Natural Evil (Elder Races #4.5)(24)

Still other news crews, along with several sightseers, drove RVs in. All the local establishments were doing a booming business, especially the combination truck stop/fast-food joint/casino. Everyone else, the miners and their families, were shocked, grieving and afraid. Most of them hadn’t known what was going on and nobody knew whether or not they would have a job in the future. Operations at the Nirvana Silver Mining Company had been halted until further notice.

Sixty-eight undocumented human workers, all foreign nationals, had been recovered from the strange pocket of Other land, along with seven more bodies from shallow graves. The survivors were malnourished, fearful and confused about where they were. Promised work and a new life, they had been driven into the mine at night and taken across the passage to the Other land where they were forced to mine silver for food.

They didn’t have any other choice—there were no animals to hunt, nor did the Other land have enough vegetation to support life. The land was literally a buckle in the Earth, little more than magic-sensitive silver, air and rock. The passageway had been buried in a vein of silver and lay inert and undetected until with a few small, controlled blasts, the Nirvana Company had blown it open. The Company blocked the area off and told the legitimate miners the area was unsafe. The passage itself kept the workers captive, since none of them had a spark of Power with which to make the return journey.

Such a lot of fuss over a piece of real estate that was destined by federal law to go unclaimed by anyone.

The downfall of the already wealthy Bradshaw family was greed. Once they uncovered the pocket of Other land and realized what they had found, they had to mine it. They couldn’t use the local pool of workers and still hope to keep their activities secret, so they imported workers. As Scott Bradshaw said when he was arrested and questioned in the hospital, one thing led to another.

Bradshaw Senior lived. He was arrested in the hospital too.

When Claudia thought of the seven graves, she wished when she had pulled the trigger that she had made it a kill shot. Instead she’d tagged him high in the shoulder, enough to incapacitate him.

When Luis and the other Peacekeepers arrived, she got to sit back and enjoy watching the take down like prime-time TV. The only thing missing was the popcorn.

Good Christ, did Luis have moves. He was all power and grace, and sex-savvy smarts. She watched him with an odd kind of pained pride. She recognized talent when she saw it, and his star was definitely on the rise. He was the total package. It wouldn’t be long before he held a Senior Peacekeeper position.

Even as he chased Rodriguez down and pinned him to the pavement, Luis raised his head and searched for her. She lifted a hand and waggled her fingers. Soon as he caught sight of her, he left Rodriguez handcuffed and spread-eagled on the ground and raced toward her, climbing up to her ledge with athletic effortlessness.

He went into a frenzy when he discovered she had taken damage from chips of rock that had ricocheted during the firefight. She hadn’t slept since early the previous morning, and she was too tired to fend off his fussing, so she let him do what he wanted. He bandaged three deep cuts and several nicks then he ran his hands gently down her body, dark eyes sharp with concern as he checked for further wounds.

All right, who was she kidding, she might have enjoyed that a little bit too. She didn’t even need to climb down off the ledge. Luis got his Djinn buddy to give her a ride. All in all, it was a cushy wrap-up.

He insisted she get medical treatment, and an EMT suggested stitches. Then Luis scared up a healing potion from somewhere. She never did find out from where. He would not stop harping at her until she drank it. Then more enforcement people arrived and there were the inevitable questions, a whole shitload of them.

She asked for coffee and got it, and she savored the hot caffeine as she answered the questions patiently. For the most part, Luis wasn’t present because he had his own job to do and people to answer to. But it just so happened that he was present for her full explanation of the bar confrontation, and his earlier frenzy was nothing compared to the rage that detonated in his body then.

She could feel it pouring off him in deadly waves as he sat beside her, until she couldn’t stand it. She gripped his forearm hard until she drew his attention, and she recognized Junior’s death blazing in Luis’s eyes.

She just looked at the whole great, clenched length of that splendid man, and she gave him a small smile, and she wouldn’t let go until he calmed. It took a while, and that was okay. For him, she had discovered she had all the time in the world, if only he knew it.

Then all at once the tension in his body uncoiled. He blew out a breath, covered her hand with his and let it go, and somehow it all combined to make her fall into the most impossible, complete and inappropriate love with him.

The realization was gorgeous, hellish. She drew back and felt more wounded than she had ever felt in her life. She could tell he sensed something serious was wrong, but it wasn’t an acceptable topic for discussion, so she did the only thing she knew to do. She went deep into herself, into silence.

Claudia. Was. Driving. Luis. Bat shit.

She’d dealt with the chaos at the mine entrance with the poise of an accomplished professional, answered the barrage of questions with dignity and tolerance, and she’d reacted to the news from the mine with compassion. He thought he might be able to gaze at her for the rest of his life and learn something about intelligent decency in the face of adversity.