For an innocent man, Boykin had a top-of-the-line security system.
Jonah entered through a basement window. After a quick visual check, he slid through, feetfirst, twisting to force his shoulders through the narrow opening. He landed in near darkness, in a fighting stance, breathing in the scent of mold and old paper, fresh sawdust and shellac. Then pulled his sword in after him.
The light from the window dimly illuminated the room he was in. It was a woodshop, with a workbench at one end, a Peg-Board with tools hung in neat rows. Wood shavings littered the floor, and sawdust coated everything. Jonah fought back a sneeze.
Large table-mounted tools lined one wall. Jonah didn’t know much about woodworking, but he recognized the lathe and the band saw. Lengths of fine woods hung in racks along the wall or stood in bins by the door. Was this Studio Greenwood’s new digs?
Light seeped under a door to his right, and muted sound. Somebody was working late in the basement.
Jonah soft-footed it to the door and cracked it open, noticing the thick padding on the inside. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword as he eased the door open and peered in.
It wasn’t Tyler Boykin at all. It was a girl. She sat on a tall stool, half turned away from him, head bent over her work, so he couldn’t see her face. She was tuning a guitar, swearing under her breath. Her hair was the color of scorched caramel, thick and wavy, tied back with a bandanna, her skin three shades lighter. She wore stained jeans, work boots, and a plaid flannel shirt two sizes too big.
Jonah searched for a Weirstone and found one, but his read on it had the muddled, diffuse quality he associated with savants.
A savant? Here? This wasn’t in the script.
Three unfinished guitars stood in stands, glued and clamped up. Posters of old blues singers lined the walls.
Her flat-top acoustic, he could see, had a sound-hole preamp installed. It was feeding into a mixer and then into a laptop on her workbench. What kind of guitar was it? The letters SG were blazoned on the fingerboard. He didn’t recognize the brand.
The girl twisted the tuning keys, plucked at the strings. Out of tune. Angry, discordant notes struck Jonah’s ears, nearly bringing him to his knees. His stomach churned, and he thought his head would split open. Another quick adjustment, and the notes that now cascaded from the instrument were perfectly in tune. Aligned like stars in a perfect universe.
She leaned forward, reaching for a flat pick on the workbench, and Jonah got his first good look at her face.
Her profile was less than classic: high cheekbones, her nose a bit overlarge for the rest of her face, lush lips, bottomless brown eyes. She was beautiful, and yet there was something feral about her, something enchantingly off-key. Hardwired wild.
Recognition flamed through him. He’d seen her before . . . but where?
And then it came to him. She was Emma, the pool-shark savant from Club Catastrophe. But what was she doing in Tyler Greenwood’s basement? Did she work for him? Had the sorcerer sent her to Club Catastrophe for a reason?
She began to play, bending her head over the fingerboard, eyes closed, silently moving her lips the way guitarists sometimes do. In that instant, Jonah was lost.
He had never heard music like this. It sluiced over him, carrying away every troubled thought, filling his heart with hope and joy. He forgot everything: the sorcerer upstairs, the mission, his own imperfection, and the shame and bitterness that came with it. Jonah listened, the music dripping into him like a mainline drug, until the song was over.
He rested his forehead against the doorframe. He wished he could leave her be. There was no need for this girl— whoever she was—to be involved in what was about to happen. With any luck, between the soundproofing and her own music, he could escape without her hearing a thing.
But leaving now would violate a cardinal rule of these operations: Secure the premises first. Avoid any nasty surprises.
Jonah took a breath. Let it out.
And pushed the door open, all the way.
Chapter Twenty-one
After Midnight
Emma heard her father’s step on the stairs. “Are you down here again, Emma?”
“I never left,” she said. “I’ll come up pretty soon. I need to let these set up a bit anyway.” She surveyed the guitars, lined up in stands against the wall—the first she’d produced in her new shop. They weren’t really guitars, yet—just tops and bottoms of maple and spruce, bookmatched and joined, then glued up and clamped. They didn’t have their songs in them yet, as Sonny Lee liked to say. Used to say.
