7
Jade wanted to leave the Pork Pit to continue searching, but I convinced her to sit in the booth and at least pretend to eat some food. While Jade once again moved chili from one side of her bowl to the other, I went over to the swinging double doors and opened one of them. Most of the waitstaff had left, probably to go over to the Cake Walk to get some coffee and doughnuts during their break, but Sophia Deveraux was still in the back.
The dwarf was standing in front of the metal shelves, doing inventory of the ketchup, sugar, cornmeal, and other foodstuffs, with a clipboard in one hand and a hot-pink pencil in the other. The pencil matched the neon color of the lace spiderwebs that decorated her black T-shirt, along with her metal spiderweb earrings. She’d also dusted hot-pink glitter all over her black hair, making the strands shimmer under the lights.
Sophia checked a final box on her clipboard sheet and turned to me. “What’s wrong?” she rasped in her eerie, broken voice.
“Jade’s sister is missing, and she wants me to find her.”
“How long?”
“Since last night.”
Understanding and sympathy flashed in her black eyes. “What do you need me to do?”
“Go home with Jade,” I said. “She shouldn’t be alone right now. Help her call all of Elissa’s friends again, just in case. And keep an eye out too. Jade has her share of enemies, just like all the underworld bosses do. Someone may have grabbed Elissa to get at her. A ransom demand might be coming.”
Sophia nodded, but disbelief filled her face, and I could tell that she was thinking the same thing I was, that there wouldn’t be any ransom demand because Elissa Daniels was most likely already dead.
The dwarf had known Fletcher even longer than I had, and I knew that she had absorbed more than a few of the old man’s nuggets of wisdom over the years. Fletcher had always told us to brace ourselves for the absolute worst. That way, anything better was a pleasant surprise. The realistic, if pessimistic, sentiment had helped me through more than one bad situation, and I was hoping that it would help me through this one too.
Sophia put down her clipboard and pencil and grabbed her long black trench coat from the rack in the corner. She shrugged into the coat, making the sequined silver skull on the back wink at me. I’d always liked Sophia’s Goth style, but right now, the skull seemed more like a portent of doom than anything else.
I had a bad, bad feeling about all this.
But I plastered a calm, neutral expression on my face as Sophia followed me into the front of the restaurant and over to the booth where Jade was still sitting. I told Jade that Sophia was going to drive her home and stay with her for a while, just in case Elissa came home or someone called with new information. Jade brightened briefly at my ransom-demand theory, but the more she thought about it—and how unlikely it was—the more her features crumpled back into a pale, worried mask.
At this point, though, she was too tired and heartsick to argue, so she got to her feet and let Sophia lead her out of the restaurant. The bell over the front door chimed at their passage, ringing out like a low, mournful dirge.
Silvio moved over to stand beside me. “You know that girl is probably already dead. Or if she’s not dead, she probably wishes that she was.”
I sighed. “I know. But a favor is a favor, and I’m going to do my best to find her. What have you found out so far?”
Silvio started swiping through screens on his tablet. “It looks like Jade told you the truth about her sister. Elissa Daniels is squeaky clean as far as I can see. No arrests and no criminal record of any kind. She’s never gotten so much as a parking ticket. If she got into trouble last night, it probably wasn’t of her own making.”
I nodded. “What about her friends? Anyone that Jade didn’t know about? Maybe another boyfriend besides Anthony Fenton?”
He shook his head. “Not that I’ve been able to find by examining her social media, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’ll start looking more closely at her and her friends’ sites right now.”
“Good. You stay here and do that. And text me that headshot of Elissa that Jade sent you.” I grabbed my jacket off the rack behind the counter, shrugged into the black fleece, and zipped it up.
“What are you going to do?” Silvio asked.
“Start at the beginning. I’m going to the club where the charity dinner was held last night. I’ll get the security footage and see if I can spot Elissa on it. I’m also going to nose around the building and see if I can pick up anything with my Stone magic. If someone snatched Elissa from the dinner, then maybe he left some sort of clue behind.”
Silvio nodded. “I’ll call you if I learn anything new.”
“I’ll do the same.” I sighed again. “Although I don’t think that either one of us is going to like what we find.”
