"No."
An easy lie. And I didn't volunteer any more information or even ask why Bria was so interested in finding Roslyn in the first place. When dealing with the po-po, it was best to follow the example of Sophia Deveraux and speak only in short bursts-if at all.
Bria studied me, her blue eyes cold and icy. "I think you're lying. You and Roslyn looked particularly friendly when she was in here yesterday."
"That was yesterday," I replied. "Roslyn was here for the food. Nothing more, detective."
"That's funny because no one seems to know where Ms. Phillips is," Bria replied. "She's not at home, and no one's seen her at that nightclub she owns, Northern Aggression."
"Perhaps you should ask your partner if he's seen her," I said in a snippy tone. "Since Xavier actually works for Roslyn."
Normally, I wouldn't have sicced Bria on Xavier. But better for her to be at the nightclub questioning him than standing here accusing me. I had work to do tonight. And the sooner I killed Elliot Slater, the sooner Roslyn could sleep easier and return to her regularly scheduled life, instead of being holed up in Jo-Jo Deveraux's house.
"I've already been to the club," Bria replied. "And Xavier claims he hasn't seen her either."
I cocked my head to one side. "You sound like you don't believe him."
Her face hardened. "What I do or don't believe is none of your business. Now, why don't you tell me where you were last night?"
"You think I did something to Roslyn Phillips?" I laughed. "Oh, please."
Bria's eyes iced over, even more. "You know, we could have this conversation down at the police station."
I crossed my arms over my chest. "Really? On what grounds? That I was at the same party as Roslyn last night? That she came into my restaurant and had a meal? I see you've already taken up the bad habits of the rest of the Ashland Police Department, detective."
"And what would those be?"
I stared at her. "Interrogating people for no reason."
Bria had the good grace to flinch at my insult.
As much as I would have loved to continue this verbal smackdown with my long-lost sister, I needed to get on with things. Finn was due to pick me up at seven so we could start tailing Elliot Slater and look for a place to kill the giant. Which meant that I needed to get rid of Bria. So I decided to give her what she wanted-some answers.
"Yes, Roslyn came in here yesterday, but only to get some food. Yes, I saw her last night on the riverboat, including that awful scene with Elliot Slater. No, I haven't seen the vamp since then, and I don't expect to," I said. "Whatever you think you saw here yesterday, Roslyn and I are not best friends, merely casual acquaintances. I go to her club on occasion, she gets barbecue here sometimes. That's the extent of our relationship, detective. As for where I was last night, I went home with Owen Grayson. We had a very stimulating evening in his office, if you absolutely have to know."
Bria studied me for several seconds. "You don't like me much, do you, Ms. Blanco?"
It wasn't that. It wasn't that at all. If anything, I was proud of how well Bria seemed to have turned out, despite everything that had happened to her. She just didn't realize that I had to keep her at arm's length. That my jumbled feelings for her were still too fresh and raw for me to do anything but antagonize her. That sarcasm was the gentlest and least deadly of my many defense mechanisms. That I had a cold, hard, bloody job to do tonight, something that she could never know about or be a part of.
I shrugged. "I don't know enough about you to like or dislike you, detective. What I hate is when someone comes into my gin joint and starts threatening me. I don't respond well to threats, from the police or anyone else."
She sighed. "I'm not threatening you. All I'm trying to do is help Ms. Phillips. You heard what she said about Elliot Slater, what she accused him of. I've spent the whole day trying to track her down. Surely you know about Slater's reputation, who he works for. I want to find Ms. Phillips before he does. That's all I want to do."
Bria had that same tired note in her voice that I'd always heard in Donovan Caine's. That same tone that told me how many brick walls and dead ends she'd run up against today-many of them in her own police department. Like she said, she was just trying to do the right thing, just trying to help a woman who so obviously needed it. Bria was trying to do things the legal way. In Ashland, all it would get her was dead. And I just couldn't allow that to happen. Not to my baby sister. Better I deal with Slater than Bria. Better for Roslyn, and better for Bria, whether she knew it or not.
