I nodded, relieved that I could once again move my head without triggering a migraine. I had swung my feet over the side of the lounge chair, ready to get on with things, when another set of familiar footsteps hurried up the gangplank.
This time, a man stepped into view. With his blue-black hair, violet eyes, and rugged features, most women would have thought him handsome, especially when they noticed the way his navy suit jacket stretched across his broad, muscled shoulders and solid chest. I thought he was one of the most gorgeous men I’d ever seen, and the fact that he was mine warmed my heart in a way nothing else did.
Owen Grayson hurried over and dropped to a knee on the deck beside me. “Gin! Are you okay? I came as soon as Silvio texted me.”
“I’m fine. Just a few bumps and bruises. Nothing too serious.”
This time.
I didn’t say the words because I didn’t want to jinx myself. But who was I kidding? This was going to get a whole lot worse before it got better. It always did.
I’d killed the supposedly unkillable Mab Monroe. And Madeline. And a whole host of other dangerous giants, dwarves, vampires, and elementals in between. Even though I didn’t want the job, I was now the big boss of the Ashland underworld. Given all that, I should have been . . . safer. At least for a few weeks, until the other criminals cooked up some new schemes to try to get rid of me. But I should have known that something like this would happen. It always did.
Story of my life.
Just when I thought I’d proven myself to everyone, just when I thought I was in the free and clear, just when I was finally ready to enjoy a little (relative) peace and quiet, another elemental had . . . what, exactly? Targeted me? Tried to assassinate me? Wanted to murder a bunch of mobsters at the same time? That remained to be seen. But whatever was going on, I was going to get to the bottom of it.
One body at a time.
Owen leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead. I drew in a breath, letting his rich, metallic scent seep into my lungs.
He leaned back and gave me the same sort of critical once-over that Silvio and Jo-Jo had. Relief seeped into his face, replacing his tight, worried expression. Then he grinned and shook his head.
“I can’t let you go anywhere, can I?” he murmured, a teasing note creeping into his deep, rumbling voice.
“Guess not,” I drawled, determined to keep the mood light.
Owen got to his feet and looked at his best friend. “I thought I told you to take good care of my girl.”
Phillip shrugged. “Kind of hard when she jumps overboard with a bomb in her hands. I can only do so much, you know.”
Owen’s grin faded a little, but he still lightly cuffed Phillip on the shoulder. “I know. Gin makes it hard sometimes, doesn’t she?”
“Y’all do realize that I’m sitting right here?”
Phillip ignored me and cuffed him back. They grinned at each other, and then Owen looked at me, his smile slipping away and his face growing more serious.
“Who do you think did this?” he asked. “Emery Slater?”
“She does seem to be a popular choice among the peanut gallery, but I don’t think so. It’s just not her style. Not what I would expect from her. She’s more brawn than bomb.”
“Maybe that’s exactly why it is her,” Owen countered. “Doing something that you wouldn’t expect. Catching you off guard.”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” I looked at him. “You up for a little hike?”
“With you?” He winked at me. “Always.”
“Good,” I said. “Then let’s go see if we can track us down a bomber.”
5
Owen took my hand and helped me up out of the lounge chair. Silvio decided to stay on the riverboat to wait for Finn and Bria to arrive, while Jo-Jo left to go back home to work at her beauty salon.
Owen and I walked down the gangplank, with Phillip trailing along behind us. The Delta Queen staff members were standing in groups in the parking lot, talking, texting on their phones, and glancing up at the riverboat.
Phillip approached them, spreading his hands out wide. “Okay, folks, here’s what I know so far . . .”
The waiters and guards clustered around him, hanging on to his every word. I looked over the crowd, scanning every single face and taking in everyone’s body language. Wide eyes, tense shoulders, nervous tapping fingers and feet. All the workers seemed genuinely shocked and shaken up by what had happened. Even in Ashland, where violence was so common, no one expected to get blown up just going to work. It was enough to upset even me.
And the workers’ worry told me something else: the watcher probably didn’t have any of them on his payroll. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bothered sending that fake waiter onto the riverboat. And if one of the workers had known about the bomb beforehand, he or she wouldn’t have stuck around to get an explanation and reassurances from Phillip that this was an isolated incident. I supposed that someone here could be faking their shock and distress, but it didn’t seem likely. On one hand, I was relieved the staff wasn’t involved, since I didn’t want to trouble Phillip any more than I already had. On the other, it left me without someone to squeeze for easy answers.
But the workers weren’t the only ones in the parking lot—so were Lorelei Parker and Jack Corbin.
The smuggler perched on the hood of a sleek royal-blue Dodge Charger, with her guard leaning against the driver’s-side door, his arms crossed over his chest. Lorelei’s eyes narrowed as she spotted me, and she looked me over from head to toe. Her lips puckered, and she pulled on the end of her black braid, lost in thought.
I frowned. Strangely enough, the gesture reminded me of . . . something.
“Friends of yours?” Owen asked, staring at them.
I snorted. “Not bloody likely. Lorelei probably wishes that I’d drowned in the river.”
