“Doesn’t the snow ever fucking melt in this place? It’s like the Norse version of hell.” Stacia glared outside at the fat flakes beginning to swirl in the gray early evening light.

“This is pretty typical March weather.” Charlie stared at Stacia over her glass of beer. Personally, she was opposed to restaurants that served beer in fancy glasses, but Stacia had insisted on somewhere fancy for the big “announcement.” What that announcement might be, Charlie wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think she was going to like it. And seeing Stacia again just reminded her Jake was gone, finishing his convalescence somewhere in the South of France, already an ocean away. She took another gulp of beer.

It’d only been a couple weeks, but sometimes it felt like she’d dreamed him. Then other days she came home and expected to see him at the table.

But he wasn’t there. No one was there. Even though sometimes she seemed to feel eyes on her. Unfriendly ones, but . . .

“My point exactly. You need to come home with me sometime, thaw out from living in this igloo.”

Her stomach tightened at the thought of seeing Jake again, even as she forced herself to roll her eyes. “Isn’t Australia full of snakes and spiders and lots of other things that bite?”

“Yeah.” Stacia smiled wistfully. “There’s no place like it in the world.”

“I guess we each have our own idea of what’s normal.”

“Normal is a setting on an iron, my dear. And yours is about to go to scorching.”

“Why? What did you do, Stace?”

“Remember when I asked to take all those pics the other day?”

“Yeah.” Charlie had been reluctant when Stacia had asked to see her favorite canvases, but she’d been unable to resist in the end. Mostly because Stacia was like a pit bull that had sunk its teeth into something tasty.

“Well, I’ve been chatting you up to a friend of mine, Gordy Tremaine. He runs this gallery here in Saint Paul. The Aurora West. We had brunch this morning with the owner. They absolutely loved your stuff, Charlie. They want to have a showing. As soon as possible.”

She lifted the glass to her suddenly hot cheeks, feeling dizzy. This couldn’t be real. She’d dreamed of showing her art, of course. Hazy, sometime-far-far-in-the-future dreams. But this . . . “How soon?”

Stacia shrugged. “The first week of spring.” She glared at the frozen landscape outside. “Or what should be the first week of spring.”

“But . . . that’s not even a month away.” Her heart was racing toward a full-blown panic attack.

“Which gives us just enough time to get you ready.”

Stacia’s cool words pulled her up short. “What do you mean, get me ready? They’re showing my paintings, not me.”

Stacia’s look was eloquent, her words less so. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Can’t I just be the reclusive artist, mysterious and absent?” Her pulse was pounding in her ears again.

“That’s never been a thing, trust me. You’re incredibly lucky Gordy and Mr. Whitehall even agreed to this without meeting you. Normally, galleries put artists through an intensive vetting process. But you’re a local, and you have an extensive body of work—and me, natch.” Stacia’s grin was full of satisfaction. “Once they get a taste of your art, you need to be ready to be the main attraction. Creative genius is rarer than diamonds; they’ll all want to bask in your shine. Don’t you want to look the part?”

“I’m no damn diamond.”

“Sure you are, you just need some polishing. Maybe a change in your look,” she said with a delicate shrug.

Charlie raised her eyebrows. “I don’t have a look and you know it.”

“I’ve been dying to ask, what is up with that, anyway? It looks like you pull stuff off the rack randomly, regardless of color, shape or style. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I can’t. Convenient is my normal.”

“What happened to normal is a setting on an iron?”

“You said that, not me.”

“Charlie, looking like yourself is fine. Embracing who you are is fantastic. But this,” she waved a hand up and down, “isn’t embracing who you are. It’s hiding under cheap, badly dyed rayon.”

“Is this where you tell me to hit the gym, lose fifty pounds and become a whole new me?”

“No. You haven’t fifty to lose, and it’s not in your biology anyway.” Stacia gave her an assessing look. “But so what? Look at you. That mouth. Those fantastic fucking tits.”

Charlie coughed, her cheeks flaming as she reached for her beer.

“Skim a little cream from the milk and you’d be a total sex kitten, Charlie.”

“I don’t like cats.”

Stacia slapped her hand on the table. “Goddamn it. This could be your shot. A shot not one artist in ten thousand gets. Don’t you think you’re being selfish?”

“Me being selfish? What’s your stake in this, Stacia, if not to get noticed, too? To keep your ‘in’ with the art world that gets you and your brother jobs. I’m not stupid.”

Stacia’s hand stilled on the tablecloth. “You think I’m using you?”

