Snared

by Jennifer Estep

  No one was here.

  I sprinted to the opposite end of the container, around the side, and back out into the parking lot beyond, but the shadow had vanished. I whirled around and around, looking in all directions, but I was all alone. If the Dollmaker had been here, he was gone.

  “Dammit!” I snarled, stalking back and forth across the parking lot. “Dammit!”

  Angry and frustrated, I whipped around and slammed my boot into the side of the closest Dumpster, right where the shadow had been. The wheels screeched in protest, but the container slid back a couple of inches, and a glimmer of gold flashed in the sun.

  I blinked, wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but they weren’t.

  Something bright and shiny was lying underneath the Dumpster, close to one of the front wheels.

  Still holding my knife, I looked around again, just in case this was a ploy to get me to lower my guard so my enemy could get the drop on me. But I was as alone as before, so I sidled forward, crouched down, and reached underneath the Dumpster. Sure enough, my fingers closed over something cold, hard, and metal, and I pulled it out where I could see it.

  A small gold tube glinted in the palm of my hand.

  And not just any kind of tube—a lipstick case.

  I sucked in a breath and got to my feet. I glanced around again, making sure that no one was sneaking up on me, then slid my knife back up my sleeve so that I could examine the tube with both hands.

  I’d never seen this particular lipstick before, but the tube was solid gold, with sleek, wavy sides, telling me that it was expensive. I tilted the tube to the side and realized that the words Glo-Glo were stamped into the metal. That must be the brand name. I turned the tube up so that I could see the small print on the bottom that would tell me the exact color: Heartbreaker.

  A cold, sick feeling flooded the pit of my stomach, but I uncapped the tube and slowly rolled it up, knowing exactly what I would find. Sure enough, the lipstick inside was blood-red.

  The same blood-red that had been used to draw my spider runes on that dead girl’s hands.

  17

  The sight of the blood-red lipstick—the Heartbreaker ­lipstick—punched me in the gut.

  It was one thing to have seen my spider runes on the dead girl’s hands. But to be holding the thing that they’d been drawn with, something so benign, so innocent, so ordinary . . . It was a painful reminder of just how sadistic the Dollmaker was—and just how much danger Elissa was in.

  But I pushed my feelings aside and forced myself to examine the tube from all angles. And I noticed something odd: the lipstick hadn’t been used. Not at all. If this were the tube that had been used on Lacey Lawrence, the lipstick would have been worn down, but this one was still smooth, sharp, and whole, as though it had just come from the store.

  Maybe it had. This tube hadn’t been here last night. Otherwise, Bria and Xavier would have found it. And I hadn’t spotted it during my initial search either. I hadn’t seen anything except that shadow, but I was more convinced than ever that someone had been watching me—and that that person had planted this lipstick for me to find. It was the only thing that made sense.

  But who would do that? And why? Was it the Dollmaker, taunting me again? Had he been hiding behind the Dumpster, waiting for me to turn my back so that he could leave his sick little clue? Or was this the work of someone else, someone whose motives I couldn’t even fathom right now?

  My hand closed over the tube. As much as I wanted to hurl it to the ground and stomp it to pieces, I forced myself to slide the lipstick into my jeans pocket. I had to get this to Ryan. He could confirm for sure that it was the same lipstick used to draw the runes on Lacey Lawrence. Then maybe we could track down what store the lipstick had come from and exactly who had bought it—

  In the distance, a car engine rumbled to life.

  My head snapped around, and I thought of that black Mercedes that I’d seen parked on the street. Not left behind by a drunk driver after all.

  I palmed my knife again, ran out of the parking lot, and sprinted around the side of the club, heading back toward the front of the building. I thought that the driver gunned the engine, although I couldn’t be sure, given the steady slap-slap-slap-slap of my boots on the pavement and how loudly my heart was pounding in my ears. I broke free of the building and headed to my right toward the street where the Mercedes was.

