Her gaze flicked to his bald head and sunken features. She shuddered and looked away. “I told him to leave me alone, but he kept following me around campus, trying to get me to go out with him. I could tell he was getting angrier and angrier, but I never thought that he’d actually hurt me. Last night, when he had those two vamps with him . . . that’s the first time he ever really scared me. And now he’s dead,” she finished in a faint, tired tone.
“It’s not your fault. The choices Troy made, the path he followed, he did all of that himself. And you are certainly not responsible for his death.”
“Well, it feels like I’m responsible,” Catalina whispered. “For everything. Maybe if I’d been more understanding, maybe if I hadn’t demanded that he quit dealing, maybe if I’d just given him another chance, I wouldn’t be sitting next to his body right now.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe he’d be sitting next to yours if you had made him angry again.”
She finally raised her gaze to mine, with guilt, grief, and memories swimming in her teary hazel eyes. “I know that he wasn’t the same guy I grew up with, but I still cared about him, you know? He didn’t deserve what Benson did to him.”
“No,” I replied. “The Troy you knew didn’t deserve this.”
Catalina fell silent, lost in her memories, her hand finally creeping over to touch Troy’s. We sat like that, lost in our own thoughts, each of us haunted by the dead man between us.
7
Ten minutes later, I heard the distant rumble of an engine, growing louder and louder as it spiraled up to this level of the garage. I recognized the sound.
I finished my text to Sophia, telling her that I was fine and to go on home for the night, and hit send. Then I looked at Catalina.
“The cops are here,” I said, getting to my feet.
Catalina nodded, but she stayed where she was on the floor by Troy’s side.
A large, anonymous sedan rounded the corner, catching me in its headlights. The vehicle slowed, then stopped, and the doors opened, revealing two familiar figures. The driver was a woman with shaggy blond hair and bright blue eyes, beautiful enough to be a model, despite the no-nonsense black boots, dark jeans, and dark blue button-up shirt she wore. A gold badge glimmered on her black leather belt, next to her holstered gun. A giant with a shaved head, ebony skin, and dark eyes maneuvered his tall, muscled frame out of the passenger’s side. Despite the late hour, a pair of aviator sunglasses were hooked into the neck of his white polo shirt.
Detective Bria Coolidge and Xavier headed in my direction. Xavier stopped by my side. I opened my mouth to call out a greeting to Bria, but she didn’t even look at me as she stalked by. Power walkers didn’t move that fast.
I frowned. Did my sister just blow me off for a dead body?
Bria’s quick steps slowed when she spotted Catalina sitting on the concrete, but her presence didn’t stop my sister from hurrying over, bending down, and studying Troy’s body with a cold, critical eye, much the same way that Benson had done earlier.
“Yeah, that’s good ole Beau’s handiwork, all right,” Bria said, disgust dripping from each and every one of her words.
Her voice might have been venomous, but her eyes were dark, her mouth was set in a hard line, and her hands were clenched into tight fists. For a second, Bria looked exactly like Catalina had right before she’d thrown up—sick, wounded, and vulnerable.
Bria eyed Catalina. A bit of sympathy flashed in my sister’s eyes, momentarily softening them, but the expression was quickly snuffed out, and her features hardened again.
Bria surged to her feet and stalked back over to me, her movements even quicker than before. “Tell me what happened.”
I stared at her, wondering what had her so riled up. “Aren’t you even going to ask if I’m okay?”
“What? Why? You’re fine. You’re always fine.” Bria waved her hand. “Tell me what happened, Gin. Now.”
I frowned at her dismissive attitude and abrupt tone, but Bria just sighed, rolled her eyes, and crossed her arms over her chest, as though I were the one being curt and childish. So I gave in and filled her and Xavier in on everything from Catalina’s run-in with Troy last night, to him following her to the garage, to Benson showing up and killing Troy.
