Venom

15

Finn saw my face tighten and my eyes darken with anger. “Something wrong?” he asked in a mild tone, even though he already knew the answer.

“I didn’t think Mab would be here tonight, since this is Phillip Kincaid’s casino,” I muttered. “The two of them hate each other. I thought Slater would be here alone, since gambling is one of his pastimes, according to your file on him.”

“Kincaid had to invite her, just like he had to invite Elliot Slater. Leave Mab Monroe and her flunkies off your guest list? That’s unthinkable in this town, even if Kincaid would be happy to dance on all their graves and take over Mab’s operations.” Finn nodded his head in that direction. “And in addition to Jonah McAllister, looks like Mab brought two more bodyguards along with her.”

Sure enough, two giants stepped onto the riverboat behind Mab and Jonah. The rear guard, as it were.

“No wonder poor Roslyn looks faint,” Finn murmured. “Besides Slater, who knows how long she’s had to listen to Jonah McAllister this evening? His arrogance would be enough to drive anyone mad. And Mab isn’t exactly a shrinking violet herself.”

We sat at the bar and watched the four of them. Elliot Slater led Roslyn Phillips out onto the deck, stopping every few feet to shake hands with someone he knew. The giant wore a black tuxedo that made his seven-foot physique seem even larger and more intimidating than usual. Tree trunks would look small in comparison to him.

So far, Roslyn seemed to be playing the role of the devoted date this evening. The first part of which was to look smashing. The vampire had donned a floor-length scarlet evening gown dotted here and there with matching sequins. Somehow, the slinky, tight-fitting gown managed to be tasteful and still show off Roslyn’s perfect figure.

More than a few eyes turned in the vampire’s direction, but a quick glower from Slater was enough to end the appreciative gazes. The giant’s hazel eyes also followed the interlopers, as though he was committing their names and faces to memory so he could beat the stuffing out of them later. He crooked a finger at one of the two giants hovering near him and whispered something in the other man’s ear. The giant nodded and moved off into the crowd. A few seconds later, one of the men who’d been staring at Roslyn was discreetly escorted off the riverboat. If I had to guess, I’d say he was going to get the same kind of treatment that I’d received the other night on the community college quad.

Elliot Slater stayed close to Roslyn the entire time, only letting her out of arm’s reach long enough to grab them both a glass of champagne. Once he was done holding court, Elliot pulled Roslyn over to one of the blackjack tables, where they both sat down. The giant picked up Roslyn’s hand and cooed sweet nothings into her ear whenever he wasn’t busy betting or looking at his cards.

Despite her makeup, the vamp’s face looked pale and sweaty underneath the strings of lights. I had the sense Roslyn was very close to bolting. And though I couldn’t blame her for it if she did, it would only make things worse in the end.

Jonah McAllister and Mab Monroe also worked the crowd. Or rather, they stood in the middle of the deck and let their admiring sycophants come by one by one and suck up.

Jonah also wore a tux, his silver hair a bright, gleaming contrast against the black fabric. Mab wore a black cocktail dress not too dissimilar from my own. The dark color made her hair look like burnished copper against her creamy shoulders. As usual, she sported her gold sunburst necklace. The ruby that made up the center of the ornate design gleamed like fresh blood against her skin. Even across the open deck, my Stone magic let me hear the gemstone’s harsh, powerful murmur — one of fire, death, destruction. The awful sound made me grind my teeth together. The primal, elemental part of me wanted to smash that damn ruby and destroy its proud, horrid murmurs almost as much as I wanted to kill Mab.

“Now that you’ve had time to scope out the place, how do you want to do this?” Finn asked in a low voice. “Want me to cull Slater from the herd? Spill a drink on him so he has to take a convenient trip to the men’s room?”

“No,” I replied. “We both need to leave with plausible deniability. You spilling a drink on Elliot Slater, and then him disappearing adds up to the right conclusion real quick. Throw me into the mix, and they’ll even think they have the right motive. Just keep an eye on them, especially Roslyn. She looks like she’s about ten seconds away from screaming and trying to claw out Slater’s eyes.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Finn asked in a quiet voice. “Xavier told me about Roslyn’s so-called meetings with the giant. All the ways that he’s been terrorizing her. About how he’s been making her play house with him, as though they’re a real couple. It’s one of the sickest things I’ve ever heard.”

