“Ow!”
The woman yelped and tried to jerk her arm from his grasp. Her name appeared in his mind. It was all she could think about. Herself. Her safety. Her indignation.
Hello, Maddie.
“Let go of her!” screamed Maddie’s friend. She struck him with the side of her fist, a glancing blow that grazed his shoulder and ended clanging against his metal arm. The friend yelped and stumbled back, cradling her hand.
Maddie’s attention shifted and Rune’s eyes grew wide at the malice of her thoughts. He gaped at her as she struggled to pull from his grasp.
She isn’t your friend, is she?
In fact, Maddie hated her ‘friend.’
You want her dead.
Maddie’s darkest thoughts poured into his brain.
Not me. Why not Dixie? She’s an idiot. Not me. Why didn’t you grab her?
Rune grinned.
“Her?” he asked.
Maddie stopped struggling. She stared at him, leaning back as he held her aloft, as if she were a water skier and he the boat. He could tell she understood he’d read her most desperate wish. Or at least, his question had given her hope he had read her mind.
Kill Dixie. Let me go. You can have her.
She said it as clearly as if she’d spoken the words.
“If that’s what you want,” he said, amused by how much pleasure the thought gave her.
He released Maddie’s wrist and she fell on her butt with a loud oof. Spinning, he grabbed the other woman by the same arm she held pressed against her torso, the hand that had struck his metal arm with such force.
“No!”
What’s this one’s name? He couldn’t read this one, but Maddie had thought it.
Dixie.
Dixie’s eyes grew wild as her panic grew. She looked to Maddie for help, the help she herself had tried to provide.
Rune glanced at Maddie, giving her every opportunity to stop him. She’d scrambled to her feet but remained rooted to the spot. Watching. Standing just out of reach. She wasn’t stupid. Best to not press her luck.
She was committed to her first thought.
Take her, not me.
Rune summoned all the healing life force he could from the woman now in his grasp. Dixie’s flesh went pale. Her features sank, her jaw falling slack as she ceased to struggle. In a moment, she collapsed to the ground, dust swirling away in the desert breeze as fast as it could fall.
Rune closed his eyes and smiled. He felt amazing. Fully healed. He raised his good hand to his neck and felt the small jagged scar where his daughter had stabbed him.
Smoother.
He turned to Maddie, who remained there, jaw lolling like a gasping fish’s. After a moment she shut her mouth, straightened and met his gaze.
“Thank you,” she said.
The corner of her mouth curled, as if she were almost giddy, and then she strode off quickly, but never running.
Rune sniffed and watched her go.
I like that one.
She reminded him of Fiona. Back before she was obviously corrupted by her do-good sister and those horrible, horrible Scots.
Chapter Five
“You okay, Maddie?”
Maddie Barbeau turned to find Jake Hastings staring down at her where she sat at a picnic bench. She glanced down at her sandwich and realized she’d been picking pieces of bread off it, rolling them into tiny balls and dropping them.
“Huh?”
“I said are you okay? You were staring at…” Jake glanced to the left. “…I don’t know what over there and...” he motioned to the mess of tiny bread balls in front of her. “And there’s that.”
Maddie smiled, knowing when she grinned people could see no less than twenty-three perfectly white teeth. Her smile melted everyone. No one could be mad at her when she flashed the pearly whites—she’d learned that early on in life. Her teeth were probably almost entirely responsible for her career as an arts and crafts guru. That, and the fact her projects were the only thing that ever seemed to make her mother take notice. She’d kept practicing until she’d decorated their entire apartment in homemade décor. It looked as if a professional designer had redone the dump.
Not that Mom noticed.
Maddie felt her expression souring and pulled her thoughts away from her childhood. “I’m fine, Jake. Just thinking of a new project for the show.”
“Yeah? What’re ya thinkin’? Ball bearings made outta bread?”
Crap. She hadn’t thought he’d ask for an example.
Maddie smiled again. “Too soon to say.”
He basked in the light of her grin and let it go.
“Okay, but we still have six shows to film and we’re running out of your standbys. Keep thinking.”
Jake flashed his own smile, one lower tooth tucked back behind the others. Coffee stains. But she guessed that’s why he was the director of Crafty People, and not the on-air talent, like her.
He moved away and then turned back. “Hey, you haven’t seen Dixie today, have you? Don’t you guys usually come to the set together?”
Maddie shook her head. “No. We’ve bumped into each other in the parking lot walking over here a few times, but we don’t carpool.”
It was a lie.
I shouldn’t have lied about that. She’d probably told people...
“I mean, not much,” she added.
“Hm.” Jake glanced at his watch and then put his hands on his hips to stare at the ground. “Not like her to be late and I can’t reach her. I can only shoot around her segments for so long.”
Maddie shrugged and pretended to return to her sandwich. Without the bread to protect her from the mustard, she wasn’t sure how to pick it up. She studied it as if it were a puzzle until she no longer felt Jake’s presence and then balled it in the paper it had been wrapped in.
Dixie. That’s who she’d been thinking about when Jake caught
