Poison Promise

13

I waited until the front doors banged shut behind Benson and his men before I got to my feet and hurried over to Roslyn, who was still standing behind the Ice bar.

“You okay?” I asked, setting my knife down on top of the frosty surface. “What happened?”

Instead of answering me, Roslyn reached under the bar, grabbed a bottle of whiskey, and fixed herself a double shot. She threw back the liquor like it was water, then made herself another double, which she also downed. It took her a third double before she finally met my gaze. Even then, the alcohol had done little to dull the fear straining her face or the faint tremors that shook her body.

“There was a knock on the back door,” Roslyn said. “I was expecting a delivery, so I opened it without looking. They stormed into the club, guns drawn, and Benson made me sit down with him.”

It was more or less what I’d expected, and her soft words only made me angrier. “Then what?”

“Benson told me to call and get you to come over here. I’m so sorry, Gin, but I didn’t have a choice.”

I waved away her apology. “I know you didn’t. Thank you for warning me that something was wrong.”

She stared at the spot on the dance floor where Derrick had died. Not so much as a speck of blood marred the surface, but Roslyn still shuddered. “I’d forgotten how cruel he can be.”

“You know Benson?”

She shuddered again. “From back when I was still on the streets.”

I frowned. “But I thought he was just into drugs.”

“He is now,” Roslyn said. “But back then, twenty years ago, when he was first starting out, he ran girls, guys too. I didn’t work for him, but I still paid him protection money not to hurt me. That’s how vicious he was. Eventually, he took over most of the other gangs. He was powerful enough that even Mab left him alone, as long as he stayed in Southtown and out of her way.”

“How did you get away from him? Benson doesn’t seem like the type to let anyone go.”

A wry smile curved Roslyn’s lips, chasing away some of her fear. “He isn’t—or wasn’t. But I scrimped and scrounged and saved up every penny I could get my hands on, and I made him an offer—a hundred thousand dollars to let me strike out on my own.”

I let out a low whistle. “And he agreed to it?”

“He thought of it as an experiment of sorts. He’s big on that, you know. Putting people in certain situations, seeing how they react and whether they can keep their promises to him.” Her voice dropped to a whisper again. “He likes it when people fail.”

I thought of Troy and Derrick. “Actions and consequences.”

She nodded. “He thought that the club would fail and that I’d have to come crawling back to him. Then he would have had me and my money.” She lifted her chin. “But that didn’t happen, and it never, ever will.”

Roslyn was a smart, savvy businesswoman. In her own way, she was more ruthless about her club than I was with my knives. Because not only was Northern Aggression Roslyn’s pride and joy, but it also supported her sister, Lisa, and her young niece, Catherine.

“Has Xavier said anything to you about Bria? Or what happened at the parking garage?”

“He told me everything.” She shook her head. “Poor Catalina. That girl has no idea what she’s gotten herself into. Doesn’t she know that no one talks in Southtown?”

Last night, I would have agreed with Roslyn. But now, after Benson had threatened her and Bria, my perspective had changed, and I saw how truly brave Catalina was being.

Even if it would most likely be the death of her.

Roslyn poured herself another drink, although she only cupped the glass between her hands, instead of throwing back the whiskey like she had before. “You need to watch out for Bria. I know she’s faced down a lot of bad guys, but Benson is worse than most. You saw what he did to Derrick.” Another tremor swept through her body. “And he wasn’t even using his magic.”

“Magic? What magic? What’s his deal? Benson said that he didn’t like to drink blood, but he seemed happy enough to sink his fangs into Derrick.”

“Oh, he still drinks blood,” Roslyn said. “We all have to do that. But Benson really gets his kicks by feeding on people’s emotions. It’s a rare vampiric ability. Xavier told me that’s what he did to Bria’s informant and the guy in the parking garage. That he pulled the fear and terror right out of them and left nothing behind but the empty husks of their bodies. Anger, lust, rage, sorrow, heartache—he can yank the smallest bit of feeling out of anyone. And when he digs out your emotions, he digs out the power that’s inside you too, whether it’s a giant’s strength or an elemental’s magic.”

I thought of the way Benson had kept staring at me and the feel of that invisible sandpaper scraping against my skin. So I’d been right, and he’d been trying to sense my emotions, trying to rile me up so he could tear the anger out of me, along with my Ice and Stone magic.

I tapped my fingers against the cold bar. “He must have some special form of Air magic, maybe one that only vampires have and that they can only use in this one particular way, for him to be able to rip out people’s emotions with just a touch of his hand. I’ll have to ask Jo-Jo about it—”

The beep of a car horn outside the club, along with the screech of tires on the pavement, cut off my words. Roslyn and I looked at each other. Someone wanted to get in here in a hurry.

“Get down!” I hissed. “Behind the bar!”

