“What do you want, Rohan?” Brady’s fingers curled to fists, the muscles beneath his tattoo rippling with the movement. “Other than my arm?”
“Everything.” Rohan did his opponent the courtesy of a truthful answer. “I wanteverything, and I always have.” For Rohan, the Mercywaseverything. “You might try asking me what your options are,” he advised Brady. “There are only three.”
“Far be it from me to deprive you of the sound of your own voice.”
“Option one: You agree to come with me to England, and I use you to flush out your sponsor, whereupon you can demand from her the answers she owes you about the lovely Ms. Thorp.”
“And option two?” Brady said.
“Identical to option one, but you travel to England unwillingly—and unconscious.”
Brady didn’t bat an eye. “You said there were three options.”
“During the Grandest Game, your sponsor used Gigi Grayson to bait Calla out. I have no idea why it worked, but it did, and it strikes me that it might well work again if the Watcher is indeed hanging about. The mere fact that Gigi has now received two calla lilies suggests a certain fixation on her, don’t you think?”
“You’re a real piece of work,” Brady retorted. “You know that?”
“Option three, I take it?” Rohan replied lightly.Three options. Three paths. All roads lead to Rome.“Using the girl.”
Brady didn’t reply, but he did start making his way back toward the shanty. When it came into view, Rohan’s sense of hearing told him that the others were already inside.Good.Rohan waited for Brady to disappear up the ladder, into their custody, and then, once he was alone, Rohan turned his senses to the world around him. To the trees. To the night. To the water.
Dark water.
Rohan heard nothing except the sounds of the bayou, but he refrained from reading much into that. For a certain type of person, silence was an artform. Perhaps the person who’d left that calla lily wasclose, camouflaged by the night, perhaps not. But Rohan believed in covering his bases, so he seeded one last path to victory, throwing his voice out over the water into the darkness, offering up four and only four words to any cloaked women who might be lurking there.
“Make me an offer.”
Chapter 14
GIGI
For the past couple of hours, Gigi had chosen to operate under the assumption thatRohan and Brady’s Bayou Adventurehad been out there unfolding like some kind of perfectly harmless, madcap buddy comedy. Knox and Savannah had not been so convinced, and if even ten more minutes had passed before Brady’s reappearance, Gigi might not have been able to put either of them off for much longer.
Fortunately, Brady was now present and accounted for, looking only a little worse for the wear as he quietly closed the door behind him and met Knox’s gaze with a silent message that Gigi heard loud and clear.
“You didn’t find anything,” Gigi said.You didn’t find her. Calla.
That was, of course, assuming the Woman in Red had been the one to leave the flower. All Gigi knew for sure was that the calla lily hadn’t been there when she’d tread that path the first time, so the person who’d left it had to have put it therewhileGigi was in the clearing with Brady and Knox. Maybe it had been placed before Savannah and Rohan had stepped into the clearing and they just hadn’t noticed it, or maybe it had been placed there less than a minute before Gigi found it.
Either way, whoever left the calla lily had beenclose.
“I looked everywhere,” Brady said. To Gigi, that sounded like an accusation, one that said thatKnoxhadn’t looked at all.
“You’re lucky you didn’t catch an arrow,” Knox told Brady flatly.
Brady’s gaze went to Knox’s collarbone, where his scar was covered by his shirt. “You should have told me.” Brady’s voice shook slightly. “Years ago, Knox. I deserved to know.”
“Told you?” Knox repeated, his voice dangerously soft. “About the way Calla warned me not to try to find her? The way she reinforced that warning by pressing the tip of an arrow to my neck?” There was something almost animal in Knox’s eyes. “Maybe I should have givenyoua play-by-play of the way I leaned forward into that arrow, forcing the first cut as I swore to the woman I loved that I was not afraid of her.” Knox’s voice was nothing but darkness now. “Calla didn’t even flinch. Neither did I. The two of us just stood there,notflinching. But you’re right, Daniels, I owedyoua detailed description of the way she pushed that arrow in deeper and deeper as she ripped my heart out and threw it away, because at the end of the day, despite everything that had passed between us, she was a Thorp, and I was nothing but Landry trash.”
A barely literate, backwoods nobody who’s broken inside and always will be.Gigi’s heart couldn’t take it, but all Brady said was “You could have told me.”
“You loved her.” Knox said that like it was a thing he’d always known, like he hadn’t loved Calla, too. “And I was okay with you hating me if that was what you needed to do.”
“You were okay with being hated because that’s what the dark place tells you that you deserve,” Brady shot back. “Don’t put that on me.”
“Speaking of the dark place,” Gigi said, eyeing Knox warily, “would anyone like to take a deep breath and share their favorite woodland creature and/or upbeat song lyric?”
Before anyone could respond, the door swung inward.Rohan.Gigi breathed an internal sigh of relief, because the second British von Saucypants graced them with his presence, Brady’s gaze swiveled from Knox to Savannah—or, more specifically, to the necklace Savannah was now wearing.
