Arachna

Chapter 4: The Spider and the Elephant

The adrenaline kept Lance awake enough on the drive to the meeting. But as Eric parked the damaged taxi in front of a coffee shop, smiling and humming to himself, Lance's eyelids became heavy.

Lance blinked and saw the horrified faces of those men again. He'd seen death before. He'd seen men and women alike riddled with bullet holes on the side of the street, only for their bodies to disappear within a day's time.

He'd always kept walking.

Yet the sight of Eric killing those men in cold blood, the way he enjoyed it, made Lance shift uncomfortably in his seat. He touched his swollen nose, taking glances in the rearview mirror at how purple and blue it was.

He'd gotten off lucky.

"Here we are," Eric said.

The Grand Brew, the sign in front of the store said, illuminated by lights above the shop. The idea of a nice large cup of black coffee swirled around in Lance's head as he stared dreamily at the building from the backseat. The last time he'd had coffee was when he was younger and the matron allowed him a small cup every now and then. Those were the only times she'd acknowledged him. Well, that and...

"Wait," Lance said, his tongue aching. "You don't own this place, do you?"

Eric laughed. "Oh, Lance, when will you learn?" He faced him. "I own this city. Every building, everything is mine."

Lance furrowed his brows. "I don't know how much I believe that."

Eric sighed. "Okay, okay, maybe not everything, but can't a guy dream? Besides, I may as well own this place with all the information I get from here. I like to send one of Kaela or Derek's agents here to order a coffee and just listen to all the conversations they can. You'd be surprised how talkative people can be when they think nobody's listening. The secrets they try to whisper to their friends over the background noise, not realizing that more than just their friend is listening in... You should try it one day." He put a hand to his chest. "Eavesdropping is an underappreciated art form."

Lance glanced at the bloody handkerchief to his right, tempted to throw it out the window and be rid of the images it brought to his head.

"So who are you meeting with?" Lance asked, leaning around the seat to look at Eric, hiding his hands behind the seat to pick at his nails.

Eric's eyes flashed with excitement. "We are meeting Landreau Corp. More specifically, one of the Landreau brothers himself."

Lance blinked. "How did you even manage something like that?"

"I have my ways, Lance. I'm a very persuasive person, in case you haven't noticed."

Lance felt a sentence bubbling up to his mouth. He knew he should keep quiet. He knew he shouldn't say the words. But his chest tightened the longer he waited. "Persuasive like you were with those men back there?"

Eric's smile dropped. He peered at Lance over his shades. "I had every intention of profiting off those fools, you know, but somebody got caught sneaking around. It was either lose a chance to make money or lose you. Where's my thank you?"

"Oh, please. Don't act like you weren't going to kill them anyway."

"I wasn't," Eric said with a roll of his eyes. "I was trying to distract them so you could steal that necklace back. When I heard the commotion on the other side of the door, I realized they'd spotted you. I wasn't about to let them kill an employee of mine, even if it meant killing them." He sighed. "What did you expect me to do? Blow them a kiss?"

Lance picked harder at his nails. "No, I just..." Some of that copper taste tainted his mouth still, resurfacing the images of that kid in agony, the matron staring at him.