• • •
The waitstaff came back from their extended break, and I left the Pork Pit in Catalina’s capable hands for the rest of the day. After checking to make sure that no one had booby-trapped my car while it was parked on the street, I got inside and headed toward Northtown. While I drove, I called my friends to fill them in on the situation.
First up was Bria.
“Detective Coolidge,” she said through the sound system in my car.
“Hey, it’s Gin. Are you at your desk? I need a favor . . .”
I told her everything that Jade had told me, including about her less-than-helpful trip to the police station earlier today. After I finished, I could hear Bria typing on the other end of the line.
“I don’t see a missing person report on Elissa Daniels filed anywhere in our system,” Bria said. “Who did Jade talk to?”
“Some cop named Sykes.”
“Sykes,” she snarled, a note of disgust creeping into her voice. “That lazy slob. All he does is sit around, eat doughnuts, and misfile paperwork. He probably just wadded up Jade’s report and tossed it into the trash the way he does all the others.”
“Sounds like a charming guy,” I said. “Real dedicated to protecting and serving.”
“You have no idea,” Bria muttered. “Anyway, give me all the info, and I’ll see what I can dig up.”
I repeated everything I knew about Elissa and her disappearance and suggested that Bria call Silvio so the two of them could pool their resources and exchange information. Bria agreed to get right on it and also to tell Xavier what was going on. She promised to call with any updates, and we both hung up.
Next on my contact list was Finn.
“Why, hello there, darling,” he drawled in a deep, suave voice. “You have reached the always awesome and ever-charming Finnegan Lane. How may I be of service to you today?”
“It’s Gin. Does Stuart Mosley really have the flu?”
Silence. I didn’t often throw Finn for a loop, but that wasn’t the response he’d expected.
“How do you know that Mosley is sick?” he asked. “And why are you so interested in my boss’s sniffles?”
I filled him in on the missing girl. “Did you know that your boss likes to squire sweet young things around Ashland?”
“Well, yeah,” Finn said. “It’s no secret. He’s done it for a while now. Ever since his wife died. He told me once that it helps to keep the society sharks at bay. The ones who want to take a big bite out of all his money. Do you actually think that Mosley might be involved in this girl’s disappearance?”
Worry rippled through Finn’s voice. He liked Mosley a lot and thought of him as a mentor the same way I thought of Fletcher. Finn didn’t want to think ill of his boss. Neither did I, but Mosley was far too mysterious for my liking.
“I don’t know, but he was the one she was supposed to meet last night. Mosley definitely has his secrets, and I want to be sure that kidnapping college girls isn’t one of them,” I said. “Can you find out if he really was sick at home last night?”
“I’m on it,” Finn said.
He also promised to contact Silvio and Bria and see what he could do to help them drill down into information on Elissa and anyone she might have had any contact with.
Last but definitely not least, I dialed Owen and told him what was going on.
“That’s awful. I can’t imagine what Jade must be going through. If Eva was missing . . .” His voice trailed off at the thought of his own younger sister, and I could tell he was thinking how horrible things were for Jade right now. “What can I do?”
Even though he couldn’t see me, I still smiled. Owen’s willingness to help, no matter how ugly or desperate the situation, always warmed my heart. “I was hoping you’d say that. Talk to Eva. See if she or Violet knows anything about Elissa and her friends. They all go to the community college. Maybe they have some classes together. Elissa seems like a good kid, but even good kids can have hidden depths.”
“Roger that,” Owen said. “And Gin?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful. I don’t know what I would do if you were the one missing either.”
I smiled again. “That’s something that you’ll never have to worry about.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
• • •
By the time I finished my call with Owen, I’d reached my destination: the Five Oaks Country Club.
Five large, circular buildings made up the club, which featured all of your usual amenities, including tennis courts, swimming pools, and more. Given the cold, most of the outdoor areas were deserted, although I could see a few hardy souls off in the distance, bundled up from head to toe, walking across one of the golf greens. A couple of miserable-looking caddies with heavy bags of clubs slung over their shoulders trudged along behind the golfers. A gust of wind swept over the land, and they all stopped and tucked their chins down into the tops of their puffy parkas until the blustery breeze had subsided.
