By a Thread

11

“What the hell is he doing here?” Owen asked in a flat voice.

Finn leaned to one side so he could see what Owen was looking at. His eyes widened when he caught sight of the detective, and he sent me a questioning glance, which I ignored, since I was focused on Owen right now.

“He’s Callie’s fiancé,” I replied in a low tone. “He showed up here at the restaurant last night after I dealt with the two guys who were threatening her.”

“And you just forgot to mention that before now?” Owen asked, his eyes narrowed in thought.

I shifted on my side of the booth. I couldn’t exactly tell Owen that I didn’t know what to make of Donovan being back in my life any more than he did. The detective noticed Owen glaring at him and did a double take as well, as surprised by his appearance as Owen had been by his. The two men stared at each other for several seconds before Donovan squared his shoulders and headed in our direction.

“Incoming,” Finn muttered, letting out a low whistle and then a crashing sound under his breath, like a bomb was about to drop down and explode on our heads.

I kicked him under the table, trying to get him to shut the hell up. This was going to be bad enough without him making wisecracks. Finn winced, gave me a dirty look, and leaned down to massage his bruised shin.

Donovan stepped up to the booth. He nodded at Bria and Finn, then turned to look at me and finally Owen.

“Owen.”

“Donovan.”

The detective’s gaze fell to the table and Owen’s hand, which was still resting on top of mine. Donovan’s face tightened, and his lips turned down the slightest bit. I had no idea why. He’d left me, after all, come down here and gotten engaged to another woman in the space of a few months. So why did he look so pissed that Owen was holding my hand? And why did his expression make me feel just a little bit smug inside?

“I hear that congratulations are in order,” Owen finally said. “On your engagement.”

He put a little extra emphasis on the last word, but Donovan just nodded, not rising to the bait.

“They are. Callie’s a really special woman. I’m lucky to have her in my life.”

“You were lucky to have Gin in your life too, but you managed to fuck that up,” Owen said in a mild tone. “Callie seems like a nice lady. Let’s hope that history doesn’t repeat itself—for her sake.”

He gave Donovan a smirking, mocking smile, which caused the detective’s hands to tighten into fists and his whole body to swell up with tension. Donovan looked like he was another quip away from challenging Owen to a showdown out in the parking lot—or just reaching across the table and throttling Owen where he sat.

I tightened my grip on Owen’s hand. We had too much to do today for my current lover and past one to get into a petty fistfight in a restaurant full of people, despite the fact that part of me thought it would be pretty damn entertaining to watch. I might be the toughest assassin around, but the idea of two men brawling over me had a certain sexy appeal—especially since I knew that Owen would wipe the floor with Donovan. Oh, the detective would put up a good struggle, but Owen would fight dirty to win—just like I would.

Owen turned away from Donovan, dismissing him as unimportant, and laced his fingers through mine. I raised my eyebrows at the macho show, but Owen just grinned at me.

Donovan stood there staring at our linked fingers for a moment, that tight expression still on his face, before he shook his head. “What are the four of you doing here? And don’t tell me that you came just to get brunch.”

“Callie is my best friend,” Bria said in a quiet voice. “We’re here to help her, Donovan.”

The detective’s features darkened with anger. “I told Gin last night that I didn’t need or want her help. I’ll handle Dekes, and I’ll do so through legal means. That’s all there is to it.”

Bria looked at him, then over at me. I could see the struggle in her blue eyes. Part of her agreed with Donovan that it would be best to handle Dekes through the law. That’s what they were supposed to do, that’s what the two of them had sworn to do as cops. But the other part of her remembered Mab and all the awful things the Fire elemental had done to us over the years—things that there was only one kind of justice for.

“It doesn’t seem to me that legal means will work with Dekes,” Bria said in a careful tone. “Not after what happened to me and Gin last night.”

Donovan frowned. For a moment, a spark of concern shimmered in his golden eyes, but it was gone so quickly that I thought I’d only imagined it.

“You mean those four bodies found at the Blue Sands hotel? I got called out there bright and early this morning to work the case. Imagine my surprise when the coroner told me how they’d all been stabbed to death.” The sarcasm in his voice was thicker than a steak. Now, the only thing I saw in his gaze was anger.

Finn held up his hand like a student patiently waiting for the teacher to call on him. Donovan looked at him, and my foster brother smiled.

“Let’s go into the back of the restaurant,” Finn suggested in a cheery voice. “Too many eyes and ears out here for this kind of discussion.”

He was right. The brunch crowd had thinned out considerably, but more than a few folks stared in our direction, wondering who we were and why there was so much tension among the five of us.

“Fine,” Donovan muttered. “Follow me.”

