Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies (9 page)

Either way, nobody would think it had been a planned hit. The best assassinations were always the ones that looked like something else. A nice, neat, easy plan all the way around.

Maybe the assassin had been following the girl, looking for just such an opportunity. Maybe he’d known she was coming to the Pork Pit today to eat lunch and ask about somebody named the Tin Man. Either way, when she’d gone into the restaurant, he’d decided to make sure that she never came out again. It would have been easy for him to slip into the building unseen, find the empty apartment, and jimmy the lock. All he would have ahd to do after that was wait for the right moment, the right angle, and then pull the trigger.

I stared at the cracked storefront of the Pork Pit. He would have hit her too—four kill shots clustered in her chest.

If the restaurant didn’t have bulletproof windows.

No, this didn’t have anything to do with Jake McAllister and me. The girl—it was all about the girl. Somebody wanted her dead.

As I stood there brooding, the front door of the restaurant opened. Violet stepped outside and hurried away.

“Fuck,” I snarled and sprinted from the apartment.

———

The assassin was long gone, so I didn’t bother reaching for my Stone magic to harden my skin again. Besides, he wasn’t after me anyway. Instead, I ran down the stairs and out of the apartment building. I hung a left and sprinted down the block in the direction the girl had gone.

She must have been power walking because she was already a full block ahead of me. She raised her arm, and a cab slid to a stop at the curb in front of her.

“Hey, you!” I yelled. “Stop!”

The girl paid no attention to me. I was too far away for my voice to carry over the traffic on the street. Even if she had heard my cry, she probably wouldn’t have thought it was directed at her.
Hey, you
wasn’t the most personal of greetings. So I picked up my pace, running at a full sprint. If the street had been empty, I might have reached her. But every five steps, I had to duck right or left to avoid someone talking on their cell phone.

I reached the end of my block. On the corner across from me, the girl had settled into the cab. I stepped out onto the street, my eyes fixed on the bright yellow vehicle—

Beep! Beep!

And abruptly stepped back as a car horn blared out. A second later, a minivan zoomed by, running the red light.

The driver shot me a dirty look.

“Red means stop, you twit!” I screamed.

She didn’t see me flip her off. Too busy nattering away on her cell phone to do something safe, like pay attention to pedestrians and traffic signals. And she’d cost me any chance I’d had of catching the girl. Up ahead, the cab had already pulled out into traffic. Five seconds later, it turned right, disappearing from sight.

Gone. The girl was gone.

And I had no idea where she went or more importantly, why someone had tried to kill her.

I stood there a moment, cursing my own stupidity. I should have known the second the girl asked for the Tin Man that something was seriously wrong. That it wasn’t just a fluke or an accident or dumb luck. That trouble had just walked into the Pork Pit.

Trouble that had gotten away from me.

“Fuck,” I snarled again before turning and heading back to the restaurant.

———

I tucked my knives up my sleeves and slowly, calmly, quietly strolled the block and a half back to the Pork Pit.

No need to draw any more attention to myself today. If I kept this up, somebody might call the police and report a crazy woman. Not too long ago, I’d spent several days in Ashland Asylum on one of my jobs. I had no desire to pay the facility a return visit.

A couple minutes later, I stepped into the Pork Pit.

Sophia was adding some red pepper and paprika to her macaroni salad. Finn sat on his usual stool, sipping another cup of chicory coffee and reading the rest of the financial section.

“Problems?” he quipped.

I gave him a sour glare.

“I only ask because a) you’re not smiling and covered in someone else’s blood, and b) I saw you run out of the building across the street like there were a pack of hungry vampires after you,” Finn said. “I take it Jake McAllister managed to allude you?”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t McAllister. The shooter wasn’t even gunning for me. He was aiming at the girl.”

I filled Finn and Sophia in on my theory about the shooter being a pro and my conclusion his target had been the girl, not me.

Finn let out a low whistle. “Someone hired an assassin to take out the girl? She must have really pissed somebody off.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Behind the counter, Sophia grunted her agreement.

“I don’t care who she’s pissed off right now,” I snapped. “I just need to find her before the assassin decides to make another run at her.”

