Page 31 of Carnival’s Playground

I shove my way through the frantic bodies, using my shoulders and forearms to cleave a path straight to the jammed mechanism. Frank's there, heaving on a rusted crowbar with veins bulging out of his neck, but the steel gears are locked dead.

"The track's fouled!" Frank desperately roars over the screaming crowd. "Something's wedged deep inside the cog housing!"

"Get the fuck out of the way!" I snarl, grabbing the heavy five-foot iron pry bar from his hands and jamming the beveled tip directly into the drive teeth. My hands are slick with sweat, shaking from adrenaline. I force myself to focus past the panic clawing at my chest.

Above the roar of the mob, Avery's sharp, authoritative voice suddenly booms through the outdoor loudspeakers, cutting through the panic like a razor blade.

"Attention Grimlight guests! The main exit is experiencing a mechanical delay! Follow the bright orange lanterns along the east midway to the secondary gates! East gates are wide open and clear! Move east now!"

The tail of the crowd hesitates, turning toward the blazing orange string lights Avery just triggered along the eastern fence line. The suffocating pressure against the front gate drops by half, and I feel a surge of relief so strong it makes my hands shake worse.

"Now, Wyatt! Pull!" Dutch roars, grabbing the top rail to brace the frame.

I plant my heavy combat boots against the concrete footer, lock my arms around the iron pry bar, and throw all two hundred and twenty pounds of my weight into the lever. Every muscle in my back burns with white-hot strain, my teeth clenching until blood tastes in my mouth. I think of Avery, of Marcy, of every person counting on me to get this right, and I pull harder than I've ever pulled anything in my life.

With a deafening shriek of shearing metal, the obstruction gives way.

The heavy steel gate violently snaps along its track, rolling wide open with a massive clang. The bottleneck instantly breaks, and the trapped crowd surges through the wide exit into the parking lot without another casualty.

"Keep moving calmly to your vehicles!" Frank shouts, guiding the remaining guests through the cleared gap.

I drop the heavy pry bar onto the gravel, dragging in huge, burning gulps of air. Sweat stings my eyes, and my hands won't stop shaking. My whole body feels like it's vibrating with leftover adrenaline and fear I can't quite shake. Dutch collapses against the ticket booth, his chest heaving, his face gray with exhaustion and blind fury.

"Look what was jammed in the primary track," Dutch roughly spits, using his heavy boot to kick a piece of metal out of the drive housing.

I crouch in the dirt, shining my light on the object. It's a solid six-inch segment of heavy iron pipe, cut cleanly with a bandsaw and coated in industrial lithium grease so it would slide smoothly into the gears before seizing the entire drive train under load.

"That didn't fall out of a toolbox," I darkly state. My voice comes out dead and deadly, rage burning cold in my chest, mixing with the fear still churning in my gut. "It was measured and planted to trigger a crowd crush during the evening rush."

"The sheriff's already on his way," Dutch furiously growls, kicking the ticket booth wall with a sickening thud. "I don't care what it costs, we're putting every deputy in this county on this perimeter."

"Good," I flatly answer, rising to my feet and scanning the thinning midway, looking for her. My chest doesn't ease until I spot her blonde hair.

Avery comes running down the sawdust path, her hair wild around her flushed face, her eyes wide with frantic concern as she scans the gate. The second she spots me standing in one piece, the fierce, terrifying mask she wears cracks wide open.

She doesn't slow down. She runs straight into my chest, her arms wrapping around my neck with a force that knocks me back half a step, and I catch her, holding on just as tight. My hands shake where they grip her waist.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AVERY

The scent of his sweat, leather, and machine oil hits me as my face buries into Wyatt's neck. I hold onto him with every shred of strength in my hands, my fingers digging into the heavy denim of his jacket, my entire body shaking with pure, unadulterated aftershock. I can't stop shaking, and I don't care who sees. I can't breathe right, can't think past the image of that gate collapsing on top of him.

"You okay, spitfire?" he murmurs into my hair, his massive arms locking around my waist and hauling me flush against him until my boots barely touch the dirt.

"I'm fine," I raggedly choke out against his throat, refusing to let him go, needing to feel him solid and whole under my hands. My voice cracks on the lie. "I saw the crowd surge. I thought the whole damn gate was gonna collapse on top of you."

"Takes more than a jammed fence to put me down," he dryly whispers, though his hands are gripping my waist so tight it bruises, his own chest heaving with heavy, ragged breaths. He's not as calm as he's pretending to be, and somehow that makes me feel less like I'm falling apart alone.

Dutch and Frank are fifty feet away, conferring with two county sheriff cruisers that just rolled onto the lot with their red and blue lights painting the trees in violent flashes. Petey's holding the greased iron pipe in a plastic evidence bag, pointing toward the tree line where we found the fresh photograph.

Wyatt gently sets me back on my boots, but he doesn't step away. He cups my face with both of his large, calloused hands, tilting my head up until my eyes are trapped by his intense gray gaze. There's something raw in his expression, something vulnerable and scared that makes my breath catch because I've never seen him look like this.

"We need to talk," he deeply rumbles, his voice dropping below the noise of the idling police cruisers. "Right now."

"Dutch needs us to give a statement to the deputies," I say, gesturing toward the flashing lights. I'm stalling and we both know it.

"Dutch can handle the preliminaries for ten minutes," Wyatt states, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the dark, quiet alley between the main equipment trailers, away from the cops, the crew, and the flashing lights.