Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

Fox.
    it. The symbol for patience. I rubbed first one scar with After he’d wolfed down his first sandwich, Finn my fingers, then the other, trying to ease the burning senreached for another. He jerked his head at the far side of sation. Didn’t help. Never did.
    the coffee table, where he’d slid the folder Fletcher Lane
    “Fletcher loved ferreting out people’s secrets. Compilhad left me—the one that contained the information on ing information, dossiers on them. It made him a good my murdered family and Bria, my baby sister, who was assassin and an even better handler,” I said. “I just never still alive. Finn had moved the folder out of the way so he thought he’d do it to me .”
    could set his laptop on the ancient table.
    “You’re angry at him.”
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    “Hell, yeah, I’m angry,” I snapped. My toes pushed off me. Just heard her laughing while she tortured me. For all the floor, and the recliner rocked back. “Fletcher spends I know, the bitch could be dead by now.”
    years putting that folder together and then leaves it with
    “She was strong enough to kill your mother and sister, Jo-Jo Deveraux instead of giving it to me. Why? What’s two powerful Ice elementals in their own right, and melt the point?”
    that silverstone spider rune into your palms. I doubt she’s I was angry, of course, but more than that, I felt bedead. People like that don’t go quietly,” Finn said. “Betrayed. Like Fletcher Lane had regarded me as nothing sides, it was only seventeen years ago. Most elementals more than a mark to gather intel on. Like I wasn’t the live to be well over a hundred.”
    daughter he’d claimed me to be. Like he hadn’t ever really A cold smile curved my lips. “Can’t blame a gal for loved me the way that I’d loved him. or at least trusted dreaming, can you?”
    me enough to tell me what he was doing.
    I stared at the folder, and my smile flipped into a And I was angry at myself too, because I’d had no clue frown. “I just don’t understand why Fletcher did it. I was what the old man had been up to, that he’d been out there. I lived through it. Nothing in that file tells me anygathering information on me and my murdered family. thing I don’t already know.”
    I’d never even dreamed that Fletcher would do such a
    “Except that your sister’s alive,” Finn said in a soft thing—at least not to me . or maybe I just hadn’t wanted voice.
    to consider the possibility. Either way, all that I had left Bria. Blond hair. Big, blue eyes. A child’s soft, sweet, now were questions and more questions.
    innocent face. A delicate primrose rune hanging from the
    “Maybe he was planning to give it to you,” Finn said. chain around her neck. She’d been eight the last time I’d
    “Before he died.”
    seen her, the night I found her blood in the hiding place Another image flashed before my eyes. Fletcher Lane, where I’d left her. The night I thought she’d died. lying in a pool of his own blood at the Pork Pit, the skin
    “Fat lot of good it does me to know she’s alive, since flayed and ripped from his body. His face and chest and I can’t find her. That picture could have been taken anyarms and hands a ruined mess of raw flesh and bones. where, and Fletcher wasn’t kind enough to scribble a loI shook my head, trying to banish the memory. Didn’t cation on the back of it.” Emotion tightened my throat, work. Never did.
    and I had to force out my next words. “I don’t—I don’t
    “I just don’t understand what he expected me to do even know if I want to find her.”
    with the information. Take my revenge on the Fire el“Why not?” Finn asked. “She’s your sister.”
    emental? It’s been years, and I still don’t know who she
    “She was my sister,” I replied in a husky voice. “I have was or why she killed my family. I didn’t even see the elno idea what she’s like now. If she remembers me, if she’d emental before one of her goons caught and blindfolded even want to see me. Hell, she probably thinks I’m dead, Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 80-81
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    just like I thought she was. Then there’s the small fact of I rubbed my palm over my forehead. The silverstone what I’ve been doing with my life. Call me crazy, but I metal in my skin felt as hard and cold as my heart. “I doubt anyone would want an assassin