“You do beautiful work,” Tyler said, now from the foot of the stairs. “And you have a great hand with the guitar. Your grandpa would be proud of you.”
“He was proud of me,” Emma said. This is the first thing— the only thing—I’ve ever been good at.
Tyler sat down on the third step, dropping his hands between his knees as if he didn’t quite know what to do with them. Emma knew she still made him nervous, but she just wasn’t sure what to do about it. “Didn’t you say you had some algebra homework?” he said finally.
“Come on, now, it’s Friday night.” Forcing away the mem ory of other Friday nights, Emma lifted the Oscar Schmidt Galiano twelve-string from its stand, and propped a foot on Sonny Lee’s stool. She brushed her fingers over the steel strings, and they harmonized—bold, bright, and brassy like a church choir.
Her fingers found the familiar chords of “Don’t You Lie to Me.” At least she could play the blues—the appropriate sound track for her life right now. All she had to look forward to was month after month of failure.
It just seems like there ought to be a place I fit into, where I can be myself.
She needed a world without so many standards and restrictions and expectations—one more friendly to a girl who thought differently from other people. I need a world with a frontier, Emma thought. A wilderness I can go to, when I need it.
For a while, that frontier had been Memphis. It was a world she fit into, cradled by the call and response of twelvebar blues. But it had turned out to be a world with no future. “Emma,” Tyler said, bringing her back to now. “Algebra?”
“I’m sorry,” Emma whispered. “I could give up all my Friday nights to algebra, but I don’t know that it would make a difference. It’s just gibberish to me. You’ve put a lot of time in, and I have, and it seems like I work harder than anybody else, but—”
“No,” her father said. “I’m sorry. When you’re young, you don’t think about anybody but yourself. You think the usual rules don’t apply to you. You do things that you regret for the rest of your life. Your mama and I . . . we . . .” And then he stopped, as he always did, never quite finishing the apology.
He’s not talking about me, Emma thought. He’s talking about himself. Was he sorry he’d turned his only child over to Sonny Lee for raising? Because now the two of them were all but strangers. Maybe if she’d had a more regular kind of childhood, she wouldn’t feel like a fish out of water all the time.
Tyler stood. “All right, Emma, I’ll leave you be. I need to get some practice in for tomorrow night. But don’t stay up too late, even if it’s Friday night. Get some sleep, and tomorrow, I want you to at least give that homework a try. I’m gonna try to do better than I have done. Just don’t ever think I’m disappointed in you.” He rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then slowly, wearily, clumped up the stairs.
Emma kept playing until the sound of her father’s steps receded. For a long moment, she rested her cheek in the curve of the guitar, feeling the sweet, nonjudgmental kiss of lacquered wood. Thinking about Friday nights in Memphis in the steamy summertime.
She heard the music start up again upstairs, the visceral thud of Tyler’s bass guitar. Knowing Tyler, he’d be at it for a while.
Emma settled the Galiano back into its stand. Slipping down from the stool, she crossed the workshop, unlatched a case, and lifted out another guitar.
This one wasn’t vi
ntage. This one she’d made the previous summer—one of two she still owned that were entirely her work. The other two she’d sold through Sonny Lee’s shop under the label Studio Greenwood, since she didn’t want anyone to mistake them for authentic Greenwoods. Sonny Lee’s guitars commanded prices of thousands of dollars, and she was just getting started.
Sonny Lee’s maker’s mark was an elaborate G inlaid in ebony and mother-of-pearl on the fret board. Emma had come up with her own logo—a simple S and G, block letters, burned into the head.
She retuned into an open G, plugged into her workshop amp, and played, pouring her frustration into the music. Head bent, eyes closed, she played, chewing on the notes the way the old blues guitarists did, ripping off bits of herself and putting them into the music. Spilling it all.
