Heart of Venom

  Once again, I recapped the morning’s events at the salon. Warren listened to my story, nodding his head here and there.

  When I’d finished, I added, “Owen says that you like to go hiking and hunting up in the mountains and that you might know the area around Grimes’s camp.”

  Warren’s lips puckered, as though he’d bitten into a lemon. “It’s more than just a might know. I’ve been there before.”

  My eyes shot up to the rearview mirror. Warren stared back at me, his mouth still twisted into that sour expression.

  “When?” I asked.

  “The last time Grimes took Sophia.”

  Suddenly, I realized what had been missing from Fletcher’s writings on his battle with Grimes: that mysterious third person he’d tried so hard not to mention.

  “You . . . you helped Fletcher rescue Sophia all those years ago? I thought that you and Fletcher had a falling out over a woman when you were young and that the two of you didn’t speak after that.”

  Warren looked at me in the mirror another moment before he turned his head and stared out the window. “Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. Fletcher and I used to go hunting in the mountains together all the time when we were young. After he left and moved down into the city, I kept on going without him.”

  “So when Jo-Jo approached him about getting Sophia back, Fletcher needed you to guide him.”

  “Actually, Jo-Jo came into my store one day, covered in mud and crying up a storm. I’d never seen her before, so I asked her what was wrong, and we got to talking. She told me how Grimes had kidnapped Sophia and how she’d been out in the woods trying to find her sister with no luck.” Warren cleared his throat. “So I told her about Fletcher being the Tin Man.”

  I could picture it all in my mind. Jo-Jo stumbling into Country Daze, Warren sitting down with her, Jo-Jo sobbing out her story, Warren realizing that she had a problem that only his former friend could solve—

  The right tires hit a rumble strip on the side of the road, jolting me out of my musings. I turned the wheel, edging the car away from the dangerous curve. The road straightened out for several hundred feet, so I looked at Warren in the rearview mirror again.

  “That was how the two of them met? Because of you?”

  Warren nodded. His dark eyes met mine in the mirror again. “I knew that he could help her, that he was probably the only one who could help her. Even back then, Harley Grimes had a reputation for being an evil, vicious, crazy son of a bitch.”

  “Half giant, half dwarf, and all mean,” I murmured, echoing what Jo-Jo had once told me about Grimes.

  Warren nodded his agreement. “But I didn’t think that Fletcher would ask for my help too. At first, I refused, but then Jo-Jo came back to the store and begged me to guide him up there. I couldn’t turn her down then—or now.”

  “Thank you, Warren,” I said in a soft voice. “For everything.”

  “Bah,” he said, waving his hand. “Don’t thank me until it’s over, Sophia is back where she belongs, and that bastard Grimes is finally dead.”

  He stared out the window again, his eyes distant, his lips pinched together, the lines on his face grooved even deeper with old memories, old hurts, old heartaches. I wondered what Warren was seeing, what he was remembering, what he was feeling. If he was reliving the trip he’d taken with Fletcher so very long ago or if he was thinking ahead to the danger he was going to face for a second time.

  Either way, there was nothing for me to do but keep on driving and hope that I could get us all back down the mountain again in one piece after we rescued Sophia.

  * * *

  Warren directed me to one of the many scenic overlooks on the narrow, curvy, switchback roads of this section of the Appalachian Mountains. Unlike the others that we’d passed, which were little more than gravel pits squeezed in between the road and the sheer edge of the mountain, this overlook was actually a park with a paved lot. I stopped Roslyn’s car in front of a sign planted in the grass that read Bone Mountain Nature Preserve.

  I stared through the windshield at the wooden sign and realized that maybe I wasn’t as unfamiliar with the area as I’d thought.

  “Is something wrong?” Owen asked, noticing me eyeing the sign.

  I shook my head. “No, not wrong. But I’ve been here before. I should have remembered when I first heard the name. Fletcher brought me here years ago. Not to the park but to this mountain.”

