Fog rolled in from the water. The vegetation grew ever thicker, branches lashing at Rohan’s skin. He didn’t even feel it.
In the end, it didn’t matter how fast she was. The moment Rohan pulled within a body’s length of her, he launched himself forward, off the ground. She dodged, avoiding a full-body blow, but Rohan managed to latch a hand around her ankle, and down she went.
Hard.
Rohan wasonher in an instant. She threw a brutal elbow back, twisting her body, her leg hooking around his torso as she attempted to take him down. Rohan grabbed her wrists an instant before her thumbswould have gouged his eyes, and as he pinned her arms to the ground, as he pinnedher, Rohan realized:
Thiswasn’tCalla Thorp.
He’d seen photographs of Calla, and this girl bore no resemblance to her whatsoever. There was something Nordic in his opponent’s features, though the shape of her eyes signaled Asian heritage of some sort as well. Thick honey-brown hair had been braided back from her face on either side of her head like a laurel. Her eyes were a darker brown than Rohan’s own.
She must have clocked him taking in her appearance, because suddenly, she stopped fighting like a warrior and shifted to struggling against Rohan’s hold in a way that masked her skill so thoroughly that, had Rohan been any less experienced himself, he might have bought the act.
“Get off me, you freak.” She did an American accent very well, but Rohan was enough of a chameleon himself to recognize that neither her accent nor her choice of words reflected her nature.
“What have we here?” Rohan murmured.
The moment his opponent realized he wasn’t buying it, a mask of chilling neutrality descended over her features. Whoever this girl was, she knew when to cut her losses—and when to rotate her wrists, drive her knee upward, and attempt to sink her teeth into skin.
Rohan pinned her by herneckthis time. That should have been the end of it, but the next thing he knew, the girl had a knife in each hand. Unfortunately for the lethal little knife-wielder, this fight was getting ready to be two-on-one.
“How kind of you to join us, Mr. Landry,” Rohan called as Knox approached. “Our new friend here was just getting ready to lower those knives and explain herself.”
The girl assessed the situation, and she must not have liked her chances two-on-one, because she lowered the knives.For now.
“Who the hell are you?” Knox asked.
“I’m just a girl.”
Like hell she was. Rohan put her in a holdno onecould break, andthen shot a warning look in Knox’s direction. “Check her for any other knives—and watch your private parts, if you’re at all attached to them.”
“She get yours?” Knox asked, and the bastard had the gall to sound amused at the prospect as he patted the girl down, a search that yielded two more knives and a single piece of paper that had been folded twice.
Knox unfolded it, stared at it, then turned the page toward Rohan.
Rohan clocked the image first. It appeared to depict a painting, most likely a medieval one, of a woman wearing an elaborate crown and holding what looked to be a church in her hand. As fascinating as the iconography there was, Rohan was far more interested in the writing on the page, two words scrawled in feminine script into the margins.
Juliet Grayson.
Chapter 19
GIGI
Gigi awoke to chaos. The kind of chaos that involved a stranger who was both unconsciousandin the process of being tied up.
“I’m not one to judge,” Gigi said, scrambling down from the loft to stand next to Savannah, who hadn’t so much as raised a brow at the display in front of them, “but can someone verify that this is the amiable sort of kidnapping? And also thatwedidn’t knock her out?”
Gigi’s questions were met with silence. Very suspicious silence.
“Knox?” Gigi prompted.
“Wasn’t me.”
Gigi turned to look at Rohan.
“She fights like an elite,” Rohan said by way of explanation. “It’s in everyone’s best interest, including her own, that she not be tempted to try me again.”
“And why were we fighting her?” Gigi was a big believer in generous uses of the wordwe.
