Black Widow (13 page)

Sophia was sitting at the end of the bench, looking calm and unruffled, despite the handcuffs that were still cinched around her wrists. The same couldn't be said for the hookers, who eyed her with obvious curiosity.

“Boo,” Sophia rasped, causing the hooker closest to her to shriek and almost fall off the bench.

One of the many knots of tension in my chest loosened at the knowledge that Sophia was okay. Silvio went over to the officer in charge to see what he could do to help her, but I scanned the room, looking for Dobson.

It didn't take me long to find the giant. The second I spotted him, my chest knotted right back up again because he was standing next to a pair of desks, along with two familiar figures. One of them was a woman, about my size, with shaggy blond hair and blue eyes. The other was a giant, around seven feet tall with thick muscles, ebony skin, and a pair of aviator sunglasses that had been propped up on top of his shaved head. My baby sister, Detective Bria Coolidge, and her partner, Xavier, who was also Roslyn's significant other.

Things were definitely going from bad to worse, just like I'd feared.

I looked over to find Silvio slipping a wad of hundred-dollar bills into the booking officer's hand. A second later,
the officer was pulling out his keys and unlocking the cuffs on Sophia's wrists. Relieved that Silvio was taking care of her, I hurried over to Bria and Xavier.

Dobson looked over at the steady
smack-smack-smack
of my boots on the floor, and a wide grin spread over his face. My chest tightened even more. I'd been so busy with everything that had happened at the Pork Pit that I'd forgotten there was one person I hadn't heard from today—Bria.

But given the smug expression on Dobson's face, I was just in time to witness whatever Madeline had planned for my sister and Xavier too.

Bria turned to see who Dobson was staring at and did a double take when she realized it was me. Given my nocturnal activities as the Spider, I didn't spend a lot of time in the police station. In fact, it was the one place in Ashland that I studiously avoided, especially since Bria and I tried to keep our professional lives as separate as possible. But it seemed like Madeline had made sure that they were going to overlap today—in the worst way possible.

“Gin?” Bria asked, the shock apparent in her voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Haven't you heard?” I sniped. “I've been accused of murdering a missing woman, the Pork Pit has been shut down for health violations, and Silvio and I are here to bail out Sophia, who supposedly assaulted the cop who was conducting the health inspection. But really, the clumsy fool fell down all on his own. Isn't that right, Dobson?”

The captain glared at me, that angry flush creeping up his neck again. He opened his mouth, no doubt to deliver
some cutting remark, but his cell phone rang, stopping him before he could get started. Dobson checked the number on the screen and gestured at two uniformed officers standing nearby, the same two who'd been with him when he first came into the Pork Pit earlier this afternoon.

“Watch them,” he barked, then stepped away a few feet to answer his call.

Dollars to doughnuts, Madeline was on the other end of the line, giving him some last-minute instructions for this part of her plan.

“Gin?” Bria asked. “What's going on?”

“Finn didn't call you?”

She shook her head. “We've been up in the mountains all day. The cell reception up there is terrible, so we turned off our phones to save the batteries. We just got back a few minutes ago.”

“Why did you go up into the mountains?”

“Supposedly, there was some sort of shooting at the Bone Mountain Nature Preserve,” Xavier rumbled. “At least, that's what Dobson claimed when he sent us up there this morning. But there was no evidence of anything like that. It was all leaf-lookers and bird-watchers.”

So Dobson had sent the two of them on a wild-goose chase to get them out of the way while everything else was going down. A bad feeling ballooned up in the pit of my stomach, bursting through the tension in my chest, and sticking in my throat, choking me from the inside out. Because Bria and Xavier were here now, and so was I—just in time to witness whatever horrible thing Dobson had planned for them. Another part of the grand scheme
that Madeline had put him up to, and another bit of my friends' misery that she wanted me to see and experience firsthand.

“Gin?” Bria asked again. “What's wrong?”

I quickly, quietly filled them in on all the problems that Madeline had caused for everyone, including closing the restaurant.

“That's ridiculous!” Bria snapped when I finished. “The food is great, and you don't have any health violations.”

“It's just Madeline spinning her webs and playing her games,” I murmured. “And I don't think she's done yet.”

“What do you think her endgame is?” Xavier asked. “I mean, closing down the Pork Pit is terrible, but it's nothing permanent.”

I thought of the hate that had flared in Madeline's eyes when I faced her down at the restaurant. “Oh, I'm sure she's working on fixing that.”

Dobson finished his call and stepped back over to us, his ruddy face full of excited expectation. While he'd been talking, more and more detectives and uniformed officers had gathered around, sipping their espressos and shoving croissants in their mouths as they waited to see what would happen next. Many of the cops had the same sort of sneer on their face that Dobson did, but more than a few seemed uncertain or outright hostile to the giant and his cronies.

“Is there anyone here you can trust?” I asked Bria. “Anyone higher up on the food chain than Dobson that can help you and Xavier?”

She glanced around, looking at first one face, then another, just like I had. Her expression became grimmer
and grimmer the longer she looked. “A few people. Not many. Dobson's the third highest-ranking officer in the department, and he's the one in charge of all the detectives, including Xavier and me. Besides, most of the time everyone waits to see which way the wind is blowing before they take sides, no matter what their rank is.”