  Someone was sitting inside the vehicle now, although I couldn’t tell exactly who, given the dark tint on the windshield. I did have the impression that it was a man, although I didn’t get a clear look at his features, which were hidden by a hat, his sunglasses, and the thick scarf he had wrapped around the bottom half of his face.

  He spotted me too. For a second, I thought that he might gun the engine, jump the curb, and come roaring at me, trying to mow me down with his car. Instead, he threw the vehicle into reverse, wrenched the steering wheel, and whipped a beautiful U-turn right in the middle of the street. Three seconds later, he was speeding away in the opposite direction, and I knew that he would be long gone by the time I reached my own car.

  “Dammit!” I snarled. “Dammit!”

  For a mad, mad moment, I thought about chucking my knife down the street after the car. Not because I had any chance of hitting the vehicle but just to relieve some of the anger and frustration surging through me. But that would have been petty and pointless, so I forced myself to take deep breaths, slow my racing heart, and think things through.

  Whether it was the Dollmaker or someone else, whoever had been watching me had wanted me to find the gold Glo-Glo tube. Someone had wanted me to know about the Heartbreaker color. Someone had deliberately left me a breadcrumb. Well, I was going to oblige the bastard.

  Time to follow the lipstick trail.

  • • •

  I slid my knife back up my sleeve, got into my car, and cranked the engine. I also took a moment to pull the lipstick out of my jeans pocket and set it in the cup holder in the center console. The gold tube glinted in the sun, almost like an eye slyly winking at me over and over again, daring me to find out where it had come from. Well, at least I wouldn’t be going back to Jade empty-handed. I had a clue, and I was determined to follow it.

  Even if I still didn’t know who had left it for me or why.

  I pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the one person who might be able to give me some answers about the lipstick: Jolene “Jo-Jo” Deveraux. Her salon was close to Northern Aggression, so I decided to visit her first and see what I could find out before I reported back to Jade.

  Twenty minutes later, I steered up a driveway and squeezed my car in next to several others already parked. The front door was always open during business hours, so I let myself into the white plantation house and walked down the long hallway to the back of the structure, which opened into an old-fashioned beauty salon.

  Cherry-red salon chairs were lined up in a row along one wall while stacks of glossy magazines and plastic pink tubs full of nail polish covered all the tables. A long counter ran along another wall, bristling with combs, curlers, scissors, styling irons, nail files, makeup brushes, and every other beauty tool known to womanhood. The air smelled of hair dye and other chemicals, although the harsh aroma was somewhat softened by the sweet vanilla that Jo-Jo infused into her homemade healing ointments, facial scrubs, and other beauty treatments.

  Thursday was one of the salon’s busiest days, since everyone was getting their hair, nails, and faces done for the weekend. Every chair in the salon was full, with several women reading magazines and letting their hair slowly set under the industrial dryers.

  I headed over to the far corner of the room, where a middle-aged dwarf with perfect white-blond curls was painting the nails of a little girl who looked to be about five. The girl had on a poofy pink princess dress, along with a slightly askew silver plastic tiara and sparkly p
ink ballet shoes, as though today was a special occasion. Her mother sat nearby, waving her own freshly painted nails back and forth in the air to help dry them.

  Jo-Jo looked up at the sound of my footsteps. So did Rosco, her basset hound, who was comfortably ensconced in his white wicker basket in the corner.

  Her face creased into a smile. “Gin! What brings you here today?”

  “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

  “Of course,” Jo-Jo said. “Just give me a few minutes to finish up with this little birthday princess.”

  She winked at the girl, who let out a pleased giggle. Jo-Jo bent over the girl’s nails again, and I sank onto one of the sofas to wait. I eyed a stack of magazines on the table at my elbow, but they all focused on beauty tips, fashion, and hairstyles. Not exactly my milieu, but I picked up one and flipped through it just to have something to do. Beside me, two women in their early twenties with pink curlers in their hair chatted back and forth as they waited for Jo-Jo to get back to them.

