Poison Promise
Page 8

“Just one,” I said, answering her question about bodies. “And it isn’t even one of mine.”
“What?” she asked, her voice still light. “Did Finn kill someone instead? I bet he just loved getting his new Fiona Fine suit dirty.”
“No. It wasn’t Finn. It was Beauregard Benson.”
I expected another teasing comment, but Bria went immediately completely quiet, so quiet that I could hear the faint hum of her phone.
“Where are you?” she growled.
I frowned at the odd, intense tone in her voice, but I told her about the parking garage.
“I’ll be there in ten,” she snapped, every word sharper and louder than the last. “Don’t move, don’t let anyone see the body, and don’t touch anything.”
“What—”
I started to ask her what was going on, but she’d already hung up on me.
•
I stared at my phone, wondering at Bria’s unexpected angry reaction. My sister dealt with criminals on a daily basis, some of whom wore badges and called themselves cops. But the mere mention of Benson’s name had made her go from carefree to nuclear in five seconds flat. What could possibly be going on with Bria and Benson—
“Who was that?” Catalina asked, seeming a little calmer than before.
“Bria. My sister, the cop. You’ve seen her at the restaurant.”
She nodded. “She’s nice. Polite. A good tipper. Pretty too.”
“She’ll be here soon. Probably with Xavier,” I said, referring to Bria’s partner on the force.
Catalina nodded again and looked at Troy. She hesitated, then let out a breath and slowly sank down onto the floor next to his body, not caring about the dirt, oil, and other grime she was smearing all over her jeans. She reached out, as if to touch his withered hand, but thought better of it and ended up resting her palm on the concrete next to his.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” she said. “But I can’t leave him.”
“I know he was your ex, but he was trying to force you to deal drugs, and he followed you here tonight. He was going to hurt you bad, Catalina. Maybe even kill you.”
She sighed, her face suddenly decades older than her twenty-one years. “I know. But he was still my friend. From before my mom died.”
She looked at the back wall of the garage, but her gaze was even more distant. Jo-Jo sometimes got that same look, whenever she was peering into the future and hearing whispers about it. But Catalina wasn’t an Air elemental, so the only thing she was seeing was the memories of her own past with Troy.
I lowered myself to the floor on the other side of his body. “Your mom died last year, right? Killed by a drunk driver?”
“Yeah,” Catalina said, her tone flat. “In the spring. The drunk guy died too, so I didn’t even have anyone to be angry at, you know?”
Yeah, I knew all about the anger that came with losing a loved one, especially so suddenly, so senselessly.
She drew in a breath. “My dad split when I was a kid. I never knew him. But my mom was great. Before she died and I . . . moved, we lived in Southtown. On Undertow Avenue.”
I let out a low whistle. Undertow Avenue was one of the roughest streets in all of Southtown, the kind of place the cops wouldn’t even go, unless there were at least a dozen of them and it was broad daylight. Even then, they’d still be outnumbered by the gangbangers, dealers, and other violent folks. Undertow Avenue also happened to be in the heart of Benson’s territory. No wonder Catalina had known who he was. She’d spent her life living in his shadow.
“Troy lived in the house next door to ours,” Catalina said. “His dad was a mean drunk who beat him and his mom, so he would always come over to my house to hide out. My mom would feed him cookies. Troy loved her chocolate-chip cookies so much.”
She smiled, but tears streaked down her face. “Troy watched out for me, you know? Even when we were little, he’d walk me to school and keep the other kids from hassling me. When we got older, we were more than friends. I loved him. At least until . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Until he started dealing drugs for Benson,” I finished.
She shrugged. “I can’t really blame him for it. In our neighborhood, that’s what a lot of people did to make money. It was just another job to them, and him too.”
“So what happened?”
Instead of looking at me, she traced her fingers over a black skid mark next to Troy’s hand. “Being part of Benson’s crew, there was always pressure to meet his weekly quotas. Troy was always stressing and scrambling to keep up. One day, we were arguing. He wanted me to start selling to help him out, but I didn’t want to. He hit me.”
