The bounty hunter stopped again in the middle of the yard. Looking a little more sure of himself now, he turned and called out to his buddies behind the pickup truck. "They must finally be out of ammo, boys-"
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Last words he ever said.
Gunfire exploded in one of the downstairs windows of the house, and the bounty hunter dropped to the ground, his brains already blown out onto the snow behind him by the three bullets that had punched through his skull.
A grim smile curved my lips, and the knots in my stomach loosened. The Annie Oakley display told me that Finn was still alive, because my foster brother was the only person I knew who could shoot like that. If he was well enough to hold a gun, that meant Bria was still alive too. Finn would die before he let anything happen to my baby sister, just as I would.
I crouched there in the snow and waited until I was sure that no one else was going to try to bum-rush the house. Then I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Finn's number. This time, this fucking time, he finally picked up.
"Where the hell are you, Gin?" Finn growled in my ear.
"Me? You're the one who hasn't been answering the phone," I snapped right back. "What have you been doing? Is Bria okay? How long have the bounty hunters been camped outside of the house?"
Finn let out a tense breath. "Bria's fine. She's right here with me. The bounty hunters have been outside for almost an hour now. As to why I wasn't answering my phone before, Bria and I were, ah, engaged in something else."
I let out a soft curse. I should have known. Finn could never be in the same room with a beautiful woman without trying to seduce her, especially someone like Bria, whom he had some genuine feelings for. I'd always thought that Finn's womanizing ways would get him into trouble one day. I just hadn't realized that it would be this much trouble-and that Bria and I would be caught in the middle of it.
"You mean that the two of you were busy screwing around instead of waiting for my phone call like you were supposed to," I snarled. "What the hell were you thinking, Finn? You know better than that. Fletcher taught you better than that."
I could almost hear him wince through the phone. "I know, Gin. Believe me, I know. The two of us were arguing, I don't even remember about what, but I was texting, and Bria grabbed my phone and threw it across the room. After that, one thing just led to another, and we ended up in one of the downstairs bedrooms..."
His voice trailed off in shame, but he didn't have to tell me the rest. I knew what had happened. Finn and Bria had finally given in to their simmering attraction, and the rest of the world had just fallen away-including my mission to kill Mab.
Finn cleared his throat. "Anyway, neither one of us heard your calls. We were right, ah, in the middle of things, when I hear someone roar up the driveway. Then another car, then another car, followed by a series of gunshots. By that point, we're out of bed, looking out the windows, and realizing that we're in deep trouble. The bastards just kept coming, and they surrounded the house before we could slip out the back. Some of them took out each other, but we didn't know how many more of them might show up, so Bria and I got out our guns and settled in to wait for you."
I wanted to scream at Finn for being so sloppy, for being more interested in seducing my sister than keeping her safe. But it took two to tango, and Bria was just as much to blame as he was. They'd both known what was going down tonight, and they'd given in to their emotions instead of staying sharp like they should have.
I could-and would-yell at them later. The most important thing right now was getting Finn and Bria out of the house and away from the bounty hunters.
"All right," I said, my tone a little calmer. "All right. I'm here now, and I'm not leaving without the two of you. We can discuss everything else later."
"Agreed," Finn said, the relief apparent in his voice. "What do you want us to do, Gin?"
I stared out at the assortment of bounty hunters before me. "You made a good choice staying in the house. There's no way you can break through the ring of them. They've got the whole front of the house surrounded, and there's too much ice and snow on the rocks to try to get out the back and rappel down the cliffs. You'll have to use the old tunnel."
Finn knew as well as I did that there was a secret passage in Fletcher's office that led from the house into an underground tunnel. The tunnel snaked under the yard before opening up about a half mile away in the woods-well out of the tight ring of bounty hunters that circled around the house like pioneers on a wagon train heading west.
