(Elemental Assassin 01) Spider's Bite (32 page)

The next time the vamp turned his head, I darted forward. A four-foot-high fence butted up against the street, and I ducked down behind it. The gate lay to my right. Someone had forgotten to latch it, and the night breeze had pushed it open even more. Perfect.

The sound of the vampire’s footsteps grew louder, and I realized Carlyle was talking to himself in a soft voice.

“Stupid, arrogant bitch,” he muttered, passing the gate. “Thought she’d torture me. Hah. Old Chuckie C. showed her who was boss. Stupid bitch—”

My first knife slashed into his leg, severing his hamstring so the bastard couldn’t run again. Carlyle had just started to scream when I popped up from behind the fence and used my other knife to cut his throat. A fountain of blood spewed out of the deep, lethal wound, spattering me and the fence.

Carlyle stumbled back, his wounded leg gave out, and he stumbled into a car before bouncing off and crumpling to the sidewalk. One hand clutched at his leg. The other tried to slow the blood gushing out of his neck.

I came around the fence and stood over him, a bloody knife in either hand. The vampire’s eyes widened, and he tried to drag himself away. But he’d already lost too much blood. Carlyle managed to pull himself forward about two feet before his wet hand slipped off the wound in his neck. Arterial blood coated the sidewalk like black varnish.

I used the toe of my boot to turn the vampire over onto his back, then crouched down beside him. “Don’t say I didn’t keep my promise, Chuck. I’d told you that you’d die quick.”

The vampire tried to gurgle something at me, but the effort was just too much for him. The sound snuffed out like a candle and died. A few seconds later, Carlyle did the same.

I waited until I was sure he was dead, then got to my feet. My eyes scanned the surrounding houses, but no lights snapped on. No curtains twitched. Nobody opened their front door. No one had heard the vamp die, but I still had to do something with his body. My gaze flicked to the fence. I didn’t think the owner would appreciate finding blood spatters all over that in the morning.

So I pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket and hit one of the numbers stored in the speed dial. It rang three times before she picked it up.

“Hmph?” Sophia Deveraux answered with her usual greeting.

“It’s Gin,” I said. “Good news. I’ve changed my mind about not needing your services. How fast can you get over to Northtown?”

For once, luck smiled on me. Sophia Deveraux was in the area and arrived about ten minutes later, pulling up to the curb in her vintage black convertible. I eyed the car. With its long body, fins, enormous trunk, and creamy white interior, it looked more like a hearse than a classic car, especially this late at night. I showed the Goth dwarf the blood on the fence and the bush I’d dragged Charles Carlyle’s body behind.

“Do you think you can clean this up before one of the neighbors wakes up and sees you?” I asked in a low voice. “Or do I need to stay and help you with the body?”

Sophia grunted and gave me a sharp look.

“Sorry. Just thought I’d ask.”

While the dwarf got to work, I jogged back to Carlyle’s house. The front door was still open. I stepped into the house, quietly shut it behind me, and headed toward the game room.

“Why isn’t she back yet?” Donovan Caine’s rough voice drifted down the hall to me.

“Because killing people takes time, detective,” Finn replied. “She probably had to chase the bastard a few blocks before she caught up with him.”

“And what if he caught up with her instead?” Donovan countered. “What if he got the drop on her? What if he killed her?”

Finn laughed. “Unlikely. Gin’s been dissecting toads like Carlyle for years. Why the concern, detective?”

A pause. “Fuck if I know.”

“Might it have something to do with the way the two of you were sucking face at Northern Aggression?”

Another pause. “You saw that?”

“Don’t be embarrassed, detective. Those eyes, those lips, that firm body. She’s a looker. And Gin seemed to be having a marvelous time on your lap.”

Even though I wasn’t in the room, I could imagine the smirk on Finn’s face. I paused, wanting to hear the detective’s answer.

“She’s … something,” Donovan admitted. “But I’m glad it stopped when it did.”

A third pause, this time from Finn. “I never considered you a stupid man, detective, but when you say things like that, you make me wonder. You’re glad you didn’t fuck her?”

“She’s an assassin, and she killed my partner,” Caine snapped. “You don’t fuck your partner’s murderer.”

“Oh, get off your high horse, detective,” Finn replied in a sharp voice. “Cliff Ingles wasn’t the saint you make him out to be. Quite the opposite. As for Gin being an assassin, well, we don’t exactly live in Mayberry. She’s done what she’s had to in order to survive over the years. We all have, even you, I imagine.”

“I’ve never killed people for money,” Caine said in an acidic tone.

“Sure you have, detective. It’s called your city paycheck.”

Okay, time to stop this before the two men came to blows. I tiptoed back down the hall, opened the door, and shut it again, hard enough so they could hear it. I made my footsteps loud and heavy.

“Finn? Donovan?” I called out.

“Still in the office,” Finn replied.

I stepped into the room. Finn leaned on the edge of the pool table, rubbing his chest. Donovan Caine perched on the lip of the fireplace. A couple of shallow cuts decorated his hands, along with a bruise on the side of his face, but the detective didn’t look like he’d been too damaged by getting tossed into the stone wall. Probably hurt his ego more than anything else.

“Where’s Carlyle?” Donovan Caine asked.

“Feeding the worms,” I replied.

The detective nodded. He didn’t seem as broken up by Carlyle’s death as I’d thought he would. Or maybe getting thrown across the room by the vampire had changed his perspective a bit.

