Poison Promise

11

I ended the call, slid my phone back into my pocket, and dropped the fork into the tub. My gaze cut left and right, scanning over the customers, but they’d all been here for at least fifteen minutes now, and I didn’t see anyone obviously studying me to see how I reacted to Roslyn’s call.

When I was sure that no one was watching me, I grabbed a newspaper from beside the cash register, then strolled toward the double doors at the far end of the counter, untying my blue work apron and hanging it on a hook on the wall as I went. I kept my movements easy and casual, as though I were just taking a break, but Sophia noticed the cold fury in my eyes and the hard set of my mouth as I stopped next to her.

“Gin?” Sophia asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing much,” I drawled, plastering a pleasant smile on my face. “I just need to run over to Northern Aggression. Roslyn has a rat problem that she needs some help with.”

The dwarf frowned. “Rats? Roslyn never has—” She stopped, her black eyes narrowing. “Oh. Rats.”

“Yeah. Rats. Care to help me find the poison for them?”

She nodded, pulled open one of the oven doors, and slid a tray of sourdough buns inside to bake. I headed through the swinging doors and into the back.

Since the restaurant was packed, all of the waitstaff were out front, seeing to the customers, so there was no one around to watch me toss the newspaper aside, march over to one of the freezers, and drag a black duffel bag out from behind it. I straightened up, put the bag on a nearby table, unzipped the top, and did a quick inventory of all the items inside. Money, fake IDs, tins of Jo-Jo’s healing ointment, anonymous black clothes, and enough guns, ammo, and knives to start a small war. Satisfied, I zipped the bag back up and slung it over my shoulder.

The doors opened behind me, and Sophia appeared. Her gaze locked onto the bag in my hand. She knew exactly what was inside, because she had a similar bag, one with a grinning figure of Death holding a scythe printed on the side, hidden behind another freezer.

“Problem?” she rasped.

“Someone’s decided to use Roslyn as leverage,” I replied, and told her about Roslyn’s call.

“Go with?” Sophia asked when I finished.

I shook my head. “Thanks, but no. I’ll call Finn and Owen on the way over there. Bria too.”

I went back over to the doors and looked through the round glass in the top at Catalina, who was passing out plates of food to a table full of customers. I turned back to Sophia.

“Stay here and keep an eye on Catalina for me. Okay?”

She nodded. “I’ll call Jo-Jo too.”

I knew what she really meant. That she’d let Jo-Jo know what was going on in case I needed the dwarven Air elemental to heal Roslyn or myself.

“Thanks. Roslyn sounded okay on the phone, but I have no idea if she’ll stay that way.”

Sophia nodded again, then reached out and took hold of my arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Be careful.”

I grinned back at her. “Always.”

Sophia went back out front to watch over Catalina in case Benson sent some of his vamps to the Pork Pit in search of her. Bria probably hadn’t told anyone Catalina’s name yet, but knowing that Sophia would look after the waitress let me focus on what I had to do now: get to Roslyn.

So I palmed a knife, opened the back door, and stepped out into the alley behind the restaurant, my head swiveling left and right, looking for anyone hunkered down beside one of the Dumpsters, leaning against the walls, or even stationed at either end of the corridor. If the person holding Roslyn hostage was smart, he or she would have someone watching the restaurant to tell them when I left so they could get ready for my arrival at Northern Aggression.

But the alley was empty.

No lurkers, no watchers, no assailants of any sort haunted the area, and the only sound was the skitter-skitter of a crumpled-up white paper bag bearing the Pork Pit’s pig logo that was being pushed across the cracked asphalt by the steady breeze. Well, just because no one was waiting in the alley didn’t mean that there weren’t watchers around somewhere.

Still being cautious, I walked to the end of the alley and fell into the flow of foot traffic on the sidewalk. I kept to the side streets as much as possible, quickly making my way over to my car, which I’d parked four blocks from the Pork Pit.

No one was following me, but I rounded the corner just in time to see someone snap a photo of my car, lean his ass against the hood, and start texting on his phone. No doubt, he was sharing the vehicle’s location with his boss. So whoever had Roslyn had had his or her men stake out my car instead of the restaurant. Smart. Just not smart enough.

Apparently, Roslyn’s captors had believed my lie about not being able to leave right away. Otherwise, the guy would have been skulking in one of the nearby alleys, instead of being out in the open right next to my car. Still, even if he wasn’t expecting me for a while, it was sloppy of him to be so brazen, and I planned to use his carelessness to my advantage.