We slid out of the booth. Brunch was my treat, so I left more than enough money on the table to cover our food and give the waitresses a generous tip. Then the four of us followed Donovan into the back of the restaurant. I didn’t look at Owen as we wound our way through the tables, but I could feel my lover’s eyes on me. He might have seemed nonchalant with Donovan, but I knew that Owen was pissed and probably a little hurt that I hadn’t mentioned the detective to him last night when I’d called.

I sighed. I’d never claimed to be good at this relationship stuff, and once again, it seemed I’d made a mess of things without even trying.

The doors next to the bar led into the restaurant’s kitchen. My eyes scanned the stainless-steel appliances, the pots of coffee brewing on their burners, the white order tickets tacked up over a series of stoves that lined the back wall. Even though it was a relatively small space, everything was neat and clean just like it was at the Pork Pit. I approved.

Callie stood in the middle of the kitchen, pouring thick, creamy batter into a series of waffle makers, calling out orders and instructions to the other cooks, and handing finished plates of food to the waitresses standing by. She had a smile on her face as she talked and laughed with her staff, and it was easy to tell that she was the heart and soul of the kitchen. That the food she served up at the Sea Breeze had a little bit of her love and joy in every single bite.

Callie looked over her shoulder at the sound of the doors swinging open, probably expecting another waitress to come hurrying through with a new order, and her eyes lit up when she realized that it was Donovan instead. She finished the latest waffle she was making, slid it on a plate, and passed it off to another chef to be topped with fresh peaches, honey, and whipped cream. Then she hurried over to Donovan, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed the detective’s stubbled cheek. The food wasn’t the only thing that Callie loved—she cared about Donovan too.

My heart twinged again, and a sort of wistful sadness filled me. I didn’t want the detective for myself, but I didn’t know that I wanted to see his obvious happiness either, especially when I’d been the cause of so much unhappiness in his life.

Donovan smiled down at his fiancée. Then his gaze cut to me, and his face iced over once again. He took a step back from Callie.

“Can you take a break and go into your office for a few minutes?” Donovan asked in a low voice. “Gin and her friends have some things that they’d like to talk to you about. Things that we all need to talk about.”

Callie stared at me, then back at her fiancé, clearly wondering what was going on between us. Damned if I knew.

“Sure. This way.”

We left the kitchen and stepped through another door into a small office in the very back of the restaurant. A desk, a computer, a phone, a couple of printers, piles of paper and invoices everywhere. It was your typical small-business office with a typical jumbled mess. Callie took the seat behind the desk, Donovan perched on the edge of it, and the rest of us crowded inside the cramped space. Finn closed the door behind him so we wouldn’t be overheard.

“What’s going on?” Callie asked, looking at Bria. “You said earlier you wanted to talk.”

Bria nodded and drew in a breath. “We need to discuss what we’re going to do about Randall Dekes and the threats he’s made against you.”

Callie shook her head, causing her dark ponytail to swish against her shoulders. “I’ve told you before, Bria, that there’s nothing for you to do. Dekes is my problem, not yours. Sooner or later, Donovan will find something to connect him to Stu’s death, and the vampire will be put in jail where he belongs.”

“Maybe, but it won’t stick. Not for long. And he won’t find it before Dekes kills you,” I said in a soft voice. “The vamp’s already made the decision to do that.”

Callie flinched, like I’d hauled off and slapped her. After a moment, she forced out a weak laugh. “What? That’s crazy.”

She tried to make her voice sound strong, confident, sure, but I could hear the doubt in her tone. She’d heard the shocked, horrified whispers of how Dekes had gotten the other people on the island to sell out to him already, and she’d been threatened by his goons herself. Not to mention what the vamp and his men had done to the old man at the ice-cream shop a few days ago. Callie sat there, chewing on her lip and tapping her fingers on top of the papers scattered across her desk.

“How do you know that Dekes plans to murder me?” she finally asked.

“Because Gin’s an assassin,” Donovan said in a cold, flat voice. “She kills people.”

My hands curled into fists at his sneering, superior tone, and for a moment, I thought about punching him in the face. I’d hoped to avoid telling Callie exactly who I was and what I did, if only for Bria’s sake. Not many people could be friends with an assassin—or friends with the sister of one. I might be jealous of Callie, but I didn’t want to come between the two women. I loved Bria too much to be that petty. But I should have known that Donovan would tell his fiancée all about me and what I did late at night—and pass the same old judgments on me here that he had back in Ashland.

Callie’s face paled, and she looked at me with wide, fearful eyes. She might have guessed that I had something to do with the dead men in the pool, but it was another thing to have her worst suspicions confirmed.

She turned to Bria. “An assassin? Your sister’s an assassin?” her voice dropped to a whisper.

My sister shifted on her feet, not quite meeting Callie’s shocked stare. “Yes, Gin’s an assassin.”

