Chapter Capsaicin
CAPSAICIN
Nolan
I’M WALKING PAST FOOD VENDOR stalls, looking at Harper’s shared location on my phone, when it buzzes with a text from my sister.
Guess who I saw at the Bootknocker last night? Gus! He said you’re probably coming home in a week or two, finally! And what did I tell him . . . ?
My heart twists uncomfortably in my chest. Not just because I know what my sister is about to say when I respond to this text about running into my boss, but because I’m staring at Harper’s little dot on my screen, one that has the gravitational pull of an imploding star.
I’m watching two worlds collide in the palm of my hand.
What the fuck were you doing at the Bootknocker? That place is the worst.
DING DING DING! That is EXACTLY what I told him you’d say to deflect from giving your little sister updates on your life because that’s what you always do when there’s a girl involved.
You did not say that.
Maybe I did.
So? Who is she? And when are you coming home???
I groan, pocketing my phone as I arrive at the edge of the open area in front of the stage.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I’m sure it’s Amelia trying to mine me for details.
I love my sister deeply, but I ignore her message, scanning the crowd instead.
I just want to push that life away, at least for a little while longer.
There’s still so much to worry about here.
So much more I want in Cape Carnage, even though I shouldn’t.
I spot Harper in the middle of the crowd.
It’s as though she has a vibration that I could pick out among a thousand people.
I push my way to where she’s standing, and I’m convinced she feels it too, because she turns and meets my eyes before I even get close.
She used to look at me with fear. Disdain.
Distrust, even after her hate had transformed into carnal want. But now, I see relief. Longing.
I think I see love.
“You found me,” Harper says as I halt next to her.
“I already told you . . . ” I slip a hand across her lower back. Lean in close. Savor the hitch in her breath, the shiver in her shoulders when my words whisper across her skin. “I’ll always find you.”
Her lips are slanted in a smile when I kiss her deeply. The world falls away. We could be the only two people in this park. At least, I could believe that until a round of applause and shouts rise around us.
“Everyone survives another round!” a voice exclaims from the direction of the stage.
“What’s going on?” I ask when our kiss breaks. All my attention is caught on Harper as she cheers along with the rest of the crowd. “This isn’t some kind of public murder event, is it?”
She sends a sly smirk in my direction.
“Next up in the Taste of Terror Annual Chili-Eating Contest is Dale Linden’s Ring of Fire, his own special variety of ghost pepper grown right here in Cape Carnage,” Bert says in his dramatic announcer voice as the audience snickers.
I turn my gaze to the stage, where Bobby is passing out peppers to contestants who are starting to sweat under the relentless sun.
And one is sweating more than the others.
Tylor Knightsbridge.
“What the fuck is he doing back in town?” I ask.
“I was hoping you might know, but I guess not.” Harper frowns as she scans the crowd.
“I checked, but there was nothing on Discord about him coming to Carnage, which I find a little worrying. He wouldn’t shut up about getting everyone to swarm this place right after Sam and Vinny died.
” Her attention settles back on me. “Maybe he’s suspicious they’re being watched. ”
“Fucking hell. I thought we were making some headway with them tapering off after Jake’s bone turned up. He might have brought another group of Sleuthseekers back with him in that case,” I say, wrapping a hand around her arm. “We should probably take off.”
“Yeah. In a minute.” Harper jerks her chin toward the stage, her voice a little distant when she says, “I just wanna see how he fares with the next round.”
“I don’t know if he’s even going to make it that long. It looks like he’s about to pass out.”
Harper nods, her mouth set in a determined line. I’d like to believe it’s because of the way Tylor grips his blue vomit bag and shifts uncomfortably in his chair. Maybe she has a thing about puke. But I don’t think that’s it.
I pivot a slow turn, facing her fully. “Promise me something, would you?”
She gives me just one eye, her brow raised in a silent question.
“Don’t ever play poker. You will lose. Abysmally.”
Harper scoffs and folds her arms across her chest. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Really,” I say, raising my palm to gently cup her cheek. My thumb coasts across her bottom lip and her eyes drift closed. I lean close to her ear, inhaling her scent of fresh herbs and aged whiskey. “You’re just dying not to bite that lip. I can tell. And whenever you do, it’s trouble.”
