Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies (23 page)

The soft, pretty murmur of the quartz. The sly whisper of the fool’s gold. The flashy elegance of the gemstones.

My eyes dropped to the bottom shelf, and I focused on the slab of granite. It was nothing compared to the gemstones, but still, I wondered why Dawson would even have it in his collection to start with. The others rocks varied in value, but they were all uniquely shaped or interesting in some way. The granite was just a slab of granite. Black and rather boxlike in its appearance. I knelt down and peered at the stone even closer. Hmm.

There was a lock on the glass case, but I took care of that with a well-crafted Ice pick. Behind me, Donovan kept sorting through papers. I opened the door on the case. The stones’ various murmurs washed over me, but I forced the melodies aside and focused on the granite. Its vibration was low and muted in comparison to the other rocks, but I rather suspected that was the point. Still, it only took me a second to attune myself to the stone. And I realized its vibrations sounded… hollow. As though the stone was only a thin layer covering something else—like a secret chamber.

“I think I’ve found Dawson’s safe—so to speak,” I murmured to Caine.

He looked up from the papers. “Can you open it?”

Picking a door lock was one thing. I had a tougher time getting into a traditional metal safe without Finn’s help—or some explosives. But Tobias Dawson didn’t have a traditional safe. His was made of stone—my element, my specialty. Still, we’d been inside more than three minutes now. No time to be subtle.

So I pulled off my glove, put my hand on the granite, and listened to its vibrations. Slow, steady, solid, just like the rock itself. There was also a sense it was guarding something, protecting something important, valuable.

Tobias Dawson’s secrets, whatever they might be.

I drew in a breath and focused my magic on the granite.

Peering at the rock, into the rock. And I realized the stone was only a couple inches deep. Any thicker than that, and Dawson wouldn’t have been able to put much of anything inside. Also, the silverstone I’d noticed earlier formed a wide, circular shape in the middle of the granite, roughly marking the size of the hollow space inside.

The dwarf probably had the metal triggered to his magic, so that no one could open it but him. Since silverstone could absorb magic, anyone who tried to force their way inside like that would probably spin their wheels for quite a while.

But I was a Stone elemental, just like the dwarf. I didn’t have to go through the silverstone—only around it. I held my bare index finger in front of the granite and reached for my magic. A silver light sparked on the tip of my finger like it was a tiny blowtorch. I leaned forward and pressed my finger against the granite, forcing my magic into the stone, deeper and deeper until I broke through the rock shell to the hollow space inside. Once I made the initial break, it was easy enough to drag my finger around the perimeter of the block, forming a square shape much bigger than the circle of silverstone at the heart of the granite.

Less than a minute later, I made the last cut in the stone. The rock creaked, and I used my magic to form a small groove in one side so I could hook my finger inside and pull it out. The granite was heavier than I’d expected, and it took me a moment to lug it out of the case and set it on the floor.

Donovan looked up at the sound of my grunts and did a double-take. “How the hell did you do that?”

I flashed him a smile. “I have many talents, detective.”

I turned my back on him and stared inside the safe. It was an even smaller space than I’d expected, and it was curiously empty, except for a few sheets of paper.

“Here.” I plucked out the papers and handing them to Donovan. “Photograph these.”

The detective spread the documents on the desk and used his cell phone to snap off some pictures. I reached back into the safe, wondering what other secrets it held.

My fingers closed around a small plastic vial, which I pulled out. I played my flashlight over the container. Black foam filled the inside of the vial, cradling a diamond.

The gemstone was small, not much bigger than one of my fingernails, and rough around the edges, but it still sparkled with an inner crimson fire. Definitely a high-quality stone. One that would polish up quite nicely.

But its sound—oh, its
sound
. That’s what held my attention.

The diamond practically sang with its own purity.

The gemstone’s inherent vibration was beautiful, breathtaking, enchanting, even. Like a Bach composition played by the master himself. I could have sat there listening to the diamond’s clear, pure song for hours.

Too bad an alarm blared out and cut into its lilting melody.

