Page 1

PART ONE

HATE

Chapter 1

LEX

First Blood on Ice

Who the hell does he think he is?

I ripped my helmet off and dragged a hand through my soaked hair, and I could still feel it. Maksim Volkov’s stare, all the way across the ice, sitting on the back of my neck like a hand.

The horn had gone two minutes ago, and the score stood at Kings 3, Ravens 2. It was opening night of the Frost Cup, and we’d stolen it with forty seconds left. Half my bench was still screaming and hammering on each other’s shoulder pads, but I was standing at the boards with my gloves hanging off my fingers, staring at the only person in the whole building who hadn’t reacted to anything.

He was number 7 in the black and red of the Ravens, six foot four of Russian granite with the expression of a man waiting for a bus.

I’d hit him three times tonight, and I don’t mean love taps. Once behind the net, my whole weight, hard enough to rattle his teeth and mine. Once into the boards on the far side with my elbow up and the ref conveniently looking at a cloud. And once, in the second period, I’d skated right up to his face after the whistle and said something about his mother that I’m not going to repeat, mostly because I’m not proud of how creative it was.

That’s the job. I’m an enforcer, so when somebody hits your guy, you answer, and when somebody hits their guy, you make sure they know you did it on purpose. You drop the gloves and you trade a few, and you both sit five minutes in the box while the crowd gets its money’s worth, and everybody goes home with a story. It’s a conversation, a mean one, sure, but a conversation.

Maksim Volkov wouldn’t talk.

He took every hit like I was a light breeze. Skated off. Didn’t even look annoyed. Once, after the elbow, he turned his head and looked right at me, and I felt it all the way down in my knees, and then he went back to playing hockey. Like I was a mosquito. Like I’d been noted .

And the freakiest part? He wasn’t sweating.

I noticed it during the handshake line. Sixty minutes of skating, forty pounds of gear, a building heated to a sauna by ten thousand screaming fans, and his face was dry. Pale, sharp, and completely dry. Maybe Russians ran cold. I’m not a scientist.

I know I’m not normal about this stuff. I’m aware. I love making people lose their temper. It’s not even a hobby, it’s more like a talent, like some people can sing. Watching someone go from calm to furious because of something I said gives me a feeling I can’t describe without sounding like a psychopath, so I don’t describe it. And in twenty-six years, I had never met somebody I couldn’t crack.

Until a Russian with dead gray eyes looked at me like I was weather.

“Hey, Lex. Take this. You need it.”

Jason Reyes dropped onto the bench beside me and shoved a water bottle into my hand. Jason’s the closest thing I have to a friend on the team, and I say that as a person who cheerfully insults everybody else on the team. He has the face of a golden retriever and the morals of an alley cat, and I’d take a bullet for him. Not that I’d tell him.

“You were unreal out there,” he said. “That block in the last minute? If that goes in, we’re in overtime, and I’m too old for overtime.”

“You’re twenty-six.”

“Emotionally too old.” He bumped my shoulder. “Duke says your first round tonight is on him. He said, and I quote, ‘Tell Pendleton that’s the first thing he’s done all week that I didn’t want to strangle him for.’”

“No problem,” I said, and chuckled, and let a smile curl up the side of my mouth like it was nothing.

It wasn’t nothing. I’d have crawled over broken glass for that sentence. I don’t advertise this, but when somebody tells me I did something well, it goes through me like hot chocolate. Warm all the way down. It’s embarrassing, honestly. I’m a grown man who beats people up for money, and a good job, kid makes me want to roll over and show my stomach.

Jason nodded and left me alone with my water. I gave the far end of the ice one last look. The Ravens were filing off. Number 7 was already gone.

I went to change.

Because of a flooded pipe in the visitors’ wing, the Frost Cup committee, in its infinite wisdom, had made the Kings and the Ravens share a locker room for the first week. One room, blue tape down the middle of the floor. Kings on the left, Ravens on the right. It was either the dumbest idea I had ever heard or the best present anyone had ever given me.

I pushed through the door and froze.

Empty, except for one guy.

Maksim was on the far side of the tape with his back to me, half changed. Jersey gone, undershirt gone, black training pants sitting low on his hips. I told myself I was looking at him the way you look at an opponent. Size him up. Find the weakness. He was long and lean the way a wolf is lean, all cut lines and nothing wasted, and his back was so smooth and pale it looked like someone had sanded it.