Page 21 of Carnival’s Playground

When Avery finally drops her heavy wrench into her tool bag and sits flat on the dirt floor of the haunt maze, her shoulders sag with sheer exhaustion.

"That's the last junction box," she heavily sighs, wiping a streak of black grease from her cheek with the back of her sleeve. "Nothing else tampered with on this side."

"For now," I add, dropping down beside her, leaning back against a plywood partition so my shoulder takes her weight when she tilts toward me.

"Whoever's doing this wants us broken," she quietly says, staring at the hanging plastic skeletons swaying in the draft. "They want Dutch ruined, and they don't care if people die to make it happen. That's a special kind of evil."

"They picked the wrong crew to push around," I say, reaching over to push a stray lock of hair behind her ear. My knuckles brush the soft skin of her jaw, and she doesn't flinch away. She leans into the touch instead.

"Thank you," she softly says, looking right into my eyes. "For climbing the rig for Marcy. For finding that clamp. For not treating me like I'm made of glass when the bottom drops out."

"You're about as fragile as a steel crowbar, Avery," I quietly tell her, my voice dropping lower than it should. "You ran straight up that ladder behind me without blinking. Takes real grit."

"We make a hell of a team, biker."

"Hell of a team," I agree, letting my thumb linger against the warm line of her throat. Her breath hitches, her lips parting slightly in the shadows, and for five long seconds the whole damn circus, the saboteur, and the cold night vanish into the heat sparking between us.

Then Dutch's radio blares on my hip, harsh and loud, demanding a final headcount at the main office.

The spell shatters. Avery blinks, pulling back with a breathless little laugh, and scrambles to her feet while brushing sawdust off the seat of her jeans.

"Duty calls," she says, her tone trying to find its usual sassy edge, though her eyes are still dark with the heat we just stepped back from.

"Yeah," I answer, climbing up after her, my chest tight as an overtuned snare drum. "Duty calls."

We walk back across the dark, silent midway together, past the locked iron gates and the dead rides, but all I can feel is the phantom imprint of her pulse against my thumb, and the cold certainty that the bastard trying to ruin this place is going to have to go through me first.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AVERY

The sun creeps over the treeline like it's hesitant to look at the mess we're standing in. I lean against the tailgate of an equipment truck near the main gates, clutching a tin mug of black coffee that has already gone ice-cold, staring at the empty gravel parking lot.

No school buses. No parents dragging kids toward the ticket booth. No smell of fried funnel cake or roasted peanuts drifting through the chilly October wind. Just dead silence, broken only by the crunch of boots on gravel as crew members walk their assigned grid lines with flashlights and clipboards.

"Drink this before you freeze your ass off."

Carnival steps up beside me, broad-shouldered and solid as a concrete wall, and trades my cold mug for a steaming paper cup he must have just pulled from the mess tent. He smells like strong coffee, engine oil, and the crisp autumn air, a combination that has no business making my stomach flip the way it does.

"Thanks," I quietly say, wrapping both hands around the hot cup and letting the warmth bleed into my stiff fingers. "You look like hell."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, spitfire," he dryly replies, rubbing a big, calloused hand over the dark stubble covering his jaw. His gray eyes are rimmed with red, but they're sharp as broken glass. "Did you sleep at all?"

"Maybe forty minutes before my brain started replaying that sliced wire on the fog machine," I honestly admit, taking a bitter sip. "What is the schedule for today?"

"Full teardown and re-inspection of the entire big top layout," he explains, tapping the metal clipboard tucked under his arm. "Dutch wants every single bolt checked with a torque wrench. Petey and Frank are re-rigging the aerial cables with fresh hardware from the reserve shed. You and I have the secondary power lines and the midway junction boxes."

"Joy," I mutely grumble, pushing off the truck and falling into stride beside him.

We spend the next four hours on our knees in the dirt, popping open heavy steel junction boxes, tracing every single heavy-duty cable from the main generator feeds out to the game booths and ride tracks. I check every terminal, tug on every ground wire, and test every circuit with my multimeter.

Nothing. Not a single nick in the rubber. Not a loose screw. No trace of sabotage anywhere along the southern corridor.

"This is bullshit," I sharply snap around noon, dropping my screwdriver into the dirt with a hollow clatter and sitting back on my heels.

Carnival glances up from the breaker panel he's probing with his test leads. "Which part?"

"The fact that everything is completely damn normal," I loudly say, gesturing wildly at the tidy rows of black wires spread around our knees. "Last night, someone tried to drop Marcy from the rafters and turn our haunt walk into an electric chair. Today, every single bolt is tight and every wire is pristine. It's making me crazy."