"I thought of that," Finn said. "But Bria spotted some flashlights in the woods, and I didn't want to risk stepping out of the tunnel and right into a couple of bounty hunters' line of fire."
He'd made the right decision. Fletcher had designed his house to be almost impregnable, and there was enough food, water, and ammo stored inside to last for weeks. But there was also strength in numbers, which the bounty hunters had, and Finn couldn't shoot them all, not if they decided to attack all at once. He and Bria needed to get out of the house as soon as possible.
"All right," I said. "I'll make sure that the tunnel is clear and take care of any stragglers in the woods, then come in and get you. You keep them busy thinking that they've got a couple of shooters still inside. I want them focused on the house as long as possible and not thinking about our escape route. Got it?"
"Got it."
"Good. And answer your fucking phone next time."
"Yes, ma'am," Finn said, actually sounding chastised for once in his life.
I hung up and stuffed the phone back into my jacket pocket. Then I slipped away from my perch at the edge of the woods. I headed deeper into the gloom, skirting around to the west of the house, although I kept the bounty hunters in sight through the screen of trees. If a group of them made a move toward the house, I'd come out of the woods and cut my way through them until I got to Finn and Bria. But the bounty hunters weren't that brave-or stupid. They stayed close to their cars, muttering to each other about how best to get inside the house without getting dead. I took advantage of their inattention, moving quickly and quietly, slipping from tree to tree, shadow to shadow, all the while heading toward the secret tunnel.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
More gunshots rang out, along with something that sounded like rusted metal creaking, although the noise was mostly drowned out by the whine of the bullets. I'd almost reached the entrance when I heard voices-loud voices with a distinctive southern twang. Knives still in my hands, I paused behind a tree and peered around the ice-crusted trunk.
Ahead of me, two women and a man stood in the middle of the woods-right in front of the opening of the tunnel.Somehow, they'd found it in the snow. They'd even been bright enough to pull back the metal hatch to reveal the dark hole leading down into the ground, which was no doubt the creaking sound that I'd heard. Fuck. I'd wanted to do this quick, clean, and quiet, and get Finn and Bria out of the house before the bounty hunters even realized that they were gone. Probably not going to happen now. Oh, it didn't bother me, the thought of killing the three people in front of me, but it meant more precious seconds wasted, more precious time when Finn and Bria were in danger of being overrun by the other bounty hunters.
"What do you think it is, Liza?" one of the women asked, shining a flashlight into the dark space.
"What do you think it is, Celia? Because it looks like some kind of tunnel to me, genius," Liza sniped.
"See?" The guy grinned. "I told you that an assassin like the Spider was sure to have some sort of escape hatch from that ugly-ass house of hers."
"Yeah, Connor," the first woman, Celia, chimed in again. "But we don't even know that the Spider's in the house. According to that info bulletin that went out, the last time anyone saw her, she was still at the country club."
"Well, someone's in that house, and they're picking off the other hunters like flies," Connor replied. "If the Spider is as good as everyone says she is, then I'm sure that the shooters have plenty of ammo to spare. Besides, did you see all that silverstone in the doors and the matching bars over the windows? They could hold that house for a week. We go through this tunnel here, we can come up in the house behind them and surprise them. They'll never even know what hit them."
The two women stared at the tunnel, then at each other. Liza shrugged.
"Might as well see where it goes," Liza said. "Connor's right-we're not getting in through the front door. At least not until someone gets the bright idea of trying to burn them out. Even then, someone would have to get close to the house to do that. I don't think that whoever is inside is going to let that happen."
No, Finn knew better than to let anyone breach the house, especially anyone carrying a flaming torch or a can of gasoline.
I scanned the rest of the area, but I didn't see any more bounty hunters in the shadows. If I was lucky, these three were the only ones who'd given up on a full-scale frontal assault and had decided to go poking around in the woods. But I doubted it. For one thing, my luck could never be that good. For another, I hadn't noticed Ruth Gentry or Sydney among the crowd circling the house. If the old bounty hunter had received the same kind of bulletin that the others had, she was sure to be lurking around here somewhere with her apprentice in tow.
