“Wait! Please! Come back!” she said, her voice dissolving into a choked sob. “Please don’t leave me!”
My heart twisted at her words, but I knew that I was doing the right thing.
I darted about thirty feet into the woods, then cut to my right, circling back around. Of course, I wasn’t going to leave her. That wasn’t what Fletcher had taught me to do. Not at all. What he had taught me was that it was better to get the drop on a powerful enemy, rather than take him on face-to-face. All I needed was a few seconds of stealth and surprise, and I could plunge my knife into Renaldo’s back. Then Lorelei and I would both be safe. I didn’t like using her as bait, but it was the only way I could think of to save us both.
So I crept through the woods, forcing myself to look and listen, in case Renaldo had figured out what I was up to and was waiting for me. I crept back to the spot where I’d vanished into the trees, but the metal elemental had his back to me. He stood over his daughter, who was huddled on her knees. He kicked a wad of dirt right into her face, causing her to cringe and choke at the small pebbles that pelted her cheeks and the dust that filled her nose and mouth. Then he started circling around her.
“Cringing and groveling, just like your mother,” Renaldo said in a disgusted voice. “She always was weak. Just like you are.”
Lorelei lifted her head, rage making her blue eyes burn even brighter than her father’s. She managed to get back up onto her feet, although she could hardly stand on her twisted ankle. But she raised her chin and glared right back at her father. In that moment, she wasn’t weak. Not anymore. Never again.
“Mom never did anything wrong,” she spat. “You’re the one who’s a complete monster. Always claiming that you loved her even though all you did was hit and yell and make fun of her. She hated you, and so do I.”
Renaldo stopped his circling and laughed, the mocking sound low and evil. “Well, you’ll be joining her soon enough.”
I pulled the kitchen knife from the back pocket of my jeans and slipped out into the clearing. Lorelei saw me, and her eyes widened, realizing that I hadn’t abandoned her after all.
She focused on her father again. “Yeah, well, I’d rather be dead than have to spend one more miserable minute with you and Raymond. You both think that your metal magic makes you sooo strong, sooo special. But all you do is hurt people with it. You’re disgusting, and so is he.”
Renaldo scoffed. “You don’t have enough metal magic to speak of. And that weak bit of Ice power you inherited from your mother isn’t any better. You always were jealous of Raymond’s power.”
She snorted. “Jealous? Of Raymond? Please.”
“He’s here with me,” Renaldo continued, as though she hadn’t spoken. “Dealing with the people in the car. Making sure they’re dead. The ones who foolishly thought that they could take away what was mine. I punished your mother for her insolence, for thinking that she could dare to leave me. And now I’m going to do the same to you.”
Renaldo twirled the mace in his hand, building up momentum for a powerful, deadly strike.
I drew in a breath and crept closer to him. I was twenty feet away and closing fast. Fifteen feet . . . ten . . . five . . .
I raised my knife, ready to plunge it deep into his back. I’d only have one shot, and I needed to make it count.
Lorelei’s eyes flicked to me again, and her father realized that she was looking at something behind him.
Renaldo whipped around and caught my arm in his hand. I struggled with all my might, trying to slam the knife forward into his body, but he was stronger than I was. He stared at me, completely unconcerned by the blade hovering inches from his heart. Then he snapped my right wrist back, breaking it. I screamed, the knife slipping from my fingers and hitting the dirt.
Renaldo gave me another bored look, then rammed his mace into my body. The impact was bad enough, but the real pain came from the wicked spikes on the metal ball that stabbed deep into my right shoulder. I screamed, then screamed again, as he yanked the weapon back out, tearing the spikes through my muscles.
I dropped to the ground, still screaming. Every single part of my right arm, from my broken wrist to my mangled shoulder, burned, pulsed, and throbbed with pain.
