Fire Brand (City of Dragons Book 6)

by Val St. Crowe

  “Yeah, she’d been in there,” said Lachlan. “I don’t know if I thought it was her first trip too or not. But, uh, she’s still on the hook. Everyone is.”

  I scrunched up my nose. “Did you do any looking into Sierra’s background?”

  “I asked her to confirm her story,” he said. “She told me the same thing. Used to work labor and delivery. Transferred to this hospital a few months ago.”

  “Well, damn it,” I said. “We got nothing. What did Tom say?”

  “Who’s Tom?” said Vivica.

  “He’s the prosecuting attorney,” I said. “But Lachlan asked him a question about zoning. Because of the thing with Eaglelinx.”

  “Oh, right,” said Vivica. “So, what did he say?” Vivica’s boyfriend, the father of Jackson, had used to work for Eaglelinx. When he’d found out about the eagleclaw candies, he’d been murdered, killed to ensure his silence. Vivica wanted us to take Eaglelinx down.

  Lachlan opened one of the pizza boxes and got out another piece. “He said that there would be a case if you wanted to fight the zoning. He said that if nothing else, you could tie up the action in the courts for years and sell the place in the meantime. Since Eaglelinx is coming after you personally, they’d probably drop the lobby, and that would leave the new owners safe to keep running it as a hotel. You should be able to find a buyer.”

  “But I don’t want to sell this place,” I said. “I love it here. Do we have to sell? Is that our only option?”

  “If you go to court to fight Eaglelinx, you might win,” said Lachlan. “But they’re a big corporation. They’ve got deep pockets. They could just keep at it until you fold, you know?”

  “Damn it,” I muttered. “Damn it, damn it.” I grabbed another piece of pizza.

  “They are such bastards,” said Vivica.

  Lachlan furrowed his brow at us. “Should we be using this kind of language in front of the babies?”

  Vivica and I both turned to our sons.

  “Never use those words in public, boys,” said Vivica.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Those are home words.”

  Lachlan laughed.

  I took a bite of my pizza and chewed. “All right, well, I think we need to simply go public with what we know. Tell the world about the eagleclaw. Then they have no leverage.”

  “I don’t know, Penny,” said Lachlan.

  “What? Don’t you want to take them down?” I said.

  “You know I do. But if you go public, then you’re declaring war. They’ll have no reason to hold back at all. Who knows what they’ll do. And I love you. Wyatt loves you. You can’t go doing risky stuff without thinking of the consequences.”

  “What do you think they’d do to me? You think they’d try to hurt me?”

  “Frankly, considering they were willing to kill before, I’m surprised they haven’t made an attempt on your life already,” said Lachlan.

  “You think they’d kill me?”

  “They killed Dan,” said Vivica.

  That was true. I sighed. “Well, we have to do something. We can’t sit around twiddling our thumbs while they take away the hotel.”

  “Look, I’m not saying that,” said Lachlan. “I’m just saying that we need to play this smart. Maybe they have a weakness, and maybe we can exploit that somehow. Maybe we don’t have to be public about it, at least not yet.”

  “Like what would their weakness be?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said Lachlan. “We should look into it.”

  “Penny, don’t do anything too crazy,” said Vivica. “Lachlan and Wyatt aren’t the only ones who need you. I don’t know what Jackson and I would do without you either.”

  I spread my hands. “Since when do I do crazy things?”

  Neither of them would meet my gaze.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I wasn’t going to do anything crazy. Seriously, I wasn’t. But that afternoon, I decided I’d let Lachlan go back to the office without me, and that I’d stay home and hang out with Wyatt. He went down for his afternoon nap around two o’clock, and then I started pacing the apartment.

  I needed to do something.

  What everyone was saying about needing me alive was valid, but it was also true that I needed this hotel. I had to fight for it. Sitting around waiting for something to happen wasn’t going to cut it. I had to make a move.

  When Eaglelinx sent that smarmy guy out here to tell me about zoning, they were issuing a challenge. They had opened the game. Now, the ball was in my court.

  So, I went downstairs to find Vivica, who had also managed to get Jackson down for a nap. The boys were currently on roughly the same napping schedule, but that wouldn’t last, and we both knew it. I asked her if she minded watching Wyatt while I went back to the office. Told her I’d decided to go in after all.

  She didn’t mind.

  So, I left.

  I got in my car and drove out of the parking lot and down to Atlantic Avenue, which is the main drag in Sea City. It’s packed with hotels on the oceanside and strip malls on the bayside. And some of each are mixed in on the opposite sides too.

  Sea City has water on both sides since it’s the tail end of a big peninsula. The land is the narrowest down here, so it’s only a strip of land between the bay and the ocean.

  I didn’t go to the police station to see Lachlan, however. Instead, I drove to the part of town where Eaglelinx’s offices were located.

  I parked my car, marched across the parking lot, and went inside.

  There was a woman at a desk in the front lobby. Behind her, on the wall in cut-out silver letters, it said, Eaglelinx, Incorporated. She had short curly hair and glasses. “May I help you?” she asked me.

  “I want to see whoever’s in charge here,” I said.

