Page 52 of Sherwood
My country.
One shift of my wrist, and I would become an enemy of the state. A mere few inches of space between my phone and my hand, and I’d no longer be a patriot, but a traitor.
I would be giving the entirety of my future and my life to Lox, and Marian too.
I lifted my hand, leaving the phone resting on Lox’s palm. She cocked her arm and threw the phone as hard as she could into the tangle of dead wood and ferns below, and before it even landed, she turned and gave me a hard kiss on the mouth.
When she pulled back, her eyes were bright.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said, and I imagined she was saying it because she had no one to say it to her a year ago. I imagined she was saying it because she needed to hear it too.
“I know,” I said. “I’m with you.”
Another hard kiss. The long hair on the side of her face blew gently against my cheek as she bruised my lips with her own. After she pulled away, lips swollen and wet, she led me deeper into the forest.
And that’s how easy it was to leave a life behind.
* * *
It wasclose to noon when we broke through the trees and saw the farmhouse. It appeared abandoned, but a keen eye could discern signs of recent use—a compression of the grass near the treeline, a shiny padlock dangling from the rusted latch of the barn door. And also the clump of irate hackers waiting for us just inside the barn.
“How did we miss this place?” I asked as we walked to the barn. I’d thought between me and the NSA and CISA agents on the job, we’d caught everything outside the trees that Lox’s people could use, but apparently not.
“You would have found it eventually,” Lox said. “But only through newly commissioned aerial, or maybe if you’d actually driven down this road yourself, because we had its online footprint scrubbed. Over here—it’s time you meet everyone. Well, you already know Will.”
We walked inside the barn, which was filled with cars, ATVs, and motorcycles, and it had to be said that no one looked particularly excited to see me, especially Will.
“Search him,” a woman with long braids and a squadron tattoo on her upper arm said, and two men roughly my size shoved me against a Jeep and started patting me down.
I wasn’t offended, but I was a little amused by it all. “Lox already did this,” I volunteered. I’d allowed Lox to check me before we even left the house—I would have been professionally irritated if she hadn’t—and so she already knew I had nothing on my person. I’d only had my phone, which was currently in a pile of deadfall as impenetrable as a cluster of those metal hedgehogs the Germans put on the beaches of Normandy.
“Lox is compromised when it comes to you,” said the woman. She looked deeply unimpressed by everything about me.
“But my plan worked, didn’t it, Jovanna?” Lox said.
“What plan?” I asked.
Lox looked at me. “Us,” she said simply, and for a moment, the rest of the world disappeared.
It was only her and me and the atomic connection between us. Charged and indelible.
“For the record, I hated the plan,” Jovanna said, jarring us back into the present moment, and I forced myself to think about more than just Lox and when I could have her to myself again. “He could have just as easily decided to turn you over to Lackland.”
I had to agree. Much as I was grateful that Lox had come hoping to change my mind, it had been a foolish gamble on her part. It would have been smarter to disarm me, or even kill me. I could tell that I was already going to have my hands full going forward—keeping Robin Loxley safe seemed to be a full-time job.
The men, satisfied I wasn’t be-ribboned with wires and taped trackers, stepped back, and I turned to face the group.
“Where’s Marian?” I asked at the same time as Lox said, “I don’t see Marian.”
“I sent her ahead with Alana and Tinker,” Will said. He gave me a look that let me know he’d gladly skewer my eyeballs with tiepins if given the chance. “We thought you’d prefer that, Lox. Just in case we have less time than we thought.”
Lox nodded, and even I had to concede they’d done the right thing. It already endeared me to this odd group of traitors and thieves, that they were so protective of Marian.
“We need to scatter then,” Lox said. “Like we planned. Does everyone know how they’re getting there?”
“Where?” I asked. I was ignored.
“Yes,” Will said, looking around at the group. Everyone was nodding, putting phones away, palming car keys. “We’ll see you in a few days, Lox.”
