Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

one occasion. Even building. I turned my flashlight off and peered through used the same rune as the dwarf.
    the thin slats in the blinds. Two flashlights bobbed in our Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 214-215
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    direction. Giants, considering the fact the lights were feet. Solid, heavy, pounding. Shouts drifted through the about even with my head. Beside me, Donovan turned rain.
    off his own flashlight and drew his gun.
    “Do you see anything?”
    “Put that away,” I said. “open the door and head
    “No. You?”
    straight toward the back of the basin, where we climbed
    “Hey! The front door’s wide open!”
    down. outrunning them is our best chance. Not engagI peeked around the side of the building just in time ing in a firefight.”
    to see two giants run into the front office. A few sec“What are you going to do?”
    onds later, lights flared in the front room, then spread
    “Make sure they don’t follow us.”
    down the hallway like a wildfire, before erupting in ToDonovan shook his head. “No, Gin. Let me stay and bias Dawson’s office. I stood off to one side of the winhelp you—”
    dows and watched. It was the same two men Dawson
    “This isn’t a fucking discussion,” I said. “It won’t much had brought to the Country Daze store earlier this aftermatter if they capture me, but you? It’ll ruin you, detecnoon. The two giants still had on the same grimy work tive. So go. Now. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. clothes they’d sported then, and they both carried long, Been doing it for years.”
    heavy flashlights that could easily be used to break bones Donovan stared at me. I could see the gold glint of his or crush someone’s skull. They had to be the dwarf’s top eyes even in the darkness and the emotions sparking in two enforcers.
    their depths. Worry. Concern. Resignation. After a few I watched them sweep into Dawson’s office. They seconds, the detective reluctantly holstered his gun. He didn’t bother with anything on the desk, but went straight moved toward the door and opened it.
    to the glass case that housed the dwarf’s rock collection. By the time I stepped outside behind him, Donovan
    “The lock’s been picked,” one of the giants rumbled, had already taken off back the way we’d come in. Twenty swinging open the case. “But it doesn’t look like anysteps later, the rain and night and shadows swallowed thing’s been taken.”
    him, just the way I’d known they would.
    The second giant came to stand beside him. “NothI palmed my silverstone knives. But instead of sprinting obvious anyway. But somebody was messing with ing after the detective, I slid around the side of the buildthe safe, with the diamond. That’s why the alarm went ing and moved all the way to the back, where Tobias off inside the guardhouse. Because somebody other than Dawson’s office was. Ten . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . I Dawson opened the safe.”
    counted off the seconds in my head.
    Well, that confirmed my suspicion the dwarf had used I didn’t have long to wait. Despite the rain and mud, his Stone magic to craft the alarm on his safe. I could do their footsteps reverberated through the stone under my the same thing, although I was usually more interested in Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 216-217
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    keeping people out of whatever building I was sleeping killing the dwarf just morphed from a pleasant idea into a in rather than trapping them inside. That’s what would cold, hard necessity. The sooner the better. have happened here. If I hadn’t been a Stone, hadn’t been The first giant finished his phone call and turned back an elemental, I wouldn’t even have heard the alarm. Both to his buddy. “They’re on their way. But I still don’t see Donovan Caine and I would have still been sitting in how anyone besides Dawson could even open the safe. All Dawson’s office when the giants came calling. Some defithe silverstone in it is keyed to his magic.”
    nite pain, perhaps even death, would have ensued.
    “For a rock like that? Somebody would find a way,” the Sneaky dwarf, using an elemental alarm like that. second guy replied.
    Something to keep in mind next time, when I went in As they stood there talking, I crept away from the winto kill him. dow and slipped off into the dark, rainy night.
    “But it doesn’t look like the safe’s been opened,” the first giant