Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

lipstick tube into my jeans pocket.
    Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 128-129
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    130 JENNIFER ESTEP
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    “That folder I gave you. The one Fletcher spent so The tone of her voice made the wheels of my brain long working on.”
    grind together—just like my teeth were doing. My gray I grimaced. Jo-Jo had been the one who’d given me eyes burned into her light ones. “You know, don’t you?
    the folder about my murdered family two months ago You know why he compiled that information.”
    soon after Fletcher’s funeral. The dwarf had told me to Jo-Jo tilted her head. “I have some ideas.”
    come talk to her about the information when I was ready.
    “Care to share?” I asked in a sarcastic tone. Something else I hadn’t done yet.
    The dwarf shook her head. “It’s not my place. This is
    “What’s there to talk about?” I shrugged. “For some between you and Fletcher.”
    reason, Fletcher Lane knew who I really was all along,
    “He’s dead .”
    and he never said a word to me about it. Instead, he spent
    “Doesn’t mean he still can’t speak to you,” Jo-Jo said. his free time compiling all the info he could on my dead
    “All you have to do is be willing to listen.”
    family, like I was another one of his targets. Some hit he I opened my mouth to tell her to cut out the cryptic was trying to figure out how to do. The old man gives the talk, that it was a little hard to have a conversation with folder to you, then gets murdered before he can tell me someone who was buried six feet under. But Finn chose about it—or what the hell he wanted me to do with the that moment to stroll into the salon. He jangled his car information. I don’t see what we have to discuss.”
    keys in his hand.
    Jo-Jo stared at me. “Your sister, for starters.”
    “You ready?” Finn asked.
    I snorted. “oh yes, my baby sister, Bria, who I find out I glanced at him. “Sophia cleaned the blood out of the is alive after thinking she was dead for seventeen years.”
    back of the Aston already? How the hell did she do that?”
    “I can understand why you feel hurt, why you feel like
    “Soap, water, and some dwarven elbow grease,” Finn Fletcher betrayed you. But family is everything, Gin,” the replied. “That woman’s a genius. Smells and looks just dwarf said in a soft voice. “Whether it’s the one you’re born like it did the day I got it.”
    into or the one you make for yourself. Bria is your blood, There were only so many things you could do with your sister, and she’s alive. You can’t just ignore that.”
    soap and water. I didn’t think getting blood out of leather
    “Fletcher left me a picture of her, but he didn’t tell me was one of them. I looked at Jo-Jo, who gave me a guilehow to find her. Where she’s at, what she’s even like now. less grin I didn’t buy for a minute. I loved the two dwarven Kind of sloppy of him to omit that information, don’t sister, but the longer I was around Jo-Jo and Sophia Deyou think?” I snapped. veraux, the more I realized I didn’t know anything about “Fletcher Lane never did anything he didn’t mean to,”
    them. Not really. Not anything that seemed to matter, Jo-Jo said. “He left you that picture for a reason. You’ll like the truth. Just as I hadn’t seemed to know the real understand why one day.”
    Fletcher Lane, either.
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    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    132 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 133
    You ready?” Finn asked again.
    stomach until it felt as hard as the brick of the restaurant I stared at Jo-Jo a moment longer, then turned to him. around me.
    “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”
    “He’s late,” I said in a soft voice.
    “Don’t be a worrywart, Gin,” a teenage voice sneered be- Finn dropped me off at Fletcher’s house, agreed to meet hind me. “He always comes back.”
    me at the Pork Pit tomorrow, then headed back to his I stopped my chopping and turned to look at Finnegan apartment in the city. I checked the gravel in the driveway Lane. At fifteen, Finn was two years older than me, with a and the granite around the front door, using my Stone mop of dark brown hair and eyes that reminded me of wet magic to listen for disturbances. But all the stones gave grass. He was tall, with a solid chest that was already filling off their usual low, quiet vibrations. No visitors today. out. Nothing like my long, gangly, spider-thin arms and legs. But I always checked. Even in my retirement, I