Lace & Lead

He sat her down beside him on the couch and wrapped her in a tight embrace. “Honey, I don’t know what the hell your dad did to get Stone on his back, but until I figure it out, I need to know you’re safe.”

She swallowed, but her voice was even as she asked, “So once it’s over, you’ll come for me?”

He didn’t respond immediately. Gods knew what he wanted to say, but would it be safe for her? For his men? His responsibilities weighed heavily on his shoulders.

She swallowed. “In the books, the man she loves always comes to find her.”

He froze. She wouldn’t look at him, but that soft comment hung in the air between them.

There was no good response. He ignored her confession, choosing instead to kiss her until she crawled on top of him and her hair hung around his face like a curtain. They lay like that, making out like a couple of teenagers, until the suns began setting, casting the room with shadows.

She finally shifted against him. “You said you needed to know what my father did to upset Stone.”

“The more data I can gather, the sooner this will end.”

“It might have to do with the mine.”

Peirce perked up. “The mine?”

She rubbed her arms, as if suddenly cold. To his surprise, she lifted her chin and looked him square in the eyes. “Yes. Plymouth’s iron mine. The accident was my father’s fault.”

Chapter 8

Peirce was watching her with wary caution. “Explain?”

She leaned back from him, curling up on the opposite end of the couch. “The mine was my father’s latest investment venture. He was trying to make back the money he lost from my mother’s treatments.”

“Treatments?”

“Gamma poisoning.”

Peirce winced and her heart swelled from his compassion. “How long?” he asked quietly.

“She fought it for three years.”

Emmaline tried to brush past those memories. The stream of doctors in and out, her father’s increasingly erratic behaviour since there was no woman keeping him in check, the constant hum and beep of equipment in her mother’s normally peaceful room.

“I’m sorry,” Peirce murmured. “I’ve heard it’s hell.”

“It is.” She looked down at her hands. Her fingers were knotted together, but she continued, focusing on the information that might help. “Her treatments drained most of the family fortune, not that my father had ever spent carefully before that point. He put together a pool of investors to fund the mining project. The day of the accident we were all visiting to see the progress that was being made.”

“It was a methane explosion, right?” Peirce was up off the couch, moving toward the coffee table and picking up a tablet.

“That’s what the authorities claimed.”

He gestured at the tablet, already on. “Do you mind?”

She shook her head. Maybe if he was focused on something else, it would be easier to explain what had happened down there.

“You say they claimed...”

“My father had taken a lot of shortcuts. He may not have personally ignited the methane pocket, but he was just as responsible for the consequences of the accident.”

“The workers weren’t prepared for it?”

Her laugh was still too brittle, even a year later. “They knew it was bound to happen. My father didn’t see the point in wasting money on safety features. If he’d spent some of the money installing blast doors like the engineers suggested, the explosion would have been contained to one tunnel. Instead, the blast radiated out, taking out supports in six different tunnels.”

“You were in one of them?”