It had taken awhile, but the wannabe gangster had finally realized that the tide had turned. He’d come out from his hiding place beside the SUV and stood in front of the vehicle, eyes wide, staring down at the blood, bodies, and carnage that painted the pavement. But before I could slither over there and finish him off, the thin bastard turned and ran. I let out a curse.
“Stay here with Bria!” I shouted to Finn. “I’ll get him!”
I had to get him. Jenkins had seen what had gone down here, and he almost certainly had to know that the Spider was responsible. There weren’t any other women running around Ashland who were as handy with knives as I was. At least, not to my knowledge. If Jenkins didn’t realize this yet, surely he would when he got somewhere safe and calmed down. Now it was my mission to make sure that he never got to that happy place.
Jenkins was quicker than he looked—much, much quicker. Must be from all that time he spent skulking around and transferring ownership of certain items. He took off like a jackrabbit across the snow, and I had to hustle to keep up with him. Despite the fact that I’d used my Stone magic to shield my body, Don had still gotten in a few good licks on me, and I could taste my own coppery blood in my mouth, as well as what felt like a broken rib scraping against my lung.
Jenkins looked back, realized that I was following him, and picked up his pace, crossing the icy street like a speed skater and disappearing into an alley on the other side. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to push the pain away and move faster, run harder. I entered the alley to find that Jenkins had gained ground on me, since the thief was already halfway down the narrow corridor, which was largely clear and free of snow. He looked back again, his eyes wide with terror.
Instead of taking advantage of his natural speed, Jenkins reached out and grabbed one of the trash cans that lined the alley. He slapped the lid off it and turned it over. All sorts of refuse spilled out of the can, and several bottles tink-tink-tinked my way. One by one, he dumped the cans over, putting all sorts of disgusting things between us. Greasy fast-food wrappers, crushed cigarettes, used condoms. The sour stench alone made me gag, but I churned through the garbage, my boots smashing everything that was underfoot.
Jenkins thought he was doing the smart thing, but his tactics cost him precious time and slowed him down as well, when he would have been much better off just hot-footing it away from me as fast as his matchstick-thin legs would carry him. Still, he might have made it even tipping the cans over, if he’d been a little quicker or I’d been a little less determined.
Or if I didn’t have my Ice magic.
We reached a spot in the alley where it was a straight shot for about a hundred feet with no garbage cans in sight. Up ahead, a light burned at the end of the corridor, indicating another street and possible escape for Jenkins. I was determined that the bastard wasn’t going to make it that far, not after he’d sold out Bria. But by this point, the pain in my ribs had intensified until it felt like I was stabbing myself in the chest with my own knives, and I could feel myself slowing with every step.
Good thing I didn’t have to catch Jenkins—only stop him.
I dropped to one knee, put my hands on the blacktop, and reached for my Ice power. A cold, silver light flickered underneath my palms, centered on the spider rune scars there. Snowflake-shaped Ice crystals spread out from my hands, zipping down the alley floor, coating the already frigid concrete faster than I could ever think about moving—and much, much faster than Lincoln Jenkins could ever dream of running.
The frosty, silvery crystals caught up with the petty thief ten feet from the end of the alley. Jenkins hadn’t noticed the elemental Ice creeping up on him, and his sneakers squeaked, then slid on the slick sheet. His arms windmilled as he tried to stay upright. Didn’t work, never did. A second later, his back smacked onto the cold pavement. His puffy jacket deflated like a popped balloon, and he let out a low groan. I smiled, my expression even colder than the Ice I’d just created.
Still, I approached Jenkins cautiously, just the way that Fletcher had taught me. Just because someone might be down didn’t mean that he was out—a trick I’d pulled more than once.
But Jenkins wasn’t all that clever, and he must have hit the concrete harder than I’d thought, because he was still moaning when I reached him. I crouched down on my knees and straddled him, putting just enough pressure on his ribs to make it difficult for him to breathe. The thief’s eyes widened at the bloody silverstone knife in my hand, and panic tightened his pasty skin. He tried to grab my hand in his, but I slapped his cold, grasping fingers away and shoved the blade up against his scrawny neck.
