Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

of doing any real damage.
    Smack!
    Smack! Smack!
    Three more bullets slammed into the front of the restaurant. I looked up, trying to judge where the shots were coming from, but the angle from the floor was all wrong. A bullet smacked into one of the storefront windows. I could see the storefront windows, but not who or what The sharp, sudden burst of sound caught the girl’s atlay beyond them. tention. Her head snapped toward the front of the restauMy eyes flicked to the projectiles. A large caliber, probrant. “What was that—”
    ably a fifty, from the looks of them. And whoever was That was all the Violet got out before I darted around shooting knew what he was doing. Despite their size, the the counter and threw myself on top of her, forcing her bullets formed a small, circular cluster about the size of to the floor.
    my fist. Kill shots, all of them.
    “oof!”
    The four metal missiles had cracked and caught in We hit the ground hard. I knocked the wind out of the the storefront glass, which kept them from punching girl, but I didn’t care. Until I figured out what she wanted through into the Pork Pit itself. Still, the sharp, sudden with the Tin Man, Violet Fox needed to keep breathing. impacts had ruined the windows. Macabre patterns ran I didn’t have to worry about Finn. Like me, he knew out from the silver bullets, as though a swarm of spiexactly what that particular sound was and had heard it ders were stringing their delicate webs through the thick too many times before to ignore it now. Somehow, he’d glass.
    already wormed under one of the tables, with several I shook one of my sleeves, and a knife slipped into my chairs further shielding him. Finnegan Lane had an excelother hand, the hilt resting on the scar on my palm. I lent sense of self-preservation.
    hoped the bastard got tired of shooting through the winEstep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 60-61
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    62 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 63
    dows and decided to come inside and finish the job. He’d to one side to a section of glass that hadn’t been cracked be in for a nasty surprise. one he wouldn’t recover from. by the bullets and peered outside.
    With every breath, I expected more bullets to slam There. Across the street, curtains flapped against an into the windows. or for the door to be yanked open and open window on the second floor of an apartment buildsomeone to storm inside. Jake McAllister, most likely, trying. Not an unusual sight—in the summer. But it was ing to make good on his threat to come back and kill me. November. Fifty degrees out, with a steady drizzle of cold Instead—silence.
    rain. Nobody in his right mind would have his window I counted off the seconds in my head. Ten . . . open on a day like this unless he had a good reason. Like twenty . . . thirty . . . forty-five . . . trying to kill me.
    The girl shifted, trying to get out from underneath Made sense. I hadn’t heard a car peel away from the me. or at least get her face up off the floor. I rolled off curb after the shots had been fired, and I didn’t see any her so she could catch her breath, but I kept one hand on new tread marks on the street outside, which meant it her back, holding her in place.
    hadn’t been a drive-by. Jake McAllister had been station“Be still,” I snapped. “He could be waiting for us to get ary when he’d put four bullets into the front of my resto our feet before he fires another shot.”
    taurant. My eyes focused on the flapping curtain. Time to Violet nodded and lay on the floor, sucking in deep see if the cuckoo had left his nest or not. breaths through her open mouth.
    “Stay here,” I told Finn.
    After ninety seconds had passed without another gun“Where are you going?” Finn asked from underneath shot, I rose to my knees and looked outside. The cracked the table.
    glass distorted my vision, but I didn’t see anyone standing I gripped my knives a little tighter. “To find the basdirectly outside the restaurant, gun in hand. No parked tard who just ruined my storefront windows.”
    cars idling at the curb. No one running down the sidewalk. Normally, I wouldn’t have gone out the front door of the I stood up and examined the bullets. Fifty caliber all Pork Pit. Not after somebody had just shot up my winthe way around, probably from a rifle. Not what I’d exdows. That was just asking for trouble, for the shooter to pected from somebody like Jake McAllister. He struck put a bullet in my chest when I stepped