Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

going to show her how it’s done—starting with Elektra.”
    I nodded. I’d expected nothing less after last night’s escapade. I’d infiltrated Mab’s newest little fiefdom, snatched Natasha right out from under her nose, burned her potential nightclub to the ground, and escaped from her assassin. Not a good night to be Mab. A great one for the Spider, though.
    Finn had already told me that the other power players in Ashland had been sniffing around Mab, ever since I’d killed Jake McAllister in the Fire elemental’s own home a few weeks ago. For the first time in a long time, the city’s other underworld sharks sensed weakness around the Fire elemental, a weakness that they wanted to exploit. And now all this had happened.
    A few more nights like this one, and I wouldn’t have to make a run at Mab. Her other enemies would do it for me. Not that they would succeed, of course, as Mab was no pushover. But my small victories would make them bold enough to try. That was something, at least.
    I thought back to all the things that I’d overheard Mab and Elektra talking about last night in the railcar. Finding the Spider. Killing the Spider. Doing the same to Gin Blanco. And most importantly, murdering my sister, Bria. There was only one way I could prevent all of that from happening—I had to kill Elektra LaFleur. I’d been planning on doing it anyway, and I might have taken my shot at her last night, if I hadn’t had Finn and Natasha to think about.
    But taking out the other assassin had morphed into anecessity. LaFleur was one of the best, and now she was on Mab’s ticking timetable. The assassin would torture and kill anyone she thought might know who I was in order to find me. Which meant there were three people in the most danger right now—Roslyn, Xavier, and Bria.
    Roslyn and Xavier because Mab suspected they were somehow connected to Elliot Slater’s death and Bria because, well, she was her. The woman that Mab thought was destined to kill her. So Roslyn and Xavier had to be warned, and Bria, well, I wasn’t sure what to do about her. I knew that Xavier would help watch my sister’s back, since the giant was her partner on the Ashland police force. But there were just too many other times, too many other places, someone like LaFleur could get to her, kill her. There was really only one way to solve this particular problem.
    “Well, then,” I murmured. “I guess I’ll just have to kill LaFleur first.”
    “And how are you planning to do that?” Jo-Jo asked.
    “Yeah,” Finn chimed in. “How are you going to do that? Because my sources tell me that Mab’s holed up on her estate and that she’s not coming out until Elektra brings her your head on a silver platter. The train yard was tricky enough. They weren’t expecting you to know about it, much less actually show up there. But Mab’s mansion is locked down tighter than Fort Knox. There’s no way you’re getting close to the Fire elemental on her own turf. And apparently, LaFleur’s in there with her as well.”
    I thought about everything I knew about Elektra LaFleur. All the information in that file that Fletcherhad compiled on her. All my interactions with her over the last few days. How she thought, how she killed, the things she seemed to want out of life. I thought back to the conversation I’d overhead between her and Mab, the one where they had talked about all the people the Fire elemental wanted dead.
    “Oh, I don’t think I have to worry about getting into Mab’s estate,” I said, echoing the words I’d told Sophia just last night. “Sooner or later, LaFleur’s going to come to me.”
    Owen frowned. “Why do you think that? Do you think she knows who you really are?”
    I shook my head. “No. There’s no way she got a good look at me last night. Not in the dark with everything that was going on. Even if she did, I was wearing that ski mask, at least until it got ripped off when I fell into the river. But Elektra will come to the Pork Pit sooner or later.”
    “But why?” Finn asked, his walnut-colored brows drawn together in confusion.
    I told the two of them about everything I’d heard Mab and Elektra talk about in the railcar—namely, the untimely demise of one Gin Blanco, soon to be followed by that of Bria Coolidge.
    “So you’re going to set yourself up as bait,” Owen said. “Okay. I guess I can understand that. But how do you know that LaFleur will show? She’s supposed to be hunting down the