  I didn’t add that the old man had taken me out only to desert me on our hike, just to see if I had the strength and smarts to get back down the mountain on my own. One of the many tests he’d given me over the years. I wondered how much I’d be tested today. Didn’t much matter. Like I’d told Finn and everyone else: Harley Grimes was a dead man. He just didn’t know it yet.

  “Gin?” Owen asked. “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head to clear away the memories. “Yeah. Let’s move. I want to get eyes on Sophia and Grimes’s camp as soon as possible.”

  Owen, Warren, and I grabbed our gear, locked the car, and walked up a series of steep, narrow stone steps that led from the parking lot to the top of a ridge that curved and bulged out like a half-moon. A few blue and green fiberglass picnic tables perched in the grass, along with a couple of dented metal trash cans. A three-foot-high stone wall marked the edge of the grass and separated the tables from the steep drop below. The ridge offered a sweeping view of the cluster of mountains that surrounded us. Trees and rocks stretched out as far as the eye could see, like green and gray ribbons unspooling in every direction, crowned by the deep, vivid blue of the sky and the burning orange citrine jewel of the sun so very high above.

  Roslyn’s had been the only vehicle in the parking lot, and no one was eating lunch at the picnic tables, stretching their legs after being cooped up in the car, or walking their dog through the grass for a quick potty break. Good. I didn’t want anyone to see us, especially with Owen and me looking like commandos out of some action movie, Warren our grizzled, rifle-toting sidekick. Besides, if someone saw us, there was always the chance that word would reach Grimes that we were coming.

  Warren pointed to the right, and I realized that the park featured more than picnic tables and a pretty overlook. Several wooden signs shaped like arrows were stacked on top of one another where the grass gave way to the trees. Three faint paths started at the signs, then curved off in three different directions into the green and brown canopy of the forest beyond.

  “The eastern trail leads to the next ridge over,” Warren said. “That’s where Grimes’s camp is. From what I remember, Grimes and his men often use this little park as a meeting spot. Most folks in these parts know better than to stop here, day or night.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Grimes and his men bring the guns, and other folks show up with suitcases full of cash.”

  Warren nodded. “Cash, gold, even diamonds on occasion. Fletcher told me that he found an old-fashioned safe and a stash of valuables in one of the outbuildings at Grimes’s camp. He said that he also saw some of Grimes’s men burying metal boxes full of cash and guns in the woods all around the camp.”

  That didn’t surprise me. A lot of folks in Ashland didn’t trust banks—with good reason. Sometimes the people working for the financial institutions were even more crooked than the criminals who called the city home. Finn was a prime example of that, given his day job as an investment banker. He didn’t swindle his clients, but he thoroughly enjoyed playing shell games and hoodwinking the government out of all of the tax money that his clients owed. And he was amazingly good at it; Finn could hide money better than a squirrel storing nuts for the winter.

  And Grimes wasn’t the only one with caches of money and weapons hidden here and there. I had stashes of cash, knives, clothes, and other supplies all over Ashland. Fletcher’s house. Bria’s house. Finn’s apartment. Behind a freezer in the back of the Pork Pit. In Roslyn’s office at her nightclub, Northern Aggression. In a bathroom vent in the English bui
lding at Ashland Community College, where I took so many classes. Even in a fireplace at Owen’s mansion.

  I glanced at Owen, who’d been quiet while Warren and I were talking. I hadn’t thought much about the duffel bag that I’d left at his house a few months ago. But that had been back before Salina had come into our lives. I wondered if he still had my things or if he’d thrown them out.

  The last notion made my heart twinge with pain, but I ignored it and focused on the signs and trails again. “C’mon. We need to get moving.”

  I slid my backpack onto my shoulders and headed for the eastern trail. Owen and Warren did the same with their gear, then fell into step behind me.

  * * *

  With myself in the lead, we walked a good distance in silence with only the sounds of the forest around us. The high, cheery chirp-chirp-chirp of the birds in the trees, the low, lazy drone of bees and other bugs, the sharp, crackling rustle-rustle-rustle of lizards, frogs, and other critters in the underbrush of dry leaves.

