Page 40 of Sherwood
But having Marian look at me like this, clear midnight eyes and open trust, felt better than anything. Better than the time we came to the Castle and realized we could hide here indefinitely. Better than when I passed Ranger school, than when I graduated from MIT. This felt like maybe—please God, maybe—everything might be okay.
Because with her by my side, how could it not?
“And who is this beauty I see?” A tall, fair man with rakish hair and a lip piercing came from the kitchen, his arms outstretched, and Marian let go of my hand and ran straight for him, burying her face in his chest as he gave her a massive hug. She probably hadn’t seen Will Russo since he left for college when Marian was still finishing high school, but six or seven years had nothing on a childhood of summers spent together in the forest.
“I didn’t know you were back,” Marian whispered, hugging him tighter.
Will squeezed her. “It had to stay a secret, chérie. And now you know why.”
“Chérie?” Marian asked, pulling back to look at him. “Are you French now?”
“You haven’t heard?” Jovanna asked as she approached. She had deep umber skin, long box braids, and a recon squadron insignia tattooed on her bicep. She still had something of the Army about her—a warm geniality for those she considered family coupled with a muscled frame, perfect posture, and abrupt transitions into bluntness. “Will paid for that fancy college in Zürich by flogging French housewives over his term breaks. You’re looking at the one and only Monsieur Scarlett, one of the premier doms of the Paris kink scene.”
Will made a face as Marian laughed. “Thanks, Jove. Would you like to tell her about my internet search history too? Maybe what brand of condoms I use?”
Jovanna gave Will a look. “She just came from The Knot. I don’t think your flogging fame is going to bother her. And also hi, I’m Jovanna,” she added, turning to Marian and extending a hand. “Lox and I were the only two women in our Ranger school class, and we were inseparable after that. She couldn’t shake me even after she went rogue.”
“Not that I tried too hard,” I said. In addition to being one of my closest friends, Jovanna also had a knack for surveillance as a former drone operator for the Army. She’d been the subject of many recruitment attempts—mostly from intelligence agencies, but also from the private sector—but she’d stayed Army until the day she left.
Left because of me. Leftwithme.
“Are Tuck and Much back?” I asked Jovanna, and she shook her head.
“They stayed in Sherwood to keep an eye on Rafe and Zhang,” she said, and I could sense the question coming before she asked it. “And why isn’t Rafe chasing you right now? Hell, why not grab you while you were there?”
“Maybe it wasn’t a trap?” Marian said, hope lining the insides of her words.
Jovanna gave Marian an appreciative glance, dark brown eyes moving up from Marian’s bare feet to the ponytail currently swept over a slender shoulder. “Darling, he made you both the gameandthe prize. He might as well have sent a hand-lettered invitation to my friend over here.”
“I’m not that predictable,” I groused, but Jove just rolled her eyes.
“You should have seen this dummy in the Army,” she said to Marian. Every single time there was a contest—rope-climbing, push-ups, who could eat the most DFAC Popsicles without throwing up—your Lox was right there in the thick of it.”
“That’s because I knew I could win,” I said, a little grumpily.
“You lost that push-up contest,andyou couldn’t move your arms for a week after. And I’ve never seen an ass-chewing like the one you got after you and Johnson polished off half a freezer case of Popsicles and he puked orange goo all over your CO’s boots. So I don’t know if I’d count that as a win.”
“Plus it wasMarian,” Will said, and Jove nodded in agreement.
“And it was Rafe de Lacy,” she added, “the only other person who redirects all the blood from Lox’s brain to her sex parts.”
“Erroneous. He also sends blood to my strangling and clawing-his-face-off parts.”
“I see that you’re not fighting me on the sex parts, though, and that’s very wise of you. Now we still haven’t satisfactorily answered why Rafe and Zhang didn’t follow you or just take you while you were there.”
I rubbed at my eye, suddenly and overwhelmingly exhausted. “Lackland wants the machines, not to mention all of you. Rafe knows we have contingency plans for the data if I’m captured. I know he’s waiting for leverage, but I thought…”
“That I was the leverage?” Marian asked. When she looked at me, I saw too many things in her face to name.
I nodded.
“Right. So the way it should have gone: he uses Marian to lure you to The Knot, and then detains you,” Will said. “Make you think that he still has Marian, even if he doesn’t, and uses that threat to extract our data Plan B out of you. It would have worked, because you charged right into his trap like a maniac, but he didn’t do any of that. Why?”
I kept rubbing at my face until it hurt. Until it felt like I could push my fingers all the way through my skull and agitate my brain until it worked as quickly as I needed it to.
“He must have a different plan then,” Marian said. There was a briskness to her words that didn’t feel entirely like corporate efficiency. More like she was forcing herself to accept a very jagged truth. “At The Knot, he said Lox was safe rightnow. It was intentional wording, like he already knew exactly what he was going to do.”
“Don’t be moody,” Will said, looking at me.