19

For a moment I froze, crouched there on the floor, the diamond vial in my hand. The alarm continued to blare like a police siren wailing in my head. Donovan Caine kept sorting through the papers, as if he couldn’t hear the unending, violent shrieking. He’d have to be deaf not to hear it.

I frowned and stared at the granite safe. The stone’s low murmur had transformed into a sharp, piercing alarm. A rune flashed to life on the front of the safe, on the slab I’d cut out of the rest of the block. A tight, spiral curl burned a cold gray in the middle of the black granite like some sort of all-seeing eye. A spiral curl—the rune for protection.

Tobias Dawson had used his Stone magic to ward his safe with a protection rune, one that would alert him if anyone tampered with the granite. I’d done the same thing to protect myself on more than one occasion. Even used the same rune as the dwarf.

Donovan Caine wasn’t an elemental, wasn’t a Stone, so he couldn’t hear the alarm, couldn’t see the rune. But I could, and I knew what they both meant—trouble headed this way.

“Fuck,” I cursed out loud this time. “Give me the papers.

Now.”

“What? Why?” Donovan asked in a distracted tone.

“There’s some interesting stuff here—”

“Because I’ve tripped some kind of silent alarm,” I interrupted him. “So give me the papers right
now
.”

To his credit, the detective didn’t ask any questions.

Instead, he shoved the documents over to me. I stuffed them back into the hollow space inside the granite, wiped my fingerprints off the diamond vial, then put it inside as well. Although I wanted to, I didn’t take the stone. The cowboy dwarf might not pursue us so hard if he still had the diamond. Big, big maybe, but it was the only hope I had.

I hastily wiped down the granite slab and safe with my jacket sleeve, then hefted the stone slab I’d cut out back into its original place. There was no time to be subtle, so I blasted the rock back in place with my magic, sealing it up tight once more. With his Stone magic, Dawson would be able to sense what I’d done immediately, but he shouldn’t be able to trace it back to me—or more importantly, the Foxes.

Donovan held out a hand and helped me to my feet.

“We need to get out of here,” I said. “Now.”

We scurried down the hallway and into the front of the building. I turned my flashlight off and peered through the thin slats in the blinds. Two flashlights bobbed in our direction. Giants, considering the fact the lights were about even with my head. Beside me, Donovan turned off his own flashlight and drew his gun.

“Put that away,” I said. “Open the door and head straight toward the back of the basin, where we climbed down. Outrunning them is our best chance. Not engaging in a firefight.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Make sure they don’t follow us.”

Donovan shook his head. “No, Gin. Let me stay and help you—”

“This isn’t a fucking discussion,” I said. “It won’t much matter if they capture me, but you? It’ll ruin you, detective. So go. Now. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. Been doing it for years.”

Donovan stared at me. I could see the gold glint of his eyes even in the darkness and the emotions sparking in their depths. Worry. Concern. Resignation. After a few seconds, the detective reluctantly holstered his gun. He moved toward the door and opened it.

By the time I stepped outside behind him, Donovan had already taken off back the way we’d come in. Twenty steps later, the rain and night and shadows swallowed him, just the way I’d known they would.

I palmed my silverstone knives. But instead of sprinting after the detective, I slid around the side of the building and moved all the way to the back, where Tobias Dawson’s office was. Ten… twenty… thirty… I counted off the seconds in my head.

I didn’t have long to wait. Despite the rain and mud, their footsteps reverberated through the stone under my feet. Solid, heavy, pounding. Shouts drifted through the rain.

“Do you see anything?”

“No. You?”

“Hey! The front door’s wide open!”

I peeked around the side of the building just in time to see two giants run into the front office. A few seconds later, lights flared in the front room, then spread down the hallway like a wildfire, before erupting in Tobias Dawson’s office. I stood off to one side of the windows and watched. It was the same two men Dawson had brought to the Country Daze store earlier this afternoon.

The two giants still had on the same grimy work clothes they’d sported then, and they both carried long, heavy flashlights that could easily be used to break bones or crush someone’s skull. They had to be the dwarf ’s top two enforcers.

I watched them sweep into Dawson’s office. They didn’t bother with anything on the desk, but went straight to the glass case that housed the dwarf ’s rock collection.

