Elemental Assassin 01 - Spider's Bite

asked. “You could have let them kill me.”
    I shrugged again. “Like I said before, I need you. Need to know what you know about Gordon Giles. I believe I heard something about files and a flash drive?”
    Caine rubbed a hand through his black hair. “Yeah. They seem to be missing. My friends here were under the assumption I had them.”
    “But you don’t?”
    He didn’t respond. Caine knew how to keep his face blank too.
    I moved around the room, picking up my knives and slipping them back into their various slots. I also rifled through the dead guys’ pockets, digging out their wallets, cell phones, and jewelry. Nobody was wearing a chain with the triangular tooth rune on it, but one of the men had the shape tattooed on the back of his left wrist. I spotted it when I took off his watch.
    I frowned. That damn symbol again. I was getting real tired of seeing it without knowing who the fuck it belonged to.
    Caine saw me staring and crouched down to get a better look. He took care not to get within arm’s or knife’s reach of me. Smart man.
    “Is that a rune?” he asked.
    “Yeah. One I’ve been seeing a lot of lately.” I pulled my cell phone out of my back jean pocket, used it to snap a picture of the rune, then stuffed the device into my jeans once more.
    Caine didn’t say anything else, but he grabbed the guy’s wrist, held it up to the light, and stared at the crude symbol, committing it to memory.
    I straightened. “All right, detective. Time to decide. Are you in? Or out?”
    He glanced up. “What happens if I’m out?”
    “You go your way, and I’ll go mine. I’ll look for your fellow boys in blue to fish your body out of the Aneirin River in a couple of days.”
    He shook his head. “That won’t happen.”
    “Really?” I asked. “I was watching the house. I noticed you arguing with someone on the phone right before these guys showed up. I’m willing to bet it was someone on the force. Care to tell me who you were talking to?”
    Caine’s eyes dropped to the floor, and I spotted another cell phone swimming in a puddle of blood. Must be his.
    “Stephenson,” he muttered. “I was talking to Wayne Stephenson, my captain.”
    The overweight giant who’d given the press conference. The one who’d kept a muzzle on Caine the whole time. I made a mental note to get Finn to start digging into the police captain. If the Air elemental had paid him off, maybe she’d left a trail back to herself.
    “And what did Stephenson want? To make sure you were home before he sent the dogs in?”
    “He wanted to talk to me about the Giles case,” Caine said. “That’s all. It doesn’t prove anything.”
    “No,” I said. “It doesn’t prove anything. But it’s a pretty damning coincidence.”
    Silence. Donovan Caine stared at me. Emotions continued to flash in his eyes. Faster now. Like lightning striking the earth again and again on a hot summer night. Although he didn’t look at it, I knew the detective was still thinking about the gun lying just a few tempting feet away. About how he could take care of one of his problems right here, right now. I hoped he’d realize how stupid that would be. Or I’d be wearing even more blood in another minute. Two, tops.
    But some of my reasoning must have resonated with him. The detective exhaled. He let go of the dead man’s wrist and got to his feet.
    “I’m in,” he said.
    “But   ”
    He shook his head. “But not without serious reservations and some rules. This truce you’re offering only goes so far. I won’t cover up anything you’ve done. Not one damn thing. I won’t kill for you, and I won’t let you hurt any innocent people.”
    I laughed. The harsh sound smacked against the bedroom walls like the kiss of death. “Innocent people? Like the gentlemen who came to see you tonight? The ones who were going to hold you down while their boss tortured you? I don’t think you have to worry about stumbling over many innocent people on this case, detective.”
    “Maybe not. But that’s how it’s going to be.”
    I’d expected nothing less from him, and I could live with those terms. It was Caine’s personal vendetta against me, that hot, seething, unreasonable rage, that could be his undoing. “Say the rest of it. You know you want to.”
    “The second this is over, I’m coming for you. Getting justice for Cliff Ingles, my partner, no matter what I have to do, even if that means killing you. Do you understand