The Spider

11

I stood there and stared down at Cesar Vaughn’s dead, crumpled figure.

Why had he thought of Charlotte at the end? He was the one who’d been hurting her. Or perhaps he thought that whoever had hired me had told me to kill his entire family. A common enough occurrence and a reasonable assumption in Ashland. Vaughn had seemed to think this was about payback for the terrace collapse. Maybe he reasoned that I’d been ordered to take out his loved ones, as eye-for-an-eye retribution for the dead and injured. But that hadn’t been my assignment.

And for the first time, I wondered why it wasn’t.

If someone really wanted to hurt Vaughn, to wound him, to make him suffer like they had suffered, then I should have been hired to kill Charlotte and Sebastian too. Not that I would ever hurt a kid, but if this was truly about payback, you’d think that my mysterious employer would have wanted to hit Vaughn where he would feel it the most. One would assume that would be by murdering his family. Plus, revenge would have been an obvious, logical move and motivation for someone who had been injured in the terrace collapse or who had lost a loved one because of it. But someone had simply wanted Vaughn dead instead.

Now, I didn’t mind such short, sweet, and to-the-point assignments. In fact, I felt a great deal of dark satisfaction that I’d eliminated the threat to Charlotte and had gotten a bit of payback for the accident victims and their families. But, with the dirty deed done, for the first time doubts whispered in my mind, doubts about what this was all really about, who exactly had wanted Vaughn dead, and why.

I sighed, realizing that I was worrying too much, like Fletcher did. But it was far too late for any sorts of doubts and unanswered questions. The job was done, and Cesar Vaughn was bleeding out on the floor, his blood soaking into the rugs, the broken bits of his stone models already muttering about their master’s murder.

Still, I couldn’t quite quiet the worried whispers in my mind or shake off all of the warnings that Fletcher had drilled into my head over the years, so I stepped over Vaughn’s body and crouched down in front of the bookcase. It only took me a moment to slide back the bottom wooden panel that hid his safe. It was a sturdy, old-fashioned device, a thick gray metal box with a simple spin lock. Enter the appropriate numbers, pull down the lever, and the safe would open. I didn’t have the combination, but I still eyed the lock, wondering if I could somehow use my weak Ice magic to shatter it and open the safe that way—

A sharp knock sounded on the door. I whipped around on one knee, my bloody knife still clutched in my hand.

“Mr. Vaughn?” A muffled voice sounded through the wood. “Are you okay? I thought that I heard some sort of scuffle back here.”

So the guard had finally come to investigate after all.

“Mr. Vaughn? Are you in there?”

Any second now, the guard would turn the knob to try to come inside and check on his boss. When he realized that the door was locked, he’d probably become even more worried, maybe even break down the wood with his massive shoulder.

Time for me to leave.

I got to my feet and hurried over to the windows at the back of the office, making sure to grab the knife that I’d dropped earlier during my fight with Vaughn.

“Mr. Vaughn?” the guard called out again. “Are you okay?”

The knob rattled as he tried to open the door.

I should be getting while the getting was good, but I hesitated, my gaze flicking back to the safe. Finn could have cracked it if he were here, probably before the guard busted into the office, but I wasn’t as good with locks as he was, especially not with something a little more sophisticated like the safe. Besides, my escape was more important than any information that I might find.

So I opened one of the windows, slipped out of the construction magnate’s office, and disappeared into the night.

I made it through the compound, over to the opening I’d cut in the fence, and back down the block to where Fletcher was waiting in the van. I opened the passenger door and slid inside. He studied me, looking for injuries and taking in the blood that covered my vest, shirt, and gloves.

“Problems?”

I shook my head. “Vaughn used some of his Stone magic to try to fight me off, but I was able to get him in the end. I’m not even injured, so we don’t have to go to Jo-Jo’s tonight.”

I told him everything that had happened, including Vaughn’s mysterious visitor.

“Harry?” Fletcher asked, his green eyes sharpening with interest until they glinted like a cat’s in the semidarkness. “That was the cop’s name? You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“No reason.”

Fletcher’s voice was as easy as ever, but he had hesitated a second too long before answering me. I studied him the same way that he’d looked at me when I’d first gotten into the van. I wondered what he knew about Harry that I didn’t.

“This cop gave Vaughn a file?” Fletcher asked. “What kind of file?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t get a look at it or any of the information inside before Vaughn stuffed it into his safe.”

“I’ll have to see if I can get my hands on a copy of the police report, then,” Fletcher murmured. “It might make some mention of the safe and what’s inside it.”

“But it doesn’t much matter now, does it? The job is done, and Vaughn is dead. You thought this assignment would be a problem, but see? Everything is fine—just like I’d told you it would be.”

Fletcher stared out through the windshield and drummed his fingers on the top of the steering wheel. Thinking. “Maybe. But I’d still like to know what was in that file that got Vaughn so hot and bothered, especially if it had something to do with the restaurant accident.”

“The cop, Harry, mentioned a crime scene.”

I deliberately used his name again to see if Fletcher would react, but he didn’t so much as twitch an eyelash. Maybe I’d only imagined his earlier hesitation.

“He had to be talking about the restaurant.”

“No doubt.” Fletcher nodded, as if he’d made some sort of decision. “But you’re right. The job is done—for tonight. Let’s get you home so you can get cleaned up.”

He turned the key in the ignition, and the van rumbled to life. Fletcher rolled out of the parking lot, turned right, and drove by the construction compound. The guards were no longer sitting inside their shack at the main gate, and it looked like all of the lights had been turned on inside the building. No doubt, the guards were searching every room, office, and hallway for their boss’s killer. But I hadn’t left anything behind for them to find—except Vaughn’s body.

I grinned, and more of that dark satisfaction surged through me. Vaughn was dead, Charlotte was safe, and the job was finished. Who ordered the hit and why, that was all just background noise now, and it would soon fade away.

Fletcher leaned over and flipped on the police scanner attached to the van’s dashboard. Another one of his safety precautions.

“We’ve got a call at Vaughn Construction,” a voice crackled over the line. “Dead body.”

Another voice crackled back. “Roger that. Just down the street from that location. On my way there now.”

In the distance, a siren started to wail. A few seconds later, a pair of flashing blue and white lights popped into view about three blocks away, heading toward us. My hands curled around the armrests, and worried tension replaced my satisfaction—I was still covered with Vaughn’s blood, and the cops could always set up a roadblock.

“Yep,” Fletcher said in a calm voice, completely unconcerned by the commotion. “Definitely time for us to leave.”

He stopped the van at the sign at the end of the block. The old man waited until the police car blasted by us, lights flashing and siren still wailing, then sedately made the turn toward home.