  “Um… well, we have a Managing Board,” she said.

  “Them, then,” I said.

  “All of them?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’m afraid you’d need an appointment well in advance for that sort of thing,” she said.

  I glared at her. “Tell the head honcho that Penelope Caspian’s here to talk. I think he’ll want to see me.”

  The secretary nodded, a little patronizingly, but she acquiesced. “All right. I’ll call up to one of the Managing Board’s administrative assistants. You can have a seat over there.” She pointed.

  I went to the little waiting area on the other side of her desk and I sat down.

  I listened to her on the phone. “She says her name is Penelope Caspian…. No, she didn’t say if she was with any company, but she said that he’d recognize her name….. Okay, well, get back to me, I guess.” She hung up the phone.

  I stood up. “Well?”

  “Well,” she said, “Mr. Bowman, the only member of the board who’s here right now, is in a meeting. When he gets out, his assistant will ask him to see you.”

  “How long is this meeting going to take?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’d like the number of Mr. Bowman’s assistant so that you could set up a meeting for yourself?”

  I glowered at her. “I came all the way down here. I’m going to see someone.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said.

  I sat back down. I had sort of hoped to be back not too long after Wyatt woke up from his nap, though. Now, I wasn’t sure that was going to happen.

  I waited.

  Time passed.

  A half hour went by.

  I started flipping through the magazines that were sitting on the tables in the waiting area. They were all candy magazines, showcasing the best candy companies in the U.S. Most of the articles were really boring—all about stocks and bonds and increases and overhead and money stuff.

  Another half hour went by.

  Well, Wyatt was definitely awake by now. I thought about calling Vivica and seeing how he was doing.

  But then she might wonder where I was, and I didn’t want to get into that with her, especially since I’
d promised that I wasn’t going to do anything crazy.

  Not that I was doing something crazy now. Going to see someone in an office was a sane thing to do. Sure, I intended to use magic to threaten him within an inch of his life while I was here. Maybe dangle him upside down by one foot. Maybe breathe fire at him. I wasn’t sure. But I wanted to scare this board member into leaving me alone.

  Of course, I guessed it was fairly likely that the board member might be a dragon like me. That might be a difficulty. He could have just as much magic as I did. I kind of doubted it, though. Lots of dragons never bothered to shift much, letting their magic fade out because they didn’t keep it charged. If he was a board member at a big corporation, he was probably busy all the time. Probably too busy to find time to shift into a dragon. Probably so busy that he’d be easy to frighten.

  At least I hoped so.

  Maybe this was crazy.

  Maybe I should leave.

  But by then, another half hour had gone by. Now, I’d been there for an hour and a half. Leaving didn’t seem like an option, because then I would have been sitting here for this long for absolutely nothing.

  I marched back up to the desk.

  “Yes?” said the secretary.

  “Call up to him again. He must be out of his meeting by now.”

  “Sometimes those meetings last a very long time, Ms. Caspian,” she said.

  “Call up,” I told her, glaring.

  She sighed. “Well, all right, I suppose.” She picked up the phone. “Yes, it’s about the Caspian woman that’s down here…. Yes, she’s still here…. Well, can you ask him?… Okay, sure, I’ll wait.” She moved the receiver away from her mouth. “He’s asking.”

  “He’s out of the meeting?” I said.

  “Apparently,” said the secretary. She waited.

  I waited.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” said the secretary eventually. Her eyes widened. “Oh. Oh, okay. Yes, I’ll be sure to do that.” She hung up the phone very carefully and looked up at me with a big smile on her face. “Well, he’s going to come down for you.”

  “He is?” I said.

  “Yes, apparently, you were right. He does know who you are.” She swallowed hard. “You can, um, you can have a seat.”

  I furrowed my brow. Something about the way she was talking. There was a tremor in her voice. “Wait a second,” I said. “You’re afraid of something. What did he say that scared you?”

  “I’m fine,” she squeaked. “You really can sit down. You don’t have to stay so close to me.”

  “You’re afraid of me?” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  And then the elevator door opened up, but it wasn’t a board member that came out, but instead three armed security guards in uniform.

  “Penelope Caspian?” said one.

  “Yes?” I said in a tiny voice.

  “You are to leave the premises immediately,” he said. “Will you go quietly, or will we have to subdue you?”

  My lips parted. “He sicced security on me?”

  “You need to leave right now.” He put his hand on his gun.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, thrusting out my own hand. I reached out with my magic as well, plucking the gun out of his holster and making it hurtle through the air toward me. I caught it and unloaded it. “Look, I’m here to see the man in charge, and I’m not leaving until that happens.”

  The other two security guards all drew their guns.

  The secretary screamed. She hid under her desk.

  “Seriously?” I said, using magic to tug the guns out of their grips and send them flying through the air. I hurled them over my head and through the glass in the window.

  Which shattered with a loud crash.

  The secretary cried out again. She reached up for her phone. “Help,” she yelled into the receiver. “We need help!”

  Silly woman. I hadn’t even hurt anyone.

  I gestured at each of the security guards and made them float in the air. “Tell me where his office is. Now.”

