Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

the train yard, with people moving back and forth all around it. Of course, Elektra LaFleur had gone where it would be the hardest to get close to her without being seen.
    I let out a soft curse. “Why couldn’t she pick a nice, dark, quiet, deserted spot to do her evil machinations in?”
    “Because she’s an arrogant bitch and her main goal in life is to frustrate you before she kills you,” Finn quipped.
    I gave him a sour look, but Finn just flashed me another grin. After a moment, though, the smile dropped from his face, and he was serious once more.
    “What do you want to do, Gin?” Finn said. “Going after LaFleur down there will be risky. I’m not so sure it’s worth it—especially since I haven’t seen any sign of Natasha. No one standing guard, nobody carrying food anywhere, nothing.”
    I sighed. I’d hoped by now that Finn would have found some indication that the little girl was still alive. But regardless, I knew what I had to do.
    “I know,” I said in a low voice. “I know that I’m taking a big risk here tonight. But I promised Vinnie that if his daughter was still alive I’d do my absolute best to find her and bring her back to him in one piece. If there’s even a chance that she’s down there somewhere, then I have togo look for her. And if she’s not, well, maybe I’ll see just how good LaFleur really is.”
    Finn nodded, accepting my decision. “So what do you want me to do? Go with or stay put?”
    I’d have a hard enough time slipping through the construction workers below. Two of us trying to do it would be suicide. So my eyes scanned the area once more before settling on one of the railcars that was parked away from the others. The slight rise it was perched on offered a view of the whole train yard and the added bonus of a clear, easy exit out the back. If I got caught, I wasn’t dragging Finn down with me.
    “Cover me from the top of that car,” I said, pointing it out to him. “I’m going in to see if I can get to LaFleur.”
    “And if you can’t?” Finn asked.
    I gave him a cold, hard smile. “Maybe if I can’t get close enough to kill her, I can flush her out and you can put a couple of bullets in that pretty little skull of hers. Dead is dead, remember? That’s what Fletcher always told us. I don’t care how LaFleur gets there, as long as we’re still breathing in the end and she’s not.”

16
     
    Finn and I hashed out a few quick details, like the fact that he was to get out of Dodge if things went bad for me in the train yard. Then we both pulled black ski masks down over our faces and slithered off into the night.
    Back before my retirement, when I’d been killing people for money as the Spider, I hadn’t bothered wearing a ski mask. Mainly, because I never left anyone alive after the fact to talk about what I looked like or give the police any sort of helpful description of me. But ever since I’d declared war on Mab Monroe, I’d worn a mask while I’d been out stalking her men. Because I had other people to think about now besides me. Finn, the Deveraux sisters, Owen and Eva Grayson, and Bria. This way, if someone did spot me, the mask would hide my face, my identity. A small precaution that I took to keep my loved ones safe.
    I waited for Finn to get into position with his rifle on top of the railcar before I palmed one of my knivesand headed down the hill and into the train yard itself. I made it to the first railcar with no problem and carefully, slowly, peered around the side. Lights had been strung up all around the depot so the workers could see what they were doing, which meant that it was plenty bright enough down here—in fact, much brighter than I wanted it to be.
    Even more debris cluttered the ground than what I’d spotted from the hill, and I had to be careful where I stepped so as to not send metal, rocks, and more skittering off into the shadows. Underneath my feet, the gravel grumbled, groaned, creaked, and whined, just like all the trains had done so many times here over the years. The air smelled of water, oil, grease, and rust.
    It took me about twenty minutes to maneuver through the train yard. I stayed well clear of the hubbub of activity around the old depot, as that would be the most dangerous place for me to get caught, and worked my way around to the railcar that Finn said LaFleur had disappeared into.
    As I skulked from shadow to shadow, I also kept an eye out for any sign of Natasha. But Finn had been right