Spider's Bite

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.

I got up and rummaged through one of the junk drawers in the kitchen until I came up with a magnifying glass. Then I sat back down and used it to go over the picture again.

Instead of the classic string of pearls I’d always seen her with, Alexis James wore a different sort of necklace in the photo. Oh, the slender white cord that encircled her throat still had pearls on it, but there was a large pendant set in the middle of necklace.

A tooth — a large, triangular-shaped tooth done in polished jet.

The tooth was the same as the jet symbol the guy at Finn’s place had worn on a chain around his neck. The same symbol the man at Caine’s cabin had tattooed on his wrist. The Air elemental’s symbol. Her mark. Her calling card. I recognized the rune immediately — and what it really was.

“Son of a bitch,” I said. “A shark’s tooth. The rune is a fucking shark’s tooth.”

Haley James wasn’t the Air elemental. Her sister was. Alexis was the one who’d tortured Fletcher, who’d been on her way to do the same thing to Donovan Caine. Alexis James was the one who’d been pulling the strings of Charles Carlyle and Wayne Stephenson. She was the bitch who’d set up this whole thing.

“What are you muttering about?” Finn asked. “Some of us are trying to concentrate.”

I slapped the photo down on the table and tapped my finger on the necklace. “This — this is what I’m muttering about.”

Both men leaned forward to stare at the picture. They spotted it at the same time.

“Is that—” Finn started.

“That looks like—” Donovan Caine chimed in.

“You bet it is,” I snarled, cutting them both off. “That’s the tooth. The Air elemental’s precious rune. Alexis James is the one running the show, not her sister, Haley.”

We sat there digesting the information. The cold knot of rage in my chest started beating like a clock, a slow, steady countdown to Alexis James’s death. Tick-fucking-tock.

“But what about the files? The ones that implicate Haley James?” Donovan Caine asked.

We both looked at Finn.

“Alexis could be using her sister’s log-in information,” Finn said. “Wouldn’t be hard for her to do.”

“Or Haley could be handling the money, while Alexis does the dirty work,” Donovan replied. “Alexis could even be making her steal, threatening her with magic.”

“Doesn’t matter to me either way,” I said. “They’re both going to die.”

Donovan Caine shook his head. “No. You can’t kill Haley James, not if she’s innocent.”

“Her sister’s running around town using her magic to torture people. How innocent do you think Haley is?” I snapped.

The detective’s eyes burned into mine. “Haley James could be as up to her neck in it as Finn is with you. Or she could be as innocent as that little girl playing in her princess castle while her madam of an aunt looked on. Until we know for sure, you can’t touch her. Remember our agreement? No innocent people. This isn’t negotiable, Gin. Not this time.”

“Why? Because she’s not a lowlife hood you’ve busted before?”

“Something like that.”

The detective and I stared at each other. His eyes blazed gold with determination. Cold fury grayed mine out. Neither one of us looked away, and neither one of us was willing to give an inch. Still, despite myself, I liked sparring with the detective. Liked pushing him, liked him pushing back at me. Strength, conviction, and passion were traits I’d always admired, no matter how misguided they were in this case.

“There are other things to consider,” Finn said in a cautious voice.

“Like what?” the detective asked, his eyes still locked on mine.

“Like that photo and bounty on Gin that’s still floating around,” Finn replied. “The fact the elemental wants you dead, detective. And your esteemed police captain, Wayne Stephenson.”

“Stephenson’s mine,” Donovan Caine snapped, his gaze flicking to the other man. “I’ll deal with him myself.”

“How? By turning him in to internal affairs? That’s the most crooked department on the whole force. He’ll just bribe his way out of whatever charge they might bring against him,” Finn replied.

Donovan’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know how yet, but I’ll find a way.”

I sighed. Bickering among ourselves wasn’t getting us anywhere, but I knew from the tone of his voice Finn had something in mind. “What are you proposing?”

Finn smiled and put his arms behind his head. “Leverage.”

“Leverage? How is that going to help us?” the detective asked.

Finn pulled the flash drive out of his laptop and held it up. “Because we’ve got this, and Alexis James doesn’t. Now, Alexis might not be afraid of us, but there is one person she doesn’t want to see this information. At least not yet. Not until she’s finalized her coup de grâce.”

“Mab Monroe,” I said, picking up on his train of thought.

Finn nodded. “Mab Monroe.”

“I still don’t understand how that helps us,” Donovan said.

“Blackmail,” I replied. “We threaten to turn the information over to Mab unless Alexis James backs off and stops trying to kill us.”

“We can also get her to withdraw the reward money on you and convince Wayne Stephenson to take an early retirement,” Finn said. “You have to admit, it’s neat, all the way around.”

He grinned, extremely pleased with himself. I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t disagree with him. Finn had occasional flashes of brilliance and coming up with this kind of compromise was one of them.

“Alexis James is still going to die for what she did to my handler. There will be no argument about that. No threats and no hunting me down after the fact,” I said. “Can you live with that, detective? If so, I can live with the rest of what Finn’s proposing. The bounty on me goes away, you bounce Stephenson out of the department, and we all get on with our lives.”

Donovan Caine’s hazel gaze darkened, and he stared into my gray eyes. After a moment, he nodded his head. “I can live with that. The question is how are we going to do it?”

“Easy,” Finn said. “We sidle up to Alexis in a public place, drop the bomb on her, and wait for her to give in to our demands.”

I shook my head. “Not Alexis, Haley. We go through Haley James.”

Donovan frowned. “Why?”

“Because if she is involved, I get to add her to my list of things to do,” I said. “And if she’s not, well, she can start ducking for cover. That’s what you let innocent people do, right?”

The detective didn’t answer.

“So now all we have to do is find out where the sisters are going to be,” Finn said.

“One step ahead of you.” I pulled out my cell phone and hit another one of the speed dial numbers.

The phone rang four times before she picked it up.

“Do y’all know what time it is?” Jo-Jo Deveraux muttered in my ear, although her slow, syrupy drawl took some of the bite out of her words.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s Gin, and it’s 3:07. I need some information and possibly a couple of invitations. Think you can handle it?”

Jo-Jo laughed. “For you, darling? Anything.”