Free 11 Poison Promise by Jennifer Estep

by a vampire was bad enough, but what Benson had done, well, it wasn’t something I wanted a repeat viewing of—ever.
    I slid my knife back up my sleeve, crouched down on my knees, and rifled through Troy’s pockets, even though Silvio had already picked them clean. Sure enough, I came up empty. But my movements shifted Troy’s body to the left, and a gleam of plastic on the concrete caught my eye. I reached down and pulled a bag out from beneath the folds of his jacket.
    A single blood-red pill lay inside the plastic.
    It was the same pill, stamped with the same crown-and-flame rune, that Troy had given to me at the college. I remembered how Silvio’s hand had dropped down to Troy’s side before he’d driven off with Benson. He’d deliberately left the pill behind. Why? He’d seen me and, no doubt, knew exactly who I was. So why hadn’t he told his boss that I was here? And why leave one of the pills behind? Whatever Silvio Sanchez was up to, it didn’t make any sense.
    I got to my feet and held the pill up to the light, turning it this way and that, but there were no other runes or marks on it, and I certainly wasn’t going to swallow it to see what it would do to me. Maybe Bria would find it useful.
    I slid the pill into my jeans pocket, then stalked over, grabbed Catalina’s keys from the floor, and rounded the side of the car. The sharp jangle-jangle-jangle of metal cut through her sobs, and she slowly lifted her head. This time, I didn’t take no for an answer. I put my hand on her arm and gently helped her to her feet.
    “Come on,” I said, unlocking the car and opening the passenger’s-side door. “We need to get out of here. I’ll drive you home.”
    “You’re not—you’re not just going to leave him there, are you?” Catalina croaked out.
    She moved away from the car and headed in Troy’s direction.
    “You don’t want to look at that,” I called out.
    But it was already too late. Catalina’s face paled at the sight of her ex-boyfriend lying on the cold concrete and the horrible way he’d died. She clamped her hand to her mouth, staggered away a few feet, and threw up.
    I sighed and leaned against the side of the car. When she finished, Catalina straightened up, pulled a tissue out of her jeans pocket, and used it to wipe off her mouth. I hoped that she would hurry over to the car and that would be the end of things, but instead, she went right back over to Troy’s body, with disgust, guilt, and grief tightening her pretty features as she stared down at him.
    “We need to call somebody . . .” Her voice trailed off.
    “And tell them what?” I asked, my voice more sarcastic than it should have been. “That we witnessed Beauregard Benson, one of the most dangerous men in Ashland, kill one of his own dealers? It’s not exactly a news flash. What we need to do is get out of here and forget this ever happened.”
    Catalina whipped around, her hair flying around her shoulders, her hands balling into fists. “I’m not leaving him!” she screamed.
    The concrete around her let out a single sharp wail that melted into low, gravelly mutters of determination. The sound matched the mulish expression on Catalina’s face. I thought about knocking her out, shoving her into her own car, and driving away with her. But I had the feeling that if I took so much as one step toward her, she would start screaming again—or, worse, bolt out of the garage.
    If she did that, someone was sure to see her, and word would get out about Catalina running away from the scene of a gruesome murder with me chasing her. Then we’d both be in more trouble than we already were. Maybe I should have been more sympathetic to the trauma Catalina had witnessed, but I had enough problems already without attracting the attention of Beauregard Benson.
    Since I couldn’t get Catalina to leave and I didn’t want Benson and his men to come back and find us, that left me with only one option.
    “Okay, okay,” I said.