She stared at Eddie lying in the street. So much blood had pooled under his cracked skull that it almost looked like his head was resting on a glossy scarlet pillow. Vera sucked in a ragged breath, and tears gleamed in her eyes. But she wasn’t ready to give up yet, and she backed up a couple of steps, dragging Mosley along with her. She wet her lips, her gaze darting around again, this time looking for a way out. But there wasn’t one, and we all knew it. Still, I tried to reason with her.
“It’s not too late,” I said. “Just let him go, and tell us who you’re working for.”
She wet her lips again, and for a moment, I thought she was actually considering it. Then her gaze dropped to Eddie’s body again. Rage and grief burned in her dark eyes, and I knew this could only end one way now.
Finn realized it too, and he shifted his stance, getting ready to charge Vera right along with me. We had to get to her before she made good on her threat and crushed Mosley’s windpipe with that baton.
Mosley saw the shift in Finn and me, and his hands curled into fists. I wondered how many times he’d been in a similar situation. Probably quite a few, given the stories he’d told over dinner about his adventures with Fletcher. Either way, I knew I could count on him to strike when the moment was right.
Finn grinned, although there was a hard, dangerous edge to his expression. He didn’t like people threatening our friends any more than I did. “You know, boss, while we’re all just standing around, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask you.” He paused a moment for dramatic effect, even as his grin sharpened. “How about a raise? What do you say? Think you could give me a little pay bump? You know, for going above and beyond the call of duty?”
Vera’s pretty features twisted into a wild, angry expression, and she dug the baton a little deeper into Mosley’s neck, grinding the metal into his skin like it was a saw. “What are you talking about? You need to back off. Now!”
“I don’t know,” Mosley replied in a hoarse but steady voice, never showing the slightest sign of fear, even as he played along with Finn. “Given everything that’s happened at the bank over the past few months, a raise might be out of the question right now.”
“Really?” Finn countered. “Are you sure you don’t want to rethink your position? Especially given what a valuable employee I am?”
“What are you two babbling about? Shut up!” Vera snapped. “Shut up and step back! Now! Right now—”
She was so angry and distracted by their inane banter that she lowered the baton a fraction of an inch from Mosley’s throat, but that was all the opening he needed. With one hand, he grabbed the end of the baton, yanking it out of Vera’s grip. With the other hand, he latched onto her wrist, wrenching her arm down and back at an awkward angle.
Crack!
The sound of Vera’s arm breaking seemed as loud as a gunshot in the cold, quiet night. She screamed, but she still wasn’t ready to give up, and she lashed out with her good arm, swiping her nails at Mosley’s face like she wanted to scratch his eyes out. Mosley stepped back, avoiding her attack, then whirled right back around and slammed the metal baton into her head.
I didn’t know if he meant to do it, if his survival instinct took over, or if he just got lucky, but he hit her square on the temple, and given his dwarven strength, that one blow was more than enough to crack open her skull. Vera’s scream abruptly cut off, and blood spurted everywhere, just like it had with Eddie. Her eyes rolled up in the back of her head, and she dropped to the ground, dead before she even hit the sidewalk.
Finn and I both rushed over to Mosley, who loomed over Vera, the baton still clutched in his hand.
“Boss!” Finn said. “Are you all right?”
Mosley reached up and slowly wiped something off his face. He stared down blankly at the wet, red smears—Vera’s blood—glistening on his fingertips. He blinked, and a shudder rippled through his body. Instinct and luck, then, instead of actual intent.
Another horrified shudder rippled through the dwarf’s body, this one so violent that it jarred the baton out of his hand. The metal rod clanged to the sidewalk right beside Vera, letting out a series of sharp, ringing notes before it finally rolled to a stop.
“Boss?” Finn asked again, in a much gentler voice.
Mosley kept staring at the blood on his fingertips. A third shudder rippled through his body, and he dropped his hand to his side and focused on Vera lying at his feet.