Something that was perfectly normal in Ashland, which meant that Bria and Xavier were pretty much screwed. Yeah. That was definitely the theme of the day. But before I could tell them to brace themselves for the worst, it went ahead and happened.

“Step away from your desk, Coolidge,” Dobson barked out.

Bria blinked. “What? Why?”

He held out his hand, and one of the officers stepped forward and passed him a piece of paper, which Dobson then slapped down on the edge of her desk. “So I can search it,” he sneered. “Seems we've gotten a tip about some Burn pills disappearing from evidence lockup. Someone seems to think they've wound up in your desk. Imagine that. Your sister is a cold-blooded killer, and you're a dirty, pill-popping cop. Must run in the family.”

Bria gasped, and all the color drained from her face at his harsh, jeering insults.

Dobson's brown gaze flicked to Xavier. “Unless you and your partner are in on it together. Might as well search them both, while we're at it. Clean out all the trash at once.”

“The only trash here is you, Dobson,” Xavier growled, stepping up so that he was nose-to-nose with the other giant. “Unlike the rest of you crooked bastards, Bria
and I don't steal evidence, and we sure as hell don't take drugs.”

Dobson smirked at Xavier, whose hands clenched into tight fists, as if he was thinking about punching the captain. I definitely knew
that
feeling.

But Bria stepped up and put her hand on her partner's shoulder, silently warning him against it. “It's okay, Xavier. Let them search. We both know they won't find anything.”

“Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that,” Dobson crooned.

Bria and Xavier looked at each other, their faces tight, both of them realizing they were being set up. But the worst part was that they both knew there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop it since Dobson outranked them. So they had no choice but to reluctantly move away from their desks.

The captain made a big show of opening the top few drawers in Bria's desk and rifling through the pens and papers inside. He kept making faces the whole time, as if he were disappointed that he hadn't found anything incriminating yet. The tension in the air built and built, and a few of the cops started muttering with worry, probably hoping that he wouldn't start searching their desks and find all the illicit items hidden inside.

Finally, Dobson had gone through all the drawers except one. He paused a moment, that smirk flitting across his face again. He already knew exactly what was in that last drawer because he'd planted it in there earlier, while Bria and Xavier were up on Bone Mountain.

“Well, well, well,” Dobson crowed, bending down and
sticking his beefy hand into the drawer, as if he'd discovered something completely unexpected. “What do we have here?”

He pulled a plastic bag filled with red and green Burn pills out of the drawer.

He held up the pills and let out a low whistle. “Forget about your own bad habit. Looks like you've decided to go into business for yourself. What do you say, Coolidge? How much were you planning on selling these babies for out on the street?”

Dobson tossed the Burn pills on top of Bria's desk and gave me another arrogant smirk. “Like sister, like sister, I suppose. Either way, Detective Coolidge, you are officially relieved of duty—effective immediately.”

9

This time, Bria's hands were the ones that clenched into fists. “I don't know where those pills came from, but I didn't put them there.”

“Right,” Dobson drawled. “And I'm the tooth fairy.”

He looked at the crowd of cops who had gathered around, but everyone's faces were cold and shuttered. Yep, everyone was waiting to see how the cookie would crumble in this situation. Bria knew as well as I did that Dobson had already won, this round at least, but she didn't want to believe it. She kept glancing from one detective, one officer, to another, hoping that someone would speak up and tell Dobson that he was full of shit, that she was a good, honest cop and that there was no way she would ever steal evidence, much less sell drugs.

But no one did.

Instead, silence descended over the crowd, spreading out to the folks in booking and beyond. Everyone
stopped what they were doing and turned to watch the drama unfold.

“As of this moment, you are suspended without pay, Detective Coolidge,” Dobson sneered, his loud, gravelly voice echoing through the entire station. “Of course, there will be a thorough investigation into your many crimes, but if I were you, I'd go ahead and clear out your desk. We both know that you won't be coming back—ever.”

Bria's fists clenched tighter, her eyes burned brighter, and the set of her jaw hardened with every lie Dobson spouted. Being a cop was just as important to her as running the Pork Pit was to me, a way to honor and follow in her foster father's footsteps, and so much a part of who she was that she could never be or do anything else that would make her nearly as happy. For Dobson to take all of that away from her, especially on such an obvious, ridiculous, phony charge, well, it made her as angry as I had been at the restaurant earlier—and Bria's reaction was just as cold as mine had been.

She approached Dobson, and the two officers who'd been flanking the giant sidled away from him. So did all the other cops who'd gathered around. They all knew that Bria was a powerful Ice elemental, and they could all see the mix of magic and rage flashing in her frosty blue eyes. They didn't want to get caught in the cross fire should she decide to unleash her magic on Dobson. Even the good captain himself swallowed and took a step back.

Bria noticed them backing away, and she let out a loud, derisive snort. Like sister, like sister, after all.

“Cowards,” she called out, her light, lilting voice
booming even louder than Dobson's had. “The whole sorry lot of you.”