Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)(102)

to wipe the rest of it off my face.

That’s when I realized that I was shackled to a chair, with silverstone

handcuffs glinting on both my wrists. I rattled the cuffs, but they were

securely anchored to the metal chair.

“Well, that finally woke her up,” a familiar voice called out.

I raised my head.

Deirdre Shaw was sitting across from me.

For a second, I thought she was the one taunting me. Then I noticed the gleam

of silver on her wrists and ankles. It took me a moment to process that they

weren’t heavy bracelets. They were handcuffs.

Deirdre was shackled to a chair just like I was.





29

My muddled mind struggled to catch up to my eyes and process what was going

on.

Deirdre a prisoner, just like me? Then that meant . . . that meant that she

was in serious trouble too. That she wasn’t the one in charge.

That she was working for someone else—and had been this whole time.

Surprise flashed through me, burning the cobwebs out of my mind. And I

realized that not only was Deirdre handcuffed, but she looked far worse for

wear than I did.

Her gray coveralls were gone, although she still wore the same purple pantsuit

and black boots she’d sported during the bank robbery. But her appearance was

anything but elegant. Her jacket and pants were covered in blood and grime and

torn in more than a dozen places. I didn’t know how long she’d been chained

to that chair, but it must have been a while, given the stench of urine that

surrounded her and the puddles of liquid on the floor.

Her blond hair was a sweaty, frizzy mess, and her blue eyes were dull and

glassy with pain. Cuts, burns, and bruises covered her face and exposed skin,

along with several puncture wounds, as though a vampire had taken a bite or

two out of her. She’d been thoroughly tortured, the same way she’d tortured

Finn.

Good.

Deirdre realized that I was staring at her. She snarled and jerked forward,

although the silverstone cuffs on her wrists kept her as securely shackled to

her chair as I was with the ones on my wrists. Her ankles had also been

chained down, and all she could do was rock her chair back and forth, since it

was on rollers. My chair also had rollers, but my feet were free and not tied

down.

I ignored her hissy fit and studied my surroundings. Bare bulbs hanging down

from the ceiling. Stacks of crates and shrink-wrapped boxes everywhere.

Concrete floor and walls. The metal cage in one corner where I’d woken up the

last time I was here. I was back in Dimitri Barkov’s warehouse.

And I was surrounded.

Several giants stood in a loose circle around Deirdre and me. They were all

carrying guns under their suits, and one of them was holding a metal bucket

with a leaky water hose curled up at his feet like a snake dripping venom.

Nothing unusual there, but the longer I looked at them, the more worried I

got. I didn’t recognize any of their faces, not a single one. This wasn’t

Barkov’s crew—it was someone else’s.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” I said, turning my attention back to

Deirdre. “What charming accommodations. Bet you wish you were back in your

penthouse right now, honey.”

“You bitch!” Deirdre hissed, spittle flying out of her bloody, swollen lips.

“This is all your fault! I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

“Oh, yeah. You absolutely should have. I’m just sorry that I wasn’t the one

who got to work you over. They did a half-assed job, if you ask me.

Considering that you’re still breathing.”

Deirdre snarled at me again, and I bared my teeth right back at her.

“Now, ladies,” that same voice I’d first heard called out again, a voice

that I now realized wasn’t Deirdre’s. “There’s no need to be so nasty.”

Footsteps scuffed on the concrete, and Deirdre stopped snarling at me. A

mulish look settled over her face, but she couldn’t quite hide the fear

flickering in her eyes. She’d failed to rob the bank for her employers,

whoever they were, and now there was to be a reckoning. One that included me,

since I was the reason her scheme had gone sideways. Lucky me.

The footsteps grew louder and closer, until they stopped right behind me.

Whoever was standing there wanted me to turn around, to strain and struggle to

try to see him, but I stayed still and faced front. He’d step into the light.

Every cockroach did, eventually.

I started counting off the seconds in my head. One . . . two . . . three . . .

five . . . ten . . . fifteen . . .

I hadn’t even made it to thirty before a man walked past me, stepping into

the space between Deirdre and me.

Black hair, black eyes, trimmed goatee, snazzy suit. He looked the same as

always, except for the fact that he wasn’t obsessively checking his phone.

Instead, for once, he looked straight at me.

“Hello, Ms. Blanco,” Hugh Tucker said. “So nice of you to join us.”