BreadCrumb Trail (The Yellow Hoods, #2): Steampunk meets Fairy Tale (5 page)

Tee quickly studied Richy’s face. “Turn around, guys. Richy, you saw something. Let’s investigate. If it’s nothing, there should still be enough sunlight for the sail home.”

“You were right the last two times, Richy. Let’s see if it’s lucky number three,” replied Elly, turning her steering wheel and managing her sail in the strong wind.

Over the years, Pierre had run across more than a dozen people lost in the forest. He’d helped many, but he’d always looked down on them as weak and ignorant. If they just had common sense, he’d told himself, they could’ve gotten out of the forest or the trap or whatever, on their own. Now he realized in his own desperate moment that common sense didn’t come easy amidst fear and panic.

Just as the dire lynx was close enough to leap at him, it stopped. Still running, Pierre glanced over his shoulder, confused. He spotted three billowing sails coming his way.

Then his right foot touched the lake ice. His frantic, heavy gait betrayed him. In the blink of an eye, he was under the ice-cold water. The chill was penetrating. His limbs wanted to stop moving. He knew he should calm down, but he couldn’t. He saw shadows, up above, fading away. 

The frigid water bit at his skin, and his clothes resisted his attempts to remove them. He was getting tired of holding on. This was nature’s true justice: the hunter, now the hunted. He would die a fool’s death—nothing noble, nothing selfless, just a simple, stupid, avoidable death.

Elly chiseled away at the ice like a young woman possessed, having already dealt with the now-unconscious dire lynx. “Why have you stopped, Tee? He’s going to
die
!”

Standing up, shock-stick in hand, Tee looked around. “I…” she started, unsure of what to say. When she’d faced down LeLoup months ago, it was the first time she’d felt the sweep of calm in a moment of crisis. An idea was bubbling its way up, getting clearer as it surfaced.

Tee sprang into action. “Richy! Help me get my sail-cart over there!” said Tee, pointing to a spot near the shore.

“Why?” said Elly. “Never mind—you’re thinking of the mini-crossbows, right?”

“Right,” said Tee, imagining how everything would need to play out. “They’re the best chance we have of punching through the ice!”

“That’s brilliant! It might kill him, but it’s brilliant,” said Richy.

“The brilliant part is if we can haul him up,” said Tee, rolling some snow to put under the sail-cart so it’d be in the position she needed.

A minute later, they had the sail-cart propped up on the shore and everyone in position. Tee got on all fours and looked at the angle. Satisfied with the sail-cart’s orientation, she stood up, backed away, and gave Richy the nod.

Richy, in the sail-cart’s pilot seat, pulled the extra lever only present in Tee’s sail-cart. Five mini-crossbow bolts shot out of the front of the sail-cart and pierced into the frozen surface of the lake in a thunderous crash of ice. 

“Woohoo! They went through!” yelled Richy, punching the air. He then quickly raised the sail-cart’s telescoping mast and sail, anticipating the next step in Tee’s plan.

Elly ran to the smashed ice and started removing chunks. Tee pushed the sail-cart slowly onto the lake’s frozen surface, hoping to avoid breaking through the ice. For her plan to work, they would need the full benefit of the wind.

 “Come on!
Come on!
” yelled Tee, going red in the face. Then, the wind snapped the sail to its limits and the sail-cart started to creak forward.

“We’re good, Tee!” said Richy.

Tee darted back to the black cables. She nervously grabbed at the first, but it was slack. She looked over to Elly, who checked the second—and it was taut.

“We’ve got something!” yelled Elly.

Finally, the top of Pierre’s head broke the surface of the water. Tee and Elly, with the sail-cart’s help, hauled him out of the water.

“Richy, he’s up!” yelled Elly.

“We didn’t kill him, did we?” asked Richy fearfully.

Tee discovered the mini-crossbow bolt lodged between Pierre’s heavy coat and his javelin holder. The bolt tips were designed to grab, not just pierce. “Nope!”

“That’s one lucky man,” said Richy.

