Just so I could help keep her alive.
In the months that I’d been working for her, I’d grown rather fond of Gin, and I didn’t want to see her die. She’d saved me from Beauregard Benson, and I was determined to save her from everyone else, including herself. Especially since she had the annoying, reckless tendency to throw herself into harm’s way at the slightest threat to someone she cared about.
Gin and I might have different ideas about what constituted acceptable holiday decorations, but we both agreed on one thing: information was often the key to destroying your enemies.
And all that precious info on Gin was right across the room, sitting in my briefcase, stored on my phone and my tablet.
“Now, I thought that you might play dumb and claim that you didn’t know anything about Blanco,” Vincent rumbled. “So I came up with a strategy to get what I want.”
I eyed him. “And what would that be?”
He grinned. “I’m going to take my anger out on your friend first. Maybe that’ll loosen your tongue.” Vincent got up out of his chair and snapped his fingers. “Bring him.”
The other three giants headed toward Martin, who looked over at me, a panicked expression on his face.
“No!” I said, surging to my feet. “No!”
“Silvio! Silvio!” Martin called out. “Help me! Please!”
“Martin! Martin!”
I lunged forward and stretched my arm out, as if I could save him if only I could reach out and touch him. But the cuff and the chain on my wrist anchored me to the wall, jerking me back, and there was nothing that I could do. A crushing fist of guilt wrapped around my heart.
I couldn’t save Martin, just like I hadn’t been able to save Derrick.
Martin kicked out with his feet, trying to keep the men away from him, but they easily sidestepped his awkward, clumsy blows. Two of the giants grabbed Martin and hauled him to his feet, holding him in place with their far superior strength, while the third giant unlocked the cuff from around Martin’s wrist.
“Now, then,” Vincent said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “Let’s go into the other room and have a little chat.”
“No! No!” Martin yelled again.
He struggled with all his might, but the giants lifted him off his feet and carried him through a door at the far end of the warehouse and out of my line of sight.
Vincent laughed at his pitiful struggles. The giant winked at me, then turned and followed his men out of the warehouse.
5
Vincent yanked the door shut behind him. The second it banged closed, I started yanking on my cuff and chain again, but they didn’t bend or budge, not even an inch. So I went over, took hold of the pipe that the chain was attached to, and pulled on it, trying to wrench it loose from the wall. But it didn’t budge either. I snarled out a curse. Even with the giant strength still running through my veins, I was well and truly stuck—
A scream ripped through the air.
I whirled around to the door at the far end of the warehouse. The thick metal remained closed, but my enhanced senses let me clearly hear Martin screaming in the next room, along with a steady thud-thud-thud-thud, as though Vincent was hitting him over and over again with his fists. Each sickening sound hurt as much as a punch to my own gut, but I forced my anger and pain aside and focused on getting free so I could help Martin.
He was not going to die like Derrick had.
I shoved my fingers under the silverstone handcuff and tried to snap it off my wrist. Tried to break the other end of the cuff that was hooked through the chain. Tried to break the chain itself, along with the three attached padlocks. Attempted to pull the pipe out of the wall again.
But nothing worked, and all I got for my troubles were bruised, bloody fingers. All the while, those steady thud-thud-thud-thuds continued, although Martin’s screams slowly died down to low, coughing groans of pain.
Frustrated, I put my back against the wall and slid to the floor. Something dug into my hip, a sharp little pinprick of pain that stabbed through my anger and made me wince. I rolled to my side, wondering if I’d sat down on a chipped piece of stone, but then I realized that the object was actually in my pants pocket. I stuck my hand in there and pulled it out.
My spider rune tiepin glinted under the lights.
I’d forgotten that I’d taken it off earlier. I started to shove it back into my pocket, but then I remembered how the point had stabbed into my thumb at the Cake Walk. Hope flared to life in my chest, and I yanked the clasp off the back of the pin, stuck the point into the lock on my handcuff, and went to work.
I wasn’t an expert lockpick, not like Finnegan Lane, Gin’s foster brother, but I’d jimmied open a few doors in my time, and I was hoping that this wouldn’t be much different. I slid the point back and forth, back and forth, trying to unlock the handcuff.
All the while, I kept listening to Vincent beating Martin in the other room. After about two minutes, the giant stopped the torture session, and Martin’s groans faded away. A couple of the men whispered to each other, although I didn’t concentrate on exactly what they were saying. It wasn’t important right now anyway.
Instead, I focused on my improvised lockpick, hoping that it would work and that I could save Martin from the giants. Or at least give us a fighting chance—
Snick.
Just like that, my handcuff popped open.
For a moment, I sat there, staring at the cuff, blinking and blinking, not quite believing that it had actually worked—but it had. Relief filled me, along with cold, grim determination. I’d get my briefcase, grab my phone, call Gin, and tell her what was going on. Then I’d storm into the next room, take Vincent and his goons by surprise, and get Martin to safety.
