Was she? Ginny honestly didn’t know. Probably. If only because it would be hard to look Tonica in the eye after. Or Georgie. Dogs believed that their humans were perfect… .
“I find that money is a preferable solution to most problems,” Hollins said calmly. “It gives people what they want and what they need, all in one simple package, without need for violence.” He looked at them both carefully. “I am a businessman. I invest in opportunities that profit me, and my associates. Particularly opportunities that may not be particularly lucrative in and of themselves, but where the large-scale franchise possibilities intrigue me.”
Hollins’s words were matter-of-fact, not creepy at all, but what he was talking about made it downright ick. He didn’t seem to notice Ginny’s shiver of distaste. She was a businesswoman, sure, but there were limits.
“And when I see something that is being done well, with room for expansion or franchise,” he continued, “I follow up on it. Like breeding dogs. Or providing social outlets.”
“And you think, what, Mary’s should be a franchise?” Ginny’s gaze narrowed, and then she smiled. “Too late for that, the owner’s already doing things his way.”
“It had been my intention, originally, to offer to invest in this bar, yes, or perhaps to fund Mr. Tonica’s own venture, if he were so inclined. Also, to invest in your business, which I have determined will stagnate if it remains a one-person operation.”
Ginny opened her mouth to tell him thanks but no thanks, when he continued. “But, in observing and speaking with the two of you, another option has occurred to me. Your little sideline of untangling knots, or cutting them. ‘Private Research and Investigations,’ your website calls it? The service is hardly unique, but you bring a nice frisson of ingenuity and outside-the-box thinking. I appreciate that, even when it is interfering in my own work. I could see supporting an expansion of that.”
“So long as we butt out of your business interests?” The smoother he got, the blunter Ginny felt.
He smiled, and calling it a shark’s smile would be an insult to fish everywhere. “There are two sides to every agreement, yes. Each party puts something on the table.”
Teddy hadn’t been enjoying the back-and-forth going on in front of him, even though he knew Ginny had it reasonably well in hand. This sort of high-stakes negotiation, with hidden meanings in almost every word, was the kind of thing he’d grown up with, the kind of thing he’d intentionally left, and the pit-of-his-stomach ache was too familiar. He would stay and listen, be his partner’s backup and witness, but he couldn’t help but wish for a distraction, something he needed to go and deal with directly, to get away from the table.
Guilt for wanting to run away made him pay closer attention to the back-and-forth, especially when he heard Ginny mention Mary’s. He almost laughed at the idea of him opening his own place—he never wanted to work that hard ever—but Hollins was probably right about Ginny’s business needing to hire someone, at least a part-time assistant.
And money would solve Deke’s housing problem, in the short run, at least. But the old man would still be on the hook for arson, especially if it was just a craptastically timed coincidence, and the landlord had set it himself and was looking for a stooge. Hush money could buy a lot, but Ginny was right—not a reputation. And that was assuming Deke would be willing to accept the money in the first place. Teddy had gotten a firsthand taste of how stubborn the old man could be… .
He felt something warm and heavy bump against his leg, and he reached down automatically, to reassure Georgie. But the dog didn’t settle down again, and when he glanced under the table to see what was going on, her attention was focused on something at the other end of the bar. No, Teddy realized, following her line of sight: not some thing, someone.
“Excuse me,” he said, when there was a pause in the conversation. “I need to take care of something at the bar.”
When he got up, Georgie hesitated, whining, as though unsure if she should go with him, or stay with her mistress.
“Georgie, stay,” he said, hoping that she’d accept the command from him. She sighed heavily but settled back under the table, her gaze still on the bar.
He got halfway there before everything went to hell.
He saw it happen in that weird slow-motion-but-speeded-up sensation that came every time he was in a fight, where he could almost predict each move before it happened, although he knew there was no way he could get there in time to do anything.
The woman—Teddy recognized her even from the side view: it was the quiet woman from the gym, the one who’d asked all the right questions—reached across the bar and grabbed Stacy by the hair at the back of her head, yanking her forward just enough that Stacy looked like she was leaning in over the bar to hear better.
Her companion, the same guy who’d been with her at the gym, was a few paces away, watching his partner while still keeping an eye on the rest of the bar’s patrons. There was a kind of coiled stillness in the guy that Teddy’s years of bartending told him to keep an eye on. The odds were depressingly good the guy was carrying. But he wasn’t waving a weapon around, which meant that whatever they were here about, they didn’t want to cause a panic.
Stacy was in trouble, but not immediate danger.
Teddy’s gaze flicked up to where Penny usually rested, but he didn’t see ears or tail dangling over the side of the top shelf. He didn’t see Parsifal, either. Good. The last thing they needed right now was a puppy suddenly underfoot.
In the corner of his eye, he saw Seth moving, his shoulders forward, chin down, ready for a fight. Teddy moved a hand back at hip level, warning the older man away. Seth’s face shifted in a grimace, but he paused.
They’d already been assaulted by low-end hoods, and propositioned by a high-end corporate criminal—he hoped things were only coming in threes today, not fours.
