Elemental Assassin: Unraveled Part 19

I grabbed the black velvet bag off the sink, making sure that the strings on the top were drawn tight so that I wouldn't lose any of the jewels inside, then stuffed the whole thing down into my corset, right next to my spider rune necklace.

It was a tight fit, and it certainly didn't make the corset any more comfortable, but it was the most secure place I had right now. Once I was sure that everything was going to stay put, I opened the door and left the restroom.

The Silver Spur clothing store wasn't all that far from the Feeding Trough barbecue restaurant, but it still took me twenty minutes to get over there, mostly because I had to stop, smile, and simper for more stupid pictures. Was I the only saloon girl in the entire theme park that people wanted to pose with? Maybe it was the bloodred dress, making me stand out in a sea of pale pinks, greens, and blues. I was sick of smiling for the camera, so I ducked into the restaurant before anyone else could waylay me.

Since it was late afternoon, the dinner crowd hadn't ramped up yet, and only a few folks were inside. Even better, most of them were in costume, with the cowboys, gamblers, and gold miners chowing down on barbecue sandwiches, cheeseburgers, onion rings, and fries before going back to their stations.

The only costumed folks out of place were the three truckers.

They all had on brown work boots, dark jeans, and puffy red vests over red plaid shirts. Gray trucker hats with the words Cypress Mountain Shipping st.i.tched across the tops in red were pulled down low on their foreheads, and all three of them had their noses buried in their menus. Despite their disguises, I still recognized them.

I sashayed over to their table. "Y'all care if a poor, simple, hardworking saloon girl joins you?" I simpered in the same syrupy-sweet drawl I'd used on Brody earlier.

"Get lost, toots," one of the truckers growled. "We're waiting on someone."

"Why, Silvio," I chided, "is that any way to talk to your boss?"

The trucker who'd spoken looked up. My a.s.sistant had gone all out with his disguise. In addition to his trucker outfit, he was also wearing a s.h.a.ggy gray wig, and an equally s.h.a.ggy gray mustache covered his upper lip. It looked like a woolly worm had crawled up there and died.

Silvio squinted. "Is that you-"

A waitress was walking by on her way to another table, so I pulled out a chair and sat down next to Silvio. "It sure is, sweetheart. Sa.s.sy Scarlet at your service."

I batted my lashes at him, then turned and looked at the two other people sitting at the table-Lorelei Parker, also sporting a trucker's hat, and Phillip Kincaid, with a hat and a bad fake dirty-blond mustache.

Phillip's blue gaze swept over my blond wig, the black beauty mark, and the bloodred saloon-girl dress. He pulled out his phone, held it up, and pointed it at me. "Say cheese, Scarlet."

It would have looked suspicious if I didn't, so I leaned in next to Silvio, put my arm around his shoulders, and smiled. "You know, I was going to graciously thank you all for coming, for wanting to help, for risking your lives for our friends. The whole nine yards. I had a speech prepared and everything. It was beautiful."

"And now?" Phillip murmured, angling his phone for a better shot.

"And now, I want to stab you with my fork," I said through gritted teeth.

He snickered and took two more pictures.

"Send me those," Lorelei said.

Phillip nodded and hit some b.u.t.tons on his phone. "Done."

I glared at Lorelei too, but she gave me a sweet smile in return.

"And just think, those suckers are in the cloud now, Gin," Phillip said in a gleeful tone. "Where they will stay and be seen forever."

I rolled my eyes, then glanced around the restaurant. "Where's Ira?" I asked in a low voice.

"Mr. Morris was waiting for us at the main park entrance," Silvio said. "He took care of getting our supplies into the park and told all the guards that we were friends of his. They looked Lorelei up and down pretty good, thinking that she might be you, but they finally let us in. Mr. Morris was going to come here with us, but he got a text from Roxy, saying that she was at his cabin, searching for you. So he went to deal with her, while we came here as planned."

I nodded. Ira had said that Roxy would get around to checking his cabin sooner or later. I was glad that it was later, and I wasn't there to cause him any more problems.

"So what's the latest?" Silvio asked.

I started to answer him, but a waitress chose that moment to come over and take our order. The others requested sweet iced teas, along with bacon cheeseburgers with all the fixings, while I opted for a strawberry lemonade, barbecue-chicken sandwich, coleslaw, baked beans, fries, and onion rings.

"Hungry?" Phillip asked after the waitress had scribbled down my order and walked away.

