Page 19 of Carnival’s Playground

"That'll take hours." Dutch drags a hand down his face, looking every bit as exhausted as I feel.

"Then we start now." I'm already reaching for my clipboard, mind sorting through everything that needs checking before I even finish the thought. "I'll pull the full rigging schedule. Carnival, you take the platform inspection since you're already up there in spirit," I direct, falling back into work mode.

"Funny." But he's moving toward the ladder again anyway, no hesitation despite what just happened forty feet above our heads.

"Carnival." I catch his arm before he climbs, voice dropping low enough that it's just for him. "Be careful up there," I plead, unable to keep the worry from bleeding through.

"Always am." He covers my hand with his again, brief and warm. "You did good today, Avery. Calling the crew back, keeping everyone steady. That took nerve," he tells me, and the praise settles something tight in my chest.

"Don't get used to me being impressive." I echo his own words back at him, and something eases in his face, a smile breaking through the tension.

"Wouldn't dream of it." He starts climbing, and I watch him go, heart still not quite settled from the last hour, still not quite ready to examine what exactly it means that watching him forty feet in the air scared me more than almost anything has in a long, long time.

CHAPTER TEN

CARNIVAL

The platform thirty feet up still stinks of ozone and cooked rubber. I crouch on the narrow steel grating, letting my flashlight beam cut through the haze of dust hanging under the big top peak, and run my bare thumb over the main tension clamp. The damn thing nearly dropped Marcy onto the hard-packed dirt an hour ago. The second my skin drags across the metal, my gut becomes cold.

It's not a stress fracture. It's not metal fatigue from hauling trailers across state lines. The groove is razor-straight, cut deep and clean into the load-bearing curve with a hardened steel blade or a bastard file.

"Avery," I shout down into the shadows of the center ring, keeping my tone dead and level so the hands on the ground don't panic. "Get your ass up here."

"I'm elbow-deep in the lighting schedule, Carnival." Her voice echoes up through the rigging, followed by the rattle of the aluminum access ladder. Her blonde head pops over the edge of the secondary platform below me, strands falling loose from her messy braid. "What broke now?"

"Nothing broke," I tell her, watching her plant her work boots on the rungs with that reckless confidence that makes my pulse hammer in my throat every damn time. "Somebody helped it along."

"What the hell does that mean?" She hauls herself onto the high platform, breathing rough from the climb, and drops to her knees beside me.

"Look right here." I tilt the flashlight beam, keeping my hand steady so she can see the raw, shiny groove eating halfway through the clamp. "That's not weather. That's not bad luck. Somebody took a tool to the steel and scored it so it'd hold dead weight during line checks, then snap the second an aerialist hit dynamic load."

"Jesus." Her face loses every drop of color under the work lights. Her fingers hover over the cut, trembling just enough that she balls them into a tight fist against her thigh. "Marcy was in the air without a net. If the secondary safety hadn't caught the cable, she'd have broken her neck."

"She'd be dead on the sawdust," I correct bluntly, sitting back on my boot heels while my mind rips through every bastard who's had clearance to climb this rig in the last forty-eight hours. "This was planned out. Calculated."

"Dutch needs to see this right damn now." Avery's already twisting around toward the ladder, her jaw set hard, every line of her body wound tight as piano wire. "If someone touched the high rig, they didn't stop with one clamp. We've got to tear this entire place apart."

"Right behind you." I drop down the rungs after her, my blood running hot and vicious. I know what sabotage looks like. I've seen rivals tamper with bike brakes and cut fuel lines back when my old club was running territorial wars, and the stink of bad intentions is identical every single time.

We find Dutch behind the equipment trailers, leaning against a stack of wooden cable spools while he drinks lukewarm black coffee from a chipped mug. He takes one look at Avery's chalk-white face and my expression, and he dumps the cup into the dirt.

"Spit it out," Dutch barks, his heavy brows pulling down into a scowl.

"Main aerial tension clamp was scored with a hardened file," I state without softening a syllable. "Deliberate cut on the stress point. It was rigged to fail during rehearsal."

"Say that again, Wyatt." Dutch steps right into my space, his gravelly voice dropping down into a dangerous rumble.

"You heard him the first time, Dutch." Avery steps in right beside me, her shoulder pressing hard against my leather cut. "It wasn't an accident. Someone tried to drop Marcy onto the arena floor."

Dutch lets out a raw curse, dragging both calloused palms down his weathered face. For a second, the man looks every one of his sixty years, the lines around his mouth digging deep with pure fury. "Show me the rig."

We drag him back into the big top and up the ladder until his nose is two inches from the ruined clamp. He runs a thick, scarred thumb over the cut, his teeth grinding loud enough to hear over the distant hum of the north generator.

"Small file or a rotary blade," Dutch roughly mutters, his eyes flashing like flint. "Fresh cut, too. The metal hasn't even started to oxidize in this humidity."

"Which means whoever did it was standing right where we're standing sometime between sunrise and afternoon walkthroughs," I logically point out, leaning over the safety rail to scan the empty bleachers below. "They walked right past our crew, climbed the ladder, did the work, and climbed back down."

"Somebody working right beside us." Avery crosses her arms over her chest, her knuckles turning white against her denim jacket. "Smiling at us by the coffee pot while they rig death traps."