Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies (10 page)

Finn was silent a moment. Then he raised his head and stared at me with his bright green eyes—eyes that were so similar to Fletcher’s it made my heart crack. “You might not have been his biological daughter, but Dad loved you just as much as he did me. You said it yourself. He loved knowing other people’s secrets. He probably started digging at first just to see who you really were and whether or not he could trust you.”

“And then?”

Finn shrugged. “And then you became his daughter, his protégé, and he loved you. Maybe Dad wanted to find the Fire elemental for you. Maybe he realized Bria hadn’t died that night. Maybe he wanted to make up for everything that had been done to you and your family.”

I’d wondered those same things myself. Because that’s exactly the kind of man Fletcher Lane had been. Live and let live, had been his motto. After all, assassins didn’t have a lot of moral high ground to stand on and cast stones and aspersions down at others. But if you fucked with somebody Fletcher Lane cared about, you might as well cut out your own heart with a rusty spoon—before he did it for you. The old man had taught me to be the same way. Loyalty, love, whatever you wanted to call it, it was the only thing as important as survival—and the only thing truly worth dying for. Which is why I’d hunted down Alexis James, the Air elemental bitch who’d killed Fletcher and had Finn tortured, even though I’d almost died in the process.

I rubbed my palm over my forehead. The silverstone metal in my skin felt as hard and cold as my heart. “I don’t know what Fletcher wanted me to do. Now I’ll never know.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Finn said. “And I’ll help you.”

Spoken like a true brother, blood or not. I smiled at him. “I know you will—”

Click-click
.
Click-click
.

Finn’s laptop spit out a different sort of noise, as though the hard drive had caught and snagged on something. I raised my brows. Finn leaned forward and hit a button.

Numbers popped up on his laptop monitor, along with what looked like a driver’s license photo. Frizzy blond hair. Dark eyes. Dusky skin. Black glasses.

“Got her,” Finn said. “Violet Elizabeth Fox. Credit card records, bank accounts, school transcripts. Read all about her.”

I joined him on the sofa and read the information on the screen. Violet Elizabeth Fox, age nineteen, parents deceased. A straight-A student on a full scholarship, getting her business degree at Ashland Community College.

A couple hundred bucks’ worth of charges on her credit card, a couple thousand in a savings account. A small check deposited every two weeks into her checking account from some business called Country Daze. Probably a part-time job of some sort. Nothing out of the ordinary and nothing to suggest why she’d come into the Pork Pit looking for the Tin Man.

“Violet Fox commutes to school,” I said.

“How do you know that?” Finn asked.

I tapped the screen with my fingernail. “Because she’s got an ACC parking permit and assigned slip. And look at her home address.”

“Ridgeline Hollow Road?” Finn asked. “That’s up in the mountains.”

“In the coalfields,” I added.

Folks had been carving coal out of the Appalachian Mountains for decades, and rich seams of it ran through the mountains just north of Ashland. Coal mining was dangerous, dirty, hard work, not for the claustrophobic or faint of heart. But it paid well enough for generations of men and women to risk life and limb digging the fossil fuel out of the ground. For some, mining was the only job the members of their family had ever known. For others, the mines were the final resting places of their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. Dark, silent tombs no machinery and no light would ever be able to penetrate again.

Click-click
.
Click-click
. The computer sounded once more, and a new screen popped up, overwriting the info we’d been looking at.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Finn grinned. “I flagged Violet Fox’s credit card, which she just used to make a purchase at the campus bookstore.”

“What did she buy?”

Finn stared at the monitor. “Two iced teas, two candy bars, and a copy of
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
by Joseph Campbell.”

“Two drinks? Sounds like she has a study date with somebody.” I got up off the sofa. “Let’s go.”

“To the college?” Finn asked. “What if she leaves before we get there?”

I pointed to a clock on the wall. “It’s not even four thirty yet. The bookstore is inside the student center, and the building doesn’t close until six. Violet will probably stay put until then. ”

“You’re the expert when it comes to the college,” Finn said. “Seeing as how you spend so much of your free time there reading books by dead white guys and getting busy with the young studs in your classes.”

