Poison Promise
Page 10
Bria ground her teeth together, but she didn’t deny or contradict my words. Her silence shouldn’t have hurt me, but it did. I might not have a badge, but I fought for justice in my own way, and I helped people when I could. I thought that Bria understood that—that she realized that we were the same that way.
Apparently not.
“I’ll do it.”
We all turned to stare at Catalina. She’d been so quiet since Bria and Xavier had arrived that I’d largely forgotten about her. Catalina let go of Troy’s hand, got to her feet, and slowly walked over to us.
“I’ll do it,” she repeated in a stronger voice. “I’ll be your witness. I’ll tell everyone who will listen exactly what Benson did to Troy.”
8
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”
Catalina’s gaze cut to Troy’s body again. Her face hardened, and her hazel eyes sparked with anger. “I know what I’m doing, and I know what I saw.”
I moved closer to her. “You don’t owe Troy anything. No sort of loyalty whatsoever. Not after what he did to you last night. Not after what he was most likely going to do to you here tonight.”
Her fierce expression melted into a more melancholy one. “You’re wrong. I do owe him. He took care of me all those years ago. This is the last way that I can take care of him. I want to do this, Gin. I want to testify. I have to do it. So please don’t make this any harder than it already is. Okay?”
I could tell by the grim set of her lips that nothing I could say would change her mind, but I still felt compelled to try—
“If you want, we can take your statement right now,” Bria said, and stepped up beside us before I could protest. “Save you the hassle of going down to the station.”
My mouth dropped open, and I once again felt like a cartoon character whose face was stretched out to impossible proportions. Two minutes ago, she’d wanted me to march into the police station, right past all her fellow boys in blue, and now she was giving Catalina a free pass on that? Anger flooded my heart, replacing my earlier hurt.
“Excuse us, Catalina.” I ground out the words. “I need to speak to my sister, the detective.”
I grabbed Bria’s arm and pulled her away. Xavier stayed behind with Catalina, talking to her in a low, soothing voice. I marched Bria over to the far side of Catalina’s car, out of earshot of the others, then whirled around to face her.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” I hissed. “You’re going to get that girl killed. And for what? Just so you can collar Benson? Even if you arrest him, the chances of him spending any time in jail are slim to none. He has too much money, too much power, and too many connections for that.”
“It’ll be fine,” Bria insisted in a stubborn tone. “Xavier and I can protect Catalina.”
“From Benson? And the dozens of vampires who work for him? I doubt that. The second Benson hears that there’s a witness to Troy’s murder, he will do everything in his power to find and kill Catalina—and anyone else who gets in his way. That includes you.”
Bria crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m a cop, Gin. I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, you can, but you’re being awfully cavalier with Catalina’s life. Xavier’s too.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t tell you how to kill people, so why don’t you give me the same courtesy and quit telling me how to do my job?”
My whole body stiffened, and I had to work very hard to keep my face blank, as though her verbal knives had slid right off my skin, instead of burying themselves deep in my heart.
Bria winced, and she opened her mouth, almost like she was going to apologize. But then her gaze flicked to Troy’s body, a shadow passed over her face, and her lips mashed down into a hard, flat line. She wasn’t going to back down, so I decided to try another approach.
“Look, Xavier told me about your informant, Max,” I said, trying to rein in my own temper and ignore the hurt I felt.
Her angry gaze shot over to the giant. “He had no right to do that—no right at all.”
“I know you feel responsible for what happened to Max.”
“I am responsible.” Guilt and bitterness roughened her voice. “I’m the one who wanted info on Burn. I’m the one who pushed him to get in deeper with Benson’s crew. Max did exactly what I wanted, and now he’s dead. And I’m the reason why.”
“Bringing down Benson won’t change what happened to Max.”
“No,” Bria agreed, rubbing her thumb over her detective’s badge. “But at least I’ll know that the bastard will never do that to anyone else.”
“Except Catalina, when he finds out about her.”
Bria stiffened, and her hand balled into a fist. Yeah, it was a low blow on my part, but that didn’t make it any less true.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to take my witness’s statement,” she snapped. “I’m also going to call in the scene. Since you’re so worried about being identified, it’s probably better if you’re not around when everyone else shows up.”
Bria pushed past me and went back over to Catalina and Xavier. She gently put her hand on Catalina’s arm, escorted her over to the sedan, drew a notepad and a pen out of the back pocket of her jeans, and started writing down Catalina’s statement. Xavier gave me another troubled look, then went to stand next to Bria. He didn’t like it either, but it was his job to back her up, and he’d do it, just like always.
