Thread of Death by Jennifer Estep Read Free Book Online

his waist and was resting her head on his chest. The sun glinted off the giant’s shaved head as he nodded at something Finn said.
    Xavier, Bria’s partner on the force and a friend of mine, grinned when he saw me come up behind Finn. “Hello, Gin. Good to see you out and about. Tell me, have you danced on Mab’s grave yet?”
    “No,” I replied, smiling back at him. “But only because they haven’t officially buried her yet. Trust me. It’s on my to-do list.”
    Xavier glanced over at a group of three dwarves who were wearing gray coveralls, drinking sodas, and leaning on shovels a few feet away from Mab’s coffin. Apparently they were waiting for everyone to clear out before they buried the Fire elemental. They’d be waiting awhile longer now that the police were here.
    While Owen and Finn talked with Xavier and Roslyn, I headed over to Bria, who was using a pen to flip through the dwarf’s wallet, which she’d fished out of his pants pocket.
    “Anything interesting in there?” I asked.
    She shook her head, making the sunlight dance through her blond hair. “Not much. Driver’s license says his name is Jack Spenser. Address says he’s a local who lives in an apartment building over in Southtown. I’ve got someone running down his friends and family now, but so far no luck finding anyone who knew him.”
    “Cell phone?”
    “Just a brand-new burner phone in his pocket, with a log that looks like he only got calls from another brand-new burner phone. Some odds and ends in his pockets: loose change, a pack of gum, a paper clip. The most interesting thing is the five thousand dollars in cash he had on him.”
    She pointed her pen at the fat roll of hundreds bound together with a rubber band that was sitting on the grass. The money was splattered with blood, just like the rest of the dwarf was, and it looked like a bullet had cut right through Ben Franklin’s face and lodged inside the rest of the cash.
    I arched an eyebrow. “He only got five thousand dollars to try and take me out? I’m rather insulted. I didn’t realize my rates had dropped so much so fast. Mab was offering at least five million to anyone who bagged me—ten if her bounty hunters managed to take me alive.”
    Bria didn’t say anything, and she didn’t crack a smile at my black humor. If anything, her face darkened at the mention of Mab’s bounty. Instead of looking at me, she stared back down at the dead dwarf, thinking.
    “We’ll look at his phone calls and backtrack the bullets and the sniper rifle . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she shrugged.
    I knew what she meant. “But you doubt either one will lead you anywhere.”
    “We both know how easy it is to get any kind of gun and ammo you want over in Southtown with no questions asked, and these burner phones are even more popular,” Bria said. “Sorry, Gin, it looks like whoever hired the dwarf to crash the funeral covered his tracks pretty well.”
    This time I shrugged. “Well, you know me: I prefer to handle my own problems anyway rather than relying on the police.”
    Bria’s features hardened a little more at that. One of the uniformed officers waved at her and she got to her feet and went over to him without another word, her high heels driving spikes into the grass. I knew Bria was still trying to come to terms with the torture she’d suffered at Mab’s hands, but it was starting to feel like she thought the attack today was my fault. Hell, maybe it was. No matter how hard I tried to avoid it, trouble just seemed to follow me everywhere I went. I was just glad neither she nor any of the others had been hurt today.
    Part of me wanted to go after Bria, to say that I hadn’t planned any of this, but I didn’t know that it would do any good. So I turned my attention back to the dead dwarf, kneeling down beside his body. But there were no more clues to be found. Someone had cut open his shirt, probably one of the paramedics who’d arrived with the cops. I