“Better than her,” he rasped in a low voice. “Better than her.”
Chapter Four
Despite the screech of Finn stopping his car and the yells and screams of the fight, no sirens sounded in the distance.
Of course, we were a couple of blocks away from Underwood’s, but if the valet stationed outside the restaurant had heard the commotion echoing down the street, he hadn’t called the cops. No surprise there. Most folks in Ashland knew that summoning the po-po was a crapshoot at best. You might get an honest officer who was truly dedicated to protecting and serving…or you might get a corrupt official who could barely be bothered to do his job. At least, not without a substantial bribe to properly motivate him.
If it had just been Finn and me, I would have loaded Vera and Eddie into the trunk of Finn’s car, driven away, and called Sophia Deveraux to help us dispose of the bodies. But Mosley had been the target, and he was a public figure with a reputation and a business to think about. If Vera and Eddie had been working for someone, I didn’t want that person to try to blackmail Mosley about their deaths later on or cook up some other scheme against him. That meant covering our asses and getting the cops involved—at least, the cops I knew I could trust.
Besides, I wanted to know every little thing about Vera and Eddie, and police databases were always a good place to start drilling down into folks. I wanted to know if this was a simple mugging, like Vera claimed, or if someone was targeting Mosley for a more sinister reason.
Finn looked at me, as if he was thinking the same things. “Time to call Bria?”
“Yep.”
Luckily for me, Detective Bria Coolidge, my baby sister, was one of the good cops. Finn pulled out his phone and dialed her, since she was also his lady love. He talked to her in a low voice for a few moments before putting his phone away and giving me a thumbs-up, telling me that Bria was on her way. Then Finn got into his car, cranked the engine, and drove it into a nearby alley so he wouldn’t have to explain why Eddie’s blood was smeared all over the driver’s-side mirror and why the vehicle was sitting in the middle of a double homicide.
Mosley kept staring down at Vera with a dull, blank expression. The adrenaline of the fight was wearing off, and the sickening shock of killing her was quickly setting in, even though it had been self-defense.
I grabbed his arm and gently steered him away from her body. We stopped at the corner, and I scanned this block and the one up ahead, wondering if someone else might be lurking in a shadowy doorway, watching us—
An engine rumbled to life, and a car barreled out of an alley across the street from us. At first, I thought it was Finn, driving back out here for some reason. Then I realized that this car was black, not silver like his. The car’s headlights hit Mosley and me, illuminating us like we were a couple of deer about to get mowed down on some dark country road. For a second, I thought that was exactly what was going to happen, since the car was picking up speed and heading straight at us.
I reached for my Stone magic and stepped forward, ready to tackle Mosley and shove him out of the way—
At the last second, the car swung away from us and made a sharp left turn onto the main street, causing its tires to squeal in protest. I squinted, trying to get my night vision back after the headlights’ searing glare, but the windows were tinted, so I couldn’t see who was inside. The driver gunned the engine, and the car zipped away. A few seconds later, the driver made another sharp left, and the vehicle vanished from sight.
I bit back a curse. I hadn’t even gotten a look at the licens
e plate, so I had no way of tracking down the vehicle. Whoever was inside was long gone, so I focused on Mosley.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
But he didn’t seem to have noticed the suspicious car or how close it had come to running us over. Instead, he was staring at Vera’s body again, his face twisted into a sad, miserable expression.
After a moment, Mosley shook his head, as if to clear away his dark thoughts, and looked at me. “Yes. I’m fine, thanks to you and Finn.”
I hesitated, not wanting to cause him any more pain, but if this hadn’t been a random attack—and that speeding car definitely made me think it wasn’t random—then we needed to figure out who might have been behind it. “I know this has been traumatic…”
“But you want to know if this was a simple mugging or something else. And if it was something else, then who might have sicced those two on me and why.” Mosley finished my thoughts, then gave me a grim smile. “Like I told Vera, this isn’t the first time someone’s threatened me. I imagine it won’t be the last.”