“Excuse me,” Teddy said, projecting just enough to be heard by the woman, without breaking into the overall crowd noise and drawing more attention.
“There you are,” the woman said, letting go of Stacy’s hair. Stacy fell back a little, her eyes wide against tears, and he saw her reach for the baseball bat she’d replaced below the counter. He shook his head at her, too, and then tilted his head to the left. She nodded, about as happy as Seth to be told to hold on and stay calm.
If things got ugly, she was within reach of the panic button, but he really hoped they didn’t have to use that, either.
“Here I am,” Teddy said to the woman. “You had my contact info, you could have called.”
“We felt that a personal visit would be more conducive to resolution.”
“MBA talk. So not just a goon, then.” Okay, so he warned the others off escalating things and then he went and taunted the bear. They could bitch at him later: right now he wanted her focused on him.
The woman didn’t take the bait, though. “You’ve been nosing around in things that don’t concern you, and do concern us. That’s not wise. We’re here to teach you some wisdom.”
Teddy would have rolled his eyes in exasperation in any other situation. “Let me guess. There really is a dogfighting ring in the back room at Sammy’s. And you think we were investigating that?” He remembered how much money Ginny had said was involved in dogfighting. Of course they’d react to someone poking around and asking about dogs. Damn it. Because God forbid this actually could have been an easily resolved job. “So what now?” he asked.
“Now you learn better.”
There was a crash behind him, and Teddy swore, not wanting to take his eyes off the woman but needing to know what her companion was doing. From the sounds of it, breaking a table. And—there was the slam of something softer, heavier, against a hard surface—maybe people, too. He took a step forward, already calculating the odds, when the woman produced a Bowie knife and someone grabbed him from behind.
Penny had
been dozing, one eye on the people below her, half that attention focused on Georgie, who was just out of sight under a table. Penny would have preferred the dog stay closer, but she was with Ginny, so that was all right.
The puppy was with the girl who worked with Theodore. That was all right, too. The puppy needed a person, and the way the girl’s hand kept reaching out to touch his fur, the girl needed a dog, too.
The sounds and smells here-and-now were normal, familiar, soothing, and Penny had drifted into her thinking-space, mulling over the smells and sounds she’d been collecting, the things she’d overheard and nosed out for herself. None of it made sense to her, even for people, and that worried her. Humans often did things for strange reasons, but normally she could piece together what Theodore and Ginny said, add them with what they’d learned, and find the cause. Not this time.
Penny blamed that deep-thinking, or the soothing familiarity of her surroundings, for how she was caught off guard, letting trouble come without her seeing it. The first she knew something was wrong was when the girl let out a frightened cry, and the puppy echoed it with a pained yip, as though someone had yanked its tail. Penny instinctively slipped down off the shelf, hiding herself behind the rows of bottles, tail bristling and whiskers outstretched, trying to find the danger.
On the floor behind the bar, the puppy whined at her, and she shushed it irritably with an ear twitch and a flick of whiskers. He hunched down and quieted, watching her intently.
Maybe there was hope for the thing yet.
Penny turned her head and took in the scene below her, her eyes widening and her ears going flat. A low rumble started in her throat.
This was her place. Her people.
Ginny had tried to keep her attention on the discussion with Hollins, trusting Tonica to deal with whatever was going on at the bar—it had to be serious for him to leave, but that was his job, after all, as manager. She could slog on without him, especially knowing that there was a bar full of backup, if she needed it.
“This is a business,” Hollins was saying again, and Ginny was so tired of that word already. “I see no reason why everyone should not benefit from it, if we all do our jobs properly. Your side venture has shown that you have initiative, and potential. I am a patron of potential. Can we not consider all this a job interview?”
The worst thing was, he was totally serious. She was about to lay out the reasons why she wouldn’t take a job with him if he were the last paycheck in the Pacific Northwest, when a loud cry and the sound of something breaking grabbed their attention.
Ginny was out of her seat in an instant, Georgie at her heels. She didn’t know what Hollins thought of her behavior, didn’t care, because the sound of splintering furniture was not a sound she should be hearing at Mary’s, not now and not ever.
There was too much of a crowd gathering around the bar, blocking her view. She shoved impatiently at a shoulder until someone moved, and she could see Stacy, glaring over the bar at a woman, tall and strongly built, wearing a baseball cap, dark jeans, and a dark blue windbreaker. The woman was facing the bar but half turned, looking at Tonica like she was daring him to move. Someone else shoved one of the patrons aside and stepped forward, coming up behind Tonica. A man, holding the broken-off leg of one of the chairs, which he brought around Tonica’s neck and used to yank him back so hard Teddy’s head jerked back and stayed there. Ginny felt the command for Georgie to attack rise in her throat, and then choked it off, not sure if that would only make things worse.
“Shit,” Ginny whispered into the sudden silence in the bar. She could almost feel the piece of wood pressed against her own neck, her mouth dry and her pulse too fast. Her phone was on the table; there was no way she could call the cops. Had someone else called the cops? Her gaze went to Stacy, who was looking from Tonica to the woman, who was now holding a knife, a big-ass one with a blade that caught the bar light but didn’t reflect it back. “Shit,” Ginny said again, louder this time. No way the cops would get here in time.