They tore off his coat, and Elly put her head on Pierre’s chest. “He’s not breathing.”

“Are you sure?” said Tee. She took off a mitt and put her hand over his mouth. “I don’t feel anything.”

Elly and Tee worked together to pump water out of Pierre’s lungs, but his eyes remained a blank stare.

“We did our best, Lala,” said Richy to Tee. “He’s gone.”

Elly stopped and looked down at the lake.

Tee was shaking, and her eyes welled up with tears. “We’ve
got
to do something. He can’t be dead. He can’t! There has to be something else we can do. Come on—
think!
” yelled Tee, more to herself than to her friends.

“His body just doesn’t remember it needs to breathe,” said Richy, putting a hand on Tee’s yellow-cloaked shoulder.

Tee snapped her fingers as she thought of how they’d taken down the dire lynx. “Shock-sticks!” she said, and grabbed the shock-sticks from her cloak’s special pockets. She handed one to Elly, and then started winding up the other.

“Lala? What do you think you’re doing?” said Richy, standing back. “You could kill him!”

“He’s already dead, Richy!” replied Elly. “Let her try.” Elly vigorously wound the other shock-stick and then handed it back to Tee.

Tee looked at Elly and Richy. Each nodded support as they backed up. Tee pressed the activation buttons and struck Pierre in the chest. Sparks flew, and Pierre convulsed wildly—and then, after a second, he coughed and blinked.

“It worked!” yelled Richy, punching and kicking wildly in the air with joy. “I can’t believe it!”

Tee stared in disbelief at Pierre. “He’s—he’s breathing. We did it—”

Elly gave Tee a huge hug. “You saved him!”

CHAPTER FIVE

Hounding the Watts

The only sounds in the town home were of two leather boots still being broken in as they walked about the hardwood floor. Though the Hound had hired the best men available, he personally wanted to check everything.

Unlike his predecessor, Andre LeLoup, he wasn’t going to fail Simon St. Malo. The man had power and influence and had granted the Hound the opportunity to move from unimportant henchman to someone whose name sent chills down spines of more and more people every day.

Simon St. Malo had been generous. The more he did for St. Malo, the more the twisted inventor did for him. The Hound was very much his namesake, a loyal dog who found what was needed and brought it home—no excuses. Every now and then, Simon would psychologically dig into the Hound to remind him of who worked for whom, but the relationship remained a productive one.

The Hound leaned against the open front door and stared into the crackling fire, trying to think like the man who lived there.

Before the Hound heard the voice of one his hired hands, he heard the crunching snow beneath the man’s feet. It reminded him that before they left, they would need to brush the path between the doorway and the coach to erase any footprints.

“Sir,” whispered the voice behind him, “we’ve secured Watt and his daughter.”

“Excuse me?” said the Hound, peering over his shoulder with a glare that made the hired thug’s blood turn cold.

The thug stammered, “By—by—by secured the daughter, I mean we’ve delivered her to her mother’s house, as you asked, and all is fine.”

“Did she wake?” asked the Hound, his gravelly voice needing little volume to be heard clearly.

“No, she didn’t.”

The Hound nodded approval, looking back at the enchanting fire. “And the mother?”

“She appreciates your assistance in dealing with her ex,” replied the thug. “She’s got everything she needs to make her side of the story work.”

“When everyone wins, there’s no mystery to be solved,” the Hound said wistfully.

“There was, ah, an odd remark from the mother I thought I should mention,” said the thug.

The Hound stiffened and turned. He wasn’t especially tall, nor large, but he was broad and muscular, and had an intensity about him that could wilt a tree. “
And?
”

The thug nervously fumbled with his hands. “She appreciated you taking care of Maxwell and her son, of whom she’s not fond, it seems.”

The Hound turned on his heel, back toward the fire. “So that’s why everything didn’t quite fit together. He has a
son
. Why didn’t our little spy tell us that? Hmm.” He rubbed his reddish-brown beard. “Maybe she thought he’d gone somewhere else? Maybe someone tipped Watt off that we were coming and he made up his own story to cover why his son wasn’t here?”

