Unraveled

by Jennifer Estep

  I spotted a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and I turned my head just in time to see Tucker leave the street behind and sprint into an alley. I started to head in that direction but stopped and glanced over at my friends.

  Finn had seen the vampire too, and he ripped the bandanna out of his mouth and waved his still-tied hands at me. “We’re fine!” he yelled. “Go! Get Tucker!”

  I flashed him a grateful smile and did as he commanded, hurrying down the street after my enemy.

  * * *

  I was hampered by all the holes and burns in and on my body, especially the ones in my thigh, but I ignored the pain of my many injuries and limped along as quickly as I could. But Tucker was exceptionally fast, and he easily put some distance between us. He was at the far side of the staging area before I’d even stepped out of the alley. But instead of taking the path that led back to the hotel, he headed toward a different one. I frowned, wondering where he was going, but then I realized exactly where that path led—the boat dock down at the lake.

  No doubt Tucker had his escape route already mapped out. Take a boat across the lake where he would most likely have a car waiting, then vanish into the night, along with the jewels.

  I wasn’t about to let him get away that easily.

  So I gritted my teeth and forced myself to move faster. I was good at plowing through things, so that’s exactly what I did, knocking over barrels, hay bales, tumbleweeds, and everything else that stood in my way. The good thing about running was that it got rid of the chill that had sunk into my bones from being dunked in the water trough. The bad thing was that it made my entire body scream with the pain of my burns and bullet wounds. But I ignored the agony as best I could and kept running.

  I left the staging area behind and stepped onto the path that led down to the lake. With no obstacles here, I picked up my pace.

  But I was still too damn late.

  In the distance, I heard a boat engine rumble to life. I snarled out a curse and kept going.

  I left the woods behind and sprinted down a hill, straight toward the wooden dock that stretched out like an arrow into the water. Holiday lights had been wrapped around the dock too, letting me clearly see Tucker standing in a boat at the far end, casting off a rope, and gunning the engine. I put on an extra burst of speed, doing my best to catch up with him.

  But it was no use.

  By the time I reached the end of the dock, Tucker was already thirty feet out into the water, with the engine idling. With no guns and no magic left, the bastard knew that I couldn’t kill him now, and he’d stayed behind just to taunt me.

  Tucker shook his head. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you, Gin?”

  “Only losers quit. You? You’re just going to die.”

  He smiled, his teeth flashing like opals in his face. “Not tonight.”

  “No,” I muttered. “Not tonight.”

  “Tell me one thing, though,” he called out.

  “What?”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the black velvet bag, letting it swing from his hand like a clock pendulum, mocking me with it. “Where did Deirdre hide the jewels? My men and I searched everywhere for them.”

  “They were in her suite. Hidden in a couple of snow globes like they were just worthless stones.”

  Tucker shook his head again. “That bitch. Deirdre was clever, but I’d never thought that she’d be that clever.”

  “Oh, I imagine that she got the idea the day the two of you paid my mother a visit in her office, right before her annual holiday party.”

  Tucker froze, the smug smile dropping from his face. “You remember that?”

  “Yeah. I remember it. I especially remember the man you sent to hurt my mother that night.”

  He eyed me a moment, then shrugged. “It was just business. Surely, you of all people can understand that.”

  “Oh, I do understand it. And I’m going to make it my business to end you and the rest of the Circle.”

  The vampire smiled, his black eyes glittering in his face. “Careful what you wish for, little Genevieve. That’s one can of worms you might not want to open.”

  “I—”

  Tucker gave me a mock salute and gunned the engine, drowning me out. The vampire waggled the black velvet bag at me again, mocking me a final time, before steering the boat around, pushing the throttle, and gliding across the lake.

  Tucker was right. He wasn’t going to die tonight.

  But soon—very soon.

  I’d make sure of that.

  28

  “Gin! Where are you? Gin!” My friends’ voices drifted through the air to me in a loud, worried chorus.

