Next, I looked at Jo-Jo. "You know that Vinnie's going to need a place to stay out of sight until we can get this thing sorted out."
The dwarf smiled at me, the lines deepening on her middle-aged face. "It's a good thing that I've got plenty of extra bedrooms then, isn't it?"
Vinnie glanced at me, then the others. "What's going on? What are you all talking about?"
I stared at him. "I'm talking about you staying here where you'll be safe, Vinnie. I'm talking about getting you out from under Mab's and LaFleur's heavy thumbs. I'm talking about rescuing your daughter from whatever hellhole Mab has got her stashed in. That's what I'm talking about."
Vinnie's mouth fell open in shock. He blinked several times, as though he was thinking about speaking but the words just wouldn't come to him.
"Do you want me to do that?" I asked. "Do you want me to find your daughter? Because I was under the impression that you cared about her-a lot."
"You-you would do that for me? Try to find Natasha?" Hope brightened Vinnie's pale blue gaze.
Hope. An emotion that always kept suckering me in, time after time, despite my supposed retirement from the assassin business. Hope. The one thing that always seemed to get me into more trouble than just killing people for money ever had. Ah, hope. Sometimes, I really hated it.
"Yes."
Vinnie blinked again, and suspicion darkened his eyes. "But why would you do that? Nobody does something like that for free, and I-I don't have any money to pay you. But I can get some," he hurried to add. "I can get however much you want. I promise you that I can."
"I don't want your money, Vinnie. I have more of my own than I can ever spend."
The Ice elemental frowned at the harsh tone in my voice, but I couldn't be any gentler with him. I couldn't get his hopes up any higher than they were. Not until I found Natasha and saw exactly what had been done to her.
"As for why I would do something like this, well, there are a lot of reasons," I continued. "But mainly, because it seems to be what I do now. Don't get me wrong; I'm not promising you kittens and rainbows. Mab's men have had Natasha for hours already. There's no telling what kind of shape she's in. Do you understand what that means? How hurt she could be? Inside and out? Even if we find her, even if we get her back, she might never be the same little girl that you knew and loved before. Can you handle that? Can you give her the help that she's going to need?"
Vinnie closed his eyes a moment, but he slowly nodded.
"All right then," I said. "I'll find your daughter. I'll find Natasha. And if I can't do that or if she's already dead when I get to her, then I promise you one thing-that the people who took her will wish for their own deaths long before I am through with them. How does that sound to you?"
Vinnie stared at me with his pale blue eyes. Emotions swirled in his gaze. Fear. Grief. Anger. Anguish. Worry. Slowly, he nodded his head once more.
"Good," I said. "Then we have a deal."
Chapter 10
Two hours later, I drove my Benz up a long, steep driveway lined on either side by thick stands of pine trees. Gravel churned under my wheels, but eventually my car crested the hill and rolled out onto the flat plateau on top of this particular ridge, one of many in the Appalachian Mountains that cut through Ashland like jagged teeth on a saw.
I stopped my car in front of the large, three-story clapboard house that perched on top of the steep hill. Gray stone, red clay, and brown brick all mishmashed together on the sprawling structure, along with a tin roof, black shutters, and blue eaves. At first glance, it looked like the house wasn't quite finished or perhaps that someone had run out of building materials and had just decided to use whatever was handy. Still, the uneven shapes and styles pleased me, because this was my home now.
The enormous house had been in Fletcher Lane's family for years, and the old man had left it to me in his will, along with a sizable amount of cash. Not that I'd really needed either one, as I'd put plenty of my own money away for a rainy day. The ramshackle structure was much too large for just me to live in by myself. Half a dozen people could have comfortably roomed inside and never run into each other if they didn't want to. I probably should have boarded up the structure and moved out into a smaller apartment or town house in the city, somewhere closer to the Pork Pit. That's where I'd been living before Fletcher had been murdered. But the house was one of the few things that I had left of the old man, and I planned on staying here as long as it-and I-were both still standing.
Despite my sentimental feelings, I still parked my car and approached the front door with my usual, wary caution. LaFleur might not have trapped me the other night down at the docks, but that didn't mean the assassin wasn't still looking for me. If her resources were as good as mine were, she'd find me-sooner rather than later. And then we'd dance. But I wasn't about to give her the upper hand by doing something sloppy, like not paying attention to my surroundings. Not even here, at my sanctuary from the world.
As I walked toward the house, my eyes scanned over what I could see of the yard in the darkness. The smooth lawn stretched out for about a hundred feet before nose-diving into a series of jagged cliffs that even some mountain goats would have had a hard time climbing. Heavy clouds obscured the silver moon and twinkling stars tonight and cast the landscape in almost coal black darkness, especially up here on this high, forested ridge. The lights of Ashland gleamed in the valley below, like fireflies hovering across the surface of a quiet, murky pond.
I also cocked my head to the side and reached out with my elemental magic, listening to the stones around me-everything from the gravel under my feet in the driveway to the falling cliffs off to my right to the brick that made up part of the house itself.
The stones only whispered with their low, usual murmurs, telling me of the cold whip of the wind around the ridge, the soft scurry of animals to and fro, and the slow, crumbling passage of time. No one had been near the house all day. I would have sensed the vibration, the disturbance, in the stones otherwise, especially if it had been someone like LaFleur here to murder me in my own bed. Dark intentions like that always found their way into their stone surroundings, and the blacker your desire, the sooner it happened.
Good. I was in no mood to kill unwanted company. Not after everything that had happened tonight. Not when I knew that there was a young girl out there somewhere who might be dying at this very moment. While Jo-Jo had tucked Vinnie into bed in one of her guest rooms, Finn and Xavier had gone over to the bartender's house to confirm whether Natasha had actually been kidnapped. The news wasn't good. They'd found the baby-sitter tied up and stuffed in a closet. She'd told them the same story Brown had spouted at the park-that some men had stormed in, roughed her up, grabbed Natasha, and left. I had no doubt that the men had taken the little girl straight to the mysterious new nightclub that Mab was building-and all the potential horrors that awaited there.