The only thing I didn’t mention was Silvio Sanchez seeing Catalina and me, and then apparently leaving a Burn pill behind for me to find. Maybe Silvio thought he could squeeze me for some money to keep his mouth shut. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t told Benson we were here. Either way, I wanted some time to puzzle out the vampire’s motives. And Bria’s too, since she was acting so strangely.
Bria’s speculative gaze zoomed back over to Catalina. “She’s one of your waitresses, right? Does she work for Benson too?”
I frowned again, wondering why she was so focused on Benson. “No, but she grew up with Troy.”
I told them a condensed version of what Catalina had revealed to me about her past. Xavier shot Catalina a sympathetic look, but Bria started tapping her foot, the toe of her boot snap-snap-snapping against the concrete, racing along with her thoughts.
“What about that pill you found?” Bria asked.
I pulled the plastic bag with its blood-red pill out of my pocket, and she snatched it out of my hand. For a second, I thought about snatching it back from her. Bria’s lack of manners was starting to get on my nerves.
“You know what it is?” I asked.
Her tense expression grew even grimmer. “It’s called Burn. It’s the latest designer drug on the streets, courtesy of Benson.”
“Burn? Why that name?”
“Because it’s supposed to make you feel like you are a mile high and like your veins are on fire at the same time,” Xavier rumbled in his low, deep voice.
“Well, I suppose that explains the rune stamped on it,” I murmured. “That crown-and-flame design represents raw, destructive power. But that’s not Benson’s rune, is it?”
“No,” Bria said, still staring at the pill. “His is the letter B with two fangs sticking out.”
“Supposedly, just one of those little babies will take you on the ride of your life,” Xavier chimed in. “Human, vampire, giant, dwarf. It’ll knock you on your ass no matter how big and strong you are, make you see things that aren’t there, and generally screw with your head, according to the reports and what we’ve seen. It’s supposed to be a real trip.”
“Elementals too?” I asked.
He and Bria exchanged a glance.
“We’ve actually heard that it’s even more potent for elementals,” she said. “And it doesn’t seem to matter how strong or weak their magic is or what element or offshoot they’re gifted in. It really packs a punch with them. Nobody knows why, though.”
“But haven’t you guys analyzed the pills to figure out what’s in them?”
She shook her head. “We’ve tried, but the lab folks haven’t been able to figure out all the ingredients. They’ve told me that there’s something that gives the pills their zing, but that they haven’t been able to pinpoint it yet.”
Her words made me think back to the fork I’d touched in the Pork Pit. The utensil had had plenty of zing, so much so that it had practically sizzled with the auburn-haired woman’s magic, whatever it was, before the sensation had slowly started to dissipate. And now here was something else that was unknown, dangerous, and deadly.
I didn’t believe in coincidences. I never had, and all the close calls, deadly schemes, and tangled webs I’d navigated through ever since I’d killed Mab Monroe had made me more suspicious and paranoid than ever before. So I couldn’t help but wonder if the woman at the Pork Pit could somehow be connected to Benson and his drugs. But I didn’t see how. The auburn-haired woman had magic, and Burn was just a pill, just a chemical compound. Maybe they had nothing to do with each other. Maybe the woman had just come into the restaurant for a good meal. Maybe she meant me no harm. Maybe . . .
I rubbed my throbbing temples. Maybes al
ways made for one hell of a headache.
“Anyway,” Bria said, sliding the plastic bag with the pill into her pocket. “I’ll call the lab and see if anyone is working tonight. Maybe it’s not too late to get this one analyzed.”
She pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket, hit a button, and held the device up to her ear. “Hey, it’s Coolidge. I need to talk to whoever’s left in the lab . . .”
She started pacing back and forth, her boots crack-crack-cracking against the concrete again. The longer Bria talked, the higher and faster her voice got, and she kept throwing one hand up into the air, punctuating all of her sentences, even though the person on the other end of the phone couldn’t even see her.