  “Over here!” I called out. “Down at the boat dock!”

  A minute later, Finn, Bria, and Owen appeared, running down to the dock. I hobbled back in their direction, the pain of my injuries flooding my body with every single step. My friends skidded to a stop, guns in their hands, looking left and right.

  “Where’s Tucker?” Finn growled. “Where is he?”

  I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “He’s gone. Got into a boat, zoomed away, and left me standing here like an idiot. That son of a bitch must be part cat, as many lives as he seems to have.”

  Bria gave me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, Gin.”

  I shrugged. “It’s okay. You guys are safe, and that’s the most important thing. Besides, Tucker will show himself again sooner or later. And I’ll get him when he does.”

  Owen stepped forward and cupped my face in his hand, his gaze steady on mine. “We’ll get him when he does.”

  I smiled back at him. “You’re damn right we will.”

  * * *

  Owen had insisted on scooping me up into his arms and carrying me over to Ira’s house so I could get cleaned up, as well as use some of Jo-Jo’s healing ointment to patch up all the burns and bullet holes that Roxy had inflicted on me. The ointment didn’t completely heal me, but it stopped the constant, searing pain of the Fire burns and took the edge off the worst of my wounds. I’d be okay until we returned home to Ashland tomorrow and Jo-Jo could heal me herself.

  Finn and Bria went back to the theme park to help Silvio, Phillip, Lorelei, and Ira deal with all the blood, bodies, and other destruction that we’d left behind. Well, that I had left behind.

  Ira ended up calling the fire department to come put out the saloon fire, and they extinguished it before it damaged any more of Main Street. As for all the bodies in and around the saloon, Ira claimed that security footage showed the giants breaking into the theme park, and he told the authorities that they must have been searching for the hidden jewels. Naturally, the giants had turned on each other, started the fire, and gunned each other down when they hadn’t found the precious stones. I don’t know if anyone actually bought Ira’s flimsy cover story, but Roxy, Brody, and the giants were all dead, so they couldn’t say anything different, and my friends and I certainly weren’t going to blab. Besides, the theme park was Finn’s private property, so there wasn’t much the cops could do once Ira told them that the owner wasn’t going to pursue the matter, since the perpetrators were all deceased. It didn’t seem like anything was going to lead back to us.

  We all crashed at the dwarf’s cabin, just in case Tucker decided to double back and take another run at us, but the rest of the night passed quietly, and we all slept in late.

  Just before noon the next day, I was standing in Ira’s kitchen, flipping buttermilk pancakes on a griddle and frying loads of bacon, eggs, and potatoes in a couple of cast-iron skillets.

  “Breakfast is served,” I called out, then looked over at Ira, who was sitting at the dining-room table. “Please tell me there’s a triangle around here somewhere that I can ring.”

  He chuckled. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Ah, well.”

/>   It was a tight fit, but everyone squeezed in around the table while I dished up the food. Golden, light-as-air pancakes, crispy bacon, fluffy scrambled eggs, and crunchy fried potatoes. It was the perfect hearty, stick-to-your-ribs breakfast, and we all dug into our feast.

  Finally, after having three heaping plates of food, Ira pushed back from the table, sighed with contentment, and looked at me. “I should hire you to work at the Feeding Trough. None of my folks can cook like this.”

  I laughed. “Sorry, but I already have a barbecue restaurant to run.”

  He grinned back at me.

  Finn huffed. “Well, I don’t know how the two of you can be so cheery this morning, considering the fact that my saloon in my theme park just burned down.”

  Ira arched his eyebrows. “Your theme park?”

  My brother shrugged. “My name is the one that’s on the deed.”

  “Good,” Ira said, not missing a beat. “Then you can pay for all the repairs.”

  Finn blinked, then realizing that he’d been one-upped, gave the dwarf a sour look. Ira chuckled, and we all joined in with his light, teasing laughter. Finn sighed and slurped down some more coffee, which perked him right back up again.

