Dixon nodded at something Clementine said and left the rotunda. A few seconds later, I heard a faint rattle-rattle, along with the screech-screech-screech of metal. Dixon must be lifting one of the gates and creating an opening so the giants could come and go as they pleased, now that they’d cornered everyone else in here.

Clementine smoothed down her black tuxedo vest, then strode to the center of the room to stand directly in front of the hostages. Opal took up a position on her right.

Clutching a gun in her right hand, Clementine put her left hand on her hip, cocking it to one side. She gazed out over the crowd, almost like a circus ringmaster getting a feel for the audience before a big performance. Slowly, the hostages quieted down, realizing that she was the one in charge of everything—including whether they lived or died.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, a broad smile creasing her face. “My name is Clementine Barker, and this here is a holdup.”

Chapter 7

7

Clementine looked out over the crowd again, then threw back her head and laughed. Her loud, booming guffaws echoed off the thick walls just like the screams and gunshots had a few minutes earlier. Somehow, though, her dark chuckles seemed far more sinister. Or maybe that was because I’d seen how casually she’d reacted to Dixon shooting Jillian and knew that she’d do the same thing to anyone who got in her way.

“Forgive me,” she said, her laughter finally dying down. “I always wanted to say that.”

Everyone stared at the giant, but no one said anything. No one dared to.

I put her theatrics out of my mind and focused on something else: her name. Clementine Barker. Again, it sounded familiar, like someone I’d heard Bria or maybe even Finn talk about. A glimmer of a conversation came back to me, something Finn had said in passing recently about some up-and-coming security firm started by a giant. The woman running it had approached Finn’s bank about taking over the security there, but the higher-ups had turned her down.

She had an unusual name, Finn’s voice whispered in my mind. Clementine. It made me want an orange.

I wondered if Clementine had plied her services to other Ashland businesses, if maybe the folks on the Briartop board had hired Clem and her men for tonight’s event, to help out as waiters, to direct traffic in the parking lots, maybe even to beef up the museum’s security staff. That would have been one way to get so many of her men onto the island without raising suspicions. Then all they would have had to do was wait until the moment was right to overpower the regular guards, and the museum—the whole island—would be theirs. Just like it was now.