“The lock’s been picked,” one of the giants rumbled, swinging open the case. “But it doesn’t look like anything’s been taken.”

The second giant came to stand beside him. “Nothing obvious anyway. But somebody was messing with the safe, with the diamond. That’s why the alarm went off inside the guardhouse. Because somebody other than Dawson opened the safe.”

Well, that confirmed my suspicion the dwarf had used his Stone magic to craft the alarm on his safe. I could do the same thing, although I was usually more interested in keeping people out of whatever building I was sleeping in rather than trapping them inside. That’s what would have happened here. If I hadn’t been a Stone, hadn’t been an elemental, I wouldn’t even have heard the alarm. Both Donovan Caine and I would have still been sitting in Dawson’s office when the giants came calling. Some definite pain, perhaps even death, would have ensued.

Sneaky dwarf, using an elemental alarm like that.

Something to keep in mind next time, when I went in to kill him.

“But it doesn’t look like the safe’s been opened,” the first giant rumbled. “Maybe it’s just a false alarm.

“No way,” the second guy replied. “The case is open. Somebody touched that safe.”

“Maybe. But you know how sensitive that rune alarm Dawson created is. I had to come up here twice last week because the cleaning crew jiggled it while they were dusting.

Remember?”

“I remember,” the second man said. “But you know how obsessed Dawson is with that diamond and the others he found. We’d still better call him, just to cover our own asses. And get Stan and Donny up here too. They can help us look around.”

The first giant sighed and picked up the telephone on the dwarf ’s desk.

I stood outside, still processing what I’d just learned.

Others? There were more diamonds like the one in the safe? I began to get a bad, bad feeling about why Tobias Dawson wanted Warren T. Fox’s land so badly. If my suspicion was correct, Dawson wouldn’t stop harassing the Foxes until he was dead. Which meant the thought of killing the dwarf just morphed from a pleasant idea into a cold, hard necessity. The sooner the better.

The first giant finished his phone call and turned back to his buddy. “They’re on their way. But I still don’t see how anyone besides Dawson could even open the safe. All the silverstone in it is keyed to his magic.”

“For a rock like that? Somebody would
find
a way,” the second guy replied.

As they stood there talking, I crept away from the window and slipped off into the dark, rainy night.

———

I jogged back to the far end of the basin away from the mine office. I didn’t sprint full out, but I didn’t dawdle either. I kept my pace just quick enough so I’d still be able to hear the giants behind me when their friends arrived and they decided to investigate the area outside the office. But I didn’t worry about them finding anything. The drizzling rain would wash away any trace evidence the detective or I might have left behind, including our footprints.

I reached the back slope of the basin where we’d come down, rounded the rock outcropping—and found myself on the business end of Donovan Caine’s gun.

“Nice to see you too,” I drawled.

Donovan let out a breath and lowered his weapon.

“Sorry. I heard footsteps.”

“Don’t worry. That’s not the first gun I’ve had pointed at me.” Probably wouldn’t be the last one, either, but I didn’t mention that to the detective.

Donovan holstered his weapon. Then he stepped out from behind the rock and looked toward the mine offices. By now, more lights burned there, like fireflies that had been grounded by the rain. Faint shouts drifted through the night air.

“Did you kill the guards?” Donovan Caine asked in a low voice.

“No.”

Surprise and relief flashed in his golden eyes. “Why not?”

I shrugged. “Because a possible break-in is one thing. Dead guards are another. I don’t want Tobias Dawson to realize I’m coming for him. Not until it’s too late.”

Donovan’s relief melted into stubborn consternation, and I half-expected him to start lecturing me about the sanctity of life. To tell me it was just plain
wrong
to go around planning someone’s assassination, even if it would save two innocent people in the end. Donovan stared at me like he wanted to do that very thing, give me the good lecture. Then another emotion crept into his golden gaze.

The detective almost looked… sad.

What did he have to be sad about? It wasn’t like I was going to kill him or even one of his friends. I didn’t understand Donovan’s sudden mood swing, and I didn’t care to stand out here in the dark to try to puzzle it out.