The Spider

by Jennifer Estep

  “Just be careful,” Fletcher finally said.

  I nodded. “Always.”

  • • •

  I got out of the van. Fletcher stayed where he was behind the wheel, in case things didn’t go as planned and I needed to make a quick getaway. But I didn’t anticipate any problems—I was too motivated to fail.

  I lowered my head, tucked my hands into my pockets, and strolled down the street, heading away from the main gate of the compound. I kept my pace slow and easy, as though I were out for a late-night walk, instead of getting ready to murder a man for money. I thought about whistling to add to my cover but decided against it. Finn might have indulged in such theatrics but not me.

  I made it to the end of the block and risked a quick glance around. Farther up the street, close to Fletcher’s van, folks laughed, talked, and smoked underneath the red awning of a restaurant that stretched all the way out to the curb. The name Underwood’s flowed across the awning fabric in an elaborate gold script. Some fancy new place that I’d heard Finn talk about, the kind of highfalutin joint where they charged you ten bucks for a glass of tap water. A few cars also drove by on the street, but no one so much as looked in my direction.

  Good. That would make this easier.

  When I was sure that no one was watching me, I crossed the intersection so that I was on the street that fronted the construction compound. I paused again at the corner, as though I were going to head on over to the next block, my gaze scanning over everything. Satisfied that I was still in the clear, I rounded the corner, stepped off the street, slid behind a tree, and wormed my way through a few patches of weeds until I reached the chain-link fence that surrounded Vaughn Construction.

  I crouched down, looking left and right for any foot or vehicle traffic on the sidewalk or street and listening for any sounds in the compound. Any whispers of clothing rubbing together, the scuff of boots on the hard-packed ground, even the soft padding of a guard dog loping this way.

  Nothing—I saw and heard nothing.

  I unzipped one of the pockets on my vest, pulled out a small pair of wire cutters, and quickly snipped a straight line up the metal links. Despite all of the expensive equipment that lay beyond, Vaughn thought that the fence and all the lights strung around it were enough to keep people out, and he hadn’t bothered to have the metal electrified. Fool. I was mildly surprised that members of some Southtown gang hadn’t made their way over here, climbed the fence, and hot-wired some of Vaughn’s pickup trucks, driving them right back out through the metal links.

  I’d decided to make my run at Vaughn here, since there was even less security at the construction compound than there was at his estate. I didn’t feel like ducking wandering giant guards just to get close enough to try to kill him. Besides, I didn’t want Sebastian and especially Charlotte to find their father’s body after the fact. I would spare them that trauma.

  I hoped the cops would remove Vaughn’s corpse from the compound before they notified Sebastian of his father’s death, although I wasn’t overly optimistic about it. The po-po were so crooked and lazy it wouldn’t surprise me if they made Sebastian pay to have his father’s body taken away in a timely manner. But that was a problem for tomorrow. I needed to focus on what I was doing here tonight.

  When I finished snipping through the metal, I slid the wire cutters back into my vest and zipped that pocket up again. In addition to the rest of my black clothes, I was also wearing thin black leather gloves, so I wasn’t worried about leaving behind any fingerprints or cutting myself on the fence as I carefully pulled the sliced edges away from one another.

  I slipped through the opening to the other side and put the links back into place, making sure that I could remember the exact spot that I’d cut, in case I had to leave in a hurry. Then, still crouching low, I started making my way toward the office building in the heart of the compound.

  Most of the space behind the fence was taken up with rows and rows of construction equipment. Bulldozers, backhoes, and other machines designed for tearing into the earth and then dump trucks to haul it away. Cement mixers for laying foundations, cranes to hoist beams into place high in the sky, and all the other equipment you would need to fill in all the spaces in between. A few metal outbuildings also squatted here and there, full of smaller tools, wiring, paint, drywall, and other supplies.

  As I slid from one piece of equipment and one pool of darkness to the next, I listened to the stone around me.

