Black Widow
Page 23

Finally, we reached the back of the room, where dozens of desks clustered in bunches, all of them sleek chrome contraptions covered with computers, monitors, and ringing phones. Detectives wearing suits and ties sprawled in their executive, leather chairs, gabbing on their phones, while others milled around the espresso machines that lined one section of the wall, along with wooden tables that boasted platters of fresh fruit, buttery croissants, and a dozen different kinds of Danishes. I snorted. No bad coffee and stale doughnuts here. The po-po had a better spread than most of the corporate climbers in the downtown skyscrapers.
Still, it wasn’t all strawberries and shortcakes. Uniformed officers moved back and forth in front of the detectives’ desks, carrying files, murmuring into their radios, and escorting some unhappy-looking individuals from one side of the station to the other. Three vampire hookers slumped on a wooden bench next to the espresso machines, their skirts riding up and their tops drooping down, showing inordinate amounts of leg and cleavage as they waited to be booked. An archway cut into the wall a few feet away led into another room that featured a fingerprint station, a camera, and a height chart for mug shots.
Sophia was sitting at the end of the bench, looking calm and unruffled, despite the handcuffs that were still cinched around her wrists. The same couldn’t be said for the hookers, who eyed her with obvious curiosity.
“Boo,” Sophia rasped, causing the hooker closest to her to shriek and almost fall off the bench.
One of the many knots of tension in my chest loosened at the knowledge that Sophia was okay. Silvio went over to the officer in charge to see what he could do to help her, but I scanned the room, looking for Dobson.
It didn’t take me long to find the giant. The second I spotted him, my chest knotted right back up again because he was standing next to a pair of desks, along with two familiar figures. One of them was a woman, about my size, with shaggy blond hair and blue eyes. The other was a giant, around seven feet tall with thick muscles, ebony skin, and a pair of aviator sunglasses that had been propped up on top of his shaved head. My baby sister, Detective Bria Coolidge, and her partner, Xavier, who was also Roslyn’s significant other.
Things were definitely going from bad to worse, just like I’d feared.
I looked over to find Silvio slipping a wad of hundred-dollar bills into the booking officer’s hand. A second later, the officer was pulling out his keys and unlocking the cuffs on Sophia’s wrists. Relieved that Silvio was taking care of her, I hurried over to Bria and Xavier.
Dobson looked over at the steady smack-smack-smack of my boots on the floor, and a wide grin spread over his face. My chest tightened even more. I’d been so busy with everything that had happened at the Pork Pit that I’d forgotten there was one person I hadn’t heard from today—Bria.
But given the smug expression on Dobson’s face, I was just in time to witness whatever Madeline had planned for my sister and Xavier too.
Bria turned to see who Dobson was staring at and did a double take when she realized it was me. Given my nocturnal activities as the Spider, I didn’t spend a lot of time in the police station. In fact, it was the one place in Ashland that I studiously avoided, especially since Bria and I tried to keep our professional lives as separate as possible. But it seemed like Madeline had made sure that they were going to overlap today—in the worst way possible.
“Gin?” Bria asked, the shock apparent in her voice. “What are you doing here?”
“Haven’t you heard?” I sniped. “I’ve been accused of murdering a missing woman, the Pork Pit has been shut down for health violations, and Silvio and I are here to bail out Sophia, who supposedly assaulted the cop who was conducting the health inspection. But really, the clumsy fool fell down all on his own. Isn’t that right, Dobson?”
The captain glared at me, that angry flush creeping up his neck again. He opened his mouth, no doubt to deliver some cutting remark, but his cell phone rang, stopping him before he could get started. Dobson checked the number on the screen and gestured at two uniformed officers standing nearby, the same two who’d been with him when he first came into the Pork Pit earlier this afternoon.
“Watch them,” he barked, then stepped away a few feet to answer his call.
Dollars to doughnuts, Madeline was on the other end of the line, giving him some last-minute instructions for this part of her plan.
“Gin?” Bria asked. “What’s going on?”
“Finn didn’t call you?”
She shook her head. “We’ve been up in the mountains all day. The cell reception up there is terrible, so we turned off our phones to save the batteries. We just got back a few minutes ago.”
“Why did you go up into the mountains?”
“Supposedly, there was some sort of shooting at the Bone Mountain Nature Preserve,” Xavier rumbled. “At least, that’s what Dobson claimed when he sent us up there this morning. But there was no evidence of anything like that. It was all leaf-lookers and bird-watchers.”
So Dobson had sent the two of them on a wild-goose chase to get them out of the way while everything else was going down. A bad feeling ballooned up in the pit of my stomach, bursting through the tension in my chest, and sticking in my throat, choking me from the inside out. Because Bria and Xavier were here now, and so was I—just in time to witness whatever horrible thing Dobson had planned for them. Another part of the grand scheme that Madeline had put him up to, and another bit of my friends’ misery that she wanted me to see and experience firsthand.
“Gin?” Bria asked again. “What’s wrong?”
I quickly, quietly filled them in on all the problems that Madeline had caused for everyone, including closing the restaurant.
“That’s ridiculous!” Bria snapped when I finished. “The food is great, and you don’t have any health violations.”
“It’s just Madeline spinning her webs and playing her games,” I murmured. “And I don’t think she’s done yet.”
“What do you think her endgame is?” Xavier asked. “I mean, closing down the Pork Pit is terrible, but it’s nothing permanent.”
I thought of the hate that had flared in Madeline’s eyes when I faced her down at the restaurant. “Oh, I’m sure she’s working on fixing that.”
Dobson finished his call and stepped back over to us, his ruddy face full of excited expectation. While he’d been talking, more and more detectives and uniformed officers had gathered around, sipping their espressos and shoving croissants in their mouths as they waited to see what would happen next. Many of the cops had the same sort of sneer on their face that Dobson did, but more than a few seemed uncertain or outright hostile to the giant and his cronies.