Black Widow

by Jennifer Estep

  I wrapped my hand around the rune, pressing it against the matching scar embedded deep in my palm. The slight weight comforted me, as did the cold, solid sensation of my Ice and Stone magic rippling through the smooth surface of the metal, waiting to be used. But that was why I was leaving the ring and the necklace with Silvio. They contained far too much of my power to let them fall into the wrong hands should things go from bad to worse inside the station, the way I suspected they were going to. If the cops did arrest me, they’d take everything away from me. Madeline had already closed down the Pork Pit. She wasn’t getting my jewelry too. It was far too precious to me, and not just for the power it contained.

  “Would you like me to take that as well?” Silvio asked.

  For a moment, I curled my hand even tighter around my rune. Then I forced myself to nod, let go, and hand the necklace over to him.

  We got out of the car. I stood watch, scanning the parking lot for any sign of Madeline’s spies, while Silvio opened the trunk and secured my weapons and jewelry. I felt naked, exposed, and vulnerable without the slight, comforting weight of my knives resting on my body and sad, empty, and lost without the feel of my ring and necklace and their reserves of Ice and Stone magic humming against my skin.

  I was a strong elemental, but I didn’t know if I could overcome Madeline’s acid power without my knives or extra reserves of magic, all of which I’d just willingly stripped away. But Sophia was in trouble and needed my help, which she wouldn’t get with my lollygagging around in the parking lot. So I drew in a breath and headed for the station, with Silvio shutting the trunk, locking the car, and falling in step beside me.

  * * *

  The inside of the police station was much nicer than what you would expect. Then again, the po-po could afford to keep everything in tip-top shape, given all the bribes they accepted. A narrow corridor ran for about fifty feet before opening up into the enormous room that was the bureaucratic heart of the station. The floor and walls were made out of beautiful gray marble with silver flecks running through it, while the diamond-shaped panes in the tall, wide windows were so clean they almost appeared transparent. Crystal and brass chandeliers dropped down from the vaulted ceiling, which soared a hundred feet overhead and also featured mosaic flowers carved out of pale rose quartz. The only things that ruined the elegance of the room were the security cameras mounted to the walls, their red lights winking on and off like devilish fireflies as they swiveled around in slow, steady circles.

  A brass plaque embedded in one of the columns near the entrance boasted that the interior had been restored to its original grandeur with the help of the Ashland Historical Association. Captain Lou Dobson’s name was on the plaque too; he was listed as the liaison between the department and the historical association. Well, I supposed that explained how he’d help Madeline sic the group on Jo-Jo. All he would have had to do was make a couple of phone calls and cash in some favors.

  Silvio and I passed through a metal detector at the end of the corridor while a bored-looking uniformed officer ran Silvio’s briefcase through the X-ray scanner. Dobson must not have had time to put the word out to be on the lookout for me because the officer waved us through without a second glance.

  “Let’s go over to booking,” Silvio said after he’d retrieved his briefcase. “That’s where Sophia will most likely be.”

  I nodded and followed him out into the main part of the station.

  Silvio must have spent more time bailing out Benson’s drug dealers than I’d thought because he moved through the station with ease, navigating around lines of people and roped off sections as though he’d long ago memorized where the clogged trouble spots were. Even more telling, several officers waved and called out friendly greetings to the slender vampire.

  Silvio nodded back, stopping a few times to speak with those he knew well. I tagged along behind him, feeling like the proverbial third wheel, but I trusted Silvio enough to realize that if he was taking the time to talk to someone, then he was most likely trying to get more information about Dobson and what the captain’s plans might be for Sophia—and me.

  Finally, we reached the back of the room, where dozens of desks clustered in bunches, all of them sleek chrome contraptions covered with computers, monitors, and ringing phones. Detectives wearing suits and ties sprawled in their executive, leather chairs, gabbing on their phones, while others milled around the espresso machines that lined one section of the wall, along with wooden tables that boasted platters of fresh fruit, buttery croissants, and a dozen different kinds of Danishes. I snorted. No bad coffee and stale doughnuts here. The po-po had a better spread than most of the corporate climbers in the downtown skyscrapers.