I push my thumb into her mouth and savor the tectonic need that shudders through her body.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?” I whisper.
Her lips tighten around my thumb as I pull it free of her mouth. “Maybe some guys just can’t handle the heat,” she says, her voice breathless. “Or . . . ”
“Or . . . ?”
Bert counts down the contestants. “Three . . . Two . . . One . . . ”
Harper presses against me, my growing erection straining against my jeans. “Or maybe the capsaicin is speeding up a super-special surprise.”
I pull back just enough to look down into her devious smirk. “A surprise,” I say. She lifts a shoulder. “Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to think it’s ‘super special.’”
“Then he has no sense of humor,” she replies.
“Tylor,” Bert interjects, and we turn our attention to the stage.
All the other contestants are managing small bites of the vicious crimson peppers.
But not Tylor. He looks like he’s truly suffering, his face pale despite the heat, his skin glistening with sweat.
“Don’t give up yet, man—there’s a bottle of whiskey on the line,” Bert says with a pat on Tylor’s back that conjures a grimace.
Harper snorts.
Tylor clutches the uneaten red pepper in one hand and the vomit bag in the other.
But the way he leans forward with his arms braced against the table makes me think he doesn’t even know what he’s holding on to.
He’s entering a whole new realm of pain, and with it, the dawning realization that something is very, very wrong.
Not that the audience senses his epiphany.
They keep cheering him on as the other competitors suffer through their peppers. “Tylor! Tylor! Tylor!”
Tylor lets out an agonized cry.
“Keep going, man!” Bert says into the mic.
“Keep going, Tylor!” the crowd chants, Harper’s voice among them.
Tylor drops his head to his forearm and smashes his other fist against the table.
“Go Tylor! Don’t stop now!” Harper shouts.
I drag a hand down my face.
Tylor lets out another cry, this one more desperate than the last. When he straightens, the crowd lets out a collective gasp.
Tears of blood trickle from his eyes to paint his cheeks in crimson streaks.
They land in fat drops on the white plastic tablecloth.
The other contestants scramble away from him as though he harbors a contagion.
Bert’s mic captures his whimper to blast it across the silent crowd.
And then Tylor vomits a spray of blood toward the audience before falling out of view on the stage.
There’s a single beat of shocked stillness. And then the crowd descends into panic. Except for me and Harper Starling, of course.
“Wow, that was much more dramatic than I expected,” Harper says in a low voice as people push past us with their young children, some of them screaming and I’m sure permanently traumatized by the blood-soaked event.
“I can’t wait to hear more about . . . whatever this is.
” I glance toward the stage. Paramedics are rushing up the stairs with their kit, followed closely by a plainclothes Sheriff Yates.
I take Harper’s arm and pull her back with me, heading deeper into the undulating mass of bodies. “We should go.”
We start making our way through the onlookers, weaving past the morbidly curious, whose eyes are still fixed on the commotion.
We detour when we hit the turkey leg stand, where the line continues as though nothing dramatic is happening a short distance away.
I don’t stop until we’re sheltered by the side of the stand and just out of view of the stage.
Harper and I stare at each other for a long moment.
Her eyes are wild. Her chest is heaving.
I have a sudden urge to fucking devour her.
Christ, I’m sure that’s fucking messed up.
But I can’t seem to stop wanting her, especially in the moments when I shouldn’t, and the only thing keeping me from hauling her off somewhere and punishing her in ways I know she’d enjoy is the fear that she’s put herself in danger.
“Care to explain that situation over there?” I ask, waving a hand in the direction of the stage.
“Tylor came by the distillery stand for a visit, so I decided to . . . take care of some things.”
“With poison.”
Harper shrugs. “It should be undetectable.”
“Should be,” I say, and she nods. “That doesn’t fill me with confidence.”
“Well, I can’t say how much Arthur has been keeping up to date on laboratory practices for poison analysis over the last few years, but when he first developed the formulation twenty years ago, he always got away with it. So I’m sure it’s fine.”
“Harper—”