John obeyed. “Face down,” Dieter ordered.

With an expressive look at me, John rolled over. He must have known what was coming. I didn’t. I suppose I expected Dieter would bend over and bang him on the back of the head with the gun. Instead, Dieter swung his foot. He didn’t hold back, as John had done with him; his toe connected with a sickening soggy crunch that spilled John over onto his back, his head and shoulders under the high antique bed. This time he wasn’t faking. His twisted body and outflung hands were as limp as dead fish.

I rocked to a halt as Dieter wriggled the gun admonishingly. He glanced longingly at John’s body, but decided not to risk another kick, much as he obviously wanted to. “Come,” he said. “We will go now.”

Lovingly entwined, we went down the stairs and through the lobby. Dieter’s left arm was around my shoulders, his fingers caressing my throat, his thumb nudging the nerve ending behind the ear. His right hand was inside his jacket, Napoleonstyle. I could feel the muzzle of the gun through both our jackets.

We had emerged from the hotel before I got my voice under control. “You’ll never make it up there, Dieter. The road is too icy.”

“I think of everything,” Dieter said. His thumb jabbed deep, and pain lanced through my head. Reflexively my head turned, away from the pressure. He forced my face down toward his and kissed me on the mouth.

“You son of a bitch,” I said, licking blood off my lower lip.

“But a romantic son of a bitch,” said Dieter, grinning and nodding at an elderly couple who had paused to smile at the young lovers. He pushed me toward a sleigh strung with bells and bright ribbons. “See what I have hired to take my sweetheart for a drive. I think there will be time for more romance while we wait for the ground to soften. How would you like that, eh?” He went on to enumerate all the “romantic” things he was going to do to me. The lad had quite a vocabulary.

I gritted my teeth and yearned for the moment when he would help me into the sleigh. He’d have to take the gun out of my ribs for a second, and that was all I would need. Boots, fists, teeth…

I should have learned by then not to underestimate him. The moment my foot touched the high step, he gave me a shove that sent me sprawling forward across the seat, my breath stifled by a fuzzy fur wrap. With a hearty chuckle at my clumsiness, he hauled me upright, folded me in a fond embrace, and hit me on the chin.

I don’t know what happened after that, but I’ll bet we made a charming picture as we drove out of town—bells chiming, horses trotting, and me wrapped cozily in the fur rug with my head on Dieter’s shoulder and his arm around me.