19
I rocked back on my heels and sat down in the middle of the mess on the office floor. The motion made fresh pain zip through the cut across my stomach, and exhaustion flooded my body. Not so much from the fight as from the fact that I hadn’t gotten any information. The questions crowded into my mind about who had sent these men here and why. And once again, I had the nagging feeling that there was a lot more going on than just a kidnapped girl. But with all the men dead, no one was left to give me any answers.
Jade lowered the gun and slumped down onto the floor too, staring at Ken’s body with a tight, strained face. “Why didn’t you want me to shoot him?”
“Because we needed one of them alive. We needed to question someone about Elissa.”
Anguish filled Jade’s eyes. “I—I didn’t think about that,” she whispered. “He hurt Ryan and me. I didn’t want him to hurt you too. I saw him holding that knife, and I just grabbed the closest gun and pulled the trigger.”
“I know. And I’m sorry that I yelled at you. It’s okay. Really, it is. We still have their phones and wallets and their car outside. We’ll find something that will tell us who sent them after you.”
Jade nodded and slowly set the gun down on the floor. She leaned over, holding out her still-bound hands to me, and I used my knife to slice through the thick ropes. Jade got up and went over to the couch where Ryan was still sitting.
“Are you okay?” she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Despite his battered face, Ryan smiled at her. “We’re alive, and they’re not. That’s what matters, right?”
Jade nodded and blinked back the tears in her eyes. I held out my knife, and she took it and used it to cut through Ryan’s bonds. He leaned forward, rubbing first one wrist, then the other.
“So what happened?” I asked, still sitting on the floor.
Jade and Ryan looked at each other, then at me.
“Ryan was here in the office reviewing the files, and I was in the kitchen making some more coffee,” Jade said. “The next thing I knew, one of the dwarves was smashing his gun into one of the glass doors and storming into the kitchen.”
“I heard the noise,” Ryan added. “So I called you. I ran into the kitchen to help Jade, but the men jumped me, and I dropped my phone before I could tell you what was going on. They hit me, dragged us in here, tied our hands, and started going through all the information on the Dollmaker.” He glared down at the dead men on the floor. “They knew exactly who he was. They were here to destroy the files, to protect him.”
“Did they say anything about him?” I asked. “Did they ever mention any names? Anyone they might have been working for?”
Jade and Ryan looked at each other again. Both of them shook their heads.
“They just talked to each other,” Jade said. “They didn’t mention anyone else.”
I stared at each one of the dead dwarves. I didn’t know Ken or the other two men. I was sure of that. But Henry, the last guy, the one with the scraggly mustache, looked familiar, although I still couldn’t place when or where I might have seen him before. The dwarf had lost his phone during the fight, although the device had landed next to his hand. Something about Henry and his phone rang a bell in the back of my mind, and I found myself staring at the device, trying to recall where I had seen it and him before . . .
“Gin,” Jade said in a sharp voice. “Gin!”
I must have zoned out for a second, because I blinked, and suddenly she was crouching down on the floor beside me, along with Ryan. I hadn’t seen either one of them move.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered.
I looked down. Sure enough, blood soaked the front of my sweater. I raised the fabric to reveal an ugly gash running across my stomach. I gingerly pressed on the wound and hissed at the fresh pain that spiked through my body. More blood oozed out of the gash and trickled down onto my jeans. Ken had cut me deeper than I’d realized.
“Gin?” Jade whispered again. “What do you want me to do?”
“Call Silvio,” I said, my words slurring a bit. “Tell him that I parked my car at a house on the next street over. He’ll get the healing ointment out of my trunk.”
Jade crawled away from me, searching through the mess on the floor for a phone she could use.
“You need to lie back so I can put some pressure on that,” Ryan said.
He helped me lie down on the floor and then put his hands on my stomach, applying constant, steady pressure.
“I guess this is a new experience for you, huh, Doc? Working on a living patient instead of a dead one?”
He smiled at me. “It’s a welcome change.”
I laughed and had to stop, as it made more pain shoot through my body, rising higher and higher with every beat of my heart, like a tidal wave about to drag me under.
