Jennifer Estep - Spider's Bite

“She’s only one woman,” Shortie pointed out.

Finn laughed again, a deep, throaty chuckle that tugged at me. I’d never realized before how much his laugh sounded like Fletcher’s.

“She’s not one woman — she’s the fucking Spider. That’s why you hired her, remember? Because she’s the best. So you can take your questions and promises and screw yourself six ways from Sunday. Because I’m not saying another word, and I’ll be seeing you in hell real soon.”

I made sure the knives were properly positioned in my hands. I’d only get one shot at them before they killed Finn. I wasn’t losing Finn. Not now, not ever.

“He’s not going to talk. This is pointless. Finish him,” Shortie snapped.

Tall Guy stepped forward and drew back his fist for the killing blow. Finn looked up at his approaching death and smiled. I skirted around the wall and stepped into the room.

Tall Guy was too focused on Finn to notice me. My first knife went into his left eye, one of the few soft spots on a giant’s head. Tall Guy jerked, a puppet whose strings had been snapped. His other buglike eye widened, and for a moment, I thought it might spring from his head like a toy. He went down on his knees, then pitched forward. His head ended up in Finnegan’s lap. He never made a sound.

Shortie was more observant. Faster, too. He managed to get a gun out from under his suit jacket. But I crossed the room in quick steps and knocked the weapon away before he could bring it up. Shortie swung at me, but I ducked his wide blow, came up inside his meager defense, and plunged the second knife into his heart. He spasmed against me, whimpering and struggling to get free, even as his blood coated my hand.

“You really should have listened to Finn,” I hissed in his face, forcing the weapon deeper into his chest.

He died with a sputter.

Shortie slackened against me, and I shoved him away. The body thumped onto the floor. Lovely sound.

“It’s about time you got here.” Finn’s voice came out in a low, pain-filled rasp.

I pulled the knife out of Shortie, then yanked the other one out of Tall Guy’s eye. I used the bloody weapons to slice through Finn’s bonds, then shoved the giant’s body off him.

“And the man outside? Or do I even have to ask?” Finn said.

I looked at him.

“Right. Dumb question.”

I stared at the bodies on the floor. Blood oozed out of their wounds, ruining the pristine white of the fluffy shag carpet. Still more gobs of blood covered me, as though a bucket of paint had been upended over my head.

But all I could see was Fletcher’s body, beaten and flayed and tortured inside the Pork Pit. Broken and dead. My eyes flicked to Finn. His handsome face, reduced to mushy pulp. I didn’t often feel rage, but a cold, hard knot of it pulsed in my chest, right where my heart would be.

My thumb traced over the hilt of my knife. Too quick. This had all been too damn quick. These men hadn’t suffered like Fletcher had. They’d barely felt a thing. A ribbon of fire, the world fading away, and they were gone. Easy. Fast. Relatively painless.

The knot of rage in my chest twitched, and I wanted to leap onto the guards’ bodies, to hack and slash and muti late them until no one would be sure what part was which or went with whom. To send a message to their boss, just the way she’d sent one to me by brutalizing Fletcher.

But Finn was hurt and needed a healer. Besides, something could always go wrong. I’d had enough adrenaline for this, but now I could feel the crash coming. My hands and legs twitched from fatigue, stress, overuse. And I still felt cold and clammy from my swan dive into the icy river.

Revenge, justice, retribution, karma, whatever the fuck you wanted to call it, could wait. Keeping Finn safe and breathing, that was my priority now. My mission. That’s what Fletcher would have asked me to do.

For once in my life, I was going to do exactly what the old man wanted.

I turned my back on the bodies. Finn lowered himself to his hands and knees, rifling through the dead men’s pockets, pulling out their wallets and cell phones. He also ripped off their watches and a gold chain from Shortie’s neck. Finn started to open one of the wallets, but I took it away from him.

“Later,” I said. “We need to get you over to Jo-Jo’s. You look like shit warmed over.”

Finn grimaced. “That bad, huh?”

“Trust me. You don’t want to look in the mirror right now. Your ego couldn’t take it.”

Finn snorted. “Please. My ego can take anything.” He jerked his head at the bodies. “What about them?”

“Sophia, of course. You know how she loves this sort of work.” I picked up the cordless phone resting on a table and hit the number 7. Like me, Finn had the dwarf programmed into his speed dial. The phone rang twice before she picked up.

“Hmph?” The low grunt was Sophia Deveraux’s usual greeting. The dwarf wasn’t big on conversation.

“It’s Gin,” I said. “I’ve made a mess over at Finn’s apartment. Need you to come clean it up.”

“Hmm.” A little more interest in this grunt than the first one.

“Two inside, one before you get to the elevator. Small, medium, and large.” Our code for a human, a half giant, and a giant.

“Damage?” Her voice rasped worse than a whiskey-drinking, hard-living chain smoker’s would have. When she did deign to speak, Sophia liked to limit herself to small spurts of syllables. Nothing too strenuous. Then again, her dwarven sister, Jo-Jo, talked enough for both of them.

I eyed the blood-soaked carpet. Finn might have thought he was hip having that white shag installed, but now it resembled spaghetti covering the floor — with a couple of meatballs on top. “Let’s just say the marble floor outside the apartment will be considerably easier to clean than the carpet inside. You coming?”

“Um-mmm.” Sophia’s grunt for yes.

“Good. And be careful. Small, medium, and large might have some friends come check on them later. We’re heading to Jo-Jo’s. See you there.” I hung up the phone and turned back to Finn. “She’s on her way. Go get whatever you need for the next few days. Clothes, your computer, whatever. You’re staying with me until this is over.”

Finn nodded, got to his feet, and took a step. One of his legs crumpled. He stumbled, swayed, and almost fell over the chair he’d been tied to. I hurried to Finn’s side, put my shoulder under his, and helped him into the bedroom. Finn sat on the bed while I threw some suits, his laptop, and a few more requested items into a duffel bag, along with the wallets and jewelry we’d taken off the dead guys.

Ten minutes later, the doors on the elevator slid open, revealing the dim parking garage attached to the back of Finn’s building. I helped Finn limp out of the elevator. Dark, dirty concrete rolled out in every direction. Late-model luxury sedans sat waiting in their assigned slips in front of a narrow ramp that angled and turned up to the next level. Fluorescent lights flickered over the vehicles, and a bug zapper hung in one corner. A moth flapping around the zapper decided to land on the glowing, tempting blue surface. The resulting crack and sizzle sounded like a grenade exploding in the enclosed space.

Finn pointed to a set of stairs that ran between the levels, and we tiptoed down them. The smell of motor oil and trapped exhaust thickened the air. I skimmed the fingers of my free hand against the concrete wall. Sharp notes of worry punctuated the stone’s mutter. Not unusual. Everybody got a little paranoid and claustrophobic in parking garages, even me.

The low, growling sound didn’t ease my mind. Not after the long, bloody night I’d had. But we made our way down to the second level without incident. I dragged Finn toward the closest car I saw that was his — a flashy silver Aston Martin that would have looked right at home in a James Bond movie. Finn collected cars like other people did knickknacks.