  Still, it wasn’t all strawberries and shortcakes. Uniformed officers moved back and forth in front of the detectives’ desks, carrying files, murmuring into their radios, and escorting some unhappy-looking individuals from one side of the station to the other. Three vampire hookers slumped on a wooden bench next to the espresso machines, their skirts riding up and their tops drooping down, showing inordinate amounts of leg and cleavage as they waited to be booked. An archway cut into the wall a few feet away led into another room that featured a fingerprint station, a camera, and a height chart for mug shots.

  Sophia was sitting at the end of the bench, looking calm and unruffled, despite the handcuffs that were still cinched around her wrists. The same couldn’t be said for the hookers, who eyed her with obvious curiosity.

  “Boo,” Sophia rasped, causing the hooker closest to her to shriek and almost fall off the bench.

  One of the many knots of tension in my chest loosened at the knowledge that Sophia was okay. Silvio went over to the officer in charge to see what he could do to help her, but I scanned the room, looking for Dobson.

  It didn’t take me long to find the giant. The second I spotted him, my chest knotted right back up again because he was standing next to a pair of desks, along with two familiar figures. One of them was a woman, about my size, with shaggy blond hair and blue eyes. The other was a giant, around seven feet tall with thick muscles, ebony skin, and a pair of aviator sunglasses that had been propped up on top of his shaved head. My baby sister, Detective Bria Coolidge, and her partner, Xavier, who was also Roslyn’s significant other.

  Things were definitely going from bad to worse, just like I’d feared.

  I looked over to find Silvio slipping a wad of hundred-dollar bills into the booking officer’s hand. A second later, the officer was pulling out his keys and unlocking the cuffs on Sophia’s wrists. Relieved that Silvio was taking care of her, I hurried over to Bria and Xavier.

  Dobson looked over at the steady smack-smack-smack of my boots on the floor, and a wide grin spread over his face. My chest tightened even more. I’d been so busy with everything that had happened at the Pork Pit that I’d forgotten there was one person I hadn’t heard from today—Bria.

  But given the smug expression on Dobson’s face, I was just in time to witness whatever Madeline had planned for my sister and Xavier too.

  Bria turned to see who Dobson was staring at and did a double take when she realized it was me. Given my nocturnal activities as the Spider, I didn’t spend a lot of time in the police station. In fact, it was the one place in Ashland that I studiously avoided, especially since Bria and I tried to keep our professional lives as separate as possible. But it seemed like Madeline had made sure that they were going to overlap today—in the worst way possible.

  “Gin?” Bria asked, the shock apparent in her voice. “What are you doing here?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” I sniped. “I’ve been accused of murdering a missing woman, the Pork Pit has been shut down for health violations, and Silvio and I are here to bail out Sophia, who supposedly assaulted the cop who was conducting the health inspection. But really, the clumsy fool fell down all on his own. Isn’t that right, Dobson?”

  The captain glared at me, that angry flush creeping up his neck again. He opened his m
outh, no doubt to deliver some cutting remark, but his cell phone rang, stopping him before he could get started. Dobson checked the number on the screen and gestured at two uniformed officers standing nearby, the same two who’d been with him when he first came into the Pork Pit earlier this afternoon.

  “Watch them,” he barked, then stepped away a few feet to answer his call.

  Dollars to doughnuts, Madeline was on the other end of the line, giving him some last-minute instructions for this part of her plan.

  “Gin?” Bria asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Finn didn’t call you?”

  She shook her head. “We’ve been up in the mountains all day. The cell reception up there is terrible, so we turned off our phones to save the batteries. We just got back a few minutes ago.”

  “Why did you go up into the mountains?”