I shrugged. "Just building up my strength for tonight. Besides, it's not like I had a very satisfying lunch."

While we waited for our food, I told Silvio, Phillip, and Lorelei everything that had happened while I'd been skulking around.

"So Hugh Tucker set this whole thing up and lured you all down here to do his dirty work for him," Phillip mused. "He went to a lot of trouble for some pretty rocks."

Even though they were stuffed down into my corset, I could still hear the gemstones proudly singing about their own beauty. "Not just some pretty rocks," I said. "Millions of sparkling carats' worth."

The waitress returned with our food, and we all dug in. The grub was much better than it had been the last time I'd eaten here a few hours ago. The fries and onion rings were golden and crispy, while the coleslaw had a nice vinegary bite to it. The barbecue-chicken sandwich and the baked beans were disappointing, though, since the sauce on both of them didn't have the spicy c.u.min and black pepper kick that Fletcher's secret sauce did back at the Pork Pit. And best of all, my lemonade wasn't laced with sedatives.

While we ate, I kept an eye on the windows, watching the ebb and flow of people out on the sidewalks. Every few minutes, a couple of giants would walk by, clutching my Wanted posters in their hands and scanning the crowds for me. They even stopped and looked through the windows several times, peering into the barbecue restaurant. But I was just another lowly saloon girl, chowing down on my dinner before I went back to work. Yep, hiding in plain sight was still one of the best tricks around. Thanks for the reminder, Mama Dee.

My friends noticed the giants as well, and they acted casual and concentrated on their food, just like I did, until the guards moved away from the restaurant windows.

Silvio eyed me a moment, then sighed, crumpled up his napkin, and pushed his plate away. "Uh-oh. I know that look."

"What look?"

He stabbed his finger at me. "That look. The one that says that you've already thought of some plan to save Finn, Bria, and Owen, at considerable danger to yourself."

I frowned. "Is there any other kind of plan? I'm certainly not going to put you guys in danger." I paused. "Well, no more danger than I absolutely have to."

Silvio sighed again. "And that's exactly what that look means."

"What do you have in mind?" Lorelei asked.

I waited until the waitress had refilled our drinks a final time, left the check, and moved on to the next table. "It's simple, really. I'm going to give Hugh Tucker exactly what he wants."

Phillip tilted his head. "And what would that be?"

I grinned. "A grand ole time in the Wild, Wild West, Spider-style."

22.

I didn't want to get into the specifics of my plan here, so Silvio paid the bill, and the four of us left the restaurant.

"I want to check on Ira," I told the others. "Get our supplies, and make sure that he's okay and that Roxy didn't cause him any problems. His cabin is that way."

Silvio, Phillip, and Lorelei ambled along the wooden sidewalks, pretending to window-shop like all the other tourists, while I strolled along behind them, keeping them in sight, even as I smiled and posed for yet more stupid photos. Slowly, the four of us made our way from Main Street, down one of the alleys, and over to the curving, wooded path that led to Ira's cabin.

Once we'd left the crowds behind, we moved much quicker, although I made my friends step off the path and creep through the trees when we got close to the cabin. I sidled up to a large maple and peered around the thick trunk.

In the clearing beyond, Ira sat in a rocking chair on the front porch of his cabin, the lights on his snowflake sweater flashing and making the shotgun laid across his lap gleam. I carefully examined the area around the cabin and the woods beyond, but I didn't see Roxy, Brody, or any giants lurking around. They must have come and gone already, when they realized that I wasn't here. I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd been worried about Ira.

Still, I gestured for my friends to stay back as I stepped out of the trees and slowly approached the dwarf, still looking around for any sign that he wasn't alone. Ira stopped rocking and got to his feet at my approach, his shotgun dangling from his hand.

"Don't worry," he said, patting the barrel of his weapon. "They're gone. And they won't be back. I told Roxy and Brody that if I ever spotted them on my land again, that I would put a load of buckshot in both of their hides."

I laughed. "You should do that anyway."

He thought about it a second, then grinned back at me. "You're right. I should."

I waved my friends over, and we stepped into the cabin. Ira locked the door behind us, while Phillip moved over to one of the windows, keeping watch on the off chance that Roxy and Brody decided to come back after all.

Ira jerked his thumb at a large black steamer trunk that sat in front of the fireplace. "It wasn't easy, but I managed to bring in those supplies that your friends brought along with them. Lots of guns for just the four of you."

