Elemental Assassin 05 - Spider's Revenge

could—and would—yell at them later. The most important thing right now was getting Finn and Bria out of the house and away from the bounty hunters.
    “All right,” I said, my tone a little calmer. “All right. I’m here now, and I’m not leaving without the two of you. We can discuss everything else later.”
    “Agreed,” Finn said, the relief apparent in his voice. “What do you want us to do, Gin?”
    I stared out at the assortment of bounty hunters beforeme. “You made a good choice staying in the house. There’s no way you can break through the ring of them. They’ve got the whole front of the house surrounded, and there’s too much ice and snow on the rocks to try to get out the back and rappel down the cliffs. You’ll have to use the old tunnel.”
    Finn knew as well as I did that there was a secret passage in Fletcher’s office that led from the house into an underground tunnel. The tunnel snaked under the yard before opening up about a half mile away in the woods—well out of the tight ring of bounty hunters that circled around the house like pioneers on a wagon train heading west.
    “I thought of that,” Finn said. “But Bria spotted some flashlights in the woods, and I didn’t want to risk stepping out of the tunnel and right into a couple of bounty hunters’ line of fire.”
    He’d made the right decision. Fletcher had designed his house to be almost impregnable, and there was enough food, water, and ammo stored inside to last for weeks. But there was also strength in numbers, which the bounty hunters had, and Finn couldn’t shoot them all, not if they decided to attack all at once. He and Bria needed to get out of the house as soon as possible.
    “All right,” I said. “I’ll make sure that the tunnel is clear and take care of any stragglers in the woods, then come in and get you. You keep them busy thinking that they’ve got a couple of shooters still inside. I want them focused on the house as long as possible and not thinking about our escape route. Got it?”
    “Got it.”
    “Good. And answer your fucking phone next time.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Finn said, actually sounding chastised for once in his life.
    I hung up and stuffed the phone back into my jacket pocket. Then I slipped away from my perch at the edge of the woods. I headed deeper into the gloom, skirting around to the west of the house, although I kept the bounty hunters in sight through the screen of trees. If a group of them made a move toward the house, I’d come out of the woods and cut my way through them until I got to Finn and Bria. But the bounty hunters weren’t that brave—or stupid. They stayed close to their cars, muttering to each other about how best to get inside the house without getting dead. I took advantage of their inattention, moving quickly and quietly, slipping from tree to tree, shadow to shadow, all the while heading toward the secret tunnel.
    Crack! Crack! Crack!
    More gunshots rang out, along with something that sounded like rusted metal creaking, although the noise was mostly drowned out by the whine of the bullets. I’d almost reached the entrance when I heard voices—loud voices with a distinctive southern twang. Knives still in my hands, I paused behind a tree and peered around the ice-crusted trunk.
    Ahead of me, two women and a man stood in the middle of the woods—right in front of the opening of the tunnel.
    Somehow, they’d found it in the snow. They’d even been bright enough to pull back the metal hatch to reveal the dark hole leading down into the ground, whichwas no doubt the creaking sound that I’d heard. Fuck. I’d wanted to do this quick, clean, and quiet, and get Finn and Bria out of the house before the bounty hunters even realized that they were gone. Probably not going to happen now. Oh, it didn’t bother me, the thought of killing the three people in front of me, but it meant more precious seconds wasted, more precious time when Finn and Bria were in danger of being overrun by the other bounty hunters.
    “What do you think it is, Liza?” one of the women asked, shining a flashlight into the dark space.
    “What do you think it is, Celia? Because it looks like some kind of tunnel to me, genius,” Liza sniped.
    “See?” The guy grinned. “I told you that an assassin like the Spider was sure to have some sort of escape hatch from that ugly-ass house of hers.”
    “Yeah, Connor,” the first woman, Celia, chimed in again. “But we don’t even