Elemental Assassin 01 - Spider's Bite

porch from an angle. The end of the wooden, wraparound porch stood about four feet off the ground, supported by a couple of low beams. I squatted down and peered over the edge, my gray eyes just above the porch line. The guy still stood by the front door, but his body was turned away from me, facing inside. He wasn’t expecting trouble, at least not from this direction. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
    I hooked one of my legs onto the porch and pulled myself up. The wooden slats felt cold against my warm stomach, and the nail heads pressed into my chest like icy, round brands. I slithered over to the corner, where the shadows were the deepest, and crouched behind an antique rocking chair. The guard kept looking inside the house.
    I got to my feet and repositioned my knives. Hugging the wall, I slid toward the front door.
    Another light flared to life on the second story, brightening the yard beyond the porch. Shouts rang out from the interior above my head. A gun burped once, then twice more. The guard cursed and rocked back and forth on his feet, unsure whether he should charge in or not. He clutched his gun close to his chest, right over his heart.
    It didn’t do him a damn bit of good.
    My knife slid into his back, through his ribs, and up into his heart. His blood spurted out onto my hand. Hot. Wet. Sticky. The sensation was the same, yet different every time.
    He jerked, and I clamped my hand over his mouth to keep him from crying out. Shouldn’t have bothered. Something crashed deeper inside the house. Loud, vicious curses drifted out onto the night breeze, drowning out whatever noise the dying man might have made.
    I pulled the knife out, eased the dead guard to the porch, stepped over him, and slipped inside. A couple of dim overhead lights cast out a bit of weak illumination. The front hallway branched off in three directions—up, right, left. A den lay to the right, with a big-screen TV, a brown leather couch, and a couple of recliners. A small dining area was off to the left. A dirty plate and glass littered the rectangular table, along with a crumpled newspaper. Cozy.
    The stairs lay in front of me, and I headed up them. Again, I hugged the wall, wincing at the inevitable crack that sounded as my weight shifted on the slick wood. I peered over the lip of the landing. Another hallway with rooms branching off either side. To my right was what looked like a never-used guest bedroom and an office with a computer half-buried by stacks of sports magazines. In front of me was a bathroom, with a heap of towels twisted together on the tile floor. Another room lay beyond that one down the hallway, probably the master bedroom.
    Lights blazed in the last room, the one I’d seen Donovan Caine pacing back and forth in. Several hard slap-slap-slap s rang out, followed by a low, throaty groan. The detective was getting the shit beat out of him.
    I eased onto the landing, wincing as the stairs let out a final, unwanted creak. But the men inside the bedroom were too intent on hitting Caine to worry about possible intruders. Besides, they’d left two guards stationed downstairs, one in the front and one in the back. Nothing could possibly go wrong when you left a couple of guys alone and in the dark to watch your back.
    A knife in either hand, I tiptoed down the hallway toward the bedroom. The indistinct voices sharpened into meaningful conversation.
    “Tell us where it is,” a man said. “Surely you can see how pointless this is. No one’s coming to save you, detective.”
    Déjà vu all over again.
    “All we want is the flash drive and the information Gordon Giles gave to you at the opera house. That’s it.”
    “Yeah,” another male voice chimed in. “Give it to us quick enough, and we might even let you live.”
    I rolled my eyes. Liar. The only way Donovan Caine was leaving this house was in a black body bag.
    A low cough rumbled out, followed by the sound of someone spitting. Caine, hacking up his own blood.
    “I told you Giles didn’t give me anything. No flash drive, no files, nothing,” Caine said in a raspy voice. “He didn’t have time to before your assassin came into the box.”
    “But you were there to get it, to convince him to turn the information over to you,” a third man’s voice sounded. “He must have told you something, given you something .”
    Another series of slap-slap-slap s sounded, punctuated by the solid thwack of fists hitting flesh. Caine groaned again.
    “Where’s the boss