"Believe me," I said, "we'll need them."

Ira opened the trunk, and Silvio started sorting through all the items inside, complaining that the dwarf had just thrown everything into the trunk and had ruined Silvio's careful organization. Ira slapped his hands on his hips, ready to snark right back at the vampire, and Lorelei went over to mediate between them.

That left me to get the ball rolling with Tucker, so I pulled out my phone and dialed the main number for the hotel.

"h.e.l.lo, this is the Bullet Pointe resort hotel. How may I a.s.sist you today?" a cheery feminine voice chirped in my ear.

"This is Gin Blanco. Tell Roxy Wyatt that I want to speak to Hugh Tucker. Don't worry, I'll hold."

"Um, okay. Just a second. Let me see if I can find her."

"Oh, I'm sure that she'll come running once she realizes that I'm on the line."

"Um, okay," the clerk said again, obviously having no idea who I was or what was going on.

She put me on hold, and I leaned against the fireplace, listening to the same sort of plinka-plinka piano music that they played incessantly in the Good Tyme Saloon.

Five minutes and endless off keys later, my phone clicked. I put it on speaker and waved at my friends, who all fell silent. A few seconds later, someone picked up on the other end of the line. He didn't say anything, though, so I decided to start the conversation.

"Why, h.e.l.lo there, Tuck," I drawled. "Bet you can't guess who this is."

"Blanco," the vampire's voice filled my ear. "How disappointing. I was holding out a faint hope that you'd crawled up into a hole somewhere and died."

"We both know that you could never be that lucky."

"No, I suppose not." His voice was calm and emotionless. "What do you want?"

"I want my friends back. And I'm going to get them back. How much bloodshed there is in the meantime depends on you."

Tucker let out a low, sinister laugh. "As if I care about bloodshed. Besides, why would I give your friends back when I went to all the trouble to get them down here in the first place?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe several million dollars' worth of shiny gemstones? Surely, that's worth a life or three, even to a coldhearted son of a b.i.t.c.h like you."

Silence, although I could almost hear the gears grinding in Tucker's mind as he debated whether I was telling the truth.

"You're bluffing. My people have been searching for weeks now and haven't seen any trace of the jewels. There's no way you've found them in a single afternoon."

"Oh, sugar. I never bluff."

He snorted.

"Besides, the very reason that you lured me and my friends down here was so we could find those shiny stones for you. And now you're saying that I haven't delivered?" I clucked my tongue. "You can't have it both ways, Tuck."

"I still don't believe you."

"Well, I could take a picture and send that to you, but you probably wouldn't believe that either. You'd just claim that I had a handful of fakes. So why don't you go ask the giants you have guarding my friends about the dashing saloon girl in the bloodred dress who moseyed into Deirdre's suite a little while ago."

"What-"

"Don't worry," I said, cutting him off. "I'm in a generous mood, so I'll give you some time to confirm everything. I'll call the main hotel line again in ten minutes. If I were you, I'd tell the clerk to put me right on through. Better get a move on now, ya hear?"

"Wait-"

I hung up on him.

"You enjoyed that," Lorelei said.

I grinned. "It's the small things that make life truly worth living."

By this point, she and Silvio had cleared the papers and photography equipment off Ira's dining-room table, pulled all the supplies out of the steamer trunk, and had laid the gear on the surface. Guns, ammo, knives, tins of Jo-Jo's healing ointment. All the usual suspects.

Silvio had also gotten a map of the theme park, which he spread out on top of the weapons, and he went into full-fledged a.s.sistant mode, comparing the paper map to some aerial photos he called up on his tablet.

"This place is like a maze," he said. "Look at all those paths circling around and around and going nowhere."

I nodded. "I know. And that's what's going to give me the advantage."

Silvio looked at me out of the corner of his eye, clearly wondering what kind of advantage I was talking about.

The ten minutes went by quickly, although I waited five more, just to make Tucker sweat a little bit. He'd gone to a lot of trouble to set this whole thing up, and I knew that he would do whatever it took to get those gems back, even wait on my call. I wondered just how much pressure the other members of his precious Circle had put on him to recoup at least some of their money that Deirdre had squandered. It must have been a considerable amount, since it seemed like he was more afraid of them than he was of me.

Tucker was a fool that way.

Finally, I dialed the main number for the hotel again. As soon as I told the clerk my name, she sputtered and put me on hold. Tucker picked up less than thirty seconds later.

"What do you want?" he growled.