I had started to get up and hurry over to my briefcase when the door at the far end of the warehouse banged open again. I quickly wrapped the handcuff back around my wrist, making it look like it was still securely locked. I also dropped my hand down to my side so that no one would see the tiepin clutched in my fingers. It wasn’t anywhere close to being a real weapon, but the sharp point might at least give me the element of surprise, especially if I stabbed it into someone’s face.
Vincent strutted into the warehouse, followed by two of his men, who were carrying Martin’s limp form between them. The giants dragged Martin over to where I was sitting and threw him onto the concrete floor right in front of me.
Martin let out a low groan and rolled over onto his back. I sucked in a breath at the sight of his battered face. Vincent had really done a number on him. Jagged cuts crisscrossed his cheeks, while puffy bruises blackened his eyes. Blood ran in a thin line from his swollen, busted lips and down his chin before spattering onto the collar of his rumpled white shirt.
More anger roared through me, and I almost surged to my feet and attacked the bastard right then and there. But the other two giants stood behind Vincent, staring at me, their hands hovering over the guns holstered to their belts. They could easily shoot me before I even got close enough to take down their boss. So I forced myself to wait, although I curled my fingers a little tighter around the tiepin still in my hand.
Vincent pulled a white silk handkerchief out of the front pocket of his suit jacket and slowly, methodically wiped the blood—Martin’s blood—off his hands. Once that was done, he squatted down next to Martin. He eyed the other man for a moment before turning his dark gaze to me.
“Now, Mr. Sanchez, I want you to take a good, long look at your friend here. This is what happens to people who don’t give me what I want. Actually, I went pretty easy on him. I won’t do the same to you.”
Vincent dropped his bloody handkerchief onto the concrete floor next to Martin’s face. Martin shuddered and turned his head away from the giant, but I found myself staring at Vincent’s hands. Now that he’d wiped the blood off them, I could see just how smooth his
skin was there. I frowned, and a sick, sinking feeling filled the pit of my stomach.
“I’ll give you two a moment alone to talk things over,” Vincent said, staring at me again. “But know this. If you don’t cooperate, there’s plenty more pain to come—for both of you.”
His threat delivered, Vincent got to his feet and left the room, along with his men. The door banged shut behind them. For several seconds, the only sound was Martin’s harsh, raspy breathing.
Slowly, Martin pushed himself up into a seated position and looked over at me. “Don’t worry,” he mumbled, his voice hoarse with pain. “It looks worse than it is.”
Instead of answering him, I reached out with my senses, trying to hear how close Vincent and his men were. From the faint scuffing of their shoes on the floor, it sounded like all four of the giants were in the next room, but they were being quiet, so I couldn’t tell for sure. Odd. I would have thought that Vincent would be bragging about how he’d roughed up Martin and that his men would be congratulating him on a job well done.
I also drew in a deep breath, opening my mouth and letting the air roll in over my tongue, tasting all the scents in the room around me. I smelled exactly what I expected to: the old oil stains and other grime caked onto the floor, the crushed stone that had fallen out of the cracks in the walls, the cold flakes of snow that had slipped in through those same cracks. But there was one thing that was out of place, a faint, sticky-sweet note that swirled through the air right in front of me . . .
My nostrils quivered, and I inhaled and tasted the air again, just to be sure. I recognized the scent, and the aroma only added to that sick feeling in my stomach.
“I’m sorry you got dragged into all of this,” I said in a low voice. “This wasn’t how I wanted our date to go. Not at all.”
A faint grin lifted Martin’s bloody lips. “Well, at least it was memorable.”
“Yeah.” I grinned back at him, but my smile quickly faded away. “How hurt are you? Can you move? We need to get out of here before they come back.”
He grimaced and grabbed his ribs. “Yeah, I can move, just not very fast. What’s the plan?”
I pointed at my briefcase. “The same as before. Grab my phone and call for help. Can you make it over there?”
Martin glanced over at the closed warehouse door, then back at my briefcase. “I guess I’ll have to.”
I got to my feet, careful not to jiggle my handcuff and the attached chain any more than necessary. Martin pushed himself up onto his knees. It took him a few seconds to get his breath back, but he grabbed his ribs again and staggered up and onto his feet.
“Hurry!” I said. “You need to move! Now!”
He nodded at me and stumbled forward. He wobbled every single step of the way, but he made it over to the poker table and slumped down in one of the chairs. With slow motions, he grabbed my briefcase, slung it onto the table in front of him, undid the clasp, and searched through the items inside. A few seconds later, he pulled out both my phone and my tablet.
He squinted at the phone through his puffy, blackened eyes. “It’s asking for a password. What is it?”
“Pigtracks. My tablet has the same password.”
He glanced over at me, obviously confused. “What?”
I shifted on my feet, a bit embarrassed. “Pigtracks. Gin has them all over the restaurant. All these little blue and pink pig tracks running all over the floor and walls. Just put it in my phone. It’ll work. I promise.”
I didn’t know what had made me choose that password, especially since I didn’t like the pig tracks any more than I liked the pig-shaped snowflakes. Maybe it was all the remodeling that Gin had done after Madeline Monroe had burned the Pork Pit down to the brick walls a while back. But it had just popped into my head one day, and I’d plugged it into my devices.
