Web of Lies

by Belle Aurora

Page 9

  Finn also helped himself to a sandwich and some fruit, and we ate in silence. Finn's laptop whirred softly as it sorted through billions of bytes of data, looking for info on one Violet Fox.

  After he'd wolfed down his first sandwich, Finn reached for another. He jerked his head at the far side of the coffee table, where he'd slid the folder Fletcher Lane had left me - the one that contained the information on my murdered family and Bria, my baby sister, who was still alive. Finn had moved the folder out of the way so he could set his laptop on the ancient table.

  "Any luck with that?" Finn asked.

  "No. "

  Shortly after Fletcher's funeral, I'd told Finn about the file and the secrets it held, including my real name -

  Genevieve Snow. I'd let him sort through the information and draw his own conclusions about everything else. Including what had happened the night my mother, Eira, and older sister, Annabella, had been murdered by a Fire elemental. For a moment, orange flames filled my vision.

  The image of two burned husks of bodies flashed before my eyes, and the air smelled of charred flesh. I willed the memory away.

  "You should let me help you with that," Finn said. "I have contacts you don't. "

  I shook my head. "No. Not. . . yet. I still don't know how I feel about it. "

  "About what?"

  "About the old man knowing who I really was all these years and not saying anything to me about it. About him collecting all that information about my family. "

  The spider rune scars on my palms started itching, the way they always did when I thought about my dead, lost family. A small circle with eight thin lines radiating out of it. The symbol for patience. I rubbed first one scar with my fingers, then the other, trying to ease the burning sensation.

  Didn't help. Never did.

  "Fletcher loved ferreting out people's secrets. Compiling information, dossiers on them. It made him a good assassin and an even better handler," I said. "I just never thought he'd do it to me. "

  "You're angry at him. "

  "Hell, yeah, I'm angry," I snapped. My toes pushed off the floor, and the recliner rocked back. "Fletcher spends years putting that folder together and then leaves it with Jo-Jo Deveraux instead of giving it to me. Why? What's the point?"

  I was angry, of course, but more than that, I felt betrayed.

  Like Fletcher Lane had regarded me as nothing more than a mark to gather intel on. Like I wasn't the daughter he'd claimed me to be. Like he hadn't ever really loved me the way that I'd loved him. Or at least trusted me enough to tell me what he was doing.

  And I was angry at myself too, because I'd had no clue what the old man had been up to, that he'd been out gathering information on me and my murdered family.

  I'd never even dreamed that Fletcher would do such a thing - at least not to me. Or maybe I just hadn't wanted to consider the possibility. Either way, all that I had left now were questions and more questions.

  "Maybe he was planning to give it to you," Finn said.

  "Before he died. "

  Another image flashed before my eyes. Fletcher Lane, lying in a pool of his own blood at the Pork Pit, the skin flayed and ripped from his body. His face and chest and arms and hands a ruined mess of raw flesh and bones.

  I shook my head, trying to banish the memory. Didn't work. Never did.

  "I just don't understand what he expected me to do with the information. Take my revenge on the Fire elemental? It's been years, and I still don't know who she was or why she killed my family. I didn't even see the elemental before one of her goons caught and blindfolded me. Just heard her laughing while she tortured me. For all I know, the bitch could be dead by now. "

  "She was strong enough to kill your mother and sister, two powerful Ice elementals in their own right, and melt that silverstone spider rune into your palms. I doubt she's dead. People like that don't go quietly," Finn said. "Besides, it was only seventeen years ago. Most elementals live to be well over a hundred. "

  A cold smile curved my lips. "Can't blame a gal for dreaming, can you?"

  I stared at the folder, and my smile flipped into a frown. "I just don't understand why Fletcher did it. I was there. I lived through it. Nothing in that file tells me anything I don't already know. "

  "Except that your sister's alive," Finn said in a soft voice.

  Bria. Blond hair. Big, blue eyes. A child's soft, sweet, innocent face. A delicate primrose rune hanging from the chain around her neck. She'd been eight the last time I'd seen her, the night I found her blood in the hiding place where I'd left her. The night I thought she'd died.

