Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)(109)

dropping two more giants who’d been heading this way.

“You’re awfully popular tonight,” he drawled. “I think we should go and

leave them wanting more.”

Crack! Crack! Crack!

More giants caught sight of us and starting firing, the bullets pinging off

the metal containers all around us.

“Good idea,” I said.

Finn fired off another round of shots, then held his hand out. “Ladies first.

”

I laughed and disappeared into the shadows, with him right beside me.





31

Finn and I made it out of the container maze and back to his car. He threw it

into drive, and we zoomed away from the shipping yard. We didn’t speak for

several blocks.

“Jo-Jo’s?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I winced. “My back is burned and frozen solid from Deirdre’s Ice

magic. Double the fun, double the pain.”

He nodded and turned onto the highway that would eventually take us to Jo-Jo’

s salon, and we both fell silent again.

Finally, I cleared my throat and gently placed Deirdre’s icicle-heart

necklace on the console between us. I’d managed to hold on to it through the

fight in the shipping yard. For a moment, Finn stared at the blood—Deirdre’s

blood—that coated the diamond icicles. Then his lips pressed into a harsh

line, and he looked away from the rune.

I’d spent the last few days tiptoeing around, trying to give him the time and

space he needed to come to terms with everything, but I couldn’t do that

anymore. Not after what happened tonight. Not after he’d shot his own mother

to save me.

“I’m sorry you had to kill her,” I said in a soft voice. “I know how much

you cared about Deirdre.”

Finn shrugged. “But she didn’t care about me, did she? Not one little bit.

No matter how much I wanted her to.” His voice dropped to a low rasp, hurt

and longing rippling through his words. After a second, he cleared his throat.

“I’m glad it was me. I think that Dad would have wanted it to be me.”

“Why would you say that?”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “After Santos got control of

the bank and tied me to that chair, I asked Deirdre why she was robbing the

bank. She told me everything. How she’d manipulated Dad into killing her

parents so she could get her trust fund and then how she’d used me to get

access to the bank.” He paused. “She said that I was an even bigger fool

than Fletcher had ever been, because you’d warned me about her, and I’d

refused to listen to you. She was right about that.”

I shook my head. “She was your mother. Of course you wanted to believe that

she’d come back to Ashland to be with you. She was counting on it.”

He sighed. “Yeah, and I fell right into her trap. I hurt you because of her.

And Bria and Jo-Jo too. I’m sorry about that. Sorrier than you will ever

know. And I’m going to make it up to you, all of you.” His mouth hardened,

and his hands tightened around the steering wheel. “But for right now, I’m

just glad that bitch is dead.”

His voice was cold, but hurt still flickered in his eyes. Finn might have

killed Deirdre to save me, but he’d be feeling the bitter bite of her

betrayal for a long time to come, just like Fletcher had.

We rode in silence for a couple of miles before Finn spoke again.

“Tell me about the shipping yard,” he said. “What did Tucker want with you?

”

I filled him in on everything that had happened. Everything Deirdre had said

and everything Tucker had threatened, including that there was some sort of

secret group that really pulled the strings of the underworld and everything

else in Ashland.

“Who do you think they are?” Finn asked.

“I have no idea, but Tucker wanted me to work for them. To be their front

woman, their puppet. Just like Mab, who he said had been working for the group

all along.” My hands curled into tight fists in my lap, my fingers digging

into the spider rune scars embedded in my palms. I drew in a breath and forced

out the rest of the words. “Tucker claimed that my mother was involved with

them too, although I don’t know how. He said that this group, this Circle,

gave Mab the okay to murder her.”

Finn’s eyes widened, and he looked at me. “Do you believe him?”

A wild sob rose in my throat, and I wanted to scream that of course I didn’t

believe Tucker, that of course it couldn’t be true, that of course my mother

couldn’t have been working with him, with this group.

That my mother couldn’t have been a monster like Tucker and Mab and Deirdre.

But I couldn’t force out the denial, no matter how hard I tried, so I ended

up shrugging instead. “Why would he lie about something like that? He was

either going to blackmail me into working for him or kill me outright. He had