I glanced behind me, but this was a narrow street, with only a few cars parked on one side, and most of the storefronts were boarded up. I was the only one on this particular block, besides the guy at my car. Good.

I hoisted my duffel bag a little higher on my shoulder and started whistling a soft, cheery tune that Sophia had taught me. The guy looked up from his phone. He started to go back to his text, but his brain finally kicked into gear, and he recognized me. He froze, his thumbs jamming into his phone’s keypad and making it beep at him.

Instead of going over and confronting him, I gave the watcher a pleasant smile and walked right on by my car, as though the vehicle weren’t mine at all. I kept my steps slow and steady, as though I were in no particular hurry. After about thirty seconds, shoes slapped on the sidewalk behind me. A glance at my reflection in the dirty windows of a defunct Italian restaurant confirmed that the watcher was scurrying after me, his phone dangling from his hand.

I grinned.

My casual walk continued until I reached the end of the block. As soon as I stepped around the corner, I dropped my duffel bag and pressed myself up against the side of the building, scanning the area. The block off to my left was deserted, and an alcove was set into the wall two feet past my right elbow, leading to a battered metal door, although whatever business had been behind it was long closed. To my right, at the far end of this block, a bum wearing layers of tattered rags dug through a plastic bag of garbage someone had tossed onto the sidewalk, searching for tin cans to add to the load already in his shopping cart.

Normally, I would have kept going until I could lure my watcher into a completely deserted area, but the bum was focused on his recycling, and I wanted to get to Roslyn as quickly as possible.

Besides, I was good at killing people quietly.

So I stood against the building, knife in my hand, tuning out the usual humming and honking of cars and horns on the neighboring streets, and concentrating on the smack-smack-smack of the watcher’s footsteps. He was a minute out and closing fast. I counted off the seconds in my head. Sixty . . . forty-five . . . thirty . . . twenty . . . ten . . .

The guy careened around the corner, his phone still in his hand, desperately trying to catch up with me before I disappeared completely. I grabbed the back of his suit jacket, spun him around, shoved him through the alcove, and slammed him into the door.

Crunch.

The sound of his nose breaking against the door was even louder than his hurried footsteps had been. The guy yelped and whirled around, blood dribbling down his face and murder in his eyes.

“Don’t be an idiot,” I warned.

Too late. He dropped his phone, his right hand darting toward the gun clipped to his belt, but I didn’t give him the chance to use it. I surged forward, clamped my hand over his mouth, and cut his throat with the knife still in my other hand. He died with a choking, bloody gurgle.

The guy pitched forward onto me, but my clothes were dark enough to hide the worst of the bloodstains. I lowered him to the ground and propped him up against the battered door, with his legs sticking out of the alcove and his feet falling away from each other on the sidewalk, as though he were a drunk sleeping off a bender.

Tink-tink-tink.

My head snapped to the left at the sounds, but it was just the bum still picking through the garbage. Even as my attacker bled out, the bum hooted with glee, apparently having found the mother lode. He started tossing can after can into his shopping cart like a basketball player swishing free throws. Dude had some game.

I waited a few seconds, but the bum kept adding to his aluminum haul. He was either too preoccupied by his search to notice me, or he was smart enough to pretend that I hadn’t just murdered a man a hundred feet away from him. Didn’t much matter to me which one.

Since the bum was seemingly fascinated with his discovery, I focused my attention back on the dead watcher. I didn’t recognize his face, but a pair of fangs gleamed in his mouth, which was frozen open in surprise at the brutal bit of death I’d just dealt him.

The man could have worked for anyone, but I couldn’t help but think of Benson and his army of vamps. Could Benson be behind Roslyn’s call? If so, I hoped that he was one of the three folks waiting for me at Northern Aggression. It was about time we had a face-to-face chat.

I started to get up, retrieve my bag from the sidewalk, and be on my way, when something let out a soft beep.

I went back down on one knee, keeping clear of the growing pool of blood forming around the vamp’s body, and fished his phone out from underneath his leg. A message from an unknown caller lit up the screen.

Has she left yet?

I sent whoever was on the other end a text.

No. Still watching for her.

I waited a few more seconds, but apparently, the person on the other end was content to wait for the vamp to respond when he spotted me leaving. I slipped the device into the back pocket of my jeans, then pulled out my own phone and sent a text to Sophia.