Lorelei let go of her braid, hopped off the hood, and said something to Corbin. The two of them got into the car and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving the Delta Queen behind.
I stared at the empty street, wondering at the vague, uneasy feeling tickling my spine.
“Gin?” Owen asked.
I shook my head, putting all thoughts of Lorelei and her odd behavior out of my mind. “Come on. Let’s go.”
We got into Owen’s car, and he drove out of the parking lot and over the nearest bridge to the opposite side of the river.
The highway curved past this part of the Aneirin River, and Owen steered his car off the road and into a gravel lot that fronted a series of wide stone steps leading up to a scenic overlook. A series of trails started at the lot and wound in either direction through the woods, rising and falling with the slope of the riverbank.
Given the number of trees that had already shed their leaves, I could see the gleaming white wood of the Delta Queen peeking through the brown tangles of branches, making the overlook and surrounding trails the perfect spots to spy on all the comings and goings on board the riverboat. Ambling along with a pair of binoculars slung around his neck, as though he were looking for birds, the watcher would have blended right in with the nature lovers on the trails, out for a fall stroll.
I’d have to talk to Phillip about rigging up security cameras or maybe even posting some guards over here—for his sake. I wasn’t the only one with enemies who wanted me dead, and since Phillip had been so public in supporting me as the new big boss, no doubt his name had climbed to the top of several folks’ hit lists too.
Owen and I got out of the car.
“Where do you want to start?” he asked. “The overlook?”
“Nah. Too many people come and go there all day long. The watcher wouldn’t want to risk a jogger or biker seeing him and wondering what he was doing hanging around the same spot for so long. He’d go someplace more private where he wouldn’t be disturbed. Let’s try over t
here.”
I pointed to the area where I thought I’d seen the flash of the watcher’s binoculars, and we headed in that direction, meandering along the winding paths. It was after five now, and the trails were mostly deserted, except for a few dedicated outdoor types. I scanned the faces and body language of every person we passed, but they only seemed concerned with keeping their heart rates up or making sure that their dogs did their business before they headed home.
Owen and I moved farther down the path, and soon we were the only hikers on the trail. The sun was already weakening in the sky, its rays growing fainter and barely penetrating what was left of the fall foliage. The dappled shadows took advantage, clumping together and spreading out into murky pools that darkened and lengthened by the second. The air was cool, and the scent of the leaves and earth mixed pleasantly.
We followed the curving trail until it ended, then stepped off the asphalt and began making our way deeper into the woods.
Owen grabbed my arm. “Stop. Someone’s been using magic here—metal magic. I can feel it. Much more of it than I should be able to. Almost like . . . he left something behind for us to find.”
“Like another bomb?”
Given the fact that I’d survived the initial blast, the watcher had to realize that I would come here looking for clues. If I were him, I would have left behind a nasty surprise or two, if only on the off chance that he could blow me up that way.
Owen nodded. “Yeah. Like another bomb.” He scanned the woods, his violet eyes glowing and his head tilting to one side as he reached out with his magic, trying to sense the other elemental’s power trail. Owen pointed to the left. “Over there.”
We headed in that direction, watching where we put our feet and scanning the surrounding trees. A hundred feet deeper into the woods, a fading patch of sunlight glinted off the corner of something metal, drawing my attention.
I pointed at the object, which was half-hidden underneath a pile of brown, curling leaves. “You were right. Someone left us a present.”
“Some present,” Owen muttered.
We crouched down and scanned the ground for trip-wires. A few seconds later, I spied a thin strand of fishing line strung ankle-high between two trees. A crude but effective trap. I palmed one of my knives and sliced through the fishing line, so we wouldn’t accidentally trip the bomb.
I carefully brushed the leaves off the object, wincing at the faint crackle-crackles they made at my touch. Just in case the bomb was booby-trapped some other way, I grabbed hold of my Stone magic and hardened my skin, ready to throw myself down on top of the bomb to protect Owen from any potential blast.
But there were no more traps, and I was able to study the bomb. It was identical to the one on the riverboat—a metal box with a cell phone taped to the top to serve as a timer and trigger. I hadn’t had time to open the box that had been on the Delta Queen, and I reached for the simple latch on the side. It wasn’t welded or magicked shut, and I slowly cracked open the top, still maintaining my grip on my Stone magic.
A small block of what looked like gray clay lay inside—the explosive—while several holes had been drilled into the lid. Red and black wires snaked through the openings, connecting the explosive to the cell phone. I unhooked the wires to disarm the bomb.
To my surprise, the explosive only took up about a third of the space inside the box. So if this device was the same as the one on the riverboat, Phillip had been right, and the blast from that bomb had been relatively small. I wondered what the damage would have been if it had detonated on deck. Enough to kill just me, since I’d been the person sitting closest to the bomb? Enough to take out half the folks at the conference table? Or maybe even everyone on deck? I didn’t know, but I was glad I hadn’t found out.
But I’d been right too, because the rest of the box was filled with nails, just like I’d thought the one on the Delta Queen had been. I slowly tilted the box to one side, and the nails rolled around, the sharp points glittering like diamonds in the fading sunlight.
