Snared (Elemental Assassin #16)(68)

Owen looked over at me. “We’ll find her, Gin. I know we will.”

I let out a long, tense breath. “I wish I had your confidence. It seems like all I’ve done the past few days is run around in circles, going nowhere fast.”

He lifted his hand and cupped my cheek, his warm, strong fingers stroking my face. “You’ll get somewhere. I know you will.”

I grabbed his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. “I love you for saying that, and I love you even more for actually believing it. So let’s go over everything again. Elissa has to be here somewhere. She just has to be.”

We left the patio behind and took the same route as before, avoiding the guards and working our way from one outbuilding to the next, checking to make sure that we’d looked absolutely everywhere. But we had, and there was nothing for us to do but head back across the lawn.

Ten minutes later, we were at the very back of the estate, getting ready to step into the woods, when a series of low mutters caught my ear. I stopped and turned around, scanning the grounds, wondering where the sounds were coming from, since we were several hundred feet away from the mansion now. And I realized that there was one place that we hadn’t searched yet.

The caretaker’s cottage.

My eyes narrowed, and I reached out with my Stone magic, listening. Sure enough, the stones of the cottage were the ones that were muttering, the harsh notes repeating over and over again, almost as if they were the words to a song ringing in my ears.

Blood, violence, pain, death . . . blood, violence, pain, death . . .

According to the info that Finn and Silvio had dug up, Bruce Porter had lived in the caretaker’s cottage for years. As Rivera’s head of security, Porter oversaw all the other guards and the servants. He would know every little thing that went on here, including his boss’s proclivities. Porter probably wouldn’t have any problem letting Rivera use his cottage, as long as the dwarf got to keep his cushy job. The building was also isolated enough to keep the other guards and servants from realizing what was really going on inside. That was why no one had talked, like Bria had thought they might.

Owen noticed that I wasn’t following him, and he stopped and turned around. “What is it?” He raised his gun. “What’s wrong?”

“The cottage,” I murmured.

“But Finn looked in through the windows when we first got here,” he said. “Elissa wasn’t inside.”

I reached out with my magic again, listening to the continued shrieks of the stone.

Blood, violence, pain, death . . . blood, violence, pain, death . . .

And I realized that the sounds were harsher, louder, fresher than they had been two nights ago. Emotional vibrations faded with time. They didn’t grow stronger. Not unless someone was around to make the sounds increase with her sharp terror and stomach-churning fear.

“Gin?” Owen asked again.

Blood, violence, pain, death . . . blood, violence, pain, death . . .

“Elissa wasn’t anywhere that Finn could see through the windows,” I murmured again. “And he couldn’t hear the stones. Not like I can. But she’s in there. I know she is. C’mon.”

I headed in that direction, with Owen following me. Through my earpiece, I heard Finn say that he and Bria were back safely at their car and would hold their positions until we met them, but I tuned him out, far more interested in what the stones had to say at the moment.

Owen and I crept back over to the cottage. Even though it was still afternoon, Porter had left a couple of lights on inside. I walked all around the structure, peering into every single window, but it seemed as empty as when Finn had checked it. Owen came with me, still watching my back. Eventually, we wound up back at the front of the cottage.

I tried the door, but it was locked. And not just a simple lock like those that had been on all the mansion doors. This one had three dead bolts all in a row. That was total overkill—unless you had something to hide.

Like the girl you’d kidnapped and were planning to murder.

“Gin?” Finn’s voice sounded through my earpiece. “We have a problem. Rivera’s car is pulling in through the front gate. He’s already back from the bank. Looks like Mosley wasn’t able to stall him as long as we’d hoped.”

I checked my watch. We’d been searching for Elissa for more than an hour. It would take me several more minutes to make Ice picks and to actually finesse all three locks open, and Damian Rivera could come here at any moment to check on his hostage. So I decided to be direct about things. I gestured for Owen to stand back, and then I put my hand on the door, right over the locks, and blasted them all with my Ice magic.

Three inches of elemental Ice coated the dead bolts in a matter of seconds. The wood and metal shrieked and groaned in protest, almost as loudly as the stones were still muttering, but I ignored the sounds, sent out another wave of magic, and blasted right through the locks and all of the surrounding wood. Broken bits of metal flew through the air, along with long splinters and sharp, needle-like pieces of my elemental Ice.

The second the locks busted open, a loud alarm blared, and lights started flashing inside the cottage, which only made me even more convinced that Elissa was inside.

“What is that?” Finn yelled in my ear. “What did you do, Gin?”

“Just a little breaking and entering!” I shouted back at him over the continued din of the alarm.