Her hand rose to her left cheek, as if she could still feel the sting of that long-ago blow. Maybe she could, deep down in her heart.
“He said it would never happen again, but I’d seen that story too many times before, so I broke up with him. A month later, my mom died, and I . . . had the chance to get away, from the neighborhood, from Troy, from all the memories of my mom, so I took it. Maybe that was weak of me, but I took it, and I haven’t looked back since.”
I wondered what she wasn’t saying, like exactly where she had gotten the money to escape from all the haints that haunted her in Southtown. But I stayed quiet, wanting to hear the rest of her story.
Catalina’s hand fell back down to the concrete. “Everything was fine until the fall term started a few weeks ago. That’s when I saw Troy again. He’d started dealing on campus, and I ran into him on one of the quads. He begged me to give him a second chance. I told him the only way I’d do that was if he quit working for Benson and got a regular job.”
She shook her head. “He didn’t like that at all. He said that I was a traitor, that I’d moved away and didn’t remember what life was like in our neighborhood. I told him that there were lots of good, honest, decent, hardworking folks where we came from. I told him that my mom had never dealt drugs to make money. He said that I didn’t have any loyalty to him, to everything we’d been through together, to how he’d protected me all those years.”
Her gaze flicked to his bald head and sunken features. She shuddered and looked away. “I told him to leave me alone, but he kept following me around campus, trying to get me to go out with him. I could tell he was getting angrier and angrier, but I never thought that he’d actually hurt me. Last night, when he had those two vamps with him . . . that’s the first time he ever really scared me. And now he’s dead,” she finished in a faint, tired tone.
“It’s not your fault. The choices Troy made, the path he followed, he did all of that himself. And you are certainly not responsible for his death.”
“Well, it feels like I’m responsible,” Catalina whispered. “For everything. Maybe if I’d been more understanding, maybe if I hadn’t demanded that he quit dealing, maybe if I’d just given him another chance, I wouldn’t be sitting next to his body right now.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe he’d be sitting next to yours if you had made him angry again.”
She finally raised her gaze to mine, with guilt, grief, and memories swimming in her teary hazel eyes. “I know that he wasn’t the same guy I grew up with, but I still cared about him, you know? He didn’t deserve what Benson did to him.”
“No,” I replied. “The Troy you knew didn’t deserve this.”
Catalina fell silent, lost in her memories, her hand finally creeping over to touch Troy’s. We sat like that, lost in our own thoughts, each of us haunted by the dead man between us.
7
Ten minutes later, I heard the distant rumble of an engine, growing louder and louder as it spiraled up to this level of the garage. I recognized the sound.
I finished my text to Sophia, telling her that I was fine and to go on home for the night, and hit send. Then I looked at Catalina.
“The cops are here,” I said, getting to my feet.
Catalina nodded, but she stayed where she was on the floor by Troy’s side.
A large, anonymous sedan rounded the corner, catching me in its headlights. The vehicle slowed, then stopped, and the doors opened, revealing two familiar figures. The driver was a woman with shaggy blond hair and bright blue eyes, beautiful enough to be a model, despite the no-nonsense black boots, dark jeans, and dark blue button-up shirt she wore. A gold badge glimmered on her black leather belt, next to her holstered gun. A giant with a shaved head, ebony skin, and dark eyes maneuvered his tall, muscled frame out of the passenger’s side. Despite the late hour, a pair of aviator sunglasses were hooked into the neck of his white polo shirt.
Detective Bria Coolidge and Xavier headed in my direction. Xavier stopped by my side. I opened my mouth to call out a greeting to Bria, but she didn’t even look at me as she stalked by. Power walkers didn’t move that fast.
I frowned. Did my sister just blow me off for a dead body?
Bria’s quick steps slowed when she spotted Catalina sitting on the concrete, but her presence didn’t stop my sister from hurrying over, bending down, and studying Troy’s body with a cold, critical eye, much the same way that Benson had done earlier.
