Elemental Assassin: Unraveled Part 3

Sure enough, that person tried again, and this time, the door started swinging open.

Someone was outside-and they were coming in.

I dropped the marker, palmed a knife, and darted over to the door, plastering myself up against the metal wall beside it.

A second later, a woman wearing dark clothes and a toboggan slipped into the container, her head moving back and forth as she looked around.

"What in the blue blazes is she up to now-"

I didn't give the woman time to finish her muttered sentence. In an instant, I grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, shoved her up against the wall, and raised my knife to her throat.

Lorelei Parker looked back at me, her pale blue eyes steady on mine. "Is this how you greet all your guests, Gin?" she said.

I hissed out a breath. "Sorry. I thought you were someone else."

"Don't be. I came prepared."

Something jabbed into my side. I looked down. Lorelei had one of her elemental Ice guns pressed up against my stomach. Even though the weapon was only loaded with a single bullet, it would still do plenty of damage, especially in that spot.

"Touche," I murmured.

I dropped my knife from her throat and stepped back. Lorelei slid her Ice gun back into the holster on her belt.

"How did you know that I was in here?"

"I was doing a final check of the yard before leaving for the night, and I noticed that the padlock was open on the container. So I figured that you were probably in here." She jerked her head at the door, which was wide-open now. "You might want to close that. And lock it from the inside next time, if you don't want people sneaking up on you."

I gave her a sour look, but Lorelei merely arched her eyebrows in a chiding response. So I shut the door and slid the metal bar down, locking us in the container.

Lorelei Parker was the smuggler supreme of the Ashland underworld, ready, willing, and able to get anything for anyone at any time. Weapons, cash, gold bars, art, designer fashions, exotic animals, fancy food and wines. If there was a black market for it, then Lorelei knew where to get it and how to best bring it into Ashland on the sly. She was also one of the few allies that I had in the underworld, despite the gun she'd just pulled on me.

Lorelei glanced around, taking in the tables and chairs that dotted the inside of the container. "You've been busy since the last time I was in here."

"Well, I just had to decorate my new fancy digs," I snarked back.

"a.s.sa.s.sin chic. I like it." She grinned. "You should come do my office in the warehouse while you're at it."

Given her smuggling interests, Lorelei had coveted the shipping yard for a long, long time. With Dimitri Barkov dead, she'd quickly and quietly taken control of it, paying off what was left of his crew to vacate the premises and bringing in her own people. Since I was the head of the underworld, such a move needed my approval, and I'd been happy to give it. All I'd asked in return was for one shipping container to call my own.

Lorelei was the only one who knew about my container. Not because I didn't trust my other friends, but because Tucker and the Circle could be spying on all of us, and I hadn't set up shop here just for them to realize what I was doing. More than that, I actually wanted to have something concrete to show my friends before I brought any of them here. Especially Bria and Finn, who wanted-needed-answers as badly as I did. Sometimes, I thought that we were like the three blind mice, desperately running around, searching for answers about our dead mothers, and all of us likely to get chopped to pieces by Tucker and the rest of the Circle.

Lorelei wandered over to the board, staring at all my scribblings and fiddling with the end of her black braid, which trailed out from underneath her royal-blue toboggan.

She snorted and pointed at the devil horns on Tucker's photo. "I didn't realize that you were such a talented artist."

"I just wish that I could get my hands on him in person," I muttered. "I'd paint his face all interesting shades of b.l.o.o.d.y then. Better than Pica.s.so."

Lorelei eyed me, hearing the anger and frustration in my voice. "You'll find Tucker eventually, and the rest of the Circle too. I have faith in you."

"And why is that?"

She shrugged. "Because you, Gin Blanco, are the single most stubborn, determined person I know."

My eyes narrowed. "That sounded suspiciously like a compliment. Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?"

"Because we're friends, sort of, and that's what friends do, right?" Her voice was casual, but she didn't look at me as she said the words, and her mouth was set into a tense line, almost as if she was afraid that I would dismiss her soft sentiment outright.

"We are friends, sort of," I said in a strong voice. "And do you know what else friends do?"

"What?"

I walked over and picked up the marker that I'd dropped on the floor. I handed it to her, then grabbed another one for myself, along with a bottle of gin and a couple of plastic cups from the metal rack.

"They have a drink and draw really bad caricatures of all their enemies," I said. "What do you say to that, friend?"

Lorelei looked at the gin, the marker in her hand, then at me. Her pretty features creased into a grin. "I say that sounds like a grand old time, friend."

4.

Lorelei and I spent the next hour doodling on the dry-erase board before she finally put her marker down, saying that she needed to go home and check on Mallory, her grandmother. We said our good-nights, and I turned off the lanterns, locked up the shipping container, and drove home myself.