“Be very, very still, and you just might make it out of this alley alive,” I snarled.
It was a lie, but I needed something to break through Jenkins’s fear—I needed something to get him to talk, other than the threat of his own imminent demise. My harsh words worked because he nodded his head in a frantic motion, as eager as a puppy to please me. I eased up a little on his ribs, although I kept my knife against his neck, ready to slash open his throat if he so much as twitched wrong. Even lowlifes like Jenkins could get in a lucky shot, and not taking that into account was how people got dead.
“Now,” I said in a pleasant tone. “You and I are going to have a little chat about Detective Bria Coolidge. Starting with who those men were and what they wanted with her.”
Jenkins stared at me, his hazel eyes dark and sullen in his face. Underneath his wispy goatee, his lips turned down into an exaggerated, almost comical pout.
“You cost me a payday,” he whined. “A big one. I was going to get ten grand for turning on that cop.”
I didn’t tell him that cop happened to be my sister and that he’d just buried himself for the promise of that elusive ten grand. Instead, I cut him. Not deep, but there was enough of a sting in the wound to remind him of what I’d done to the dwarven mobsters in the parking lot—and that I wasn’t just some chick with a knife who looked good in black.
“Start talking,” I said in a mild voice, digging the silverstone blade a little deeper into his neck. “Or I’ll peel the skin from your throat like it’s an apple. Now, why did you sell out Detective Coolidge tonight? What did those men want with her—”
“Bounty!” Jenkins screamed, cutting me off. “There’s a bounty on the cop! And one on the Spider too!”
My eyes narrowed. A bounty. Another fucking bounty. I should have known, should have guessed. After all, Mab had hired Elektra LaFleur, one of the best assassins around, to come to Ashland to kill me. No, the bounty on my head, on the Spider’s head, didn’t surprise me. But why would there be a price on Bria? Why now? Had Mab finally gotten tired of knowing that my sister was alive? Did the Fire elemental still think that Bria was the one who was supposedly destined to kill her? The Snow sister with both Ice and Stone magic?
“So Mab wants the Spider and a cop dead. Tell me something that I don’t know.” I used my knife to make a sawing motion against his neck, slowly drawing the blade through the blood already running down his throat, but not cutting him again just yet. “And tell me quick.”
For a second, confusion filled Jenkins’s eyes, as if I’d said something wrong.
“What?” I snapped. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He started to shake his head, then thought better of it, given the knife. “No, that’s not what’s going down at all. Sure, Mab wants the Spider dead, but not the cop. She wants the cop brought to her alive.”
There was only one reason I could think of that Mab would want Bria captured alive—leverage. To use my sister against me. To flush me out into the open so she could kill us both. So the Fire elemental had figured it out then. She knew that the Spider was really Genevieve Snow—or at least suspected it enough to want to get her hands on Bria to confirm the theory.
Fuck. Just… fuck. Jenkins’s words spread through me like my own elemental Ice had coated the alley floor—cold, swift, uncaring. My heart clenched with dread and fear for
my sister, but I didn’t let any of what I was feeling show in my hard face. Instead, I dug the blade even deeper into Jenkins’s neck, encouraging him to start talking—fast.
“Tell me everything that you know,” I growled. “Before my hand slips even more than it already has.”
“It was—it was just a job, you know?” he sputtered. “I’ve been laying low these past few days, what with all the bounty hunters in town.”
“Bounty hunters?”
Jenkins nodded as much as he could, given the knife at his throat. “Yeah, yeah, bounty hunters. Mab’s declared open season on the Spider. The last I heard was that Mab was offering five million to whoever brought the Spider to her dead. The number goes up to ten million if you manage to bring her in alive, but everyone would be pretty happy if she was dead. It’s not worth the extra risk, ya know? I could spend five million just as easy as I could ten.”