Renaldo reared his foot back to kick me in the ribs, but I managed to roll out of the way, my one good hand scrabbling over the ground, trying to pull myself out of his range. Every movement sent more agony slicing through my shoulder. Cries of pain bubbled out of my lips, and sweat streamed down my face, the salty drops stinging my eyes and adding to my misery. Nausea boiled in my stomach, and gray spots flashed in front of my eyes in warning. I was this close to blacking out, and if that happened, I was dead.
“Stop it! Leave her alone!”
Lorelei snatched up my knife. Despite how badly she was wobbling on her twisted ankle, she still lashed out with the weapon, trying to stab her father to death. But Renaldo blocked her blow, then slapped her across the face, sending her tumbling to the ground. Her moans of pain matched mine.
Renaldo leaned down and picked up my knife, flipping it end-over-end in his hand, before turning and throwing it across the clearing. Thwack. The knife sank deep into a tree trunk.
Despair filled me. There went my only weapon and my best chance of killing him—
Something sharp stabbed into my right palm, in the center of my spider rune scar. I hissed and raised my hand, to find a nail sticking out of my skin. I ground my teeth together and yanked it free, causing myself even more pain, but I didn’t let go of it. Renaldo had used nails against us, and I was going to do the same thing to him. Yeah, a single nail wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was all I had.
I let out a weak little whimper that wasn’t really all that fake and kept dragging myself through the dirt, rocks, and leaves.
Renaldo laughed. “Running away? I don’t think so. No one runs away from me.”
His footsteps scuffed on the ground, as his shadow slid closer and closer to me on the forest floor. I forced down the pain of my injuries and tightened my grip on the nail, waiting for him to get within reach.
Renaldo’s hand clamped onto my injured arm, and he hauled me upright. He turned me around and held his mace up against my face, one of the points digging into my cheek, close to my eye.
“You should be grateful that I’m going to kill you first. You won’t suffer nearly as much as my daughter will.”
He grinned, then reared back his arm to slam the mace into my face.
But I was quicker.
I snapped my hand up and rammed the nail into the side of his neck.
It was a crude weapon, but the tip was sharp enough to cut through his skin just as it had cut through mine. Renaldo yelped, blood spewing out of the wound. He was so surprised that his mace slipped from his hand, hit the ground, and rolled away.
My fingers were too slick with blood to yank the nail back out of his neck, so I shoved him away. His feet caught on another tree root sticking up out of the ground, and he fell backward.
Right on top of his own mace.
Renaldo screamed and arched his back, as if he could push the deadly spikes out of his body, but all he did was sink even deeper down on top of them. Blood bubbled up out of his lips, and I knew that at least one of those spikes had hit something vital.
Good.
Renaldo rolled to his side, the spiked ball of the mace sticking out of his back. His gaze locked onto his daughter, and he started crawling toward her, stretching his hand out. Lorelei scrambled backward out of the way, shrieking all the while.
But there was no need to be afraid of him anymore.
Renaldo’s hand dropped to the dirt, his body stilled, and his head lolled to the side, the glossy glaze of death dimming his eyes . . .
Lorelei’s shrieks startled me out of my own sleep. I lay in bed, gasping for air, my wrist and shoulder throbbing,
as though those spikes had torn through my muscles just moments ago.
I let out a long, weary breath and scrubbed my hands over my face, as if that would somehow get rid of the awful memories—or my growing guilt.
Raymond Pike wanted to kill Lorelei for murdering their father. That was the sole reason he’d come to Ashland.
But he was targeting the wrong person.
Lorelei hadn’t done anything to their father. I was the one who’d killed Renaldo, and Lorelei knew it as well as I did. So why wasn’t she shouting the truth to the high heavens? Why hadn’t she found some way to let Raymond know that it was really me who’d killed their father? Why was she sitting back and waiting for him to try to murder her again for something that she didn’t even do?
If she really wanted to eliminate threats, as she’d put it, then Lorelei should have whispered in Raymond’s ear that I was the one he really wanted. That way, she could have killed two birds with one truth. She could have let Raymond have his revenge and gotten rid of me at the same time.