Watcher in doorway on Dalton Street. Leave as is, or dispose of at your leisure. Your choice. G.

A few seconds later, Sophia hit me back with a smiley face:

I grinned, put my phone away, and grabbed my duffel bag. I also took a moment to fish the dead guy’s wallet out of his suit jacket and swipe the cash inside before wiping off my prints and leaving the empty leather on the pavement beside his body so it would look like just another robbery gone wrong. Then I got to my feet and headed toward the bum, who was sorting through the cans in his shopping cart.

He finally looked up when my shadow fell over him. His eyes narrowed, and he grabbed the handle of his cart, holding on tight with both hands, lest I try to wrest it away from him. But all I did was toss the crumpled bills I’d taken off the dead watcher on top of the sticky mound of cans.

“For helping to keep the streets clean,” I said.

The bum gave me a suspicious look, but he snatched the money off the aluminum and tucked it into one of his pockets.

I winked at him, then turned and headed back toward my car, whistling all the while.

No one else was lurking at or around my vehicle, and no one had planted any bombs on it, so I was able to slide inside and zoom away without any more problems or delays.

While I drove, I pulled out my phone and called Bria, to let her know what was going on. But instead of picking up, my call went straight to her voice mail. Hi, you’ve reached Detective Bria Coolidge with the Ashland Police Department . . .

I growled in frustration, but I didn’t leave her a message. The way things had gone between us last night, she was probably screening my calls, so I doubted that she’d listen to any voice mail I left her right now.

I tried Xavier next, since Roslyn was his main squeeze, but he didn’t answer either. He was probably busy working with Bria on the best way to use Catalina’s testimony against Benson. I dialed Owen too but struck out for a third time. Then I remembered that he had some big business meeting planned for this afternoon, so he was probably tied up with that.

But there was one person I called who actually picked up his phone.

“You have reached the always awesome, ever charming, and obscenely handsome Finnegan Lane,” he chirped in my ear. “How may I be of service to you today?”

“Where are you?”

“Work. At the bank. Why?” His voice sharpened with every word.

I filled him in on Roslyn’s call and her request for me to come over to Northern Aggression to pick up my nonexistent bottles of gin. Finn was silent for a moment, then let loose with a string of curses.

“You want me to come help you?” he said. “I can grab my guns out of the safety-deposit boxes in the vault and be right over.”

“No. Roslyn said that there were only three of them. I should be able to handle that. See if you can track down Bria and Xavier. I’ve called them both, but their phones go straight to voice mail.”

“I’ll round them up and bring them over to the club as soon as possible,” he promised. “Watch your back.”

“You know I will.”

I hung up and tossed my phone into the passenger’s seat.

I drove fast and reached Northern Aggression in record time. I’d told Roslyn that I wouldn’t be here for at least an hour, but I had no intention of sticking to that timeline. The element of surprise could help me rescue my friend, and I intended to exploit it to the fullest.

But instead of zooming into Northern Aggression’s main lot and screeching to a stop in front of the entrance, I parked my car two streets over in an alley where no one would notice it. I glanced at my duffel bag on the passenger seat, debating whether I wanted to dig a gun, some ammo, and a silencer out of the dark depths. But I decided not to, since I was carrying my usual arsenal of five silverstone knives—one up either sleeve, one tucked against the small of my back, and one in the side of either boot.

My knives were my best weapons, especially in a situation like this that called for quick, quiet action. So I grabbed my phone, got out of the car, and tucked the device into my pocket. I also checked the dead vamp’s phone, but there were no more messages, so I slid it back into my pocket as well and headed for the club.

I leapfrogged from one alley and side street to the next, until I ended up crouching behind a weeping willow at the far end of the parking lot in front of the club. I peered through the swaying screen of long green tendrils.

From the outside, Northern Aggression looked like an office building, plain and featureless, except for the sign mounted over the entrance—a heart with an arrow through it. Roslyn’s rune for her club. Since it was midafternoon, the neon sign was dark, but when the crowds came out tonight, it would glow a bright red, then orange, then yellow, as though the pierced heart were a living, beating thing, pulsing in agony from the wound it had received.

A guy was standing by the entrance, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes sweeping from left to right and back again. I didn’t recognize him as one of the bouncers, and he wasn’t wearing a gold heart-and-arrow rune necklace that would mark him as one of the hookers, bartenders, or other club workers. He shifted on his feet, his unbuttoned black suit jacket flapping around enough for me to get a glimpse of the gun holstered on his belt. Well, that certainly clued me in to the fact that he was up to no good. I grinned. Me too.

