Deadly Sting (7 page)

“So,” she said. “Do I need to be worried about you and Owen?”

“Me and Owen?”

She hesitated. “When I came over to the two of you earlier, it looked like you were both . . . involved in something.”

I didn’t know that we were
involved
, so much as feeling awkward with each other, but I could imagine how we must have looked to her, each one of us staring at the other, pain and tension glinting in our eyes.

“No,” I said. “We weren’t involved in anything except a nice little chat. Owen and I are old friends.”

That’s what I’d introduced myself as to her before, and that’s what I was going with now, since it was far less complicated than the truth. I’d hoped that would be enough to satisfy her, but Jillian kept staring at me, her brown eyes dark and thoughtful.

“So I’m not encroaching on your territory, then?” she asked in a blunt tone. “Because I’m not the kind of woman who goes around trying to poach men who are already involved with someone else. And I especially don’t like being anybody’s rebound fling.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Well, that’s a colorful way of putting things.”

She shrugged, but she lifted her chin and kept her eyes steady on mine. I admired her for that—I admired her a lot for that. It took moxy to confront your date’s ex, or whatever I was these days, and ask her point-blank what was going on. So I decided to be polite about things.

“Owen’s a big boy,” I said. “His actions are his own—and so are mine.”

Jillian frowned, clearly not understanding my words, but I didn’t feel like explaining them to her. I wasn’t quite sure what I meant myself. But if she wanted to make a play for Owen and he decided to move on with her, I wasn’t going to stand in their way. I owed Owen that much—her too. No matter how much it hurt.

“What I’m trying to say is that I hope you have a nice night,” I said. “With or without Owen.”

She nodded, accepting my words. What she really thought about them and me, I couldn’t tell, but they seemed to ease her mind.

“Well, I guess I should be getting back to the party,” she said. “I believe Mr. McAllister is about to start his speech.”

“Oh,” I drawled. “You certainly wouldn’t want to miss
that
.”

Finn had told me that sometime during the evening McAllister and a few of the muckety-mucks who were on the Briartop board were going to talk about what a wonderful benefactor of the arts Mab had been, how much she’d supported the museum throughout the years, and how generous it was of her to endow Briartop with her art collection postmortem. Lies, lies, and more lies, all the way around. The only things Mab had ever generously dished out had been pain, misery, and suffering, courtesy of her Fire magic.

If that was what was next on the agenda, I’d be quite happy staying in the bathroom until all the pretty speeches were over with. I’d rather scrub my hands until they were red, raw, cracked, and bleeding than listen to people prattle on about how damn
noble
the Fire elemental had supposedly been. And I certainly wasn’t going to raise a glass of champagne and toast Mab with it. Especially not now, when I’d discovered that she’d had my mother’s and Annabella’s rune necklaces all these years—

“Anyway, it was nice seeing you again, Gin,” Jillian said, cutting into my dark thoughts. “You have excellent taste in clothes. And men.”

She was trying to make a joke and lighten the mood, so I forced myself to laugh, hoping she wouldn’t notice how tight and hollow the sound really was. “You too.”

Jillian smiled at me a final time, then opened the bathroom door and headed out into the powder room. But the door didn’t quite shut behind her, and I watched her through the wide gap. Jillian walked through the powder room, opened the exterior door, and stepped through to the other side. That door was just swinging shut behind her when she jerked and let out a small, startled gasp, then—

Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

The sounds were soft, no more than harsh whispers, but they made me reach for one of my knives all the same.

Because unless I was mistaken, someone had just been shot with a silenced gun.

6

The first thing I did was toe off my shoes so the heels wouldn’t clack against the marble floor. At the same time, I reached through a slit in my skirt. I’d just stepped out of my second shoe when my hand closed around one of the two knives I had strapped to my thighs. I slid the weapon free and pulled open the interior door just wide enough for me to slip into the powder room. Then I tiptoed over to the exterior door. I stood there, head cocked toward the heavy wood, but I didn’t hear anything else.

But there was a pane of glass that served as a vent in the top of the door, so I picked up one of the white velvet chairs, carried it over to the door, and climbed up onto the seat so I could see through the glass.

Jillian Delancey lay on the floor right outside the bathroom door—dead.

At least, I assumed it was Jillian. It was kind of hard to tell, since most of her face had been blown off.

But she wasn’t alone. A giant stood over her body. He was on the small side, a few inches short of seven feet tall, but he made up for it by having a ripped, chiseled figure that would have put any bodybuilder to shame. His biceps bulged so big I doubted that he could rest his arms down against his sides. His skin was exceptionally tan, bordering on orange, the sort of fake, unnatural color you got out of a bottle. Everything else about him was pale, though: his hazel eyes, his curly blond hair, even the wispy soul patch that clung to his chin like puffed-up peach fuzz.