  “As much as I hate to admit it, Finn is partially right,” Silvio chimed in. “After all, Tucker did escape.”

  Bria nodded. “And he got away with the gems too.”

  “Some guys have all the luck,” Finn muttered.

  Ira, Owen, Phillip, and Lorelei all nodded their agreement, but I laughed again, making them all look at me in surprise.

  Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do, Gin?”

  I got to my feet, walked across the cabin, and grabbed Sweet Sally Sue’s dress from where it was hanging on the wall. I brought the dress over to the dining-room table and held it out to Ira. “Why don’t you do the honors?”

  He frowned, wondering what I was getting at, but then his face cleared, and I knew that he remembered what I’d told him yesterday. The dwarf took the dress from me, laid it out across his lap, and slipped his hand into first one pocket, then the other. He found it in the second one. Ira blinked in surprise and slowly drew out a black velvet bag.

  Everyone gasped, got to their feet, and gathered around his chair.

  With shaking hands, the dwarf slowly opened the drawstrings on the bag and carefully tipped the contents out onto the table.

  Sweet Sally Sue’s jewels glimmered under the lights.

  For a moment, there was stunned silence.

  Then Finn piped up first, the way he always did. “Those . . . those are the real jewels, right?”

  I nodded. “Yep, those are the ones I found hidden in those snow globes in Deirdre’s suite. Every last one that she’d tucked away in them.”

  Silvio frowned. “Then what was in that bag you gave Tucker? Because he opened it on Main Street last night, and I saw him pour the stones out into his hand.”

  “Oh, those were gems too, just mostly fake ones.”

  This time, Owen frowned. “But where did you get fake jewels on such short notice?”

  I grinned. “Straight from Mama Dee herself.”

  We all sat back down in our chairs, and I told my friends how I’d grabbed a bunch of rings, necklaces, and bracelets, along with an extra black velvet bag, from that wall of jewelry in Deirdre’s closet.

  “Most of it was just costume jewelry,” I said. “Very nice costume jewelry, but still fake. There were a few real gems in the mix, but they were small, poor-quality stones. So I pried them out of their settings and put them in a black velvet bag like they were the real thing. It was good enough to fool Tucker.”

  The vampire might be clever, but he wasn’t a Stone elemental like I was, so he hadn’t been able to hear the stones’ soft, muted murmurs last night, and he hadn’t realized that I’d been giving him a bag full of fakes. That’s what I’d been counting on, and it had worked like a proverbial charm. Tucker might have escaped, but at least I’d kept him from getting his hands on the jewels. It was a small victory, but I’d take what I could get.

  “I just wish that I could be there to see the look on Tucker’s face when he realizes that you duped him and that all he has is a pile of pretty glass,” Phillip said.

  “Me too.” I grinned. “Me too.”

  Everyone fell silent, sipping their coffee and orange juice. Ira was still staring down at all the colorful, sparkling stones spread across the table. After several seconds, he scooped them all up, poured them back into the bag, and held the whole thing over the table for Finn.

  “Here,” Ira said in a rough voice. “These belong to you now. After all, your name is on the deed, just like you said.”

  Finn grinned and started to reach across the table for the jewels, but I cleared my throat and raised my eyebrows. He looked at me, his face creasing into a pleading wince. But I kept staring at him, and he finally rolled his eyes.

  “You know how much I hate being noble,” he whined. “It makes me break out in hives.”

  “Finn . . .” I warned.

  “All right, all right,” he said, dropping his hand and sitting back in his chair. “Actually, Ira, I think that you should keep the jewels. After all, you were the one who loved Sweet Sally Sue.”

  Another thought occurred to Finn, and he brightened. “Besides, this is your home. I bet a couple of those diamonds would go a long way toward repairing the saloon and getting the theme park back up and running again.”

