Jennifer Estep - Deadly Sting

Finn nodded. “You have to admire that about him. It’s a scheme that even I could be proud of. In fact, I may tuck this one into my back pocket for a rainy day.”

“I wonder how long it was going on. Do you think he started before or after I killed Mab?”

He shrugged. “If I had to guess, I would say before. He would have had to in order to accumulate what he has. If I were him, though, I would have left Ashland the second Mab died. Not hung around for all these months. But the real question now is, how do you want to handle him?”

“Oh,” I said. “I know exactly what I want to do about him.”

Finn grinned. “That’s the coldhearted girl I know and love.”

“You have no idea.”

“When?” he asked.

“Tonight,” I said. “Let’s go get the bastard tonight.”

I sat in the dark and waited for my nemesis to come home.

According to the grandfather clock ticking away in the corner, it was almost midnight. I wondered what he was doing out so late. If I were him, I would have been packing my bags and getting out of town. But he was arrogant. Always had been, always would be. Oh, he’d probably been on edge these past few days, wondering if anyone would be able to trace Clementine and her crew back to him. But given that a week had passed and no one had come knocking on his door, he probably thought that he was finally in the free and clear.

I was going to enjoy showing him just how wrong he was.

It had been ridiculously easy slipping onto his sprawling Northtown estate. There were no giants roaming through the woods, no guard dogs to bark at the first hint of danger, no cameras zooming from one side of the lawn to the other. He didn’t even have a decent security system on the house itself. No bulletproof glass, no iron bars over the windows, no reinforced silverstone doors. The pitiful locks that he did have on the doors were hardly worth the trouble of making a couple of Ice picks to jimmy them open with.

I suppose he thought that the stone wall and iron gate out front would deter most folks. Well, that and who he used to work for—but not me.

After I’d opened one of the doors, I’d gone from room to room to room, looking at all of his things, but the house was as cold and impersonal as he was. Oh, all of the furnishings were the absolute best that money could buy: antique desks and chairs, delicate china in stained-glass cabinets, expensive appliances done in polished chrome. But most of the furniture looked like it had never even been sat on, and there hadn’t been any human touches in the house—no odd knickknacks, no stacks of books, no piles of magazines. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d been at Mab’s beck and call so long he probably hadn’t spent much time in his own house.

The only room that looked remotely lived in had been the master bathroom, and that was only because of all the beauty products inside. They were everywhere—in the medicine cabinet, clustered on the sink, even lined up like plastic soldiers around the rim of the sunken bathtub. Jo-Jo didn’t have as many anti-aging creams, gels, and lotions in her beauty salon as he did in his bathroom. Then again, that didn’t surprise me either. Not knowing what I did about him. He might have been a lackey, but he was a vain one at that.

The only other oddity I’d noticed had been all the mirrors. There was one on just about every wall, as though this was some sort of circus fun house instead of an upscale mansion. I wondered what exactly he saw when he peered into the glass. If he saw the smooth, confident figure he always tried to present to the world or the heartless monster lurking underneath that I did, maybe even if he saw Mab’s ghost trailing along behind him. But it didn’t much matter in the end. All that really mattered were people’s actions, and he’d doomed himself long ago with his.

Those were my thoughts as I waited in his office. I’d decided to make my approach in here because I’d figured he’d probably stop by for a nightcap before heading to bed. Along with the desk I was sitting at, the other main feature of the room was a mahogany wet bar. Behind it perched a cabinet that was stocked with booze. A snifter and a bottle of brandy had been placed in the center of the bar, perpetually on call for their owner to come home and imbibe. I wondered how many drinks he’d had since that night at the museum—and if they’d been downed to calm shaking nerves or to celebrate his actions seemingly going undetected.

I might ask him—before the end.

Outside, a car churned across the crushed-shell driveway, and a pair of headlights sliced across the glass doors behind me that led out to a patio in the front yard. But I stayed where I was at his desk and waited, just waited.

Two minutes later, a key turned in the front-door lock, and a couple of footsteps sounded, scraping repeatedly across the rug inside the door. I admired his cleanliness, if nothing else. Home, sweet home.

He shut and locked the front door behind him, then made other noises as he moved through the house. The soft rustle of fabric as he shrugged out of his suit jacket. The clatter of his keys as he tossed them into a bowl on a table. The dull clang of his umbrella as he slid it into a brass tub. That was the other thing I’d noticed as I’d searched the house: he was very meticulous. Everything had a place, and there was a place for everything. Even Finn would have been envious of his walk-in closet, where the suits, shirts, ties, socks, and shoes were sorted by size and color.

It took him longer than I thought it would to go through his routines and make his way to the office, but I’m nothing if not patient, and he got here eventually. One light turned on in the hallway, perfectly outlining his trim silhouette. If I’d bothered to bring a gun, I could have easily put three bullets in his chest from here. But that would have been a waste of lead. Besides, I needed to talk to him first.

He stepped into the office and started to walk over to the light switch on the wall, but I picked up the remote I’d found earlier and hit a button.

The crystal chandelier above my head blazed with light. A startled gasp escaped his lips, and he whirled around. His eyes widened when he realized there was someone in his house—and that someone was me. His mouth dropped open, although the rest of his tight features remained where they were, like usual.

“Hello, Jonah,” I said.

Jonah McAllister blinked and blinked, as if he couldn’t quite believe that I was sitting in his office—in his own chair, no less.

I gave him a lazy grin, tilted back the chair, and propped my boots up on top of the desk. My shoes were not particularly clean, and McAllister’s left eye twitched with fury as he realized that I was mucking up his pristine workspace. I crossed one leg on top of the other and leaned back a little farther, getting even more comfortable in his chair.

“What are you doing in my house?” he finally demanded.

“What?” I asked. “No ‘Hello, Ms. Blanco’? No, ‘You’re looking well this evening’? Why, Jonah, wherever are your manners? I bet you were never this rude to Mab.”

The lawyer’s eye twitched again, but he stayed by the wall. I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind as he debated making a break for the door. Couldn’t blame him for that. Late-night visits from the Spider tended to involve only one thing: blood, and a lot of it.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “You locked the front door behind you, remember? And I have no doubt that I can run faster than you.”