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 bear— ings there and decide where to go to next.”
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 shouldered 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.
Chapter Thirteen
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!
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
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 stared up at me.
“If you make one sound, one fucking
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