“Just don’t let me bleed out before Silvio gets here,” I mumbled. “He’ll never let me hear the end of it if I die on him . . .”
White stars exploded in my field of vision, along with a misty white fog that blanketed my mind.
“Gin? Gin!” Ryan shouted. “Stay with me!”
But his voice was faint and far away, and the tidal wave of pain rose again, higher and stronger than before. It crashed down on me, sweeping everything else away.
• • •
I was snared in a world of shadows.
As soon as the Fire elemental had sent her men after me, I’d staggered away from the edge of the trees and plunged into the heart of the woods, desperate to escape before they found and killed me.
And I’d become thoroughly lost in the process.
The dark, twisted shapes of the trees loomed like skeletal monsters all around me, making everything seem blacker and more sinister than ever before. I could barely see my own hand in front of my face, much less the gnarled roots that arched up from the forest floor to trip me or the rocks hidden in the leaves that stabbed into my bare feet like a hundred little needles, each one bringing a sharp sting of pain.
After tripping for the umpteenth time, I forced myself to stop and look around. Up ahead, more trees blended into a never-ending sea of shadows, one that I could easily become lost in forever. Behind me, several hundred feet in the distance, the Snow family mansion continued to burn, the orange-red flames looking deceptively bright, cheerful, and inviting in the black night.
I shifted on my feet and winced as another hidden rock poked into my heel. Stupid rocks. Stupid tree roots. Stupid everything. A harsh, bitter wail rose in my throat, but I swallowed it down. Crying certainly wasn’t going to help anything. All it would do was tell the Fire elemental and her men exactly where I was. Not to mention Hugh, that creepy vampire. I couldn’t let any of them find me.
So I bit my lip and considered my options. I could keep walking through the woods and wind up who knew where. It wouldn’t be daylight for hours, and I could get so turned around in here that I’d never find my way out again, especially since I didn’t have any food, water, or other supplies. Or I could walk back toward the flames, the mansion, and orient myself.
It was a big risk to take, especially since I didn’t know where the Fire elemental, her men, and that vampire were. I hadn’t seen any flashlights bobbing up and down in the woods, so maybe they were searching in a different area. Maybe they’d already passed me by. Maybe they’d already given up and left. Either way, my best chance to get away from them was to go back to the house. If I was lucky, I could slip down to the road and follow it . . . somewhere, anywhere but here.
So I turned around and trudged back toward the mansion, using the flames as a homing beacon to light my way. I’d been so panicked that I hadn’t gone nearly as far as I’d thought, and I quickly made it back to the edge of the woods. I slid behind a tree, looking out at the mansion, but I didn’t see anyone moving through the backyard or wandering around this side of the crumbled structure. My heart lifted. Maybe I could make it down to the road after all—
A hand clamped on my shoulder and spun me around.
A giant grinned at me, his crooked teeth gleaming in the ambient glow cast from the flashlight in his other hand. “Hello, little girl. I know someone who wants to talk to you.”
Panic flooded my body, and fresh waves of pain exploded in my burned hands at the thought of facing the Fire elemental and her cruel magic again. I didn’t think. I just reacted. I lashed out and kicked the giant in the knee as hard as I could.
I didn’t do any real damage, since I wasn’t wearing shoes, but the blow surprised him and made him lose his grip on my shoulder. I ducked under his arm and darted away.
“Hey!” he hissed. “Come back here!”
I expected him to start yelling that he’d found me, but the woods remained quiet, except for the continued spitting, hissing, and crackling of the mansion fire. The giant must have thought that he could chase me down himself.
He wasn’t wrong about that.
I wove in and out of the trees, trying to disappear into the shadows, but something sliced into my bare feet with every single step, and I was limping along more than I was actually running. My heart pounded, sweat streamed down my face, and a stitch throbbed in my side, growing more painful by the second. Finally, that pain forced me to stop and catch my breath. I crouched down behind a large bush with snarled branches, squinting into the shadows, expecting the giant to come crashing through the woods at any second.
