Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

comfortably hold. The rush of water drowned out the from under mine. “We should get back.”
    sound of the rain slapping against the tin roof. I stared at his rugged features. Black hair, bronze skin, I’d come back here this afternoon to check out the golden eyes. But heat and desire no longer brightened structure, but I was once again struck by how much the his gaze. Instead, the detective looked tired, weary, heartclapboard building resembled Fletcher Lane’s house. sick. As though all the pleasure he’d just experienced Both featured the same white boards, the same kind of came with a weight that was just too much to bear, even shutters, the same sloping tin roof. And it wasn’t just the for him.
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    about Warren T. Fox. The blue work clothes he wore, Warren rocked back and forth in an oversize recliner his grumpy nature, the old-fashioned store he ran. It that made him seem older and more frail than he really was almost like Fletcher and Warren were identical twins was. The television was tuned to the Weather Channel. separated at birth. The kind you read about who built Warren’s brown eyes focused intently on the storm-front separate, but almost identical, lives for themselves. once graphics on the flickering screen. Finn relaxed in a similar again, I felt that faint softness stir in my chest. Because chair, which he’d reclined all the way back. His laptop everything about Warren made me remember Fletcher drowsed on his lap. Finn was doing the same in the chair and the love I’d had for him.
    itself. Soft snores drifted out of his open mouth. Lights blazed in several of the first-floor windows. I I went over, put my hand into Finn’s broad shoulder, stepped up onto the porch and knocked on the front and shook him awake.
    door.
    “What? What?” he mumbled in a sleepy voice. “I
    “Hmph?” Sophia grunted through the heavy wood. didn’t touch her, I swear.”
    “It’s Gin.”
    “Relax, Casanova,” I said.
    A lock clicked, and the Goth dwarf opened the door. Finn blinked a few times before his green eyes focused Sophia clenched an aluminum baseball bat in one hand. on me. “oh, Gin, it’s you.” He frowned. “Why are you Her black eyes flicked over my oversize clothes, and she wearing a T-shirt that says Ashland Police Department stepped back to let us inside. Sophia crooked her finger on it?”
    at us, and we followed her deeper into the house. For I sighed. “It’s a long story.”
    a moment, I felt like I was coming home to Fletcher’s once Finn was more or less awake, I filled the others after a long day at the Pork Pit. Because the inside of in on what Donovan Caine and I had found in Tobias Warren T. Fox’s house could have been an exact duplicate Dawson’s office. The detective e-mailed the cell phone of Fletcher Lane’s. Same sort of well-worn, overstuffed photos he’d taken to Finn, who started pulling them up furniture, same clutter of knickknacks, same piles of odds on his laptop and going through them.
    and ends that made a house a home. I blinked, and the
    “Anything happen on this end?” I asked Sophia. illusion vanished.
    “Quiet,” she rasped.
    The others were in a large den. Violet huddled on the
    “A couple of folks came in for sodas and cigarettes, but sofa, a heavy textbook in her lap, a notepad and pen by that was it,” Jo-Jo agreed.
    her side. Studying. Jo-Jo perched on the other end of
    “Usual customers,” Warren cut in. “Even Dawson the sofa and flipped through a beauty magazine. Several can’t scare off folks when they need their tobacco.”
    more sat stacked at her bare feet. The dwarf had come
    “Those papers you found inside the safe,” Jo-Jo said. prepared.
    “What did they say? Anything interesting?”
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    I shrugged. “Ask Donovan. It was dark. I didn’t really Sometimes, we can feel the tremors down here. once see them.”
    they were so strong, they knocked over some sodas in the All eyes turned to the detective, who also shrugged. store. Made a big mess.”
    “Like Gin said, it was dark. We only used flashlights in“They feel sort of like small earthquakes,” Violet side. They mostly looked like schematics to me. We’ll added. “They’ve been going on a couple of months now.”
    have to wait and