I swallowed and cleared my throat. “I, uh, there were apples.” I told Thorin the rest, the bit about the orchard and the fire and how it had burned my hand.
“It sounds a little like Idun’s orchard,” Thorin said.
“I thought so too.” When he quirked an eyebrow, I shrugged. “What? My research assistant is missing, and I had some time on my hands. Would you have preferred that I stick my head in the sand?”
Thorin grinned. “That makes for an interesting mental image.”
“Not helpful.” I poked his shoulder. “Do you have any idea what it means? It makes no sense to me.”
Thorin shook his head. “I don’t know what it means either, but I assume we’ll find out soon enough.”
For a moment, Thorin and I stood in silence, my hand still gripped in his, but I blinked, and the moment passed. I pulled loose from his hold and backed away, eager to breathe air that didn’t smell like him. When I opened the bathroom door, Thorin took my hint and strode out to the living room.
I followed him out and found that Baldur and Val had changed into a matching set of Commando Ken outfits. They wore black cargo pants, black T-shirts, and black caps—possibly in an attempt to blend into the darkness outside. I had failed to notice before, but Thorin was dressed in similar attire.
“Here.” Thorin grabbed another black T-shirt from the kitchen counter and shoved it at me. “Put this on and meet us out front at the truck.”
I snatched the shirt and marched into the bathroom. The fabric had molded to every plane and angle of the men’s physiques, but if I knotted the hem around my hips, it looked slightly less like a trash bag on me. I braided my hair and pulled up the hood of my black sweatshirt. “Good as it’s going to get,” I said to the mirror. My reflection didn’t disagree, so I turned off the lights and hurried to catch up with the guys.
Chapter Eight
After an hour-and-a-half ride and a brief geography lesson from Baldur, I learned Helen’s warehouses were situated near the Mojave National Preserve, a federally owned wilderness composed of 1.6 million acres near the border of Nevada and Arizona.
“That’s neato and all,” I said, “but why would Helen take Nina to some warehouses out on the edge of nowhere?”
“It’s not an easy place to stumble on by accident or run away from on purpose,” Baldur said. “Desert for miles around. If you escaped, you might succumb to the elements before you lucked into an ATV or a hunter who was willing to help you out. It makes a good prison.”
“It makes a good place for us to die without anyone noticing, too. I learned that lesson at Oneida Lake.”
Speaking of the lake had the effect of naming an evil spirit. Everyone fell silent, and gooseflesh broke out on my arms. I wondered again about Skyla—where she was and if she was okay.
“Seriously,” I said. “All you’re going to achieve by this is to gratify Helen’s desires. The only things waiting for you at the end of this road are empty hopes or a trap. Probably both.”
Thorin slowed the SUV and turned it off the dirt path we had followed into the desert. The truck rolled to a stop behind a thatch of cacti and desert brush, and Thorin killed the engine and turned off the headlights.
“We’ve considered all that,” Baldur said. His flashlight bobbed in my direction as he bailed out of the truck. “But it’s a chance we have to take. This is the first solid lead I’ve had on Nina in decades.”
“You guys could be putting yourselves in danger—”
“Solina, don’t worry,” Val said, cutting into my objection. “We know the risks. We’ll be smart about it.”
Smart?Hardy har har. But I bit my tongue and took a fortifying breath. “Okay, what’s the plan?”
Thorin grimaced. “It’s one thing to keep you close, Sunshine, and quite another to lead you into the heart of the lion’s den. Stay here, be safe, and if we don’t come back—”
“Run for your life,” Val said.
No valid reason existed for me to insist they take me along. Immortal blood did not flow through my veins. Some goals and schemes might have been worth the risk of losing my life, but walking into semiobvious traps laid by Helen was not one of them. “All right. I’ll wait here. But this is the part in the movie I always fast-forward through. I hate the anticipation.”
Val squeezed my shoulder. “We’ll be back before you know it.”
Thorin hung back as Val and Baldur started down the pathway. Without a word, he dangled the SUV keys before my face. I snatched them and stuffed them in my pocket. He winked at me, turned on his heel, and caught up with the others.