  “Supposedly, there was some sort of shooting at the Bone Mountain Nature Preserve,” Xavier rumbled. “At least, that’s what Dobson claimed when he sent us up there this morning. But there was no evidence of anything like that. It was all leaf-lookers and bird-watchers.”

  So Dobson had sent the two of them on a wild-goose chase to get them out of the way while everything else was going down. A bad feeling ballooned up in the pit of my stomach, bursting through the tension in my chest, and sticking in my throat, choking me from the inside out. Because Bria and Xavier were here now, and so was I—just in time to witness whatever horrible thing Dobson had planned for them. Another part of the grand scheme that Madeline had put him up to, and another bit of my friends’ misery that she wanted me to see and experience firsthand.

  “Gin?” Bria asked again. “What’s wrong?”

  I quickly, quietly filled them in on all the problems that Madeline had caused for everyone, including closing the restaurant.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Bria snapped when I finished. “The food is great, and you don’t have any health violations.”

  “It’s just Madeline spinning her webs and playing her games,” I murmured. “And I don’t think she’s done yet.”

  “What do you think her endgame is?” Xavier asked. “I mean, closing down the Pork Pit is terrible, but it’s nothing permanent.”

  I thought of the hate that had flared in Madeline’s eyes when I faced her down at the restaurant. “Oh, I’m sure she’s working on fixing that.”

  Dobson finished his call and stepped back over to us, his ruddy face full of excited expectation. While he’d been talking, more and more detectives and uniformed officers had gathered around, sipping their espressos and shoving croissants in their mouths as they waited to see what would happen next. Many of the cops had the same sort of sneer on their face that Dobson did, but more than a few seemed uncertain or outright hostile to the giant and his cronies.

  “Is there anyone here you can trust?” I asked Bria. “Anyone higher up on the food chain than Dobson that can help you and Xavier?”

  She glanced around, looking at first one face, then another, just like I had. Her expression became grimmer and grimmer the longer she looked. “A few people. Not many. Dobson’s the third highest-ranking officer in the department, and he’s the one in charge of all the detectives, including Xavier and me. Besides, most of the time everyone waits to see which way the wind is blowing before they take sides, no matter what their rank is.”

  Something that was perfectly normal in Ashland, which meant that Bria and Xavier were pretty much screwed. Yeah. That was definitely the theme of the day. But before I could tell them to brace themselves for the worst, it went ahead and happened.

  “Step away from your desk, Coolidge,” Dobson barked out.

  Bria blinked. “What? Why?”

  He held out his hand, and one of the officers stepped forward and passed him a piece of paper, which Dobson then slapped down on the edge of her desk. “So I can search it,” he sneered. “Seems we’ve gotten a tip about some Burn pills disappearing from evidence lockup. Someone seems to think they’ve wound up in your desk. Imagine that. Your sister is a cold-blooded killer, and you’re a dirty, pill-popping cop. Must run in the family.”

  Bria gasped, and all the color drained from her face at his harsh, jeering insults.

  Dobson’s brown gaze flicked to Xavier. “Unless you and your partner are in on it together. Might as well search them both, while we’re at it. Clean out all the trash at once.”

  “The only trash here is you, Dobson,” Xavier growled, stepping up so that he was nose-to-nose with the other giant. “Unlike the rest of you crooked bastards, Bria and I don’t steal evidence, and we sure as hell don’t take drugs.”

  Dobson smirked at Xavier, whose hands clenched into tight fists, as if he was thinking about punching the captain. I definitely knew that feeling.

  But Bria stepped up and put her hand on her partner’s shoulder, silently warning him against it. “It’s okay, Xavier. Let them search. We both know they won’t find anything.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Dobson crooned.

  Bria and Xavier looked at each other, their faces tight, both of them realizing they were being set up. But the worst part was that they both knew there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop it since Dobson outranked them. So they had no choice but to reluctantly move away from their desks.