“What is up with Bria?” I asked Xavier. “She’s usually not this . . .”
“Forceful? Gung-ho? Eager to nail a bad guy’s ass to the wall?” he said.
“I was going to say cold, rude, and dismissive. But yeah. All that too. I mean, she’s always happy to throw drug dealers and other criminals in jail, but this seems . . .”
“Personal,” Xavier finished.
“Yeah.”
He looked at Bria, but she was still talking on her phone. Xavier nodded his head at me, and we stepped a few feet away from her. Catalina continued her silent vigil by Troy’s body.
“Look, Bria asked me not to say anything,” he began. “But with what happened tonight, I figure that you deserve a heads-up.”
“About what?” I asked.
He glanced over to make sure that Bria wasn’t listening to us before turning back to me. “Bria and I have been working on taking down all the dealers who sell Burn for a couple of months now, ever since it started showing up in Ashland over the summer. It makes people crazier than anything else I’ve ever seen, so crazy that they’ll claw their own skin off because they think it’s on fire or melting or something like that.”
“Okay . . .”
“At first, it was just a routine assignment, you know?”
“Until . . .”
Xavier drew in a breath. “Until one of Bria’s informants got caught up in the middle of it. Max Young, he was one of her snitches, eighteen years old, even younger than that dead kid over there. Typical story. Never knew his dad, mom died when he was ten, bounced around from foster home to foster home until he aged out of the system at eighteen. One of those guys who’s always on the fringes, you know? Not really in a gang but staying on the edges in order to have the protection they offer in Southtown. Doing odd jobs for the real gang members to scrape together enough money for food and a lousy apartment every month. A nice kid, a likable guy, doing the best he could to survive.”
“So how did he meet Bria?”
Xavier shrugged. “He was about to get the shit beat out of him by a couple of guys outside a Southtown bar. We were on patrol, and Bria jumped in and saved Max from them.”
I knew my sister, so I could guess what had happened next. “And she took him under her wing.”
“Yep,” Xavier said. “Gave him some money, got him into a better, cleaner apartment building, even tried to get him to think about going back to school. In return, Max would feed Bria info about dealers, pimps who liked to beat the folks who work for them, gangbangers who were going to get a little trigger-happy with their rivals. Things like that.”
My gaze cut to Catalina, who was still holding Troy’s hand. She’d tried so hard to get away from Troy and the memories she had of growing up in Southtown, but here she was, another witness to the violence all the same.
“That sounds like low-level stuff,” I asked. “So what happened to Max?”
Xavier glanced at Bria again. “Max calls Bria last week, all excited and bursting with pride. Says that he finally has some high-level intel for her—info that will blow her Burn case wide open. Says that Benson is the one distributing it. We knew that, of course, but we couldn’t prove it, because—”
“No one talks in Southtown,” I murmured, finishing his sentence, which was a common saying around Ashland.
“Exactly.” Xavier nodded. “But Max says he can prove that it’s Benson who’s running the drug. Says he heard about a big shipment of Burn coming in from a dealer he knows. A kid selling at the community college, flashing a lot of cash and bragging about how much more he was going to make when the drugs came in.”
My eyes narrowed. “That sounds like our dead friend there.”
And if it was true, then Troy Mannis had been a marked man before I’d ever met him. Benson hadn’t held on to his empire this long by letting his dealers blab about drugs coming into town. Most of the cops might take bribes and look the other way, but there were a few honest ones like Bria who could cause trouble for the vamp, especially if they got a tip that panned out. At the very least, the drugs could have been seized by the cops or jacked by a rival crew, and Benson would have been out hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more.
I thought about what Benson had said to Troy about paying for his actions, all his actions. He must have been talking about Troy’s loose lips. Well, he’d certainly silenced them tonight.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Xavier said. “So anyway, Max sets up a meet with Bria. She goes to the location. Max is already there—dead. But that wasn’t the worst part.”
“And what would the worst part be?”
