Tangled Threads

15

I stood there staring at the front door of the Pork Pit, wishing Bria would come back, wishing I could just tell her who I really was without worrying about how she would react to the information. But I didn’t want to immediately lose my sister all over again when I’d just found her, which is probably how things would go if I told her I was the Spider.

I shook my head and pushed away my wistful thoughts. Now was not the time to be sloppy and sentimental. Not when I had an assassin to stalk and kill tonight, and hopefully, a little girl to rescue. So I locked the front door, dug my cell phone out of my jeans, and called Finn. He answered on the first ring.

“What took you so long?” Finn groused in my ear. “I’ve been following LaFleur for almost half an hour now. I got in position just like you wanted, Gin. I expected you to call as soon as she left the restaurant with Jonah McAllister.”

“Sorry,” I murmured. “I had one more customer I had to take care of. But the restaurant’s closed now, and you have my complete and undivided attention. So what’s happening?”

“Well, after they left the Pork Pit, LaFleur and McAllister got into his limo, which was parked just down the block,” Finn said. “You might be interested to know that the two of them started sucking face before they even got into the backseat.”

I thought of the way I’d seen Jonah look at Elektra earlier. “Yeah, they’re fucking each other. What else?”

Finn huffed. “Must you always ruin my surprises?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Then what happened?”

I heard Finn take a sip of something through the phone. Probably from his fifteenth cup of chicory coffee of the day. It was a wonder his stomach didn’t explode from all the caffeine he sucked down on a daily basis.

“The limo cruised through downtown, going absolutely nowhere in particular, probably so Jonah and our good assassin could have a little personal time,” Finn replied. “After that, the limo whisked them away to the always elegant confines of the old Ashland train yard. LaFleur disappeared into the hallowed depths. McAllister watched her go, obviously admiring her ass, then got back into the limo and rode away. I chose to stay with LaFleur, since we both know that you can stiff the lawyer any old time you want to.”

“True, McAllister isn’t nearly the problem that LaFleur is.” I frowned. “But why did he take her to the old train yard? What is she doing there?”

Like most metropolitan cities, train lines crisscrossed through the greater Ashland area before their slender metal rails snaked out into the more mountainous countryside. Several years ago, the city had built a fancy new complex for passenger rail service out in the Northtown suburbs that included a state-of-the-art train station, upscale shops, a couple of five-star restaurants, and several ritzy hotels.

As a result, the old Ashland train yard on the outskirts of downtown had been largely abandoned and left to rust. Oh, trains hauling coal, lumber, and other industrial products still rumbled past the area on their regular daily schedules, as it was the quickest and most direct route through town, but none of them actually stopped there anymore. These days, the train yard was a popular area for homeless bums, who liked to squat in the abandoned railcars to take shelter from the cold. At least until the cops could be bothered to come out and roust them.

“It looks to me like LaFleur’s set up shop here,” Finn replied. “There’s a lot of activity out here, and I’m not just talking about hobos starting trash can fires. Giants moving around lots of construction equipment and building materials. Some dwarves and humans too, all working on some of the old railcars and what used to be the old train depot. Looks like they’re building something brand new.”

I thought about what Vinnie Volga had told me, about how Mab Monroe was planning on opening up her own nightclub in Ashland, a place that would offer absolutely anything a person’s black heart could desire, no matter how twisted, perverted, illegal, or deadly it was.

“You think this is where Mab is going to establish her new business?” I asked.

Through the phone, I heard Finn take another sip of his coffee. “That thought crossed my mind as well, so I did some checking on my laptop after I realized that LaFleur was going to be here a while. Guess who just happens to have bought up all the land in the area recently, including the train yard itself.”

My hand tightened around the phone. “Mab Monroe.”

“The one and the same,” Finn said. “Whether it’s the new nightclub or not, Mab’s up to something out here. And LaFleur is helping her with it.”

That was more than enough reason for me to pay a visit to the area tonight. But there was something else I wanted to know before I met Finn — the reason we were doing all of this in the first place.

“Any sign of Natasha?” I asked.