I parked my car and headed for the center building, an elegant structure of pale gray stone and gleaming glass that served as the club’s main social area. I pushed through the double doors and walked down a long ivory-carpeted hallway, listening to the hushed whispers of the stones as they murmured about money, manners, station, and all the other things that were so important to the people here. I reached out with my magic, focusing on their soft, sly mutterings, but no loud, obvious notes of danger or violence trilled through the stones. Whatever had happened to Elissa Daniels, I didn’t think that it had started here.
Only one way to find out for sure.
The hallway led into a large corridor with several sets of double doors set into its walls. The two doors in front of me were standing wide open, and the trill of more than a dozen conversations drifted over to me. No one was standing at the nearby host’s station, so I stepped up and peered inside the club’s main ballroom.
Round tables covered with pale peach linens filled the massive space from one end to the other. An acorn—the country club’s rune—shimmered in gold thread in the center of each tablecloth and napkin and was also engraved into all the silverware. A glass dome curved over the ballroom four stories above, letting in the weak winter sunlight, as did the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the back wall. Multiple sets of stairs led to the upper levels of the ballroom, where more tables were situated.
The ballroom served as the country club’s restaurant, offering gourmet brunch, lunch, dinner, and drinks to its wealthy members and their guests. Given the cold outside, everyone wanted to be warm and comfortable inside, and people had flocked to the club to eat, drink, socialize, and scheme against their frenemies.
Being a Five Oaks member was a status symbol that told everyone exactly how obscenely wealthy you were, and I recognized more than a few faces in the crowd: the mayor, the police chief, a couple of local congressmen, and, of course, several underworld bosses, all dressed in their best business suits. My gaze roamed over them all in turn, men and women, seeing who was sitting with whom, who was pointedly ignoring their companions, and who had more martini glasses on their tables than plates of food. Despite their nice clothes, understated jewels, and benign smiles, more than one killer lurked in this crowd. I wondered if Elissa had had the misfortune to find that out for herself.
A particularly loud guffaw caught my attention, and my gaze flicked to a table in the center of the ballroom where a man with wavy black hair was using a large glass of wine to gesture at his companions.
Damian Rivera.
I blinked, wondering if it was really him, but yes sirree, the Circle member was here and holding court, like he was the king of the country club. Several women were sitting at his table, all leaning forward and hanging on to his every word. Rivera might be a notorious drunk, but he was an extremely rich notorious drunk, and the society sharks, as Finn called them, would be eager to make themselves available to a man like him to try to pry some of his money loose for themselves.
I scanned the crowd again, but I didn’t see Hugh Tucker or any of the other Circle members in the ballroom. Perhaps they knew better than to draw such attention to themselves.
But Rivera wasn’t alone. Bruce Porter stood against the wall, looking bored and texting on his phone, knowing that his boss was in absolutely no danger from anything other than gold diggers. Still, Porter was a professional, and he glanced up from his phone every few seconds, scanning the ballroom and making sure that his boss was still secure. The dwarf must have sensed my stare because he looked in my direction.
I ducked my head, pivoted away, and stepped back into the corridor, out of Porter’s line of sight. I couldn’t afford to let him know that I was onto his boss. Not until I was ready to make my move against Rivera and the rest of the Circle.
I peered through the crack between the open door and the wall. Porter was still staring in this direction, his middle-aged face pinched into a frown, but he didn’t start across the ballroom to come investigate. He must not have spotted me after all—
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” a snide voice asked.
I turned around to find a man standing behind me, his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing an expensive but subdued navy suit that was tailored to his tall, skinny frame. Everything about him was perfect, from the way his dark brown hair curled over his forehead, to his square gold cuff links, to the small gold acorn glinting in the exact center of his light blue tie. A gold name badge glimmered on his jacket: Marco, Club Manager.
Marco’s dark brown gaze drifted over my black fleece jacket, jeans, and boots, and his lips curled with disgust. “I’m sorry,” he said in an arrogant tone that indicated that he was not sorry at all. “This is a private club. We are not open to the public.”