“And the body?” Finn asked.

“Being taken care of by our mutual Goth friend.”

Donovan stared at me, then Finn. “So now what?” he asked.

I pulled the flash drive out of my pocket and held it up. “Now we get out of here and go see what’s on this—and why the Air elemental wants it back so badly.” 

23

Using all the usual precautions, we left Carlyle’s house, dumped our stolen car in one of the downtown parking garages, and headed to my apartment.

Once we were inside, Finn opened his laptop and plugged in the flash drive. Donovan Caine dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and flipped through the matching folder we’d found in the fireplace hiding spot. I grabbed the photos of Giles and went through them. Injuries, bloody clothes, aches and pains, everything else was forgotten except for the information we’d found.

Finn was right. Gordon Giles had been into some kinky stuff. Leafing through the pictures, I saw much more of the middle-aged accountant than I’d ever wanted to. But I studied each image carefully. Hopefully, there was a reason Gordon Giles had kept these pictures, other than for his own private enjoyment. But nothing jumped out at me.

After about ten minutes of nonstop mouse clicking and the occasional burst of typing, Finn let out a low whistle and leaned back in his chair.

“You got something?” Donovan Caine asked. “Because I can’t make heads or tails out of what’s in this folder. It’s just account numbers and file names and other gibberish that makes no sense to me.”

“I’m not a forensic accountant and I’m usually more interested in hiding money than tracking it down, but it looks like Haley James has been skimming off the top of her own company,” Finn said.

Not a surprise, but it was a welcome bit of confirmation instead of mere speculation.

“Are you sure it’s her?” I asked.

Finn nodded. “If not, someone’s framed her but good, because her password and log-in information are all over these files. Not exactly the kind of info you give out to just anybody, especially when you’re the head of a company as large as Halo Industries.”

“What do you mean by skimming off the top?” Donovan asked. “How is she doing it exactly?”

Finn shrugged. “Your usual embezzling. Padding expenses. Getting reimbursed for business trips she never took. Diverting company cash flow into offshore accounts. A couple hundred thousand dollars here, a few more there, you’d be surprised how quickly it adds up.”

I frowned, thinking of the care that had been put into this whole operation, into framing me to take the fall for Giles’s murder. “That sounds too easy, too obvious, too sloppy.”

Finn shrugged again. “Keep in mind I’ve only been looking at these files for a few minutes. A company as large as Halo would generate hundreds, if not thousands, of files every single day. It’s probably a very delicate operation, but we’ve got the exact, specific files you need to put it all together.”

“Which is why Gordon Giles spent months collecting information,” Donovan Caine said. “Which is also why he was going to be the state’s star witness. Because he could understand how the money was being diverted and explain exactly where it was going.”

“Do the files show where the money was going?” I asked. “What it was being used for?”

Finn clicked a few more times. “Looks like Haley James has hired several new executive vice presidents the past few months. Part of it went to pay their
salaries,
and I use that word loosely.”

“Her crew, in other words,” Donovan Caine chimed in. “The men she thought were going to help her take on Mab Monroe.”

“I’ve also got several payments here made out to Carla Stephenson,” Finn added. “Looks like ten payments of ten thousand dollars each. A hundred grand, total.”

Donovan’s face tightened. “Carla? That’s Wayne Stephenson’s daughter. She’s ten.”

“Probably not a donation to her college trust fund then, although that’s what it’s listed as here,” Finn said. “Smart of him, putting it in her name. That’s why it didn’t immediately come up when I ran his financials earlier.”

“Keep digging,” I said. “I want to know everything there is to know about this scam.”

We went back to work. Finn surfed files. Donovan squinted at the small print in the folder. And I picked up the stack of Gordon Giles’s porn photos.

Thankfully, and to my slight surprise, not all of the pictures were of Giles doing vampire hookers every which way he knew how. There was a photo of an older lady I assumed was his mother, and several more of Giles in various locales holding up fish and beaming at the camera.

Although they were of a different sort than the previous pictures, they were still mementoes, small treasures the accountant had wanted to keep. Giles had probably put them all together so he could grab them at one time when Caine put him in witness protection. And then Charles Carlyle had stumbled across them and hidden them in his fireplace. Given the amount of porn I’d seen in the vampire’s game room, I didn’t have to guess why the hooker photos were on top—and covered with greasy fingerprints and other stains.

I was almost to the bottom of the stack when I came across a photo that didn’t quite match the others. For one thing, there weren’t any hookers in it. For another, it starred a very different person than Giles’s dead mother.

Alexis James.

In the photo, Alexis James wore black Bermuda shorts, a tailored white shirt, and a floppy straw hat. She stood next to some sort of gray shark she’d speared with the gun in her hand. The poor creature hung upside down, its side slit open, guts hanging out for everyone to see. The shark’s blood turned the dock a mottled brown, but Alexis was too busy smiling into the camera to notice it. Classy. Gordon Giles stood off to one side. He was smiling too.

So Alexis had gone with Gordon on one of his fishing trips and speared herself a shark. Hell, maybe she’d even let the accountant spear her, and they’d had some sort of fishing trip fling.

I started to put the photo aside, when something caught my eye. A black blob in the middle of the picture. I scraped at it with my fingernail, wondering if it was just dirt that had somehow gotten on the print. But it didn’t come off, and I realized it was part of the picture. What was that around Alexis James’s neck? I held the photo up almost to my nose, but I couldn’t quite make it out.