Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

LaFleur thought that I was just a defenseless cook. I didn’t want her opinion of me to change whatsoever. Every second she thought me weak was another second I had to escape and save myself and Bria.
    Besides, sooner or later, Sophia would come out into the alley to see what had happened to Bria and me. When she realized that we weren’t back here, the dwarf would start looking around. She’d find the knives and realizesomething bad had gone down. She’d call Finn and get the cavalry charge rolling—provided Bria and I lived that long.
    LaFleur shook her head. “Oh,
now
she starts blubbering. How disappointing. Pick her up.”
    Two of the giants plucked me off the ground. The third moved over to help Elektra with Bria. The giant yanked my baby sister’s gun off her belt, then ran his hands over the rest of her body in a slow, suggestive way. Bria’s lips tightened, but she didn’t respond to his leers. The giant found her backup gun strapped in an ankle holster and removed that one as well, along with the cell phone in her jacket pocket and her keys.
    I held my breath, but the two giants holding on to me didn’t bother to search me for weapons. I suppose they considered the cop more of a threat than the cook. It was a mistake that was going to cost them their lives. I was glad I’d ditched the two knives, though. The way the giants had their hands clamped on my arms, they would surely have felt the blades through my sweater. But the fabric was bulky enough to at least hide my silverstone vest.
    When the giant finished searching Bria, the four of them marched us out of the alley, with LaFleur keeping a close eye on the proceedings, the ball of green lightning still flickering in her hand. She wasn’t going to drop her magic until we were secured. Maybe not even then.
    LaFleur had a limo waiting two blocks away, well out of sight of the storefront windows of the Pork Pit. The giants shoved Bria and me inside the back, then crowded in after us. The few people still moving out on the street ducked their heads and walked even faster when theyspotted us. In Ashland, giants shepherding people into the back of a car was never a good thing.
    “Cuff them,” LaFleur called out from the street.
    The giants produced a couple of pairs of handcuffs and clamped them on our wrists, shackling our hands in front of us. Mistake number one. It’s much harder to get free if your hands are behind your back.
    While the giants were busy settling themselves into the limo, I looked at the metal, which had a peculiar glint that could mean only one thing—it was made out of silverstone. Which meant that I’d have to use my elemental magic to somehow break through the metal chains before I could get free to do anything else with my hands—like carve up LaFleur and the giants with the three knives I still had on me. Fuck. My being an elemental was something else that I didn’t want LaFleur to know about just yet. Not until it was too late.
    “Don’t worry, Gin,” Bria said in a low voice, trying to reassure me. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
    I just stared at my sister and the determination blazing in her blue eyes. If she only knew that I was the reason all this was happening in the first place. That I’d thumbed my nose at Jonah McAllister once too many times. That I was the Spider, the assassin who was going around killing Mab Monroe’s men. That I was the one with the Ice and Stone magic Mab had so desperately wanted to snuff out. That I was the reason why the rest of our family was dead. I wondered if Bria would be so eager to rescue me then. Probably not.
    But I had a bad, bad feeling she was going to find out all that and more before the night was through.
    Elektra LaFleur climbed into the limo and sat across from us. One of the giants was next to her, with the other two crowded in on either side of Bria and me. Elektra tapped on the roof of the car with her fist, and the limo pulled away from the curb.
    Elektra regarded the two of us a moment before reaching into the small wet bar housed in the back of the limo. She pulled out a crystal glass and poured herself a couple of fingers’ worth of a pale blue liquor.
    “Gin,” LaFleur said, toasting me, before taking a long pull on the cold drink.
    I hoped she choked on it.
    “Where are you taking us?” Bria demanded.
    Elektra leaned back against the limo seat and smiled. “Somewhere nice and deserted where no one will hear you scream, detective.”
    Bria