I thought about how calm Roslyn Phillips had been when she’d told me what Slater had been doing to her. How the bastard was controlling and scaring and hurting and abusing her. How he was playing with her before he finally raped her.

“I would have cut his heart out of his chest with one of my knives — or at least tried to,” I replied.

“So why hasn’t Roslyn done that?”

“Because Roslyn isn’t a former assassin like me. She didn’t have the benefit of Fletcher’s training. But more importantly, she has her sister and niece to think about. Xavier too. Her dying doesn’t help them one bit.”

Finn looked at me with his bright green eyes. “And you don’t have people who love you too?”

I shrugged. “It’s not the same. You, Jo-Jo, and Sophia know what I am, what I can do. And you’ve seen what other people have done to me.”

“You were a mess after Alexis James and Tobias Dawson got done with you,” he agreed.

I continued on like he hadn’t spoken. “The three of you know the risks by now. That one night, I might not come home. The three of you have each other to lean on. Roslyn’s the rock in her family. Her sister and her niece depend on her. She was trying to protect them.”

Finn kept staring at me. “And you’re our rock, Gin. You should think about that too.”

I didn’t respond. Because the funny thing was, Finn, Jo-Jo, and Sophia were my rocks — and I’d kill anyone who even thought about hurting them. Even if it meant my own death.

It was a price I’d be happy to pay.

Finn strolled off into the crowd, planting himself at a slot machine just in front of Slater’s blackjack table. Roslyn gave him a wan smile, but some of the tension eased out of her slim shoulders. At least the vamp knew we were here and ready to play. Her toffee eyes skimmed over the crowd, looking for me, but she couldn’t see me from where she was sitting. I made sure of it. I stayed at the bar, drinking a gin, watching the flow of traffic around the blackjack table, and thinking about everything I’d read about Elliot Slater in the past few days.

Finn had compiled quite a file on the giant, looking for any way to get to him, any weakness, vice, or hobby that he might have. We’d even dug into the folder of info that Fletcher Lane had compiled on Mab Monroe. The old man had included Slater in the mix with his boss, for obvious reasons. All the information had been interesting but not very helpful. Slater hadn’t become Mab Monroe’s top enforcer by accident. He was a crafty, cold-blooded bastard who liked using his fists to hurt people — a fact I’d felt for myself twice now.

Sadly, Roslyn Phillips wasn’t the first woman Elliot Slater had terrorized. Finn had dug up a dozen investigations involving missing women in Ashland just in the last two years alone. Slater’s name had been connected to all the cases, with him almost always listed as being the victim’s boyfriend.

Tall, short, curvy, or not. Giant, dwarf, vampire, human, elemental. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian. None of those things mattered to Slater. The only thing he seemed to care about was beauty. That was the one thing all his victims had in common — they were all exceptionally beautiful women, just like Roslyn was. Eye-catching and striking with the kind of perfect features you just couldn’t look away from.

The pattern was the same every single time. Slater would see a beautiful woman, become obsessed with her, and start stalking her. Showering her with his own twisted brand of attention and inventing the same sort of sick relationship with her that he had with Roslyn. In every single case, the woman turned up dead — raped and beaten to death a few weeks after she started dating Elliot Slater.

Finn had gotten his hands on some of the crime scene photos. They weren’t pretty. They made what the giant had done to me that night at the community college seem like a gentle massage. Slater seemed to enjoy destroying the women’s beauty just as much as he did admiring it to start with.

Some of the women had tried to fight back, of course. They’d gone to the police and tried to get a restraining order against Slater. But nothing ever came of their cries for help. In those cases, the women ended up dead within days instead of weeks. Slater didn’t like being disobeyed.

The simple fact was that Elliot Slater was a serial killer who enjoyed stalking, terrorizing, and controlling women before he finally raped and ultimately murdered them. He liked their fear, liked the feeling of power it gave him. It was probably the only thing that could get a sick bastard like him off.

Of course, nothing ever came of any investigation into Slater, thanks to the giant’s working for Mab Monroe. Hell, she probably gave him carte blanche to go out and find himself a certain kind of distraction every once in a while. A reward for all the bloody jobs he did on the Fire elemental’s behalf.