Roslyn stopped long enough to yank her shotgun out of its slot, then disappeared behind the thick, glittering sheet of elemental Ice. I grabbed my knife off the bar and raced toward the front of the club, plastering myself up against the wall inside the entrance.

I’d barely gotten into position when the doors burst open, and three figures rushed inside, all with guns in their hands.

Two men and a woman raced by me, and I let them go, instead of stepping out of the shadows and confronting them. I didn’t want to get shot by accident. The three figures were so focused on what was up ahead in the club that they never even noticed me lurking behind them. I slid my knife back up my sleeve and followed them at a more sedate pace.

Xavier, Bria, and Finn skidded to a halt and took up a position so that they were back-to-back-to-back in the middle of the dance floor, their guns up, their eyes cutting left and right, looking for enemies.

“Roslyn!” Xavier called out.

“Here! I’m here!” Roslyn replied, standing up behind the Ice bar.

Xavier went over and grabbed her in a fierce hug, lifting her off her feet with one arm before he set her back down. He holstered his gun, cradled her face in his hands, and started whispering to her. Roslyn kept nodding, trying to convince him that she was fine.

“Where’s Gin?” Finn asked.

“On your blind side,” I drawled. “Just like always.”

I stepped out onto the dance floor where he could see me. Finn lowered his gun and raised his eyebrows at me in a silent question. I nodded back, letting him know that I was okay.

“What about Benson?” Bria demanded. “Where is he?”

She snapped her gun from one side of the club to the other, as if she thought that Benson was still here and going to leap out from behind the red velvet curtains so she could shoot him.

“Glad to know that you’re so concerned about my safety,” I drawled again. “Roslyn’s too.”

Bria dropped her gun to her side and let out an exasperated breath. “Of course I’m glad that you guys are okay. It’s just that when Finn called, I thought . . .”

“That this was your big chance to finally nail Benson,” I finished. “Yeah, I think we all got that message loud and clear.”

A guilty blush stained Bria’s cheeks. The pale pink tint of her skin reminded me of Benson’s teeth. But she didn’t deny my accusation as she holstered her weapon. “So what happened?”

I had opened my mouth to tell her when Finn held up his index finger.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “No way am I settling in for some bloody, gory, long-winded story involving Gin and a bunch of drug-dealing vamps unless I have a drink in one hand and many more already arrayed on the bar in front of me.”

I rolled my eyes, while Bria gave Finn a sour look, but, as always, he was oblivious to our dirty glances. He wandered behind the bar and started perusing the bottles of liquor.

I took a seat at the corner of the bar, with Bria, Xavier, and Roslyn sitting close to me. Finn decided to play the role of bartender, shrugging out of his navy suit jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt. Then he went to work, pulling bottle after bottle off the shelves, flipping them around in his hands, spinning them behind his back, and showing off his cocktail-making skills. A few minutes later, he set our drinks on the bar, including another gin and tonic for me and mojitos for Bria and Roslyn. He poured himself and Xavier each a generous amount of Scotch.

“Manly drinks for manly men,” Finn said, winking at Xavier.

Roslyn snorted, leaned across the bar, grabbed Finn’s Scotch, and downed it.

“Hey!” Finn cried out. “I was going to drink that.”

Roslyn gave him a sweet smile and pushed the mojito over to him. “Trust me. I need it more than you do. You can have the girlie drink instead.”

Finn stared at the drink, then shrugged, picked it up, and started sipping it. “I do make a fine mojito.”

“Enough already,” Bria snapped.

She pulled a pad out of her back pocket, along with a pen she clicked on, ready to take notes. Her movements reminded me of Benson’s when he’d recorded the aftermath of Troy’s murder.

“What happened with Benson?” she growled. “I want all the details. Don’t leave anything out, no matter how small.”

I raised my eyebrows, but Bria kept staring at me. She wasn’t going to give any ground, not when it came to this. So I told her, Xavier, and Finn everything that had happened, with Roslyn chiming in too. When Roslyn and I finished, everyone was silent.

Finally, Bria turned her gaze to me, her blue eyes bright and accusing. “And you just let Benson walk out of here? And his men take the body with them?”

“What was I supposed to do?”

She slid off her stool and threw her hands out wide. “What you usually do. What you always do. Slice him open with your knives and wait for me and Xavier to come clean up the mess.”

Her snarky words stung, but they were all too true. Bria and Xavier had taken care of more than one sticky situation I’d left behind as the Spider. I tried to rein in my temper, since I knew that she was hurting, but I found myself sliding off my own stool, crossing my arms over my chest, and staring her down.

“I never thought you minded doing that before,” I said.

Roslyn, Xavier, and Finn looked back and forth between Bria and me. None of them moved, and none of them said a word.

Bria snorted. “Yeah, because it’s so easy to explain away multiple bodies, two or three or even four a week, all of them not-so-shockingly clustered around the Pork Pit.”

