11 Poison Promise (15 page)

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-tink
ed 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
snick
ed open. I tossed the picks down onto the ground to melt away, eased inside the club, and closed the door behind me.