Jimmy Fontaine watched Gin for another minute, but when she didn’t do anything else suspicious or threatening, his unease faded away, and his eyes latched onto her ass. In addition to pimping out young girls and boys, Fontaine also like to sample the merchandise himself.
Fontaine stepped out from behind his desk, moved over, and sat down on a wide white couch that took up the better part of the right wall. He patted the cushion beside him. “Why don’t you come over here? I’d like to get to know you better. Jackson’s told you what we do here right? How we run a sort of halfway house for teens who don’t fit in anywhere else.”
That was the bullshit line that Jackson fed to other teens to get them into the row house in the first place. After that, Jimmy, his men, and his drugs made sure that they didn’t leave until they were all used up—or dead.
“Sure,” Gin chirped in a bright voice, but once again, her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
She moved over and plopped down onto the sofa next to Jimmy. Jackson sat in a chair across from them. Neither man noticed Gin’s arm fall down to her side—or the bit of metal that suddenly glinted in her right hand.
“So,” Gin chirped in that light tone again. “Is this where you rape all the girls that you bring up here? Or do you get them high first so they don’t fight back as hard? Is this were you raped Violet Wong before you beat her to death? Or did one of your filthy customers do it for you?”
For a moment, Fontaine’s mouth gaped open, and Jackson wore a similarly stunned look. Big brother was a little quicker on the draw, though, because his mouth snapped shut, and his eyes narrowed.
“How the hell do you know that name?” Jimmy growled, dark rage filling his face.
Gin just smiled at him. “Because I went to her funeral a few weeks ago. And her father wanted me to come here tonight and say hello for him.”
“What the hell—” Jackson sputtered.
Gin chose that moment to lean forward, snap up her hand, and drive the silverstone knife that she held there deep into Jimmy Fontaine’s chest. The giant’s eyes bulged in pain and surprise, and he opened his mouth to scream, even though it wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good in the soundproofed office. But Gin didn’t give him the chance. She leaped on top of the giant, even as she yanked the knife out of his chest.
And then, she cut his throat with it.
She turned her head, and blood spattered onto the side of her face, coating her pretty features like thick, sticky paint. Gin’s lips tightened at the sensation, but she kept her eyes open and focused on Jackson the whole time, already thinking about how to take out her next target.
“You bitch!” Jackson screamed, scrambling to his feet. “This was a setup!”
Gin pushed herself up off the sofa and leapt at Jackson, but the younger giant was too quick for her. He stepped back, knocking over his chair. She landed at his feet, and the giant drew back his foot and kicked her in the ribs. Gin grunted at the brutal contact and rolled back, back, back, away from the enraged giant. She came up in a low crouch, her knife still clutched in her hand.
Jackson stared at his brother a moment, and the blood soaking into the white coach. “You killed him! You killed Jimmy, you bitch!”
With a roar, the giant went after Gin. She tried to defend herself, but he slapped her knife away. Jackson grabbed Gin’s jacket, lifted her up off the floor, and punched her repeatedly in the stomach.
I didn’t remember standing outside on the fire escape, but suddenly, I was, with the gun that I’d had tucked into the small of my back clenched in my right hand. Worry burned through my veins like a wildfire roaring out of control. The girl’s pride be damned. I wasn’t going to let her die, not like I had her mother and older sister—
Gin groaned, but she reached up and clawed at Jackson’s eyes. The giant jerked back in surprise, and Gin managed to spin around and out of her jacket. She stumbled across the room and fell on top of the desk, gasping for air. Her eyes landed on something on top of the smooth glass, and I saw her hand snake forward.
Behind her, Jackson drew the gun out of the pocket of his letterman jacket. Through the window, I took careful aim at him with my own weapon. If he made a move to pull the trigger, the boy was going to get a bullet through the back of his head.
But Jackson just looked down at his gun, then over at his brother with his cut throat. Rage twisted his handsome face, and he threw down the gun and took off his jacket. Fool.
Jackson cracked the knuckles on both of his hands. “Time to die, bitch,” he snarled, grabbing Gin’s shoulder and turning her back around toward him.
And that’s when she stabbed him in the throat.
The object that I’d seen Gin palm off the desk had been a long, slender letter opener with a shiny pearl handle. It wasn’t as sharp as one of her silverstone knives, but it did the job, especially since she buried it up to the hilt on Jackson’s throat.
Jackson tried to scream, but all that came out was a series of strangled gasps and gurgles. Gin pulled the makeshift weapon out of his throat and shoved him away. The young half-giant stumbled over his fallen chair and went down onto the floor on his back. Gin didn’t make the same mistake that Jackson had—she didn’t hesitate. She raised the letter opener again and used the force of her entire body to drive it down deep into his chest.
Jackson Fontaine didn’t get up after that.
When it was over, and Jackson was as dead as his older brother, Gin slowly pushed herself up to her feet. She stood there in the middle of the office, swaying back and forth, eyes wide, fear and a touch of disgust filling her face at what had just happened. At what she’d just done.
“Come on, girl,” I whispered. “Pull yourself together. You can do it. This is what you were born to do, what I’ve been training you for.”
After a moment, Gin closed her eyes and shuddered out a breath. When she opened them again, her gray gaze was sharp and bright as steel once more. Now, she was the Gin that I knew—the little girl with an iron will and a heart of stone that had let her survive so many terrible things already. The death of her mother and older sister, being tortured by Mab Monroe, living on the streets, being trained by an assassin like me.
