Deadly Sting Read Free Page A

her, while her other hand was clamped over her mouth to hold back her screams. She wasn’t entirely successful at that, though, and a series of high-pitched squeaks filled the air, almost like a dog whimpering.
    Finn stood about ten feet away from the dwarf. He must have been talking to Red when the gunman entered the store, because he’d put himself in between her and the dwarf. Red had the same stunned, horrified expression on her face that Blondie did.
    Finn had his hands up, although his eyes were narrowed, assessing the dwarf and the danger he presented, just like I was.
    The first thing I did was look past the gunman and through the boutique windows, just in case he had a partner waiting outside, but I didn’t see anyone loitering on the sidewalk or sitting in a getaway car by the curb. A solo job, then.
    The second thing I did was study the dwarf to see if it looked like he was searching the store for someone else—me, Gin Blanco, the assassin known as the Spider.
    By killing Mab, I’d inadvertently made myself a popular target in the underworld, and more than one of the crime bosses had put a bounty on my head, hoping to establish themselves as Ashland’s new head honcho by taking me out. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility to think that the dwarf had followed Finn and me to the boutique on someone’s orders.
    But the only thing the dwarf was interested in was the jewelry. His eyes glinted, and his mouth curved up into a satisfied smile as he glanced down at all the expensive baubles. So this was nothing more than a simple robbery, then. Plenty of those in Ashland, even up here in the rarefied air of Northtown. Really, if the Posh owners were going to keep all those diamonds around, then they should have at least hired a giant or two to guard them.
    “Move!” the dwarf barked, pointing his gun at Blondie. “Over there with the others. Now!”
    Blondie, who’d been behind the counter, hurried around it and stopped next to Red, putting the other woman and Finn between her and the robber. Well, at least she had a good sense of self-preservation. Red knew it too; she gave her coworker a hostile glance over her shoulder.
    I turned my attention back to the robber, wondering if he might have any magic to go along with his inherent dwarven strength and the hand cannon he was sporting. But the dwarf’s eyes didn’t glow, and I didn’t sense anything emanating from him. No hot, invisible waves of Fire power, no cold, frosty blasts of Ice magic, and nothing else to indicate that he was an elemental. Good. That would make this easier.
    “Give me the key!” the dwarf snapped at Blondie as he moved behind the counter. “Now!”
    Blondie stepped around the others and over to the robber, pulling a set of keys out of her pants pocket and holding them out to him at arm’s length, her hands shaking. The dwarf grabbed the keys and used one of them to open the lock on the jewelry case, instead of just smashing the glass and setting off the alarms. He threw the keys down on the floor and started shoving bracelets, rings, and necklaces into his jeans pockets.
    I looked at the knives I’d piled on the bench inside the fitting room alongside my clothes. Normally, I carried five silverstone knives on me—one up either sleeve, one against the small of my back, and two in the sides of my boots—but I’d removed them when I’d started trying on the dresses. I couldn’t exactly go outside with a knife in my hand, since that would ruin whatever element of surprise I had, and there was no time to change back into my regular clothes. Cursing Finn under my breath, I hiked up the long skirt of the dress I was wearing and opened the fitting-room door.
    “Darling!” I squealed, rushing into the front of the store. “Isn’t this dress just the most divine thing you’ve ever seen?”
    I twirled around and managed to put myself in between Finn and the robber. With the yellow dress, I might as well have been a mother duck,