Sharpest Sting

by Jennifer Estep

  My eyes narrowed. “Did you know what Mason was going to do to Tristan? Were you there when it happened?”

  Tucker hesitated, debating whether to answer me, but he squared his shoulders and looked me in the eyes again. “Yes, I was there. We were all there. Me, Mab, Deirdre Shaw, Damian Rivera, Bruce Porter, Amelia Eaton, some members of the other families, your mother. Mason made everyone watch as a warning about what would happen if any of us ever thought about betraying him. A few folks ignored his message, and he did the same thing to them that he did to Tristan.”

  He paused and cleared his throat, as if he was having difficulty getting out his next words. “After that night, Mason managed to keep almost everyone in line, except for Eira, of course. But after Mab killed your mother, there was no one left to challenge him. Not in Ashland, anyway.”

  More anger exploded in my heart, even as my stomach churned with disgust. My parents had suffered so much because of Mason’s ambition, greed, and need for control. I’d faced down a lot of bad folks over the years, but Tucker was right. Mason was smarter, stronger, and more ruthless than any enemy I’d ever encountered.

  “I would hate to see you end up like your father,” Tucker repeated. “And I would especially hate for Owen to grieve for you the way I have for your mother all these years.”

  His face remained blank and impassive, but his voice was low and strained, and emotion flickered in his eyes. It looked suspiciously like regret. Tucker had been in love with my mother from the time they were kids right up to her death, and part of him loved her still. Mason and I weren’t the only ones snared by the past. Hugh Tucker was tangled up in the sharp, stinging web of it too.

  He cleared his throat again, and the regret was snuffed out of his eyes, replaced by the usual emptiness. “Don’t put Owen through that, Gin. Don’t put Bria or any of your loved ones through that. Do what Mason wants. Find the ledger, and hand it over.”

  “And then what?” I asked.

  He gave me a brief, humorless smile. “And then try to pretend you never found out about the Circle.”

  Tucker smoothly spun around on his heel and headed for the front door. He pulled it open gently, and the bell didn’t even chime at his passing. He flipped up the collar of his gray coat, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and strode out of sight.

  I stayed where I was behind the counter, staring at the spot where he had vanished, my mind churning. Tucker didn’t realize it, but for once, I was actually going to take his advice to heart. In fact, I was going to follow it to the letter. He wanted me to find the missing ledger? Fine.

  I would do exactly that, and then I would use whatever information was inside to destroy Mason.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The rest of the afternoon passed by quietly, with no more threats from Mason or anyone else. I closed the Pork Pit early. Liam went to check in with Mallory and Mosley about the security for their wedding, while Silvio and I headed to Fletcher’s house.

  Finn, Bria, and Owen were waiting for us in the den. Now that we’d ruled out Fletcher’s house, the Pork Pit, and First Trust bank, my friends were brainstorming, trying to figure out where else Fletcher might have stashed the ledger. While they talked, I headed into the kitchen.

  Even though I’d been working all day at the restaurant, we had a long night ahead, and we would need a warm, hearty meal to get through it. Besides, I always enjoyed cooking for my loved ones, and this might be one of the last chances I ever got to do it. So I was going to make the most of it, just as Mason had suggested.

  Given the bitter cold outside, I wanted something that would stick to everyone’s ribs, so I made one of my favorite meals: cube steak marinated in a zesty mesquite sauce, then baked low and slow in the oven until it was tender. I nestled some baby carrots in the same pan as the steak, so that they too would get coated with the mesquite sauce and absorb its delicious flavors. I added several generous pats of butter to give the dish a little extra richness, covered the pan with aluminum foil, and slid it into the oven to bake.

  While the steak cooked, I peeled, sliced, and boiled a couple of pounds of potatoes. When the potatoes were fork-tender, I drained off the water, tossed in milk and butter, and mashed them. For an extra bit of tang and flavor, I added in some sour cream and horseradish. Then I scooped the potatoes into a bowl and sprinkled them with blue cheese crumbles, sliced green onions, and some chopped bacon. And, yes, a few more pats of butter. You couldn’t have mashed potatoes without a little—okay, a lot—of butter.

