Free Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies by Jennifer Estep Page A

quickly, and then they got dead.
    A minute was enough to unnerve most people. Three, enough to drive all but the most consummate professional assassin crazy with adrenaline. Even I didn’t like waiting three minutes for something to happen. But there was a reason Fletcher had dubbed me the Spider—because I could be infinitely patient. Because I had that internal restraint. Because I could wait those long, long three minutes, if it meant getting to my target—or not becoming one myself.
    I slipped inside the apartment and closed the door behind me.
    It was a small space, divided up into even smaller rooms that reminded me of a rat’s maze. Knives in hands, I slipped from one room to the next, checking them all with extreme caution and care.
    Empty. The place was totally empty.
    No furniture, no appliances, not even a couple of fastfood wrappers crumpled and discarded on the linoleum floor. It didn’t even smell of anything except the cold rain gusting in through the open window. Not bleach, not food, nothing. I frowned. Not what I’d expected. Jake McAllister didn’t strike me as a patient person—much less the kind to pick up after himself. If the Fire elemental had been up here for any length of time, there should have been some evidence of it. Beer cans, cigarettes, an empty soda bottle, some candy bar wrappers. Instead, there was nothing. I didn’t even see any roach traps hidden in the corners.
    I dropped my Stone magic and let my skin revert back to its normal texture. Then, I moved to the back of the apartment and the open window where the shooter had been when he’d fired into the Pork Pit.
    Again, there was nothing. No cups, no wrappers, no evidence anyone had been inside the apartment today or anytime in the recent past. I peered under the window.
    He’d even policed his brass, picking up the spent shell casings from the bullets he’d fired. Again, not something I would expect from a reckless, twitchy, Fire elemental hothead like Jake McAllister.
    Dingy exposed brick outlined the window, and I pressed my hand against it. The uneven stone bit into my palm, and I closed my eyes and reached for my magic again, letting the cool power flow through me, attuning myself to the smallest vibrations embedded in the brick.
    Nothing. Just calm. I concentrated, going deeper and deeper into the stone, until it felt like a part of me. A natural extension of myself I could examine and analyze the way I might my own fingernails. I felt more calm and… the sense of someone waiting. Not particularly bored, but not excited either. Just waiting… for the right moment to come along. An emotion, an action, I knew all too well.
    My frown deepened. I opened my eyes, dropped my hand, and stepped away from the brick. I looked at the room again with a more critical eye, putting all the facts together.
    There was nothing in the apartment, no trash, no shell casings, no emotions, because Jake McAllister hadn’t been here. He wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t calm enough for this sort of action. This—this was the work of a professional.
    An assassin, just like me.
    My gray eyes narrowed. So Jake, or more likely Jonah McAllister, had hired a big boy to clean up his son’s mess.
    Now I was really annoyed.
    But still… I couldn’t shake the feeling I was missing something. Something important. Vital. Obvious.
    My reading, my sense, of the vibrations in the stone was correct. I knew it was. Even from an early age, I’d been able to hear the stone murmuring to me, and my power to understand and interpret it had only sharpened and strengthened over time. And would continue to do so until I died, hopefully at the ripe age of a hundred and fifty or so.
    From the vibrations I’d picked up, the shooter had been waiting the better part of an hour. Maybe longer.
    Sophia came in early, usually by nine, to start baking the day’s bread. I usually showed up around ten, and the restaurant officially opened for business at eleven. But the shots