  “Uh, fifth floor,” said one of them, his eyes wide with fear. “Put me down?”

  I headed for the elevator and hit the button to go up. I turned away from the elevator doors and surveyed the guards. “Look, this isn’t anything personal, you understand. Still, you might consider getting a different job. Trust me, you don’t want to work for these assholes.” I let go of my magic, and they all dropped to the ground.

  The elevator door opened behind me.

  I started to turn, but I felt something cold and hard poke me in the back of the head. “Ms. Caspian,” said a gravelly voice. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. If you do not go quietly, I will put a bullet in your skull.”

  I raised my hands in surrender. Damn it. I was vulnerable to bullets. Damn it, damn it. Whoever it was had me by the balls. I didn’t want to die today. “Okay, okay,” I said.

  “Move toward the door please,” said the voice.

  “Fine, fine,” I sighed. I started toward the doors to the outside.

  The man behind me came with me, holding the gun to my head.

  “I’m leaving,” I said. “Can you just—”

  “Move toward the door,” he repeated.

  Right. I moved.

  * * *

  When I got back to the hotel, Scott was waiting for me in the lobby. I waved at him and started to head toward the stairwell. I figured he was waiting for Felicity.

  He intercepted me, stepping directly into my path.

  I stopped short, furrowing my brow at him. “Um, hi, Scott. Did you need something?”

  “I have to talk to you,” he said.

  “Okay.” I stepped back from him. “Uh… are you okay?”

  He didn’t look okay, now that I was this close to him. He was sweaty. His face was pinched. He gritted his teeth. “Listen to me, you can’t go to Eaglelinx and talk to the employees. That’s not cool.”

  I took another step back. “How did you know where I was?”

  “You do something like that again, this whole situation is going to get worse. Upper management regrets drastic actions that were taken in the past, but they won’t hesitate to make them again if the situation calls for it.”

  “What?” I gaped at him. “Why are you saying this?” And why had he suddenly started sounding a lot like the smarmy guy who’d come by to tell me all about the zoning?

  “Until Eaglelinx has assurances from you that you will not be pursuing any action toward them, they will hold the zoning over your head. If that isn’t a sufficient threat, they’ll start escalating.”

  “Scott, did someone grab you and compel you to say this stuff? Do you wear a talisman, because if you don’t, you should really look into—”

  “The fact they made me talk to you means that they’re getting antsy. I was supposed to remain undercover.”

  “Undercover? Like a secret agent?”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Look, I never wanted to do this.”

  “Do what exactly?”

  “Spy on you for Eaglelinx. See what you do, report your every action back to them.”

  “What?” I could not close my mouth. “You’re working for Eaglelinx?”

  He nodded, a pained expression on his face. “I never wanted this. But when they found out that I had ties to Felicity, they wouldn’t let it go. I didn’t have a choice, all right? They forced my hand. I had to get close to Felicity in order to keep an eye on you.”

  I gasped. “You used Felicity? You’re not even into her?”

  “I never said I wasn’t into her,” he said, his jaw twitching.

  “You said that Eaglelinx forced you to get close to her.”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  My mind was reeling. “You need to get out of my hotel.”

  “Listen, Penny, they’re serious. You need to make sure that you keep your mouth shut.”

  “Get out and never come back,” I said.

/>   “If you agree to their terms, you can communicate through me,” he said.

  “Out.” I pointed toward the door.

  He looked at the door, and then back at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t care. Leave.”

  “For what it’s worth, I always liked you. Even back when I worked for your grandparents, I thought you were one of the better dragons out there. You weren’t rude or anything like that. You always seemed… solid to me. And I never wanted to do anything to hurt you. If I had any choice in the matter, I would never have done this.”

  “We always have a choice, Scott. And frankly, I don’t care about me. I care about Felicity. What you’ve done to her is… is… just get out now. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  He hung his head. “All right. I really am sorry.” And then he turned and walked out of the hotel.

  I stared after him, stunned.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “I don’t even know how to tell you this.” I was pacing in the living room, my phone at my ear.

  “Tell me what?” said Felicity.

  “Where are you?” I said. “Because maybe you should come here. Maybe I should tell you this in person. Maybe I should tell you this along with copious amounts of wine.”

  “I thought you were pretty much limited to a couple glasses since you’re still breastfeeding,” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at home with Asia,” she said. “I can’t go anywhere.”

  “Oh, hell, he makes you watch his daughter. He’s horrible.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I took a deep breath. Damn it, she was going to be so hurt. She had told me that he was her first love, and now I was going to crush all that. Tell her that he was playing a part and using her. I didn’t want to do that, but she had to know. To hide it from her for any longer would be cruel. “It’s about Scott.”

  “Yeah, I’m kind of getting that. What about Scott?”

  “When I got home just a few minutes ago, he was waiting for me in the lobby with a message from Eaglelinx.”

  “What?”

  “Felicity, he’s working for them. He says that they made him get close to you so that he could spy on me and make sure that I wasn’t going public with the knowledge about the eagleclaws. He threatened me. He threatened my life in so many words. Or maybe the lives of people I care about, I don’t know.”