Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

couple had been up here for any length of time, there should arguing about Ralph drinking too much and getting fired have been some evidence of it. Beer cans, cigarettes, an from his latest job.
    empty soda bottle, some candy bar wrappers. Instead, I stayed outside three minutes. Empty. The apartment there was nothing. I didn’t even see any roach traps hidwas empty. If Jake McAllister had been inside to see or den in the corners.
    hear the door open, he would have come out to investiI dropped my Stone magic and let my skin revert back gate by now. Most people weren’t good at waiting. They to its normal texture. Then, I moved to the back of the moved too soon, too quickly, and then they got dead. apartment and the open window where the shooter had A minute was enough to unnerve most people. Three, been when he’d fired into the Pork Pit.
    enough to drive all but the most consummate profesAgain, there was nothing. No cups, no wrappers, no sional assassin crazy with adrenaline. Even I didn’t like evidence anyone had been inside the apartment today or waiting three minutes for something to happen. But there anytime in the recent past. I peered under the window. was a reason Fletcher had dubbed me the Spider—beHe’d even policed his brass, picking up the spent shell cause I could be infinitely patient. Because I had that casings from the bullets he’d fired. Again, not something internal restraint. Because I could wait those long, long I would expect from a reckless, twitchy, Fire elemental three minutes, if it meant getting to my target—or not hothead like Jake McAllister.
    becoming one myself.
    Dingy exposed brick outlined the window, and I I slipped inside the apartment and closed the door bepressed my hand against it. The uneven stone bit into hind me.
    my palm, and I closed my eyes and reached for my magic It was a small space, divided up into even smaller again, letting the cool power flow through me, attuning rooms that reminded me of a rat’s maze. Knives in hands, myself to the smallest vibrations embedded in the brick. I slipped from one room to the next, checking them all Nothing. Just calm. I concentrated, going deeper and with extreme caution and care.
    deeper into the stone, until it felt like a part of me. A Empty. The place was totally empty.
    natural extension of myself I could examine and analyze No furniture, no appliances, not even a couple of fastthe way I might my own fingernails. I felt more calm and food wrappers crumpled and discarded on the linoleum
    . . . the sense of someone waiting. Not particularly bored, floor. It didn’t even smell of anything except the cold rain but not excited either. Just waiting . . . for the right moEstep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 66-67
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    68 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 69
    ment to come along. An emotion, an action, I knew all moving through the restaurant all morning. Cooking, too well.
    cleaning, wiping off the tables and booths, flipping the My frown deepened. I opened my eyes, dropped my sign on the front door over to open. He could have taken hand, and stepped away from the brick. I looked at the me out at any time during the morning. So why hadn’t he room again with a more critical eye, putting all the facts taken a shot before lunchtime? Why then?
    together.
    I went back over the shooting in my mind. I’d been There was nothing in the apartment, no trash, no shell standing behind the counter when the shots had been casings, no emotions, because Jake McAllister hadn’t been fired. A tough shot to make, even for a professional assashere. He wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t calm enough for sin, no matter how good with a gun he was. Maybe he’d this sort of action. This—this was the work of a profeswanted an audience when he killed me. Maybe that’s why sional.
    he’d waited. Finn had been in the restaurant, standing off An assassin, just like me.
    to my left. The girl had been there too, more or less in My gray eyes narrowed. So Jake, or more likely Jonah front of me—
    McAllister, had hired a big boy to clean up his son’s mess. And I realized what I’d been missing. The shooter, the Now I was really annoyed.
    assassin, hadn’t been firing at me.
    But still . . . I couldn’t shake the feeling I was missHe’d been aiming at the girl. ing something. Something important. Vital. obvious. My reading, my sense, of the vibrations in the stone was correct. I knew it was. Even from an early age, I’d been able to hear the stone