“Oh, no,” I drawled. “But greedy, shameless hustler certainly is.”
“Damn skippy.”
Owen chuckled again. There was no use arguing with Finn, so I grabbed a spoon off the counter and went back to the pan on the stove. I’d already been through Silvio’s file while I was waiting for them to show up, and I’d decided to make us all some dinner while Finn and Owen reviewed the info. After the emotional roller coaster of the day, I needed some serious comfort food, and I’d decided on good, old-fashioned sloppy joes.
I’d melted a little butter in the bottom of the pan, before browning up some ground sirloin, adding ketchup, and letting everything bubble away together. I leaned over the pan and breathed in, enjoying the spicy tickle of chili powder and black pepper steaming up from the simmering mixture. I gave my sloppy joe filling a final stir, then turned off the stove.
While Finn and Owen flipped through the papers and photos, I sliced up a loaf of Sophia’s sourdough bread and started making sandwiches. I covered one piece of bread with a bit of mayonnaise, along with a thick layer of my spicy sloppy joe mix, then topped that off with some shredded sharp cheddar cheese and another piece of bread. I made six sandwiches, two for each of us, then grabbed the parmesan-dill potatoes I’d been roasting in the oven, along with parfait glasses filled with dark chocolate mousse I’d made earlier in the week. I put everything on a tray and carried it over to the table.
My stomach gurgled with happiness as we all dug into the food. The warm, hearty potatoes pleasantly offset the slow burn of the spices in the sloppy joes, while the mousse was a rich cocoa concoction. I washed everything down with tart, crisp lemonade.
Owen and Finn must have been as hungry as I was, because we all finished our food in record time. Owen cleared the dishes away, while Finn and I stayed at the table.
“We should get started. No rest for the wicked and all that,” Finn said in a cheery voice.
“Or the weary,” I muttered, but he didn’t hear me.
Finn grabbed the file, dragged it over in front of him, flipped it open, and started perusing the contents. “I have to hand it to Silvio. He knows what he’s doing. There’s thorough, and then there is what is in this folder. Photos, blueprints, dates, times, routes, contacts. It’s all in here, along with every corner, alley, and parked car where Benson’s dealers set up. Silvio even included what Benson’s favorite meal is at Underwood’s. The veal cutlets, in case you were wondering.” He shook his head. “This is as good as any file in Dad’s office—and better than some.”
I’d thought the same thing, although I would never say so out loud. It felt . . . disloyal.
“Yeah,” Owen called out, washing the dishes in the sink. “But is the information accurate? Or is he setting Gin up for some kind of fall?”
“It’s accurate,” I said, pointing to another folder on the table. “I dug out Fletcher’s file on Benson. All of Silvio’s info matches up with the old man’s.”
Some of Fletcher’s information was out of date, since it was more than a year old, given his death last fall. But the important things he had noted about Benson corresponded with Silvio’s file.
Finn let out a low whistle. “Well, it certainly seems like Silvio is serious about wanting Benson dead.”
“Wouldn’t you be, if Catalina was your niece?” Owen asked. “And how did you miss the fact that Silvio was her uncle?”
Finn shook his head. “I did a background check on Catalina, like I do with all the employees at the Pork Pit, but she started working there last year, well before—”
“Before I outed myself as the Spider by killing Mab,” I finished.
He nodded. “So I didn’t dig as deep as I should have. But Silvio is the one who paid for Catalina’s car, her apartment, all of it. He actually set everything up through my bank, if you can believe that. On paper, it looks like a monthly life insurance payout, but it’s actually a trust that he established in Catalina’s name when she was born. She’s had access to it since she was eighteen, but she didn’t touch a penny of the money—”
“Until after her mom died.” I finished his thought again.
“Well, you can’t blame her for that, can you?” Owen murmured. “Wanting to get away from Southtown and all the memories there, good and bad.”
“No, I can’t.”
We all fell silent, and the only sound was the hissing of the water as Owen kept washing and rinsing off the dishes.
Finn shook his head again. “And I still can’t believe that Silvio just up and gave you all of this information on Benson. It’s better than a Christmas present. Why can’t people ever make things this easy for me?”
“What can I say? I’m special,” I quipped. “People throw things at me wherever I go.”
He snorted. “You mean they pull out guns and try to shoot you with them. Knives, rune bombs, and the like.”
“Well, I suppose that people wanting me dead is its own form of flattery. At least it makes me popular.” I put my elbows on the table and leaned forward. “So how does it look to you?”
Finn shuffled through the information again. “Doing it up close and personal is out of the question. There’s a lot of open space around the mansion, and his guards would be all over you the second you set foot on the grounds. But let’s say that you managed to slip inside his mansion. Guess what? There are more guards on every single floor. Even if you got Benson, I don’t think you could get out again. At least not without making a whole lot of noise and alerting the exterior guards.”
“Providing that I could even get Benson in the first place,” I muttered.
Something I wasn’t so sure about, given his Air magic. Sneaking up on people was one of the things I did best, but if Benson knew I was coming, if his magic whispered to him that I was there, then I would lose the element of surprise. And I had a feeling that I would need every single advantage I could get to take him down.
Owen didn’t hear me over the rush of the water, but Finn did, and he raised his eyebrows in obvious concern. I ignored his worry and waved my hand, telling him to continue.
“Sniping him from a distance is the best option,” Finn said. “There are a couple of buildings close to his mansion that have good sight lines. If I were you, I’d wait until he goes out to his Bentley and put a bullet through his head.”
He tapped his finger on a photo that showed Benson’s baby-blue Bentley parked by itself on the street outside his mansion. “He never rides in anything else, and the car is always parked right there, according to Silvio’s file.”
“It’s a wonder somebody doesn’t steal it, if it’s just sitting out there in the open,” Owen said.
“No one would dare to steal Benson’s car, because everyone in Southtown knows exactly who it belongs to and what he would do to them once he caught them,” I said. “And he would catch them. A car like that would be hard to fence without word getting back to Benson.”
“Yeah,” Finn said in a dreamy tone. “But ain’t she a beauty?”
He stroked his fingers over the photo, as if he could actually feel the perfect paint and polished chrome.
Owen finished with the dishes, slung a towel over his shoulder, and leaned against the counter. “But are you going to do it, Gin? That’s the real question.”
Benson had certainly given me reason enough by taking Roslyn hostage and menacing Bria. I’d killed people for less—far less—and anybody who threatened my friends or my family was fair game, as far as I was concerned. Not to mention my guilt that Roslyn had been targeted in the first place solely because of her friendship with me. I felt like I’d failed her, even though there was no way I could have predicted that Benson would use her to get to me.