"We got a tip, from one of Arianna's people that someone was trying to kill her, someone highly trained and very deadly. We don’t take chances with our own."
I narrowed my eyes on him. "So someone just walked up and told them hey, we plan to kill the Light Heir and you believed them?"
"No we investigated it, but we couldn’t find any leads and since your Guild was the only one inside the city, we came to you. If the Guild Master offered to help, we knew it wasn’t from within your Guild. Marie sent me a letter a few years back claiming you were different than the others inside the Guild, better, faster and smarter. I made sure to ask for you. Alden was only too willing to give you to us for a price. So tell me Syn, if you had been told to take out my bride, what would you have done?" He asked watching me closely.
"I would have observed her movements for around two weeks or so, until I knew a time and location where she would have been more available and with fewer guards. Then I would have gotten the team together and taken her out before a single word of what we had been told to do could have gotten out, clean, simple, painless. I wouldn’t have told a single person who wasn’t on the hit about the target, when you take a mark, you don’t want retaliation and so telling anyone else would be off limits. A breach of contract, so let me ask you this Ryder…who would be so sloppy to get word out about taking down a target, unless your future bride placed it on herself?"
"Why would she do something like that?" He growled, obviously upset with where my mind was going.
"Because she loves attention and being targeted by assassins has only garnered the newly found Light Heir a truck load of it. I don’t know Ryder, the Fae are secretive and yet she seems to be loving the limelight of being on the front page of every fucking tabloid in Washington State, in fact Larissa brought in a copy of her having tea with the Governor. So if she was so worried about dying…why is she at the Capitol building having tea in a place easily accessible to an assassin?"
"Enough, she wouldn’t be that careless. You are forgetting that pictures are easily forged."
"That's true Ryder. But she's incredibly excited to be the new Queen-In-Waiting of the Dark Fae and couldn’t ask for more in her new husband who is generous and handsome…her exact words she fed the press last week in Spokane at the Mayor's settee where she had tea with him. Same exact thing she told the Governor."
His teeth ground together as the tick in his cheek flared to life. "Enough Witch."
I smiled, I was back to being just a Witch. Back where I knew what my job here was. "I'd like to try something if we can clear the room and get to a safe distance."
"What do you have in mind?" He asked his eyes still narrowed dangerously. He was touchy about his future bride. So was I. I had forgotten that he was spoken for and yet I'd come close to losing myself in his arms. Easily done since he was Fae and they didn't follow the same rules about marriage as we did.
"We clear the building and try to see if I can make it explode," I smiled impishly crunching my nose at him as several cameras from the others on the scene were going off, taking in every detail of it.
"After the CSI team clears it, you think the dogs missed one?" He asked quietly as he tilted his head as if listening for something.
"If we missed them Ryder, the dogs could have. Something we did at the last two scenes set them off, if I'm right it was magic. Thing is, if I'm right, that means the Vampires have more knowledge of the crime then they are letting on."
"It's possible," Ryder said as we waited for the crime scene unit to finish with their pictures.
When they finally cleared the scene and we had moved a safe distance away, I put up my shield, but nothing happened. I closed my eyes replaying everything I had done inside the other scenes and smiled when I found what it was. Second sight, I'd used it moments before the bomb in the body cavity of the Fairy went off and I had been using it when the one at the Vampire's sad excuse for a calling card went off.
I pulled in just enough power to use it and sent it seeking around the crime scene, nothing happened. I stepped a few feet closer, while Ryder talked to his men and sent it out with a force that would reach inside the house where the bodies lay mutilated.
The house exploded with enough force that I was thrown from the spot I had been standing in and ended up landing on something hard. I coughed as smoke took to the air, making it thick and un-breathable. Noise exploded as my ears started to work again, I tried to sit up but the once solid object gave in as my hands pushed on it and a deep growl sounded next to my ear.
"I hate when you're right," Ryder said inches from my ear as I turned over to find his face close to my own. I'd landed on him. It was becoming an irritating pattern. I smiled brightly. I didn’t mind being right, not at all.