Finn grinned, his white teeth flashing in the darkness. “You know you love me and my bad puns.”
“Oh, yeah. Like a toothache I can’t get rid of.”
“That’s me, baby. Finnegan Lane, rotten as they come.”
He saluted me with his gun again, proud that he’d gotten the last word in. I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling as I turned away from him, left the shadows behind, and hurried toward the mansion.
* * *
Since it was January, the holidays were officially over, but someone was being a little slow about putting away the decorations. White twinkle lights were still wrapped around the thick columns that supported various parts of the sprawling, two-story, gray stone mansion, along with strands of illuminated snowflakes that glowed a pale blue. Still more lights and snowflakes curved over the archways and outlined all the windows, along with the white velvet bows hanging in them.
But this was a new year, with new targets for the Spider.
I made it across the lawn and hunkered down behind a couple of lounge chairs set up on the patio that ringed the heated pool, as far away from the cheery glow of the holiday lights as I could get. Then I peered around the chairs and over at the mansion.
Despite its creeping up on eight o’clock, lights burned in practically every room on the first floor, and I spotted several servants moving back and forth, tidying up and doing their final chores for the night. In the windows closest to me, two women were plucking red and green glass balls off a massive Christmas tree that seemed to take up most of the room.
I watched the women for a few seconds longer, as well as all the other servants that I could see, but no one moved toward the windows and peered outside. No one had seen me approach the mansion, so I raised my gaze to a particular window on the second floor. Lights burned in that room as well, but I didn’t spot anyone moving around inside. Excellent.
I glanced over my shoulder, but the guard was at the very back of the lawn now, several hundred feet from me, and still playing his game, judging by the faint beeps and trills that whispered into the night. I wouldn’t get a better chance than this, so I slid my knife up my sleeve so that I would have both hands free. Then I surged to my feet, took a running start, leaped up, and grabbed hold of a trellis attached to this part of the mansion.
The wood groaned under my weight, more used to holding up pretty roses than a deadly assassin, but the slats didn’t crack, and I felt safe enough to keep climbing. Even if the wood had broken and made me fall, I could easily have used my Stone magic to harden my body and protect myself from the rough landing.
It took me only a few seconds to scale the trellis, hook my leg onto the first-story roof, and pull myself up and onto that part of the mansion. I lay flat on my stomach for several seconds, listening, but no surprised shouts or alarms sounded. I also glanced at the guard again, but he was a murky, indistinct shape in the night. No one had seen my quick, spidery climb.
Even though lying on the cold roof chilled my body from head to toe, I held my position, once again reaching out with my magic and listening to the stones around me. Just like the ones at the cottage, the stones of the mansion whispered of dark, malicious intent, along with blood, violence, and death. The mutters were much fainter here, more sloppy slurs than clear, distinct notes, as though the stones had been soaked in all the alcohol that their owner so famously imbibed. Still, I could pick out the emotional vibrations from all the evil deeds that had been committed here over the years. Exactly what I would expect from the home of a member of the Circle.
Even so, the stones’ mutters weren’t as disturbing as those of some of the other places I’d been, and the noise certainly wasn’t going to stop me from completing my mission tonight. So I got to my feet and hurried over to the window that I wanted, the same one I’d looked at earlier. After a quick glance in through the glass to make sure the room was still empty, I pushed aside the twinkle lights and tried the window, which easily slid up. I waited a few seconds, but no alarms blared.
I shook my head again. You’d think that someone who was part of a decades-old criminal conspiracy would have enough common sense to lock the windows on the second story of his fancy mansion—or at least order his staff to do it for him. But the mansion’s owner thought that he was well protected, anonymous, and untouchable, just like the rest of the Circle did.
Well, they weren’t. Not anymore. Not from me.
I pushed aside the white velvet bow, ducked down, and shimmied in through the open window, making sure to close it behind me. Then I turned and looked over the room in front of me.
The office was the inner sanctum of Damian Rivera, the mansion’s owner and the first member of the Circle who was on my hit list. Several generations ago, the ancestors of Maria Rivera, Damian’s mother, had made a fortune in coal before selling off their mines and branching out into other areas. Maria herself had been big into real estate, buying and selling property all over Ashland, as well as renovating crumbling old homes that she decked out with all the antique furniture and heirlooms she got for a song at various estate sales.
