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shook her head and tried to concentrate on what was being said.
    “What went wrong?” Gunnar continued to pepper his battered son with questions.
    “I did what I was supposed to,” Rory sputtered in protest. “I got Mason and I brought her to the bridge. But . . . I dunno.”
    He shook his head, sweat beading on his brow. In the opposite corner from where Heather crouched, Tag Overlea was shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. He looked like he was just barely resisting the urge to bolt for the door.
    “Roth must have screwed up,” Rory mumbled. “He never showed. But that son of a bitch Fennrys turned up all on his own and”—his eyes shifted back and forth—“and he had a gun. He was going to shoot Mason, Dad.”
    Heather almost protested out loud about what a load of BS that was. According to what Mason had told Heather, and according to what Heather herself knew of the mysterious Fennrys Wolf, that was a highly unlikely possibility. Only a few days earlier, Mason had confided in Heather that she and Fennrys had been seeing each other secretly. And to say that it was going well betweenthe two of them would have been, from what Heather had gathered, a vast understatement. It was funny, because Mason was the only person Heather had never been able to read. She’d always been able to tell when people were in love, if they’d ever been in love, if they ever would be in love, and with whom, if they’d already met. She’d never gotten a read on Mason. Or, for that matter, Fennrys. And yet, her instincts screamed to her that they were , 100 percent, falling in love. Fenn would never have tried to hurt her. He was the kind of guy who would have died trying to save Mason rather than see her hurt.
    Died like Calum did. A jolt of pain stabbed at Heather’s heart.
    “The Wolf had a gun?” the elder Starling asked quietly.
    Rory glanced at Tag, who was ash-gray in complexion and sweating profusely. His fists were jammed in the pockets of his letterman jacket, and he looked like he wanted to sink into the floor.
    “Yeah.” Rory nodded. “He did. I mean . . . I wish I’d had one.”
    “But you didn’t.”
    “Of course not. Where would I get a gun, y’know?”
    Over by the polished brass-and-mahogany bar, Tag suddenly went so shifty-eyed he looked like he might pop a vein in his forehead. What a jackass, Heather thought. He’d been more than happy to lob not-so-veiled threats at her—in between ogling her chest and pilfering cigars and chugging brandy straight from the bottle—less than an hour earlier. But now his bravado seemed to have evaporated into the ether. And judging from his reaction to what had just been said, Heather figured he was the one who’d supplied Rory with a firearm. She wondered what Rory had offered him in return.
    “So, yeah. He had a gun, and he was threatening Mason. He would have killed her if I hadn’t fought him and”—here a note of real pain and horror crept into Rory’s voice—“look what he did to my arm , Dad. . . .”
    Gunnar stared impassively down at the injury. Which even Heather had to admit was pretty horrific, the bones of his forearm piercing through the skin like that.
    There was a feverish look in Rory’s eyes as he looked from his mangled limb to his father. “But I got the gun away from him. I saved Mason, Dad. I saved her. Only . . . I had to knock Fennrys off the train to do it. And by thattime, it was too late and the bridge was all lit up. I know you wanted him to cross over. I know. But . . . I had to save my sister .” His voice broke plaintively on that last word.
    Suddenly, the front door to the train car opened, and Heather was shocked to see Toby Fortier step through. At first she felt an initial surge of hope. Toby was one of the good guys. He was the fencing master at the academy, and even if he was kind of a drill sergeant when it came to practices, he was okay. But then she saw Toby’s eyes flick in her direction