“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. I promise you this: if he is still alive, then I will do everything in my power to save him, the same as he did for me. Will that work for you?”
Catalina nodded, and some of the tension drained out of her body. “So what happens now?”
“You’re going to stay here and stay safe,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle the rest.”
•
Catalina and I both went back to our staterooms to try to get some more shut-eye. I crawled back into bed next to Owen, snuggling up against his warm, muscled body, and drifted off to sleep with no trouble.
Then again, I was never particularly troubled when I decided to kill someone.
I slept another two hours and woke up feeling refreshed and ready to get on with my inevitable confrontation with Benson. Owen had slipped out of bed while I’d been sleeping, although he’d left me a note propped up on the nightstand.
Buffet. Main deck. Phillip’s treat.
Well, that sounded promising. So I put on some clothes that Jo-Jo had brought to the riverboat for me and headed out to find the others.
At dawn, the main deck had been empty, except for Sophia and her shotguns, but now two tables had been set up in her place, each one covered with an impressive spread of food. Bacon, scrambled eggs, biscuits with sausage gravy, country-fried ham, stacks of toast with different kinds of fruit preserves. My stomach rumbled, and I realized how long it had been since I had eaten. I fixed myself a heaping plate of food, grabbed a tall glass of orange juice, and took everything over to a third table that had been positioned at the bow of the boat, close to the railing, so that the diners would have a view of the river.
Phillip was sitting at the table, his plate already clean, a mimosa in his hand, and a pitcher full of the same perched at his elbow. Owen was there too, talking softly to his best friend. So was Finn, who had not one, not two, but three plates of food in front of him, all of which he was eating from at the same time, taking first a bite of scrambled eggs and then one of biscuits and gravy and following that up with a crunch-crunch-crunch of bacon and toast slathered with strawberry preserves.
I sat down next to Finn, not so gently nudging his plethora of plates out of my way. “Where are the others?”
“Sophia, Jo-Jo, and Catalina are still sleeping below deck,” Owen rumbled, reaching across the table and squeezing my hand. “Xavier went to check on Roslyn. She still had to run things at Northern Aggression last night, so she got a hotel room under a different name instead of driving over here. Bria went with him.”
“And how is that going?” I asked. “Xavier and Bria?”
Owen shrugged. “As well as can be expected.”
I squeezed his hand back, then leaned over and kissed him.
Finn made a gagging noise. “Please. Some of us are eating.”
“I have to agree with Lane,” Phillip said, waggling his champagne flute at me. “It is far too early in the day for that sort of thing.”
I gave Owen another kiss, just to annoy them, then sat back in my chair and started eating. The biscuits were light, fluffy, and baked to golden perfection, while the sausage gravy was thick and creamy, with a nice, peppery bite. I cut my stack of toast into triangles, sampling the strawberry, blackberry, and apricot preserves in turn, enjoying the bright burst of sweet, sticky fruit that tickled my tongue.
Everything was good, and I didn’t mind eating someone else’s food, but it had become a tradition for me to fix the postbattle meal, and I was a little put out that I hadn’t been able to do that here. Maybe it was petty of me, but I wanted everyone to be oohing and aahing over the meal that I had fixed. Not some stranger’s.
“So what’s the verdict on the buffet?” Owen asked, his violet eyes twinkling a bit, knowing exactly what I was going to say.
“Serviceable.” I sniffed. “But I could do better.”
Phillip rolled his eyes. “I’ll be sure to give your regards to my chef, with all his many years in culinary school and time working in some of the finest restaurants on the East Coast.”
“Better watch out, Gin,” Owen said, teasing Phillip and me. “Gustav doesn’t take insults to his food too kindly, and he’s almost as good with knives as you are.”
“Oh,” I drawled. “I doubt that.”
Owen snickered, but Phillip rolled his eyes again and drained the rest of his mimosa in exaggerated annoyance.
I polished off two plates of food. So did Owen, and Finn was still going strong and well into his fourth one. While he finished eating, we sat there in companionable silence, listening to the rush of the river. A faint breeze ruffled my hair, bringing a rich, earthy smell along with it. I breathed in deeply, letting the taste of fall come in through my mouth and roll over my tongue before trickling down into my throat and lungs. Perhaps it was my imagination, but the air seemed tangier than ever before, with an almost metallic, coppery taste to it.
Or maybe that was just my anticipation of making Beauregard Benson bleed later on today.
“So what’s the plan?” Finn asked, shoving another strip of bacon into his mouth.
I shrugged. “I figured that we would have a nice, leisurely morning here on the riverboat, and then I would suit up, go over to Southtown, knock on Benson’s front door, and kill him when he answers. With y’all backing me up, of course. After that, who knows? Drinks at Northern Aggression all around?”
The three guys looked at one another, then at me.
“You’re not going to be a little more . . . circumspect about things?” Phillip asked. “You know, slip into his mansion late at night, kill him under the cover of darkness, and leave his bloody body for his men to find the next morning?”
Instead of answering him, I stared up into the sky. A bit of cloud cover had formed, making it seem as though rays were streaming out of the sun. The bloody streaks reminded me of Coral’s hair. Thanks to my dreams, I’d been thinking a lot about my time with her, especially how I’d hidden in the closet while her pimp had beaten her to death. And I’d realized that I’d been doing the same exact thing these past several months, hiding at the Pork Pit and waiting for the underworld bosses to try to take me out, when I should have been the one on the offensive, on the attack, instead.
It was time to do something about that, all of it, starting with Benson.
“Gin?” Owen asked.
“No,” I growled, answering them. “No sneak attacks. Not today. I’m tired of skulking around in the shadows, and there’s no point in it. Not anymore, when everyone in the underworld knows who I am. They’ve been messing with me for months now. Well, I think it’s finally time I showed them exactly who they are dealing with, starting with Benson.”