Right now, though, I had a more immediate problem-the three people in front of me and how to kill them as quickly and quietly as possible.
The man, Connor, had a gun like all the other bounty hunters, but the two women had gone in for more exotic weapons. Celia had a sword strapped to her belt, while a leather whip coiled around Liza's waist. I grimaced. That whip was going to hurt, especially since Mab had already blasted my skin with her Fire magic tonight. Nothing I could about it now, though, which meant that it was time to get on with things-
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Another barrage of shots echoed through the trees, as Finn mowed down whichever fool had been stupid enough to step out from behind his vehicle.
Knives in my hands, I moved forward. By this point, snow crusted my boots an inch thick in places, so my footsteps made little noise. I crept up until I stood at a right angle with the three bounty hunters, who were dickering about who should lead the way into the tunnel. Despite their weapons, none of them wanted to come face-to-face with the Spider in her own house.
They just didn't realize that it was too late for that already. Way too late.
The three bounty hunters continued to mill around the tunnel entrance, still arguing. When it was apparent that they couldn't come to a decision by themselves, they held out their hands and decided to go rock-paper-scissors for it. They slapped their hands together, and I used the noise to tiptoe even closer to them. I stood in the woods and waited, but all three of them picked paper, so they had to do it again.
I rolled my eyes. And these were the people that Mab was promising millions of dollars to if they found, captured, or killed me. At least Elektra LaFleur had been smart and strong enough to be a real challenge. Mab was wasting her money on these amateurs.
Finally, their hands smacked down for the final time, and the two women grinned, because they'd both picked paper again, while Connor had chosen rock, which meant that he'd lost.
"Fine," he grumbled. "I'll go first since you ladies are so afraid to-"
The silverstone knife I'd just thrown sank into his right eye, and he fell to the snow without a sound. For a moment, the two women stood there-stunned-and stared down at their fallen comrade, mouths open, their brains not quite catching on as to what was happening.
And that's when I made my move.
I palmed another knife, darted out of the shelter of the trees, and raced toward them. Connor had been the only one with a gun, which is why I'd dropped him first. My focus was on keeping the noise to a minimum-not letting Connor shoot up the woods and give away my location. Besides, if I couldn't take out two chicks with only a sword and a whip between them, then I wasn't the Spider, wasn't half the assassin Fletcher had trained me to be.
After another second, the women snapped back to reality and realized that there was someone else in the clearing, someone who was an immediate threat to them-me. Celia reached down, fumbling at her sword, trying to get it free of the loop on her belt.
I didn't give her the chance.
My first knife punched into chest, rupturing her heart. Her hot blood painted my hands a steaming crimson, spattering onto the snow like scarlet teardrops. Celia opened her mouth to scream, but I used my second knife to cut her throat before she could utter so much as a whimper. I pushed her dying body away and turned to face the other woman-
Her whip snapped against my neck.
I hissed in pain and staggered back, my blood mixing with that of the other bounty hunters' on the snow. In front of me, Liza flicked her whip over the ground, making it writhe like a rattlesnake. She also backed up out of the range of my knives. Smart. Just not smart enough.
"So you're the Spider," she muttered. "I suppose I should thank you for killing Connor and Celia. Now, I won't have to bother with it-or share the bounty with them."
I gave her a cold, hard smile that was as wintry as the landscape around us. "You're assuming that you're going to live long enough to collect."
Liza returned my smile with one of her own. "Oh, I will, Spider. Don't you worry about that-"
I rushed her, trying to take her by surprise while she was still talking, but the bounty hunter had been expecting the move and raised her whip. I threw myself to one side, but the leather streaked through the air like black lightning. The blow opened up a deep cut on my cheek, burning my skin almost as much as Mab's elemental Fire had. I hissed again.