Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge

tiptoed through the snow toward the house, hunching over as much as he could. He stopped and swallowed once, clearly nervous about being out in the open. A minute later, when nothing happened, he straightened. Hestood there a moment, his body tense, expecting a shot from somewhere. Maybe from the other bounty hunters, maybe from the house. But it didn’t come, and he continued on his slow, careful journey.
    I palmed my silverstone knives, my hands tightening around the hilts. Why wasn’t someone shooting at him? Fifty more feet, and the bastard would be at the front door. Once he made it up onto the porch, the others would follow in a sudden, violent swarm. Then, if Finn and Bria were still in the house, they’d be found, dragged outside, and hauled off to Mab.
    The bounty hunter stopped again in the middle of the yard. Looking a little more sure of himself now, he turned and called out to his buddies behind the pickup truck. “They must finally be out of ammo, boys—”
    Crack! Crack! Crack!
    Last words he ever said.
    Gunfire exploded in one of the downstairs windows of the house, and the bounty hunter dropped to the ground, his brains already blown out onto the snow behind him by the three bullets that had punched through his skull.
    A grim smile curved my lips, and the knots in my stomach loosened. The Annie Oakley display told me that Finn was still alive, because my foster brother was the only person I knew who could shoot like that. If he was well enough to hold a gun, that meant Bria was still alive too. Finn would die before he let anything happen to my baby sister, just as I would.
    I crouched there in the snow and waited until I was sure that no one else was going to try to bum-rush thehouse. Then I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Finn’s number. This time, this fucking
time
, he finally picked up.
    “Where the hell are you, Gin?” Finn growled in my ear.
    “Me? You’re the one who hasn’t been answering the phone,” I snapped right back. “What have you been doing? Is Bria okay? How long have the bounty hunters been camped outside of the house?”
    Finn let out a tense breath. “Bria’s fine. She’s right here with me. The bounty hunters have been outside for almost an hour now. As to why I wasn’t answering my phone before, Bria and I were, ah, engaged in something else.”
    I let out a soft curse. I should have known. Finn could never be in the same room with a beautiful woman without trying to seduce her, especially someone like Bria, whom he had some genuine feelings for. I’d always thought that Finn’s womanizing ways would get him into trouble one day. I just hadn’t realized that it would be this much trouble—and that Bria and I would be caught in the middle of it.
    “You mean that the two of you were busy screwing around instead of waiting for my phone call like you were supposed to,” I snarled. “What the hell were you thinking, Finn? You know better than that. Fletcher taught you better than that.”
    I could almost hear him wince through the phone. “I know, Gin. Believe me, I know. The two of us were arguing, I don’t even remember about what, but I was texting, and Bria grabbed my phone and threw it across the room. After that, one thing just led to another, and we ended up in one of the downstairs bedrooms…”
    His voice trailed off in shame, but he didn’t have to tell me the rest. I knew what had happened. Finn and Bria had finally given in to their simmering attraction, and the rest of the world had just fallen away—including my mission to kill Mab.
    Finn cleared his throat. “Anyway, neither one of us heard your calls. We were right, ah, in the middle of things, when I hear someone roar up the driveway. Then another car, then another car, followed by a series of gunshots. By that point, we’re out of bed, looking out the windows, and realizing that we’re in deep trouble. The bastards just kept coming, and they surrounded the house before we could slip out the back. Some of them took out each other, but we didn’t know how many more of them might show up, so Bria and I got out our guns and settled in to wait for you.”
    I wanted to scream at Finn for being so sloppy, for being more interested in seducing my sister than keeping her safe. But it took two to tango, and Bria was just as much to blame as he was. They’d both known what was going down tonight, and they’d given in to their emotions instead of staying sharp like they should have.
    I