Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

talking. He asked me if I ever,ah, imbibed something stronger than alcohol. He said he heard about some good stuff that was coming in down at the docks tonight.”
    I looked at Finn. “Vinnie just blurted out that he knew when and where some drugs were coming into town? That sounds like a plant to me. Like Vinnie was spreading that line around to everyone to see who might bite on it.”
    “I thought it was just bullshit myself, until the dwarf started unloading those boxes,” Finn said.
    “I think we both know it’s a little more serious than that now.”
    We fell silent as Finn left the downtown streets behind. The metropolis of Ashland sprawled over the corner of the Appalachian Mountains where Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia converged. The city was divided into two sections—Northtown and Southtown—held together by the circle of the downtown area.
    The docks we’d just left were firmly entrenched in Southtown, the rough part of Ashland that was home to the poor, the down-on-their-luck, and the downtrodden. Southtown was the kind of place where people would slit your throat for your shoes. Anything in your wallet would just be gravy on top of that. Gangs and junkies littered the Southtown streets, along with more traditional forms of trash.
    In comparison, Northtown was the rich, genteel, refined part of town, with high-end McMansions and immaculate estates that stretched out for miles. But that didn’t mean Northtown was any safer. Because the rich folks there would kill you first with kind words before they actually plunged a dagger into your back.
    Middle-class suburbs with more modest homes and income levels ringed Ashland on both sides, with all the requisite schools, shops, and businesses that you’d expect to find. Which is the general direction that Finn and I were headed in now.
    About ten minutes later, Finn drove his car past a massive iron gate and up a long driveway that curved by a four-story mansion. Unlike some of the others in this area close to Northtown, the home was relatively plain with a simple, sturdy, stone facade. Much like the man who lived inside. The one that I’d come here to be with this evening.
    Finn grinned at me, his white teeth gleaming in the darkness. “Well, I hope you and Owen have fun on your booty call tonight, since you made me drive you all the way out here.”
    The Owen that Finn was referring to was Owen Grayson, the wealthy businessman I’d recently started seeing and the owner of the mansion before me. Owen had asked me to come by this evening, if I wasn’t out too late killing Mab’s minions. Since I wasn’t covered in blood tonight as I had been for the last several, I’d decided to take him up on his offer.
    “It’s not a booty call,” I muttered.
    “Right,” Finn drawled. “And I’m a eunuch.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “I do happen to have several sharp knives secreted on my person. So we could easily arrange that, if you really wanted to make that sort of permanent lifestyle change.”
    Finn shuddered. “I’d rather be dead.”
    He really would have. Finn had an appreciation for thefemale form that bordered on obsession. Old, young, fat, thin, blond, brunette, toothless. It didn’t matter to Finn. As long as it was breathing and female, he saw an open invitation to be charming and oh so suave.
    “Be sure and say hello to Eva for me,” Finn said in a hopeful voice.
    Eva Grayson was Owen’s gorgeous nineteen-year-old sister and the object of Finn’s affections whenever he saw her—or at least whenever there wasn’t some other, more accessible female in his immediate line of sight. Finn tended to have a short attention span where the ladies were concerned.
    “I thought you’d sworn off college girls after that pair at Northern Aggression said you were old enough to be their father.”
    “Hmph.” Finn sniffed. “I’m only thirty-two, Gin, so technically, that’s not quite accurate. I’m not
that
old.”
    “Oh no?” I said. “You just had more than a decade on the girls you were hitting on.”
    But Finn wasn’t bothered by my quip, because his grin widened. “Decade or not, it was a good thing that they had daddy issues, wasn’t it? Because I still went home with both of them.”
    I rolled my eyes and punched him lightly in the shoulder. Finn just laughed.
    “Seriously, though,” he said after his chuckles faded away. “What do you want to do about Vinnie and the info he leaked to me?”
    “We’ll pay Vinnie