From the bits and pieces that she’d told me and what Xavier had let slip, I knew that Bria had been adopted by a couple named Coolidge. The man had been a cop down in Savannah, Georgia, where they’d lived, and he was Bria’s inspiration for joining the force. Her foster father had died a couple of years ago from a heart attack. Her foster mother had followed him a year later, hit and killed by a drunk driver.
By all accounts, they’d both loved Bria, and she’d loved them. I’d learned a while back that when your family had been murdered and torn away from you like mine had, you had to make a new family for yourself. Sometimes with what was left of your own flesh and blood, and sometimes with the people you met along the way. It helped to ease the pain.
Shadows darkened Bria’s blue eyes, and her mouth flattened into a tight line. “I was planning on working Christmas and letting somebody else spend the day with her family since I don’t really have any.”
The harsh tone in my sister’s voice indicated that I should drop this awkward conversation. I looked at Sophia, who cleared her throat again and raised her eyebrows, a rare show of expression from her. The dwarf didn’t want me to give up. Neither would Finn, Owen, or Jo-Jo, if they’d been here. The truth was that I didn’t want to give up either. Not when Bria was finally back in my life after so many years. Not when Fletcher had gone to so much trouble to make sure that I knew that she was alive and to bring her back to Ashland in the first place.
“Well, Owen Grayson is having some people over at his house,” I said, taking the plunge. “Me, Finn, Xavier, Roslyn. I thought that if you weren’t doing anything else, you might like to join us.”
After, of course, I called Finn, Xavier, and Roslyn and asked them all to come.
Bria didn’t say anything, but a sad sort of longing flickered in her blue eyes. It matched the ache in my heart.
“I’m cooking,” I said, trying to sweeten the pot, so to speak. “So I can assure you that the food will be excellent.”
After, of course, I told Owen that I was whipping up a Christmas feast for all the people that I hadn’t actually invited over to his house yet.
Bria stared at me a moment more before answering. “I don’t want to intrude,” she said in a soft voice.
I smiled at her, letting a rare bit of warmth creep into my cold gray eyes. “You won’t be intruding. You’re Xavier’s partner. You’re practically family now, Bria.”
Behind me, Sophia let out a soft snicker at my lame attempt to establish some sort of connection with my sister. Yeah, my words dripped with cheese, and I knew that it was amusing to see big, bad Gin Blanco reduced to pleading just to spend a few hours with her own bloody sister. But still, this comedy of errors had been the dwarf’s idea to start with.
I turned and glared at Sophia. Below the counter, out of Bria’s line of sight, I grabbed the silverstone knife that I’d stuck in there when McAllister and LaFleur had come into the restaurant. I brandished the weapon at the dwarf, telling her exactly what I was going to do to her if she didn’t quit her giggling.
But my flashing the blade only made her snicker harder. Given her extremely thick, dwarven musculature, I could make Sophia look like a pincushion with my silverstone knives, and it wouldn’t hurt her — much. At least, not as much as she’d hurt me with her fists, something that we both knew.
“I’ll … think about it,” Bria finally said.
I gave her another smile, but her lack of commitment made some of the warmth drain out of my features. “You do that.”
Bria nodded at me once more, then turned and headed out of the restaurant. This time, I didn’t try to call her back or stop her from leaving, even though my heart felt as cold and empty as the snowy night outside as the door swung shut behind her.
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.”