When she looked up again, the door to the dirty room was open.
A boy stood in the doorway—or maybe a man—wearing a mask, a hooded sweatshirt, and jeans. From his black leather gloves to his black boots, every inch of skin was covered, save the upper part of his face. It was almost as if he were trying to hide in his clothes.
And yet . . . somehow she knew that she’d seen him before. It was more the effect he had on her than anything about his appearance. It was like he gave off a scent that made her want to run headlong into trouble.
He stood, framed in light, like a saint in a medieval painting. But anybody who breaks into your basement in black leather and a mask is no saint.
You should be afraid, said the practical voice in her head. You should be screaming. Or running. But Emma did neither of those things. She sat, transfixed, as he stalked, catlike, across the room toward her. Though he was broad-shouldered and muscular, he moved with a dancer’s grace. Up close, she saw something poking up over his shoulder. The hilt of a massive sword. He wasn’t looking at her, though. He was looking at her guitar.
“I’ve never heard a guitar like that before,” he said, running long fingers over the binding. There was a player’s knowledge in his touch. “Is it custom work?”
Emma looked down at the guitar, resting across her knees, as if she’d never seen it before. Fingered the maker’s mark on the head, the S and G. And could not speak to save her life.
A masked boy had broken into her basement with a sword. Apparently so he could talk about guitars.
She looked up at his face again. About all she could see were his eyes, but his eyes were enough.
This boy actually looked at her. Looked and knew and didn’t judge. A fragile thread of connection shimmered between them. It was that, and his voice, more than his physical beauty, that drew her in. In fact, she couldn’t see his physical beauty, but she knew it was there, under his clothes.
Under. His. Clothes. Warmth rushed into Emma’s cheeks. “Do I know you?” she whispered.
“No,” he said quickly. “You don’t. And you don’t want to.” He studied the guitar, as if to memorize every detail.
Emma wished he would look at her in that hungry way.
“The guitar,” he said softly. “Where did you get it?”
“I built it,” she said, running her fingers over the mirrorlike finish.
“You built it,” he repeated, shaking his head. He glanced around the shop. “I guess I should have figured that out. Are there more like it?”
“I’ve made four,” Emma said. “I’ve sold two of them.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” she said, the spell he’d spun fraying a bit. “What are you doing here?”
“But . . . you’re a savant,” he said.
“A what?” This boy was just about as ADD as she was. But somehow she just kept right on answering his questions.
“Who else is here?” he asked.
“My father,” Emma said, apprehension raising the hair on the back of her neck.
“What’s your name?”
“Emma Greenwood.”
“Tyler Greenwood is your father?” He said it like that was the worst news possible.
“Well,” Emma said, “he goes by Boykin now.”
His shoulders slumped, picking up weight.
He doesn’t want to hurt me, Emma thought. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. But he’s going to hurt me anyway.
“What’s your name?” Emma said.
He hesitated, a fraction of a second. Then said, “Zorro.” His eyes had fixed on the guitar again.
“Are you here to steal a guitar or what?” she asked bluntly.
“Steal a . . . ? No.” He shook his head. “But . . . may I give it a try?” he asked, almost shyly.
Mutely, she extended it toward him. He took it, flipped it around, and rested one foot on the cross brace of Emma’s stool. Fitting his fingers onto the frets, he brushed his other hand across the strings. Sound rippled out, like water over stone, sweeping her along. She spun helplessly in its current, unable to gain footing. He played a few riffs—bits of rockand-roll standards. Then a haunting instrumental Emma hadn’t heard before.
When he’d finished, he closed his eyes, shivering, savor ing each note as it died away. “It’s like sex, isn’t it?” Emma said, her mouth, as always, running ahead of good sense. She clapped both hands over her mouth, too late.
For a moment, the joy faded from his eyes. Then he laughed. “Yes,” he said. “It’s just like sex.”
Desperate to change the subject, Emma said, “What was that last piece? I’ve never heard it.”