“I wouldn’t ask you this right now if I didn’t think it was important.”
“I know,” he said. “And I shouldn’t be so upset. You heard about my adventures with Fletcher over dinner, so you know Vera isn’t the first person I’ve killed in self-defense. But being in this area, seeing her lying on the sidewalk, realizing how young she is…it reminds me of Joanna. And it’s a damn waste of a life, just like Joanna’s was.”
Joanna, Mosley’s beloved great-granddaughter, had been abducted and murdered by the Dollmaker serial killer about two years ago. She’d gone out to dinner with friends at Underwood’s one night and had never come back home.
Mosley fell silent, lost in his own dark thoughts again, and I remained quiet, giving him the time he needed to start processing this. After a minute, he roused himself out of his memories and looked at me again.
“I’ve never seen this woman or that giant before tonight,” he said. “They aren’t bank clients.”
“Then who are they? And why did they target you?”
He shrugged. “Given what Vera said to me in the restaurant, I thought she was looking for someone to pick up her tab. Or that she was a professional working girl trying to turn dinner into a longer, more lucrative date. Maybe she thought I looked like an old, rich, easy mark.”
“Why would she think that?”
He tapped his hooked nose. “I’m not the most attractive man around, Gin. Tonight wasn’t the first time I’ve been propositioned like that. Although I pissed her off when I turned her down. I was annoyed by all the phone calls about the auction, and I wasn’t as nice about it as I could have been.” He shrugged. “Maybe that’s why she was waiting out here. Maybe I made her so angry that she wanted to get something out of me, one way or another.”
“Maybe.”
Mosley frowned at the doubtful note in my voice. “But you don’t think it was random.”
No, I didn’t. Oh, I could believe that Vera had targeted Mosley in the restaurant because she thought he looked like a rich, easy mark. But how had she known which car was his? I supposed that Eddie could have been lurking outside and spotted the dwarf parking his vehicle and heading into the restaurant. Maybe the giant had snapped Mosley’s photo and sent it to Vera as a heads-up for a potential victim.
But that still didn’t explain who was in the other car that had zoomed away after Vera and Eddie were dead. Sure, it could have been someone who’d seen the fight and didn’t want to stick around and get involved or even someone who’d had a few too many drinks at Underwood’s to drive home safely. But if that were the case, the car would have plowed straight into Mosley and me, not veered away smoothly at the last second.
No, I didn’t think any of this was random. Not at all. But Mosley was upset enough, and I didn’t want to worry him any more, so I didn’t share my suspicions.
Instead, I shrugged. “You know me and how I always go straight to the worst-case scenario. But let’s assume it wasn’t random. Anyone with a particular grudge against you? Anyone make any recent threats? Anyone you think could be behind this?”
Mosley stuck his hands in his pants pockets and slowly rocked back and forth on his feet, thinking. “Well, lots of folks were extremely upset by the recent robbery attempt at the bank. I got several threats about that, but now that everyone’s items have been returned and security has been dramatically increased, most of the hubbub has died down. Honestly, I’ve spent so much time working on the auction the last few weeks that I haven’t paid attention to much else.”
He fell silent, although he kept rocking back and forth, lost in his own thoughts again. I thought about pressing him further and trying to jog his memory, but I decided against it. Mosley had already been through enough tonight, and the only thing that mattered right now was that he was okay.
I scanned the street again, wondering if that mysterious car might careen back around, but it didn’t reappear, and everything remained quiet. So my gaze flicked over to Vera sprawled on the sidewalk and then Eddie slumped out in the street. Their arms and legs stuck out at awkward angles, like they were puppets whose strings had been suddenly severed, and blood had pooled underneath both of their heads, like their skulls were eggs that had been cracked open and were oozing everywhere. These Humpty-Dumptys had had great falls, and they were never, ever getting put back together again.
By all appearances, this looked like a simple mugging, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something else—something more—was going on. Then again, Finn claimed that I saw plots, especially Circle plots, everywhere I went and in everything that happened to me and my friends these days. He wasn’t wrong about that.