  Lorelei snorted. “And get you off the hook for actually having to pay for anything yourself. Nice logic, Lane.”

  Finn grinned and shot his thumb and forefinger at her. “Bingo.”

  We all groaned.

  Ira set the bag down on the table and cleared his throat. “Actually, I have something for you too, Gin, Bria.”

  He got to his feet and disappeared into his bedroom. I looked at my sister, who shrugged back at me. She didn’t know what he was up to any more than I did. Ira appeared a few seconds later carrying two framed photos. He handed the first one to Bria, and we all leaned over the table to look at it.

  It was a picture of our mother.

  The photo had been taken in the hotel lobby during the holidays, and Eira was standing in front of a Christmas tree, examining one of the snow globes nestled in the branches. She looked young in the photo, probably in her early twenties, and she was smiling with childish delight, her whole face shining even brighter than the lights on the tree. The lovely shot of her was much nicer than the photos I had that showed her with Deirdre Shaw and Mab Monroe. My chest tightened.

  Ira nodded at Bria. “When I first saw you, I thought that you looked like somebody that I’d photographed at the resort, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly who it was or where her picture might be. Then, when I saw Gin wearing that blond wig, I realized that she looked like that same woman too.”

  Shock jolted through me. Bria was the spitting image of our mother, but I’d never considered that I might look anything like her. But Ira thought that I did. That pleased me. That I still carried part of her with me, even if I hadn’t realized it until right now.

  “You never forget a face,” I rasped, my voice thick with emotion.

  “No, I don’t.” Ira nodded at me. “You have her nose and cheekbones. Put that blond wig back on, and both you and Bria could be her twins.”

  “Thank you,” I rasped again.

  Ira nodded and handed me the second photo. “And I thought you might want to see this one too.”

  Once again, everyone leaned across the table to see the picture—of Hugh Tucker.

  The vampire was sitting in the hotel lobby, also during the holidays, given the mistletoe strung up on the fireplace mantel behind him. Tucker was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, talking to someone sitting in a high-backed chair that I couldn’t see. I brought the
picture up close to my face, examining every single detail, but there was nothing else to it. Tucker looked young in the photo too, in his twenties, although he had one of those ageless faces that made it hard to pinpoint how old he had been back then.

  “I did a quick scan through all my photos here, and I’m afraid that’s the only shot I have of Tucker,” Ira said. “I’m sorry, Gin.”

  “The vampire’s not important. Not today, anyway.” I set the photo aside and looked at my friends, old and new. “Right now, I’m just happy to be here with all of you.” I paused. “And that we all survived another so-called vacation.”

  Finn lifted his coffee mug. “I’ll drink to that. Cheers, everyone!”

  We all lifted our mugs back to him. “Cheers!”

  29

  After finishing our late breakfast, we went to the hotel, grabbed our things, and met back down in the lobby, where Ira had another surprise, this time for Finn—that photo of Deirdre’s ribbon cutting that I’d spotted in the dwarf’s office yesterday.

  “Thank you for this, but I don’t really need it anymore,” Finn said. “For better or worse, I’ve made my peace with Deirdre. She didn’t care about me, so I’m not going to bother to think about her anymore. At least, I’m going to try not to think about her so much anymore.”

  “Take it,” Ira said in a gruff voice. “She was still your mother. You might want it . . . later.”

  Finn hesitated, but he finally nodded and slipped the photo into his bag.

  We said our good-byes to Ira, who promised to keep in touch and let us know how the theme-park renovations were coming along, and left the Bullet Pointe resort complex. Finn, Bria, Owen, and I got into Finn’s Range Rover for the drive home, with Silvio, Phillip, and Lorelei following behind in another car.

  “So,” Finn chirped in a bright voice as we all buckled our seat belts, “who wants to sing some cowboy songs on the way home?”

  Bria stabbed her finger at him. “If I hear so much as a single yippee-ki-yay, I will shoot you. No more cowboy songs. Ever.”