"That's very noble of you," I said in a kinder voice. "It really is. But I can't help you. I don't know where Roslyn is, and I didn't know anything about her problems with Slater until I heard about them last night on the riverboat, like everyone else. Even if I had known before, there's nothing I could do to help her. Not against someone like Slater. You said it yourself. You know who he works for. But I truly am sorry for Roslyn, detective. I truly am. More than you will ever know."
Bria opened her mouth to say something, when a sharp ring cut her off. But it wasn't the telephone next to the register that had sounded. It was my disposable cell phone. Which could mean only one thing-trouble.
"Excuse me." I dug my cell phone out of my jeans pocket and answered it. "What?"
"Gin?" Jo-Jo's voice flooded the line. "We've got a problem."
The tight, worried note in the dwarf's tone told me exactly what she was going to say.
"Roslyn's gone," Jo-Jo said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Roslyn Phillips gone? Fuck.
Bria saw my face tighten. Her blue eyes sharpened with interest.
"Gin?" Jo-Jo asked. "Are you still there?"
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said in a calm voice. "Tell me what happened."
"I was busy with clients most of the day. I checked in on her at lunchtime, and Roslyn was fine. Well, as fine as she could be, given the circumstances. Quiet, but fine," Jo-Jo said. "I went upstairs to ask her what she wanted me to make for supper, if she needed some blood, if she wanted to talk about anything, and she was gone. She must have slipped out while I was doing my last perm of the day."
"Do you have any idea why she decided that she didn't like her perm?" I asked.
Jo-Jo knew enough to realize that I didn't want to speak openly in front of whoever might be standing nearby. "She left her cell phone behind. There was a text message on the screen from Elliot Slater. He said for Roslyn to meet him on the street outside Underwood's restaurant in half an hour or he would start killing the people close to her-starting with Xavier. He also threatened to kill her sister and niece whenever they came back to Ashland."
So the giant had decided to play hardball. And instead of coming to me, instead of trusting me to handle things, Roslyn had gone straight to him. She might even be dead already.
"When did she leave?" I asked. "Right after you gave her the perm?"
"I finished up at six. I heard her moving around upstairs as late as five thirty. She can't have been gone more than thirty minutes, forty tops."
I glanced at the clock on the wall. Creeping up on six fifteen now. Which meant that Roslyn had been gone almost an hour. The restaurant was only about a twenty-minute cab ride from Jo-Jo's house, which meant Roslyn had to have reached Slater by now.
"I'm so sorry, Gin," Jo-Jo said, shame and worry in her voice. "I thought that she'd let you handle things. I had no idea that she'd take off."
I sighed. "It's not your fault that she didn't like her perm. Some people just don't know good work when they see it. We'll talk about it later. I have a customer waiting right now. But keep your door open, okay? I'll probably stop by later."
"Sure," Jo-Jo replied. "I'll have everything ready, including myself. Whatever you need, Gin."
What Jo-Jo really meant was that she'd be on standby, ready to heal Roslyn Phillips when I got the vamp away from Elliot Slater. If I got the vamp away from the giant before he killed her.
"Great. See you then."
I hung up and looked at Bria.
"Something wrong?" Bria asked.
I smiled at her. "Nothing serious. A friend of mine runs a beauty salon. Seems like one of her clients didn't like the curl in her hair today."
Bria didn't look like she believed me for a second, but there wasn't much she could do about it. She'd already called me a liar to my face and threatened to take me to the police station. I hadn't blinked at either one of those threats, and she was smart enough to realize that it would take a lot to rattle me. So she drew a card out from her coat pocket and put it on the counter between us. I didn't pick it up. I didn't want to risk brushing my fingers against hers and feeling her Ice magic again. I didn't need the distraction of that and all the emotions that came with it right now.