  For a lighter side, I threw together a green salad with cherry tomatoes, matchstick carrots, sliced cucumbers, and diced red onions topped with a tangy Italian vinaigrette. I also warmed a tray of Sophia’s sourdough rolls in the oven and whipped up some blackberry iced tea. For dessert, there were brownies with cherry sauce and vanilla-bean ice cream, just like the one I’d eaten at the Pork Pit earlier.

  When everything was ready, my friends and I trooped into the dining room, sat down, and ate. The smoky mesquite sauce was the perfect complement to the steak, while the horseradish potatoes had a great spicy kick that was offset by the tangy blue cheese. The salad added some cool, refreshing crunch, while the rich, dark chocolate brownies were the perfect, sweet treat to cap off the meal.

  Finn scraped up the last of his brownie and ice cream, leaned back in his chair, and let out a loud, happy sigh. “Steak. Potatoes. More steak and potatoes. Brownies. Ice cream. This might be the perfect meal, Gin.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You say that about every meal.”

  “Well, I agree,” Owen rumbled. “You really outdid yourself tonight.”

  I nodded, accepting their praise and scooping up the rest of my own dessert. They were right. This perfect meal had definitely been the highlight of my not-so-perfect day.

  But dinner was over, and it was time to get down to business, so I pushed aside my dessert bowl. I had roughly forty-eight hours left to find Fletcher’s ledger, and I needed someplace to start searching for it.

  Everyone sensed the shift in my mood and moved their own plates aside. Silvio fired up his tablet, while Finn pulled a stack of papers out of his briefcase and set them on the table.

  “Where are we at?” I asked.

  Silvio started swiping through screens on his tablet. “Well, I’ve been trying to think of where else Fletcher might have hidden the ledger. According to what you and Finn have told me and some of the old family photos I’ve gone through, it seems like Fletcher spent the majority of his time at home, at the Pork Pit, or at Jo-Jo’s salon. But of course, we’ve already eliminated the house and the restaurant.”

  “What about Jo-Jo’s salon?” Bria asked. “Do you think he could have hidden the ledger there?”

  “Maybe,” I replied. “Sophia said that she and Jo-Jo would look through the salon and the rest of their house tonight.”

  Finn shook his head. “I don’t know. I feel like Dad would have put the ledger someplace more secure, more remote. So many people come and go at Jo-Jo’s house every day. It would have been a risk hiding the ledger there, where anyone might have stumbled across it.”

  He had a point. Fletcher had probably hidden the ledger somewhere else, somewhere you would have to exert a lot of time and effort in order to uncover it.

  Owen looked at me. “What about your father’s grave? The one in Blue Ridge Cemetery? Before all this started, you were planning to dig it up to see if Fletcher had left something there.”

  He was right. So much had happened the last two days that I’d forgotten about my previous plan to dig up Tristan’s grave. And since none of us had any other bright ideas about where the ledger might be hidden, it was as good a place as any to start searching.

  I grinned, leaned over, and bumped Owen with my shoulder. “You just want to have another date night in the cemetery. Admit it.”

  He groaned. “That’s not what I meant. Not at all.”

  My grin widened. “It’s too late to take it back now. Get your shovel, Grayson. W
e’re going grave digging.”

  * * *

  Owen, Silvio, and I quickly geared up. Bria had to go back to work, and Finn had some wedding-related stuff to take care of for Mosley, so the two of them left, although I made them promise to check in with me later. I still might have roughly two days left to find the ledger, but after my confrontation with Mason earlier, I wouldn’t put it past him to try to kidnap Bria or another one of my friends in order to further motivate me.

  Mason might not realize it, but he didn’t have to threaten me again. I felt like there was a giant hourglass in my chest, nestled right next to my heart. Every grain of sand that dropped through that hourglass lessened my chances of finding the ledger and decreased my hope of saving my friends from Mason’s impending wrath.