It was one of those times when Charlie knew she should hold her tongue, but she couldn’t help herself. “I think that’s the way the world works.”

Stacia’s lips thinned and her eyes narrowed. Finally, she nodded. “Maybe it is. But I also love art, in a way I thought you understood. Your work is art in its truest form. A whole new way of seeing and appreciating what’s right in front of us every day. I want people to see your paintings—not for me, but because of how it will make them feel.” She tilted her head, those blue-gray eyes so like her brother’s sharpening. “Isn’t that why you painted them in the first place? To get that beauty out? Because holding it inside hurt too much?”

She swallowed. That was it. Well, most of it.

“But if you’re too much of a coward to let other people see it,” Stacia continued, her voice hardening, “don’t use me as an excuse to keep hiding. Though I am sure you can find another.”

Stacia waved for the check, gather her purse and got to her feet, turning away from their table without another word. In those icepick heels she favored, Stacia was well over six feet tall. Intimidating, beautiful . . .

And so right it was scary. Charlie had gone out of her way to avoid attention for years, particularly male attention. But in the end, didn’t that mean she’d given up part of herself? That the monsters had won?

She bit her lip. Maybe it was time to stop hiding.

“Sit back down. Please.”

Stacia turned, her face sober. “Why?”

“Because I’m being an ungrateful little shit and I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it all the way. Tell me what you have in mind.”

---

Sunshine blazed like the laser eyes of some alien intent on finding every patch of hidden snow and vaporizing it. It was finally warming up, even in downtown Minneapolis. Surprise, surprise. Unfortunately, in Minnesota, that meant it was about fifty. And the heater in this rental was for shit.

“Why can’t we just grab the tubby bitch?”

Archie sighed without taking his eyes off the building they were parked across from. “You know why. With the sister hanging around day and night the last few weeks, that Polack’s keeping tabs for sure.”

“Now there’s a woman I’d like to get alone for a few hours.” Timor looked out the window of the car as Anastacia flashed past right on time, a small bag in her hands.

Archie scratched his nose. He didn’t much care for some of his partner’s favorite pastimes, raping women being one. Along with occasionally mutilating them. Darnell had always told him to keep an eye on the younger man but not to interfere. Such “skills,” the boss said, had their uses. It wasn’t any of his business anyway, except—

“Her husband would slice your dick into itty bitty pieces and serve it to his dogs.” And make you watch, Archie thought. Stupid fuck. Timor snorted. Lucjan Kowalewski was one of the few men on earth as scary as their boss. Archie shivered and slapped the dash again, trying to squeeze a bit more warmth into the air.

Nope, no way in hell would he let Timor get within sniffing distance of that dark-haired bitch. If something happened to the Polack’s wife, he wouldn’t give a flying fuck if it had been Archie or his partner who’d actually done the deed; they’d both find themselves deep in the bowels of some Polish salt mine.

After the crazy son of a bitch fed both their dicks to his dogs.

The blond was another story. He frowned as she walked up to the Harris bitch. She looked different than the night they’d talked to her in the hallway. More polished. Less . . . lumpy. Her hair was still a mousy color, but now it was piled high on her head. Her cheeks were pink with exertion. This was a daily ritual now. Anastacia brought her lunch every day at noon, right after the other woman emerged from the gym and before she headed back to her office a few blocks away.

The sight of the blond enraged him. To think Harris had been helpless, a few feet away, only this cunt between him and getting back in with Darnell. The boss had gotten positively cagey over the last few years. It wasn’t like the man hadn’t always been a little paranoid, but he’d had his inner circle, the men he trusted. Archie had been proud to be one of those men. But that had all changed a while back. Nobody saw Darnell anymore, least of all him and Timor.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel, his big ruddy knuckles turning white. Nailing the Harris twins to the wall would go a long way to restoring that breach. When Timor had winged Jake, Archie had been ecstatic, and intent on securing the kill for himself. Then that goddamn artist had to interfere. He snarled, remembering her big blue eyes, placid as a cow’s behind those glasses. She’d fooled him. It had been his call, and she’d fooled him.

So yeah, Charlotte Gracen was one woman Archie wouldn’t mind turning Timor loose on. And Archie thought the boss was leaning that way, too. There was definitely something up between her and the Harris twins.

“I’m going batshit here. We haven’t done anything except watch in weeks.” Timor slapped his hands on his thighs.

“Patience,” Archie whispered, watching the two women walk up the narrow street streaked in sunshine. “Patience.”