“I go by the name the Spider,” I said, trying to spare Bria from having to explain anything else about me and further alienate her friend. “Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”

I’d meant the words as a joke, but Callie’s face paled a little more, the golden glow completely washing out of her skin.

“The Spider? The assassin who killed that Fire elemental up in Ashland?” Callie looked at Donovan. “The assassin that you couldn’t stop obsessing about a few weeks ago? The one that you tried so hard to find out if she was dead or alive?”

My breath caught in my throat, but I kept my features blank. Donovan had actually been concerned about me? Now? After all this time? I didn’t know what to make of that—or that news of my taking down Mab had made its way this far south. That last point was particularly troublesome, to say the least.

Callie gazed at me, then at Donovan, who was doing his very best not to look at me. I could almost see the proverbial lightbulb snap on over her head.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” Callie said, a note of accusation and worry creeping into her voice. “Gin’s the reason you left Ashland. The woman that you were . . . involved with. The one who made you doubt yourself and what you were doing by being a good cop in such a corrupt city.”

I glanced at Donovan, who still wouldn’t look at me. I hadn’t thought that I’d made any kind of dent in his moral righteousness, but apparently I had, if the detective had brought his emotional baggage into his relationship with Callie.

“Awkward,” Finn said in a singsong voice.

This time, Bria kicked him in the shin. Finn winced and bent down to rub his leg.

I cleared my throat. “Anyway, Donovan is right. I’m an assassin. I used to kill people for money—”

“A lot of money,” Finn interrupted in a dreamy voice. “Stacks of it, actually. Do the job, get paid, walk away. Those were the good ole days, if you ask me. These freebie jobs have zero profit margin.”

Bria drew her leg back for another kick, but Finn held up his hands and backed away from her as far as he could in the tiny office.

“Like I said, I used to kill people for money, but these days I run more of a pro bono business,” I said. “I help folks with certain . . . problems that they and the law can’t or don’t know how to handle.”

“Problems like Randall Dekes,” Callie said.

“Problems exactly like Randall Dekes.”

She stared at me, her gray-green eyes dark with suspicion, hurt, and a touch of fear. I wondered if the last emotion was because I was the Spider or the fact that she knew that I used to fuck her fiancé. “And why in the world would you want to help me? I certainly can’t pay you much. I can’t pay you anything, really. The wedding—”

She stopped, realizing how ironic it was to mention her impending wedding to her fiancé’s ex-lover. But I’d give Callie her props because she sucked in another breath and finished her thought. “The wedding has taken up most of my savings, along with some repairs and renovations that I’ve recently made to the restaurant. So I ask again—why would you want to help me?”

“Because you’re Bria’s best friend. She loves you, and I’d do anything for my sister,” I answered honestly. “And because you don’t deserve what Dekes has in store for you. You just want to run your restaurant, cook your food, and see to your customers. Nothing else. You never wanted any trouble, but it has come looking for you these past few months. Believe me, I can relate to that—more than you know. That’s why I’d help you. That’s enough for me. Let it be enough for you too.”

Callie shook her head. “But you’re still talking about killing someone, just because I asked you to.”

I grinned at her. “Sweetheart, you don’t even have to ask. Not after last night.”

“That’s the second time someone’s said something about last night,” Donovan said. “What the hell happened? And how did it end with me fishing four bodies out of the pool at the Blue Sands?”

“Dekes sent some of his men to the hotel suite where Bria and I were staying,” I said. “They were planning to rape and murder us. That’s when I heard them talking about Callie as well—about how they were planning to do the same thing to her after they got done with me and Bria.”

Finn pointedly cleared his throat.

“And they also busted up Finn’s car along the way,” I added.

“Bastards,” my foster brother muttered. “You never, ever key an Aston Martin, much less crack the windshield or rip up the seats. They deserved to be gutted like fish for that alone.”

Callie’s eyes widened at the venom in his voice, and she stared at him like he’d just grown another head. Finn smiled at her, following it up with a sexy wink. Bria kicked him again just for that.

Donovan’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I thought as much. I knew it was you as soon as I heard that they’d been stabbed to death.”

I could have pointed out that Bria had actually killed Pete Procter with her Ice magic, but I knew it wouldn’t make a difference to Donovan.

“Guilty as charged,” I quipped. “Just like old times, right?”

Donovan gave me a disgusted look then—the same disappointed, disheartened, utterly disgusted look that he had dozens of times before. The look that said that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t shot me when he’d had the chance, the first night we’d met at the Ashland Opera House. The look that said he couldn’t believe he’d ever let himself get close to me. The look that said I wasn’t worth one single shred of his time, attention, consideration, or sympathy.

My heart twinged again, but this time it was more from anger than some deep, dark, hidden longing.