  This was a pretty patch of woods, and if we’d been out on a summer hike, I would have taken my time and enjoyed the scenery. The dark brown soil of the forest floor gave way to the lush, vibrant green of the leaves, and the arching branches of the trees stretched high into the cloudless sky above. The thick canopy dappled the forest in shifting shadows, which provided some welcome relief from the July heat, although the humidity was as muggy and oppressive as ever. Despite the shade, sweat trickled down my neck and the small of my back, making my clothes stick to my skin like patches of soggy tape. I could have used my Ice magic to help cool myself, but I didn’t want to waste my power like that. Not when I had a feeling that I’d need every ounce of my strength to go up against Grimes.

  His combination of giant and dwarven blood made him tough enough, but add his Fire magic to that, and you had a truly dangerous enemy. Not to mention the fact that Hazel had the same sort of strength and Fire power that her brother did and how much malicious glee she took in using her magic to hurt other people.

  But what worried me the most was Sophia. She’d been shot at least twice before she’d stumbled into the salon and then was burned with Hazel’s Fire when she’d been dragged away. I didn’t know how many more injuries Hazel and Grimes might have inflicted on her in the meantime or how much blood she might have lost.

  So there was a very real chance that Sophia wouldn’t be well enough to leave the mountain under her own power. Since she had an even more muscular body than Jo-Jo’s, she weighed more and would be even harder to move. But if we had to carry her all the way down the mountain, so be it.

  After about half an hour of following the trail, the three of us stopped. We all chugged down some bottled water, and then I drew out the maps of the area that had been in Fletcher’s file and showed them to Warren and Owen.

  Warren tapped his finger on one of the maps, then pointed up ahead. “The edge of Grimes’s property, at least what he likes to think of as his property, starts about another two miles up the trail, beyond that next big curve.”

  I eyed the sharp bend, where the trail made a hard right and disappeared behind a thick stand of oaks. “Will he have guards posted around the perimeter?”

  Warren tapped another spot on the map. “Not way down here but definitely farther up the trail. There’s another path, well, more like a deer track, that runs parallel to the main trail. We can follow that. It leads to a ridge that overlooks Grimes’s entire camp. We can get our bearings there and decide where to go to next.”

  And see whether Sophia is even still alive.

  He didn’t say the words, but we all knew that it was a possibility, that Sophia might already be dead. That maybe all Grimes had wanted was to kidnap her so he could torture her to death.

  Owen must have seen the worry in my face, because he gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “We’ll find her, and we’ll get her out of there. Jo-Jo can fix the rest. That’s what you always say, right?”

  “Right.”

  I echoed the word back to him, but my voice sounded faint and hollow, even to me. Because there were some wounds, some hurts, some sorrows that even Jo-Jo’s Air magic simply couldn’t fix, and Sophia had them, She had ever since the first time Grimes had taken her. Her raspy, broken voice, the sadness that glimmered in her black eyes, the way she sometimes tensed up when a new customer entered the Pork Pit. And now her worst nightmare, her deepest, darkest fear, had come to life and was happening to her all over again. Sophia had barely survived what Grimes had done to her the first time. I didn’t know what—if anything—would be left of her after this new round of horrors.

  “Gin?” Owen asked in a soft voice.

  “C’mon. Let’s find this trail of Warren’s. The sooner we set eyes on Sophia, the sooner we can rescue her.”

  Owen gave my arm another squeeze. Then he grabbed his backpack, while Warren hoisted his rifle onto his shoulder again. Together, the three of us started back up the trail.

  We’d only gone about fifty feet when a man rounded the bend in front of us.

  He wore brown boots and pants, a short-sleeved white button-up shirt, and an old-fashioned brown fedora that was an exact match for the ones that Grimes’s men had on when they’d swarmed into Jo-Jo’s salon. He also had the same sort of large, old-fashioned revolver strapped to his side as they had. All of that marked him as one of Grimes’s men—and as good as dead.

