Chapter 4 · Lights Out on the Cold-Room Hook

"I said stop." My voice comes out wrecked, not commanding, and his hand at my waist doesn't move. Doesn't loosen. His thumb sits right on the bone of my hip like he's marking a spot on a map he already owns. "You said stop after you opened your mouth for me, Lila." Marco's breath is right against my ear, cold room air turning it to steam between us. "Which one am I supposed to believe?" "Let go." "You're not asking like you mean it." He's right, and I hate him for being right, and I shove both palms flat against his chest anyway — not to push him off, just to feel the wall of him under my hands, because some traitor part of me wants to know if he's as unsteady as I am. He's not. His heart barely kicks. Mine's going like a fist on a door. The overhead strip lights buzz once, hard, and die. Every one of them. The whole aisle of the subzero room drops to black so total I lose the edges of him, only the heat and the shape and the smell of diesel and cedar and man sweat pressed into my face. "Marco." "Breaker's on a timer past midnight. Nobody's coming to fix it." His voice doesn't move an inch, like the dark is exactly where he wanted us. "Fourteen tides, Lila. Tide eleven hits in six hours and Customs walks into my ice house with a federal seal if there's no Crowe die sitting warm in that counting room. You want to talk about *stop*, or you want to talk about that clock?" "I want the second chip." I say it into the dark like it still has power. "You said you'd trade." "I said I'd trade for the truth about your husband's ledger. You gave me your mouth instead." "You *took* it." "Baby, you leaned in." I can't see his face and that's worse, because I can hear the grin in it, and my whole body remembers the shape of him against me from thirty seconds ago before I got my head back. He hasn't stepped away. If anything he's closer, the front of him a wall of heat in a room built to kill heat, and the cold is biting my shoulders where my coat's gone crooked. His hand slides — not rough, worse than rough, *patient* — from my hip up along my ribs like he's reading braille off my spine. "Don't," I say. "Don't what. Be specific. I don't move on maybe." "Don't touch me like you already own the answer." "I own the tape, Lila." His mouth is at my jaw now, not kissing, just resting there, breath dragging heat across skin that's gone goosebumped from cold and something that isn't cold at all. "I own the federal card that says smuggler's widow gets believed over grieving widow every single time a jury looks at your face. I own every reason a room full of men will nod along when I say the Crowe pier answers to me now." "Then leak it." My hands are still on his chest, not pushing, just — there, feeling the drum of him under my palms. "Go on. Leak the tape. Ruin me at the auction, ruin the pier, and lose the only die who'll sign your occupancy paper past tonight. See how many tides your crates survive without me standing in that booth." He goes still. Actually still, for one full second, like I found the one wire that matters in the whole dark box of him. "You think that scares me," he says, but it comes out lower than before. Rougher at the edges. "I think it's the only leverage I've got left down here in the dark, so I'm using it." "Smart girl." His hand finds the zipper of my coat and drags it down, slow, metal teeth splitting apart one at a time in a room that's forty degrees and dropping, and I should be shaking from cold and instead I'm shaking from the fact that I don't stop him. "Say the word. One word, Lila. Say you stay master die through tide fourteen — no vote, no committee, just you — and the tape burns tonight." "And if I don't sign that word?" "Then Customs gets a copy at dawn with your husband's voice on it explaining exactly how the ice house paid off its debts, and every man on that floor who called you *smuggler's widow* gets to hear you agree with him. Nod along, like they already know." My coat is open. His hand is flat against my sternum, over the thin cotton of my shirt, and I can feel my own pulse slamming up into his palm like it's trying to answer him before I do. The last layer between us is nothing, is fabric so thin the cold's already found my skin through it, and he leans in until his mouth is a breath off mine, until I can taste the metal-and-cedar of him on the air I'm not breathing right. "Marco—" "Say it." His knee shifts between mine, his weight pins me back against the freezer rack, ice crates rattling once behind my skull, cold biting through the shirt now, his mouth so close I can feel the shape of every word before he says it. "Say it, and I'll make you forget the number on that clock." "That's not a trade. That's a leash." "Call it whatever helps you sleep in the counting room." His thumb drags once, slow, along my collarbone, and my breath catches loud enough that he hears it, and I hate that he hears it, and he makes a sound against my jaw that isn't quite a laugh. "Five seconds, Lila. That's all it'd take me. You know it. I know it. The only thing "Say stay, or walk out into the rain naked." The last covering left my skin. His canine sat on my throat. The tip pressed the entrance and held, not yet inside, last half-second. No phone. No knock. Stay, or recant leftover on the floor.