Finn winced at that. Yeah. Me too.

“I still don’t understand, though,” she continued. “Benson threatened you and me too. You’ve killed people for less. So why didn’t you take him out?”

“Because Roslyn was here,” I said, struggling to keep my voice level. “It was bad enough that Benson held her hostage. I didn’t want her to get hurt in any fight I might have with him and his men. Besides, Benson’s magic is a bit . . . troubling.”

Bria snorted again, the sound louder and more derisive this time. “You mean his vampiric emotional mining of his victims? Yeah, I know all about that. I’ve seen it twice now, remember? But you’re an assassin, you’re the Spider, you’re the biggest, baddest bitch in all of Ashland. You’ve said it yourself, more than once. You aren’t supposed to be scared of things like that, and especially not of thugs like Benson.”

I didn’t respond, and I didn’t let any of my emotions show on my face, especially not the anger and hurt that pinched my heart at her words. I’d thought that we were past our issues with my being an assassin and Bria being a cop, but apparently, that wasn’t the case. At least not when it came to Benson.

Xavier slowly stood up, scraping his stool away from the bar. “Bria, calm down.”

She scowled at him. “Calm down? You know what Benson did, you know what kind of monster he is, you know how long and hard we’ve been working to try to take him down. And Gin just lets him walk out of here and take a dead body with him. Don’t tell me that you aren’t pissed about that.”

“I’d be more pissed if Roslyn and Gin were hurt—or worse,” Xavier countered. “Wouldn’t you?”

Bria blushed again, the expression darker, angrier, and guiltier than before, but she quickly regained her composure. “You’re my partner; you’re supposed to have my back. So why are you taking her side?” She stabbed her finger at me.

Xavier crossed his arms over his massive chest. “I’ve had your back for weeks now, and all you’ve done is bitch and moan about how we can’t find enough evidence to arrest Benson. And now you’re blaming Gin for being smart, for protecting herself and Roslyn, instead of trying to take him out for you.”

Bria shook her head. “That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is,” he replied, his voice much quieter and more ominous than before. “For as many times as you’ve complained about Gin being the Spider, right now, you’re just pissed that she didn’t whip out her knives and carve up Benson. That would have solved a lot of your problems, wouldn’t it?”

Bria’s mouth opened and closed, and opened and closed again, but she couldn’t deny his words. More and more guilt stained her cheeks, turning them an ugly, mottled red.

“It’s bad enough you’ve dragged Catalina into this. That poor girl doesn’t know any better, but you do. You need to rein in this obsession you have with Benson,” Xavier warned. “You keep going after him this way, all reckless, angry, and crazy, not caring who you piss off, step on, or hurt, and you’ll walk right into some trap that he sets for you. Then you’ll be the one we find in an alley somewhere, dead, drained, with a rat stuffed in your mouth and Benson’s rune inked on your forehead.”

Bria shook her head again, making her blond hair fly around her face, the strands dancing like angry bees. “I can’t do that. You know I can’t. Not after what happened to Max.”

Her lips pinched together, and her hand crept up to the primrose rune hanging around her neck, her fingers squeezing the pendant. Bria noticed me staring at her clutching her rune, and she loosened her grip on it. But the pain and guilt of Max’s murder continued to shimmer in her eyes.

She turned away from me and stretched out a hand, pleading with the giant. “You saw what Benson did to Max. You saw it, Xavier. Don’t tell me you can forget that. Don’t tell me you can let it go.”

“No, I can’t forget it, and I can’t let it go,” he admitted, sadness rumbling through his words. “But we need to be smart and take the time to properly build our case the way we always do. That’s how we’ll get Benson, and that’s how you can get justice for Max. Not by charging after him with no sort of plan in mind. That will only get you killed.”

“What are you saying?” Bria asked.

Xavier straightened up to his full, towering height. “I’m saying that we should both take a break, at least for a few days, then come back at this with fresh eyes and calmer hearts. Starting right now. Call me when you’re ready to go after Benson—the right way.”

Xavier held out his hand. Roslyn took it, and the two of them left the bar and walked over to the door at the back of the club, the one I’d left open when I forced Silvio out onto the dance floor.

Roslyn didn’t look back at us as she stepped through the opening. Neither did Xavier as he followed her and slammed the door shut behind them.

Bria, Finn, and I stared at the closed door, the hard bang slowly fading away.

“Well,” Finn drawled. “That went well, so well, in fact, that I need another drink. Or three. Who’s with me?”

He waggled a lime at Bria and me, then started cutting it up with a small paring knife, his movements quick and efficient. The tangy citrus scent drifted over to me, followed by the sharp smell of the mint he crushed and added to the drink. He pushed the finished product over to Bria, who shoved it right back at him, so hard that some of the liquid sloshed out of the top and spattered against the Ice bar.

