CHAPTER 13 ROHAN
ROHAN
There were moments in life when one was forced to choose: The guaranteed payoff or the risk? The long game or the short one? To protect what was yours or let it all ride?
Personally, Rohan had always had a taste for bigger fish, so when Brady had taken off into the wilderness like a warrior possessed after seeing Gigi holding that calla lily, Rohan hadn’t even hesitated. He’d torn off after the scholar before Knox Landry could even think of doing the same.
Calla Thorp, the so-called Watcher, was a sizable fish indeed.
The woman was a player of games, clearly.
A person of interest—and then some. Thus, for the past two hours, Rohan had chosen to allow Brady a significant tether, trailing him through the night, sticking to him like a living shadow as Brady had scoured the bayou in search of Calla.
It was only when the scholar began doubling back to the same locations that Rohan reached the limit of his patience.
He swept Brady’s feet out from beneath him. “That’s enough,” Rohan said in an almost bored tone.
“Get out of my way. Now.” Brady climbed to his feet.
“As much as I would love to retread what I can only assume are all of your old childhood haunts,” Rohan said, “we both know that doing so would be futile.”
“I don’t care.”
“Come now, Mr. Daniels, you’re the sort of gentleman who cares far too much.”
“Leave. Me. Alone.” Brady’s tone promised violence, but Rohan and the scholar had been down that road before, and Rohan was the one who’d come out on top.
“I would, but I don’t want to.” Rohan stepped into Brady’s personal space and lightly tapped the man’s forearm. “Unless you’d care to part with that.”
“My arm?” Brady’s jaw tightened. “My tattoo. That’s what this is about?”
Dancing over Brady’s skin was a sequence of spiraling letters that Rohan couldn’t make out in the moonlight.
Regardless, the tattoo was proof enough, for Rohan’s purposes, that the duchess had interfered with the Grandest Game.
That made the scholar a means to an end for Rohan, useful as both leverage and bait, but now it was starting to seem like there might be a more direct path to victory.
Whatever Zella knew about the disappearance of Avery Grambs, the mysterious Watcher likely knew a great deal more.
If Rohan could capture Calla Thorp, that in and of itself might be enough to earn him the promised payday from Jameson Hawthorne, at which point, Rohan wouldn’t need Brady or Zella or anyone or anything else at all.
Once the money was in hand, the Mercy would be his.
“Tell me, Mr. Daniels,” Rohan prodded, “what would you have done if you’d found your Calla out here?”
“I don’t know.” Brady’s voice was thick.
Young love did not always scar, but when it did, it scarred deeply.
Rohan could use that. In games of highest stakes, one could never have too many paths to victory.
“You don’t know what you would do if you came face-to-face with her.
You only know that the last time you spoke to Calla Thorp cannot be the last time. ”
Motivation. Weakness. One and the same.
“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 want everything, and I always have.” For Rohan, the Mercy was everything. “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 was close, 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.”