I didn't have to encourage him any more. The thief started babbling on then about how dangerous the Spider was and how bounty hunters from all over the country had come to town just to look for her. Well, I supposed that accounted for all the extra fights, murders, and violence recently. Inviting bounty hunters to a city as dark, gritty, and corrupt as Ashland was like splashing gasoline on top of an already roaring fire. Someone was bound to get burned.
I thought about all the hard cases that I'd seen getting ready to dine with Mab last night, and the way Ruth Gentry and Sydney had more or less been trying to take me alive. So that's who they all were then, bounty hunters come to Ashland to collect on the Spider, on me-dead or alive. Mab had definitely upped her game. Before, she'd brought in only LaFleur. Now, she had a whole city of bloodhounds sniffing after me. Despite the situation, I had to give Mab her props. She never did anything halfway.
"And what about the cop? What does Coolidge have to do with the Spider?"
Jenkins blinked, a little taken aback that I'd interrupted his whiny rant. "Nothing, as far as I can tell. But a few days ago, Mab goes and puts a million-dollar bounty on the cop's head. The only thing is that the cop has to be brought in alive. Not dead. So I'm at the bar the other night, and I hear these guys talking about the bounty, and I realize that this cop they're talking about is actually my cop. So I mention this to the leader, all casual-like, and he asks me if I want to make some quick cash."
"And I'll bet you said hell yeah."
Even though I was still straddling him, Jenkins managed a not-so-sheepish shrug. "I gotta get paid, you know?"
"Yeah," I said. "I know."
And then I cut his throat.
He didn't have any more to tell me. At least, nothing that I couldn't figure out myself. Jenkins was a small-time hood, a bottom feeder who survived on others' crumbs. He'd pointed the men at Bria and then had stood back and let them do all the dirty work. He just hadn't counted on me and Finn being there and his new friends getting dead.
Maybe I should have let him live. I'd been dealing with creeps like him my whole life, and he was no real threat to me. Maybe I should have let him slink off to whatever dark hole he called home. But he'd set up Bria for a measly ten grand, set her up to be raped, tortured, and whatever else those men had in mind before they turned her over to Mab. Jenkins had almost gotten Bria killed because of his greed, had turned on her even after she'd repeatedly tried to help him. He'd betrayed her, and that was just unacceptable.
Jenkins was nothing if not an opportunistic weasel. If I'd let him live, word would have gotten out about tonight, and, after a while, he'd have started thinking about things-including the mysterious woman with her silver-stone knives who'd come out of the darkness just to save Detective Bria Coolidge. Jenkins wasn't completely clueless. He'd have put two and two together and realized that I was the Spider. If not, he'd have blabbed it to someone who would have put it together for him. And then, Bria would have been even more of a target and in even more danger than she already was, which was something that I just couldn't allow.
Besides, I'd never been much for mercy.
So I cut his throat, stood there, and watched until his blood was just as cold and frozen as the alley floor beneath him-and my own black heart.
Chapter 12
When I was sure that Lincoln Jenkins was dead, I pulled off my ski mask and walked back to the parking lot at Northern Aggression.
Finn stood next to Bria, who sat on the bumper of one of the SUVs. My foster brother said something to her, then pulled out the white silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit. He passed the delicate fabric to Bria, who used it to wipe some of the blood off her face. Oh, yeah, Finn had it bad for my sister if he was offering up his precious silk to her.
But they weren't alone.
Sometime while I'd been chasing after Jenkins, Roslyn and Xavier had joined the party. Roslyn stood on the other side of Bria, eyeing the bodies that littered the cracked pavement like loose gravel, her beautiful features puckered with obvious distaste. I couldn't tell if the vamp was bothered by what Finn and I had done to the men or the horrible, cliched Windbreakers that they wore. Xavier was being more practical. The giant went from body to body, pulling out wallets and cell phones, and scanning through them, trying to find out who the men were. Their names didn't much matter now, since they were all dead.
At the scuff of my footsteps, Finn turned, his gun still in his hand.
"Relax," I said, stepping out of the shadows. "It's just me."
Finn nodded, but he didn't put his gun away. Instead, he kept scanning the area like he expected more goons to pop up out of the snow and try to grab Bria again. Given what Jenkins had told me about Mab's bounty on my sister, it wasn't that much of a stretch.
I looked at Bria, checking her for injuries just the way that Fletcher had always done for me whenever I'd been in a knockdown, drag-out fight. Her face was a mess. A cut above her right eye dripped blood, while another one across her chin did the same. Bruises blackened both her cheeks, further marring her pretty, delicate features, and she had one arm wrapped around her middle, as though a couple of her ribs were broken.
My heart twisted at the damage that had been done to her, at the pain she was suffering. But I also knew that Bria had gotten off easy. Because she was still here with me, instead of being delivered into Mab's fiery hands.
"So what did he say?" Finn asked.
"One of these men talked?" Roslyn asked in a disbelieving tone. "Before he died?"
I shook my head. "Not them. There was one more who ran when things got bloody, but I chased him down. As for what he said, it was nothing good. Mab's put out a five-million-dollar bounty on the Spider's head."
Finn let out a low whistle.
"Oh, the news gets better. The sum goes up to ten million if someone manages to hog-tie me and dump me at Mab's feet-alive."
"Ten million dollars?" Xavier rumbled. The giant was still bent over one of the bodies on the pavement. "No wonder things have been so crazy around here. Every bounty hunter east of the Mississippi would come to Ashland for that kind of money."
I nodded at the dead dwarves. "Apparently, they're already here."
Nobody said anything.
"But there's more, isn't there?" Bria asked. "Something you aren't telling us. Something to do with me. Because these men tonight? They wanted me, not you, Gin. So tell us the rest of it."
Bria and I might not have the closest of relationships, but she was starting to pick up on things about me. Like the fact that I would keep secrets if I thought it would protect the people I loved. I didn't know whether to be happy or annoyed with her insight. But there was no getting around her question, not with Finn, Roslyn, and Xavier eyeing me too, wondering what was going on.