Widow's Web (Elemental Assassin) (7 page)

Sophia and I spent the next fifteen minutes unloading our supplies from her classic convertible and the Cadillac Escalade I’d borrowed from Finn’s fleet of cars. Together, the Goth dwarf and I carried everything we needed up the gangplank and on board the riverboat . . .

And right into the middle of a frat party.

Guys and girls in their late teens and early twenties filled the riverboat’s third deck, which formed an open U shape that jutted out past all the other decks and curved into the bow of the boat. Everyone had on flip-flops and sandals, along with the tightest T-shirts and the shortest shorts they could get away with. A banner hanging down from the fourth deck read
Charity Rocks! Give ’Til It Hurts!

That was the other strange thing about tonight. I’d expected Kincaid to be throwing some fancy gala, but instead here was a fund-raiser for an animal shelter being put on by some sororities and fraternities at Ashland Community College. Well, perhaps
fund-raiser
was too generous a term.
Kegger with a cause
would have been more appropriate, given the students who had brought along their own beer and were already stumbling around
like the boat was actually moving instead of being secured to the dock.

Games had been set up on deck, everything from poker to roulette to craps. A twenty-dollar cover charge got you on board the riverboat, all the food you could eat, and a stack of chips. They didn’t have any monetary value tonight, but if you won enough chips playing the games, you could redeem them for prizes. Raffles of donated items were also being held, and screams of delight rippled through the crowd every time someone won something, rising above the loud, constant, ringing
ching-ching-ching
of the slot machines.

The kids who weren’t drinking or gambling were amusing themselves by hooking up, as though standing by the railing meant that no one could see them sticking their tongues down each other’s throats or would notice all the wandering hands disappearing beneath skimpy outfits.

It all looked so real, so legit, so damn
convincing,
that I would have almost believed this was a bona fide catering job—except for the fact Kincaid had personally come into the Pork Pit to hire me. Men like him didn’t do things like that—that’s what underlings were for. The casino boss was definitely up to something; I just didn’t know what it was yet.

“Gin! There you are!”

Speak of the devil. Kincaid pushed through a door that led into the riverboat’s interior and headed in my direction. From my past explorations here, I knew the inside of the boat was hollow and ringed with a series of balconies, so folks on the upper decks could see the stage here on the third floor and watch the elaborate shows put
on there. Kincaid offered a full, Vegas-style experience, right down to the leggy showgirls Finn always lusted after whenever he watched a performance here.

Kincaid walked toward me, followed by a giant with pecan-brown hair, matching eyes, and olive skin. Both men wore light, summer-weight suits, and each had a large pin in the middle of his silk tie. Kincaid’s pin was made of silverstone, while the giant’s was gold, but both were shaped like a dollar sign superimposed over an outline of the riverboat—Kincaid’s rune for his casino and the buckets of money it netted him. A little garish and too in-your-face for my tastes, but it didn’t surprise me that the casino boss liked to flaunt his wealth. He’d earned it, clawing his way up through the underworld.

More giants circulated through the crowd, all wearing suits and the same gold tiepin. They closely monitored the students and games. Despite the fact that he’d opened up his riverboat to the college crowd, Kincaid wasn’t letting any of the kids cheat or swipe chips from their fellow gamblers. How noble of him.

Kincaid stopped in front of Sophia and me, his blue eyes flicking over our boots, jeans, and long-sleeved T-shirts. Once again, I got the sense he was highly amused about something whenever he looked at me, although I had no idea what that could possibly be. There wasn’t anything amusing about me—or the knives I’d brought along.

“This is Antonio Mendez, my second-in-command,” Kincaid said, gesturing to the giant beside him. “If you need anything tonight, just let him know.”

Antonio nodded his head at Sophia, then turned to
stare at me, sizing me up. Despite the neutral expression, I could sense the coiled strength in his seven-foot body. Finn had actually been able to find out more about Kincaid’s men than about Kincaid himself, so I knew Antonio could be ruthless when need be. The giant wasn’t someone you wanted to fuck with.

Then again, neither was I.

I returned Antonio’s searching stare with a cold, hard one of my own. After a moment, the giant nodded his head again, indicating I’d passed his little mental pissing contest. As if I cared. I didn’t have anything to prove to the giant or anyone else, but I’d have been happy to show him exactly who he was messing with if he got an inch out of line or threatened either Sophia or myself in the slightest way.

Antonio turned his attention to the Goth dwarf, and his eyes widened at her black lipstick and the purple streaks she’d put in her hair. “Here. Let me help you with those,” he said, reaching for the stack of boxes in her arms.

Sophia let out a low, threatening growl. With her ruined, raspy voice, she sounded like a mythological Fenrir wolf about to sink its teeth into a hunk of fresh meat. Antonio froze. Sophia let out another growl, and the giant dropped his hands to his sides and stepped away from her. Smart man.

Kincaid stayed silent throughout their exchange, then made a sweeping motion with his hand. “This way.”

He led us over to the far side of the deck, the one facing out toward the Aneirin River. A large cooking station had been set up there, complete with pots, pans, utensils, a couple of burners, coolers filled with ice, and everything
else we would need. Kincaid had been thorough, if nothing else. His accommodating nature only made me that much more suspicious about what he really wanted—and how many people I might have to kill to make it through the night.