He said the word public as though it were some sort of horrendous plague upon all mankind. Or at least upon those with money.
“Good thing I’m not the mere public, then,” I said, giving him a razor-thin smile.
Marco blinked, as if he weren’t used to having his authority challenged, but I ignored his confusion, pulled out my phone, and showed him Elissa’s photo.
“This girl was here at the charity dinner that the club hosted last night. Do you remember seeing her?”
Marco let out a delicate huff, as though I’d greatly offended him by daring to ask a question. “We do not give out information to commoners who just wander in off the street. If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to call the police.”
I laughed. “Oh, sugar. You go right ahead and call the cops. Unless you’ve got a couple of them on your payroll, I can’t imagine that they’ll be too eager to rush all the way up here just to remove some commoner like me from the premises.”
Marco’s lips curled again at my easy dismissal of his empty threat. “Well, then, it’s a good thing that the club employs its own private security force to deal with certain . . . problems.”
He looked down the hallway, raised his hand, and snapped his fingers a couple of times. Footsteps scuffed on the carpet, and three giants wearing navy suits stepped up and flanked me. Ah, reinforcements. The men weren’t carrying guns, but they didn’t need them, given their solid seven-foot frames and massive fists. Besides, it wasn’t like we were in Southtown. The most dangerous things these guys faced down on a regular basis were drunken businessmen and tipsy debutantes.
Marco gave me a triumphant sneer. “Please escort this woman off the property. And don’t be gentle about it.”
I could have stopped this before it got started. I could have pulled my spider rune pendant out from under my jacket, flashed it at Marco and the giants, and told them exactly who I was. My being the Spider would have been enough to get them to back off.
Probably.
Maybe.
Okay, okay, so probably not.
Folks had a very peculiar—and bad—habit of not believing me when I claimed to be an assassin, and that one mistake almost always led to their deaths. Their disbelief killed them, right along with my knives.
Two of the giants stepped forward and clamped their hands on my arms, deliberately, painfully digging their fingers into my skin, but I still didn’t reach for my spider rune. If Marco and his minions wanted to play rough, then I would be happy to oblige them.
I liked playing rough too.
I looked at Marco. “What’s the matter? Not manager enough to throw me out yourself?”
His dark eyes narrowed at my mockery. “You know what, guys? Let’s take her to the security office for a more . . . private conversation.”
The three giants grinned at their boss. This was probably the most excitement they’d had in ages, and they were all looking forward to the pleasure of beating me—or worse.
Oh, it was going to be worse, all right—for them.
Marco led the way, and the two giants strong-armed me down the hallway, with the third man following along behind us, just in case I decided to make a break for it. But I didn’t protest or try to wrench away or even dig my heels into the carpet to slow our progress.
After all, they were taking me exactly where I wanted to go.
We wound through a couple of different hallways, heading away from the crowd in the ballroom toward the far side of the building. We passed a few staff members, mostly janitors and housekeepers mopping, dusting, and making sure that the inside of the club was spick-and-span. At the sight of Marco and the giants, they all stopped what they were doing and snapped to attention. The second Marco’s back was to them, they all relaxed again, and a few folks even winced, shook their heads, and gave me sympathetic looks. Some of them must have taken this same forced walk to the security office.
I wondered what their infractions had been. Forgetting to put enough toilet paper in the restrooms? Not getting the last speck of dust off the gilded mirrors on the walls? Or perhaps it was something even more serious, like not bowing down to Marco in what he considered to be his own little fiefdom.
A minute later, we reached the end of this hallway, and Marco used a key card to open a door marked Security Personnel Only. He held out his hand, and the two giants shoved me through the doorway. I stumbled forward and hit a table, pretending to be far more off balance than I really was. All the while, my gaze flicked around the room, taking in the security monitors that lined the opposite wall, the poker cards on the table in front of me, and the half-full coffee cups that littered the messy desk in the corner. Three cups, to be exact, which meant that these three giants were probably the full extent of the club’s security force.
Excellent. Wouldn’t want any stragglers to miss this.