“Yeah, that’s good ole Beau’s handiwork, all right,” Bria said, disgust dripping from each and every one of her words.
Her voice might have been venomous, but her eyes were dark, her mouth was set in a hard line, and her hands were clenched into tight fists. For a second, Bria looked exactly like Catalina had right before she’d thrown up—sick, wounded, and vulnerable.
Bria eyed Catalina. A bit of sympathy flashed in my sister’s eyes, momentarily softening them, but the expression was quickly snuffed out, and her features hardened again.
Bria surged to her feet and stalked back over to me, her movements even quicker than before. “Tell me what happened.”
I stared at her, wondering what had her so riled up. “Aren’t you even going to ask if I’m okay?”
“What? Why? You’re fine. You’re always fine.” Bria waved her hand. “Tell me what happened, Gin. Now.”
I frowned at her dismissive attitude and abrupt tone, but Bria just sighed, rolled her eyes, and crossed her arms over her chest, as though I were the one being curt and childish. So I gave in and filled her and Xavier in on everything from Catalina’s run-in with Troy last night, to him following her to the garage, to Benson showing up and killing Troy.
The only thing I didn’t mention was Silvio Sanchez seeing Catalina and me, and then apparently leaving a Burn pill behind for me to find. Maybe Silvio thought he could squeeze me for some money to keep his mouth shut. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t told Benson we were here. Either way, I wanted some time to puzzle out the vampire’s motives. And Bria’s too, since she was acting so strangely.
Bria’s speculative gaze zoomed back over to Catalina. “She’s one of your waitresses, right? Does she work for Benson too?”
I frowned again, wondering why she was so focused on Benson. “No, but she grew up with Troy.”
I told them a condensed version of what Catalina had revealed to me about her past. Xavier shot Catalina a sympathetic look, but Bria started tapping her foot, the toe of her boot snap-snap-snapping against the concrete, racing along with her thoughts.
“What about that pill you found?” Bria asked.
I pulled the plastic bag with its blood-red pill out of my pocket, and she snatched it out of my hand. For a second, I thought about snatching it back from her. Bria’s lack of manners was starting to get on my nerves.
“You know what it is?” I asked.
Her tense expression grew even grimmer. “It’s called Burn. It’s the latest designer drug on the streets, courtesy of Benson.”
“Burn? Why that name?”
“Because it’s supposed to make you feel like you are a mile high and like your veins are on fire at the same time,” Xavier rumbled in his low, deep voice.
“Well, I suppose that explains the rune stamped on it,” I murmured. “That crown-and-flame design represents raw, destructive power. But that’s not Benson’s rune, is it?”
“No,” Bria said, still staring at the pill. “His is the letter B with two fangs sticking out.”
“Supposedly, just one of those little babies will take you on the ride of your life,” Xavier chimed in. “Human, vampire, giant, dwarf. It’ll knock you on your ass no matter how big and strong you are, make you see things that aren’t there, and generally screw with your head, according to the reports and what we’ve seen. It’s supposed to be a real trip.”
“Elementals too?” I asked.
He and Bria exchanged a glance.
“We’ve actually heard that it’s even more potent for elementals,” she said. “And it doesn’t seem to matter how strong or weak their magic is or what element or offshoot they’re gifted in. It really packs a punch with them. Nobody knows why, though.”
“But haven’t you guys analyzed the pills to figure out what’s in them?”
She shook her head. “We’ve tried, but the lab folks haven’t been able to figure out all the ingredients. They’ve told me that there’s something that gives the pills their zing, but that they haven’t been able to pinpoint it yet.”
Her words made me think back to the fork I’d touched in the Pork Pit. The utensil had had plenty of zing, so much so that it had practically sizzled with the auburn-haired woman’s magic, whatever it was, before the sensation had slowly started to dissipate. And now here was something else that was unknown, dangerous, and deadly.