Snared (Elemental Assassin #16)(59)

“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.