Scythe & Sparrow (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #3)(35)

I sit back in my seat. I know enough about the area now to know that Humboldt Lake is about twenty miles out of Hartford, in the opposite direction of Weyburn. That puts it at least a good forty or fifty miles from Eric’s watery tomb at the bottom of the Platte River.

By the time we park at Fionn’s clinic, the burst of adrenaline from seeing the police vehicles has subsided. Maybe it’s a false sense of security, but knowing the authorities are focusing their attention so far off course, I feel a measure of relief. I can’t say Fionn feels the same. Not with the way his brows knit together, or the momentary pause he takes when he exits the vehicle to look back toward Main Street as though the cruisers might appear. When he comes to my side to help me down, the smile he gives me is a faint echo of the one from his doorstep only a few minutes ago.




“Don’t worry,” he says. “As long as no one else realizes he was intending to hunt and not fish, he’s going to be hard to find. And even if they do, who knows where he might have gone.”

“I’m not worried.” I probably should be. I’m sure that’s what Fionn is thinking too. But something about it feels right, no matter what happens next or what consequences I might have to face. Sometimes, I think right might not be good. And wrong might not be bad. Even before I joined Silveria Circus, I’d started to question what kind of people drew those lines around our lives, and whose benefit those boundaries are really for. Because the more women I meet like me, the more I believe the rules were never made with us in mind.

With a single, decisive nod, Fionn passes me my crutches before grabbing a backpack from the rear seat. When we get to the entrance of the clinic, he brings up the app on his phone, disarming the security system before he checks each of the internal cameras. “I don’t see her,” he says as he pulls the keys from his pocket and unlocks the door.

“Is there a back entrance?” I ask, and he nods. “I’ll take the keys and go in that way. We can corner her. Or, if we’re lucky, she’s already gone.”

Fionn levels me with a flat look as he drops the keys onto my waiting palm and then slides the backpack from his shoulder to rummage through its interior. He passes me a pair of gardening gloves. “Trust me. She’s not gone. She’s lying in wait to ambush us.”

“Okay,” I say as I shift my shoulders back. “Where’s the comms device?”

Fionn’s eyes narrow as he hands me a beach towel.

“Walkie-talkie? Riot gear? Lasers? Surely you brought lasers, right? You’re not expecting we can take down an assassin raccoon with nothing more than a towel, are you?”

Fionn pulls on his own gloves and sighs. “Just … be careful.”

“Copy that.”

I grin at Fionn’s exaggerated eye roll and pocket the keys before I pull the gloves on. With the towel tossed over my shoulder, I make my way to the back of the clinic, making note of any potential entry points where Barbara might be gaining access into the building. A vent near the peak of the roof catches my eye, and though the grill looks like it’s in place, I’d be willing to bet money that she’s figured out a way to get past it.

“You might be tricky,” I say to myself as I unlock the door, “but you’re not circus-level tricky, Barbara.”

I step inside the air-conditioned building, shutting the door behind me with a quiet snick. The storage room I’ve entered is silent and dark. To my right, there are shelves with boxes of office supplies and latex gloves, masks and paper towels. To my left is an unlit hallway that must lead toward the exam rooms.

“Marco,” I call out as I flip on the storage room light. I lean my crutches against a wall and shift some boxes on a shelf, half expecting the raccoon to jump on my face. “Marco.” My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull off a glove and check the device.

Polo.




Shhh. She’ll hear you.

Loosen up, McSpicy. You’re worse than a bongo board in a blowdown.

.….

I have no idea what that means.

You know, the tent master? In a circus? During a storm that blows all the tents down?

… I’m still lost, but we’ll come back to that later. DON’T LET BARBARA SENSE YOUR FEAR. It makes her more aggressive.



I grin at the screen and pocket the device before taking up my crutches and starting toward the corridor.

And then I hear it. A rustling in the distance.

I dart as fast as I can to the mouth of the darkened corridor and lock eyes with the raccoon.

Barbara stands upright on her hind legs. Neither of us moves. She looks at me as though weighing her odds for coming out of a fight on top. And then, with her beady black eyes pinned to mine and her front paws folded against her chest, she walks on her back legs into the room at the end of the hall.

“Oh my God. That’s both creepy and adorable. Barbara, get back here.” I chase after the sound of her chattering call, losing my momentum when the towel slips from my shoulder and tangles around my crutches. There’s a momentary clattering of tiny nails on stainless steel, but all has gone eerily quiet by the time I regain my balance and make it to the darkened threshold. When I hit the light switch and look around the staff break room, Barbara is nowhere to be seen. “What the hell …? Doc … Doc …”

Fionn’s rushing footfalls draw to a halt just behind me. “No, Rose,” he says, his voice desperate. “She’s drawn to sound.”