She gritted her teeth. She had slapped a temporary bandage on herself when she had changed in the pharmacy bathroom, but she needed to clean and bandage her knife wound properly. Instead she picked up the wallets. They weren’t new wallets. They were other people’s wallets. They were from all the people she had bumped into today, when she had wrinkled her cute widdle nose at them and said sowwy. She bet every last one of them was very unhappy with her right about now.
Why did she pick pockets and start smoking and drinking when she was under stress? Can we say maladaptive coping mechanisms, class? If she wasn’t careful, she was going to go to prison where people would call her Light-Fingered Stinky.
She pinched her nose and sighed. She was good at a dog-and-pony show. She could clean up well and pretend to be respectable enough, often for hours, even days at a time. She had, after all, been excellent at her job as head of PR for Cuelebre Enterprises. It was all an act. She had known for a long time now that she was really nothing more than a Sackville-Baggins kind of hobbit.
She showered first. It was harder and more exhausting than she had counted on. Afterward she sat on the toilet and hissed as she blotted the knife wound with fresh cotton pads. She poked it to see if there were any cloth fibers from her dress or any other kind of dirt still in the wound. Gray stars bloomed in front of her eyes. Damn, that hurt. A deep puncture, it kept seeping a slow, steady stream of crimson.
She put antibacterial goop on it, doubled up on the padding and taped it in place as best she could. She smeared more goop on the blisters on her heels and put Hello Kitty Band-Aids on them. Then she put on her new underwear. Teeny-tiny little camo boxer shorty-shorts that rode low on the hips. Weren’t they cute?
The next bit wasn’t so easy. She grunted as she worked her way as carefully as she could into a sports bra. Structurally she may not be very big, but her perky pair of puppies made her a C-cup. Shoulda bought a bra with a front clasp, but today hadn’t been a shining example of her best thinking. Whoop-whoop-whoop, smack. After she managed to get the bra on, she eased on a matching camo spaghetti-strap T-shirt that stopped above her pierced navel.
Then she put her hair in pigtails. Because it was layered to fall in an outward-flipping bob, the pigtails stood up on her head like twin black starbursts. She pouted at herself in the mirror and said, “Sowwy.”
Yep. This look is good for several more wallets. NOT that I’m going to steal anymore, because I’m stopping right now. I’m just sayin’.
And now it was past time for that hot date. She limped to the bed and eased her sore, bruised body onto it, lit a cigarette and flipped on the TV. She started to look through the contents of the stolen wallets. Hey, some of these had good family pics. She pulled out the photos and started to lay them across the bed.
Then what was playing on the television registered in her tired brain.
She stared. Put the cigarette in the ashtray. Put down the wallets and photos. Picked up the vodka bottle, opened it and took a stiff drink.
That was the first time she saw the cell phone video footage of the attack in the alleyway, where she had kicked the crap out of her second cousin Geril’s dead body.
It wasn’t going to be the last time. Not by a long shot.
Tiago believed in giving credit where credit was due. The little shit had tried like hell to avoid being tracked down.
By the time he had reached Chicago, the SUV Rune had requisitioned was waiting for him, along with a detailed list of assorted supplies, including cash, a couple changes of clothes, a laptop and an assortment of his preferred type of weapons. Tiago picked up the vehicle in Lakeview from their Wyr contact, Tucker, who had already stashed the supplies in a large duffel bag in the backseat.
Tucker was, like his Wyr-badger nature, a short, powerful, stocky and antisocial male. He did well living in relative isolation outside the social structure of the Wyrkind demesne. The badger was content with a job that had sporadic, often strange duties and irregular hours, as long as he could live within walking distance of his beloved Wrigley Field.
Although Tiago hadn’t thought to ask for one, there was also a cell phone tucked into a side pocket of the large, heavy canvas duffel bag. He discovered it when it rang as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
He clicked it on. “What.”
Dragos said, “Preliminary autopsy report is in on the three dead Dark Fae males.”
His eyebrows rose. “That was fast.”
“With the next ruler of the Dark Fae demesne missing, the authorities put a rush on the job,” Dragos said. “All the Dark Fae males died of the same kind of poison Tricks favors on her stilettos.”
Tiago adjusted the seat and pulled into traffic. He grunted. “At least she kept her weapons poisoned when she left New York. Good for her.”
“The fucker who filmed the footage is cooperating with police,” Dragos said. “He’s claiming he didn’t see anybody else in the vicinity when she took off down the street.”
“I want to know where he lives,” said Tiago. He drove fast and aggressively as he glared at the other vehicles on the road.