But the most interesting thing about him was the fact that he was wearing the dark blue uniform of one of the museum’s security guards—one that didn’t quite fit. The pants legs stopped an inch short of his black socks, and the chest and sleeves of the shirt threatened to split open with every breath he took. It almost looked like he was playing dress-up in someone else’s clothes.

He clutched a silenced gun in his right hand, the weapon trained on Jillian as if he thought she was suddenly going to come back to life with that much of her face missing. Not even Mab could have survived something like that.

For a moment, sorrow washed over me. I hadn’t known a thing about Jillian Delancey, other than that she’d come here with Owen and had been interested in him, but she hadn’t deserved to die like that.

But the real question was, why had the giant killed her? Why here? Why now? All around me, the marble whispered as Jillian’s blood oozed across it and the giant’s ugly, violent actions soaked into it. I’d thought the stones had sounded upset before, but now they practically hummed with tension and whined with worry. Whatever was going down, it was happening now.

Lucky for me, there was a guy standing right outside the door who could tell me exactly what that was—and how I could stop it before anyone else got hurt.

I started to get down from the chair so I could yank open the door and confront the giant when another sound caught my ear—
clack-clack-clack-clack
. Footsteps, hurrying this way. The giant’s head snapped up, and he moved away from Jillian’s body so the new arrival could see his gruesome handiwork.

The giant waiter who’d entered the bathroom earlier stepped into view. Dropping to one knee beside Jillian, she was careful not to get too close to the blood spreading across the floor. She looked at Jillian—or what was left of her—and shook her head, making her tight curls bounce every which way before they settled back into place.

“What a fucking mess,” she said. “Why the hell did you shoot her in the face so many times?”

“Are you kidding me?” the second giant asked. His high, whiny voice reminded me of a mosquito buzzing around. “With her reputation? I wasn’t taking any chances. Not with this bitch. And see? It worked.”

Her reputation?
My stomach clenched, and I started to get a bad, bad feeling.

“Yeah, it worked because you blew half her skull off.” The female giant shook her head again. “I told you to kill her, Dixon. Not splatter her brains everywhere.”

“Well, who cares as long as she’s dead?” Dixon, the male giant, said. “Come on, Clementine. You know I’m right about this.”

Clementine?
That wasn’t a very common name, and it rang a bell in the back of my mind. I studied the giant, but once again, I couldn’t quite place who she was or where I might have seen her before tonight. I was going to find out, though—real soon.

“We’re the ones taking all the risks,” Dixon said, his voice taking on a pleading, petulant note. “I say we do whatever we want, as long as we get the job done in the end. This is the score of a lifetime. I don’t want anything to screw it up. Do you? So three in the head, and the Spider’s dead.”

The Spider
. That sick, sick feeling ballooned up in my stomach, choking me from the inside out, burning as cruelly as the hottest elemental Fire. They thought that they’d killed the Spider; they thought that they’d murdered
me
. But it was Jillian lying there on the cold marble—or what was left of her.

Finn had been so upset when he’d realized that Jillian had on the same dress as I did. He’d never dreamed it would get her killed, and neither had I. Scarlet dress, dark brown hair, strong, slender build. Owen had mistaken me for Jillian earlier, and Dixon had made the same error in reverse.

The cold, cruel irony twisted into my gut, adding to my agonizing guilt, and my own scarlet gown seemed to cinch tightly around my waist, like a corset compressing my lungs and slowly suffocating me. I could feel each and every one of the delicate crystals around the waist digging into my stomach like tiny daggers. For a moment, I was seized by the unbearable urge to tear off the gown and rip it to shreds with my knife. I wanted to scream and shout and beat my fists against the marble walls about how fucking
unfair
it was that an innocent woman had died because of me.

But that wouldn’t calm my raging emotions.

Nothing would—except killing the giants.

Clementine studied Jillian’s body. After a moment, she nodded. “You’re right. Dead is dead, and dead is good in her case. Besides, it’s not like you can put her face back where it used to be.”

Dixon let out the breath he’d been holding. He smiled at the other giant, but it was a nervous expression, punctuated by a faint twitching of his left eye, and it took him a moment to relax the tight, white-knuckled grip he’d had on his gun. He’d known that Clementine wouldn’t be happy with what he’d done, and he’d been afraid of what she might do to him.

Whoever Clementine was, she was definitely in charge, and Dixon was scared of her. He had shot an unarmed woman in the face, but he was still taking pains to tiptoe around the other giant. That told me a few things about Clementine, namely that she was even more dangerous and ruthless than Dixon was.