  The man spotted us at the same time as we saw him, and he stopped in his tracks in the middle of the trail. His eyes widened in surprise, and his hand dropped to the gun on his belt. The man’s fingers curled around the hilt of his revolver, but he didn’t immediately yank it out and start shooting at us.

  His first mistake—and his last.

  13

  Instead of palming a knife, surging forward, and killing the man where he stood, I held my hands out to my sides, gave him a bright, friendly smile, and slowly ambled toward him.

  “Oh, thank goodness! Finally, we see another hiker out here in the middle of nowhere. Can you help us? Because my friends and I, we are totally lost.”

  I jerked my thumb over my shoulder at Owen and Warren. All the while, though, I kept moving closer and closer to the man. He kept his eyes trained on me, his suspicious gaze flicking over my clothes, as if he was wondering why I was wearing jeans and long sleeves when it was ninety degrees out, but he still didn’t make a move to draw his gun. Even if he did, it wouldn’t much matter. The silverstone in my vest would catch any bullets he sent flying my way.

  I drew even nearer to him. The guy must have decided that I wasn’t all that much of a threat—long dark clothes notwithstanding—because he cocked his head and leaned to the side, trying to get a better look at Owen and Warren on the trail behind me.

  He frowned, and then his eyes bulged again. He must have spotted Warren’s rifle and finally realized that we weren’t lost hikers after all.

  But it was already too late.

  Even as the guy fumbled for his gun, I stepped forward and slammed my fist into his face. His head snapped back, and I sucker-punched him in the gut. I followed up those first two blows with hard, brutal jabs to his chest, stomach, and groin.

  After the last few hours of worrying about my family, driving all over Ashland, and gathering supplies and intel, it felt good to finally act, to finally do something that would actually get me closer to rescuing Sophia.

  So I kept hitting him, over and over again, driving my fists into his body with quick, precise, debilitating strikes. He was listing from side to side and about to topple over when I finally grabbed his arm, turned my body to his, and flipped him over my shoulder and onto the ground.

  He rocked back and forth on the trail, coughing, sputtering, and trying to suck down as much oxygen as he could, since I’d pummeled all of the air out of his lungs. I had a knife out and up against his throat before he knew what was happening or could even think about reaching for his gun again.

  He froze, his mouth gaping like a fish’s as he s
tared up at me.

  “If you make one sound, one fucking sound, I will slit your throat and leave your miserable carcass out here for the crows to pick over,” I snarled.

  He snorted, like he didn’t believe that I’d actually make good on my threat, so I nicked him with my knife. He hissed with pain and surprise, so I cut him again, a little deeper this time.

  “What did I say about making a sound?”

  The guy finally realized that I was as mean, heartless, and crazy as I claimed to be and swallowed down the scream that was rising in his throat. Pain filled his hazel eyes, along with fear. Good. That would make this easier.

  “Gin?” Warren asked. “What are you doing?”

  “There’s some duct tape in my backpack,” I said, not really answering his question. He’d figure it out soon enough. “Hand it to me, please.”

  Owen stepped forward and walked around me. A zipper sounded, and he reached into the bag, which was still on my back, and rifled through the items inside. A moment later, he zipped the bag back up and handed me the duct tape. He didn’t say a word the whole time. Good. I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want anything to distract me from what I had to do now.

  I kept my eyes on the guy on the ground. “If you make one sound that I don’t like, one small snort or grunt or fart, I will cut your throat quicker than you can blink.”

  The guy started to nod but thought better of it as my knife kissed his throat again. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple scraping against the blade.

  Warren kept his rifle trained on the man while I wrapped the tape around the guy’s hands and ankles, trussing him up so he couldn’t run away.

  When the guy was secure and no longer a threat, Owen helped me haul him up and onto his feet. By this point, the guy was shooting daggers at me with his eyes, but I ignored his sullen glares. He had no idea how much more he was going to hate me before this was all said and done.

  “As you’ve probably guessed by now, we are not hikers,” I said. “We’re here for the woman Grimes kidnapped this morning. We want her back, and you’re going to help us with that.”