Gin sucked in a breath and stared at the two bodies. For a moment, I wondered if she’d be able to go through with the final part of the assignment. But her face hardened, and her lips flattened out into a thin line. Gin tiptoed over to Jackson Fontaine, leaned down, and checked the pulse—or lack thereof—in his neck. Just because someone looked dead didn’t mean that he was actually that way. You always had to check and make sure.
I nodded in satisfaction. Smart girl. She’d done everything that I’d told her to—and then some. She’d made this old man prouder than I’d thought possible. I’d been right when I’d told Jo-Jo that Gin was ready for this. The girl was more than capable of doing jobs on her own. And soon, in a few more years, she’d be the equal of any assassin working today. And someday, maybe one day sooner than I realized, she’d be ready for what I was really training her for—to kill Mab Monroe.
When Gin was satisfied that the gaints were gone, she wiped her bloody knives off on the edge of the white couch and tucked them back up her sleeves. Then, she went over, unlocked the door, and left Jimmy Fontaine and his younger brother Jackson dead and cooling on the floor. She didn’t look back.
#
An hour later, Gin pulled open the front door of the Pork Pit, making the bell chime. She stepped inside, and her eyes swept over the interior, skimming over the blue and pink vinyl booths, the matching pig tracks on the floor, and finally back to the counter where I sat reading an old, battered copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. It seemed like an appropriate choice, given what had happened tonigh
t. Besides, you just couldn’t go wrong with the Southern classics.
“Is the job done?” I asked, using one of the day’s checks to mark my place in the book.
“You shouldn’t ask me that,” she said, a slightly hurt tone in her voice. “You know that I wouldn’t have come back unless it was done.”
I nodded. “You’re right. Forgive me.”
Gin nodded back. The girl came over and hopped up on one of the stools in front of the counter. My green eyes flicked down her body, but her dark jacket did a good job of hiding the blood that she’d gotten on her when she’d killed the Fontaine brothers. She’d taken the extra step of zipping up her jacket too, to cover whatever stains might be on her T-shirt. And somewhere along the way, she’d stopped long enough to wipe the blood off her face. Overall, she’d covered her tracks well.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, thinking of the punches that I’d seen her take in the office. “Do you need to go see Jo-Jo tonight and get her to heal you?”
I’d sent the dwarf home after Gin had walked out of Jimmy Fontaine’s office, but I’d told Jo-Jo that we might be over at her salon later, depending on how Gin felt about things.
Gin shrugged. “I think my ribs are bruised that’s all. It’s nothing that can’t wait until morning. What I’d really like now is some food. I’m starving, Fletcher.”
I nodded. “I’m one step ahead of you there.”
I turned around and retrieved the plate of food that I’d warmed for her. A thick, juicy hamburger with all the fixings, a pile of macaroni salad, and a heaping helping of baked beans smothered in the Pork Pit’s famous barbecue sauce. All of Gin’s favorites.
I pushed the food across the counter to her, and she immediately dug in. I knew that she was hungry. I hadn’t let her eat supper before she’d gone to meet Jackson Fontaine, for fear that she might throw up before or even during the job. It was always better to do a job on an empty stomach—especially the first time you went solo.
I let her get halfway through her food before I asked the inevitable question. “So how was it?”
I watched her face carefully, looking for any sign of guilt or fear or disgust. By now, the girl had had time to really think about what she’d done, and I didn’t want her emotions to start gnawing at her. But no guilt flashed in her eyes and no self-loathing twisted her fair features. Instead, she sat there and the counter, chewed her food, and thought about my question.
“It went okay,” Gin finally said. “I don’t think that I did very well at convincing them that I was a runaway. I was too angry about what they were doing to really play the part like you told me too.”
Her self-analysis was spot-on. Her acting could have used some work, but she’d gotten the job done in the end. And next time, I knew that she’d make an effort to correct her mistake tonight. I only had to tell Gin something once, and she did it, without hesitating and without asking questions.
“Well, it doesn’t much matter now, does it?” I asked. “The Fontaine brothers are dead, and you’re not. I’d say that makes the evening a grand success.”
I hesitated, not quite sure how to say what I really wanted to—or how it might sound to a sixteen-year-old girl who’d just killed two men. In the end, I decided on the direct approach. I’d never been one for smooth words, not like my son, Finnegan. That boy could charm the wings off a butterfly.
“I’m proud of you, Gin.”
“Really?” she asked in a soft, shy voice. “Really and truly, Fletcher? I did good tonight?”
I nodded. “Really and truly. You did real good tonight, Gin. What you did will at least give Victor Wong some peace. That’s all the poor man can hope for at this point.”
She smiled then, and it was as if the moon had suddenly burst into the Pork Pit, bathing everything in its soft, silver light. Still smiling, Gin turned her attention back to her food.
I decided to let her eat the rest of her meal in peace, so I picked up my book once more. But I couldn’t quite focus on the words—or hide the proud grin that quirked my lips.
Oh, yes. The girl was a natural-born assassin.
And I was going to make her the very best there was. So she could do what needed to be done—for herself and for her sister Bria.
One day, Gin Blanco was going to grow up and kill Mab Monroe. And I, Fletcher Lane, the Tin Man, was going to help her every step of the way.
Web of Deceit Page 2