Catalina started talking. I didn’t hear her words, but I didn’t need to. I’d seen the whole thing for myself. Instead, I watched Bria. The longer Catalina spoke, the more eager my baby sister’s expression became, and a twinkle shone in her eyes, almost as if she was enjoying hearing about a young man’s murder.
But the thing that bothered me the most was Bria’s smile—a cold, cruel, satisfied expression I’d never seen her wear before.
But one that I’d sported all too often as the Spider.
•
Even though Bria had made it abundantly clear that I wasn’t welcome here anymore, I stayed in the garage until she finished taking Catalina’s statement. Bria moved off and started talking on her phone, notifying the rest of the po-po about the murder. Catalina drifted back over to Troy’s body, saying her good-byes, while Xavier walked over to me.
“I’m going to follow Catalina home, then come back and help Bria,” he said. “Bria’s agreed to keep Catalina’s identity under wraps for as long as possible. She’s not going to tell anyone who Catalina is until she absolutely has to. Neither will I.”
“Benson will still find out. You know he will.”
Xavier shrugged. He couldn’t deny it. He reached out, squeezed my arm, then went over and got into the sedan. Catalina bent down over Troy’s body and touched his hand a final time before straightening back up. She wiped a few tears away and came over to where I was leaning against her car.
“Thank you for being here tonight,” she said. “For saving me.”
My heart twisted. I hadn’t saved her so much as I had signed her death warrant. I should have found some way to sneak her out of the garage instead of letting her witness Troy’s murder. Now Benson was going to kill her as soon as he found out that she’d seen what he’d done.
“See you at work tomorrow?” she asked.
“Sure.”
I handed over her keys. Catalina gave me a shaky smile, more tears pooling in her eyes, then slid into her car and cranked the engine. She backed up and followed Xavier in the sedan out of the garage.
Bria was still talking on the phone, pointedly not looking in my direction. Maybe I should have tried to make nice with her, but right now, I was too angry and disgusted to bother.
So I went over to the stairs and plodded down them to the first level, my soft footsteps like a steady heartbeat against the dirty concrete. I stood in the shadows by the entrance, staring out at the street. The lights spaced along the sidewalks continually flickered, the weak, worn-out bulbs humming in warning that they could go dark at any second. The sputtering glows made it seem as though the graffiti runes spray-painted everywhere were moving, like roaches skittering along the street and up and down the building walls. Most of the commuter cars that had been parked here earlier were gone, and I didn’t see anyone schlepping down the sidewalks, not even a couple of hookers trolling for clients.
I sighed. It didn’t matter if anyone was watching or not. The cops would be here soon enough, their blue and white lights flashing and drawing everyone’s attention to the garage. And when word got out about exactly how gruesome Troy’s murder had been and that there had been a witness to the crime, well, that would only make folks more interested in things, especially Benson in finding and eliminating Catalina.
But Catalina had made her choice to testify, and there was nothing I could do to stop her, even if doing the right thing would probably end up getting her killed. I sighed again, a little louder and deeper this time, stuck my hands into my jeans pockets, and ambled down the street.
I’d only gone half a block when a pair of headlights popped on behind me.
I palmed a knife and whirled around, thinking that maybe Benson had already heard something on the police scanner and had come back with his vamps to investigate.
But the lights weren’t from a car cruising down the street. They were on one already parked at the curb close to the garage entrance—a black Audi with tinted windows.
The Audi’s engine churned steadily, sounding as smooth and silky as a cat’s satisfied purr. I squinted against the glare of the headlights, but I couldn’t make out who was sitting inside through the tinted windows. I doubted it was just a wayward commuter, though, hiding in his car until the scary woman with the knife decided to leave. Oh, no. If whoever was inside was an innocent bystander, he would be calling the cops and racing down the street as fast as he could, instead of sitting there playing a game of chicken with me. Maybe Benson had left some vamps behind to watch the garage for whatever reason. Either way, I wanted to know who was in that car and why.
So I sprinted toward the Audi, coming at the car from an angle, in case the driver decided to floor it, zoom up onto the sidewalk, and try to turn me into a bloody pancake against the side of the garage. I was a hundred feet away from the car and closing fast. Seventy-five . . . sixty . . . fifty . . . thirty . . .
The driver finally did floor it, and I tensed, ready to throw myself out of the way of the sleek hood and churning wheels. But I didn’t have to. The driver turned the wheel sharply to the left . . . and zoomed away from the curb and down the street.