I doubted that the little girl was still alive. Mab’s men had probably killed her last night, since they’d been planning to do the same to Vinnie. Given what Bria had told me, the bodies of the three men I’d disposed of last night had been found at the park, along with my rune. The Fire elemental would know that I was responsible for stiffing her goons. And since Vinnie wasn’t among the corpses, Mab would also realize that I’d gotten my hands on him — and that he’d probably spilled his guts to me about LaFleur and everything else that was going on.

All of which meant that there was just no reason for Mab to keep Natasha alive, except maybe for use in her sick nightclub. I had Vinnie now, not the Fire elemental, so the girl was no good as leverage anymore. But there was a slim chance that she might still be breathing — there was always a chance, even if it rarely turned out that way. But more important was that I’d made a promise to Vinnie to do what I could to find his daughter. Or at least make the people who took her pay — with their lives.

“Not yet,” Finn said. “But I’m going to take a casual stroll around the premises and see what I can see. Might be nice if you came and joined the party. You know, like you wanted me to last night at the park.”

I rolled my eyes. “Must you always mock me with my own words?”

“Yes,” he chirped in a happy tone. “So you coming or not?”

“Oh, you know me,” I drawled. “I never miss a good party.”

I told Sophia what Finn and I were going to do and asked her to tell Jo-Jo to be on standby, just in case one of us got injured during the course of the evening. The dwarf grunted at me and went home, still wearing her black Santa hat with its dangling, grinning skull. I hoped that wasn’t an omen of things to come tonight. For me, anyway.

Once I turned out the lights in the storefront, I went into the back of the restaurant and grabbed a black duffel bag from behind one of the freezers. Cash, knives, clothes, credit cards, a disposable cell phone, some healing supplies, a ski mask. The bag held everything that the Spider might need for a bloody good time out on the town. Emphasis on the bloody part.

I changed clothes, trading in my blue work apron, T-shirt, and jeans for a pair of heavy cargo pants, boots, and a thick turtleneck. All in black, of course. I didn’t really wear any other color while I was working. Few assassins did. Besides, by the time I got to Finn it would be after eight, and the night would be as dark as my clothes. Always better to blend into your surroundings, especially when you were going into hostile territory.

For the finishing touch, I put on a black vest. The garment had a variety of zippered pockets on it, which I stuffed full of my various supplies. Even without the extra gear, the vest was still heavy. That’s because it was made of silverstone, just like my knives. In addition to absorbing elemental magic, the metal also had the added benefit of being tougher than Kevlar. Which meant that I could take a few bullets or blasts of magic to the chest and still come up swinging. Given the fact that I planned on killing Elektra LaFleur, I wanted every single advantage that I could get, no matter how small it might be.

When I was finished dressing, I checked my silverstone knives and made sure they were all in their proper slots. One up either sleeve, one in the small of my back, and two tucked into my boots. My standard five-point arsenal. I also fished a couple of extra knives out of the duffel bag and put those in various pockets in my vest. I had a feeling I’d need the extra weapons to take down LaFleur. The assassin wouldn’t go quietly. Not with her deadly skills and electrical elemental magic. Hell, I’d be lucky if I didn’t get fried in the process.

When I was outfitted for the evening, I slipped out of the back of the Pork Pit. For a moment, I stood there in the alley, my eyes flicking over the black shadows, making sure that everything was as it should be. Sophia had already left, so nothing moved or stirred in the dark night. It was so cold that even the garbage rats had quieted down for the evening.

Still, just to be sure, I brushed my fingers against the back wall of the restaurant and reached out with my Stone magic. The red brick only murmured with its usual slow, steady, clogged contentment, matching the stomachs and arteries of so many folks after eating at the Pork Pit. Satisfied that everything was as it should be, I shouldered my duffel bag and left the restaurant behind.

It took me about ten minutes to drive to Finn’s location. The old train yard was located on the outskirts of the downtown area, just on the edge of Southtown, a half-moon piece of land that curved around a high bank overlooking the Aneirin River before sloping downward and giving way to dilapidated buildings and streets once more.

