Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)(77)
been, rendering them useless. I growled, got up, and stalked through the
warehouse, peering past the crates and boxes, hoping to see a landline phone
sticking out from the wall.
I didn’t find one, but I found something even more interesting: an office.
It was a twenty-five-foot-square space in the back corner of the warehouse. I
used my Stone magic to harden my hand, then punched my fist through the glass
in the door, threw the lock open, and stepped inside.
According to the brass nameplate on the door, this was Dimitri’s office, but
it looked more like a thief’s lair. Photos, blueprints, and security specs
had been tacked up to the walls, along with lists of names and times. My eyes
narrowed. Those looked like guard rosters and rotations.
This . . . this was where Santos had planned the Briartop heist, and quite
thoroughly from the looks of it. But I didn’t have time to be impressed by
the giant’s planning. Not if I wanted to stop the robbery.
So I went over to the desk in the center of the room and started opening
drawers . . . where I found yet more photos, blueprints, and lists. Unlike the
other pages that were haphazardly taped to the walls, all this information was
neatly filed away, as though someone had wanted it kept separate from
everything else.
I frowned. Why weren’t these pages up on the walls with the rest of the
museum schematics? It seemed like there was more information stuffed in the
desk than anywhere else in the office. Of course, Santos would have been
thorough with such an ambitious heist, but the more drawers I opened, and the
more information I spotted, the more my worry increased.
Something was wrong here.
But I didn’t have time to puzzle out what it was, so I kept rifling through
the desk, searching for a phone. There was no landline, but I was hoping that
I might find a spare burner phone somewhere, one without a stupid PIN code
already programmed into it.
I found a phone, all right—mine. Along with all five of my knives, just
tossed into a drawer like they were a pile of paper clips. Jackpot.
I slid the weapons into their usual slots, then powered on my phone, turned
around, and took several photos of the blueprints to prove to Finn that
Deirdre had been lying all along—
“Boss! Are you all right?” A loud voice boomed through the warehouse.
I stuck my phone into my back pocket, palmed a knife, and slipped out of the
office. Several crates separated this area from the rest of the warehouse, so
I sprinted over to the end of the row and peered around the last one.
A guy was standing over Dimitri’s body, his mouth gaping open, a gun in his
hand. “Oh, no, no, no, no . . .” he babbled, even as he dug his own phone
out of his pocket to call in the rest of the crew. Soon the warehouse would be
crawling with goons.
Time to leave.
I glanced around and spotted a door fifty feet past the office. It was
directly in the guy’s line of sight, but it was the quickest way out of here.
So I pushed away from the crates and sprinted in that direction.
“Hey! Hey, you! Stop right there!” I heard him shout.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The guy fired off a few shots, but his aim was lousy, and the bullets all went
wide.
“Hey! Stop!”
I put on another burst of speed, slammed my shoulder into the door, and raced
out into the bright morning sunlight.
22
A few more bullets ping-ping-pinged off the closing door behind me, but I
ignored them and glanced around, scanning my surroundings.
The warehouse was in the center of a large shipping yard. Rusty red, orange,
and yellow metal containers were stacked everywhere, like oversized Legos.
Cranes and other heavy machinery towered over the containers, and the air
smelled of oil, exhaust, and fish. In the distance, the sun glinted off the
Aneirin River, making the surface sparkle like the diamonds Deirdre was
planning to steal.
More shouts rose in the warehouse, but instead of plunging into the container
maze, I turned right and jogged around the corner of the building. I yanked
Dimitri’s keys out of my pocket and started hitting the unlock button. His
car had to be around here somewhere—
Beep-beep.
Headlights flashed on a black Range Rover sticking out between two containers
at the opposite end of the warehouse. I sprinted in that direction, yanked
open the door, and threw myself inside.
“Hey! There she is! Get her!”
More shouts sounded, and men started pouring out of the warehouse, all of them
carrying guns and running toward the SUV. Dimitri’s crew had given chase
faster than I’d expected.
I jammed the key into the ignition, cranked the engine, and stomped down on
the gas. The Range Rover lunged out of its makeshift parking space, but
instead of wrenching the wheel and turning the vehicle away from the men, I
steered straight at them.
Crack! Crack! Crack!