But she hadn’t done any of that, and I wondered why.
Oh, the whys. They had caused me many a sleepless night.
And this one was going to be no exception.
19
Despite all the questions bouncing around in my mind, I managed to get a little sleep. I still had a barbecue restaurant to run, so I got up, took a shower, and went to the Pork Pit on schedule the next morning.
I did my usual check for booby traps, being extra cautious in case Pike had decided to leave me a little present like the ones he’d been dropping for Lorelei all over town. But the restaurant was clean, so I opened the front door, went inside, and started cooking.
The familiar rhythms of mixing, stirring, baking, and frying soothed me the way they always did. The thing I loved about cooking was that it was predictable, reliable, dependable. Measure the ingredients, follow the directions, set the oven to the right temperature, and everything always came out just fine. Too bad there wasn’t a recipe for life and all its messy complications.
So I threw myself into my routine to try to quiet my troubled thoughts. And it worked. By the time Sophia, Catalina, and the rest of the waitstaff came in, I’d already made two vats of Fletcher’s secret barbecue sauce, put the day’s sourdough rolls in the ovens to bake, and sliced up the vegetables for the burgers and other sandwiches. But most important, I felt much calmer, and I’d made an important decision.
To leave Lorelei Parker to her own fate.
I’d already saved her twice from her brother and his bombs, and she’d been an ungrateful snot every step of the way. She didn’t want my help? Well, that was just fine and dandy with me. She was an underworld boss. She had Ice and metal magic. She could take care of herself. Besides, it wasn’t my problem. Her feud with her brother didn’t have anything to do with me.
Even if a stubborn little voice in the very back of my mind kept insisting that it did.
Stupid voice. Stupid head. Stupid everything.
Silvio cleared his throat, interrupting my thoughts. He’d come in with Catalina a few minutes ago and was sitting on his usual stool, arranging his phone and tablet on the counter. “It’s nice to see that you are actually where you’re supposed to be. For a change.”
“Don’t tell me that you’re still bent out of shape because I didn’t take you to the garden party yesterday. It was ladies-only, if you’ll recall.”
Silvio sniffed, letting me know that he was indeed still miffed. “I’m not upset that I couldn’t attend the actual event. I find those sorts of social activities rather abhorrent.” His nose twitched in disgust. “It’s just that you didn’t check in with me before you went.”
“So?”
The vampire gave me a chiding look. “So how can I be your assistant and actually assist you if I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing?”
I sighed. “I appreciate your wanting to help, Silvio. Really, I do. But you should know by now that I’m more of a do-it-myselfer. I’m still not used to having an assistant, especially not one as . . . dedicated as you.”
That was my diplomatic way of not saying that Silvio’s obsessive love of lists, schedules, plans, and details sometimes drove me crazy. I didn’t know if I would ever get used to having an assistant, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
My apology seemed to satisfy Silvio, who fired up his tablet for the morning briefing. For once, I listened carefully to everything he said, since almost all of it had to do with Pike.
“If he’s staying in a hotel in Ashland, he’s using an alias,” Silvio said. “More likely, he’s rented an apartment or a house under a fake name. Either way, there’s no trace of him anywhere in the city. No hotel sightings, no credit-card charges, nothing.”
I tapped my fingers against the counter. Not surprising. Pike had struck me as a careful sort who didn’t leave anything to chance, especially not the revenge he’d been planning for so many years. The fact that I’d mucked up his plans to hurt Lorelei and hadn’t been seriously injured myself was somewhat amazing. I just wondered how long it would be before my luck ran out.
No, I thought. My luck wasn’t going to run out, because this wasn’t my problem. Lorelei wanted me to stay out of her affairs; well, I was going to cede to her wishes. Besides, I still had enough problems of my own to worry about with the other bosses.
