Black Widow (9 page)

His eyes narrowed to slits. “Then you better start dialing because you are coming with me—one way or the other.”

“Actually, Gin doesn't have to call anyone,” Silvio piped up. “I'm her lawyer, and I'm right here.”

The lean vampire hopped off his stool and moved to the end of the counter, so that he was standing beside me. With his gray suit and stiff posture, he did seem like a lawyer, right down to the superior look he shot Dobson. The giant loomed over Silvio, as though he wanted to punch the shorter man, but in the end he drew back, restraining himself, although I could see what an obvious effort it was.

Silvio glanced at me, and I raised my eyebrows in a silent question. He shrugged. I didn't know if he was a lawyer or not, but he was willing to play the part for Dobson. My new assistant was definitely getting a raise—should I live through this.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Madeline frowning. Apparently, she'd thought that Dobson could cart me off and murder me with no problems. She hadn't factored Silvio into her crafty calculations.

“Well, now that that's settled, I suggest you get the hell out of my restaurant,” I said, my voice as cold as a winter night. “Before I sue you, the department, and anyone else who strikes my fancy right now.”

Dobson turned his head, as though he was going to look over his shoulder at Madeline and Emery for guidance, but he noticed me watching and caught himself. He snapped back to face me, although he took several seconds to tuck his phone away, button his suit jacket, and calm down, thinking about how to handle the situation. But apparently, he had another ace up his sleeve, because a pleased smile spread across his face.

“I'm afraid that won't be possible, Ms. Blanco,” Dobson said, a cheery note in his low, gravelly tone. “Because in addition to my questions, Ms. Winona Wright here is one of the chief inspectors with the Ashland Health Department, and she's had some disturbing complaints about your restaurant.”

He gestured, and the woman with the clipboard slowly stepped forward, her eyes fixed on the pig tracks on the floor, instead of looking at me. Obviously she didn't want to be here. I wondered how Dobson had bribed or bullied
her into making an appearance. Didn't much matter. She was about to cause problems.

“What sort of complaints?” I asked in an icy tone.

“Bugs in people's food, roaches in the storerooms, filthy restrooms, unsafe working conditions . . .” the inspector mumbled, her voice pitching lower and softer with each supposed infraction.

Finally, she finished, and Dobson fixed his gaze on me. “So, as you can see, Ms. Wright needs to do a full inspection in order to substantiate the validity of these claims,” he crowed, knowing that he had outmaneuvered me.

Dobson brought his fingers to his lips and let out a sharp whistle that made even Sophia wince. “Come on in, boys!” he called out.

The cops outside on the street headed toward the front door, and the invasion of the Pork Pit officially began.

6

I might not have to go with Dobson to the station for questioning, but there was nothing I could do about the health inspector, who had the legal right to inspect every corner of my restaurant anytime she wanted to.

Including right now.

Given the tension, accusations, and hostility in the air, everyone was suddenly eager to push their plates away, pay up, and skedaddle, especially at the thought that there might be bugs in their food and cockroaches crawling around in the corners. Of course, the real roaches were out in the open where everyone could see them—Dobson, Madeline, and Emery—but I'd have a hard time convincing my customers of that.

So I gave the waitstaff the rest of the day off with pay, stationed Catalina at the cash register, and told her to charge everyone half price as they left, if they were even willing to pay that much for my supposedly tainted food.
I wasn't going to quibble about money today. No, I had far bigger problems to worry about.

“What do you want me to do?” Owen asked in a low voice, coming over to stand beside me. “Whatever you need, you know I'm here for you, Gin.”

I shook my head. “There's nothing you can do. Go, take care of Eva's problem at school and the one with your business deal. That's the best thing you can do for me right now. Madeline's screwing with us, and I need to know that you guys are safe.”

Besides, something could always go terribly wrong here, with all the cops with all their guns swarming all over everything, and I wanted the two of them out of the line of fire, should it come to that.

“Are you sure?” Owen asked. “I can stay. I
want
to stay.”

His violet eyes glittered with anger, and he eyed Dobson with open hostility, Owen's fingers curling into fists over and over, as if he wished that he had one of his blacksmith hammers handy so he could kneecap the giant for me. Owen's protective stance and obvious care and concern touched me the way it always did—and made me even more determined to get him and Eva out of here before something worse happened.

“I'm sure.”

“I'll call you later,” he promised. “Just as soon as we're done at the college.”

I nodded. Owen wrapped his arms around me, giving me a soft, lingering kiss. I held on to him as tightly as I could, returning his kiss with an even deeper one of my own, trying to let him know how much he meant to me. Finally, we broke apart, and he rested his forehead on mine.

“Whatever happens, stay safe,” he whispered.

“Always.”

I stepped back. Eva came over and hugged me as well.

“I know you'll make that bitch pay for all of this,” she whispered in my ear.

I drew back and winked at her. “Don't you know it,” I said, sounding far more confident than I felt about actually making that happen.

But my bright, breezy tone and false bravado worked on Eva, who let out a soft laugh, her face a little less tense than before. Owen put his arm around her, and the two of them left the restaurant. The bell over the front door chimed with a mournful note as they stepped out onto the street and disappeared from sight.