The three men’s figures moved away from the truck and dissolved into the darkness. I climbed into the Yukon and pulled the door closed, making sure to lock it before stretching out across the bench seat. After a few minutes of staring up through the aptly named moon roof, my stomach growled, and I cursed myself for not having asked for a food stop on the way. I had eaten nothing since… I couldn’t remember, exactly. The ghost of a low-blood-sugar headache haunted my temples. When the scheme ended, if we all lived through it, I intended to insist on a burger stand or a taco truck or a freaking 7-Eleven hot dog, even if it meant we had to drive all the way back to Vegas to get it.
“Solina, wake up!” Val pounded on my window and jolted me from my daze.
I hadn’t slept—too much worry kept me from dozing off—but I had zoned out, staring into the sky, looking at the moon and thinking of Mani and tacos.
“Solina!”
I popped the lock, and Val flung open the door. “What happened?” I scrubbed my eyes and peered into the darkness behind him. “Where is everybody?”
“It’s gone to hell.” Val scrambled into the driver’s seat. He riffled through the glove box and flipped down the sun visor.
“What are you doing?” I crawled over the center console into the passenger seat. “What do you mean it’s gone to hell?”
“Helen’s guards were waiting for us when we got there.” Val leaned down between his legs and rolled up the floor mat. Then he reached over and rolled up mine.
Well, duh! I didn’t say. “What happened to Thorin and Baldur?”
“They’ve been taken. I’m going to get you out of here if I can find the keys.”
I had the keys but wasn’t going to give them to Val without getting the full story from him first. I scrutinized the darkness again, looking for signs of pursuit. “Are they chasing you?”
“No, Thorin and Baldur got ahead of me. I stopped to take a piss. By the time I caught up, they were already out. Helen’s guards had used something on them. They were knocked out.”
I threw open my door and jumped out. “So, you think they used a tranquilizer? Like they were wild animals or something? Is that even possible? It’s so, so… absurd.” The Valkyries had done the same to me, but I was mostly human, and they had wanted to take me alive. Helen would most likely prefer to dispose of Thorin. Baldur, however, she would keep, so maybe drugs made sense, for the time being. I had to get to Thorin before Helen changed her mind and utilized something deadlier, such as Odin’s spear.
Val leaped from the truck and jogged around to my side, using his body to block my forward progress. “C’mon, Solina. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“We can’t leave them.” I shoved past Val, went to the Yukon’s back end, and opened the rear hatch to dig through stacks of luggage and a toolbox. Eventually, I found a tiny LED flashlight in a roadside emergency kit.
“They’re big boys.” Val positioned himself in my way again. “They can handle themselves. They knew the risks. Thorin would want us to leave.”
“If the roles were reversed, he wouldn’t leave us behind.”
Val stiffened, and his voice took on a harsh edge. “He wouldn’t leave you because any time you’re at risk, he’s at risk. He protects you out of pure self-interest. If you think he’ll love you for this…” Val didn’t finish the thought, but I got his meaning.
Not for Val, but for my own sake, I paused and thought about my motives. If my softer feelings for Thorin, whatever they might have been, were inspiring my actions, then I had to stop. Val was right. I couldn’t risk my life on the expectation of receiving some future preference from Thorin. My motives had to be mine alone.
I wouldn’t go out of my way to help Baldur find Nina, but I wouldn’t feed him to Helen, either—same for Thorin. My reason for going into the desert was no longer about participating in a simple treasure hunt for a pot of gold I had no desire to find. My motives were now about the lives and deaths of people I cared about—circumstances that did not tolerate apathy. “That’s not what this is about. It’s about right and wrong. If they die because of my indifference, that would be wrong.”
Val shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s a compound full of armed men up there. Thorin and Baldur took out a handful of them barehanded before someone put them down with a dart gun, as if they were beasts. How do you expect to do any better than them?”
“I cannot stand by and let someone die simply to save my own hide,” I said. Losing Thorin meant losing my greatest ally against Helen. Val had demonstrated strength and fortitude when it suited him, but his chances of defeating Helen on his own inspired little confidence in me. He needed Thorin as much as I did.
Val gritted his teeth. “You are the stubbornest, most pig-headed—”
