Wildfire (Hidden Legacy #3)(60)

The carrier stopped. My mother boarded, followed by Leon. She was still calm, her face serene. Leon had a dreamy look on his face. The last time I saw it, he was seven and we took him to Disney World.

"How was it?" I asked.

My cousin smiled at me. "Glorious."

Mom rolled her eyes.

Rogan's phone rang. He answered it.

"Slow down, Rynda, I can't understand you. . . . Okay. Put it on ice. We're on the way."

He hung up. His face was grim. "They sent her Brian's ear."



The ear came in a Ziploc bag in a plain yellow padded envelope. It was addressed to Rynda and me and dropped off in front of the security booth on Gessner Street. She left the ear in the bag. I did the same, except I slid the bag onto a piece of white paper to examine it.

The ear was Caucasian and had been severed in a single precise cut, the kind an experienced surgeon might make with a scalpel. The cut bothered me. Things weren't adding up.

We were in Rogan's HQ on the second floor. The moment we arrived, people ran up to the carrier with urgent looks on their faces and Rogan took off with them, which left me to deal with the ear. 

Rynda had been waiting all this time in the tender care of Bug, who was looking slightly freaked out. At least they had the presence of mind to get a cooler and fill it with ice.

"It's not going to get fixed, is it?" Rynda asked, her voice dull. "We're not going to get through this okay."

"You will," I told her. "Did Brian have pierced ears, scars, tattoos, anything that would let us confirm it's his ear?"

"Please don't ask me if it looks like my husband's ear," Rynda said in a small voice.

"Are you registered with Scroll?"

She blinked, taken aback. "Yes?"

"Please request DNA analysis on the ear. Let's confirm it belongs to Brian."

"Why would they send me someone else's ear?"

And that was the million-dollar question.

"I'd like to be thorough."

She rose. "I'll make the call. I'm going to go check on the kids now. They don't know. Please don't tell them."

"I won't."

I watched her go down the stairs. She seemed so frail now. I half expected her legs to give out. That poor woman.

I puzzled over the ear some more.

Bug sidled up to me. "What's the deal with the ear?"

"I'll tell you but you have to promise to keep it to yourself."

"I can fill this room with things I keep to myself."

"I mean it."

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

"Sit down."

He sat on the couch. I took a pen off the coffee table. "Let's say you're restrained, so hold your hands together."

He clamped his hands into a single fist.

I showed him the pen. "Pretend this is a knife." I grabbed his head with one hand and moved to "cut" his ear. He jerked away.

"See?"

"This doesn't explain anything."

I picked the bag up gently and showed him the ear. "One precise cut. No tears, no jagged edges, no nicks. He would have to be held completely immobile while this happened. Why immobilize someone's head like that? You can just hack the ear off."

"Maybe they sedated him."

"Why? He's a botanical mage. He isn't dangerous. Why go through the trouble? I don't know about Sturm, but Vincent for sure would want to torment him. He gets off on control and fear. Besides, sedation is dangerous. You never know when the person might have an adverse reaction to it and die."

Bug pondered it.

"There is another thing," I told him.

"What?"

"Look at the ear."

He peered at it and gave it an intense once-over. "I don't see it."

"I don't either."

He squinted at me. "Will you just say it, Nevada, you're driving me nuts."

"When you nick your ear, it bleeds. A lot."

"Yes. All head wounds bleed, so?"

"Where is the blood?"

He stared at the ear. "Huh. Did they wash it?"

"If you wanted to terrify a man's wife into paying a ransom, would you send her a bloody mutilated chunk of flesh that was hacked off his head, or would you send her this perfectly clean, surgically removed ear?"

Bug blinked. "So what does it mean?"

It meant one of two things. Either Brian was dead or it wasn't his ear.

"And?" Bug asked.

"And I'm going home to think about it. Did you find anything on Rynda's computers?"

"No. Bern and I have been through them last night. He's digging deeper today. There is nothing there. Pictures of the kids, a fungi database, Rynda's holiday recipes . . ." Bug waved his arms. "So much domestic bliss, I could puke."