"I can, and I'm going to. I don't care how many f**king men he has. I'll kill every single one of them if that's what it takes; you should know that."
"I do know that. I also know that you're upset, but going up there on your own isn't a smart move," Finn said. "You know it too, deep down inside. You're just not thinking clearly right now because you're so angry."
Jo-Jo! Sophia! Jo-Jo! Sophia!
The sisters' screams echoed in my head again, and once more all the images, all the terrible memories, of the day overwhelmed me. Sophia stumbling into the salon, telling us to run. Jo-Jo stretching her hand out toward her sister. Sophia hanging on to the doorframe with all her might. The coppery smears of Jo-Jo's blood on Bria's sheet of elemental Ice. The agony in her eyes at the thought of Sophia in Grimes's clutches. The cold touch of Jo-Jo's hand at cooper's house.
Finn was right. I was angry. But I was determined too.
And waiting simply wasn't an option, no matter how dangerous doing this alone was going to be.
"My thinking is crystal-clear," I snapped. "Save Sophia. kill Grimes. It's pretty cut-and-dried. Save your breath, Finn."
"Gin, wait - "
I hung up on him. The phone started ringing a second later. No doubt, Finn thought that he could talk me out of it. He should have known better.
Chapter Ten
With my phone turned off and tossed onto the passenger seat of Roslyn's car, I left Jo-Jo's salon and drove over to Fletcher's house, my house now. I zoomed up the driveway, making the tires spit out gravel in every direction, crested the ridge, and parked.
The ramshackle structure looked a bit odd, since it featured a mishmash of white clapboard, brown brick, and gray stone, all topped off by a tin roof. But to me, it was simply home. To the right of the house, the yard stretched out before abruptly dropping off into a series of jagged cliffs. To the left, the woods formed a solid line of green, gray, and brown.
I got out of the car and headed for the front porch.
Normally, I took a moment to reach out with my magic and listen to the stones around me, in case anyone had decided to lie in wait to ambush the Spider at home. But today I didn't even bother. If someone was out there, then today was the unluckiest day of his life, because the idiot would be my warm-up for Harley Grimes.
But as I opened the heavy black granite front door shot through with thick veins of silverstone, nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the chirping of the birds in the trees or the rustle of the rabbits in the underbrush. Good. I didn't want anything else to slow me down and keep me from reaching Sophia as quickly as possible.
I stepped inside, shut the door behind me, and headed straight for Fletcher's office. I hated delaying even a second, but I needed more information before I went after Grimes, and this was the one place I was sure I could get it.
A large maple tree shaded this part of the house, and even with the day's sun, Fletcher's office was dark enough that I had to turn the lights on to see what I was doing.
The room was a mess, with papers, pens, and folders stacked everywhere, from the desk in the back to the bookcases standing against the walls to the file cabinets that squatted on either side of the door. But there had been a method to Fletcher's madness, and I'd slowly been figuring out his system.
In fact, I'd been spending more and more time in his office over the past few weeks, trying to track down the mysterious M. M. Monroe, the long-lost relative that
Mab's will had listed as heir to all of her earthly possessions. I hadn't had any luck so far, but going through the files had finally nudged me into straightening up the old man's office. At least a little bit. I left most of his things where Fletcher had kept them, though. In a way, it made me feel like he was still there, still guiding me, even though he'd been dead since last fall.
I hadn't run across any information about Grimes, Hazel, and their men, but there had to be something there.
Fletcher and Grimes had almost killed each other over Sophia, and the old man had made Grimes stay away on his mountain ever since then. Still, Fletcher had liked to keep tabs on everyone who was up to no good in Ashland, and there was no way that he wouldn't have tracked Grimes through the years, especially if he thought that
Grimes might be a threat to the Deveraux sisters again someday.
I started with the file cabinets beside the door, flipping through all of the folders inside. No file on Grimes.
I moved over to the bookcases, rifling through the items on every shelf. No file. I went over to the desk, sorting through all the papers on the battered surface and then all the ones in the various drawers. Still no file.
Frustrated, I slammed the last drawer on the desk shut, then swiveled Fletcher's chair back and forth, making the wheels go screech-screech-screech . I studied every part of the office, wondering if there was anything that I'd missed, any possible place that Fletcher might have stashed some information on Grimes that I'd overlooked.
And that's when I noticed the sticker on one of the bookcases.
It was a small sticker, stuck on the bottom right corner of the case, a few feet away from the desk. Odd that Fletcher would put a sticker on the wood way down there where no one was likely to notice it. But what was odder still was the sticker itself: a couple of white scythes crossed over a red heart, all on a black background. It wasn't Fletcher's style at all . . .
But it was definitely Sophia's.
My heart quickening, I got down on my knees and ran my hands all over the bookcase, searching for a secret compartment, but there wasn't one. The case was just a case, solid wood from top to bottom. Puzzled, I rocked back on my heels, wondering where the file could be, since it wasn't actually sitting on one of the shelves.
Then I remembered something that Fletcher had always said:
Simpler is better. I let out a laugh, leaned forward, and reached under the bookcase. A second later, my fingers closed around a folder, and I pulled it out into the light. Unlike the manila folders that Fletcher used for everything else, this one was black and simply had Sophia scrawled across the front in silver ink. I sat on the floor, leaned my back against the desk, and opened it.
Hello, Gin. If you are reading this, then I am dead, but Harley Grimes is not.
I recognized the old man's handwriting, and the distinctive flow and cadence of his words made it feel like he was sitting there right beside me, slowly, carefully, quietly reviewing the information with me.
If Harley Grimes has any sort of heart at all, then it is a heart of venom - cold, cruel, and delighting in the suffering of others. Sophia wasn't the first girl he took, and she certainly wasn't the last . . .
Fletcher went on to detail everything that Jo-Jo had told me. How Grimes had seen Sophia, wanted her, and kidnapped her. How Jo-Jo had reached out to Fletcher and hired him as the Tin Man to rescue Sophia. Fletcher's journey up Bone Mountain to where Grimes had his camp. The guerrilla tactics that he had used to pick off