I took a shower and went to bed, although I spent a good portion of the night glaring at my bedroom ceiling, still cursing myself for letting Fedora get away. Once again, the Circle had been three steps ahead of me the whole time, and I still had no new information about them.

Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, got up the next morning, and went to the Pork Pit, my barbecue restaurant in downtown Ashland. I parked six blocks away from the restaurant and stepped onto the sidewalk, easing into the crowds of commuters scurrying to work on this cold December morning. The sun was shining for a change, but the weak rays gave off no real warmth, and everyone had their chins tucked down into their coats, their breaths billowing out around them in thick clouds of frost.

I hurried along with everyone else, although I kept glancing around and looking at the reflections in all the gla.s.s storefront windows, trying to see if anyone was following me. I didn't spot anyone, but that didn't mean anything. Not with a skilled professional like Fedora working for the Circle. I wouldn't even see someone like her coming until she had put three bullets in the back of my head. Still, I kept as good a watch as I could. Just in case.

I made my way to the Pork Pit and did my usual check of the front door and windows, on the off chance that someone had left a rune trap, bomb, or other nasty little holiday gift for me. But the door and windows hadn't been tampered with, so I headed inside and repeated the process. The blue and pink vinyl booths were clean as well, along with the tables and chairs, and no one had been inside since I'd locked up last night. So I put a blue work ap.r.o.n on over my clothes and got started on my morning ch.o.r.es, including making a vat of my mentor Fletcher Lane's secret barbecue sauce.

Getting into my usual routine and breathing in all the c.u.min, black pepper, and other sweet and spicy fumes from the simmering sauce made me feel a smidge better. So had doing those silly drawings with Lorelei last night. Sure, Fedora might have gotten away, but Phillip and I were okay, and that was the most important thing. Besides, sooner or later the Circle would make a mistake. I just had to be ready to take advantage of it when they did.

At ten o'clock, a soft knock sounded on the front door, and I let Silvio Sanchez inside the restaurant.

"You don't have to knock, you know. I gave you your own key weeks ago. You can come in anytime you want to."

"Knocking is the polite thing to do," the vampire murmured back to me. "And in this case, it's the prudent thing as well. Especially when your boss is an a.s.sa.s.sin who doesn't take too kindly to people sneaking up on her."

"Point taken."

Silvio shrugged out of his long gray trench coat, revealing his matching gray suit, shirt, and tie underneath. He hung his coat on the rack by the door, then swept off his gray fedora and placed it there as well.

My gaze locked onto his fedora, and just like that, my mellow mood vanished. Silvio realized what I was staring at.

"It's just a hat, Gin," he said in an amused voice. "Not a vessel for the ultimate evil."

I grunted and stepped behind the counter that ran along the back wall of the restaurant. I pulled out a sharp, serrated knife from a butcher block and started slicing tomatoes, lettuce, and onions for the day's sandwiches. Cutting things always made me feel better.

Silvio perched on his usual stool at the counter and fired up his phone and tablet for the morning briefing, as he liked to call it. The vampire ran down everything he'd found out about Fedora overnight, which basically was nothing. He'd been in touch with Bria and Xavier and had gotten a license-plate number for the SUV off a security camera in the neighborhood. Silvio had tracked the vehicle to its rightful owner, who had reported it stolen a few hours before the attack at McAllister's mansion. No doubt Fedora had abandoned the vehicle by now. Another dead end.

So Silvio moved on to other underworld matters, including a couple of bosses who needed me to mediate yet another petty dispute. I sighed. More often than not, I felt like being the head of the Ashland underworld was like serving as the CEO of the most dangerous company ever. Only I didn't get a cushy payday, a corner office, a private jet, or any other sweet corporate perks. Just more and more people planning, plotting, and biding their time until they decided that they were finally ready to try to kill me.

But I forced myself to listen to Silvio and follow along. Everyone else still thought that I was the big boss, so I had to act like it. At least until I found out more about the Circle, how they fit into the Ashland underworld, and whose strings they were pulling, other than my own. Besides, if the other bosses ever found out about the Circle and realized that I was not the ultimate power in Ashland, that would only make them that much more determined to kill me so they could move up in the underworld food chain.

Silvio suggested that we schedule some meetings with a few of the more important criminals, and I reluctantly agreed.

Then I moved on to the other pressing topic of the day. "What about Jonah McAllister? Is he still holed up in his mansion?"

Silvio nodded. "As of ten minutes ago, according to one of Jade's people. She has them texting me updates, but so far, everything is quiet."

"Fedora wouldn't come back until tonight anyway. That's what I would do. How did Jade take my request?"

