Page 19 of Cold Foot King

He looked at her over his shoulder, and for a second, she thought he would answer. Instead, he told her, “If you want to go to the store, you need to get ready. I’m leaving.”

“I don’t need you to escort me.”

“Suit yourself.” He stood and crumpled up the paper, then tossed it in the trash. Without another word, he left the room and let the door swing closed behind him.

The abrupt departure took her aback. They’d been talking. Sure, it wasn’t as intimate as when she’d been boo-hooing her eyeballs out on his shirt in the bathroom, but they’d been kind of having a conversation, and then he’d just…left.

Perhaps because she asked him about who he killed. His avoidance of an answer only made her more curious.

It was true, she didn’t need an escort, but it was kind of nice tagging along with someone who knew the layout of the store already. In a rush, she got up and pulled her boots and her jacket on, then tucked her damp hair under her beanie so it wouldn’t freeze. She grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair, then pocketed the phone, the envelope of money, and the key card to the room. Katrina bolted out the door after him. In the hallway, she came to an abrupt stop as she realized something huge. She was free.

There were no guards keeping her in line, no strict schedule to follow.

King was waiting at the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his muscular chest. “They said we could come and go to the store, but that there are people waiting on the border of the town in case we make a run for it out of Deadhorse.”

“But we can just…go to the store? With no rules? No chaperones?”

“I mean, you probably can’t rob someone or get in a bar fight. There’s probably some rules. Pretty sure the phones have trackers in them, too.”

“That’s fair. We’re all criminals.” Katrina squared up to him and handed him his jacket. “You forgot this in the room.”

He took it and nodded his thanks, then opened the door for her.

It was nice, him being a gentleman after she’d witnessed the other side of him.

She did like that he hadn’t made a move on her when she was vulnerable and crying, and she also liked that he seemed to understand the needs of women. “Do you have sisters?”

“Three of them,” he answered easily.

Okay, so he wasn’t opposed to answering questions. He was just good at shutting down on her if she asked the wrong ones. She got that. She didn’t want to talk about Rook, or the embarrassing reason she had a scar down her face.

“I have a brother,” she told him. “And a step-sister, but she’s always lived far away and I barely talked to her. I only met her a couple times.”

“Are you and your brother close?” he asked, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and shrugging his shoulders up to his ears as they walked into the wind toward a lit-up gas station and convenience store across the icy road.

“We were when we were younger.”

“What changed?”

“Me,” she said honestly. “I wanted to be a Queen, and for a while I didn’t care who I stepped on to get to the top.” She blew out a long, frozen breath.

“Feel good, admitting that out loud?”

“Actually, yeah. I think that’s the first time I’ve put words to that. Silver would also be feeling about me the same way my brother does. I wasn’t always kind on my rise to the top.”

“And now look at you,” he said, a smile in his voice.

“Yeah, look at me. Freezing my ass off, heading to a convenience store with borrowed money after a dragon and a phoenix broke me out of prison, and likely I’ll be going right back there. I’m living the dream.”

“You don’t know you’ll go back to Cold Foot. They seem pretty interested in keeping you around.”

“How could you tell? Was it because Wreck ordered me to stay in the same room with a murdery stranger as a form of some weird punishment? No offense on the murdery-stranger part.”

“None taken.” He led her inside an entryway that was clearly built to block the snow and cold air from the front door, and up a trio of stairs.

“I can admit the bad stuff about me because you can’t judge me.” She smiled up at him as he opened the door for her. “Because you are a murderer.”

His smile was tight, but it was still a smile. Kind of. It counted.