“Look,” I snapped. “I didn’t come down here looking for trouble, but whether you like it or not, Bria and I are in this thing with Callie now. We’ve embarrassed the vampire twice and killed four of his men. From what little I know about him, Dekes doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to let things like that slide. He can’t—not and be the badass everyone claims he is. And he still needs the land that the Sea Breeze sits on to build his casino. He’s not just going to forget about that either, no matter how much you might want him to.”

Donovan couldn’t argue with my logic, but he couldn’t bring himself to agree with me either. I knew that Donovan’s morals meant more to him than I ever had, but I wondered how he felt now that Callie’s life was the one in danger. Because Callie was everything I was not—good, sweet, innocent. Would Donovan bend his morals to let me save her? Or would he refuse, foolishly try to go after Dekes through legal methods, and get them both killed in the process?

“Why don’t we let Callie decide?” I asked. “Since it’s her life on the line.”

We all looked at Callie. Some of the color had returned to her face, but confusion, surprise, and hurt still filled her eyes. She kept staring at Donovan like she’d never seen him before. I wondered if it was because she’d just found out that he’d slept with an assassin or because he hadn’t told her who I really was last night. Looked like Donovan wasn’t any better at this relationship stuff than I was.

“I’m not sure,” Callie finally said in a hesitant tone. “I know that Dekes is a horrible person, that he’s hurt people, that he killed Stu Alexander or had it done, but we’re sitting here talking about murdering him. As much as I love the Sea Breeze, it’s not worth his life.”

“Well, Dekes thinks that it is definitely worth your life,” I said. “And I’m the one talking about murdering someone. Everyone else is just an innocent bystander.”

“I’d go with cheerleaders myself,” Finn said in a helpful voice.

This time, Bria shoved her elbow into his side. Finn winced and shuffled a little closer to Owen, who gave him an amused look.

“I can’t let you do that, Gin,” Donovan said in a low voice. “I can’t let you go after Dekes. You know that.”

The anger that had been simmering in my stomach turned into a slow boil, and I glared at him. “You aren’t letting me do anything, Detective. Not one damn thing. I’m a big girl, and I make my own decisions, remember? And I’ve decided I’m going to crash Dekes’s press conference this afternoon. That’s all there is to it.”

“If you go after him, I’ll arrest you,” Donovan snapped. “I won’t be part of your murdering him. I won’t let you get it away with it again. Not here. This is my town, Gin. Not yours. You can either play by my rules or you can get the hell off my island.”

I opened my mouth to snap back that I’d like to see him try to fucking arrest me, when Callie got to her feet and held up her hands.

“Please, enough, stop. Both of you. I . . . appreciate what you’re trying to do, Gin,” she said. “What you’re offering to do for me. But I’m not any more comfortable with this than Donovan is, especially since you’re talking about murdering Dekes like it’s something casual that you do every day of the week.”

Callie’s statement was far closer to the truth than she knew, given how many thugs I’d taken out in Ashland over the past few weeks and all the others that would be waiting for me when I went back home. Vacation or no vacation, things in the Ashland underworld were by no means settled. It made me tired just thinking about how many more hoods I’d have to take out before the others got the message to leave me the hell alone—if they ever did.

But more than that, I sensed that same kind of bone-tired weariness in Callie. She’d been fighting Dekes for months now, and the struggle had taken its toll on her. Oh, she seemed happy enough on the surface, cooking in her restaurant, laughing and joking with her staff and customers, but tension radiated off her like lightning from a storm cloud. Even now, in the privacy of her own office, her petite body was ramrod straight, and her troubled eyes kept drifting toward the door, as if she expected more of Dekes’s men to barge in at any second just because we were talking about the vamp. I was willing to bet that today wasn’t the first morning that Callie had woken up with tired smudges under her eyes and knots in her stomach—but it could be the very last, if I had my way with Dekes this afternoon.

“I understand,” I said in a gentler voice. “So how about we compromise? Instead of doing what I usually do, I’ll strongly suggest that Dekes leave you alone. We’ll leave it up to the vampire what happens from there. What he does from then on and all the consequences are on him, okay? Can you live with that?”

Callie nodded with obvious relief, but the tension didn’t leave Donovan’s rough features. The detective knew me far better than his fiancée did. He knew exactly what I’d do if the vampire failed to heed my advice: that I’d stick my knives in Dekes and walk away before the vamp’s body even hit the floor. And the worst part for Donovan was that he also realized there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Not really. Oh, I imagined he could warn Dekes, but all that would do was make it harder for me to get to the vampire and delay the inevitable. And really, all Donovan’s talk about stopping me was just that—talk. Just like it had been back in Ashland. The detective wanted Callie to be safe, and deep down he was happy to let me be the one to get my hands dirty instead of him.

Good thing I liked playing in the muck.