  Bricks, concrete, granite . . . all sorts of stone could be found throughout the compound, some of it out in the open, like the sturdy cinder blocks stacked on top of one another, while other, more expensive and delicate ones were safely behind lock and key, like the marble that I could hear murmuring inside one of the outbuildings.

  Most of the whispers told of the shake, rattle, and roll of heavy machinery as the stones were continuously picked up and moved from one place to another before being shipped out to their ultimate destinations. But some of the more polished pieces, like the marble countertops, vainly sang of their own smooth, glossy beauty and how lovely they were going to look in whatever new house they would eventually be installed in. The more sensible, utilitarian stones grumbled in response, having no use for the marble’s frippery. They were bricks, solid, stout, and sturdy, meant to protect, shield, and hold up against all of the rain, wind, sun, and snow they would be exposed to. That was more than enough for them.

  Vanity, envy, exasperation . . . in many ways, stones were just like people, with all the pride, insecurities, and emotions to match.

  But the longer I listened, the more I realized that there was a . . . darkness in the stones. No, not just darkness—evil, evil intent.

  It rippled throughout the entire site, from the bricks and cinder blocks outside to the fine marble and granite slabs housed indoors. A black, ominous, foreboding sense that someone here was capable of doing some very bad things at any moment—and had already committed some gruesome sins at this very spot. One particular stack of bricks practically hummed with harsh, murderous whispers, indicating that one or more of them had been used to bash someone’s head in and that the person hadn’t gotten back up from the brutal attack.

  My own mood darkened in response to the stones’ cruel cries. I knew the cause of all the commotion: Cesar Vaughn. It was one more nail in the coffin of his guilt, as far as I was concerned. This was his compound, his business, his gin joint, so it only made sense that the stones would soak up his emotions and intentions, especially since he had the same power over them that I did. Stones tended to react even more to the elementals who could control them, sensing their primal connection to the elementals and reflecting back their actions more intensely.

  But I shut the malicious murmurs out of my mind and kept heading toward the main office building, which was made out of lovely gray bricks. A few giants roamed through the site near the structure, shining their flashlights over the rows of equipment and the locks on the outbuildings, but their movements were slow, sloppy, and halfhearted. They weren’t expecting any trouble. Good.

  I crouched in the shadows behind a pickup truck and waited until the giants had moved on to the next part of their security sweep. Then I sprinted the last thirty feet over to the headquarters. If I’d been doing the hit during business hours, I would have sauntered up to the front door, pulled it open, and marched right on inside, like I belonged here. But since there was a giant guard posted at the desk inside the entrance and this wasn’t exactly a business call, the direct approach was out.

  Instead, I sidled all the way around the building until I reached a loading dock on the east side. The large metal door was shut and locked. Even if I’d had the strength to open it, it would have made far too much noise rattling upward. So I set my sights on a regular door in the wall a few feet away. I peered through the glass, but the hallway on the other side was empty, as I expected it to be. According to my calculations, Vaughn should be the only one still inside the building, besides the gua
rd sitting at the front desk.

  I took one more look around, this time reaching out and listening to the bricks’ murmurs for any hints of danger, surprise, or unease. But the same whispers as before echoed back to me, perhaps a touch darker as I got closer to my victim and my own murderous goal.

  Satisfied that the coast was clear, I reached out and tried the doorknob. Locked, but I could fix that. I pulled off one of my gloves and held my hand out, palm up.

  Then I reached for my Ice magic.

  The power flowed through my veins, like a spring of cold crystal buried deep inside me. I could feel it the same way that I could hear the rasps of the gravel under my feet and the murmurs of the bricks that made up the building. But I couldn’t access it as easily. Every time I reached for that frosty power, it slid away, like frozen raindrops falling through my hands. Or maybe it only seemed that way because my Ice magic was so much weaker than my Stone power.

  So I concentrated, and a dim silver light flashed, flickered, and finally flared to life in the palm of my hand, centered on the spider rune scar there. It took me a minute, but I managed to bring enough magic to bear to form two small, slender shapes: Ice picks. Why carry around a set of lock picks when you could make your own?