Owen let out a low whistle. “That’s a deadly bit of business. All those nails . . . they would have shredded everything and everyone they came into contact with.”
“Maybe the watcher didn’t want to kill me outright,” I said. “Maybe he wanted to mess me up and watch me suffer first. Maybe that’s why he had a sniper rifle. To put me down after the bomb went off.”
Owen grimaced, but he didn’t disagree with my assessment. I thought about my words to Phillip and Silvio, my musing that maybe the watcher liked collateral damage. The nails definitely proved that. Whoever the watcher was, he definitely had a sadistic streak, which only made me more determined to figure out who he was and what he wanted.
I rolled the nails around in the box again, listening to them tink-tink-tink together, the sound almost like a clock, ticking down the seconds to my death.
* * *
I left the bomb where I’d found it, and Owen and I searched the rest of the area. It was easy to tell where the fake waiter had slogged ashore, since he hadn’t bothered to hide his muddy tracks. But they led back to the parking lot and vanished, which meant that he’d left in a car, so there was no way to trace him farther at the moment.
But it was the watcher’s nest that interested me the most.
Owen and I followed the fake waiter’s tracks straight to it. The watcher had chosen a good spot, on a slight rise just inside the trees that lined the shore. The area gave him a clear view of the riverboat from fore to aft but still had enough foliage to hide him from sight of anyone on the Delta Queen looking in this direction. The flash of light on his binoculars had been his only giveaway. But even then, it was mostly luck that I’d spotted the reflection. If I hadn’t . . . well, I didn’t want to think about what would have happened on the riverboat, especially to Phillip and Silvio.
But the watcher hadn’t left any glaring clues behind. No restaurant receipts, no parking stubs, no hotel matchbooks. As far as I could tell, all he’d done was stand here, peer through his binoculars, and watch the riverboat before leaving. He’d even taken the time to pick up his shell casings and scuff over his footprints to hide what kind of shoes he was wearing. Smart.
And I didn’t think anyone else had been here with him. No other tracks littered the ground, and the surrounding foliage wasn’t trampled or disturbed enough for more than a couple of people to have passed this way. Besides, if the watcher had a group of men at his disposal, then why not send them to storm the riverboat and shoot me point-blank? No, this struck me as a two-man job: the waiter and the watcher.
I was betting that the watcher was also the metal elemental who had built the bombs. After all, why construct a bomb if you weren’t going to stick around to watch it explode, and there hadn’t been anyone else here to witness the blast. Besides, the metal elemental was smart enough to build a bomb, which meant that he was smart enough to get someone else—the fake waiter—to plant it on the riverboat so he could be sure to stay out of range of the destructive blast.
I crouched down and examined the same patch of ground for the fifth time, hoping that a clue would miraculously sprout up out of the earth like some magical fairy-tale rose. I’d even take a weed at this point. But of course that didn’t happen, and I came up empty. Frustration surged through me. Another dead end—
“Hey, Gin,” Owen called out. “Check this out.”
I got to my feet and went over to where he was standing, about twenty feet to my right and another ten back in the woods. Owen pointed at a tree trunk, where a gnarled knot stuck out right at my heart level. At first, I didn’t see what he was so interested in, but then I noticed the deep gouges in the wood. The bomber must have gotten bored while he’d been out here, because something had been carved into the knot. I leaned closer and squinted at the crude shape—a long line with a spiked ball on the end.
“Is that . . . a mace?” I asked.
I wasn’t sure why that particular weapon popped into my head, but as soon as I said the word, my stomach clenched with a vague, uneasy feeling of . . . dread. But why would I be worried about some symbol carved into a tree? It wasn’t the first one I’d seen, and I doubted it would be the last.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Owen flashed me a grin. “I was going with some sort of bomb or maybe even fireworks. Since there have been so many of those already today.”
I laughed at his black humor, then stared at the carving again. It didn’t look like it had been done with a knife, at least not a sharp one. Otherwise, the image would have been clearer, deeper, with more defined edges, and more curls of wood would have been littering the ground. This looked like scratches more than anything else, like it had been done with . . . a nail.
Like all the nails he’d packed into those two bombs.
As soon as the thought occurred to me, I knew that it was right. I wondered how many nails the watcher, the bomber, carried around with him—and why. Sure, they were practical tools for a metal elemental, but the nails had to mean something more, had to represent some sentiment or memory. Weapons always did to the people wielding them.
“You’re sure it’s not fireworks?” Owen joked again.
“No,” I said. “Long line topped with a spiked ball. I really think it’s a mace.”
My stomach clenched again at the word, but I pushed my unease aside.
“A medieval weapon.” Owen shook his head. “You don’t see those every day. What does it mean?”
“I have no idea.”
A mace wasn’t something that was commonly used as a rune. Like Owen said, it wasn’t a weapon that a lot of people wielded anymore. Guns, knives, swords, the occasional chainsaw, sure. But a mace? Even I didn’t have a mace in my arsenal of weapons at Fletcher’s house. Of course, it probably represented strength and power—most weapons did—or maybe some family or specific business. Or perhaps the watcher had drawn it simply because it represented his own affinity for metal—or, more likely, his twisted bombs.
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