“The way Benson killed him.” Xavier jerked his head at Troy. “It was just like that.”
We both fell silent. I glanced at Bria, who was still talking on the phone. The death of any informant would be hard, but losing a kid like that—a kid she’d been trying to help—that would cut her deep.
“Max’s death was also a message,” Xavier said in a much softer voice. “To Bria.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because Benson stuffed a dead rat into the kid’s mouth—and inked Bria’s rune on Max’s forehead.”
I thought of all the pens I’d seen in Benson’s shirt pocket. My gaze shot over to Bria and the silverstone pendant glimmering around her neck. A primrose. The symbol for beauty. Her personal rune.
“Has Benson made any threats against Bria?” My hands curled into fists at the thought.
Xavier shook his head. “No, nothing like that. But no one’s giving her information anymore either. None of her snitches will return her calls about anything, even if it’s not related to Benson. Nobody wants to end up like Max. So Bria’s been on a tear to take down anyone and everyone associated with Benson and Burn.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She tried to talk to you about Benson once, when you were having that girls’ day at Jo-Jo’s salon. But she didn’t get the chance—”
“Because that’s the day Sophia was kidnapped,” I finished. “But why didn’t she try again? Especially after Max was murdered?”
Xavier gave me a pointed look. “And what would you have done if she had?”
I opened my mouth, ready to tell him that I would have supported my sister and let Bria handle things the best way she saw fit, but that would have been a lie.
I sighed. “I would have paid Benson a quiet visit on the sly. Or at the very least, some of his men, enough of them to send him a message not to mess with my sister.”
“And we have bingo,” Xavier said. “I know you, Gin. If there is the slightest risk to anyone you care about, then you will eliminate that risk. And we all know how you do that.”
“By carving people up like Christmas hams,” I finished.
“Exactly.”
I shrugged. “Bria’s hands are dirty enough just being related to me. Just acknowledging that I exist and that we have a relationship, that she cares about me. She doesn’t need to sink down any deeper in the muck with me.”
“And you need to realize that Bria is her own person, especially when it comes to being a cop,” Xavier replied. “She likes to do things herself, in her own way and time. Just like you do. She really liked Max. We both did. She feels like Max’s death is on her, and she w
ants to be the one to bring down Benson. You should understand that better than anyone else.”
I scuffed my boot over a skid mark on the concrete. “Oh, I understand it, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”
• • •
After Bria finished her conversation, she slid her phone into her pocket and came back over to Xavier and me. “Cassie is in the lab. It took some convincing, but she agreed to stay and analyze the pill tonight.”
Bria’s convincing had sounded more like badgering, but I decided not to mention that. Xavier nodded, and my sister turned her gaze to me.
“And I’m going to need you to come downtown and make a statement about what you saw. About Benson killing that dealer.”
My eyebrows zoomed up into my forehead. “You want me to what?”
“Make a formal statement,” Bria replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “To be a witness and help me build my case against Benson.”
My mouth dropped open. Between it and my eyebrows, no doubt I looked like some cartoon character whose face was stretched out to comical proportions. The next thing you knew, my eyes would pop out of my head and roll away in surprise. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m an assassin, Bria,” I snapped. “I kill people. The only testifying I do is with my knives.”
She waved her hand, as though my dark occupation and all the blood on my hands were of no concern. “We can work around that.”
I stared at Bria. Normally, she tried to keep our professional lives, so to speak, as separate as possible, although I knew that she would always have my back if I ever really needed her. But right now, she seemed perfectly willing to shine the uncomfortably bright spotlight of law and order squarely on me. It wasn’t like her at all.
Xavier shrugged his broad, muscled shoulders at me, as if to say I told you so. Max’s death must have hit Bria harder than even she realized, if she was willing to shove me in front of everyone just to get Benson. Surprise sparked in my chest, along with a little hurt that she wanted to use me this way. But she was hurting too, so I tried to reason with her.
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