Still, that didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to keep an eye on the situation. After all, I’d messed up Pike’s schemes twice now. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he might turn his attention to me after he was done with Lorelei.
“Keep looking for Pike,” I told Silvio. “If you find him, don’t approach him. He’s too dangerous for that. Just let me know where he is.”
He made a note on his tablet. “I’ll ask Ms. Jamison again too, since her organization was the one that located Harold Smith.”
I nodded. It made sense. Not only did Jade Jamison run guys and girls, but she also owned several cleaning and service businesses that supplied workers to restaurants, hotels, apartment buildings, and more throughout Ashland.
While Silvio texted Jade, I crossed the storefront, flipped over the sign on the door to Open, and greeted the day’s first customers.
The lunch rush came and went with no problems, unless you counted Dimitri Barkov and Luiz Ramos strolling into the restaurant together, sitting down, and ordering heaping plates of barbecue. In between bites, the gangsters stared at me, obviously wanting me to come over and talk to them, but my cold glower had them staying in their seats and concentrating on their vittles—for the time being.
Silvio’s lips quirked up into a small, amused smile. “You never did tell them who was getting the coin laundries.”
“Well, they’ll just have to wait until I’m good and ready to decide,” I snapped. “I’m sure they’ve heard that I have other problems right now.”
I kept cooking, cleaning, and cashing out customers. By the time two o’clock rolled around and Owen and Finn showed up at the restaurant, I had settled into a mellow mood.
“How are you feeling?” Owen asked, giving me a slow once-over to make sure that I was really okay.
“Fine, just like I told you last night. I’m not even sore from the bombing, thanks to Jo-Jo and her healing magic.”
Owen nodded, but he knew me too well to let me get away with such a simple, easy answer. “And how are you feeling on the inside?” he asked in a softer voice.
I gave him a tight smile. “Those wounds always tend to linger with me.”
“I thought so.”
Owen stepped around the counter and drew me into his arms, just holding me for a second and offering me the comfort he knew that I needed. He dipped his head to mine, and we shared a long, lingering kiss that had Finn making gagging sounds. So I kissed Owen again, even deeper, just for good measure.
“Please, Gin,” Finn whined, clutching his flat stomach. “Stop sucking face with your boy toy before I lose my appetite.”
“Why, to hear you tell it, wading through raw sewage wouldn’t make the great Finnegan Lane lose his appetite.”
He considered my words, then brightened. “You know, you’re right. I could always eat.”
Finn grabbed a menu and started scanning through the choices, even though he’d memorized them all long ago.
He and Owen slid onto the two stools closest to the cash register, with Silvio sitting beside them, and ordered their food. A bacon cheeseburger for Owen, with onion rings and potato salad, barbecue chicken with a side of mac and cheese for Finn, and a grilled chicken sandwich for Silvio, with some chocolate chip cookies that I’d baked fresh this morning.
My friends chatted back and forth with each other and across the counter to me while I fixed their food. Eventually, Finn jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the booth where Dimitri and Luiz were still sitting.
“What’s with the Wonder Twins?” he snarked. “I thought they hated each other.”
“Oh, they’re probably just disappointed that Pike didn’t blow me to smithereens yesterday. They’ll get over it.”
Another dark, pointed glare from me had Dimitri and Luiz pulling out fat wads of bills to pay for their food and skedaddling out the front door. Good riddance. I was tired of them and their whining. Especially when there was a far more dangerous threat in Ashland.
I rubbed my aching head. As much as I tried to stop thinking about Lorelei, Pike, and all the rest of it, my mind kept going back to everything that had happened, both over the past few days and all those years ago.
But I pushed those thoughts away and concentrated on finishing my friends’ food. I had just slid the hot plates over to them when the bell over the front door chimed, indicating that I had a new customer.
I wasn’t all that surprised when Mallory Parker strolled through the door. My friends glanced over their shoulders at the new arrival, and Finn let out a low whistle.