Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

clean, soapy tain ridge. Gravel replaced the pavement. It ran out into scent washed over me. Mmm. The smell made me want two hard-packed dirt ruts that passed for a road. Despite to turn to him, press my lips to his, and lower us both to the terrain, Donovan drove on. We went almost a mile the forest floor. Sure, the leaves and earth would be a little down the ruts before they ended in a small, wooded cleardamp, but I had no doubt Donovan and I could warm ing. The detective stopped the car, and we got out. each other up—in a hurry.
    The air was even cooler up here than it had been Unfortunately, I wasn’t here for a quickie with the deat Country Daze, and it had started to drizzle again. I tective, no matter how pleasurable it might be. So I raised turned up the collar of my black fleece jacket, hefted the the binoculars I’d brought along up to my eyes. Below coil of rope over my shoulder, and made sure I had all my me, the ridge sloped downward and then bottomed out, other supplies. Donovan reached into the backseat and forming a fat U shape. The ridge we stood on was the grabbed a navy rain slicker embossed with the words Ash- base of the U, while the rest of the mountain had been Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 200-201
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    202 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 203
    removed to form the open area. Ramps of dirt twisted about a lot of subjects, thanks to all the classes that I’d down either leg of the U, providing access to the topmost taken at Ashland Community College, but coal mining portions of the slope.
    wasn’t one of them.
    A variety of machines sat on the basin floor. Backhoes, But even from my high vantage point, I could hear bulldozers, and other machines designed to move earth—
    the stone of the mountain. Growling, snarling, cursing, and a lot of it. others were just big, hulking, complicated muttering. The stone was supremely angry at the cruel brutes of metal with more arms, cranes, and buckets damage that had been done to it. once upon a time, this than I’d ever seen. Some of them were bigger than small must have been a lovely spot, with steep slopes, trees, and houses, but I had no idea what their names were or even rocky outcroppings as far as the eye could see. But now what they did. There were dump trucks too, with beds there was nothing left but stripped, bare earth, rock, and and wheels even bigger than the ones on the vehicle Finn machinery. The stone’s vibrations made me want to draw had used to run over Trace Dawson.
    on my magic, to make the whole mine, the whole rest of Across the basin floor was the other end of the opthe mountain, crumble down and bury the men and maeration—the underground mine. A square black hole in chines that had been so cruel to her. But I didn’t have that the wall of the mountain, held open by concrete support kind of power, and it wouldn’t help Warren and Violet beams. Metal tracks ran into and out of the wide mouth. in any way. So I gritted my teeth and forced the feeling I supposed at one time the tracks had been used to help aside.
    move men and equipment down into the earth. Now they It was after six now and already growing dark. I passed looked dull and rusty from lack of use. I could see places the binoculars to Donovan Caine, so the detective could where the metal had been torn up and not replaced. I watch the workers climb down off their machines and remembered what Violet Fox had said about the coal in head out of the basin. I kept scanning the area, fixing the the underground mine running out and how it had been overall layout in my mind. It would be easy to lose your idle for some time now. It was easy to tell that the focus sense of direction among the massive machines, especially had shifted to stripping off the mountain one layer at a with the rainy twilight rapidly giving way to full night. time. That’s what all the equipment was here for—to cart “I don’t see anything much. Just machines,” Donovan coal and dirt away, not bring it up out of the ground. Not Caine said.
    anymore.
    “Look down to the left at the edge of the basin. Down More tracks curved around the far side of the basin there.” I pointed to a small, white building that gleamed and disappeared from sight. According to Finn’s map, like a dull moon. “That’s where some of the mine offices they led to another area where the coal was stored and are, including Dawson’s, according to the information processed, among other things. I had a lot of