Beast in the Tower. Julie Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ freeze to death if we sit here and argue until she changes her mind.”

      “Don’t I know it.” Germane had a surprisingly deep belly laugh for such a tall, slender man. He dodged Kit’s elbow to his ribs, reached out and thumped the roof of the cab, clearing Tariq to be on his way. “Be safe, my friend.”

      With a wave, Tariq checked the light traffic, then whipped away from the curb in a U-turn to avoid construction in the lane ahead. Kit and Germane jumped back as sooty slush spun from beneath the tires up onto the sidewalk. Kit was still shaking the glop off her boots when Germane pulled her back toward the brightly lit windows of the Snow Family Barbecue Grill and Diner.

      “C’mon, girl. We’d best get out of the cold air ourselves and get this place shut down for the night. I’m feelin’ the chill in my knees somethin’ fierce.”

      “In a minute.” Giving his arm a reassuring pat, Kit pushed Germane toward the diner’s front door. “The dishes are already in the washer. Go ahead and turn off the neon signs and start cleaning the grill. I’ll be there in a sec to take care of the pans and count down the money.”

      Kit huddled inside her cable-knit sweater and peered into the filmy shadows beyond the circles of lamplight dotting the street to the north and south. An older woman slowed her car and pulled into the parking garage next door. A pair of faceless figures buried their faces in their hoods and collars as they left the shelter of Hannity’s Bar and cut across the slickening street.

      Could the young man in the red-and-gold Kansas City Chiefs parka be Matt? He wasn’t old enough to buy a drink, but that kid was rebelling with a vengeance against the forced parenting of his older sister. Kit had left graduate school and come home after their parents’ unexpected deaths, thinking he needed her. She knew she needed him. But they were each dealing with their grief in different ways. She thought Matt wanted a home, but apparently, her one-time Stanford-bound brother just wanted his space.

      But a Chiefs parka was common enough this time of year in a football-crazed city like K.C. When the two bar patrons turned north away from the diner, Kit wondered anew where Matt could be at 12:00 a.m. on a Thursday night. She was going to have to do the tough-love thing and ground his tardy ass for being out so late on a school night.

      Shivering at the pending sense of loss she couldn’t quite explain, Kit looked up and down the street one more time. She couldn’t see much else through the steel scaffolding and plastic sheeting that framed the building’s facade and curved into the side alley. Though the work on her own first-floor apartment and business had been completed three months ago, the construction team renovating the twenty-nine floors above her in the Depression-era Sinclair Building never seemed to run out of projects.

      The workers were the diner’s best customers for lunch. But, along with the handful of tenants on the second and third floors who’d stuck it out through first one construction company, then another, she suspected she wasn’t the only one tired of her absent landlord’s penchant for historic perfection. Heavy equipment had blocked the sidewalk and torn up the street for more than a year now, turning three lanes of traffic into two, and giving petty thieves, gang-bangers and the homeless plenty of places to hide at night. She suspected some unwanted squatters had even found their way into a few of the unfinished apartments above her.

      Though she could admire the unseen Sinclair heir for trying to make this block of downtown Kansas City the same tourist-and-young-professional draw that Wesport or the Plaza to the south were, Kit feared that the working-class locals would be forced to move before any new influx of business could save them.

      Kit’s parents hadn’t owned any pharmaceutical empires like the Sinclairs did. They couldn’t pack up and go to a second home in the islands when the weather turned bitter and the construction got in the way. They’d toughed it out and had paid the ultimate price in the fire that had taken everything. This block of Kansas City had been their home. True, Kit had gone off to college to pursue her science degrees, and had dreamed of working in a criminology lab in New York City or Chicago. But she’d returned when she was needed. To find out why her parents had died. To rebuild their diner and maintain their dream.

      This was her home now. And her brother’s. Along with the countless castoffs from society like Germane and the handful of loyal workers she employed. They all needed her to succeed. She didn’t have time to want or dream.

      Kit tilted her face and squinted up into the falling snow. The ominous shadows of the Sinclair Building’s Art Deco carvings and dark rows of high-tech replacement windows towered above her. The far-removed penthouse apartments on the top floors were completely swallowed up by the raw night sky. If the construction delays didn’t end, and the troubling rise in neighborhood crime didn’t—

      “Watchin ’isn’t gonna make that boy come home any sooner.” Germane’s sympathetic warning stirred Kit from her thoughts. “This is the second night this week Matty’s missed his curfew.”

      At eighteen, six years her junior, Kit’s brother looked more man than boy. And legally, she supposed she didn’t have any right to set boundaries and expectations for him. But even if he wouldn’t accept her hugs, she intended to protect him. From gangs, drinking, crime—from himself. He could hate her guts if he wanted, but Matthew Snow Jr. was going to make it to adulthood and make something of himself. She’d sworn that promise at her parents’ graves.

      She couldn’t quite raise a smile. “You noticed, huh?”

      “He’s giving you worry lines beside those pretty gray eyes.”

      “He’ll be here.” She hoped. The worry that was never far from her thoughts cut through her like the bite of the winter wind. Doing had become a lot easier than feeling lately. That was how she dealt with the loss. She pushed Germane through the diner’s front door and locked it behind her. She’d wait until Matt showed up before pulling down the cage that shielded the front windows. “C’mon. We’ve got work to do.”

      TEN MINUTES LATER Kit jumped at the scream from the alley. Elbow-deep in hot, sudsy water, she chilled at the words she heard through the kitchen’s back door.

      “You?”

      “Shut up and let go, you hag!”

      “Take it. Please, just take—”

      She preferred screams to the muffled thud and sudden, eerie silence.

      “Germane!” He was mopping out by the tables. But she was just a few feet away from the shouts and scuffle in the alley. Kit tightened her grip around the iron skillet she’d been washing and ran to the exit. “Call 911!”

      “Kit! Don’t you—”

      But she was already out the door at the top of the loading dock. Not Matt. Please don’t let it be Matt. The crunching of snow drew her attention to the steel scaffolding beyond the light over her back door. She spotted the groceries scattered across the ground and hurried down the concrete steps toward the torn sack they belonged to.

      “Next time, old lady, you’ll shut up when I tell you to.”

      Kit’s eyes adjusted to the sight of two young men in saggy jeans and hooded parkas—one bearing the distinctive arrowhead of the Chiefs—squatting beside a woman’s still form in the slush near the garbage cans. “Matty?”

      The bigger of the two stopped digging through the woman’s purse and swung around. Black hair and little else was visible above the scarf he’d tied over his face. Not Matt.

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