But I left the guy alone, since there was no way I could sneak up on him without him seeing me coming, given the open, empty pavement that stretched between us. Instead, I darted from tree to tree, skirting around the edges of the parking lot until I had worked my way over to the back of the building.

Another man was stationed at this entrance, a younger guy who had his head down and his eyes glued to his phone instead of keeping a watch out for me. Careless fool.

Lucky for me, a line of Dumpsters stretched from my position all the way up to the back door where the guy was standing, so I was able to use the containers as a screen between the two of us. It took me less than a minute to move from the edge of the lot to the Dumpster closest to him. But there was still about a twenty-foot gap between this container and his position at the door, which would give him more than enough time to let out one good, long, loud scream if he saw me coming.

So I reached down, picked up a loose bit of metal, and chucked it over his head. The metal hit the wall off to his right and then tink-tink-tinked across the pavement, and the guy finally looked up from his phone. He cursed and swiveled in that direction, his free hand yanking the gun from the holster belted to his waist.

I skirted around the Dumpster and crept up behind him, moving fast. I was so focused on the guy that I didn’t see the broken glass littering the pavement behind him until it was too late.

Crunch.

At the sound of my boots hitting the glass, the guy brought his gun up and pivoted toward me, but I was close enough to surge forward, dig my fingers into his hair, yank his head back, and cut his throat. His legs went out from under him, and he died with a raspy whisper, his phone and gun slipping out of his suddenly slack fingers and clattering across the pavement.

I moved over to the west corner of the building and pressed myself up against the wall, wondering if the noise of the phone and the gun tumbling end over end would carry all the way around to the front of the club and trying to guess which side the first man might approach from. But a minute passed, then another, and the other guard didn’t come to investigate, so I figured that it was safe for me to slip inside the club.

I tried the back door, which was locked, so I reached for my magic and made a couple of Ice picks. Less than a minute later, the door snicked open. I tossed the picks down onto the ground to melt away, eased inside the club, and closed the door behind me.

A long hallway stretched out in front out me, with rooms and corridors branching off on either side. I didn’t know where in the club Roslyn and her captors might be, so I tiptoed down the hallway, peering into every room I passed, careful to keep up against the wall at all times, where it was less likely that the bamboo floor would creak and give away my position.

But no one haunted the back of the club. No hookers were in the locker room, putting on their makeup and heart-and-arrow necklaces and getting ready for another night of sin. No bouncers were carrying around cases of liquor to restock the elemental Ice bar out front. No one was waiting in Roslyn’s office to talk to her. They must be out in the main part of the club, then.

I had started to slide down another hallway, to see if I could get a glimpse of what was going on out there through one of the many peepholes that were cut into the walls, when a toilet flushed in a men’s room off to my left. I moved forward and stopped outside the door. A few seconds later, the door opened, and a familiar figure stepped out into the hallway: Silvio Sanchez.

He was once again wearing a gray suit, and he paused long enough to straighten his matching tie, which gave me plenty of time to strike. But instead of cutting his throat like I had done to the other two men, I snaked my arm around his lean waist and pressed the point of my knife against his neck, right where his carotid artery was.

Silvio stiffened, but he did the smart thing and didn’t try to fight back. If he had, I would have fileted him like a fish.

“Blanco?” he asked.

“Surprise, surprise,” I hissed.

Silvio tried to step away from me, but the scrape of my knife against his throat persuaded him to stand still.

“Where’s Roslyn? How many more men are in the club?”

“Just me and two more,” he said. “That’s everyone who’s inside. I swear.”

He didn’t say anything about the men waiting outside, but I hadn’t expected him to. Still, his head count lined up with what Roslyn had told me, so I decided to let Silvio keep breathing—for now.

“Where?”

“Out in the front part of the club. In the middle of the dance floor. He wanted to be able to see you coming.”

I didn’t have to ask who he was. “Well, that was smart of him. Otherwise, he’d probably be dead already.”

“He hasn’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Silvio said, trying to save his own neck and his boss’s too. “He just wanted to talk to you. There’s no need for this to get violent.”

“Oh, this has already gotten violent,” I drawled. “Just ask the man you stationed by my car or the one at the back door here. Oh, wait. Silly me. You can’t, because they are indisposed at the moment. Forever, actually.”