"Another one of my cards," Bria said. "Please call me if you hear anything about Ms. Phillips. I'd consider it a personal favor."
"Of course," I lied. "You have a good evening, detective."
"You too, Ms. Blanco."
I thought Bria would turn around and leave, but instead, she just kept staring at me with her cold, icy eyes.
"Is there something else, detective?" I finally asked.
"It's funny," she murmured. "But ever since I came here a few days ago, I've had the strangest feeling of deja vu about you. Almost like I... know you from somewhere."
Years of training kept any emotion from showing on my face. The first time Bria had come to the Pork Pit, when our fingers had touched and I'd felt her magic, I'd wondered if she'd sensed anything about me. If she'd felt my Ice power that was so similar to hers. Whether she had or not, something about me had tickled her memory.
Bria and I had been exceptionally close when we were kids, but I wasn't particularly worried about her recognizing me as her big sister Genevieve Snow. With my dark, chocolate brown hair and gray eyes, I looked like our father, Tristan. He'd died when Bria was a baby, and she'd never known him. Bria was the one who'd looked the most like our mother, Eira. And I'd changed a lot from when I was thirteen. I'd lost all the baby fat that had softened my features. The planes of my face were much sharper, harder, and more angular than they'd been when I was a kid. Then again, so were Bria's.
But more than that was the fact that Bria had already looked into my background, already dug into my rock-solid cover identity as Gin Blanco. There was just no reason for her to think that I was her long-lost sister Genevieve. Especially since I hadn't acted anything like she probably thought Genevieve would. I hadn't exactly been welcoming toward Bria, even though I longed to just wrap my arms around her and hug her tight, just to make sure she was real. But too many things, too many secrets, lay between us right now for all that.
Bria shrugged. "I suppose it's nothing. Just like the help that you've given me today, Ms. Blanco."
My sister stared at me a second longer, then turned and walked out of the Pork Pit.
The first thing I did was go over to the front door, lock it, and turn the sign over to Closed. I stared out the storefront windows, but Bria had already disappeared from sight. Good. I didn't need her hanging around distracting me from what needed to be done. A long, bloody night lay ahead, and I needed to focus, needed to forget about everyone and everything that I cared about, and morph into the Spider once more, so I could get through what lay ahead. So I could get Roslyn Phillips through it- before she got dead.
So I pushed all thought of Bria away and turned to face Sophia. The Goth dwarf stood behind the counter, a dish towel draped over her shoulder, just watching me with her flat, black eyes.
"That was Jo-Jo on the phone," I said.
"Problem?" Sophia rasped.
"Roslyn left the house and went to meet Elliot Slater. He threatened to start killing the people she was close to. Slater has her now, and I have to figure out where he took her-before he kills her." I looked at the Goth dwarf. "I need you to go babysit Xavier for me. If he finds out Roslyn went to Slater, he'll go crazy and start looking for her himself. And I can't have that."
Sophia nodded. She knew that Xavier would only get in my way-and probably get Roslyn killed in the process.
While the dwarf turned off the french fryer and shut everything else down for the night, I called Finn and told him the situation.
"Fuck," he said.
"Fuck, indeed." Then, I asked Finn the most important question-of Roslyn Phillips's life. "Where would Elliot Slater take Roslyn for one last hurrah before he kills her?"
"You don't think she's dead already?" he asked. "He's had her at least an hour by now."
I thought of the hot rage that I'd seen flashing in Slater's hazel eyes last night on the riverboat. Of the embarrassment that Roslyn had caused him with her screamed accusations. Of the way that the giant had started after her, only to be called back by Mab Monroe. Of all the incessant calls that he'd bombarded Roslyn with during the long night.
"No," I replied. "Slater will want to play with her first, punish her for what she did to him. At least for a couple of hours. That's what he did to all those other women in his file. Which means I still have time to get to Roslyn-if I can find her. So where do you think Slater would go? You're the one who compiled that file on him, who dug up all of Fletcher's old information on him. You would know better than me."