  “I can’t believe that you talked me into competing in the Miss Ashland Pageant,” one of the girls, a pretty brunette, complained. “If I’d known it was going to be this much freaking work, I would have told you no.”

  The other girl, an equally pretty redhead, rolled her eyes. “And I told you that it would be an easy way to get some scholarship money. So chillax already and enjoy being pampered.”

  The brunette huffed, crossed her arms over her chest, and slouched a little lower in her chair. “Well, I still say that our hunting trip to Cloudburst Falls next weekend will be way more fun than this.”

  I brought my magazine up to hide my grin. Beauty pageants one weekend, hunting the next. Ah, the wide and varied interests of Southern women.

  I agreed with the brunette, though. Hunting was always much more fun. And I was going to bag a serial killer before all was said and done.

  Jo-Jo finished up with the little girl and her mom, then checked and made sure that her other customers were okay by themselves for a few minutes. She crooked her finger at me, and we headed into the kitchen for some privacy. Rosco let out a loud woof, heaved himself to his feet, and followed us in hopes of scoring a doggy treat.

  Jo-Jo went over to the fridge, pulled out a pitcher of sweet iced tea, and poured herself a tall glass. She offered me some, but I held up my hand, declining.

  She took a long drink of her tea before setting it aside and staring at me with her clear, almost colorless eyes. “What’s up, darling? What can I help you with? Does it have something to do with that poor missing girl? Sophia told me all about it when she came home from the police station last night.”

  “Yeah. I found something that I want you to take a look at.”

  I filled her in on everything that had happened, including the mysterious shadow lurking behind the Dumpster and the obvious clue that he’d left behind. I placed the lipstick on the butcher-block table between us.

  “I figured that if anyone knew about this kind of makeup, it would be you. Have you ever heard of Glo-Glo lipstick? Do you know where they might sell it in Ashland?”

  “Sure, I’ve heard of it,” Jo-Jo replied. “It’s a makeup company out of Bigtime, New York. They make good products. Lots of bright, vibrant colors at reasonable prices.”

  I tapped my finger on top of the lipstick. “All this gold doesn’t look very reasonable to me. But of course, I’m no expert, which is why I came to the best.”

  Jo-Jo winked at me. “Well, you certainly did that.”

  She picked up the tube and examined it from all angles before pulling off the cap and examining the lipstick. She even went so far as to sniff the lipstick itself. After several seconds, she set the open tube back down on the table and held up her finger.

  “Give me one minute. I’ll be right back.”

  Jo-Jo left the kitchen and headed back into the salon. The second she was gone, Rosco crept even closer to me. The basset hound plopped down on the floor at my feet, let out a plaintive whine, and stared up at me with his big brown eyes. And he kept right on whining and wagging his tail, slapping it up against the side of my boot.

  “All right, all right,” I grumbled. “You win. You know a softhearted sucker when you see one, don’t you, boy?”

  Rosco woofed his agreement.

  I plucked the lid off a large blue and white container shaped like a dog bone. The bright color and fun style reminded me of that chocolate cake cookie jar that Elissa had given to Jade. And just like that, my light mood vanished. I grabbed a dog biscuit out of the container and tossed it down to Rosco to munch on.

  “Here we go,” Jo-Jo said, coming back into the kitchen. “I thought that I’d seen that fancy gold tube before.”

  She put an open catalog down on the table and tapped her finger on a product on one of the pages. “Heartbreaker lipstick. A special anniversary product from Glo-Glo. Apparently, it was the very first color the company ever produced. They’ve been selling it for years in regular, cheaper packaging, but for the anniversary, they decided to dress it up in that gold case. It’s a nice red, and I thought about ordering a few tubes to resell to my clients, but the price is a little too steep for my tastes.”

  I blinked at the information on the page. “Five hundred dollars? For a tube of lipstick?”

  “Like I said, a little too steep for my tastes, especially since you can still get the exact same color in the regular packaging for fifteen bucks a pop.” She shrugged. “But we both know that there are a lot of folks out there with more money than common sense, especially in this town.”