“My brother wrote it,” the boy said, handing back the guitar.
“Well, he has a gift.”
“He does.” The boy nodded, his expression softening into unguarded love.
This boy would not hurt me. This boy could never hurt me.
“I never saw anybody play guitar with gloves on before.” Emma set the guitar aside, on the workbench.
“I like to challenge myself.”
“You going to tell me why you’re here, or not?” Maybe it was a risky thing to ask, but she couldn’t stand the suspense anymore.
Zorro winced. “Right,” he said. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out a bundle of cording and a pair of handcuffs. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “The thing is, I’m going to have to tie you up.”
Well, that broke the spell for sure.
“Oh, no,” Emma said, sliding off the stool, both feet hitting with a thud. “You don’t.” She ran for the stairs, but the boy moved impossibly fast, easily intercepting her.
He caught her about the waist, pulling her back against him, speaking low and fast, his breath warm on her neck. “I won’t hurt you, Emma, I promise I won’t hurt you. Just let me do this.” His voice was like Southern Comfort—smooth and sweet and just as potent. As he talked, he turned her so she faced the wall, bringing her hands behind her back with the ease of long practice.
He’s done this before, Emma thought, her head swimming. He’s one of those serial killers. The kind that sweet-talk you into opening your door.
He kept right on talking. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, but this is the best way to make sure you don’t get hurt. I just need a little uninterrupted time with your father.”
She wanted to float on the current of that voice, like a chip of wood in a river at flood.
I need to find a way to stop it.
Emma slammed her head back, shooting up from the balls of her feet, feeling a satisfying crunch as her skull hit his nose. His voice stopped, his iron grip relaxed, and she ripped free, hurling herself toward the stairs.
She stumbled, though, and he caught her before she got there and dragged her back, into the dirty room, one gloved hand over her mouth, pressing her tightly against his body to prevent any further head-butting. He pushed her to the floor next to the band saw, trying to pin her with one hand, but she rolled onto her back, gouged at his eyes, ripped at his mask, kneed him in the groin—used every street-fighting trick she knew to hurt him all while he seemed to be doing his best to get her tied up without hurting her.
She screa
med bloody murder, too. Likely Tyler couldn’t hear her with his music going, but it did dilute Zorro’s voice a little.
In the end, she lay on her side on the basement floor, her cheek in the sawdust, breathing in that familiar scent, hands bound together behind her, feet bound, too, and handcuffed to the leg of the band-saw table, enraged and still swearing.
Was this what Tyler had been so worried about? Had she somehow brought trouble straight to her father’s door after all this time?
“What do you want with Tyler?” Emma demanded while Zorro was still fussing with the cords. “What are you going to do to him? You’d better not hurt him.”
Zorro’s hands stopped moving. “I don’t want to hurt him,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “I don’t plan to.”
“Then promise me you won’t,” Emma said.
“Can you breathe okay? Are you reasonably comfortable?” Zorro asked. He wasn’t nearly as charming now that he had her tied up.
“Promise me,” Emma repeated, tears stinging her eyes.
“Hopefully this won’t take too long,” Zorro said. He stood, and left, closing the door softly behind him.
Chapter Twenty-two
Melee
Jonah mounted the stairs, already dogged by misgivings. He’d wanted this rogue operation to be clean and uncomplicated, and already it was getting messy. There was no longer a clear win to be had, here. If Greenwood knew something, Emma would pay a price. If he didn’t, well, Jonah was back where he started.
But now that he was on this path, he had to follow through. He’d risked a lot already, and he needed to come away with something or this visit would only send Greenwood on the run again.
A wall of sound hit him when he opened the basement door—music, amped up high. It struck Jonah that Greenwood might be jamming with his band. That would be just his luck.
Jonah followed the sound, through the kitchen lined with ancient appliances, the sink piled high with unwashed dishes. Through the dining room and down the center hall to the back of the house.
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