I didn’t have to encourage him any more. The thief started babbling on then about how dangerous the Spider was and how bounty hunters from all over the country had come to town just to look for her. Well, I supposed that accounted for all the extra fights, murders, and violence recently. Inviting bounty hunters to a city as dark, gritty, and corrupt as Ashland was like splashing gasoline on top of an already roaring fire. Someone was bound to get burned.
I thought about all the hard cases that I’d seen getting ready to dine with Mab last night, and the way Ruth Gentry and Sydney had more or less been trying to take me alive. So that’s who they all were then, bounty hunters come to Ashland to collect on the Spider, on me—dead or alive. Mab had definitely upped her game. Before, she’d brought in only LaFleur. Now, she had a whole city of bloodhounds sniffing after me. Despite the situation, I had to give Mab her props. She never did anything halfway.
“And what about the cop? What does Coolidge have to do with the Spider?”
Jenkins blinked, a little taken aback that I’d interrupted his whiny rant. “Nothing, as far as I can tell. But a few days ago, Mab goes and puts a million-dollar bounty on the cop’s head. The only thing is that the cop has to be brought in alive. Not dead. So I’m at the bar the other night, and I hear these guys talking about the bounty, and I realize that this cop they’re talking about is actually my cop. So I mention this to the leader, all casual-like, and he asks me if I want to make some quick cash.”
“And I’ll bet you said hell yeah.”
Even though I was still straddling him, Jenkins managed a not-so-sheepish shrug. “I gotta get paid, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
And then I cut his throat.
He didn’t have any more to tell me. At least, nothing that I couldn’t figure out myself. Jenkins was a small-time hood, a bottom feeder who survived on others’ crumbs. He’d pointed the men at Bria and then had stood back and let them do all the dirty work. He just hadn’t counted on me and Finn being there and his new friends getting dead.
Maybe I should have let him live. I’d been dealing with creeps like him my whole life, and he was no real threat to me. Maybe I should have let him slink off to whatever dark hole he called home. But he’d set up Bria for a measly ten grand, set her up to be raped, tortured, and whatever else those men had in mind before they turned her over to Mab. Jenkins had almost gotten Bria killed because of his greed, had turned on her even after she’d repeatedly tried to help him. He’d betrayed her, and that was just unacceptable.
Jenkins was nothing if not an opportunistic weasel. If I’d let him live, word would have gotten out about tonight, and, after a while, he’d have started thinking about things—including the mysterious woman with her silver-stone knives who’d come out of the darkness just to save Detective Bria Coolidge. Jenkins wasn’t completely clueless. He’d have put two and two together and realized that I was the Spider. If not, he’d have blabbed it to someone who would have put it together for him. And then, Bria would have been even more of a target and in even more danger than she already was, which was something that I just couldn’t allow.
Besides, I’d never been much for mercy.
So I cut his throat, stood there, and watched until his blood was just as cold and frozen as the alley floor beneath him—and my own black heart.
When I was sure that Lincoln Jenkins was dead, I pulled off my ski mask and walked back to the parking lot at Northern Aggression.
Finn stood next to Bria, who sat on the bumper of one of the SUVs. My foster brother said something to her, then pulled out the white silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit. He passed the delicate fabric to Bria, who used it to wipe some of the blood off her face. Oh, yeah, Finn had it bad for my sister if he was offering up his precious silk to her.
But they weren’t alone.
Sometime while I’d been chasing after Jenkins, Roslyn and Xavier had joined the party. Roslyn stood on the other side of Bria, eyeing the bodies that littered the cracked pavement like loose gravel, her beautiful features puckered with obvious distaste. I couldn’t tell if the vamp was bothered by what Finn and I had done to the men or the horrible, clichéd Windbreakers that they wore. Xavier was being more practical. The giant went from body to body, pulling out wallets and cell phones, and scanning through them, trying to find out who the men were. Their names didn’t much matter now, since they were all dead.
At the scuff of my footsteps, Finn turned, his gun still in his hand.
