Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)(116)
We sat still in the van, watching our mirrors. Sure enough, a minute later,
that same SUV cruised by us again. Only this time, the vehicle didn’t have
its headlights on, or even its parking lights. It whipped a U-turn in the
middle of the street, pulled over to the curb, and stopped—right in front of
the mansion we were watching.
“Hello,” I murmured. “What do we have here?”
The doors opened, and two people got out of the front of the SUV, both wearing
long black trench coats akin to Phillip’s. They were giants, each one roughly
seven feet tall with thick shoulders and broad chests. Most likely they were
the muscle and bodyguards for whoever was in the back of the vehicle.
Sure enough, one of the giants opened a rear door, and a shorter, thinner
figure emerged, also sporting a black trench coat. This person also wore a
black fedora and had a matching scarf wrapped around their neck. I peered
through my binoculars, but the person’s back was to me, so I couldn’t see
their face, although from the size and gait, I did get the impression that it
was a woman.
“Some late-night visitors here for a hush-hush meeting with our old friend?”
Phillip drawled.
“Maybe.”
One of the giants squatted down. At first, I wondered what he was doing, but
then the woman in the fedora and scarf ran over to the giant, who hoisted her
up into the air. Ms. Fedora grabbed hold of the top of the iron gate and swung
her legs up and over it with all the grace of an Olympic gymnast. Landing
deftly on her feet in the yard on the other side, she straightened up and
started striding toward the mansion with graceful purpose.
I cursed, realizing that I was about to lose my one and only lead on the
Circle. I’d considered the possibility that someone might come here looking
for him, but part of me hadn’t thought that it would actually happen, since
everything else I’d tried to track down the members of the Circle had been a
dead end.
“Not a meeting,” I growled. “They’re here to kill him.”
Since Fedora was already past the gate, I didn’t have time to ease out of the
van, sneak through the shadows, and stab the giants in the back the way I
normally would have.
Thus I kicked my door open, barreled out of the vehicle, and started running
down the street toward the SUV.
“Gin! Wait!” Phillip shouted, scrambling to get out and follow me.
But I needed to get to the man in the mansion before Fedora did, so I tuned
him out. The giants whirled around at the sound of Phillip’s voice and
spotted me racing toward them. They cursed, pulled guns out from underneath
their trench coats, and snapped up the weapons.
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
I zigzagged, and the first round of bullets went wide. But when the giants
paused to take more careful aim, I reached for my Stone magic and hardened my
skin into an impenetrable shell.
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
The second round of bullets also went wide. The giants had come prepared, and
the silencers on the ends of their weapons muffled the sounds of the shots. No
lights snapped on inside the neighboring mansions. They wanted to keep this
quiet—well, so did I.
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
Two of the bullets went wide, but the third punched into my right shoulder,
spinning me around. Still, thanks to my magic, it didn’t blast through me the
way it would have otherwise. I skidded on the ice coating the street, but I
managed to regain my balance and charge forward again.
But instead of heading toward the giants, I ran straight at the SUV. When I
was in range, I leaped up onto the hood, then scrambled up onto the roof.
Before the giants realized what I was doing, I raced forward and leaped off
the vehicle’s roof, pushing off hard and trying to get as high in the air as
possible. Lucky for me, they’d parked close to the curb and the narrow
sidewalk. A second later, my hands hit the top of the wall that fronted the
mansion, and I dug my boots into the slick stones so that I could pull myself
up onto the top of the wall. Fedora wasn’t the only one who could do
gymnastics.
I rolled off the top of the wall and dropped ten feet down to the other side.
I paused a moment to palm one of the silverstone knives tucked up my sleeves,
then darted forward across the lawn. The ice-crusted grass crunched like
brittle bones under my boots.
The light spilling out from the office perfectly illuminated Fedora, who was
fifty feet ahead of me and moving fast, her breath streaming out behind her in
a trail of frosty vapor. She must have heard the disturbance out on the street
because she picked up her pace, pulled a gun out of her trench coat, and shot
through the lock on the patio doors with one smooth motion. A second later,
she was inside the mansion.
“Hey!” a man’s voice shouted from inside the office. “Who are you? What do
you think you’re doing?”
I didn’t hear her reply, if there even was one.