But I wasn’t usually wrong about these sorts of things either.
And the longer I stared at the two bodies, the more certain I was that this was just the beginning of a whole new wave of trouble for Mosley—and for me too.
* * *
Finn returned from parking his car just as a siren wailed in the distance. Blue and white lights flashed at the far end of the street, growing brighter and closer. A few moments later, a navy sedan pulled over to the curb, right behind Mosley’s car with its dented hood and busted windshield.
The driver’s-side door opened, and a woman with blue eyes and blond hair that peeked out from underneath her blue toboggan got out. A giant who was roughly seven feet tall, with a broad, strong body, dark eyes, a shaved head, and ebony skin, climbed out of the passenger’s side. Detective Bria Coolidge, my baby sister, and Xavier, her partner on the force.
Bria and Xavier looked at the giant lying on the street before moving over and examining the woman sprawled across the sidewalk. Then the two cops walked over to where Finn and I were standing with Mosley at the corner.
“Thanks for coming,” I said.
Bria flashed me a warm smile. “Anytime. You know that.” Then she turned her attention to the dwarf. “Mr. Mosley. Nice to see you again, although I wish the circumstances were better. Can you tell me what happened?”
She went into full-fledged detective mode, pulling a pen and a small notepad out of the back pocket of her jeans. Meanwhile, Xavier drew his phone out of his black leather jacket and took photos of the crime scene, documenting everything, from the two bodies to the blood and broken glass to Mosley’s battered car.
Bria carefully listened and wrote down everything Mosley told her, then went over and conferred in quiet tones with Xavier, who pulled on a pair of black crime-scene gloves and scooped Vera’s red clutch off the sidewalk. He popped it open, plucked her driver’s license out of the bag, and showed it to Bria, who nodded, as if she’d been expecting the information all along. Curious.
She also pulled on a pair of crime-scene gloves, and Xavier crouched down and rolled Eddie over onto his side so she could dig his wallet out of his back pocket. She showed Xavier the dead giant’s driver’s license, and he nodded back to her the same way she had to him. Very curious indeed.
 
; Eventually, Bria and Xavier finished documenting everything, and she crooked her finger at me, since Finn was talking to Mosley about bank business, trying to distract him from staring at Vera’s body again.
I walked over to the cops. “You got something?”
“Actually, yes.” Bria gestured at the two bodies. “Meet Vera and Eddie Jones, a married pair of professional muggers. Both of them have extensive rap sheets that include solicitation, assault, battery…you get the picture. Tonight isn’t the first time the two of them have pulled a scam like this. Vera’s the bait. She lures the victim out of a restaurant or bar and into a shadowy alley, where hubby Eddie is waiting, then—”
“Bam!” Xavier smacked his fist into his hand. “Eddie comes up behind the guy and knocks him out, and then the two of them roll the poor sap for everything he has on him—wallet, phone, jewelry.”
“So you know them?” I asked.
They both nodded.
“We’ve busted them a couple of times now, but we’ve never been able to make anything stick, since none of the victims has been willing to testify.” Xavier grinned. “What with those guys being so happily married and all.”
“Right,” I drawled. “So you think this was random?”
Bria shrugged. “Well, Vera and Eddie usually stick to Southtown, since folks flock to that area when they’re looking to have a good time on the sly. It’s just easier pickings over there. This is the first time I know of that they’ve strayed out of that area. Although we have gotten several reports of muggings in this neighborhood over the past few weeks. The owner of Underwood’s spoke to our captain about it a couple of days ago. He wanted to know why his very generous donation to the police department’s annual fund-raiser wasn’t resulting in this sort of crime being kept away from his restaurant.”
“Donation?” I snorted. “Heh. You mean he wanted to know why he wasn’t getting anything for his bribe money.”
She shrugged again. “Something like that. But you think Mosley was specifically targeted, don’t you?”