  I slid my glove back on and went to work on the lock with the Ice picks. Less than a minute later, the tumblers fell into place, and the door snicked open. I dropped the picks onto the gravel, where they would soon melt away, given the warm, muggy night. Then I drew in a breath, stepped inside, and quietly closed and locked the door behind me.

  I stood at the end of a long hallway that stretched for about fifty feet before splitting off left and right. I paused again, looking and listening, but I didn’t hear any heavy footsteps from the guard stationed out front coming in this direction. No rustles of clothing, no creak of another door opening, and nothing else to indicate that someone had seen me approach and enter the building and was headed this way. That was another reason I’d decided to do the hit here: the lack of security cameras. Oh, a couple of cameras were trained on the compound entrance, out where the guards were sitting in their shack, but there was none at all inside the offices, which meant that there was no chance of anyone seeing or recording what I was here to do.

  So I pushed away from the door and headed toward my ultimate destination: Cesar Vaughn’s office.

  According to everything I’d read and observed about him, Vaughn wasn’t the sort of man who went in for a lot of frills, so the building was solid but bare. White paint covered the ceiling, and thick Persian carpets stretched across the floors, but that was it. No art decorated the walls, no sculptures sat in the corners, no potted plants perched in the windows. This building was about business and business only. I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not.

  I moved quickly and quietly through the hallways, gliding from one part of the structure to the next. I glanced into every room that I crept by, but all of the offices were dark. For a moment, I wondered what Sebastian was doing tonight, if he’d found another girl to spend the evening with since I’d turned him down, but I pushed away the pang of longing that rippled through me. Finn and Fletcher were right. I should forget all about Sebastian, because he was certainly going to do that to me. Besides, I needed to focus on the job at hand, not daydream like some silly, simpering girl who’d never been on a date before.

  I crept up to the end of the hallway that I was skulking along and peered around the corner. Vaughn’s office stood at the far end of the next corridor over. The door was closed, but he was in there. Light leaked out from under the door, highlighting the gold threads in the carpet in front of it, and I could hear the faint tap-tap-tap of his fingers on his keyboard. I felt safe enough to ease over to his office door.

  Then I waited.

  A minute passed, then another one, but those tap-tap-taps kept up a soft, steady rhythm, as Vaughn typed out whatever report, e-mail, or other work he needed to finish. I drew in a breath and reached for the knob to see if the door was locked—

  A phone in the office rang, making me freeze and momentarily interrupting Vaughn. A faint murmur sounded as he picked it up and spoke to whoever was on the other end of the line.

  I bit my lip, hating the delay, but I couldn’t exactly murder him while he was talking on the phone. So I drew in another breath, thought of Charlotte, and palmed one of my silverstone knives. The familiar weight of the weapon steadied me, centered me, and prepared me for what was to come next: the death of Cesar Vaughn.

  I started to reach for the knob again, but the handle started turning on its own. Too late, I realized that I couldn’t hear Vaughn talking or typing anymore. I bit back a vicious curse, because I’d made such a simple, rookie mistake. I’d been too cautious, too slow, and I’d waited too long to strike. Now he was leaving his office, for whatever reason.

  And I had nowhere to go.

  Oh, I could have rammed my knife into Vaughn’s back the second he stepped through the doorway, but that wasn’t my plan. No, I needed him to be in his office before I attacked, firmly out of earshot of the guard at the front desk on the far side of the building. If I tried to take him out here in the hallway, he might scream and bring the guard running. The chance of that happening was small, but I didn’t want to risk it, not when I’d already screwed up my approach. No, I couldn’t kill Vaughn now, not unless there was no other choice.

  My eyes darted left and right, even though there was nothing to see. The hallway was too long for me to have any hope of sprinting down it and disappearing around the corner before Vaughn stepped out of his office. That left me with only one option.

  The door opened outward, and I darted behind it and plastered myself to the wall there, hoping that Vaughn wouldn’t shove the heavy wood open as wide as it would go and that he wouldn’t stop to close the door behind him.