“What about me?” Finn asked, taking Owen's place beside me.

“You need to leave too,” I said. “Go to your bank, and get everything squared away there. Look into the lawsuit, and see what needs to be done about it. Like I said, Madeline's screwing with us. She wants us to react, she wants us to fight back, she wants us to be so pissed off that we do something stupid that gets us into even more trouble. So the best thing we can do right now is to stay calm, play it straight, and follow the rules.”

Finn sniffed. “Rules are for
other
people.”

I gave him a look.

“All right, all right,” he said. “I'll see if I can figure out what else she might have up her sleeve. Or, at the very least, who else might be on her payroll.”

“Check into Dobson for me too. I want to know why he's helping Madeline and exactly how much pull he has
in the police department.” A thought occurred to me, and more worry twisted my stomach. “And see if you can get a hold of Bria. There's no way she wouldn't have come down here if she knew what Dobson was up to. He must have gotten her out of the way somehow, and I want to make sure she's okay.”

Finn nodded, promised to touch base with me later, and left the Pork Pit.

The cash register
ring-ring-ring
ed as Catalina calculated order tickets for the long line of customers. With the rest of the waitstaff having already gone out the back, that left me, Silvio, and Sophia with Dobson, Winona Wright, and the other cops in the restaurant.

Dobson looked at me as if he wanted me to put up more of a fight about the health inspection, probably so he could use my refusal to arrest me on some trumped-up charge. But all I did was give him a cold, flat stare in return. His face fell a little when he realized that I wasn't going to protest, but he got over his disappointment.

“Well, then,” he said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “let's get started.”

Dobson marched back to the men's restroom, yanked open the door, and looked inside. “Filthy,” he pronounced. “Absolutely filthy.”

I walked up behind him and peered around his broad body. The restroom wasn't filthy, since I had cleaned it this morning. In fact, nothing was out of place at all, unless you counted the lone, crumpled paper towel that someone had tossed at the trash can. The towel had missed the mark, since it was lying on the floor a foot short of the container.

Dobson shook his head. “I wouldn't take a piss in here with someone else's dick. Make sure you make a note of that, Ms. Wright.”

The only dick here was him. I had to grind my teeth together to keep from kicking him in the back of his knee, pushing him forward through a stall door, and drowning him in one of the toilets.

The giant moved from the restrooms to the cooking area, which ran along the back wall. Sophia stood in front of the ovens. She hadn't moved a muscle since Dobson entered the restaurant, and her arms were still crossed over her chest, so that all you could see were the words
Kiss off
on her T-shirt. Yeah, that about summed up my mood right now.

Dobson did a double take at the Goth dwarf, but he was wise enough to skirt around her, instead of ordering her to get out of the way or using his enormous body to shove past her. He wouldn't have been able to move her, not even with his giant strength, not when she was glowering at him like that. But what the good captain did do was purposefully shove his elbow into a full pitcher of sweet iced tea, making it tip over and spilling the sticky concoction all over the floor.

“Whoops,” Dobson said with obvious, malicious glee. “But, hey, isn't a wet floor an unsafe working condition? And treacherous for customers? What do you think, Ms. Wright?”

The health inspector sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, as if she was ashamed to be part of this obvious charade and witch hunt, but she dutifully checked off something on her clipboard.

After deliberately spilling a pitcher of lemonade, Dobson stormed into the back of the restaurant, where he found fault with everything from the temperature of the walk-in freezers (too warm), to the ketchup bottles lining some metal shelves (too cluttered), to the unopened boxes of flour and cornmeal in one of the cabinets (too full of invisible roaches). And he did the bull-in-a-china-shop routine the whole time, knocking over, spilling, and breaking everything he could shove his giant elbows, hips, and knees into.

The health inspector followed him, ducking out of the way of the flying bits of shattered dishes and fat puddles of spilled beverages as best she could, all the while adding more and more supposed infractions to the list on her clipboard. Silvio, Sophia, and I were right behind her, with the rest of the cops bringing up the rear, making sure I didn't attack their boss for supposedly doing his job.

Still, Dobson's tirade was more annoying than anything else, until he went over to the far side of the restaurant.

“Hey,” he called out. “What's in these?”

He pointed to the freezers that lined the walls, including the one in the very back—where my skillet-wielding attacker's body was currently resting in peas.

I finally realized why Dobson had dragged the health inspector along with him. After Madeline had sent her maid in here to attack me, and she hadn't come back out again, the acid elemental would have known that I'd killed her maid and that her body was around here somewhere. So she'd sent Dobson in to find it.

If the health inspector opened that freezer, then Dobson would get to do exactly what he'd come here for in
the first place. Arrest me for murder, cart me off to jail, and kill me on the way there—just like Madeline wanted.

But there was no way I could stop him from opening the freezer. Any sort of protest on my part would only make him that much more eager to see what was inside it. I was well and truly stuck in Madeline's black widow's web, and there was nothing I could do but start figuring out how many of the cops I could keep busy while I yelled at Silvio and Sophia to run to safety.