He also allowed himself to slip out of her. He didn’t want it, but it had to be done. She’d be sore, and the rubber would start leaking soon.

He also found when he lifted his head that he’d been sucking on her neck so hard while coming he’d left a hickey.

He should be ashamed. He should. But he wasn’t. It looked just fine on her neck, like a little brand left by him. Like a little message to the world.

Mine.

Parker’s Ridge

November 21

Late Monday morning, Nick rapped his knuckles on the steel door of the van.

He was in a foul mood. He’d spent the past three hours overseeing the company that put in a top-of-the-line security system at the Prewitt mansion. The company was a good one, but the salesman had tried to snow the elderly, confused judge with unnecessary bells and whistles.

It made him so goddamned angry. The instant a human becomes weak, the wolves come out to prey. He remembered reading in a book a Roman saying—man is wolf to man. Well, that just about summed up humankind.

It got to him, every fucking time, how the strong preyed on the weak. Jake would have died in the orphanage, either from the beatings or sheer neglect, if he hadn’t been there.

Nick made it his life work to stand between the weak, the young, and the old and that section of humankind that was born without a heart. That saw other humans the way the butcher sees the pig. Useful, but only when slaughtered.

He’d fought them in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Indonesia. And now he was fighting them here at home. These aliens in human bodies.

But no matter how hard he fought, no matter how many he took down, there were always more and more and more of them. The supply never ended.

Nick was so familiar with the type he could smell it—the alien who would cut you up for parts as soon as look at you.

Nick could actually watch the thought processes of the slick company salesman who drove out with the workmen. Maybe he was from the area and knew the family name. Or maybe he recognized the address. Whatever, he spent an entire morning tagging along, just for a shot at the judge, alone.

Nick came back into the house to see old Judge Prewitt with a pen in his mottled, shaking hand, about to sign an inch-thick sheaf of papers. And scumbag watching over him, greed and anticipation on his plump, vicious face.

Five minutes later, the fuckhead was scurrying out the door, red faced and empty-handed.

So Nick was in a piss-poor mood by the time he made it out of town to the surveillance van. Not to mention that he was already missing Charity, which was a first. Iceman never missed anyone, ever.

Di Stefano opened the back door of the van and beckoned him in. The instant Nick stepped in, he was assailed by the smell of male sweat, dirty laundry, stale pizza, and farts. One deep breath and he was choking.

Three days in Charity’s company and already he was spoiled.

“Jesus.” He batted the air in front of him. “What the hell do you guys eat all day, beans? It’s enough to make a man pass out. We don’t need weapons. We should get Worontzoff’s goons out here and gas ’em.”

Alexei was, as usual, sitting on a chair, hunched forward, those huge, heavy earphones on his head. He lifted a hand in greeting, then bent his head again in concentration.

“Wow, listen to the gentleman here. Lah-di-da. Excuuuuuse us.” Di Stefano rolled his eyes. “Not all of us are playing the part of billionaire businessmen, Iceman. Some of us are actually working. We’ve been here all weekend, haven’t left the van once. So get off my case.”

“Don’t give me that shit. I’ve been on the clock, too. All weekend.”

“Oh yeah?” Di Stefano gave him a sideways glance. “I’ll just bet. I saw the photos. Real hardship duty. So, tell me,” he said casually, picking up his can of diet Coke, “she’s such a pretty little thing. How is she in the sack? I’ll bet—”

Di Stefano didn’t get a chance to say anything else because he was slammed up against the van’s bulkhead with Nick’s arm across his windpipe, pressing hard, the can of Coke rolling, forgotten, on the floor of the van.

“Jesus, Iceman!” Alexei scrambled to Nick’s side and starting pulling uselessly at his arm. “Let go, you’ll kill him. Let go, man! What the fuck are you thinking?”

He wasn’t thinking. Nick didn’t have any thoughts in his head at all, only a bright red storm of rage, drowning out everything else.

Di Stefano was turning purple, arms flailing, trying to club Nick on the side of the head, trying to kick him away. Di Stefano had been trained in self-defense—he was a cop, after all—but he had nothing like Nick’s training. Nick had spent ten years being trained by the best to kill.

Ordinarily, Di Stefano would be dead. Nick knew precisely how to do it. Colonel Merle had spent a whole month on chokeholds and Nick was an expert. Smash the hyoid bone and in a second the adversary goes down like a felled bull.

But something was starting to penetrate, past the wall of staticky noise in his head. Alexei’s voice. It was only the voice that stopped him. Alexei had no muscles at all, and though he was pulling at Nick’s arm, he could just as well have been patting him.

Nick stared into Di Stefano’s bulging eyes and loosened his hold. Half a second later, he stepped back, dropping his arm.

Di Stefano fell to his knees, head hanging, wheezing to get air into his suffering lungs. “You. Miserable. Fuck,” he gasped, getting a word out every ten seconds. He rubbed his neck, red and raw looking.

Nick sat in one of the two chairs in the van, then bounced right back up again, as if the dingy off-white plastic chair had pneumatic springs. He couldn’t sit, he was too wound up. Even his breathing was speeded up.

Jesus.

He was buzzing with nervous energy and had to force himself to stand still.

It wasn’t like him. They called him Iceman not because he didn’t have emotions. He had them, in spades. It’s just that he’d honed his self-control since he was two years old and realized that fighting back against an eight-year-old was suicide. He could always put aside the inner man on the job.

Clocking Di Stefano was just insane. He could hardly believe he’d done it. He felt ashamed. Sort of. Except that if Di Stefano made another suggestive comment about Charity, he’d put him in a chokehold again, which probably meant that he wasn’t that sorry.

Di Stefano was standing now, glaring at him, rubbing his neck angrily. “What the fuck was that about?”

Nick looked him straight in the eye. Di Stefano was a teammate. In the army, you defended your teammates with your life, whether you liked them or not. Nick liked Di Stefano, a lot. It’s just that he had to learn what the new rule was.

“Here’s the way it works. From this moment on, Charity Ames is eighty years old, with four chins and warts. You never mention sex and her name in the same sentence, ever again. She is officially sexless. I hope that’s clear.” He turned to Alexei. “That includes you.”

Wide-eyed, Alexei mimed zipping his mouth shut. Nick speared Di Stefano with a hard gaze. “Clear?”

“Absolutely.” Di Stefano shook his head, as if to clear it. “And I have a new rule, too. You ever pull that stunt again, and I’ll take you down.”

Nick bared his teeth. “You can try,” he said softly.

Alexei stepped between them, hands up in a time-out gesture. “Hey guys, stop locking antlers. The smell of testosterone is overriding the farts. Let’s just settle down—”

A faint buzz sounded from Alexei’s headset and he dived for the console, switching on the sound from the speakers. It was the phone, ringing. Worontzoff picked up on the second ring.

“Hello.” His voice was deep and calm.