Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)(38)

teeth and followed up that first elbow strike with another, harder one. Santos

let out a loud oof of air and let go of my wrist, and I whipped around, raised

my fists, and went at him again.

Santos lurched to his left, grabbed the photos off the mantel, and chucked

them at me. I ducked again and again, the sounds of the frames crashing to the

floor and the glass splintering making me growl with rage. The bastard was

destroying my rune drawings.

He was going to pay for that.

Santos ran out of pictures. I expected him to pull out another gun, but the

photo bombs had just been a distraction. He sprinted forward, leaped up onto

the coffee table, grabbed the ceiling fan with one hand, and swung himself

right past me.

It was truly an impressive move, worthy of a world-class gymnast, especially

given his seven-foot frame. But Santos was faster and far more limber and

flexible than most giants. Even more impressive, he landed on his feet as

nimbly as a cat and sprinted down the hallway.

I growled again, whirled around, and charged after him, but I stepped on a

couple of broken bits of my own elemental Ice rolling around on the floor. My

bare feet slipped, and I had to windmill my arms back and forth to keep from

falling on my ass.

It only took me a few seconds to regain my balance, but it cost me dearly. I

staggered out into the hallway to see the front door slamming shut. A few

seconds later, a car engine roared to life in the driveway. I cursed again and

picked up my speed, even though I knew I was already too late.

I yanked open the front door and raced out onto the porch. A dark, anonymous

sedan was already zooming down the driveway, fishtailing wildly through snow,

ice, and gravel. I hadn’t even made it to the porch steps when the taillights

disappeared. I cursed, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to hop into my own car

and catch up with him.

Gone. Santos was gone.

Again.

*

I stood on the porch for the better part of a minute, fuming at myself for

letting Santos get away twice in one night. But there was nothing I could do

to bring him back, so I moved on to what I could do: learn more about the

bastard.

I went inside, wrapped a blanket from the couch around my shoulders, and

shoved my cold, bare feet into a pair of snow boots. Then I snapped on the

porch light, stepped back outside, and peered at the front door, trying to

figure out how Santos had gotten into the house.

Silverstone bars covered all the windows and side doors, so he had to have

come in through the front door, a solid slab of black granite shot through

with thick veins of silverstone. It wasn’t the sort of door that a giant

could pound through or that an elemental could blast through with magic. Not

without a lot of effort and a whole lot of noise—much more noise than Santos

had made.

There was no damage to the door, so I bent down, examining the lock. A few

scratches gleamed in the metal, so small that I wouldn’t have noticed them if

I hadn’t been looking. Santos had picked open the door instead of trying to

punch his way through it. Smart and not something I would expect from a giant,

since most of them relied on their great strength to solve whatever problems

came their way.

I frowned. Santos was seeming less like a common robber and more like a highly

trained thief, especially given his acrobatics with the ceiling fan. You didn

’t develop slick, nimble moves like that by knocking over convenience stores.

At the bank, I’d thought he was a professional, but he was a far higher class

of thief than I’d given him credit for. I wondered what other skills he had—

and how deadly they might be.

I went back inside, locked the front door behind me, and wedged a heavy chair

under the knob for good measure. Then I turned on more lights, going through

the rooms one by one to see if anything was missing.

But the rest of the house was undisturbed, and the only mess was the one we’d

made fighting in the den. It seemed as though Santos had come in through the

front door, gone straight down the hallway, and headed into the den to wait

for me. No doubt, he would have stayed in there all night, then casually

stepped up to the doorjamb and shot me as I went into the kitchen for

breakfast. It was a good plan, and it would have worked, if my nightmare hadn

’t already startled me awake enough to hear his faint creeping through the

house.

I frowned again as another, more troubling thought occurred to me. Fletcher’s

house was a labyrinth, given all the rooms and additions that had been tacked

onto the original structure over the years. So how had Santos known exactly

where to go? How had he realized that the den was the closest room to the

kitchen and the best place for him to wait to kill me? Santos had never been

in here before.

But Deirdre had.

She’d certainly spent many hours with Fletcher here, both before and after

Finn was born. Even if her memories were fuzzy, which I doubted, it would have