I cursed, whipped around, and ran after the car, even though there was no way I could possibly catch up with it. The Audi rounded the corner. A few seconds later, so did I, but the car was already two blocks away and picking up speed. I cursed even louder as I finally stopped. I hadn’t even gotten the license plate to give to Finn.
It wasn’t until the car had zipped around another corner, completely disappearing from sight, that I realized that the black Audi was an exact match to the vehicle the two mystery women had gotten into when they’d left the Pork Pit earlier this evening.
9
I frowned into the darkness, my mind racing through all the implications.
There was no way that the auburn-haired woman and her giant bodyguard could have followed me here from the Pork Pit. They’d left the restaurant before I did, and I’d cut through too many alleys for them to track me easily. But here they’d been all the same. Why had they been parked outside the garage? How long had they been there? And what had they been waiting for?
If they’d wanted to assassinate me, then one of the women should have rolled down her window, stuck a gun through the opening, and sprayed the sidewalk with bullets—at the very least. Tossed some grenades at me, run me over, pinned me against the garage wall and put a clip full of bullets in my chest. Oh, yes. They could have done any one of those things.
In addition to looking out for would-be assailants, I also spent a fair amount of time imagining exactly how they might murder me. I supposed that it was my professional mind at work, so to speak, since I’d dispatched so many folks myself in such varying ways. I’d pictured all those scenarios before, along with dozens more. But instead of attacking me, the people in the car had just driven off, and I didn’t think it was because I’d spooked them with my killer smile and my gleaming knife.
More theories swirled through my mind, each one darker and more violent than the last, but none of them answered my questions. I had a sinking feeling that there were some new players in Ashland—ones who seemed to know a lot more about me than I did about them.
But there was nothing I could do to confirm my suspicions about the women who may or may not have been in the Audi. Besides, Bria was right. The cops would be here any minute, and it would be better if I was gone.
So I slid my knife back up my sleeve, stepped into the shadows, and disappeared into the darkness.
•
Still keeping an eye out for the mystery car, I headed back to the Pork Pit. I took a few minutes to check the restaurant, but the lights were off, the doors were locked, and no one was hanging out in the alley, waiting to murder me. Everything was quiet, so I walked three blocks east to the side street where I’d parked my own car.
After I’d checked my vehicle for bombs and rune traps, I got inside and circled the downtown loop a few times, looking for the black Audi, but I didn’t spot it. Whoever was inside had probably hightailed it up into Northtown by now. Still, I had a feeling that I’d see the Audi—and the two women—again.
Apparently not.
“I’ll do it.”
We all turned to stare at Catalina. She’d been so quiet since Bria and Xavier had arrived that I’d largely forgotten about her. Catalina let go of Troy’s hand, got to her feet, and slowly walked over to us.
“I’ll do it,” she repeated in a stronger voice. “I’ll be your witness. I’ll tell everyone who will listen exactly what Benson did to Troy.”
8
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”
Catalina’s gaze cut to Troy’s body again. Her face hardened, and her hazel eyes sparked with anger. “I know what I’m doing, and I know what I saw.”
I moved closer to her. “You don’t owe Troy anything. No sort of loyalty whatsoever. Not after what he did to you last night. Not after what he was most likely going to do to you here tonight.”
Her fierce expression melted into a more melancholy one. “You’re wrong. I do owe him. He took care of me all those years ago. This is the last way that I can take care of him. I want to do this, Gin. I want to testify. I have to do it. So please don’t make this any harder than it already is. Okay?”
I could tell by the grim set of her lips that nothing I could say would change her mind, but I still felt compelled to try—
“If you want, we can take your statement right now,” Bria said, and stepped up beside us before I could protest. “Save you the hassle of going down to the station.”
My mouth dropped open, and I once again felt like a cartoon character whose face was stretched out to impossible proportions. Two minutes ago, she’d wanted me to march into the police station, right past all her fellow boys in blue, and now she was giving Catalina a free pass on that? Anger flooded my heart, replacing my earlier hurt.
“Excuse us, Catalina.” I ground out the words. “I need to speak to my sister, the detective.”
I grabbed Bria’s arm and pulled her away. Xavier stayed behind with Catalina, talking to her in a low, soothing voice. I marched Bria over to the far side of Catalina’s car, out of earshot of the others, then whirled around to face her.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” I hissed. “You’re going to get that girl killed. And for what? Just so you can collar Benson? Even if you arrest him, the chances of him spending any time in jail are slim to none. He has too much money, too much power, and too many connections for that.”
“It’ll be fine,” Bria insisted in a stubborn tone. “Xavier and I can protect Catalina.”
