Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)(39)

been easy enough for her to draw a crude map for Santos and suggest where he

might lie in wait to murder me.

Deirdre could have done this. But had she?

Santos hadn’t looked to her for help when the bank robbery went sideways, and

he hadn’t hesitated to shoot her. Not exactly the actions of a minion. Sure,

he’d never been inside the house before, but he could have easily walked the

perimeter and peered in through the windows, scouting out the best place to

lie in wait for me. Maybe my bias against Deirdre was clouding my judgment and

making me think that she was at the center of some grand conspiracy when she

wasn’t.

Because I was biased against her. Even if Fletcher hadn’t left me that

warning letter, I still would have questioned any person who just showed up

out of the blue after thirty-some years. People didn’t do things for no

reason. Especially not in Ashland, where practically everyone had at least one

ulterior motive, along with two angles they were working from at any given

time. Deirdre had to want something. I just had to figure out what it was.

Too bad I had absolutely nothing to help me do that.

I didn’t have Santos, much less a confession about whom, if anyone, he might

be working for. I didn’t have anything, not so much as a single scrap of

proof linking him to Deirdre. All I had were smashed picture frames littering

the floor, muddy boot prints from where Santos had stepped on the coffee

table, and a ceiling fan drooping down at a sad angle from where his weight

had pulled it loose.

I waded through the shards of glass and melting bits of elemental Ice and

picked up one of the rune drawings—a pig holding a platter of food. The same

sign hung over the front door of the Pork Pit, and the sketch was my way of

memorializing Fletcher and everything that the old man and his restaurant had

meant to me.

I picked the rest of the broken glass out of the frame and tossed it aside,

then ran my fingers over the paper.

“I’m going to get to the bottom of this, Fletcher,” I whispered. “I

promise you that.”

As soon as I finished speaking, a gust of winter wind howled around the house,

hard enough to rattle the windows in their frames. Just as quickly as it

started, the wind died down, and a still, heavy silence settled over the house

again. I didn’t much believe in omens, but I was going to take that as a sign

of Fletcher’s approval.

But there was nothing else I could do tonight, so I placed the rune drawings

back on the mantel, snapped off the lights, and went to bed.





12

The next morning, I cleaned up the mess in the den and went to work at the

Pork Pit as usual. All the while, I kept stewing about Santos and how he’d

escaped. If only I’d been quicker, faster, stronger, I could have nabbed him

and cut him open for answers about the bank robbery and why he’d tried to

kill me in my own home. Instead, I was back to square one, with no clue to

what was really going on.

At least, until Deirdre showed up this afternoon.

I got started on the day’s cooking by whipping up a batch of Fletcher’s

secret barbecue sauce. Smelling its rich blend of cumin, black pepper, and

other spices bubbling away was my own sort of aromatherapy, and it soothed me,

the way it always did. While I stirred the sauce, I thought about all the

angles I could work and how I could get to the bottom of things.

Silvio came in early, an hour before the restaurant was set to open, knowing

that I would want to have a private chat with him. A great assistant in

addition to being a good friend.

I gave him a few minutes to fire up his phone and tablet, then finished wiping

down the counter, put my elbows on top of the shiny surface, and stared at

him. “Tell me what you found out. I want to hear everything, no matter how

small the detail.”

Silvio blinked, not used to me being so interested in our morning briefings.

He pulled his tablet a little closer and began swiping through screens. I

grabbed a knife and started slicing tomatoes while he filled me in.

“By all accounts, Deirdre Shaw is a wealthy Ice elemental who hails from a

prestigious Ashland family,” he began. “We’re talking old, old money and a

lot of it. She’s the last of the Shaws, although she hasn’t lived in Ashland

in years. She has a number of homes around the country where she divides her

time, including a summer cabin in Cloudburst Falls, a town house in Cypress

Mountain, and a penthouse in Bigtime.”

“Let me guess. Deirdre spends her days flitting around the country on her

private jet, staying in her swanky pads, guzzling champagne, and spending all

of that old, old money.”

“Naturally,” he replied. “But she also spends quite a bit of time raising

money for charity. Supposedly, one of the causes near and dear to her heart is

an after-school art program for kids from broken homes.”