Damian had definitely inherited his mother’s flair for decorating and dramatic spaces. The office was enormous, taking up a good chunk of this corner of the mansion. The decidedly masculine area was full of dark brown leather chairs and couches nestled alongside wide, heavy tables covered with all sorts of expensive knickknacks. Porcelain vases, crystal figurines, wooden carvings, stone statues. All perfectly in place and all perfectly highlighted by the three gold-plated chandeliers dangling from the ceiling.
But the centerpiece of the office was the freestanding bar that took up one entire wall, complete with several padded barstools lined up in front of it. A wide variety of liquor bottles perched prettily on the wooden shelves behind the bar, along with rows of glassware. I eyed the bottles, recognizing them all as being well out of my price range, but they fit right in with the rest of the luxe furnishings. The air reeked of expensive cologne and even more expensive cigar smoke, adding to the gentlemen’s club feel of Damian’s lair, and I had to wrinkle my nose to hold back a sneeze.
But I wasn’t here to sightsee or gawk at the expensive furnishings, so I moved over to the large desk that stood in the back of the room near the window that I’d just slithered through. To my disappointment, the golden wood was spotless, as though it had never been touched, much less actually used, and not so much as a pen or paper clip littered the gleaming surface. Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Damian Rivera didn’t have to do something as common as work. From what I knew of him, his favorite hobbies were drinking, smoking, shopping for antiques, and flitting from one mistress to the next. Not necessarily in that order.
Still, I’d come here to search for information about the Circle, so I opened all the drawers and tapped all around the desk, searching for hidden compartments. But the drawers were empty, except for some stacks of cocktail napkins and paper coasters, and no secret hidey-holes were carved into the wood.
Strike one.
Since nothing was in the desk, I moved over to the bar, searching the shelves underneath it, as well as the glass ones behind it. But all I found were more napkins and coasters, along with several sterling-silver martini shakers and other old-fashioned, drink-making accoutrements.
Strike two.
Frustration surged through me, but I forced myself to stay calm and search the rest of the office. I ran my hands over all the furniture, looking for any secret compartments. Examined all the vases, carvings, and statues for false bottoms. Tapped on the walls, searching for hidden panels. I even rolled back the thick rugs and used my magic to listen to the flagstones, just in case a safe was hidden in the floor.
But there was nothing. No secret compartments, no hidden panels, no floor safes.
Strike three, and I was out.
More frustration surged through me, mixed with even more disappointment
, both of which burned through my veins like acid. A couple of weeks ago, I’d found several safety-deposit boxes full of information on the Circle that my mentor, Fletcher Lane, had compiled. Fletcher had only photos of the group’s members, but it had been easy enough for me to get their names, since many of them were such wealthy, prominent citizens.
I’d scouted several of the Circle members, and Damian Rivera had been the easiest target with the least amount of security. So I’d broken in here tonight in hopes of learning more about the group, especially the identity of the mystery man who headed the organization, the bastard who’d ordered my mother’s murder. But maybe there was a reason that Rivera’s security was so lax. Maybe he wasn’t as important or as involved with the Circle as I’d thought.
Still frustrated, I turned to the fireplace that took up most of the wall across from the bar. I’d already searched that area for loose stones and secret compartments and had come up empty. So this time I pulled out my phone and carefully snapped shots of all the framed photos propped up on the mantel, hoping that one of them might hold some small clue.
Not only did Damian Rivera love the finer things in life but he also loved himself, since most of the photos were softly lit glamour shots showing off his wavy black hair, bronze skin, dark brown eyes, and startlingly white teeth. Rivera was in his prime in his early thirties, and he was an exceptionally handsome man—and a thoroughly disgusting individual, even by Ashland’s admittedly low, low standards.
Not only was Rivera a trust-fund baby, living off his family’s wealth, who’d never worked a day in his life, but he’d also never faced any consequences for any of the despicable things he’d done.
And he had done plenty of despicable things.
