No sound, but fury fires the intruder’s small eyes. Too quick for Rose to see, much less react, he lets go of the roof ridge. Clamping his hand around her left wrist, he pulls. Rose pulls back, but it is no contest.

Rose opens the fist she has gripped around her knife hand and lets the arm go limp. The sudden loss of opposing energy jolts him off balance. He nearly yanks Rose’s arm out of its socket as he slips down the shingles. For a horrific moment she can see herself and the man and the knife cartwheeling off the roof together.

A curse and he steadies himself. No longer is he dragging her from her perch, but he still keeps a crushing grip on her wrist.

Knife in her right hand, Rose leans perilously far out over the ridgeline. Panicked, she stabs at his far hand as if she is tenderizing beef in one heck of a hurry.

Stab, stab, stab. Maybe the knife hits his fingers, maybe it hits the shingles. Delicate differences are lost to Rose. “Get off my roof!” she spits. Stab, stab. “Pig face.” Now she is practically growling. Stab. “Dog vomit.” Spittle flies from her lips. Stab.

The paw manacling her wrist opens. She laughs with freedom. Then he grabs. Black leather-covered fingers, like those of a bull ape, close over her thigh just above the knee.

With the squeak of a terrified rodent, Rose plunges the knife through the black hand and deep into the flesh of her thigh, pinning her and the monster together. That flash of the blade, like a giant tooth biting down, releases her last lost memory. Rose knows how Harley died; her beloved’s god-awful tabloid marvel of an exit from this plane of existence. Hysterical laughter forces up from her belly. Tense muscles in her throat strangle it into a high-pitched giggle.

The man’s eyes go wide, then narrow to mere slits, as if he sees her differently now that she’s snickering.

Rose has frightened a hit man. That scares her quiet. Still, he flinches back, and his hand slides free of the glove skewered to her leg. Blood, dark as ink, splatters over her thigh. “You are one crazy bitch,” he says as he tucks the injured hand to his chest and curls protectively around it.

This is a mistake. Rolling like a sow bug, he tumbles down the roof and over the edge.

Rose hears a sound like a giant sea lion, dropped from a helicopter, hitting the tarmac.

The glove remains, spiked to her leg by the oversized knife. Wide-eyed, she looks at the enormous blade protruding from her flesh.

“Don’t you dare faint,” she tells her body. “Not after all I’ve done for you.”

CHAPTER 12