“Pig tracks?” Martin asked, still confused.
“Yeah. Pigtracks. All one word.” I spelled it out for him.
He entered the password into the phone and nodded. “Got it.”
But instead of swiping over to the call screen, Martin set my phone aside, picked up my tablet, and entered the same password into it.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Why aren’t you calling for help?”
“You weren’t lying,” he said, not really answering me. “You used the same password for your tablet too. Kind of sloppy, if you ask me. I expected more from you, Silvio.”
That sick feeling in my stomach intensified. “What do you mean, more?”
“I expected you to be more careful, more cautious, more determined to protect your boss’s secrets no matter what.” He shook his head. “How very disappointing.”
All I could do was gape at him, my mind struggling to process his words and what they actually meant.
Martin leaned back in his chair with ease, even though he’d been grimacing and clutching his ribs just a minute before. He grinned and waggled my tablet at me. “But you just gave me the keys to the kingdom, and now I have all the information that I need on Gin Blanco.”
6
I kept staring at Martin. “You . . . you set this whole thing up.”
His grin widened. “Now you’re catching on.”
Martin put my tablet down, reached into his jacket pocket, and drew out a white silk handkerchief. He winked at me, then used the handkerchief to wipe all the blood and bruises off his face. In seconds, he went from beaten and battered to his regular handsome self. No, that wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t the man I’d been flirting with for the past few weeks, and he definitely wasn’t the nice guy I’d had coffee with just a few hours ago. Now, for the first time, he was showing me his true, sly, devious self.
“Makeup,” I muttered. “It was all makeup.”
He held the dirty fabric up where I could see it. “Yup. Did you know that I’m an adviser to the theater department at the community college? I’ve picked up all sorts of interesting tricks from them. Makeup, acting, how to really sell a performance.”
“So it was all pretend. Vincent’s threats, the giants dragging you into the other room, your supposed beating.” I pressed my lips together, not wanting to admit how thoroughly he had tricked me, but I forced myself to open my mouth and say the words. “And the rest of it was a lie too, wasn’t it? All those days you ate lunch at the Pork Pit. All our talks. All the times you smiled at me or laughed at my stupid jokes. It was all just an act to get me away from the restaurant. To lure me out for coffee so you could kidnap and torture me for information about Gin.”
Martin shrugged. “Don’t take it personally, Silvio. I’m very good at being charming. You’re not the first person who’s fallen for my pretty face, and you certainly won’t be the last. Men, women, young, old. Everyone loves me.”
That sick feeling in my stomach vanished, replaced by cold, icy rage. My hands curled into fists, and I wanted to cross the distance between us and give him a real beating, one that he so richly deserved. But I reined in my anger. Because I still had questions for the bastard, and I wanted some answers. “Who are you, really?”
He laced his hands behind his head. “That’s the beauty of this whole thing. I really am Martin Mahoney, humble college professor.” He grinned again. “Well, maybe not quite so humble. That’s my day job anyway. But you could say that I’m a lot like your boss. My after-hours gigs are way more interesting, and they pay a lot better too.”
“So you do . . . what, exactly? Go around Ashland, flirt with people, and get them to spill their guts to you?”
He shrugged. “More or less.”
“And what does that get you?”
Martin dropped his hands and leaned forward in his chair, his blue eyes glinting with smug satisfaction. “Everything.”
I arched an eyebrow in disbelief, and Martin waved his hand, dismissing my skepticism.
“Think about it,” he said.
“We live in a digital world now. Everyone’s connected to everything all the time. All you have to do is charm a password or a PIN code out of someone, swipe their phone or laptop, and you’ve got their entire life right at your fingertips. Shopping info, purchase histories, bank accounts. The books they read, the movies they watch, the music they listen to. Where they get their hair cut and their tires rotated.”
“And what do you do with all that information?” I asked.
He shrugged again. “It depends on how rich the marks are, how much time I’ve invested in wining and dining them, and how much info I get. Sometimes I go on a little shopping spree. Other times I just drain their bank accounts outright. A couple of months ago, I blackmailed an accountant who was embezzling from his company. Got him to hand over all the money that he’d stolen to me. Of course, I stayed anonymous through the whole transaction, including the tip that I called in to his boss about his skimming from the company. The accountant claimed that he’d been hoodwinked, but he couldn’t prove that I, his blackmailer, even existed. Everyone thought that he was crazy, in addition to being a thief. That job was particularly fun.”
Martin laughed, his hearty chuckles echoing from one side of the warehouse to the other and back again. The loud, cheerful sounds sent more icy rage spiraling out through my body.
“And no one ever connects you, Professor Martin Mahoney, their new and charming paramour, to the sudden influx of trouble in their lives?”
“Well, I don’t dump them right away. That would be far too obvious. I usually wait at least a few weeks before I pull the plug on the relationship. By that point, most of my marks are too busy doing damage control to think much about me leaving them. Still, one or two folks have caught on.” He tilted his head at the closed warehouse door. “But Vincent and his boys handle those situations for me. That’s what I pay them for, after all.”
In other words, the giants killed anyone who figured out Martin’s scheme.