Page 47 of Carnival’s Playground

"He wants to shut down the main diesels during the finale," I say, my voice shaking with fury. "He's going to kill someone."

Carnival pulls his tactical knife from his boot sheath, the blade catching the light. "We take him together. Stay right on my shoulder."

"I'm not letting you out of my sight, Wyatt."

He keys his radio. "Renn, suspect's on foot in the generator alley. We're closing in from the north."

"Units are moving in," Renn answers.

Dutch circles around the front to cut off the midway access, and Petey follows him, leaving Carnival and me to plunge into the pitch-black corridor behind the equipment trailers. The air back here smells of cold grease, spilled diesel, and damp canvas. My breath comes in short, sharp bursts, and I can hear Carnival's boots crunching on the gravel just ahead of me.

We round the corner of the wardrobe trailer, and Carnival's flashlight beam catches him. A man is crouched over the main distribution panel of our primary two-hundred-kilowatt generator, his hands frantically wrenching at the heavy brass lugs that feed power to the big top. He wears a dark green canvas work hoodie, jeans caked in red clay, and heavy leather work gloves. His movements are fast, practiced, like he's done this a hundred times before.

"Step away from the panel!" Carnival roars, charging forward. "Get your hands on your head right now!"

The bastard doesn't freeze. He whips around, his face shadowed beneath his hood, and hurls a heavy steel pipe wrench straight at Carnival's skull. Carnival ducks hard, the iron whistling inches past his ear and smashing through the trailer window behind him with an explosion of glass. The suspect vaults over a stack of wooden cable spools and tears into the narrow prop storage alley behind the big top.

"Left!" I yell, right on his heels. "He's heading for the staging curtain!"

Carnival sprints through the narrow alley, dodging dangling animatronic skeletons, kicking aside stacks of foam tombstones, his heavy boots tearing through the sawdust. The guy's fast, but he's running scared, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

I'm right behind Carnival, my lungs burning, my legs screaming, but I don't slow down. I can't. Not when this bastard's been stalking us for weeks, not when he's tried to kill Marcy, not when he's about to plunge the big top into darkness with performers forty feet in the air.

"Carnival, he's heading for the back curtain!" I shout.

"I see him!"

The suspect bursts through the rear curtain into the open backstage staging area beneath the harsh halogen work lights. He skids to a stop, realizes he's boxed in by the locked equipment cages and the crew barriers, and spins around with wild, cornered fury in his eyes.

For a split second, I see his face clearly under the lights—hollow cheeks, thin lips, and a distinct, jagged scar running from his left nostril across his mouth. "Grady," I breathe, my stomach dropping. "Grady Fenn."

Carnival's already moving, closing the distance between them, his knife still in his hand. "Don't even think about it, Grady. You're done."

Grady's eyes dart around the staging area, looking for an exit, but there's nowhere to go. Dutch and Petey are blocking the midway access, Frank's coming up from the south, and Renn's units are closing in from the perimeter.

He's trapped.

And he knows it.

His hand shoots out, grabbing a heavy steel equipment case off a folding table, and he swings it in a vicious arc toward Carnival's chest.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CARNIVAL

He grabs a heavy steel equipment case off a folding table and swings it in a vicious arc toward my chest. I drop my shoulder, take the brunt of the blow across my upper arm, and drive all two hundred and twenty pounds of my body straight into his ribs. We crash to the dirt in a violent tangle of limbs, tools, and shattered props. The impact knocks the wind out of him, but he claws viciously at my face, trying to gouge my eyes. I throw a short, brutal right hook into his jaw, follow it with a knee across his thighs, and pin his right wrist hard against the gravel.

"Get the fuck off me!" He spits blood into the dirt.

I press my full weight into his chest until his ribs groan under the pressure. "Stay down before I snap your arm in two."

Avery steps out of the shadows, her heavy flashlight aimed straight between his eyes. The white beam illuminates his hollow cheeks, his thin lips, and the distinct, jagged scar running from his left nostril across his mouth. "Grady." Avery's voice drops like a lead weight. "Grady Fenn. You miserable sonofabitch."

The man on the ground stops thrashing, his chest heaving with ragged, bitter breaths as his bloodshot eyes lock onto hers.

"You worked this show for four straight years, Grady," Avery says, her voice shaking with disgust and raw betrayal. "Dutch treated you like family. You ate at our tables, fixed our rides, and you came back here to murder Marcy and burn this place to the ground?"

"Dutch threw me away like garbage!" Grady spits back, his teeth stained crimson. "Four years of busting my knuckles in the mud, and he replaced me with a cheap outside contractor because of a budget cut! Handed me a final check and told me to get off his property! I built this fucking show!"