Jennifer Estep: Poison Promise

I groaned.

“I will let you pick out the flavor of the cake, if that makes you feel better.”

“How very gracious of you.”

He beamed. “Isn’t it?”

I sighed again, but Finn started talking about cakes versus cupcakes, vanilla versus chocolate, buttercream versus cream-cheese icing. After a few seconds, my eyes glazed over, and I was in serious danger of falling off my stool from the sheer boredom of his ramblings.

Catalina Vasquez stepped out of the restroom and started to walk over to the table I’d cleared. She stopped when she realized that the food and the guy were gone, then headed over to me.

“Gin?” she asked. “Is something wrong? Why did that guy leave? I just served him.”

“Apparently, he had an appointment that just wouldn’t wait.”

Finn snickered at my deadpan drawl, but I ignored him.

“Go ahead and wipe down that table, please,” I said. “Trust me. That guy isn’t coming back.”

That table belonged to the idiot with the baseball bat who’d jumped me in the alley. He wasn’t going to do much of anything now, except rot out in the heat.

Catalina nodded, either not hearing or choosing to ignore the sarcasm in my words. “Sure thing. I’ll get right on it.”

I nodded and grabbed my book, as though I were going to read a few pages, but I kept my gaze on Catalina the whole time. When she’d shown up a few hours ago to work her shift, she’d murmured a polite hello to me, tied on an apron, and gotten to work. She hadn’t said anything about me saving her last night, and I hadn’t brought it up, but she’d gone out of her way to stay on the opposite side of the restaurant from me all day. I didn’t know if it was because of the beat-down I’d given Troy or because she didn’t want me asking her any more questions. Didn’t much matter. I was getting to the bottom of things one way or another.

Finn waited until he’d plowed through half of his food and Catalina had moved over to serve another customer before he looked at me. “This is what’s so urgent? Me tracking down info on one of your waitresses? This is what I canceled my afternoon nap for?”

I arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t know they let you take naps at the bank.”

In addition to helping me whenever the Spider needed a bit of backup, Finn also ostensibly worked as an investment banker, although shameless, greedy money launderer would have been a far more accurate description of his job.

He waved his hand. “ Let is such a narrow word. The higher-ups at the bank want all their employees to be well rested. Sometimes I happen to take that rest on the couch in my office in the middle of the afternoon.”

“Next thing you know, you’ll be demanding milk and cookies afterward,” I muttered.

Finn eyed the almond-flavored sugar cookies in the cake stand on the counter with hungry interest. “I should get something for schlepping all the way over here on a moment’s notice. You can give me, say, a dozen of those cookies. After I finish my milkshake, of course.”

I snorted.

While Finn kept eating, I filled him in about my run-in with Troy and his goons, in addition to Catalina’s nice car and her even nicer address. I also told him the tidbit Violet had mentioned about Catalina’s mother passing away.

“I’ve never heard of the guy, but if her mom died, she could be living off some sort of insurance settlement,” Finn suggested, polishing off the rest of the dead man’s grilled cheese. “That might explain the car and the apartment.”

“Maybe,” I murmured, watching Catalina seat a couple, hand them menus, and take their drink orders. “Either way, I want to know everything there is to know about her. And Troy Mannis too. He doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who takes the word no very well, much less the ass-kicking that I gave him and his friends.”

“Consider it done.”

Finn pushed his empty plate away and slurped down the dregs of his milkshake. But instead of untucking the napkin at his chin, getting to his feet, and leaving, he crossed his arms over his chest and gave me an expectant look.

“What?” I growled.

“You know what,” he replied in an annoying, singsong voice. “You’re the one who brought it up in the first place.”

I sighed, grabbed the glass cake stand, and pushed it over to him. Finn cackled with glee as he removed the top and started cramming cookies into his mouth.

“Now that we’ve taken care of business, let’s get back to what’s really important: your birthday party,” he mumbled between bites.

I groaned.

“Mark my words,” Finn crowed. “By the time I get done, you’re going to have the best birthday ever .”

I closed my eyes as he started chattering on about my party again. I would have laid my head down on the counter and cried, but there were too many witnesses for that.

After he got his sugar fix, Finn left the restaurant. In between torturing me with what he might cook up for my not-so-surprise party, he did also promise to dig to the very depths of Catalina, Troy, and anyone and everyone they might know. That was comforting, even if all the birthday talk wasn’t.

I kept one eye on Catalina as she worked her shift, but the rest of the day passed by quietly, and no one else came into the restaurant with the sole intention of killing me. In fact, nothing particularly noteworthy happened at all, and I was starting to think that I would get through unscathed.

Until two women strolled through the front door.

One of them was a giant, seven feet tall, with a short, sleek bob of golden hair, hazel eyes, and milky skin covered with a smattering of pale freckles. The other woman was my size, about five-seven or so, with a beautiful mane of wavy hair that flowed past her slender shoulders. At first, her hair seemed to be a rich sable brown, but then she stepped into a patch of sunlight, and I realized that it was actually an intense auburn, with coppery streaks woven in among her lustrous locks, almost like her hair was glowing with some sort of inner fire. Both of them wore expensive pantsuits, black for the giant and a cool white for the other woman.

Catalina directed them over to a booth that was right across from my position at the cash register, and the two women sat down.

The giant glanced around, her cold gaze taking in everyone, from the other customers to the waitstaff to the people passing by on the sidewalk outside. I recognized the hard stare and the mental calculations. So she was a bodyguard, then, one who seemed to be exceptionally protective of her client, judging by the way she sized up every person who walked by in terms of how much of a potential threat they might be and how fast she could take them down. And I was willing to bet that it was fast . Her body wasn’t as heavily muscled as that of other giants, but her tall figure hinted at a lean, coiled strength that would crack out at you like a whip—fast, stinging, and merciless.

In contrast, the second, shorter woman seemed completely unconcerned by her surroundings. Then again, why should she be worried when she had a seven-foot-tall meat shield watching over her?

The auburn-haired woman took the menu that Catalina offered her, then glanced around the storefront. Her face was neutral, but I got the feeling that she was analyzing every single thing in the restaurant, albeit in a different way from how the giant had.

Finally, her gaze met mine.

Sculpted eyebrows, high cheekbones, heart-shaped mouth. Her features were flawless in their symmetrical beauty, and her creamy skin had a faint pink undertone to it, which made her look even more vibrant and alive. Her eyes were a vivid green, the intense color standing out against the black of her large pupils.