“Why don’t we ask Watt?” asked the thug, trying to get on the boss’ good side. “He’s still conscious, somewhat.”

The Hound considered it, but decided to trust his gut. “He already blacked out twice at the sight of me, and I wouldn’t believe anything he says anyway. He could send us on a wild fox hunt. St. Malo will decide what to do with him. By the time they get answers—
if
they can—it will be too late for us. We will have failed, and whatever Watt is up to could have succeeded.”

The Hound stepped into the house. “I need to check things again, now that we know the son is missing. I’ll see you in the coach shortly,” he said, dismissing the thug. The Hound smiled secretly at the idea of riding around the kingdoms in expensive coaches, wearing fine clothes, eating exceptional food, and having impressive access to resources. Such luxuries facilitated his focus and dedication. Since LeLoup had died, his life had changed considerably.

Leading up to this evening, he’d taken time to gather information on Watt, before approaching the cleaning lady who spied for St. Malo. He’d then approached Watt’s ex-wife and struck a deal, gaining her support to convince authorities there was nothing out of the ordinary about Mister Watt suddenly being out of town. This afternoon, he’d hired some thugs—indirectly—in order to set fires across town, to keep authorities distracted.

From the moment the Hound had turned the key in the front door and walked in, everything had proceeded like clockwork. Not a side table or shoe was out of place, and if they had missed anything, the cleaning lady was due at seven in the morning sharp, and would remove any final signs of him and his team having been there.

The Hound had generously paid the cleaning lady two-thirds of the promised money; she’d only expected half. She was to be paid the rest in a week, when everything calmed down. However, he was certain that St. Malo intended her to have the same fate he suspected was in store for the thugs he’d hired. He didn’t like thinking about things like that—it bothered him and got in the way of getting a job done.

He went upstairs to double-check Maxwell’s room, making sure that everything that should’ve been packed as part of a long trip had been taken. Then, he went through the daughter’s bedroom one more time.

Finally, he entered the bedroom he’d thought was unused. The Hound checked under the bed, under the mattress, and all of the drawers. “Other than the lack of dust in some places, it looks like no one’s been living here. Smart. The boy’s probably traveling with a light pack,” he mused. The Hound drummed his fingers on the fine chestnut dresser. “I was hoping for a hint of where you’d sent him, Watt.”

He went back downstairs, sat on the ottoman, and warmed his hands by the fire. “What did you do with your notes and plans, Mister Watt? And where did you send your boy?” he asked himself.

The Hound looked around the room. He spotted the writing desk tucked in the corner and went over to it. After carefully going through everything, he went back to the ottoman, disappointed.

“What would I do with my life’s work in this situation? Would I fear more for my son’s life, burn all my stuff, and send him to a distant relative?” Staring into the fire a while, the Hound noticed something behind the logs. He got the poker and moved them around.

“You burned paper. That makes sense,” he mused, and paused. “I’d burn a lot of things, but I don’t think I’d burn my life’s work. St. Malo made it clear how important this is to you. You wouldn’t destroy everything.” He stood up. “You gave it… to your
son
… to take to someone. Perhaps…
ah
.” Satisfied with his deduction, the Hound slapped his knees and then stood.

With a final glance around, he turned and exited the town home. He carefully locked up, and then called over one of his thugs. “I need you to brush all around here—we want
no
sign of footprints. Do you understand?”

The thug nodded.

“Your money will be waiting for you at the tavern where we met earlier. Ask the bartender,” said the Hound. He stepped into the coach and closed the door.

Inside the coach, Maxwell Watt, tied up and with a large man at each side, stared at the Hound.

“Watt, I know where you’ve sent your son,” said the Hound, grinning menacingly.

CHAPTER SIX

Merry Solstice

It warmed Nikolas’ heart to see the large crowd that had gathered for Mineau’s first community Solstice celebration. He greeted and thanked every person who came forward with something to donate. Some apologized for the quality or number of gifts they were giving, and Nikolas reminded them no score was being kept, and that it was their act of generosity that was the important thing.