  The captain made a big show of opening the top few drawers in Bria’s desk and rifling through the pens and papers inside. He kept making faces the whole time, as if he were disappointed that he hadn’t found anything incriminating yet. The tension in the air built and built, and a few of the cops started muttering with worry, probably hoping that he wouldn’t start searching their desks and find all the illicit items hidden inside.

  Finally, Dobson had gone through all the drawers except one. He paused a moment, that smirk flitting across his face again. He already knew exactly what was in that last drawer because he’d planted it in there earlier, while Bria and Xavier were up on Bone Mountain.

  “Well, well, well,” Dobson crowed, bending down and sticking his beefy hand into the drawer, as if he’d discovered something completely unexpected. “What do we have here?”

  He pulled a plastic bag filled with red and green Burn pills out of the drawer.

  He held up the pills and let out a low whistle. “Forget about your own bad habit. Looks like you’ve decided to go into business for yourself. What do you say, Coolidge? How much were you planning on selling these babies for out on the street?”

  Dobson tossed the Burn pills on top of Bria’s desk and gave me another arrogant smirk. “Like sister, like sister, I suppose. Either way, Detective Coolidge, you are officially relieved of duty—effective immediately.”

  9

  This time, Bria’s hands were the ones that clenched into fists. “I don’t know where those pills came from, but I didn’t put them there.”

  “Right,” Dobson drawled. “And I’m the tooth fairy.”

  He looked at the crowd of cops who had gathered around, but everyone’s faces were cold and shuttered. Yep, everyone was waiting to see how the cookie would crumble in this situation. Bria knew as well as I did that Dobson had already won, this round at least, but she didn’t want to believe it. She kept glancing from one detective, one officer, to another, hoping that someone would speak up and tell Dobson that he was full of shit, that she was a good, honest cop and that there was no way she would ever steal evidence, much less sell drugs.

  But no one did.

  Instead, silence descended over the crowd, spreading out to the folks in booking and beyond. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to watch the drama unfold.

  “As of this moment, you are suspended without pay, Detective Coolidge,” Dobson sneered, his loud, gravelly voice echoing through the entire station. “Of course, there will be a thorough investigation into your many crimes, but if I were you, I’d go ahead and clear out your desk. We both know that you won’t be coming back—ever.”

  Bria’s fists clenched ti
ghter, her eyes burned brighter, and the set of her jaw hardened with every lie Dobson spouted. Being a cop was just as important to her as running the Pork Pit was to me, a way to honor and follow in her foster father’s footsteps, and so much a part of who she was that she could never be or do anything else that would make her nearly as happy. For Dobson to take all of that away from her, especially on such an obvious, ridiculous, phony charge, well, it made her as angry as I had been at the restaurant earlier—and Bria’s reaction was just as cold as mine had been.

  She approached Dobson, and the two officers who’d been flanking the giant sidled away from him. So did all the other cops who’d gathered around. They all knew that Bria was a powerful Ice elemental, and they could all see the mix of magic and rage flashing in her frosty blue eyes. They didn’t want to get caught in the cross fire should she decide to unleash her magic on Dobson. Even the good captain himself swallowed and took a step back.

  Bria noticed them backing away, and she let out a loud, derisive snort. Like sister, like sister, after all.

  “Cowards,” she called out, her light, lilting voice booming even louder than Dobson’s had. “The whole sorry lot of you.”

  Once again, she looked from one face to another, even as her own features tightened with disgust. A few of the cops had enough guilt and shame to lower their heads, rather than meet her angry gaze.

  Finally, Bria focused her attention on Dobson again. “You’re not going to get away with this.” She spat out the words as if each and every one were an icicle shooting out of her lips and stabbing into his smug smile.

  “It seems to me like I already have, Coolidge,” he sneered.

  Bria stepped forward and tilted her head back so that she was staring directly into his face. “This is bullshit, and we all know it, Dobson. You’ve never liked me because I actually try to do my job, because I actually try to help people, protect them. Not hurt them like you do. You’ve been looking for an excuse to get rid of me for a long time now.”