  "Fat lot of good it does me to know she's alive, since I can't find her. That picture could have been taken anywhere, and Fletcher wasn't kind enough to scribble a location on the back of it. " Emotion tightened my throat, and I had to force out my next words. "I don't - I don't even know if I want to find her. "

  "Why not?" Finn asked. "She's your sister. "

  "She was my sister," I replied in a husky voice. "I have no idea what she's like now. If she remembers me, if she'd even want to see me. Hell, she probably thinks I'm dead, just like I thought she was. Then there's the small fact of what I've been doing with my life. Call me crazy, but I doubt anyone would want an assassin for a big sister. "

  Finn was silent a moment. Then he raised his head and stared at me with his bright green eyes - eyes that were so similar to Fletcher's it made my heart crack. "You might not have been his biological daughter, but Dad loved you just as much as he did me. You said it yourself. He loved knowing other people's secrets. He probably started digging at first just to see who you really were and whether or not he could trust you. "

  "And then?"

  Finn shrugged. "And then you became his daughter, his protege, and he loved you. Maybe Dad wanted to find the Fire elemental for you. Maybe he realized Bria hadn't died that night. Maybe he wanted to make up for everything that had been done to you and your family. "

  I'd wondered those same things myself. Because that's exactly the kind of man Fletcher Lane had been. Live and let live, had been his motto. After all, assassins didn't have a lot of moral high ground to stand on and cast stones and aspersions down at others. But if you fucked with somebody Fletcher Lane cared about, you might as well cut out your own heart with a rusty spoon - before he did it for you. The old man had taught me to be the same way. Loyalty, love, whatever you wanted to call it, it was the only thing as important as survival - and the only thing truly worth dying for. Which is why I'd hunted down Alexis James, the Air elemental bitch who'd killed Fletcher and had Finn tortured, even though I'd almost died in the process.

  I rubbed my palm over my forehead. The silverstone metal in my skin felt as hard and cold as my heart. "I don't know what Fletcher wanted me to do. Now I'll never know. "

  "You'll figure it out," Finn said. "And I'll help you. "

  Spoken like a true brother, blood or not. I smiled at him. "I know you will - "

  Click-click. Click-click.

  Finn's laptop spit out a different sort of noise, as though the hard drive had caught and snagged on something. I raised my brows. Finn leaned forward and hit a button.

  Numbers popped up on his laptop monitor, along with what looked like a driver's license photo. Frizzy blond hair. Dark eyes. Dusky skin. Black glasses.

  "Got her," Finn said. "Violet Elizabeth Fox. Credit card records, bank accounts, school transcripts. Read all about her. "

  I joined him on the sofa and read the information on the screen. Violet Elizabeth Fox, age nineteen, parents deceased. A straight-A student on a full scholarship, getting her business degree at Ashland Community College.

  A couple hundred bucks' worth of charges on her credit card, a couple thousand in a savings account. A small check deposited every two weeks into her checki
ng account from some business called Country Daze. Probably a part-time job of some sort. Nothing out of the ordinary and nothing to suggest why she'd come into the Pork Pit looking for the Tin Man.

  "Violet Fox commutes to school," I said.

  "How do you know that?" Finn asked.

  I tapped the screen with my fingernail. "Because she's got an ACC parking permit and assigned slip. And look at her home address. "

  "Ridgeline Hollow Road?" Finn asked. "That's up in the mountains. "

  "In the coalfields," I added.

  Folks had been carving coal out of the Appalachian Mountains for decades, and rich seams of it ran through the mountains just north of Ashland. Coal mining was dangerous, dirty, hard work, not for the claustrophobic or faint of heart. But it paid well enough for generations of men and women to risk life and limb digging the fossil fuel out of the ground. For some, mining was the only job the members of their family had ever known. For others, the mines were the final resting places of their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. Dark, silent tombs no machinery and no light would ever be able to penetrate again.

  Click-click. Click-click. The computer sounded once more, and a new screen popped up, overwriting the info we'd been looking at.