"Jade was more than happy to offer her a.s.sistance," Silvio said. "She already had several folks working in the area, including a security guard who patrols that particular neighborhood. She's not even going to charge you for it, although she would like to request a small favor in return. Although said favor is unspecified at this point."

"Of course she would."

Jade Jamison was a savvy businesswoman, and she knew that having me owe her one would be worth more in the long run than any money I might pay her for her surveillance services.

Silvio mentioned a few other things that needed my attention before a couple more knocks sounded on the front door, and the rest of the workers started showing up, including Catalina Vasquez, Silvio's niece, and Sophia Deveraux, who was wearing a long black trench coat with a silver sequined skull wearing a red Santa hat st.i.tched across the back. It matched the rest of her Goth clothes, including her black-and-silver, candy-cane-striped sweater. Sophia always showed her holiday spirit in a unique way.

We all started working, and by the time eleven o'clock rolled around, several folks were waiting outside the door, stamping their feet to stay warm, more than ready to come inside and get their barbecue on. It must have been too cold for criminal shenanigans today, because most of my customers were just regular folks, eager to chow down on a hot plate of barbecue, along with baked beans, fries, onion rings, coleslaw, and some mac and cheese that I made special because of the chilly weather.

I had a large dish of the mac and cheese for my own lunch. Al dente pasta, sharp white cheddar melted into an ooey, gooey sauce, crushed, toasted b.u.t.ter crackers sprinkled on top for a bit of crunch. It was perfect, warm, hearty comfort food, and I could use all the comforting I could get right now.

The lunch rush came and went with no problems, and the restaurant slowly emptied after that, with only a couple of folks to wait on. Most everyone was staying inside today, not wanting to venture out into the cold any more than they absolutely had to. I knew the feeling. Ever since I'd found out about the Circle, I'd just wanted to stay holed up at Fletcher's house, curled in bed, with pillows and blankets tucked in all around me, as if that would somehow change everything that Hugh Tucker had told me-and the threat that he and his mysterious group represented to everyone that I cared about.

I'd just finished off the last of my mac and cheese when my phone beeped with a new text message.

Can you come to the bank? Finally ready to let the genie out of the box. F.

My heart lifted, and new, fresh hope surged through me at the message from Finn. It was about time. I'd been waiting on this for days now, and so had he.

I texted him back. Be there in 30 min. G.

I pushed my empty bowl away, got to my feet, and slid my phone into my jeans pocket. Then I turned around and grabbed a large cardboard box from the back counter, along with several take-out containers.

"What was that about?" Silvio asked, watching me scoop mac and cheese into a bowl.

"Oh, just Finn. Apparently, he's trapped in another crisis-management meeting at the bank and wants me to bring him some food."

"Mmm-hmm. You know, that would almost be a believable lie except for how happy you sound."

I glanced at the vampire. "I can't sound happy when I'm talking about my friends?"

Silvio crossed his arms over his chest and gave me a knowing look. "Not that happy."

I finished with the mac and cheese and moved on to a pot of baked beans, putting them in a separate container. "You know, Silvio, you're becoming as paranoid as Finn always says that I am."

He sighed. "I know. And it's all your fault. You've driven me to it."

"And how have I done that?"

"Not telling me where you are and what you're doing. Turning your phone off so I can't track you. Parking your car in odd locations at all hours of the day and night." He ticked the points off on his fingers. "What exactly were you doing in Southtown at midnight last night?"

"Maybe I was out for a moonlit drive," I quipped.

"In the ice and cold? I don't think so. You were up to something, just like you're always up to something." He shook his head. "Being your a.s.sistant is like trying to wrangle a recalcitrant three-year-old."

I arched my eyebrows and moved on to a vat of coleslaw. "Wow, I've grown up quickly. You said more or less the same thing last week, only I was a stubborn two-year-old then."

He huffed, not at all amused by my joke, so I decided to tell him the truth. At least, part of it.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I am going to the bank, and I am taking Finn some food." I held up the container of coleslaw as proof.

"Among other things," Silvio said, not buying it for a second.

"Among other things," I agreed.

I finished packing Finn's food into the cardboard box, then went over to a gla.s.s cake stand, grabbed a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie, and placed it on a napkin.

"Here." I held it out to Silvio as a peace offering. "Cookies make everything better, even grumpy vampire a.s.sistants."

"Mmm-hmm."

Silvio's gray eyes narrowed, but I smiled in the face of his glare. Finally, he relented, took the cookie from me, and broke off a piece. He popped it in his mouth and sighed again, this time with pleasure.

"Cookies do make everything better," he muttered, grudgingly agreeing with me. "Even paranoid, secretive a.s.sa.s.sin bosses."

I laughed and handed him another cookie.

5.