Free 11 Poison Promise by Jennifer Estep Page A

“I’ll call someone. Look, I’m doing it right now, see?”
    Catalina stared at me, still angry and suspicious, so Ipulled my phone out of my jeans pocket and hit a number in the speed dial. Three rings later, she picked up.
    “Coolidge.”
    “Hey, baby sister.”
    “Hey, Gin.” Bria paused. “What’s up?”
    “Why ever would you think that something’s up?” I said in my best, most innocent, I-haven’t-killed-anybody-in-hours voice.
    “Because you never call me at work unless your work has somehow become my work,” she said, a teasing note creeping into her voice. “So who is it this time, and how many bodies are there?”
    The fact that she could joke about it was something of a miracle. Detective Bria Coolidge was a good cop, and my being the Spider was something that didn’t exactly sit well with her at times. But we’d slowly come to an agreement ever since she’d returned to Ashland. Bria would never like my being an assassin, but she understood why I did it, the same way that I understood her being a cop and wanting to help people, even if the law was a running joke in our city and the only justice most folks got was what they made for themselves.
    “Just one,” I said, answering her question about bodies. “And it isn’t even one of mine.”
    “What?” she asked, her voice still light. “Did Finn kill someone instead? I bet he just loved getting his new Fiona Fine suit dirty.”
    “No. It wasn’t Finn. It was Beauregard Benson.”
    I expected another teasing comment, but Bria went immediately completely quiet, so quiet that I could hear the faint hum of her phone.
    “Where are you?” she growled.
    I frowned at the odd, intense tone in her voice, but I told her about the parking garage.
    “I’ll be there in ten,” she snapped, every word sharper and louder than the last. “Don’t move, don’t let anyone see the body, and don’t touch anything.”
    “What—”
    I started to ask her what was going on, but she’d already hung up on me.
    •  •  •
    I stared at my phone, wondering at Bria’s unexpected angry reaction. My sister dealt with criminals on a daily basis, some of whom wore badges and called themselves cops. But the mere mention of Benson’s name had made her go from carefree to nuclear in five seconds flat. What could possibly be going on with Bria and Benson—
    “Who was that?” Catalina asked, seeming a little calmer than before.
    “Bria. My sister, the cop. You’ve seen her at the restaurant.”
    She nodded. “She’s nice. Polite. A good tipper. Pretty too.”
    “She’ll be here soon. Probably with Xavier,” I said, referring to Bria’s partner on the force.
    Catalina nodded again and looked at Troy. She hesitated, then let out a breath and slowly sank down onto the floor next to his body, not caring about the dirt, oil, and other grime she was smearing all over her jeans. She reached out, as if to touch his withered hand, but thought better of it and ended up resting her palm on the concrete next to his.
    “I don’t expect you to understand,” she said. “But I can’t leave him.”
    “I know he was your ex, but he was trying to force you to deal drugs, and he followed you here tonight. He was going to hurt you bad, Catalina. Maybe even kill you.”
    She sighed, her face suddenly decades older than her twenty-one years. “I know. But he was still my friend. From before my mom died.”
    She looked at the back wall of the garage, but her gaze was even more distant. Jo-Jo sometimes got that same look, whenever she was peering into the future and hearing whispers about it. But Catalina wasn’t an Air elemental, so the only thing she was seeing was the memories of her own past with Troy.
    I lowered myself to the floor on the other side of his body. “Your mom died last year, right? Killed by a drunk driver?”
    “Yeah,” Catalina said, her tone flat. “In the spring. The drunk guy died too, so I didn’t even have anyone to be angry at, you