Free Burn Me Deadly: An Eddie LaCrosse Novel by Alex Bledsoe Page B

but you really have no one to blame but yourself.” I held the knife ready to throw and watched him expectantly. “What were you guys trying to find out from that girl?”
    He opened his mouth as if to speak, then mustered his resolve and clamped it shut again.
    I sighed, said, “I’ll be great at this before much longer,” and threw the knife again. This time I aimed higher, closer to his groin. This one finally got his attention. He howled as the point jabbed the soft skin at the crease of his thigh and hip, and thrashed madly until he shook the knife free. It clattered to the floor and he turned wide, panicked eyes on me.
    “You son of a bitch !” he cried, his voice high.
    “Don’t talk about my mother,” I said patiently. “And what should concern you is that I was aiming at your heart. So are you ready to talk?”
    “ Yes! ” he snarled.
    “What did you want to find out from the girl you peeled the skin off of a week and a half ago?”
    He shook his head frantically. “Uh-uh, man, not me. That was Frankie. He’s into that. I was just the lookout.”
    “Good for you. What were you trying to find out?”
    He looked up at the manacles as if he hoped they’d magically open and free him. When they didn’t he sighed, looked down and said, “Lumina. We’re trying to find Lumina.”
    “Who is Lumina?”
    I heard the distant twang , followed by a much closer snick , at about the same time I registered his sudden, wide-eyed look of surprise. An arrowhead appeared just above his navel, poking out through his shirt. He tried to say something; then another snick-twang combo preceded the solid thunk of a second arrow into his back. This one didn’t come out the other side.
    By the time the second one struck, I’d flung myself to the floor and scrambled over beneath the window. I drew my sword and held it up so I could use a specially polished part of the blade as a mirror. Outside, a man on horseback untied both my horse and the dead man’s, then smacked them with the flat of his sword and sent them off down the trail. He watched the house for another moment, then, apparently happy with his handiwork, spurred his own horse after the others.
    Crap , I thought.
    I snatched up the dragon knife and rushed out the door, scabbarding my sword as I went. I ran down the trail, but no way was I going to catch a guy on horseback. I skidded to a stop, out of breath and furious. Then I had a terrible idea.
    If he left by the same cliff-top trail I’d used, there was a chance I could cut through the woods and head him off. He’d have no reason to hurry once he got out of sight, since he knew I was now on foot. But most of the trees were hawthorns, and they were woven together like the lies a king’s chamberlain tells to hide the queen’s dalliances. They’d shred me to pieces before I’d gone fifty feet. Still, I’d get no answers standing there wheezing. So I pulled my jacket sleeves down to protect my hands, put up my arms to shield my face, cursed the various fates that brought me to this point and headed into the gauntlet.
    It was as bad as I feared. A couple of times I dodged around rocky outcroppings and caught another whiff of lamp oil. Finally I emerged on the trail where it ran closest to the cliff’s edge, my arms slashed from protecting my head and my shins cut from pushing their way through the branches. Exhausted, I sat down on a fallen tree beside the path to catch my breath. I tried to read the ground to see if my man had already passed, but it was too rocky, and the traces I saw could easily have been my own from earlier that day. Sweat from the exertion trickled into the various cuts and scratches, and the stinging made me even angrier. I was sure I’d missed him, that my frantic race to intercept the bastard had been for nothing. Then, from up the trail, I heard the distinctive neighing of my own borrowed horse as she came toward me.
    I ducked out of sight behind the fallen tree and pulled a