  But Vaughn was in a hurry, and he merely pushed the door open and started moving down the corridor at a fast clip. I caught the wood right before it slammed into my face, then eased to one side so I could peek out from behind the edge of the door.

  Vaughn never looked back. He thought that he was all alone, which made his sudden departure more puzzling. It wasn’t like he was strolling to another office to check in with one of his workers, and I didn’t think that he was leaving the building for good. Otherwise, he would have taken the time to turn off his office lights and grab the briefcase that he always carried. I hesitated, wondering where he was heading and why he’d picked such an inconvenient time to go there. Maybe it had something to do with the call he’d received.

  I had no choice but to follow him. For all I knew, Vaughn was, in fact, rushing home for the night, and I wasn’t about to let him get anywhere near Charlotte again. Not after I’d seen that dark, haunted look in her eyes today at the Pork Pit. I wanted to kill Vaughn in his office in order to minimize the noise and maximize my getaway time, but if I had to improvise and take him out elsewhere, so be it.

  Vaughn rounded the corner of the hallway and stepped out of sight. I pushed the door away from the wall, slipped out from behind it, and hurried after him.

  10

  To my surprise, instead of heading toward the front of the building to speak with the guard, Vaughn made his way to the loading dock, stepping out of the same door that I’d Ice-picked open earlier. I was glad that I’d remembered to lock it behind me. Vaughn threw the lock, turned the knob, and went outside, disappearing from view again.

  I bit back another curse, wondering where he was going and how many more ways I could mess up such an easy assignment. Vaughn should have been bleeding out on the floor of his office by now, not traipsing around like he didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe Fletcher was right to keep looking over my shoulder. I hadn’t exactly been the smooth, suave assassin so far tonight.

  Determined to finish this, I hurried over to the door, which was cracked open a couple of inches from where Vaughn had forgotten to pull it shut behind him. I plastered my back against the wall, then
crouched down and tipped my head forward so I could peer through the opening between the door and the frame.

  Vaughn stood about ten feet away, pacing back and forth across the loading dock.

  I frowned. He wasn’t a smoker, so this wasn’t some cigarette break. So what was he doing?

  I got my answer two minutes later, when a car rounded the corner of the building. It was an older navy sedan, big, stout, square, and worn, the sort of car that criminals recognized the world over. A cop car if ever I’d seen one. One of the guards at the shack must have called Vaughn to let him know that he had a visitor.

  The sedan rolled to a stop, and a man got out, carrying a thick, overstuffed manila folder. In contrast to Vaughn’s business suit, the other man was dressed down in khakis, scuffed brown boots, and a loose white cotton shirt patterned with bright pink, garish roses. A straw hat perched on his head, hiding much of his dark brown hair, although he tipped the hat back on his forehead so he could get a better view of his surroundings. His pale eyes flicked over the compound, his gaze cool and assessing as it went from the construction equipment to the outbuildings to Vaughn standing on the loading dock. Oh, yeah. If he wasn’t a cop, I’d eat one of my own knives—point first.

  Great. Now my mistakes were starting to multiply exponentially. Because not only did Vaughn have a visitor, which meant that I couldn’t kill him right now, but that visitor also happened to be a cop. Fletcher was going to love this. He wouldn’t come right out and say “I told you so,” but he’d definitely be thinking it.

  Still, I held my position, trying to think things through and see how everything played out. Why was Vaughn meeting with a cop after hours? As far as Fletcher had been able to determine, Vaughn didn’t have anything illegal cooking with the po-po, other than a few necessary bribes. But Fletcher had said that there was something about this job that felt slightly off. Maybe Vaughn having a cop on his payroll on the sly was it. Cops in Ashland didn’t like their meal tickets being murdered. That was one of the few things that would prompt a thorough, comprehensive investigation into someone’s death. In those cases, the cops were all too eager to find whoever had cut off their cash flow and punish them accordingly.