“Relax,” I said, stepping out of the shadows. “It’s just me.”
Finn nodded, but he didn’t put his gun away. Instead, he kept scanning the area like he expected more goons to pop up out of the snow and try to grab Bria again. Given what Jenkins had told me about Mab’s bounty on my sister, it wasn’t that much of a stretch.
I looked at Bria, checking her for injuries just the way that Fletcher had always done for me whenever I’d been in a knockdown, drag-out fight. Her face was a mess. A cut above her right eye dripped blood, while another one across her chin did the same. Bruises blackened both her cheeks, further marring her pretty, delicate features, and she had one arm wrapped around her middle, as though a couple of her ribs were broken.
My heart twisted at the damage that had been done to her, at the pain she was suffering. But I also knew that Bria had gotten off easy. Because she was still here with me, instead of being delivered into Mab’s fiery hands.
“So what did he say?” Finn asked.
“One of these men talked?” Roslyn asked in a disbelieving tone. “Before he died?”
I shook my head. “Not them. There was one more who ran when things got bloody, but I chased him down. As for what he said, it was nothing good. Mab’s put out a five-million-dollar bounty on the Spider’s head.”
Finn let out a low whistle.
“Oh, the news gets better. The sum goes up to ten million if someone manages to hog-tie me and dump me at Mab’s feet—alive.”
“Ten million dollars?” Xavier rumbled. The giant was still bent over one of the bodies on the pavement. “No wonder things have been so crazy around here. Every bounty hunter east of the Mississippi would come to Ashland for that kind of money.”
I nodded at the dead dwarves. “Apparently, they’re already here.”
Nobody said anything.
“But there’s more, isn’t there?” Bria asked. “Something you aren’t telling us. Something to do with me. Because these men tonight? They wanted me, not you, Gin. So tell us the rest of it.”
Bria and I might not have the closest of relationships, but she was starting to pick up on things about me. Like the fact that I would keep secrets if I thought it would protect the people I loved. I didn’t know whether to be happy or annoyed with her insight. But there was no getting around her question, not with Finn, Roslyn, and Xavier eyeing me too, wondering what was going on.
I stared at Bria. “Apparently, Mab has realized our familial connection—or at least suspects it—because she’s put a bounty on your head as well. One million dollars. The only catch is that
you have to be brought in alive. With me, she’ll take whatever she can get.”
Bria looked at me, her blue eyes dark and thoughtful. “She wants to use me as bait. To lure you out into the open so she can kill us both.”
I shrugged. “That would be my guess. But it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to let it happen. I promise you that, baby sister.”
Anger tightened her battered features. “I don’t need you to protect me, Gin. I’m a cop and an Ice elemental, remember? I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time now. I can handle a few bounty hunters.”
I snorted. “This is more than a few bounty hunters. This is every toothless old geezer with a shotgun in the back of his pickup coming to Ashland gunning for us. Me, they haven’t got much of a shot at, since I’m so good at being a ghost. But everybody in town knows your name, rank, and serial number, especially since the incident at the train yard right before Christmas. I’m just surprised it took them this long to get up enough gumption to come after a cop.”
Bria shifted on the bumper of the SUV. Her bloody lips clamped down, like she was afraid that if she opened them she’d spill her guts about something she wasn’t supposed to.
My eyes narrowed. “This is the first time that someone’s tried to kidnap you, right? Because I know you would have told me if something like this had happened before.”
For a moment, I thought that she wasn’t going to answer me. But my cold, accusing gaze weighed down on her, cracking her resolve.
Bria sighed. “There was a guy two days ago when I was getting coffee over at the Cake Walk. He pulled a gun on me as I came out of the restaurant, forced me into a nearby alley, and told me that he was going to take me for a ride.”
“What happened?”
Bria shrugged. “I waited until I was sure that there was no one else around who could get hurt, then threw my coffee in the bastard’s face and took away his gun. While he was screaming from the pain and the second-degree burns, I cuffed his ass and hauled him down to the station. End of story.”