Clementine got to her feet and glanced at her watch. I didn’t get a good look at it, but I could still see the flash of diamonds and the gleam of silverstone around her wrist. An expensive piece, one far too pricey for a simple waiter. Then again, Clementine wasn’t what she seemed to be, any more than I was.

Didn’t much matter. She was getting dead in another minute, two tops.

I’d wait until they left Jillian’s body behind, creep through the shadows after them, then ram my knife into Clementine’s back. Once she was dead, I’d find a quiet, secluded corner in the museum where I could question Dixon—a place where no one would hear him scream out the answers. Depending on what he told me, I’d either wipe his blood off my knives and go back to the exhibit, or I’d find Finn and tell him that we had a situation to deal with—

“Is everyone else in position?” Clementine asked.

Dixon reached down and grabbed a walkie-talkie that was clipped to the black leather belt around his waist. “Team one?”

A staticky crackle sounded, along with a male voice. “In position.”

“Team two?” he asked.

Another crackle, another voice, this one female. “In position.”

He repeated the procedure, checking in with three other teams. I didn’t know how many folks were on each team, but I was willing to bet that it was several. This was what the stones had been murmuring about all evening. Whatever was happening, I was going to stop it—and the giants.

Clementine nodded, satisfied. “All right. Grab her, and let’s get out of here.”

“Aw, do I have to?” Dixon whined again. “Why don’t
you
do it?”

“Because you’re the idiot who shot her in the face. You made the mess, so you can carry her. Do you have a problem with that?” Her voice was calm, polite even, but her hazel eyes were cold, flat, and empty.

“No, no, no, that’s okay,” Dixon said. “I can get her. No problem, boss.”

This time, Clementine smiled. The expression reminded me of a fox baring its teeth at a fat hen. “Good. Then let’s get the show started. We wouldn’t want to keep our guests waiting.”

Turning her back on her underling, Clementine set off down the hallway.

* * *

Dixon stared at Jillian’s body for a moment, his lips curled with disgust. Finally, sighing, he holstered his gun and attached the walkie-talkie to his belt again. He reached down, grabbed Jillian’s leg, and hurried after his boss. His inherent giant strength and the smooth marble floor made it easy for him to drag the body, like a kid pulling a wagon behind him. In seconds, the two of them had rounded a corner and disappeared from sight.

I got out of the chair, went back into the bathroom, and grabbed my shoes. Then, knife still in my hand, I opened the exterior door and eased out into the hallway, looking left and right. Not seeing anyone else or hearing any footsteps clattering in my direction, I hurried down the hallway after them, my shoes clutched in one hand and my knife in the other. The marble floor felt as cold and slick as an ice rink against my bare feet, but I didn’t dare take the time to stop and put my heels back on. They’d make too much noise cracking against the floor, anyway.

Guilt surged through me once more. I should have realized something was wrong the second Clementine had sidled up to me in the rotunda, and especially when she’d done the same thing again in the bathroom. Clementine had been making sure I was inside so Dixon could shoot me. But somehow, while they’d been off plotting my demise, the two of them had missed Jillian entering the bathroom. And since he’d shot Jillian so many times in the face, destroying her features, they both assumed he’d killed the right woman in the red dress.

I didn’t know anything about Jillian Delancey. Didn’t know if she was good or bad, kind or indifferent, sweet or cynical. If she had a family, if she was a loner, if she had a couple of cats at home. If she gave money to charity, if she saved every penny, if she was a ruthless businesswoman who crushed everyone who stood in her way. All I did know was that Jillian had been in the wrong place at the wrong time—and wearing the wrong damn dress.

The giants were going to pay for that—in blood.

The determination to end Clementine and Dixon burned through me, but I made myself rein in my anger and focus on the pertinent questions.

As for why the giants might want me dead, it could be any number of reasons. But I kept wondering. Why would the giants consider me such a threat? There were lots of bad people here tonight. So why target me and not someone else?

This had the feel of a hasty hit, something arranged and executed on the spur of the moment. If all they’d wanted to do was murder me, then Clementine and
Dixon had already succeeded—or at least thought they
had. With their mission accomplished, they should be hightailing it out of Briartop and off the island, not
dragging Jillian’s body off to parts unknown. Even more telling was the fact that they hadn’t bothered to hide or clean up the mess they’d left behind. Jillian’s blood was sprayed all over the bathroom door and the floor in front
of it for all the world to see. Then there were the other teams they’d checked in with—and why they needed so
many other people in the first place. No, something else was going on here besides killing me. That alone made
me curious enough to figure out what Clementine and her pals were up to and do whatever it took to derail
their scheme.