"Somebody doesn't want Caine talking about what really happened. " Finn shook his head. "Honesty will get you killed in this city. "
All the reporters started speaking at once, a flock of cawing crows shouting questions at Caine and the other officials. Captain Stephenson held out his arms for silence.
"We want to send a message to the woman who killed Mr. Giles. Whoever you are, wherever you are, if you're out there watching us, know this-we're going to do everything in our power to find you. "
Finn elbowed me. "Looks like somebody's got the hots for you, Gin. " The captain, Stephenson, kept talking. "Mr. Giles was a respected businessman and upstanding member of the community. Mr. Giles's employer, Halo Industries, has authorized me to announce a reward for information leading to the capture and arrest of his murderer. "
The captain gestured to his right, and Alexis James stepped forward. Sometime during the night she'd traded her little black cocktail dress for a severe black pantsuit.
The pearls still wringed her throat and wrist. Why would she be at the press conference instead of her sister, Haley? Then I remembered. Alexis was the head of marketing and public relations. The company mouthpiece.
The sight of Alexis James added to the reporters' frenzy.
"Alexis! Alexis! How much are you offering?" one of them screamed over the din.
Alexis put her lips close to the microphone. "One million dollars. " Finn and I sat there in stunned silence.
But Alexis James wasn't finished. She talked about what a great guy Gordon Giles was and how she hoped the reward money would help the police catch me, the evil bitch who'd killed him.
The press conference finally ended, but the reporters weren't ready to let their sources slip away. They tried to ask the police captain and Donovan Caine a few more questions. But Stephenson waved them off, and he and Caine left the podium and disappeared from sight, along with Alexis James.
"A million bucks? Fuck," Finn said. That summed up my feelings perfectly.
Chapter Eleven
Nothing more to do or say. Not tonight. Finn shuffled into the spare bedroom, while I took a shower to wash the matted blood out of my hair. The vampire hooker's ruined clothes went into the trash. I'd take them down to the incinerator in the basement and burn them later.
Thanks to Jo-Jo and her healing magic, my left shoulder and arm no longer throbbed where Brutus had shot and knifed me. But my chest still burned with cold rage from losing Fletcher. At what had been done to him. At the desecration of the Pork Pit. The sadistic glee the Air elemental had taken in accomplishing both. And for what? So I could be blamed for a murder I didn't even commit? Pointless. All of it.
I couldn't believe Fletcher was gone. Dead. That I hadn't gotten to him in time. That I hadn't been able to save him, like he'd saved me so long ago.
My troubled thoughts turned to the last conversation I'd had with Fletcher. Do this job, and you can retire. His gruff voice whispered the words in my mind. I'd scoffed at his suggestion, sneered, dismissed it, the way I had for six months now, ever since the old man had first brought up the subject of me quitting the business.
Maybe-just maybe-if I'd listened to him the first time he'd asked me to retire all those months ago, Fletcher would still be alive. Maybe if I'd quit killing people back then, the Gordon Giles hit would have never come his way at all. Maybe if I'd just given in to his wishes, to his hopes of a more normal life for me, the old man would be over at the Pork Pit right now, reading a book and drinking coffee, instead of staring up at the ceiling with dull, sightless eyes. Maybe if I'd retired when he'd first asked me to, Fletcher might still be alive.
My fault. Everything was my fucking fault.
Guilt and grief welled up in my chest, cracking the walls around my heart, crumbling the cold stone to dust. My throat closed up, and tears, hotter than the water cascading around me, scalded my eyes. I sank to my knees in the shower, huddling against the slick tile.
And for the first time in seventeen years, I truly, deeply wept.
Ten minutes passed, maybe fifteen. I wasn't sure. But the cooling water cut through my grief, and I shivered against the shower wall. Some might have called me a hypocrite for my grief at Fletcher's death and my rage at the Air elemental who'd killed him. I had buckets of blood on my hands, and my actions had left plenty of folks crying for their loved ones. But there were lines, rules, codes, no matter how twisted they might appear. No kids, no pets, no torture, no framing someone else for what I did. The way the elemental had tortured Fletcher . . . she deserved to be punished for that alone. Put down like a rabid dog before she did it to someone else.
Fletcher was gone, but I was still here. So was Finn. And I was going to do everything in my power to keep it that way. The old man had drilled survival into my head above all else-emotions, conscience, fear, regrets. If that made me a hypocrite, so be it.
Worse things to be. Like dead.
I forced myself to go through the motions of my late-night rituals. Washing my body, shampooing my hair, drying off, slipping into my softest flannel pajamas, the ones Jo-Jo had given me with the puffy blue clouds on them. Guilt, tears, and emotional breakdown aside, I'd need to be at my best tomorrow. And for the foreseeable future.
Oh, I wasn't worried about the bounty. Fletcher had taught me how to be careful, how to be invisible, a skill I'd perfected these last seventeen years. Which made it all the stranger that someone had been able to target us. I still didn't understand how or when we'd been that careless, that sloppy. But somebody, somewhere, sometime had talked about what the three of us did. When I got up close and personal with the Air elemental, I was going to ask how she'd found Fletcher-and I wasn't going to ask nicely.
Before I went to bed, I shuffled around the apartment and pressed my hand to the stone around the door frame and all the windows one more time, checking my protection runes. The stone murmured in response before falling back down to its usual, low hum.
As added insurance, I tucked a silverstone knife under both my pillows and put a few more on the nightstand within easy reach. Then I curled into a tight ball underneath the soft sheets. The tension in my body slowly unknotted, and I dreamed . . .
Great, heaving, breath-stealing sobs wracked my body, shaking me from head to toe.
Tears rushed down my chapped face in an endless torrent, mixing with the dirt on my hands. I drew in a ragged breath and licked my cracked lips, tasting my own salt.