The two giants trooped into the room behind me, along with Marco and the third giant, who closed the door behind him. I grinned at the sound of the lock snicking home, then straightened up and turned to face the men.
Marco crossed his arms over his chest. “Not so mouthy now, are you?”
“Oh, sugar. I’ve always thought that actions speak far louder than words.”
He frowned at my cryptic comment, but I ignored him and stared at the three giants standing in front of me.
“I hope you boys didn’t pay too much for those fancy suits,” I drawled.
“Why is that?” one of the giants asked.
My grin widened. “Because I’m going to have a lot of fun splattering your blood all over that pretty, pretty fabric.”
The giant snorted. Another disbeliever. His loss.
“Enough talk,” Marco said in a bored tone. “I have a club to run, so get on with it. Slap her around and then throw her outside.”
“Yes, sir,” the giants said in unison.
The first two men came at me with outstretched arms, thinking that they could latch on to me again and hold me still while the third man hit me.
I actually did let the first giant grab my shoulder, just so I could snap up my fist and sucker-punch him in the throat. He choked and started to stagger backward, but I grabbed hold of his silk tie, yanked it down, and slammed his face into the table beside me. His nose busted open, and blood flew through the air, along with the poker cards. The giant screamed, but I whipped around and drove my knee into the side of his head. He collapsed to the floor unconscious.
The second giant growled, pissed that I’d hurt his buddy, and he too came at me with outstretched arms. I whirled around him, grabbed one of the coffee cups from the desk in the corner, and tossed the contents into his face. Luckily for him, the coffee had cooled, but it still blinded him. He yelped in surprise and batted at his face, as if he expected the liquid to start burning him at any second. I rammed my foot into the side of his knee, making it give way with a sickening pop! He yelped again, his leg buckling. I darted forward, dug my fingers into his hair, and slammed his head into the table. Once, twice, three times, until his screams cut off, and he too dropped to the floor unconscious, landing right on top of his friend.
Two down, two to go.
The third giant was a little smarter or had at least been in a few more fights than his friends. He raised his fists and gave me a wary look, but he didn’t actually attack.
“What are you waiting for?” Marco demanded, his voice sounding higher and more panicked with every word. “Get her! Now!”
The giant ignored his boss and stared at me, waiting for me to make the first move. With my left hand, I feinted like I was going for another cup of coffee on the desk. Even as the giant moved in that direction, I reached out with my right hand, grabbed the landline phone off the desk, and smashed it into the side of his head. The giant screamed and staggered away, but I grabbed his suit jacket, pulled him right back to me, and smashed the phone into his head again. The plastic broke apart in my hands, and the giant screamed again.
I tossed away the ruined phone and went low, sweeping my right leg out and catching the giant around his ankles. His legs flew out from under him, and his head hit the floor with a resounding crack. He didn’t move after that.
I straightened up and eyed the giants, but they were all out cold, sprawled all over the floor, and bleeding all over their fancy suits just like I’d warned. I could have palmed a knife and killed them, but that would have been a whole other headache to deal with, one that I just didn’t have time for right now. So I turned to Marco, who had pressed himself up against the wall, his eyes wide, his hand clamped over his mouth, as if he was going to be sick.
“Let me guess,” I drawled. “Your boys can dish it out, but you can’t take it yourself, right?”
Marco made a choking sound and ran for the door, but I beat him to it. I wrapped my hand around the knob and blasted it with my Ice magic, further sealing us inside the security office.
“Now, now,” I said. “We wouldn’t want anyone to interrupt us. We have important business to discuss. That private conversation you were so eager to have with me—remember?”
Marco stumbled away and tripped over one of the unconscious giants. I reached out and grabbed the back of his suit jacket so that he wouldn’t fall down and accidentally knock himself out. The manager quickly regained his balance, although he scuttled away from me, pressing his tall, thin body into the corner, as if that would somehow protect him.
“What—what do you want?” he whispered.
This time when I stepped forward, I did finally reach under my jacket and pull out my silverstone pendant. Marco’s eyes locked onto the spider rune symbol, and his mouth gaped open. Now he knew exactly who I was. What a nice surprise.
“Now that the pleasantries are over with, I want to look at your security footage.”