Page 52 of The Steel Rogue

“As always.”

Kilmore stood straight, pulling a key from inside his vest and making a show of slapping it into Roe’s hand. A room for upstairs. To anyone watching, Roe and Torrie would be spending the night.

With an incline of his head, Kilmore patted Roe’s shoulder. “Godspeed, old friend.”

Roe waved the heavy brass key in the air between them, setting a decidedly lascivious grin on his face. “Thank you, Kilmore.”

Kilmore walked away toward the bar just as Weston and Des strolled back to the table with a silver tankard in each of their hands.

Roe sat down next to Torrie as they settled into the other side of the booth.

Torrie leaned into his upper arm. “Roe, what—”

Roe shook his head, cutting Torrie’s whispered words as he clamped his fingers hard on her thigh. Warning her like he couldn’t do out loud at the moment. Warning her to be ready. He could hear the worry in her voice, see the worry furrowing her brow out of the corner of his eye. But he couldn’t explain. Not here. Not now.

Weston pushed one of the tankards in his hands toward Torrie and then leaned back against the high-backed bench.

Des set his spare tankard in front of Roe and lifted his own tankard to his lips, appearing casual.

Far too casual.

It wasn’t in Des’s nature.

“Did you see them?” His first mate said the words low behind the lip of his drink.

Of course Des and Weston had already identified the threats in the room.

There was a reason he kept saving Weston again and again from himself. There was no one he’d rather be in a brawl with than the two men sitting across from him.

But the woman to his left meant he’d do no brawling, not if he could help it. He’d not let one stray fist come close to Torrie.

Roe nodded, picking up his own tankard with practiced ease in his movements. Carefree on the outside, coiled on the inside. Mastering the trick had done him well growing up in St. Giles.

“Kilmore just passed along the information. Bockton is after the Box of Draupnir, and he thinks he has a key to getting it.” Roe took a sip of the ale in his tankard as his eyes shifted pointedly to Torrie at his left. The slightest action he hoped she missed.

Des inclined his head. Perfectly understood.

“I don’t have full sightline,” Roe said. “How many here?”

Weston leaned forward, his left hand lifting to rub his mouth to hide his mutter. “Six, maybe eight.”

Holding back a wince, Roe nodded, a smile on his face. “Bloody well eight? He must have put a price on it that’s made them rabid.”

“Aye.” For all the hard features of Weston—his square jaw, the crook in his nose from being broken one too many times, a thick forehead that could crack walnuts—his hazel eyes lit up as he looked at Roe, making him look actually agreeable for a change. “Tell me we get to crack heads.”

The man did love a good brawl.

Roe shook his head ever so slightly. “We split. I’ll bring Torrie up to her room.” He flashed the key in the air over the table. “And we rendezvous—you know where. Ten days.”

A smile and a loud laugh blurted from Des’s mouth and he slapped his hand on the table. “That’s it, Cap, you and the lass have a good night.”

Roe slid to the end of the table and stood, holding his hand out to Torrie. Her mouth opened, questions on her tongue and Roe had to shake his head at her.

Her mouth clamped closed and she grabbed his hand, letting him pull her along the bench and to her feet.

His grip on her hand was tight, too tight, but he couldn’t communicate in any other way the danger they were in. How quickly she could slip from his grasp if there were eight blackguards in there hoping to take them down. Bockton must have put a pretty price on her head.

He angled Torrie in front of him, blocking her as much as he could from the rest of the room as he steered her toward the stairs by the bar that led up to the sleeping rooms.