“That’s right,” I said. “And your jealousy is unbecoming. Now, get your lazy ass off the sofa. It’s time for you to show me just how fast that Aston Martin of yours can go.”

———

“This is pointless,” Finn said. “She’s not coming back here tonight.”

We’d arrived at the college just after five and had walked through the student center, looking for Violet Fox. I knew the center well, along with the rest of campus, since I’d been auditing classes at Ashland Community College for years. Cake decorating, yoga, charcoal drawing, watercolor painting. I’d taken all those and more, as part of my cover as an eternal college student and cook and waitress at the Pork Pit.

This semester, I’d signed up for a course in classic literature, hence the fact I was currently reading
The Odyssey.

I’d always liked learning new things and saw no reason to stop taking classes just because I wasn’t killing people anymore. Besides, you just never knew when a new skill might come in handy. Especially given my past.

And I was thinking of taking several classes next semester, because, truth be told, my retirement was turning out to be rather, well, boring. During the day, I worked at the Pork Pit, of course, just as I always had. But at night, I didn’t know quite what to do with myself since I wasn’t reviewing files, trailing marks, and plotting the best way to kill someone. I could only watch the Food Network for so many hours a night. Most of the time, I ended up staring blankly at the television, wondering if eight o’clock was too early to go to bed. On the bright side, I was always extremely well rested now.

Finn and I hadn’t found Violet Fox during our search of the student center. It had lots of little cubbyholes for students to hide and study in. Or Violet and whomever she’d been with might have decided to study in the library or a computer lab or even someone’s dorm room. Too many possibilities and no way to narrow them down. So we’d come to the one place Violet Fox had to show up sooner or later—the parking lot.

“Trust me,” I said. “She’ll come back and get her car. Nobody in their right mind would leave their wheels here overnight.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Finn muttered and shifted in his seat.

I stared out the window. Ashland Community College was located in the downtown district, a small circle of knowledge hidden among the glass-and-chrome corporate buildings that passed for skyscrapers in the city.

Even though the college took up a couple of city blocks, the various halls and buildings were more or less grouped together and connected by a series of grassy quads. But space was at a premium in the downtown area, and the lots that surrounded the college had been developed long ago. All of which meant there was no student parking anywhere on campus. Instead, those who commuted every day had to leave their vehicles in a variety of lots and garages on the outskirts of downtown, then hike or bike their way over to the campus.

The parking lot we were in was the farthest one from the campus quads and located just below the Southtown border. A single light flickered overhead, painting the cars below a ghostly silver. Four-foot-high concrete barriers ringed most of the area, warning the drivers away from various potholes in the cracked asphalt. Spray-painted gang symbol runes, including clenched fists and crude outlines of guns and knives, dirtied the stone surfaces.

Crumpled fast-food wrappers, crushed-out cigarette butts, and limp, used condoms littered the ground.

According to the info Finn had compiled, Violet Fox drove an old, black Honda Accord. The midsize serviceable car sat in the center of the lot, dwarfed on one side by a truck on monster wheels covered in army green paint. A Confederate flag covered part of the truck’s back window, along with a gun rack. We sat several rows away, parked next to a Volkswagen bug with a red hood that didn’t match the rest of its white body.

“Any more charges on her credit card?” I asked.

Finn reached into the backseat and hit a button on his laptop. “Not since the last time you asked five minutes ago. How long are we going to wait? It’s almost six thirty.”

“All the campus buildings except the library close at six,” I said. “If she’s not at the library cramming, Violet Fox should be on her way here right now. We’ll give her a few more minutes. This lot is almost a mile from campus. It takes a good twenty minutes to get here from the student center, and that’s if you’re hoofing it fast.”

Finn sighed and settled a little deeper into his seat. I rolled down the window. It was still drizzling, and the wet sheen of rain made the night seem colder and gloomier than it really was. Even in the Aston Martin’s plush confines, I could hear the vibrations of the concrete barriers and broken asphalt of the parking lot. Sharp, worrisome mutters that spoke of violence, blood, fear. This was a place where people got beaten, robbed, and mugged with alarming regularity, even for Ashland—

A figure passed through a gap in the concrete barriers.