A hand came down on her shoulder, gently. It was Hollins standing beside her. His gaze was focused on the scene in front of them, the same as everyone else, but somehow the expression on his face was different. Not concern, not fear or even shock, but an intense… study.
Keep her talking. Keep her talking. Teddy swallowed against the weight across his throat, tried to relax a little rather than resisting, hoping that the hold would loosen. No such luck. He tried to talk, and felt the rough wood press more firmly against his Adam’s apple, making him cough. At a signal from the woman, the wood eased a little. He swallowed, trying to get some moisture back into his mouth, then got the words out.
“You’re here to tell me to back down from asking questions, and walk away?”
The woman shook her head, smiling slightly under the bill of her cap. She was weirdly relaxed, as though they were just shooting the breeze over a few beers, not in a standoff in front of nearly twenty people. “That would presume that our boss gives warnings. He doesn’t. He takes care of problems.”
“Seriously?” His voice, annoyingly, cracked on the word, and he felt the man holding him huff with laughter. That—more than anything else—pissed him off. “You come here, in the middle of a crowd, and threaten to carve my face up, and think the cops won’t notice?”
The woman smiled at him again, unfussed, and stepped up closer, letting the knife’s edge curl down the side of his face gently, not quite cutting skin. She didn’t have cold eyes, he realized. She had dead eyes. There was someone home back there, but they weren’t taking calls.
Great. He was about to get carved up by a professional sociopath.
“I really wouldn’t advise that,” a new voice said.
The woman was clearly not pleased with whoever had interrupted what was probably going to be a fabulous “As you know, Mr. Bond” speech. “Excuse me?”
“I said, I really wouldn’t advise that.” Lewis Hollins was standing next to Ginny, who was wide-eyed, one hand resting on the top of Georgie’s head, keeping the dog still. He walked past them as calmly as though he were heading to the bathroom, and stopped barely a foot away from the woman, well within reach, if she decided to lunge for him.
“I’ve been hearing rumors about your employer for a while. Nasty work, that. None of my business, of course, except as it touched my people. I gave them orders not to sell to him, and presumed that would be the end of that. It appears not.
“Now, I realize that you are following orders—or perhaps elaborating on them, as you seem the type to do that. But even if your employer has not realized that this sort of behavior is bad for continued business, I’m afraid your too-high profile has cut into my business. And I can’t allow that.”
“You…” Her laughter was derisive, raking him from head to foot. Even to Teddy, who knew who he was, the guy didn’t look very impressive, shirtsleeves and dress shoes, against a sociopath with a knife and the muscle-bound fighter who was armed, at the very least, with a wooden club. “How are you going to stop me?”
Hollins didn’t posture, didn’t make a witty comeback. He merely lifted his left hand and shot her with the pistol he held there.
The wooden club dug deep into Teddy’s throat again, and he felt his abdomen clench as the air was yanked out of his lungs. Everything else went bright, and then dark as he fell to his knees, the last thing he heard a high-pitched screaming that might have been a cat’s battle cry… .
“You need to let go.”
Penny hissed, her claws still deep in soft, satisfying flesh. She had no intention of letting go.
“C’mon, Penny. You have to let go.” Georgie was nose-to-nose with her, big brown eyes mournful, and she felt the urge to hiss, to scratch at her friend’s muzzle, to make the dog back off, go away. But then she’d have to let go, and she wasn’t angry at Georgie, anyway.
“Penny?”
Georgie’
s human knelt down beside her, eyes wide, a dark mark on her face and blood on her lip. She had gotten into the fight, too. Penny approved.
“Penny, sweetie, come on. The cops are here, and if you don’t let go they can’t take him into custody.” She lifted a hand, wisely not touching Penny’s fur: instead she let her hand drop into the folds of Georgie’s pelt. “If you don’t let go, they might think you’re vicious, and… if they take you away, if they call animal services about you, who’s going to look after Teddy?”
Penny’s tail lashed, and she flexed her claws into skin, the man underneath her moaning slightly.
“He hurt Theodore,” she said to Georgie.
“And you hurt him,” the dog said.
That was true. He wouldn’t be hitting anyone anytime soon, not after what she had done. She sighed and flexed her paws, releasing claws. Ginny scooped her, hands delicately under her belly, and lifted her up, holding her against her chest.
Penny permitted the indignity because this was Georgie’s human.
“Were these the bad guys, Penny? Were these the ones who took the little man’s home?”
Penny didn’t know. But she wasn’t going to admit to Georgie that she didn’t know.
And then there were two men in uniform standing behind her, smelling of bitter smoke and cold metal, and the rest of the humans had backed away.
“Sir,” one of them said, kneeling by the man, but not touching him. “Sir, can you?”
The man surged up, and the uniformed human grabbed him by one arm, twisting it behind his back and snapping a metal collar around his wrist. “I guess he’s not too badly injured, after all,” the uniformed human said to his companion, and hauled the man to his feet. “Better get the medics to look at his face, though. God, what a mess.”
L.A. Kornetsky - Gin & Tonic 03 - Doghouse Page 21