  “So who would sell something like this? Where would you get it in Ashland?”

  “Well, given the price, it’s not the sort of thing that you can get just anywhere,” Jo-Jo said. “The only place I know of that has been selling it is the Posh boutique in Northtown.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Several of the women who work at the boutique get their hair done here. One of them came in earlier this week, bragging about how she’d gotten her latest sugar daddy to buy her a tube of it.”

  I nodded. “Thanks for your help.”

  “You’re quite welcome.” She tilted her head to the side, looking at me. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “Call Finn. He knows some of the folks who work at Posh. He should be able to get a list of everyone who’s bought a tube of this lipstick in the last six months. After that, we’ll see if anyone’s name jumps out at us.”

  Jo-Jo nodded. She reached out and put the cap back on the lipstick, but she didn’t give it to me. Instead, she started turning the gold tube around and around in her hands, and the pins-and-needles sensation of her Air magic gusted through the kitchen, pricking my skin with its sharp, sudden intensity. My spider rune scars itched and burned at the uncomfortable sensation of her magic, which was the complete opposite of my own Ice and Stone power.

  In an instant, her eyes took on a bright, intense, milky-white glow. She might be staring at the lipstick, but she wasn’t really seeing it anymore. She raised her eerie gaze to mine.

  “Be careful, darling,” Jo-Jo murmured. “I’m seeing storm clouds ahead for you. Some very dark, nasty ones. Swirling around and around, trying to consume you, trying to drown out all your light . . .”

  In addition to healing people and smoothing out wrinkles with her Air magic, Jo-Jo’s power also gave her glimpses of the future. I waited for her to elaborate, to be more specific, but she didn’t say anything else. After a minute, the prickly feel of her Air magic vanished, and her eyes returned to their normal clear color.

  Jo-Jo shook her head and finally held the lipstick out to me. “I’m sorry. I wish that I could tell you more, Gin.”

  “That’s okay. Nothing else about this has been easy. Why should the future be any different?” I asked, not really joking.

  I took the li
pstick and held it up, staring at the smooth, shiny surface. The bright, glimmering gold was about as far away from Jo-Jo’s dire prediction as you could get, but I knew better than to doubt her.

  “Storm clouds, huh?” I murmured. “Funny, but I don’t think that there are any other kinds of clouds in my life these days.”

  18

  I left Jo-Jo’s salon, went outside, and got into my car. I put the tube into the cup holder and texted Finn, asking him to get a list of everyone who’d bought a gold tube of Heartbreaker lipstick from the Posh boutique in the last six months. He hit me back a minute later, saying that he was on it.

  I also texted Silvio, asking him to check and see if any other stores in Ashland sold the lipstick, just to cover all the bases. He too texted me back a minute later, saying that he would look into it, and he even sent me a little smiley face, telling me that he was happy to help. My assistant really did like this sort of thing. Then again, it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever asked him to do. And it certainly wasn’t the most dangerous.

  I cranked the engine, steered down Jo-Jo’s driveway, and left her subdivision behind. I’d just pulled out onto the main road when the car’s sound system chirped with a new call. I hit a button on the steering wheel to answer it.

  “Hello?”

  For a few seconds, there was silence. Then a series of loud crashes and bangs sounded, along with several muffled shouts and the distinctive tinkle-tinkle of breaking glass. I glanced at the screen on my dashboard to see who was calling.

  Ryan Colson.

  I’d told Ryan to call if anything suspicious happened, but the noises coming out of the phone were downright violent. Someone had broken into Jade’s house.

  I floored the gas pedal, speeding toward her place. I thought about ending the call to dial Bria and tell her what was going on, but I wanted to stay on the line and hear what was happening.

  Nothing—absolutely nothing.

  After that first initial blast of sound, the noises stopped completely, and I didn’t hear so much as a whisper of conversation in the background. Whatever was happening at Jade’s house, it was now taking place away from the phone.