Think, Gin, think! I chided myself. The giant was much bigger and stronger than I was, and he probably had a gun too. I couldn’t outrun him, so how could I possibly escape?
Not just escape. A sick realization filled the pit of my stomach. I needed to keep him quiet about seeing me too. I needed to silence him.
I needed to kill him.
I couldn’t let the giant go back and tell the Fire elemental that I was still alive. That would ruin whatever small chance I had of escaping, of surviving. But how could I defeat him? What could I possibly do against someone who was so much bigger, tougher, and stronger than I was?
I forced myself to take in slow, deep breaths, trying to calm my racing heart and come up with a plan. Then I looked around again, trying to figure out where I was.
I’d learned my lesson before and had stuck close to the tree line this time instead of plunging deeper into the woods, but there was nothing that would help me. I couldn’t even go much farther in this direction, since there was a canyon up ahead, one with sharp rocks on either side and all along the bottom. Far too many rocks for me to climb down, much less over and up again in the dark, without cutting myself to pieces. And that was if I didn’t slip, fall, and break my neck outright.
I loved to tromp around in the woods, pretending that I was a great warrior on a grand adventure and an epic quest to save my kingdom. Mom had indulged me, letting me come out here whenever I wanted, but she’d always warned me not to go near the canyon. My heart squeezed at the thought of my mom, at the fresh, horrible memory of her charred, ashy body, but I forced the images away and thought. And a simple conclusion came to me.
If the canyon rocks could break my bones, maybe they could break the giant’s too.
“Hey!” A voice sounded behind me. “You there!”
A bright beam of light slashed across my face, blinding me, so I threw my hand up and squinted against the glare. The giant had his flashlight pointed directly at me. My heart sank. No way he didn’t see me. I was out of time, so I did the only thing I could.
I lurched to my feet and ran for the canyon, hoping that my desperate plan would somehow work . . .
“Gin? Gin, darling, wake up.” A soft, soothing voice penetrated my nightmarish memory.
The phantom feeling of rocks cutting into my feet slowly faded away, and my eyes fluttered open. Jo-Jo was leaning over me, the milky-white glow of her Air magic wisping like hazy clouds through her eyes, while the afternoon sun made her white-blond curls shimmer like pure spun gold. It reminded me of the lipstick tube.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
I glanced around and realized that I was still in Jade’s house, lying on the same couch in the den where I’d slept last night. I slowly sat up, wiggling my fingers and toes, moving my arms and legs, and stretching and testing out my body. Except for feeling a little tired from the blood loss, I was in one piece again. Jo-Jo had used her Air magic to seal up the gash in my stomach.
“Okay, thanks to you.”
She patted my hand. “Anytime, darling. Anytime. You sit still for a minute.”
She left the den. I heard the faint murmur of conversation, and then Jade came rushing into the room, followed by Silvio and Jo-Jo, both moving at a much more sedate pace. Jo-Jo must have healed Jade too, since her face was now free of bruises.
Jade started to come over and help me up, but I waved her off. Silvio looked me up and down, but once he realized that I was okay, he sighed, shook his head, and started scrolling through screens on his phone. Jo-Jo stood in the doorway, watching me.
I got to my feet and took a step forward. I wobbled a little, but that was to be expected, given the painful injury I’d suffered. It would take my brain a little time to play catch-up with my body and realize that I was okay.
Jade frowned. “Don’t you want to sit down? Shouldn’t you be resting? You almost died.”
“Actually,” Jo-Jo drawled, “the wound was fairly minor, all things considered.”
I snorted. “You mean that it wasn’t nearly as horrific as some of the other things people have done to me over the years.”
She grinned at my black humor.
“Perhaps you should take it easy,” Silvio murmured. “Just for a few hours.”
I snorted again. “Please. It’s going to take more than a little knife wound in my stomach to slow me down. Besides, I can’t sit on the sidelines now. Not when our killer has finally made some mistakes.”
“Mistakes?” Jade asked. “What mistakes?”
“All those men he sent here to kill you. There has to be something in their phones and wallets that will tell us who this guy is and where he’s keeping Elissa,” I said. “So let’s get to work, and get your sister back.”