I found Finn’s Aston Martin parked in an alley on the far western edge of the train yard, several hundred feet from the actual start of the rail lines themselves. I whipped a U-turn and pulled my silver Benz into an alley another quarter mile out, giving us a second getaway option in case things got a little heated this evening. Then I pulled my cell phone out of my vest pocket and called Finn. He answered on the third ring.

“I’m here,” I said. “Where are you?”

“On a small hill overlooking the train yard, about five hundred feet due west of McLaren Street,” he said.

“I’ll be there shortly.”

I hung up and got out of the car. I moved quietly through the night, hopscotching from building to building, shadow to shadow, and stopping frequently to look and listen to the stones around me. But nothing moved on this cold December night, except the icy wind whipping through the streets and the few hard bits of snow that came along with it. Crushed beer cans and crumpled fast-food wrappers skittered across the cracked parking lots, pushed on by the steady breeze.

Finally, I left the streets and buildings behind and entered a more industrial area. A small knoll covered more by hard-packed dirt than actual grass sloped upward before curving around and cresting over the train yard below. Still keeping a watchful eye out, I palmed one of my silverstone knives and climbed up the shallow hill.

Two dogwood trees, stooped and gnarled by age, squatted on top of the knoll. The few leaves still clinging to the branches rustled back and forth in the breeze, threatening to fly off into the night. Finn sat against the trunk of one of the trees, sipping coffee from a metal thermos and looking down at the scene below with a pair of night-vision goggles. Like me, Finn was dressed in black from head to toe.

“About time you showed up, Gin,” Finn said without looking up. “I’ve been freezing my ass off out here for half an hour now.”

“Sorry,” I said, dropping into a crouch beside him. “I had to make sure I was properly attired for the evening.”

“Way ahead of you.” Finn tapped on a slender metal case sitting on the ground next to him.

“You brought your rifle?”

“You bet,” he said. “With the new scope that I just bought. Thought I might get a chance to test it out tonight.”

Finnegan Lane could barely carve a Christmas ham with a knife, much less actually cut into a person with one the way that I could. But he was a hell of a shot, even better than me. Whether you were standing right in front of him or two hundred yards away, Finn could put three bullets through your eye before you realized that the first one had even hit you.

“Here,” he said, passing me the goggles. “Take a gander at the majesty before us.”

I took the goggles from him and held them up to my eyes. It took a few seconds before my vision adjusted to the greenish tinge.

Below us, the old Ashland train yard stretched out horizontally about a mile, with the left side giving way to the downtown streets once more and the right side butting up against the Aneirin River. Even from up here, I could hear the swift rush of the water as it made its journey toward the Mississippi and eventually on to the Gulf of Mexico.

Metal tracks crisscrossed this way and that in the train yard, the rails glistening like the silky, silver strings of a spider’s web in the moonlight, before disappearing into the shadows. A few old railcars squatted here and there, their open doors looking like gaping maws just waiting for someone to be foolish enough to step inside so they could crunch down on them. Loose gravel covered the ground, along with a variety of junk — rotted timbers, rusted pipes, coils, and other bent, twisted pieces of metal.

I moved on, eyeing the building that lay in the center of it all. The old, original three-story train depot had definitely seen better days. All the windows had been busted out, the tin roof had long since caved in, and the porch sagged worse than a set of slumped shoulders. But Finn had been right. There was a beehive of activity around the structure. Giants moved back and forth through the area, carrying lumber, Sheetrock, power saws, and everything else you’d need to tear down or remodel a building. And the improvement project had already begun, judging from the steady thwack-thwack-thwack of hammers and the hoarse shouts that drifted up to us.

In the distance, beyond the depot, I spotted a few dwarves and humans working on some of the old railcars. The sparks from their welding torches flickered, fluttered, and flashed like red, white, and blue fireflies winking on and off in the darkness.

“It looks like they’re remodeling the whole train yard,” I murmured. “Strange place to put a nightclub, though.”

Finn nodded. “That’s what I thought too — at first.”

I lowered the goggles and looked at him. “And now?”

Finn shrugged. “True, it’s not much to look at right now, but Mab never does anything halfway. You’ve told me that yourself on more than one occasion.”

