Bitter Bite (Elemental Assassin #14)

by Jennifer Estep

  Deirdre Shaw was next.

  * * *

  Once I was sure Dimitri was dead, I rifled through his pockets, taking his car keys and all the cash in his wallet. I would have used his phone to call my friends and tell them what was happening, but it required a PIN code, so I tossed it aside.

  All the while, I kept glancing at the warehouse door, expecting men to come running inside, guns drawn. But no one appeared, and I didn’t hear anything but a faint, steady rush that indicated I was somewhere near the water. Either no one else was around or they hadn’t heard the gunshots. I checked the time on Dimitri’s fancy gold watch. Just after nine on this Saturday morning.

  After I searched Dimitri, I patted down the dead guards, looking for a phone I could use. But all their phones were locked the same way their boss’s had 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!

  Bullets ping-ping-pinged against the front grille, and one punched into the windshield. I gave the engine even more gas, and the vehicle lurched forward. Dimitri’s crew finally realized that I wasn’t going to stop, and they all trampled one another, trying to get out of my way. One guy wasn’t as fast as his friends, and he screamed as I mowed him down. He disappeared below the grille, and the tires whomp-whomped over him.

  I grinned and kept going.

  Shouts rose behind me again, and a few more gunshots rang out, but I had my eye on the prize: the open gate several hundred feet away at the end of the shipping yard.

  I hit the gas again, zooming through the gate before the giant sitting in the guard shack could do anything more than gape in surprise, much less reach for his gun. Tires squealing, I made a hard right onto the road, leaving the warehouse and the shipping yard in my rearview mirror.

  * * *

  I drove fast for three miles, getting away from the shipping yard as quickly as possible. When I was sure that none of Dimitri’s men was going to give chase, I slowed down, yanked my phone out of my pocket, and checked the time. Nine twenty-seven. My escape had taken longer than I’d hoped. I didn’t know exactly what time Deirdre and Santos had left the warehouse, but they had at least a thirty-minute head start, if not more. But I knew where they were going—Briartop—so I headed in that direction. All I could do was hope I’d catch up to them in time.

  While I drove, I checked my voice mail—two messages, one from Silvio and one from Owen. Silvio sounded especially worried, and he told me to call him back immediately. He also finally had some news on Deirdre: She’s broke. Combine her insane spending habits with some bad investments, and she’s lost almost all her charity foundation’s capital in the last year. We’re talking tens of millions just gone up in smoke. Whoever fronted her that money has to be pissed. She’s playing a shell game with what money she has left, just trying to stay afloat.

  Well, that explained why she was planning to rob her own exhibit. She desperately needed to pay back her investors, whoever they were.

  And why has your phone been off all night? Silvio snapped at the end of the message, his voice a bit surly. You know I can’t locate you when it’s turned off.

  I snorted. Sometimes Silvio made me feel like a wayward puppy that kept escaping from the yard. He should just put a GPS chip in my shoulder and be done wi
th it. I wouldn’t have minded him tracking me to the warehouse and getting some help from him and our friends this morning.

  Instead of dialing Silvio, I called Finn first, hoping I wasn’t too late to warn him.

  Hello, ladies and gentlemen. You have reached the alluring, amazing, and all-around awe-inspiring Finnegan Lane. Leave a message . . .

  His phone went straight to voice mail. Deirdre and Santos had made good use of their head start. Whatever their plan was, it was going down right now.

  “Finn,” I growled after his phone beeped. “Your ice-queen bitch of a mother kidnapped me last night. She’s planning to rob her own exhibit at the Briartop museum. Whatever she tells you, do not trust her. Call me back the second you get this.”

  I hung up and tried him again, but it went straight to voice mail, same as before. Frustrated, I called Owen, but his phone was off too. I cursed, but then I remembered that he’d promised his sister, Eva, that the two of them would spend some time together today. I left him a message, told him what was going on, and promised that I would call him back when I had more info or Deirdre was dead, whichever came first. I was hoping for the second option.

  Third, I tried Bria, and finally—finally—someone answered me.

