Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

the alley that ran behind the restaurant. were.
    I stood in the ink-black shadows next to one of the Satisfied the Fire elemental wasn’t going to come gunDumpsters, looking, listening, searching. But nothing ning for me tonight, I dropped my hand from the cold Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 36-37
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    38 JENNIFER ESTEP
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    brick and headed home. I walked three blocks in the driztrash. Most of them lived in run-down row houses and zling rain, cut through twice as many alleys, and doubled public housing units that resembled fallout shelters. The back five times before I was positive no one was following Pork Pit lay close to the Southtown border. me. Sure, I was a retired assassin, but that didn’t mean While Southtown resembled the dregs in the bottom there weren’t people out there who didn’t want me dead. of a coffee cup, Northtown was the whipped meringue on As the Spider, I’d killed my share of powerful men and top of a chocolate pie. You had to have money to live in women over the years, and I wasn’t taking any chances Northtown. Lots of it, to afford one of the plantation-style with my safety—retirement or not.
    mansions. Connections and a bloodline that went back a Twenty minutes later, I retrieved my car—a sturdy, few hundred years didn’t hurt either. But for all their polsilver Benz that I’d recently purchased—from one of ish, the folks in Northtown weren’t any better than those the parking garages near the restaurant and headed for in Southtown. They were all dangerous. The only differFletcher’s. ence was the people in Northtown would serve you tea Traffic was light on the downtown streets that ringed and cucumber sandwiches before they fucked you over. the Pork Pit. The bankers, businessmen, and other corpoThe Southtown hoods were much more efficient. They’d rate sharks had long since fled the city’s spindly skyscrapslit your throat, take your wallet, and be ready to do it ers for the comfort of their posh homes in Northtown. again to someone else before you even hit the alley floor. Their secretaries and junior staff lived out in the suburbs It took me about twenty minutes to wind my way that clustered around the heart of the city, while the janifrom the downtown district out into the suburbs that tors, maids, and other menial workers made their homes lay northwest of the city. I drove past gated communities on the rough streets of Southtown.
    with cutesy names like Davis Square and Peachtree Acres The city of Ashland spread over three states—Tennesand eventually turned onto a rutted, gravel road that see, Virginia, and North Carolina. The official borders wound up one of the ridges that slashed through the city. might have shown it to be one cohesive city, but the area I rode over the lumps and bumps in the road, used to the was really divided into two distinct sections—Northtown teeth-rattling sensation by now. Fletcher Lane had liked and Southtown. A holdover from the Civil War days his privacy, which was why his house squatted on the side that had just never faded away. The sprawling, circular of a cliff so steep a mountain goat couldn’t climb up it. confines of the downtown area joined the two halves of I steered the car through the skeletal remains of the the city together, but they bore little resemblance to each trees that flanked what passed for the driveway. Thirty other. The working poor and blue-collar folks populated seconds later, the Benz left the bare, clutching branches Southtown, along with vampire hookers, gangbangers, behind. I crested a hill, and the house popped into sight. junkies, and all other manner of rednecks and white In addition to leaving me the Pork Pit in his last will Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 38-39
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    40 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 41
    and testament, Fletcher Lane had also bequeathed me his once I’d assured myself everything was as it should be, house—a three-story clapboard structure that had been I grabbed my purse and headed for the house. But before built before the Civil War. Various improvements and adI slid my key into the front door lock, I brushed my finditions had been made to the house over the years, none gertips against the stone that framed and composed it. of which matched. Gray stone, red clay, brown brick. All Deep, rich, black granite so hard and solid even a giant that and more could be seen on the house, along with a would have a tough time pounding through it. Thin veins