  Owen drove Silvio and me over to the cemetery and pulled off the road, parking in the same spot as during our previous so-called date night. An eerie sense of déjà vu swept over me, but I pushed it aside. All that mattered was finding the ledger. Not the lingering ghosts of my past mistakes over the last few days.

  We grabbed our supplies, left the car, and hiked through the woods, using the same route Owen and I had taken the other night. The three of us reached the edge of the trees and stopped, peering out at the landscape before us.

  Hills and ridges. Towering trees and brown grass. Patches of ice and snow. Tombstones, crosses, and other grave markers glinting in the moonlight. The cemetery looked the same as before, and I didn’t see anyone creeping through the shadows.

  “All right, boys,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”

  We made our way up the hill to my father’s grave. I stared at his tombstone, then over at my mother’s marker. Now that I knew what had really happened to them, more waves of sorrow and bitterness washed over me than ever before. Mason had caused my parents so much pain and misery. And for what? To be the head of some outdated secret society with a dwindling membership? If Mason wasn’t careful, he was going to be the king of nothing, with no subjects left to serve him.

  “Gin?” Silvio asked. “Are you ready?”

  I dragged my gaze away from the markers, slid my shovel off my shoulder, and stabbed the point into the ground. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”

  Owen and I made quick work of digging up my father’s grave, while Silvio kept watch. Truth be told, it wasn’t a bad way to spend the evening. I liked the cold and the quiet, although I could still feel those precious sands sliding through the hourglass in my chest. Maybe I would get lucky and the ledger would be here—

  Thunk.

  Owen’s shovel hit something. He tapped the point into the loose earth a few more times, and the same solid sound rang out again and again. “I think this is the casket.”

  Silvio maintained his watchful stance, while Owen and I scraped away the dirt, revealing the top of the casket.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting. Perhaps my spider rune, my mother’s snowflake, or some other symbol carved into the wood, but the top of the casket was smooth and whole. Then again, if Fletcher had left a clue here, he had probably put it inside the container. At least I didn’t have to worry about disturbing Tristan’s bones, since they were actually entombed in the Circle family cemetery.

  I wiped the sweat off my forehead, set my shovel aside, and crouched in the dirt next to the casket. Owen crouched down beside me, and we both reached out and took hold of the lid. Above us, Silvio clicked on a flashlight and shone it down into the hole.

  “On three,” I said. “One, two, three!”

  Together Owen and I lifted the casket lid. Dirt and small rocks rained down around us, and I had to blink my eyes a few times to get rid of the grit. Eventually, the clouds of dust settled, and I peered into the casket.

  Empty—it was completely, utterly empty.

  Even when they were sitting in a funeral home, waiting to be used, most caskets contained some sort of cloth lining, perhaps even a small pillow to cushion the dearly departed’s head. Not this one. It was just a plain casket, a wooden box, with no lining, pillows, decorations, or adornments of any kind.

  “You see anything?” Owen asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  “Maybe there’s a secret compartment?” Silvio suggested, slowly moving his flashlight back and forth across the length of the box.

  Owen and I ran our hands over the casket lid and knocked on the sides and bottom, but all we got for our troubles were a few splinters stuck in our skin. No secret compartments and no symbols carved into the wood. It was a simple box and nothing more.

  “Maybe Fletcher hid something under the casket?” Owen suggested, after seeing the disappointed look on my face.

  “I doubt it,” I muttered. “But we already dug the hole, so we might as well look.”

  Silvio helped me up out of the grave, and he got down into the hole with Owen. The two of them pried the casket out of the dirt and stood it upright, as though an old-fashioned, Dracula-type vampire was going to come along, crawl inside, and take a nap.

  Once the container was out of the way, Owen and Silvio punched the shovels into the ground again, churning up more earth.

  “Stop,” I said, after a few minutes of digging. “Just stop. Nothing is down there. Fletcher didn’t hide the ledger here.”

  “Well, if it’s not here, then where is it?” Silvio asked. “You’ve already dug up your mother’s grave and Deirdre Shaw’s too.”