“Why?” Finn asked. “It’s her problem, not yours.”

I stared at him. “Because she comes in here asking about the Tin Man, asking about Fletcher, and a minute later, somebody’s shooting at her. I want to know why. Why she came here, what her connection to Fletcher is, all of it.”

Mainly, I wanted to make sure there was no way her almost or future murder was going to get laid on my doorstep or on Finn or the Deveraux sisters. Covering myself had been one of the first things Fletcher Lane had taught me.

“Now, what happened after I left? Did she say anything, do anything?”

Finn shook his head. “No. She sat there a minute getting her breath back; then she got up and left.”

My gray eyes narrowed. “And you didn’t try to stop her?”

Finn shrugged. “I figured as long as she wasn’t screaming and calling the cops, it was all right. We both thought it was Jake McAllister shooting at you, not somebody else gunning for her.”

I bit back another curse. Finn was right. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Still, I needed some answers, and the girl was the only one who could give them to me. But she was miles away by now. So how could I track her down? I thought for a second, then went over to the counter.

“Uh-oh,” Finn muttered. “I know that look.”

“What look?” I asked, lifting up the cash register.

“That look. The one that makes you resemble a hibernating bear someone just poked with a sharp stick. The look that says you’re not going to let this go, even though it’s not your problem.”

I put my hand over my heart and batted my lashes at him. “You know me all too well.”

“But how are you going to find her?” Finn asked. “She didn’t exactly leave you a personal dossier.”

My fingers probed the dark space under the cash register.

There it was. I pulled out a scrap of paper from beneath the register. The girl’s credit card receipt from lunch. The one with her name on it.
Violet Fox
. Not as good as a dossier, but it was a place to start.

“Oh, I’m not going to find her,” I said in a sweet voice.

“Don’t say it,” he pleaded. “Please don’t say it.”

I held the piece of paper out to him. “I’m not going to find her because you’re going to do it for me.”

Finn just sighed and took another sip of his coffee.

7

“Anything yet?”

Finn glared over his shoulder at me. “It’s only been two hours, Gin. Keep your panties on.”

I glared back and stuck my tongue out at him.

He grinned. “Don’t stick it out unless you plan to use it.”

I snorted. “You wish.”

“Always.”

After I’d told Finn to track down the college girl using her credit card receipt, he’d gone to his office to get his laptop and some other supplies and tell the money men he was taking the rest of the day off. While he’d done that, I’d scheduled an appointment for a glazier to come fix the storefront windows in the morning. Then I’d sent Sophia home, closed down the restaurant, and driven to Fletcher’s house. That had taken an hour.

Finn had shown up thirty minutes ago. Now he relaxed on the faded plaid sofa in the den, while I puttered around in the kitchen. Given all the excitement, I hadn’t had a chance to eat lunch at the restaurant, and I had a feeling it was going to be a long night. That’s why I’d made chicken salad sandwiches on thick, honey-wheat bread, along with a fresh fruit salad.

I put the food on a tray, along with plates, silverware, napkins, and a pitcher of raspberry lemonade. Then I reached for my Ice magic. The cold, silver light flickered on my palm, centered over the spider rune scar, and I dropped several Ice cubes into the two glasses on the tray.

I took the whole thing into the den and set it on the coffee table.

I sat cross-legged in one of the recliners and munched on a sandwich. Celery, apples, golden raisins, lemon zest, and a sour cream–mayo dressing flavored the chicken salad, while the crusty bread provided crunch and contrast.

I alternated with bites of my strawberry-and-kiwi fruit salad, tossed with lime juice, vanilla, and just a hint of honey.

Finn also helped himself to a sandwich and some fruit, and we ate in silence. Finn’s laptop whirred softly as it sorted through billions of bytes of data, looking for info on one Violet Fox.

After he’d wolfed down his first sandwich, Finn reached for another. He jerked his head at the far side of the coffee table, where he’d slid the folder Fletcher Lane had left me—the one that contained the information on my murdered family and Bria, my baby sister, who was still alive. Finn had moved the folder out of the way so he could set his laptop on the ancient table.

“Any luck with that?” Finn asked.

“No.”