I grunted my agreement.

“So I did some more digging and got a list of some of the building supplies that she’s purchased in recent weeks. Flawless marble, platinum fixtures — it’s all upscale all the way around. Even the paint has real gold flecks in it. By the time she gets through with it, this place will be swankier than a sultan’s palace. It’s got a nice view of the water, plus, it’s only about a mile or so away from the Delta Queen and the Riverwalk. I’m sure Mab will get plenty of traffic from over there.”

The Delta Queen Finn was referring to was a riverboat casino owned by underworld figure Phillip Kincaid and was one of the prime places in Ashland that folks went to lose their hard-earned money. The riverboat was nothing more than a swanky floating castle that fronted the Riverwalk, a row of upscale shops and expensive restaurants designed to siphon even more money away from those looking to have a good time at the casino.

“Then there’s the added bonus of the railcars,” Finn added.

“And what could that possibly be?”

Finn flashed me a grin. “Taking the show on the road, of course. Once Mab gets those railcars fixed up the way she wants them, she can load them up with girls, liquor, gambling, whatever, and roll right on over to the next city. Hell, she could go on a whole tour of the South if she wanted to. Maybe even go up north and show them Yankees a thing or two about how to have a good time.”

“All of which would help put Roslyn Phillips and Northern Aggression out of business,” I said.

Finn shot his thumb and forefinger at me, mimicking a gun. “You got it. Especially since Vinnie said that Mab was making her club the sort of place where anything goes. There are plenty of folks in Ashland with a lot of cash and a lot of sick, twisted vices. There’s no telling how much money Mab could make off this thing, if she does it up right. And we both know that she will.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do about that,” I said, looking through the goggles again. “What did you find out during your stroll through the premises?”

“Not much,” Finn admitted. “A couple of trucks brought some more supplies in a few minutes ago, and there were just too many men roaming around for me to get very far into the rail yard. But I did see LaFleur step into that car over there. The one past the depot.”

He pointed it out to me. The car was almost in the exact center of the train yard, with people moving back and forth all around it. Of course, Elektra LaFleur had gone where it would be the hardest to get close to her without being seen.

I let out a soft curse. “Why couldn’t she pick a nice, dark, quiet, deserted spot to do her evil machinations in?”

“Because she’s an arrogant bitch and her main goal in life is to frustrate you before she kills you,” Finn quipped.

I gave him a sour look, but Finn just flashed me another grin. After a moment, though, the smile dropped from his face, and he was serious once more.

“What do you want to do, Gin?” Finn said. “Going after LaFleur down there will be risky. I’m not so sure it’s worth it — especially since I haven’t seen any sign of Natasha. No one standing guard, nobody carrying food anywhere, nothing.”

I sighed. I’d hoped by now that Finn would have found some indication that the little girl was still alive. But regardless, I knew what I had to do.

“I know,” I said in a low voice. “I know that I’m taking a big risk here tonight. But I promised Vinnie that if his daughter was still alive I’d do my absolute best to find her and bring her back to him in one piece. If there’s even a chance that she’s down there somewhere, then I have to go look for her. And if she’s not, well, maybe I’ll see just how good LaFleur really is.”

Finn nodded, accepting my decision. “So what do you want me to do? Go with or stay put?”

I’d have a hard enough time slipping through the construction workers below. Two of us trying to do it would be suicide. So my eyes scanned the area once more before settling on one of the railcars that was parked away from the others. The slight rise it was perched on offered a view of the whole train yard and the added bonus of a clear, easy exit out the back. If I got caught, I wasn’t dragging Finn down with me.

“Cover me from the top of that car,” I said, pointing it out to him. “I’m going in to see if I can get to LaFleur.”

“And if you can’t?” Finn asked.

I gave him a cold, hard smile. “Maybe if I can’t get close enough to kill her, I can flush her out and you can put a couple of bullets in that pretty little skull of hers. Dead is dead, remember? That’s what Fletcher always told us. I don’t care how LaFleur gets there, as long as we’re still breathing in the end and she’s not.”