Silvio Sanchez, my personal assistant, had only been looking into Rivera for a few days, but he’d already found several arrests, mostly for DUIs, stretching all the way back to when Rivera was a teenager. Damian also had some serious anger-management issues, and he’d beaten more than one girlfriend over the years, servants too, and had even put a couple of them in the hospital with broken bones and other serious injuries.
But all of that was nothing compared to the woman he’d killed.
One night during his college years, Rivera had gotten into his fancy SUV and decided to see how fast he could drunkenly steer around Ashland’s mountain roads. He’d come around one curve, crossed the center lane, and plowed head-on into a sedan being driven by a single mother of two. She’d died instantly, but Rivera had walked away from the crash with minor injuries. He’d never been charged in the woman’s death, thanks to his mother, who’d pulled all the right strings and paid off all the right people to cover the whole thing up.
But Rivera hadn’t learned his lesson. He hadn’t learned anything, since he’d been arrested for another DUI on New Year’s Eve. But he wouldn’t face any consequences for that one either. His mama was long dead, but Damian still had someone to clean up his messes—Bruce Porter, a dwarf who’d been the Rivera family’s head of security for years.
I stopped in front of a photo that showed Maria Rivera, a beautiful woman with long, wavy, golden hair, dark eyes, and red lips. In the photo, she was smiling and standing in between Damian and his father, Richard Rivera, with a dour-looking Bruce Porter hovering behind them in the distance. I raised my phone and snapped a shot of the picture—
“You’ve been in there a while now,” Finn’s voice crackled in my ear. “Does that mean you’ve found something good?”
“No,” I muttered. “Just a lot of liquor, antiques, and photos.”
“What kind of liquor?” Finn chirped with obvious interest. “Anything I would drink?”
I slid my phone into my pocket, then turned and eyed the rows of gleaming bottles behind the bar. “Oh, I think that you would drink it all, especially since Damian’s tastes are even more expensive than yours. Why, you would cackle with glee if you could see all the spirits he has in here.”
“Well, why don’t you bring me a bottle or two so I can cackle in person?” Finn chirped again. “I might as well get something from standing out here in the cold all night long.”
Even though he was in the woods outside and couldn’t see me, I still rolled my eyes. “I came here for information on the Circle. Not to pilfer Daddy’s booze like some teenager.”
“You say potato, I say opportunity.”
I rolled my eyes again and started to respond when a faint creak sounded in the hallway outside, as though someone had stepped on a floorboard. I froze. The creak came again, louder and closer this time, and it was followed by something far, far worse—the distinctive snick of a key sliding in a lock.
“Let’s have a drink,” a faint, muffled voice said.
Someone was outside the office—and he was about to come in.
PHOTO © ANDRE TEAGUE
JENNIFER ESTEP is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author prowling the streets of her imagination in search of her next fantasy idea. Spider’s Bite, Web of Lies, Venom, Tangled Threads, Spider’s Revenge, By a Thread, Widow’s Web, Deadly Sting, Heart of Venom, The Spider, Poison Promise, Black Widow, Spider’s Trap, and Bitter Bite, along with the e-shorts Thread of Death, Parlor Tricks, Kiss of Venom, and Unwanted, are the other works in her red-hot Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series. Jennifer is also the author of the Black Blade and Mythos Academy young adult urban fantasy series and the Bigtime paranormal romance series. For more on Jennifer and her books, visit her at www.JenniferEstep.com and @Jennifer_Estep.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Jennifer-Estep
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Books in the Elemental Assassin Series
by Jennifer Estep
Spider’s Bite
Web of Lies
Venom
Tangled Threads
Spider’s Revenge
By a Thread
Widow’s Web
Deadly Sting
Heart of Venom
The Spider
Poison Promise
Black Widow
Spider’s Trap
Bitter Bite
Unraveled
E-novellas
Thread of Death
Parlor Tricks
Kiss of Venom
Unwanted
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Jennifer Estep
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Cover illustration and design by Tony Mauro
ISBN 978-1-5011-4221-5
ISBN 978-1-5011-4226-0 (ebook)
Jennifer Estep, Unraveled
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