Marlow closed his eyes for a second and tried to think of a way out of that statement. There wasn’t one. He would just have to deal with it. “I mean—”
Someone screamed. It was the shocked, genderless yawp of pain, not surprise or horror. For just asecond, Marlow was grateful for the interruption as Cade turned sharply away from him. Then his brain clicked back on.
That wasn’t good.
Nader lay on the mulch and shed needles in a puddle of his own puke and blood. He was gray under the Cali surfer tan he sported, and his cheeks and chin were slick with tears and snot. Two other operatives had to hold him down to stop him writhing before he made his situation worse.
His right leg was mangled, crushed in the half-moon clamp that had snapped down on it. The razor-sharp teeth had sheared through his black combat trousers and torn through flesh and muscle. The spring-loaded force behind the trap had broken his leg viciously halfway up his shin. A tourniquet twisted around his thigh had stemmed the worst of the bleeding, but blood welled sluggishly out of the wound. There was already enough of it on the ground to be a worry.
“Bear trap,” Cade identified it as he crouched down, balanced on the balls of his feet. He put his hand gingerly on the cold arch of the trap. “I haven’t seen one of these since I left Alaska.”
Marlow swallowed the sickly taste in his mouth and dragged his gaze away from the white stick of bone that jutted out of Nader’s leg like a splinter. The old scar tissue between his ribs ached in sympathy.
“Are traps legal in Alaska?” he asked.
Cade laughed harshly. “No,” he said. “But no one cares about that. Someone get me a crowbar.”
It took three men to hold Nader down as Cade forced the jaws of the trap open. Fresh blood spilled onto the ground as the teeth pulled out of Nader’s leg and smeared as he was dragged backward.
“The Reserve’s concierge doctor will be here soon.” One of the operatives delivered the news as he rejoined them. “There is an air ambulance on the way, too, to take him back to San Diego.”
Cade let the trap snap shut once Nader was clear. He straightened up and wiped his forehead on his sleeve—the crowbar, scraped and bloody, dangled from his other hand.
“Great,” he said. “Then we can work out how the hell someone just waltzed through our security to drop this off here.”
Marlow stepped over the wet smear of Nader’s blood as he examined the trap. It was attached to a chain that snaked away from it under a loose covering of mulch and leaves. Marlow brushed the debris off the chain with the side of his foot as he followed it between the trees to a huge, black rock half-buried in the side of a hill. The chain was attached to a heavy metal pin freshly drilled into the stone.
He picked the chain up and rubbed grime off it with his thumb. The metal was smooth and thick, well-forged and crafted. Strong enough to hold a pissed-off wolf if you got one leashed. Very similar chains hung in the Night Shift armory, but the few links he looked over didn’t have a maker’s mark on them.
“No one dropped it off,” he said. “Someone spent a lot of time setting this up.”
Cade looked around and snarked, “Well, if they put some effort in, that makes me feel better.” He left the others to tend to Nader, though, and stalked over to look for himself. A scowl grooved itself into his face as he took in the worked stone, concrete, and quality of the trap.
“Does this have anything to do with Ned Piper and his mess?” he asked.
The question hit Marlow like a punch. He’d been less shaken the night before when the wolf had coldcocked him.
“I don’t—” Marlow stopped mid-stammer and shook his head. O’Hara had already dragged him over the coals for his slip up in the morgue. “That’s old business, and it’s nothing to do with me.”
He started to walk away. Cade stepped in front of him to block him, one hand casually on Marlow’s shoulder, and he stopped, irritation rough against the back of his throat.
“What?”
“O’Hara thought Piper was involved. Why?”
Marlow chewed on the inside of his cheek as he tried to work out how much he could say. He already knew that what heshouldsay was nothing. A slightly masochistic attraction to a handsome jerk wasn’t a good reason to spill this particular secret.
Unfortunately, Cade had a point. The security of the Reserveliterallywas his business.
“Piper was a dirty cop, but he did it for money, not thrills. Besides, he’s in an out-of-state prison. I never thought it was him, but—”
That was the cutoff for what hecouldsay. Marlow stopped, and Cade finished the sentence for him.
“But he wasn’t the only one back then who needed a bath?”
Marlow hesitated, but if Cade had put the pieces together, what point was there in lying? It was up to O’Hara to do damage control. He raked his fingers through his hair, sweaty damp at the roots from the hike.
“The morgue drop during the changeover was right out of Piper’s playbook,” he said quietly, one eye on the crowd around Nader. “Screwed-up paperwork, confusing provenance, all of it. This, though? Not his style. He didn’t have any morals, but he was a professional, and he didn’t like… messy. Traps? Kidnap? That’s too much chaos for Piper. Anything else you want to know, ask O’Hara.”