Silvio swallowed, his Adam’s apple bumping up against the edge of my knife, but he didn’t respond to my taunt.

“While you’re here, I am curious about one thing,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“I know you saw me and the girl in the parking garage. So why didn’t you rat us out? Why leave that pill next to Troy’s body and walk away like you hadn’t seen anything at all? Did you think you could blackmail me? Get me to pay you to keep quiet?”

“I have my reasons.”

I dug my blade into his neck, breaking the skin and drawing blood, to encourage him to start talking. Silvio stiffened even more, feeling more like a board pressed against my side than flesh and bone, but he remained silent. Whatever he was holding back, it would take more than a scratch from my knife to get him to spill his guts. I admired him for that—but only a little.

“Well, then, on to other matters. You and I are going to go out and do the whole meet-and-greet that your boss so desperately wants. Don’t make any problems for me, and you might live through this.”

“And if I do make problems?” he asked in a wry tone, even though he already knew the answer.

“Make so much as a whimper, and I will slit your throat,” I hissed again.

Silvio nodded once. Smart man.

“Move,” I ordered.

Silvio walked toward the door at the end of the hallway. I gripped his left shoulder with one hand and used the other to keep my knife at his throat, so our progress was slow but steady. We reached the door.

“Open it—slowly.”

Silvio started to nod again but thought better of it, given the blade against his neck. He leaned forward enough to turn the knob and crack the door. The murmur of conversation drifted over to me.

“. . . good to see that you’ve done so well for yourself, Roslyn,” a familiar nasal voice said.

Silence.

“Thank you,” Roslyn answered, her normally light voice tight with tension. “But I don’t see the need for this.”

A low laugh sounded. “Oh, I think we both know that I couldn’t meet with your friend under any other circumstances. Not without killing her. And you wouldn’t want that, now, would you?”

This time, Roslyn laughed. “You always were confident. In this case, too confident.”

“We’ll see.”

Silvio slowly opened the door the rest of the way. I leaned to one side so that I could see over his right shoulder.

“Walk,” I ordered him.

Silvio moved forward, his steps slow, careful, and steady. He didn’t want to get sliced open. We would see if the same could be said for his boss.

We stepped through the door and into the main part of the club. The inside of Northern Aggression was all opulent glamour, from the springy bamboo floor to the red crushed-velvet drapes cloaking the walls to the glittering elemental Ice bar off to my left. The air was cool, bordering on frosty, to keep the bar intact until the elemental who maintained it with his magic came in for his shift, but the chill swirling through the room was nothing compared with the cold fury running through my veins.

Roslyn was sitting at a small round table that had been moved to the middle of the dance floor. In her teal-blue suit, she looked every inch the successful club owner she was. The bright color set off the dark luster of her black hair and the rich toffee color of her skin, while her understated makeup highlighted her toffee eyes and perfect features.

And she wasn’t alone.

Beauregard Benson sat opposite her at the table. Long, gangly arms and legs, rumpled black hair, blue eyes behind silver glasses. He looked much the same as he had in the garage last night, wearing white pants and sneakers, with a pale pink button-up shirt and matching bow tie. I didn’t see his white lab coat anywhere, but adding to the geeky-scientist illusion were the plastic protector and the notepad and pens once again lined up inside it in a neat row in his shirt pocket. He had one ankle crossed on top of the opposite knee, his pant leg pulled up enough to expose his sock, white with a pink argyle pattern in the center.

Benson’s posture was easy and relaxed, but another guard stood a few feet behind the vamp, his arms crossed over his chest and his hard stare fixed on Roslyn, as if he expected her to cause trouble at any second.

That was my job.

At the sound of Silvio’s footsteps, Benson looked in our direction. “Ah, Silvio. There you are. I was wondering what was taking you so long—”

Benson’s mouth puckered at the sight of me and the knife I had at his minion’s throat, but the expression quickly melted into a smile as he got to his feet. His figure was lean again, instead of having the bulked-up look it had last night after he’d drained Troy of his emotions. I wondered what he’d done to expend all that stolen life and energy so quickly. Probably best not to know.

“Ah, Ms. Blanco,” he said. “So glad you could join us. And ahead of schedule too.”

“Well, I got your invitation and hurried over here as fast as I could,” I drawled, my voice as calm and even as his was.

His smile widened. “I don’t think that we’ve been properly introduced. My name is Benson. Beauregard Benson.”