  “Detective Coolidge,” she said in a cold, clipped voice.

  “It’s Gin. Where are you? Deirdre is going to try to rob the Briartop exhibit. Rodrigo Santos, the bank robber, is working with her. You have to get some cops over there to stop them.”

  Silence.

  “Bria? Bria, are you there?” I asked, wondering if my phone had cut out.

  “I’m here.” She sighed. “But I’m afraid it’s too late. Someone’s already tried to rob the museum. I’m here at Briartop right now, dealing with the aftermath.”

  I cursed. “I’m on my way.”

  We hung up, but I wasn’t really on my way since Dimitri’s SUV ran out of gas about five miles from the museum.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

  I’d been in a hurry at the shipping yard, so I hadn’t paid any attention to the gas gauge. Besides, what kind of idiot let his gas get that low? Dimitri Barkov, that’s who. If the mobster had been here, I would have killed him all over again.

  The red light on the dash kept blinking and blinking. The Range Rover sputtered up another hill, then died completely.

  “Dammit!” I snarled, and slapped my hands against the steering wheel.

  There was nothing else to do but get out of the vehicle and start hoofing it toward the museum. I pulled out my phone and dialed Silvio, hoping that he might be able to pick me up, but the call went straight to voice mail. Weird. I didn’t think I’d ever gotten his voice mail before. Maybe he was busy talking to someone else. I left him a message.

  I thought about calling Bria again, but she was probably too busy to leave the museum, so I trudged on. I’d only gone about a quarter-mile when I crested another hill and spotted a familiar sign: Blue Ridge Cemetery.

  I stopped on the side of the road, remembering my last trip to the cemetery. It had been more than a week now, but I wondered if the van was still there. Not likely, but it was the best option I had right now.

  So I picked up my pace, jogging around a sharp curve, and there it was, an old, battered white van sitting on the side of the road, right where the grave-robbing Don and Ethel had left it. The vehicle looked untouched, and even that white plastic trash bag was still stuck in the driver’s-side window, fluttering like a trapped butterfly. I supposed the van had looked too much like a junker for anyone to bother messing with it.

  I grinned. “No good deed.”

  * * *

  The van had a full tank of gas, but it was still after ten by the time I reached Briartop.

  It looked like every cop in Ashland was at the museum. Blue and white lights flashed on more than a dozen patrol cars on this side of the covered bridge, with even more cars over on the island and clustered around the museum itself. Uniformed officers and suited detectives swarmed over everything, talking and texting on their phones or calling out to one another through their walkie-talkies.

  I parked the van behind one of the patrol cars. My black clothes hid most of the blood that had soaked into them from the warehouse fight, but my face was a bruised, blood-caked mess. I couldn’t exactly waltz over to the museum looking like this, so I started rustling around in the van, looking for supplies.

  The grave robbers had stuffed a variety of junk into the door pockets, including a bottle of water, which I poured over an old white undershirt. It wasn’t much of a washcloth, but it scrubbed the blood off my face. I couldn’t do anything about the goose egg, but this was as respectable as I was going to look, so I got out of the van and headed for the covered bridge.

  A cop who barely looked old enough to shave stepped in front of me. “Sorry, ma’am, but you can’t be here. This is an active crime scene.”

  I had opened my mouth to make up some excuse to try to get past him when heavy footsteps sounded, and Xavier stepped out of the bridge opening.

  “She’s with me,” he called out. “Let her through, Larry.”

  Larry gave me a suspicious look, but I just smiled sweetly at him, and he reluctantly stepped aside. It was good to have friends.

  “Here,” Xavier said, passing me a pair of black crime-scene gloves. “Put these on, and try to look official. Bria’s up at the museum. She asked me to come down here and keep an eye out for you.”

  I did as he asked, and the giant led me through the covered bridge, up the hill, and into the museum. Cops looked at us, wondering why I was here, but Xavier nodded at them, and no one stopped us from entering the main exhibit space.

