Stepanovich backpedaled away from the fence so that the police on Reed Street wouldn’t see him. Beck followed, knowing only one of them was going to leave this street alive.

Stepanovich bared his teeth at Beck, and spit at him. Rolling his head. Flexing his long, powerful arms, ready to do battle.

Beck bent his knees trying to dispel the pain from landing on the sidewalk. He rotated his left arm. It was still numb. Stepanovich’s kick must have hit the brachial nerve bundle. Feeling was coming back, but maybe too late.

Suddenly, Stepanovich jumped toward Beck, reaching for his head with both hands to pull him in close.

Beck ducked under Stepanovich’s arms and twisted two right hooks into his ribs. The Bosnian mostly blocked them with his elbow, and grabbed the back of Beck’s head, pushing down hard as he lifted a knee into Beck’s face.

Beck barely managed to block Stepanovich’s knee with crossed forearms, but the force of it drove Beck’s arms up into his face. Stepanovich tried to knee Beck in the face again. Beck countered by grabbing Stepanovich’s thigh and tried to twist the taller man down onto the ground.

Stepanovich pushed Beck away and pulled his leg free. Beck lunged forward and punched Stepanovich hard in the side of his neck. He kept coming forward, banged his forehead into Stepanovich’s broken nose, and hooked punch after punch into Stepanovich’s face before Stepanovich landed a desperate blow into the side of Beck’s head, knocking Beck four feet back.

For a moment, everything went black. Beck instinctively ducked and covered up with his forearms. Another punch landed on the other side of his head. Beck twisted a blind left hook into where he figured Stepanovich’s ribs might be. The punch landed solidly. He heard Stepanovich grunt in pain. Instantly, Beck hit again, with all the force he could muster. And again. He felt a sharp pain as the impact against Stepanovich’s ribs crunched his knuckles and bent his wrist. He accepted the pain, knowing he had done major damage.

Stepanovich twisted an elbow at Beck’s head that would have knocked him out if it landed, but Beck just managed to duck under most of the strike, feeling Stepanovich’s elbow skip off the side of his head.

Beck straightened up and backpedaled. He felt the sickening nausea from Stepanovich’s roundhouse punch, but he shook his head, breathed deep, managing to dispel the dizziness.

Beck knew he had cracked Stepanovich’s ribs. He knew that he’d further damaged Stepanovich’s already broken nose. He circled away from Stepanovich, taking more deep breaths, blinking, sucking in the cold night air, getting his focus back, estimating how badly Stepanovich was hurting.

A nose further smashed. Broken ribs. Press him now, Beck thought. Make sure he can’t breathe. Smash him. Finish him off. Get inside where the man’s longer reach and advantage in size and strength wouldn’t help.

Beck tried to move in for the kill, but he felt like he was moving through molasses. His legs weren’t working. His focus was still hazy.

And then Stepanovich pulled the knife.

The sight of it sent a cold, sickening chill flaring in Beck’s chest and stomach.

Beck backed away quickly. Shit. The thing Beck hated most. He would rather face a bullet. He’d seen too many men stabbed and slashed in prison. Memories of horrific wounds, limbs made useless because of sliced tendons flashed through his mind.

Stepanovich took a quick swipe at Beck’s face, trying to take out his eyes. Beck leaned away from the blade and stepped back farther.

Over on Reed Street, the gunfire had ceased. Beck heard muffled commands sounding through a police loudspeaker telling whoever was in the lot to come out with their hands on their heads. He hoped there wasn’t anybody alive to obey the order.

Stepanovich gathered himself, his blade ready, closing in.

Beck continued circling away from Stepanovich, moving out into the empty street as he pulled his own knife out of the sheath on his ankle.

Stepanovich paused to check out Beck’s blade. He smiled. It didn’t seem to matter to him. He knew he had a much longer reach, and in a knife fight, that was all it took.

Beck knew it, too. For a moment he thought about just pulling out his Browning and shooting Stepanovich, but that would certainly bring the cops flooding into Beard Street. Demarco was parked at the end of the block. Shooting now would trap him, too. There was only one way he could do this. And it meant overcoming the overwhelming, instinctive urge to get away from that blade.

Stepanovich slowly weaved as he carefully edged closer. Beck circled to his left, away from Stepanovich’s right hand. Stepanovich looked like he had done this many times.

Beck held his knife low, at the level of his thigh. He crouched over, his left arm out in front to block Stepanovich’s knife if he could. He pictured blocking and immediately punching roundhouse stabs into Stepanovich’s ribs, kidney, and liver.

But Stepanovich didn’t move closer. He stood upright, slashing back and forth, without much speed, testing Beck’s reaction. Beck stood his ground. Stepanovich feinted a stab, then a slash. Relaxed. Almost lazy.

Beck knew it would be coming now. The kill move. He stayed low. Blocking arm ready. And then as if powered by an electric jolt, Stepanovich leaped at Beck with shocking speed, his right hand coming down at him with a long, looping overhand stab.

It was a move intent on burying the full length of his knife into the crook between Beck’s neck and shoulder.

Beck saw the knife coming down at him. But instead of reflexively turning away from the blow, or stepping back, he did the opposite. He moved straight into the oncoming blade’s downward path, completely surprising Stepanovich, who tried to change the angle of his downward stab. But Beck had gotten too close. The blade came down, just past Beck’s left shoulder, slicing through Beck’s coat, cutting into his upper back.

Stepanovich let his momentum carry him forward, turning away, but Beck spun right with him, turning clockwise, almost as if he were attached to Stepanovich, flipping his knife into an ice pick grip, and stabbing the point of his blade into the left side of Stepanovich’s neck, quickly, precisely, and without hesitation.

The knife punched through the carotid artery. Beck spun away from Stepanovich’s counterthrust like a matador avoiding the horns of a bull.

They ended up five feet from each other. Both still standing. Both bleeding. But only one dying. Stepanovich stood stunned, grabbing at his neck, trying to staunch the massive spurts of arterial blood his racing heart pumped out onto the dark Red Hook street. There was very little pain. Just the paralyzing terror of knowing he was going to die.

Beck backed away from the spurting blood.

Stepanovich wobbled. He swiped his blade at Beck in a desperate, hateful attempt to hurt one last time. Beck stood fast, staring into Stepanovich’s eyes, watching until they glazed over and his enemy slowly folded to his knees, and then fell over onto his side, eyes open, his life draining away.

Beck ignored his own warm blood seeping into his coat. He knew the slice in his back was long, but not deep. There were no arteries or veins back there that could have been severed. He hoped Stepanovich’s knife hadn’t cut through too much muscle. He rolled his shoulder. It was all right. It hurt, but he could move his arm without too much trouble.

He stepped around Stepanovich’s body, watching the last slow pulses of blood turning the remnants of snow and ice on the street into black slush.

Beck began shivering. He crouched down to fight a wave of nausea that hit him. Get to the car, he told himself. Have to get out of the neighborhood. Can’t be caught on the street with this corpse. But he knew he wasn’t done yet.