“I don’t want a damn drink,” she growled.

“Well, I think you need one,” he said. “Might help you relax some. Xavier’s right. You have been a little obsessed with Benson lately. Even when you’re with me.”

Bria scowled at him. “And how is that different from anybody Gin’s had in her crosshairs these past few months? Huh? Someone makes a move against her, but when she goes after them, knives first, none of you ever says a word about it—not a single word. So why the double standard, Finn?”

“Because you’re better than me,” I said in a quiet voice.

Bria turned her hot glare to me. “And what do you mean by that?”

I gestured at the gold badge clipped to her black leather belt. “I mean you’re a cop, a good cop, and I’m an assassin. You’re right. When someone comes after me, I retaliate, with no questions asked and no mercy given. But you’re supposed to be better than that. You’re supposed to follow the law. You’re supposed to use the law to take down people like Benson.”

Bria pressed her lips together, and anger sparked in her eyes—more anger than I’d ever seen her show before. “I have been using the law, and it’s gotten me nowhere. Every time I get the slightest bit of evidence on Benson, either it disappears, or he manages to tap-dance his way around it. I feel like Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill, just to have it roll down and flatten me time and time again. I’m tired of it.”

She shook her head. “Maybe I should just give up on the law. Do things the way you always do them. At least I’d get some results then, even if I’d rather see Benson rotting in prison than in the ground.”

“You say that now, but you don’t really mean it. I know you don’t.”

Bria let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah. Because Gin always knows best, right?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Forget it,” she muttered. “You wouldn’t understand anyway.”

But I could read between the lines and hear exactly what she wasn’t saying. Bria was pissed at me, Xavier, Finn, and everyone else who wasn’t helping her in her vendetta against Benson. I knew all about vendettas. Knew how they could pull you down a rabbit hole that you could have a very hard time clawing your way out of again. Knew how they could consume you. Knew how they could eat you up inside until there was nothing left but your need for revenge and then the hollow ache that remained behind should you ever actually achieve your goal. I didn’t want Bria to end up like that.

I didn’t want her to end up like me.

But I didn’t know how to help her either. Not with this. Not without coming across like a complete hypocrite.

“Look,” I said. “Be calm, be smart, and keep working on Benson, just like Xavier said. You know that he’s the one pushing Burn. Sooner or later, he’ll make a mistake, and you’ll find some way to nail him. I have faith in you.”

“He already made a mistake when he killed Troy and Catalina saw him do it,” she said. “I have her statement, which is exactly what I need to nail him.”

“And he knows that you have a witness. The second he figures out it’s Catalina, he’ll kill her. You know he will.”

Bria gave me a cold look, not even bothering to acknowledge my words with some of her own. I’d always thought that my sister had the flat cop stare down pat, but she’d never used it to its full effect on me—until now.

“Forget about Catalina for a second. I can’t believe that you aren’t foaming at the mouth to go after Benson yourself,” she sniped. “Especially after what he did to Roslyn.”

I sighed. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I get tired too?”

“And what would you have to get tired about?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The blood, the bodies, the sneak attacks, constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering when the next moron is going to try to kill me,” I snapped back. “And do you know what the worst part is?”

She didn’t bother to answer.

“Knowing that I have to be vigilant, that I have to be on my guard every single minute of every single day for the rest of my life,” I snarled. “I have to be prepared. I have to be ready—always. But the people who want to kill me? They just have to get lucky once, for one measly second, and it’s lights-out for me. So forgive me for trying to get out of one situation without some bloodshed today.”

Bria looked at me, anger still pinching her face, before she glanced at Finn, who was making yet another mojito.

“You’ve been awfully quiet through all of this. Don’t tell me that the great Finnegan Lane doesn’t have something to say.” Her voice took on a mocking note.

Finn looked back and forth between Bria and me. He shook his head, not wanting to take sides. I didn’t blame him. No one was going to win this argument.

Bria snorted in disgust before turning her attention back to me. “Well, do you know what I’m tired of, Gin? The fact that you never trust me to do my job.”

“You’re a good cop. I’ve never said otherwise.”

“No, but you don’t think that I can protect Catalina from Benson,” she accused. “You’ve definitely said that.”

“Only because Benson won’t fight fair. You know he has other cops on his payroll, cops who will sell you out to him in a heartbeat.”

“And you don’t think I can handle them or Benson. Not like you can.”

“No,” I said, my voice as soft as hers was loud. “Not like I can.”

Bria gave me another disgusted look. She opened her mouth, but her phone started ringing, saving us both from whatever harsh thing she’d been about to say. She pulled it out of her jeans pocket and looked at the screen. Her mouth twisted.

“Well, duty calls,” she said, holding the phone up to her ear. “Detective Coolidge.”

Then my baby sister whirled around and stormed out of Northern Aggression without another word.