Shortly after Fletcher’s funeral, I’d told Finn about the file and the secrets it held, including my real name—

Genevieve Snow. I’d let him sort through the information and draw his own conclusions about everything else. Including what had happened the night my mother, Eira, and older sister, Annabella, had been murdered by a Fire elemental. For a moment, orange flames filled my vision.

The image of two burned husks of bodies flashed before my eyes, and the air smelled of charred flesh. I willed the memory away.

“You should let me help you with that,” Finn said. “I have contacts you don’t.”

I shook my head. “No. Not… yet. I still don’t know how I feel about it.”

“About what?”

“About the old man knowing who I really was all these years and not saying anything to me about it. About him collecting all that information about my family.”

The spider rune scars on my palms started itching, the way they always did when I thought about my dead, lost family. A small circle with eight thin lines radiating out of it. The symbol for patience. I rubbed first one scar with my fingers, then the other, trying to ease the burning sensation.

Didn’t help. Never did.

“Fletcher loved ferreting out people’s secrets. Compiling information, dossiers on them. It made him a good assassin and an even better handler,” I said. “I just never thought he’d do it to
me
.”

“You’re angry at him.”

“Hell, yeah, I’m angry,” I snapped. My toes pushed off the floor, and the recliner rocked back. “Fletcher spends years putting that folder together and then leaves it with Jo-Jo Deveraux instead of giving it to me. Why? What’s the point?”

I was angry, of course, but more than that, I felt betrayed.

Like Fletcher Lane had regarded me as nothing more than a mark to gather intel on. Like I wasn’t the daughter he’d claimed me to be. Like he hadn’t ever really loved me the way that I’d loved him. Or at least trusted me enough to tell me what he was doing.

And I was angry at myself too, because I’d had no clue what the old man had been up to, that he’d been out gathering information on me and my murdered family.

I’d never even dreamed that Fletcher would do such a thing—at least not to
me
. Or maybe I just hadn’t wanted to consider the possibility. Either way, all that I had left now were questions and more questions.

“Maybe he was planning to give it to you,” Finn said.

“Before he died.”

Another image flashed before my eyes. Fletcher Lane, lying in a pool of his own blood at the Pork Pit, the skin flayed and ripped from his body. His face and chest and arms and hands a ruined mess of raw flesh and bones.

I shook my head, trying to banish the memory. Didn’t work. Never did.

“I just don’t understand what he expected me to do with the information. Take my revenge on the Fire elemental? It’s been years, and I still don’t know who she was or why she killed my family. I didn’t even
see
the elemental before one of her goons caught and blindfolded me. Just heard her laughing while she tortured me. For all I know, the bitch could be dead by now.”

“She was strong enough to kill your mother and sister, two powerful Ice elementals in their own right, and melt that silverstone spider rune into your palms. I doubt she’s dead. People like that don’t go quietly,” Finn said. “Besides, it was only seventeen years ago. Most elementals live to be well over a hundred.”

A cold smile curved my lips. “Can’t blame a gal for dreaming, can you?”

I stared at the folder, and my smile flipped into a frown. “I just don’t understand
why
Fletcher did it. I was there. I lived through it. Nothing in that file tells me anything I don’t already know.”

“Except that your sister’s alive,” Finn said in a soft voice.

Bria. Blond hair. Big, blue eyes. A child’s soft, sweet, innocent face. A delicate primrose rune hanging from the chain around her neck. She’d been eight the last time I’d seen her, the night I found her blood in the hiding place where I’d left her. The night I thought she’d died.

“Fat lot of good it does me to know she’s alive, since I can’t find her. That picture could have been taken anywhere, and Fletcher wasn’t kind enough to scribble a location on the back of it.” Emotion tightened my throat, and I had to force out my next words. “I don’t—I don’t even know if I want to find her.”

“Why not?” Finn asked. “She’s your sister.”

“She
was
my sister,” I replied in a husky voice. “I have no idea what she’s like now. If she remembers me, if she’d even want to see me. Hell, she probably thinks I’m dead, just like I thought she was. Then there’s the small fact of what I’ve been doing with my life. Call me crazy, but I doubt anyone would want an assassin for a big sister.”