  Owen pointed at the other markers in the Snow family plot. “Maybe it’s buried in Bria’s grave or yours.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Fletcher knew better than to try the same trick so many times. Besides, this is about my parents, not Bria and me. Plus, there are no emotional vibrations in those tombstones, and as far as I can tell, those two graves have never been disturbed. Fletcher must have hidden the ledger somewhere else.”

  Owen and Silvio grabbed my father’s empty casket, lowered it back into the ground, and started filling the dirt in on top of it. I helped them. We smoothed out the dirt as best we could, but it was obvious what we’d done. Unlike last time, I didn’t bother trying to cover our tracks. There was no point hiding our search now that Mason had given me his ultimatum.

  After we finished, the three of us sat around the grave, getting our breath back. Digging up dirt was always a workout, even on a night as chilly as this one.

  “You ready to go?” Owen asked.

  “Give me a minute,” I replied. “I want to sit here and see if I get any bright ideas about where else Fletcher might have hidden the ledger.”

  “We’ll wait for you at the car,” Silvio said.

  The guys got to their feet, grabbed our shovels and other supplies, trudged down the hill, and headed for the woods.

  I stayed seated on the cold ground and stared at my father’s tombstone. The brittle, frozen kudzu vines I’d draped over the marker the last time I’d been here had fallen off and been blown away by the wind, giving me a clear look at Tristan’s name and dates of birth and death. Another wave of sorrow and bitterness washed over me.

  “I’m so sorry for what happened,” I whispered. “For what Mason did to you.”

  But my father was long dead and wasn’t even buried here, so he couldn’t answer me. And neither could Fletcher. I glanced down the hill, staring at the fresh dirt that marked his grave. Anger spurted through me that Mason’s giants had disturbed his final resting place, although I supposed I couldn’t throw stones about that. I’d dug up my fair share of graves here too.

  But I’d come up empty tonight, and it was time to leave. I climbed to my feet and dusted some of the dirt and grime off my jeans. A slice of moonlight slipped around my body and bathed Tristan’s tombstone in a ghostly glow. My gaze traced over his name, which now stood out in stark, ink-black relief, thanks to the shadows and the moon’s silvery glimmer.

  More sadness and anger welled up in my heart, and I had started to turn away from the marker when I noticed another ink-black spot in the lower right
-hand corner. For a moment, I thought it was some dead bug frozen on the stone, but then I remembered the crude carving of my spider rune that I’d found on the marker when Owen and I had been here before.

  I snorted with disgust. Some clue that had turned out to be, since my father’s casket had been empty. Once again, I started to turn away from the marker, but something stopped me—probably my own sentimental foolishness—and I found myself moving forward, leaning down, and taking another look at the rune.

  The moon wasn’t quite as bright as it had been the other night, and Silvio had taken the flashlights, so I couldn’t get a clear view of the symbol. Although I supposed it didn’t really matter, since we’d already dug up my father’s grave. For the third time, I started to turn away, but once again, that sentimental foolishness stopped me. I sighed, dug my phone out of my jeans pocket, and hit the flashlight app.

  Yep, there it was, the symbol Fletcher had carved into the tombstone, a circle with nine thin rays radiating out of it—

  Wait a second. My rune had eight rays, eight lines, for the eight legs on a spider. So why would this one have nine? Fletcher would never make such an obvious mistake.

  Unless…it wasn’t a mistake.

  Unless…it wasn’t a spider rune.

  I bent down even closer to the marker, my chin hovering right above the ground, and slowly moved my phone back and forth, illuminating the rune. In addition to the extra leg, small arrows had also been carved at the end of each of the nine lines. The marks were so faint and thin that I’d missed them the other night.

  I frowned. A circle with nine lines, each one with a sharp pointed end. It definitely wasn’t my spider rune, but it reminded me of…

  The Circle rune—that ring of swords pointing outward.

  Surprise shot through me, and I blinked several times, wondering if I was so desperate for a clue that I was imagining things.