But I had seen a sliver of opportunity in the file, one possible window to get the giant alone tonight — Elliot Slater liked to smoke cigars. A fact I’d witnessed the other night outside of Underwood’s restaurant. Not an unusual habit among the moneyed, muckety-muck types in Ashland.

But in a crowd like this, lighting up a Cuban would be frowned upon. Trophy wives didn’t like their designer dresses to reek of tobacco. And they’d create enough fuss to make even someone like Slater realize it was better to smoke away from all the silks and satins, if only to keep from listening to their bitching. So if the giant wanted his nicotine fix tonight, Slater would have to seek out a less crowded location to puff away to his heart’s content. And when he did, I’d make my move—

“Is this seat taken?” a voice rumbled to my right.

I turned my head and found myself staring into Owen Grayson’s violet eyes. “It is now.”

Owen tipped his head, settled himself next to me, and ordered a tonic water.

“No scotch tonight?” I asked.

The bartender slid his drink over, and Owen rattled the ice cubes in the glass before he took a sip. “I don’t drink when I’m gambling.”

“Didn’t look like much of a gamble,” I replied. “Since you were up several hundred thousand dollars last time I saw you, and the other players desperately looked like they wanted you to move to another table.”

Owen grinned. “I should probably mention that I’m excellent at bluffing.”

“I just bet you are.”

We sat there in companionable silence for a few moments. Owen leaned back, his gaze slowly tracking up and down my body. Admiring the view. I had to admit the unabashed attention pleased me. Especially when there were so many more attractive women on board. Even assassins had egos.

“You know,” Owen said in a casual tone. “We’re going to have to stop meeting like this.”

“Like what?”

He gestured. “At a bar.”

This time, I leaned back against said bar and cocked an eyebrow. “You didn’t seem too upset last time we were at a bar together. The other night at Northern Aggression.”

“That’s because you promised to call me,” Owen replied. “Which you haven’t done yet.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been busy.”

“With what?”

Across the deck, Elliot Slater raked in a pile of gold chips.

“This and that.”

Owen drained the rest of his tonic. “You know, I’m not used to waiting for a woman to call.”

“Well, then this new experience will be good for your ego,” I replied. “Keep it from getting too inflated. I think we also discussed that last time we met.”

Owen chuckled, then scooted forward and put his hand on top of mine. It was a light touch, as gentle as a breeze. But to me, the feel of his warm skin on mine whispered of possibilities — and the pleasure that could be found in more full-body contact.

“What do you say we get out of here, Gin? Go have that dinner you promised me?”

“Dinner?” I replied.

“Dinner,” he said, his eyes darkening to a rich, plum color. “And maybe some dessert too. If you’d like.”

I knew exactly what he meant by dessert. My eyes drifted over Owen’s face, down his chest, and over his strong, capable-looking hands. Once again, a hot tingle of desire sizzled to life in the pit of my stomach.

Donovan Caine wasn’t coming back. The detective had made it perfectly clear that I wasn’t what he wanted. That he valued his precious morals more than what he could have with me. And Owen Grayson was here, ready, willing, and able — and his violet eyes free of the guilt that had always darkened Donovan’s golden ones.

Owen’s thumb stroked over the back of my hand, another light, delicious touch that made me want to say yes to him, just to see what would happen between us—

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elliot Slater get to his feet. He murmured something in Roslyn’s ear, then snapped his fingers. The two giants that had been hovering around the blackjack table moved closer to Roslyn, ordered to watch her instead of Slater. The giant traced a finger down the side of Roslyn’s cheek. The vamp attempted to smile through the touch, but it came off as more of a grimace. Slater didn’t seem to notice, though. He pulled a heavy silver case out from inside his jacket, opened it, and plucked out a long, fat cigar.

My window of opportunity had just opened. I wouldn’t get a better chance than this all evening. I might not get another chance all evening.

Owen’s thumb kept up its long, sure strokes, a promise of what could come later with other, more interesting parts of his anatomy. My pleasure or Roslyn’s pain. No choice, really.

I smiled at Owen, pulled my hand away from his, and got to my feet. “Hold that thought. I see someone I just have to speak to. Please excuse me for a few minutes.”

Surprise flashed in his eyes, and Owen opened his mouth, probably to ask what I thought I was doing turning down his open invitation yet again. I wasn’t sure I knew myself.

I might even have been sorry if I hadn’t already turned and walked away.