  "What's that?" I asked.

  Finn grinned. "I flagged Violet Fox's credit card, which she just used to make a purchase at the campus bookstore. "

  "What did she buy?"

  Finn stared at the monitor. "Two iced teas, two candy bars, and a copy of The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. "

  "Two drinks? Sounds like she has a study date with somebody. " I got up off the sofa. "Let's go. "

  "To the college?" Finn asked. "What if she leaves before we get there?"

  I pointed to a clock on the wall. "It's not even four thirty yet. The bookstore is inside the student center, and the building doesn't close until six. Violet will probably stay put until then. "

  "You're the expert when it comes to the college," Finn said. "Seeing as how you spend so much of your free time there reading books by dead white guys and getting busy with the young studs in your classes. "

  "That's right," I said. "And your jealousy is unbecoming. Now, get your lazy ass off the sofa. It's time for you to show me just how fast that Aston Martin of yours can go. "

  "This is pointless," Finn said. "She's not coming back here tonight. "

  We'd arrived at the college just after five and had walked through the student center, looking for Violet Fox. I knew the center well, along with the rest of campus, since I'd been auditing classes at Ashland Community College for years. Cake decorating, yoga, charcoal drawing, watercolor painting. I'd taken all those and more, as part of my cover as an eternal college student and cook and waitress at the Pork Pit.

  This semester, I'd signed up for a course in classic literature, hence the fact I was currently reading The Odyssey.

  I'd always liked learning new things and saw no reason to stop taking classes just because I wasn't killing people anymore. Besides, you just never knew when a new skill might come in handy. Especially given my past.

  And I was thinking of taking several classes next semester, because, truth be told, my retirement was turning out to be rather, well, boring. During the day, I worked at the Pork Pit, of course, just as I always had. But at night, I didn't know quite what to do with myself since I wasn't reviewing files, trailing marks, and plotting the best way to kill someone. I could only watch the Food Network for so many hours a night. Most of the time, I ended up staring blankly at the television, wondering if eight o'clock was too early to go to bed. On the bright side, I was always extremely well rested now.

  Finn and I hadn't found Violet Fox during our search of the student center. It had lots of little cubbyholes for students to hide and study in. Or Violet and whomever she'd been with might have decided to study in the library or a computer lab or even someone's dorm room. Too many possibilities and no way to narrow them down. So we'd come to the one place Violet Fox had to show up sooner or later - the parking lot.

  "Trust me," I said. "She'll come back and get her car. Nobody in their right mind would leave their wheels here overnight. "

  "I can't imagine why," Finn muttered and shifted in his seat.

  I stared out the window. Ashland Community College was located in the downtown district, a small circle of knowledge hidden among the glass-and-chrome corporate buildings that passed for skyscrapers in the city.

  Even though the college took up a couple of city blocks, the various halls and buildings were more or less grouped together and connected by a series of grassy quads. But space was at a premium in the downtown area, and the lots that surrounded the college had been developed long ago. All of which meant there was no student parking anywhere on campus. Instead, those who commuted every day had to leave their vehicles in a variety of lots and garages on the outskirts of downtown, then hike or bike their way over to the campus.

  The parking lot we were in was the farthest one from the campus quads and located just below the Southtown border. A single light flickered overhead, painting the cars below a ghostly silver. Four-foot-high concrete barriers ringed most of the area, warning the drivers away from various potholes in the cracked asphalt. Spray-painted gang symbol runes, including clenched fists and crude outlines of guns and knives, dirtied the stone surfaces.

  Crumpled fast-food wrappers, crushed-out cigarette butts, and limp, used condoms littered the ground.

  According to the info Finn had compiled, Violet Fox drove an old, black Honda Accord. The midsize serviceable car sat in the center of the lot, dwarfed on one side by a truck on monster wheels covered in army green paint. A Confederate flag covered part of the truck's back window, along with a gun rack. We sat several rows away, parked next to a Volkswagen bug with a red hood that didn't match the rest of its white body.