A short, curvy woman with a mop of blond hair that had frizzed out to TBH—Tennessee Big Hair—proportions thanks to the drizzle. Violet Fox. She wore a heavy down jacket that didn’t do enough to shield her from the rain.

Her purse was looped over her chest and shoulder. She stepped underneath the flickering light, and a small metal canister glinted in her right hand. Pepper spray, unless I missed my guess. Smart, sensible precautions. This was a girl who was used to walking through here at night.

But she wasn’t alone. Another girl was with her. Blueblack hair, pale eyes, slim figure, designer jeans. I recognized her too.

“That’s Eva Grayson,” I said.

Finn’s green eyes latched onto Eva. He smiled and sat up in his seat. “Really? Owen Grayson never told me what a looker his sister is.”

“Then he knows you well enough to know not to do that,” I replied.

As I watched, a man about my age followed the girls into the parking lot. His head swiveled right and left, and he stayed as close to Eva as her own shadow. His bulky windbreaker had ridden up, revealing a Glock tucked into the small of his back. Looked like Owen Grayson had gotten his sister that bodyguard after all.

Violet and Eva stopped in the middle of the lot and exchanged a few words. Violet said something that made Eva laugh. Then Violet waved her hand and started walking toward her aging Honda. Eva waved back. The man grabbed her elbow to escort her out of the parking lot, but Eva gave him a nasty glare and shook him off. The two of them turned, walked back through the gap in the concrete barrier, and disappeared from sight.

Since we’d already disabled the light in the front of the car, I opened the door of the Aston Martin and swung my legs outside.

“Well, she’s alone now.” Finn reached for his own door handle, but I grabbed his arm.

“Wait,” I said in a low voice. “Let’s see who else is around.”

“You think the shooter is here?” he asked. “We would have seen him by now.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Depends on how good he is. He could have slipped in the other side of the lot. The point is he missed her at the Pork Pit and probably couldn’t get to her on campus today. Too many witnesses, too many security guards. This is his last shot at her before she goes home for the night.”

“And you think he’s going to take it,” Finn said.

“I would.”

So we watched. Violet Fox was no fool. She approached her car cautiously. She looked right, then left, in front and behind her. She also stayed in the middle of the lot away from the sides of the parked cars. Making sure no one was sneaking up on her or was waiting underneath one of the vehicles to grab her ankles and pull her down. Smart girl.

But she wasn’t quite smart enough. Violet Fox reached into her purse, and her steps slowed as she fumbled for her keys. She didn’t immediately find them because she stopped, dropped her head, and peered into her bag.

And that’s when I saw a shadow slither out of the bed of the monster truck and head toward her.

“There he is,” Finn said, scrambling to open his door.

“He was hiding in the truck bed the whole time.”

I didn’t respond. I was already out of the car, running toward the girl.

8

Even as I started running, I saw the shadowy figure creep closer to Violet and take on the form of a short, stocky man. A dwarf. I was two hundred feet away. I wasn’t going to make it in time. I was going to be too late.

Again.

I opened my mouth to shout a warning, when something
skitter-skittered
across the pavement. The dwarf must have stepped on a soda can. Violet froze at the noise, one of her hands still in her purse. Then she bolted.

Didn’t look back, didn’t check to see what the noise was.

She just ran.

She got maybe twenty steps before the man grabbed her by her frizzy blond hair. Violet shrieked in pain and turned to flail at him, her hands arced into claws. He let her slap at him. Those sorts of blows would mean nothing to a dwarf. Magic and weapons were the only things that got their attention. Violet paused half a second to draw in another breath to scream. That’s when the man punched her in the face—hard. I heard the crunch of bone a hundred feet away.

Violet moaned, and the man hit her again. Her head snapped to one side, and she fell to her knees, retching.

The dwarf kicked her in the stomach, and the force lifted Violet off the pavement and threw her ten feet. She hit the hood of a rusty pickup and slid to the ground. She didn’t move.