“From Benson? And the dozens of vampires who work for him? I doubt that. The second Benson hears that there’s a witness to Troy’s murder, he will do everything in his power to find and kill Catalina—and anyone else who gets in his way. That includes you.”
Bria crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m a cop, Gin. I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, you can, but you’re being awfully cavalier with Catalina’s life. Xavier’s too.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t tell you how to kill people, so why don’t you give me the same courtesy and quit telling me how to do my job?”
My whole body stiffened, and I had to work very hard to keep my face blank, as though her verbal knives had slid right off my skin, instead of burying themselves deep in my heart.
Bria winced, and she opened her mouth, almost like she was going to apologize. But then her gaze flicked to Troy’s body, a shadow passed over her face, and her lips mashed down into a hard, flat line. She wasn’t going to back down, so I decided to try another approach.
“Look, Xavier told me about your informant, Max,” I said, trying to rein in my own temper and ignore the hurt I felt.
Her angry gaze shot over to the giant. “He had no right to do that—no right at all.”
“I know you feel responsible for what happened to Max.”
“I am responsible.” Guilt and bitterness roughened her voice. “I’m the one who wanted info on Burn. I’m the one who pushed him to get in deeper with Benson’s crew. Max did exactly what I wanted, and now he’s dead. And I’m the reason why.”
“Bringing down Benson won’t change what happened to Max.”
“No,” Bria agreed, rubbing her thumb over her detective’s badge. “But at least I’ll know that the bastard will never do that to anyone else.”
“Except Catalina, when he finds out about her.”
Bria stiffened, and her hand balled into a fist. Yeah, it was a low blow on my part, but that didn’t make it any less true.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to take my witness’s statement,” she snapped. “I’m also going to call in the scene. Since you’re so worried about being identified, it’s probably better if you’re not around when everyone else shows up.”
Bria pushed past me and went back over to Catalina and Xavier. She gently put her hand on Catalina’s arm, escorted her over to the sedan, drew a notepad and a pen out of the back pocket of her jeans, and started writing down Catalina’s statement. Xavier gave me another troubled look, then went to stand next to Bria. He didn’t like it either, but it was his job to back her up, and he’d do it, just like always.
Catalina started talking. I didn’t hear her words, but I didn’t need to. I’d seen the whole thing for myself. Instead, I watched Bria. The longer Catalina spoke, the more eager my baby sister’s expression became, and a twinkle shone in her eyes, almost as if she was enjoying hearing about a young man’s murder.
But the thing that bothered me the most was Bria’s smile—a cold, cruel, satisfied expression I’d never seen her wear before.
But one that I’d sported all too often as the Spider.
•
Even though Bria had made it abundantly clear that I wasn’t welcome here anymore, I stayed in the garage until she finished taking Catalina’s statement. Bria moved off and started talking on her phone, notifying the rest of the po-po about the murder. Catalina drifted back over to Troy’s body, saying her good-byes, while Xavier walked over to me.
“I’m going to follow Catalina home, then come back and help Bria,” he said. “Bria’s agreed to keep Catalina’s identity under wraps for as long as possible. She’s not going to tell anyone who Catalina is until she absolutely has to. Neither will I.”
“Benson will still find out. You know he will.”
Xavier shrugged. He couldn’t deny it. He reached out, squeezed my arm, then went over and got into the sedan. Catalina bent down over Troy’s body and touched his hand a final time before straightening back up. She wiped a few tears away and came over to where I was leaning against her car.
“Thank you for being here tonight,” she said. “For saving me.”
My heart twisted. I hadn’t saved her so much as I had signed her death warrant. I should have found some way to sneak her out of the garage instead of letting her witness Troy’s murder. Now Benson was going to kill her as soon as he found out that she’d seen what he’d done.
“See you at work tomorrow?” she asked.
“Sure.”
I handed over her keys. Catalina gave me a shaky smile, more tears pooling in her eyes, then slid into her car and cranked the engine. She backed up and followed Xavier in the sedan out of the garage.
Bria was still talking on the phone, pointedly not looking in my direction. Maybe I should have tried to make nice with her, but right now, I was too angry and disgusted to bother.
So I went over to the stairs and plodded down them to the first level, my soft footsteps like a steady heartbeat against the dirty concrete. I stood in the shadows by the entrance, staring out at the street. The lights spaced along the sidewalks continually flickered, the weak, worn-out bulbs humming in warning that they could go dark at any second. The sputtering glows made it seem as though the graffiti runes spray-painted everywhere were moving, like roaches skittering along the street and up and down the building walls. Most of the commuter cars that had been parked here earlier were gone, and I didn’t see anyone schlepping down the sidewalks, not even a couple of hookers trolling for clients.
