Chapter Six
As much asI wanted to surge to my feet, run around, and scream Owen’s name, I forced myself to calmly, slowly, carefully examine the ground where I’d found his hat.
The grass had been flattened in patches and churned up in others, along with the dirt underneath, indicating a struggle. Owen had come here for some reason, or had been lured here, and then he’d been attacked. In additionto being a metal elemental, Owen was also a good, strong fighter. Even if he’d been taken by surprise, he still would have put up a fierce struggle, and all the flattened grass and disturbed earth told me that he’d been attacked by at least a couple of guys. Probably more of the black-leather-clad giants.
With a heavy heart, I also forced myself to search the ground for more blood, but thankfully,the smears on Owen’s cap were all I found.
I stood up, thinking about what I knew. Owen had definitely been attacked here and then taken somewhere else. Despite the crowds, a snatch-and-grab would have been easy enough to pull off. A couple of the costumed giants could have bashed Owen over the head and carted him off in plain sight simply by making the whole thing seem like an act and part ofthe ren-faire fun instead of the kidnapping it truly was.
And itwasa kidnapping. If someone had just wanted to kill Owen, they could have shoved a knife in his back and left his body here. But there was no body, which told me that Owen was still alive.
For now.
But why kidnap him? Was this some ploy by Hugh Tucker to get leverage over me? To force me to kill another one of the vampire’s Circleenemies? And why grab Owen at the faire with so many potential witnesses around? Why not snatch him when he was coming out of his office late one night? Or from his house, where there was far less chance of someone realizing what was going on?
My hand fisted tight around the bloody leather cap. I didn’t know the answers to my questions, but I was damn sure going to find them out.
And when Ifound the people who had taken Owen, they were the ones who were going to fuckingbleed.
Still clutching Owen’shat, I skirted around the blacksmith forge, threaded my way through the crowd, and hurried back over to the Pork Pit truck. Sophia had fed the latest wave of customers, and she leaned out the window again, a concerned lookon her face.
“What’s wrong?” she rasped.
I quickly told her about the giants following me into the woods and then handed her Owen’s bloody hat.
Sophia studied the hat a moment, then set it aside. Her face darkened, and her black eyes glittered with anger. “What do you want me to do?”
“Call Finn and Bria—” I stopped and let out a vicious curse.
Calling them wouldn’t do any good, since they’dturned their phones off earlier, just like Owen and I had.
“Close up the truck, then go find Finn and Bria and tell them what’s going on,” I said. “Spread out and start looking for Owen. Ask around, and see if anyone remembers some giants in black leather carrying another guy. Whoever took him couldn’t have gotten too far away yet.”
“What are you going to do?” she rasped.
“I’m going to findanother giant dressed like the ones who attacked me and squeeze him for answers. I don’t know that all those giants are working together, but it’s a place to start.”
Sophia nodded and started closing up the truck. I left her there and hurried over to the wrought-iron fence that cordoned off the park from the gravel lot beyond. I looked out over the rows of cars, trucks, and vans, but I didn’tsee anything suspicious, and there were no empty spaces to indicate that a vehicle had recently left.
The kidnappers could have taken Owen out of the park, put him in a car, and driven away, but it would have been much more conspicuous, and they would have had to walk right by the Pork Pit truck to do it. Whoever had planned this had been very careful and smart so far, and I doubted they wouldhave wanted to risk Sophia seeing and stopping them. No, my gut was telling me that Owen was still nearby.
That was my hope, anyway. I wasn’t going to think about all the awful things that might have already happened, all the ways that he could have been horribly hurt and brutally tortured. My stomach roiled with fear, but I pushed it away and instead focused on the cold determination surgingthrough me. I didn’t know what this was about yet, but Iwasgoing to find Owen, and the people who took himweregoing to pay for what they’d done.
With that dark and deadly promise beating in my heart, I moved away from the fence, walked back through the concessions area, and started doing a sweep of the front part of the park, searching for the black-leather-clad giants.
But I couldn’t findthem—not a single one.
Earlier today, the giants had beeneverywhere, but now there was nary a one in sight. That only confirmed my suspicion that they were working together. After all, why stick around the scene of your crime when you’d already abducted your victim?
Still, I kept scanning the throngs of people, desperately hoping I’d spot the giants. All I needed was one of them to talk andtell me where they’d taken Owen. Just one.
No giants magically appeared to answer my silent plea, but as I looked around, I realized that someone else was also missing from the faire.
Pirate Queen Celeste.
My head snapped back and forth, and I scanned the crowd, but I didn’t see Celeste anywhere either. She had vanished, along with the giants.
Oh, I supposed that Celeste could have been takinga break, hanging out somewhere deeper in the park, or maybe even over at the stage, preparing for the next show. But mine was a suspicious mind, and I remembered how the giants had entered the faire as part of her entourage this morning, almost as if they worked for her in real life.
