Fate’s arm came up and blocked the bathroom, more teasing then serious. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” When he didn’t move, I shrugged and redirected toward the dresser, pretending I needed something from within.
“Now I know it’s something,” he said, remaining in place.
“I just want to get in the shower.” I shuffled through the drawer searching for some article of clothing that didn’t exist.
“Are you mad because of last night?”
It was another poke in an already sore belly that had me finally spewing my complaints. “I work with you, I sleep in the same room with you, same bed. Sometimes it’s a little hard to face the other people in this house when everybody knows you tried to get rid of me. I do have some pride. Or at least I used to.”
The playfulness was gone in a blink. “Who cares what anyone thinks?”
“Maybe we need to change sleeping arrangements.”
“Why? You plan on moving into Knox’s room?”
I rested an elbow on the dresser and put my forehead on my palm. “No.”
“That’s where this is coming from though. Isn’t it? What did he say to you? You were fine when you went into the garage. He goes in and now you’re not.”
“This has nothing to do with him.”
“It shouldn’t but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
My back still to him, I heard his movements to the door and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. This was what I got for starting to talk again.
Being closer, I moved in front of it before he got there
He stopped short when I wouldn’t get out of the way. “Move.”
“Why?” The look on his face said it was to go punch Knox in the gut but I was hoping I was wrong.
“Because I’m going to punch Knox in his mouth so that he learns to keep it shut.”
I’d almost had it right.
“You can’t hit him. He’s on our side.”
“He’s on someone’s side but it’s not mine.” He stood there, staring me down, trying to physically intimidate me out of the doorway.
I shook my head.
His hands went to my waist and lifted me out of the way and deposited me to the side. What the hell? Why let me think I had a chance in blocking him?
He stormed down the hall, and I ran after him.
“Where’s Knox?” he asked, pausing briefly in the living room to ask Murphy, who was sitting on the couch.
Murphy hooked a finger towards the garage. Fate took off in that direction, now both Murphy and I following him.
He threw the door open. “What did you say to her?”
He didn’t wait for a reply, and I wondered why he even asked because he decked him a second later.
Knox was lying on his back as I ran to grab Fate’s arm to make sure he didn’t continue beating on him but stopped dead. It sounded like a bomb was exploding.
The fight was forgotten as a threat from beyond loomed. The walls of the house were still shaking as we all raced outside as quickly as the garage door would open.
“Don’t go beyond the twenty feet,” Fate yelled, even as he himself did.
I was too stunned to move immediately. Every single house surrounding us was in flames, five in total. My hand covered the scream I wanted to release as I reminded myself we were the last occupied house on the block. The twenty feet radius was clear as the flames came close enough to lick the boundary in places but didn’t touch so much as a blade of grass within that distance.
I was glad I hadn’t undressed completely and my knife was still at my ankle when I spotted them. Five of Malokin’s guys were about fifty feet from us. Fate spotted them at the same moment and took off.
Disregarding his warning, I sprinted off right behind him.
They ran as soon as they saw us coming and I was amazed at how much speed I was getting from my legs. I overtook Fate after the first block and launched myself on the closest target a couple minutes after.
We fell to the ground and skin shredded on pavement. He rolled on top of me but I quickly managed to get the better position. My knife going up and under his ribs seconds later.
I was back on my feet and looking for my next target as Knox was breaking the neck of one and Fate had another pinned to the ground. Murphy hadn’t caught up to us yet.
I ran ahead, looking for the other two, but they were gone. Knox joined me but without any luck.
When we circled back around, Fate had one guy with his back on the ground. Murphy was beside him, having finally caught up.
“Where is he?” Fate demanded the guy as he held him by the throat.
“Fuck off,” the guy said through broken teeth.
“I will kill you.”
“Do it.” The guy meant it. He’d rather be dead than disclose anything on Malokin. I couldn’t say I was surprised.
Fate, obviously believing him as well, grabbed the guy’s head and smashed it against the asphalt below him. Considering what I knew about Malokin, it was about as good an ending as he was going to get.
He stood and the four of us looked around. The rest of the house’s inhabitants were standing on the lawn taking in the chaos.
And then I noticed the house in front of us, its walls still in flames except for one. Upon it, a message charred into its surface.
Almost even
We wouldn’t be almost anything after he found out we’d just killed three more of his guys.
Chapter TwentyNine
My eyes shot to the clock on the side table. Four a.m.; I’d only been asleep for an hour but I knew I wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping after watching the houses around us burn to the ground. After Fate had lectured the Jinxes for over an hour about getting drunk on the job, we’d all sat around the living room scrambling for a new plan. No one had come up with one. It hadn’t been a good night by any standard.
Now here I was with clammy skin, throbbing pain and still no plan. The pain, which had started at the tattoo and worked its way down my leg, was now climbing through my chest until I feared I was having a heart attack, except that was supposed to be impossible.
I tried to keep my body still so I wouldn’t have to answer any questions from Fate, who lay beside me. I must have finally fallen asleep last night while he was showering because I didn’t remember him getting into bed. Any talk of separate rooms, along with further mention of the Knox incident, was as gone as the houses that had burned down. Still, he was way over on the other side and the gap between us felt a lot larger than a few feet.
“Karma?”
I should’ve known he’d wake up just when I wanted him to sleep. I answered the question I knew was inevitable. “It’s the tattoo.”
There was pause a before he spoke again and I could imagine the pieces falling into place in his head, like they had for me. He had less information but he had more knowledge. This wasn’t just the tattoo and it wasn’t getting better.
“How often is this happening?”
I tried to think back to when it had first started. It was hard to pin down time and frequency on something so sporadic. Falling short of a concrete answer, I came up with the next best thing I could. “I guess you could say just enough to remind me there’s something wrong whenever I start to forget.”
“Show me,” he said as he moved over to my side of the bed and started tugging the covers out of the way.
I pushed down the shorts I sometimes wore to sleep, knowing exactly what he’d find, and what Lars had found as well. “It looks the same. It always looks the same.” I didn’t need to look at it to know.
“What’s it feel like?” he asked, prodding the area that now lit up the bedroom with a warm glow.
“Most of the time? Normal.”
“And the not normal times?” he asked, leaning too close to me with a too knowing stare.
“A stabbing pain that radiates.”
“So badly that you can’t walk,” he said, obviously remembering the time he’d witnessed it act up.
Fate rose abruptly, startling me with the burst of action. He was on his feet throwing on pants as I still lay abed. “We’re getting it out.”
It wasn’t a question or a suggestion.