  The rotunda was a disaster. It looked like a bomb had exploded, blowing blood, glass, bullets, and bodies everywhere. Men dressed in khakis and cheap gray suit jackets were sprawled across the marble floor, guns lying next to them and blood pooled underneath their bodies from where they had been shot so many times. Bullets had smashed through and shattered the glass cases housing the jewelry, and the resulting shards glinted like diamonds underfoot, mixed in with the brass bullet casings. More holes blackened the walls, and I could hear the marble whimpering about all the violence that had occurred here today.

  Bria broke away from a cluster of cops and came over to Xavier and me. She hugged me tight before pulling back and giving me a quick once-over, eyeing the knot on my head.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. Just a little banged up. What happened?”

  Bria pointed at the dead men on the floor. “These guys walked in here as soon as the museum opened at nine o’clock this morning, pulled out guns, and started shooting. But given the amount of jewels, the museum’s guards and the cops on duty were already on high alert. They took cover and returned fire. All the robbers were killed, and only one of our guys was hit in return. Shoulder wound. He’s with an Air elemental healer, and he’s going to be fine.”

  I frowned. From the way Deirdre had talked and the obvious planning that Santos had put into this, I would have thought the robbery would have been successful. Or at least not such a total, epic failure.

  “I don’t know what these guys were thinking.” Xavier shook his head. “They never had a chance.”

  He was right. All the robbers’ bodies were clustered at the front of the rotunda. They hadn’t gotten twenty feet into the room before they were all killed. Maybe Deirdre and Santos hadn’t been as smart as I’d thought.

  One of the cops called out to Bria and Xavier, and they went over to see what she wanted. I looked over the dead men on the floor, expecting to see Santos’s mug somewhere in the mess of bodies, his face frozen in pain and death.

  But he wasn’t here.

  I frowned and walked closer to the bodies, going around the pile of them and staring at each robber’s face in turn, but none of them was Santos. I hadn’t expected Deirdre to be here, to do the dirty work of actually robbing the museum herself,
but this was Santos’s gig, his crew, his plan. He should have been here, leading the charge. So where was he? Had he managed to escape from the museum?

  No. The cops would have checked the security footage to make sure that none of the robbers had escaped. Even if Santos had gotten away, they would have been combing the surrounding area for him, not camped out here at the museum collecting evidence.

  And then I noticed something else missing: the jewelry.

  Many of the exhibit cases had been shattered by the flying bullets, but no jewelry littered the rotunda, and I didn’t see so much as a single diamond knocked loose from its setting, glittering on the floor. And all the cases that were still intact were also empty. No rings, no bracelets, no necklaces. All the jewelry was gone. The cops must have removed it and taken it to the museum’s shiny new vault for safekeeping.

  I stared out over the blood, bodies, and destruction, turning things over and over in my mind. The longer I studied the scene, the more cold worry pooled in the pit of my stomach. Deirdre wasn’t done yet. She hadn’t gone to all this trouble for an unsuccessful heist. And why worm her way back into Finn’s life if she’d been planning to hit the museum all along? He didn’t have any real connection to the museum. From what I could tell, Finn hadn’t been anywhere near Briartop when the robbery attempt had gone down. Bria would have told me if he’d been here.

  While I was waiting for Bria and Xavier to finish their conversation with the other cop, I took off my black gloves, pulled out my phone, and called Finn again, but he still didn’t answer. Another brick of worry piled onto the growing stack in my stomach.

  Something was wrong.

  Bria left Xavier and the other cop and walked back over to me.

  “Sorry that took so long,” she said. “Debbie was telling us that the security company has transported the jewelry to the secondary location.”

  “Secondary location? Why didn’t you guys just leave it here and stick it in the museum’s vault?”

  Bria shrugged. “Since Clementine Barker managed to crack the museum vault back during the summer, the company insuring the exhibit insisted on it. That in case of a robbery attempt, all the jewelry would immediately be taken to a more secure location for safekeeping. At least until everything could be reassessed and the museum and exhibit reopened. They briefed Xavier, me, and all the detectives on it several times and even did a couple of dry runs.”