I sighed. It didn’t matter if anyone was watching or not. The cops would be here soon enough, their blue and white lights flashing and drawing everyone’s attention to the garage. And when word got out about exactly how gruesome Troy’s murder had been and that there had been a witness to the crime, well, that would only make folks more interested in things, especially Benson in finding and eliminating Catalina.
But Catalina had made her choice to testify, and there was nothing I could do to stop her, even if doing the right thing would probably end up getting her killed. I sighed again, a little louder and deeper this time, stuck my hands into my jeans pockets, and ambled down the street.
I’d only gone half a block when a pair of headlights popped on behind me.
I palmed a knife and whirled around, thinking that maybe Benson had already heard something on the police scanner and had come back with his vamps to investigate.
But the lights weren’t from a car cruising down the street. They were on one already parked at the curb close to the garage entrance—a black Audi with tinted windows.
The Audi’s engine churned steadily, sounding as smooth and silky as a cat’s satisfied purr. I squinted against the glare of the headlights, but I couldn’t make out who was sitting inside through the tinted windows. I doubted it was just a wayward commuter, though, hiding in his car until the scary woman with the knife decided to leave. Oh, no. If whoever was inside was an innocent bystander, he would be calling the cops and racing down the street as fast as he could, instead of sitting there playing a game of chicken with me. Maybe Benson had left some vamps behind to watch the garage for whatever reason. Either way, I wanted to know who was in that car and why.
So I sprinted toward the Audi, coming at the car from an angle, in case the driver decided to floor it, zoom up onto the sidewalk, and try to turn me into a bloody pancake against the side of the garage. I was a hundred feet away from the car and closing fast. Seventy-five . . . sixty . . . fifty . . . thirty . . .
The driver finally did floor it, and I tensed, ready to throw myself out of the way of the sleek hood and churning wheels. But I didn’t have to. The driver turned the wheel sharply to the left . . . and zoomed away from the curb and down the street.
I cursed, whipped around, and ran after the car, even though there was no way I could possibly catch up with it. The Audi rounded the corner. A few seconds later, so did I, but the car was already two blocks away and picking up speed. I cursed even louder as I finally stopped. I hadn’t even gotten the license plate to give to Finn.
It wasn’t until the car had zipped around another corner, completely disappearing from sight, that I realized that the black Audi was an exact match to the vehicle the two mystery women had gotten into when they’d left the Pork Pit earlier this evening.
9
I frowned into the darkness, my mind racing through all the implications.
There was no way that the auburn-haired woman and her giant bodyguard could have followed me here from the Pork Pit. They’d left the restaurant before I did, and I’d cut through too many alleys for them to track me easily. But here they’d been all the same. Why had they been parked outside the garage? How long had they been there? And what had they been waiting for?
If they’d wanted to assassinate me, then one of the women should have rolled down her window, stuck a gun through the opening, and sprayed the sidewalk with bullets—at the very least. Tossed some grenades at me, run me over, pinned me against the garage wall and put a clip full of bullets in my chest. Oh, yes. They could have done any one of those things.
In addition to looking out for would-be assailants, I also spent a fair amount of time imagining exactly how they might murder me. I supposed that it was my professional mind at work, so to speak, since I’d dispatched so many folks myself in such varying ways. I’d pictured all those scenarios before, along with dozens more. But instead of attacking me, the people in the car had just driven off, and I didn’t think it was because I’d spooked them with my killer smile and my gleaming knife.
More theories swirled through my mind, each one darker and more violent than the last, but none of them answered my questions. I had a sinking feeling that there were some new players in Ashland—ones who seemed to know a lot more about me than I did about them.
But there was nothing I could do to confirm my suspicions about the women who may or may not have been in the Audi. Besides, Bria was right. The cops would be here any minute, and it would be better if I was gone.
So I slid my knife back up my sleeve, stepped into the shadows, and disappeared into the darkness.
•
Still keeping an eye out for the mystery car, I headed back to the Pork Pit. I took a few minutes to check the restaurant, but the lights were off, the doors were locked, and no one was hanging out in the alley, waiting to murder me. Everything was quiet, so I walked three blocks east to the side street where I’d parked my own car.
After I’d checked my vehicle for bombs and rune traps, I got inside and circled the downtown loop a few times, looking for the black Audi, but I didn’t spot it. Whoever was inside had probably hightailed it up into Northtown by now. Still, I had a feeling that I’d see the Audi—and the two women—again.
