Spider's Bargain - (Elemental Assassin, #0.5)
Jennifer Estep - (Elemental Assassin, #0.5) Spider's Bargain
The cop was going to die tonight.
He just didn’t know it yet.
For Detective Cliff Ingles, this was just another Saturday night in the southern metropolis of Ashland, and he was spending it the way he did all his other Saturday nights—slugging down drinks and ogling the sultry vampire hookers at Northern Aggression, the most popular nightclub in the city.
Just before midnight, and people packed into the nightclub. Men in designer suits, women in skirts that barely covered their asses, all looking for their particular brand of poison. Blood, booze, drugs, sex, smokes. Northern Aggression offered all that and more, as long as you had the cash or plastic to pay for your particular vice.
Still, despite the veritable unwashed masses that surrounded me, I had to admit that the nightclub had a decadent style about it. Crushed red velvet drapes covered the walls, while the floor was made of soft, springy bamboo. But the most striking thing in the club was the bar that ran down one wall—an elaborate sheet made entirely of ice. Runes had been carved into the slick surface of the ice. Suns and stars, mostly, symbolizing life and joy. I supposed the symbols were rather appropriate, given all the people getting hot ‘n’ heavy in the booths in the back of the club.
Either way, I’d spent the last hour sitting at the Ice bar—along with Cliff Ingles.
The detective threw back his third whiskey of the evening, then leaned forward and murmured something in the ear of the vampire waitress who’d brought over his drink. The two of them were near the center of the enormous Ice bar, about fifty feet away from my position around the curve and up against the far wall.
Ingles never had a clue that I was watching him. No real reason why he would. If the detective had bothered to look in my direction, all he would have seen was another woman drinking her way through a night out on the town.
Even if the detective had noticed me, even if he’d come over and tried to pick me up, I would have told him exactly who I was. Gin Blanco. A part-time cook and waitress at the Pork Pit barbecue joint in downtown Ashland. A Stone and Ice elemental.
And the assassin known as the Spider.
The woman who was going to make sure Detective Cliff Ingles quit breathing before the night was through.
But there was no danger of Ingles noticing me. I wasn’t his type. The bastard preferred to force himself on young, helpless girls.
And with the five silverstone knives hidden on my person, I was anything but helpless.
I took another sip of my gin and tonic and studied my target, comparing the man in front of me to the photo that had been in the file of information that my handler, Fletcher Lane, had given me when he’d told me about the hit.
Detective Cliff Ingles stood six feet tall, which meant he was a good foot shorter than the giant bouncers who patrolled the nightclub and kept everyone in line. Still, at more than two hundred fifty pounds, Ingles wasn’t a small guy, although his once trim, hard muscle was slowly giving way to flabby fat underneath his expensive navy suit.
With his thick, honey-blonde hair, wide smile, and square chin, Ingles wasn’t an unattractive man. But his brown eyes got a little narrower and a little meaner with every drink that he had. Now, he reminded me of a copperhead, all coiled up and ready to lash out and sink his poisonous fangs into whoever crossed his path tonight.
Ingles wore his gold detective’s badge openly on the leather belt around his thick waist, along with his gun, almost like being a member of the Ashland police force was something to be proud of.
I snorted into my drink. Everyone knew that the majority of the Ashland cops were dirtier than the gangbanger graffiti that covered some of the city’s buildings. Ingles was no exception. Fletcher had dug up all sorts of nasty bits of business that the detective was involved in. Extortion, gambling, forcing vampire hookers to give him freebies in the back of his city-issued sedan. Ingles was a real classy guy all the way around.
But he wasn’t going to die for those particular sins. No, Cliff Ingles was getting my particular brand of attention because he’d raped a thirteen-year-old girl, beaten her after the fact, and left her for dead. Ashland was a violent city, full