“I thought we would set you up out here so you can see all of the action,” he said. “Keep you right in the thick of things.”

His voice was as bland as could be, but something in his words bothered me. It almost sounded like he was expecting trouble tonight, but I couldn’t imagine what problems the drunken frat boys and girls could possibly create that his giants couldn’t handle.

“Like I said, let Antonio know if you need anything.”

Kincaid gave me a thin smile, then moved off into the crowd. Antonio nodded at us and walked away too, although he didn’t go far, planting himself against the rail about twenty feet from the cooking station. Keeping an eye on us.

“This gets stranger by the minute,” I said to Sophia.

The dwarf grunted her agreement, put down her boxes, and started unpacking them. I did the same. Whatever Kincaid was up to, there was nothing to do now but see it through to the end.

The next hour involved reheating the dishes Sophia and I had made earlier in the day, creating some last-minute ones on-site, and then serving everything up to the hungry kids.

I recognized more than a few folks and said hello to those I knew, since I was also a student at Ashland Community
College. I was always taking a course or two at the college, like the literature class I’d signed up for this summer. Sophia and I had just finished feeding the first wave of students when I spotted two very familiar faces in the crowd—Eva Grayson and Violet Fox.

Eva was Owen’s nineteen-year-old sister, and Violet was her best friend. The two girls were pretty much inseparable, despite how different they were. Eva looked a lot like Owen, with her blue-black hair, while Violet was all frizzy blond hair and glasses. Like everyone else, they were dressed in shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops. In fact, Eva’s T-shirt bore the name of the sorority that was hosting the fund-raiser, making me wonder if she’d been involved in the planning.

I wasn’t particularly surprised to see them at a college function, but the troubling thing was that the two girls were talking to none other than Kincaid himself. The casino boss said something, causing both Eva and Violet to laugh. Eva, especially, seemed interested in what he had to say, tossing her hair over her shoulder and smiling at him—something her big brother would definitely not approve of.

Owen had a protective streak a mile wide when it came to Eva, just like I did when it came to my younger sister Bria. Owen would definitely not want Eva cozying up to a casino mobster, but that was exactly what she was doing—and Kincaid seemed to be enjoying every second of her attention.

I dished up the last of the macaroni salad in my tin pan and turned to Sophia. “Can you handle things for a while? I see something I need to take care of.”

The dwarf followed my gaze, frowned, and nodded. She didn’t like the two girls being close to Kincaid any more than I did, especially since we still didn’t know what he was plotting.

“Go,” she rasped.

I undid my blue work apron, lifted the strings over my head, and tied them to the brass railing behind me. Then I skirted around the cooking station and headed for Kincaid. Antonio, who’d been leaning against the railing and idly ogling the pretty young girls who walked by, snapped to attention as I stalked past him.

“Down, boy,” I drawled. “I just want to talk to your boss a second. I’m not going to kill him.”

Yet
.

The word wasn’t spoken, but the threat must have shown in my cold face, because Antonio followed me over to where Kincaid was holding court with Eva and Violet.

Violet saw me first and winced, like the jig was up. She tapped Eva on the arm, trying to get her attention, but Eva was too interested in what Kincaid had to say to pay her friend any mind. That changed, though, the second I shouldered my way in between Eva and Kincaid, not so subtly bumping the casino boss away from her and making him take several steps back.

“Why, hello, Eva,” I drawled again. “I had no idea you were going to be here tonight.”

“Gin!” Eva sputtered, her blue eyes widening. “What—what are you doing here?”

“Catering. And you?”

It took her a second to recover, but when she did, she gestured at the other kids. “Overseeing the fund-raiser.”

“Really? This is
your
fund-raiser? I don’t remember you telling me anything about it when you and Violet had lunch at the Pork Pit yesterday. I’m surprised you wouldn’t mention it to me, if the cause was so very important to you. But I’m guessing you told Owen all about it, right? And where you were going tonight?”

A guilty flush stained Eva’s pale cheeks.
Busted.
Eva realized as well as I did that Owen wouldn’t want her near anyone as dangerous as Kincaid, but here she was all the same. I couldn’t help but wonder why. Was the fund-raiser being held on the riverboat just a coincidence? Or was there something else going on? Something between Eva and Kincaid, as unlikely as that seemed? I didn’t know, but I was going to find out.

I had to hand it to her, Eva wasn’t easily intimidated, not even by the likes of me, and she raised her chin. “I needed somewhere to host the fund-raiser, somewhere cooler and more interesting than the student center, so I called Philly and asked him if we could use the riverboat. He said yes.”

“
Philly?
” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

Kincaid squared his shoulders and looked me in the eye. “Philly. It’s an old nickname Eva gave me when we were kids.”

This time, both my eyebrows shot up. According to Finn’s sketchy file on him, Kincaid was my age, thirty, which made him about eleven years older than Eva. Even if you disregarded the age difference, they didn’t exactly
move in the same social circles. So what was going on here? How did they know each other? And more importantly, why was Eva being so nice to Kincaid? Cozying up to him like he was a long-lost friend?

I was opening my mouth to ask those very questions, when a scream ripped through the crowd.

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