5. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Louna stared. The man stared back, frowning slightly at her continued silence.
He was handsome, with hazel eyes and shaved reddish-orange hair, and a light spray of freckles across his tanned face.
His sleeves were pushed up past his elbows, and she could see the shapes of multiple tattoos along his arms.
“Louna,” Tennyson said again, and she started. “Did you find Lindsey?”
“Yes,” she said, putting her finger to her earbud. “I found... him.”
Lindsey cocked his head. “Are you talking to him now?”
Him. Lindsey was a him. She clawed through her memories of the conversations she’d had with Tennyson and the Verdier brothers—hadn’t they said she? Hadn’t Louna? Why had no one corrected her? Tennyson had spoken of Lindsey with so much emotion, so much regret… she was sure he’d been in love.
She regarded him again, reconciling the image of the Lindsey she’d held in her mind to the one standing before her.
She wasn’t completely wrong—Tennyson did love Lindsey.
But it wasn’t the kind of love Louna could compete with, and that meant…
well, she didn’t know what it meant, beyond the fact that she’d wasted the effort of trying to steal Tennyson away from his past.
“Ma’am?” Lindsey said.
Louna took a breath and slipped two fingers into her pocket, withdrawing the extra earbud. She let it roll into her palm and held it out to him, but he kept his hands at his sides.
“Is he here?” Lindsey asked.
She put a finger to her lips and drew nearer. “Another official from the State Department checked your cell, yes? Could they have planted a bug?”
Lindsey frowned and shook his head, but didn’t speak again as she moved to inspect the room. “My name is Leah Wilson,” she said at a normal volume, for the guard’s benefit. In a whisper, she added, “Je m’appelle Louna.”
“Et vous connaissez mon nom,” Lindsey answered in low tones. His accent was better than Tennyson’s, his syllables languid and confident. “How do you know Tennyson?”
Louna considered a response, but I painted his likeness into a forgery which he then tried to steal from my museum’s gala would probably raise more questions than it answered.
“I’m from the State Department, just following up on the well-fare check,” she said instead, holding out the extra earbud again.
“There’s nothing to report,” Lindsey said. He crossed muscular arms over a broad chest and watched her search, his expression set in a pleasant but unreadable mask.
“We’re here to help,” Louna said meaningfully.
Lindsey didn’t move. “If you’re here with Tennyson,” he said, “then I don’t want your help.”
Louna’s hand stalled against the wall. The man across from her stood motionless, fortified against the argument rising to her tongue. He studied her, his closed expression giving away nothing of his observations.
She lowered her hand. “You would rather stay in jail?”
“That’s how the law works,” he said emotionlessly. “A person is arrested for a crime and held until trial. I’m waiting for mine.”
“And you’re sure you can win in a trial?” Louna asked. The walls were plain and empty, so she moved on to the cot shoved into one corner.
“I’m innocent.” There was a pause, and when Louna turned to look at him, she found him contemplating the open door. When the silence stretched too long, he angled his body toward her and exhaled. “I don’t know who killed Gheorghe Razvan, but it wasn’t me.”
“Trials do not determine innocence,” Louna said. “People do. Corruptible, bribable people. If the evidence is interpreted against you, you will be found guilty. Then what will you do?”
“All I can do is argue my case,” Lindsey said stubbornly.
“And if that is not enough?”
His brows drew together, settling his features into an attractive scowl. “Why are you here?”
“I told you,” she said. “I’m here to help you.”
“You don’t know me,” Lindsey said.
Another flash of the imagined Lindsey flickered through her mind, and she blinked to clear it. “I’m here to help Tennyson,” she said, matching his brisk tone.
“Uh-huh.” He waited a moment, watching her reaction. “How do you know him?”
A shuffle in the hall spoke to the guard’s growing boredom, and Louna offered the earbud again. “That can all be explained later. For now—”
“You haven’t known him long,” Lindsey interrupted. “At least, not long enough. Tennyson Stone cannot be trusted.”
Louna removed her earbud; Tennyson didn’t need to hear this. She leveled a cool look at the man before her and waited for an explanation.
He obliged with a similarly frigid expression. “He’s a mercenary. He took what he learned from our training and turned himself into a gun for hire. Whatever he’s doing here is for his own gain. Not yours, not mine. He only thinks about himself.”
“Are you finished?” Louna asked.
The scowl deepened. “You don’t believe me.”
“No,” Louna said, clamping down on her irritation. “I don’t care. I think avarice is a healthy trait, and should be encouraged as often as possible. Tennyson told me you are his best friend, but I see now that he was mistaken. He may have been a friend to you, but you do not understand him.”
If her words angered him, he didn’t show it.
His expression never changed, and when he spoke again, his voice was like Tennyson’s—soft, not just quiet, as though he were trying to keep the coarseness out of it.
It was wholly at odds with his cold tone, but the familiarity of it made her stomach do a strange little flip.
“You can’t know what kind of friend I have been to him. ”
“The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong,” Louna said. “Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.”
Lindsey snorted. “Mark Twain?”
A prickle of satisfaction stole over her. “You know the quote. Then I suppose you have read Tom Sawyer.”
“I went to high school,” Lindsey said. Something shifted in his expression, and with a slight air of concession, he added, “Most of it. What does that have to do with anything?”
Louna flashed him her brightest smile. “If you are the kind of man I think you are, you will understand.”
“You don’t know what kind of man I am,” Lindsey said.
“You are a Marine,” Louna began, as though presenting an opening statement to his undecided jury.
“You are observant enough to have noticed a man outside the embassy, and had the foresight to assign men to watch him. You left the immunity of the embassy grounds to help an injured man. In your statement, you tried to take full responsibility of the situation in order to spare your men. Corporals Mitchell and Alvarez clearly respect you. You are a good leader. And yet,” she went on, talking over him as he began to argue.
“You ran away from home with Tennyson to join the Marines.”
An uncomfortable look chased some of the hardness from his eyes. “He told you that?”
“You told me,” Louna said, tilting her head toward him. “You said you went to most of high school. I know Tennyson left home after his father died. I know he joined the military shortly after. You went with him, didn’t you?”
He studied her again, reevaluating. “Yes.”
“Then you are adventurous as well as responsible,” Louna went on. “You are loyal and unafraid of difficulty. Just like Tom Sawyer.”
A harsh laugh burst from him. “And he’s Huckleberry Finn?”
Louna dropped her gaze to the coin on his chest, and he covered it with one large palm. “Tell Tennyson I don’t want his help,” he said in a flat voice. “I’m not sure what he said to get you involved, but this is where it ends. Go back to France. Take him with you.”
“Lindsey,” Louna said, but he shook his head and crossed to the door in two long-legged steps.
“Thank you for coming, Ms. Wilson,” he said loudly. “I’ll look forward to the State Department’s next visit.”
She stood without moving for a moment before replacing her earbud. “Of course,” she said, following him. As she passed, she took his hand and pressed the extra comm into his palm. “Please let us know if anything changes.”
He tried to push it back at her, but she evaded his grasp and stepped into the hall.
She could feel Lindsey watching her as the guard closed and locked his cell, and while she turned to follow him back to the lobby.
Before they turned the corner, she looked back and found him still staring after her.
He did not put the earbud in.
There were no voices over her comm. She turned the meeting over and over in her mind, feeling out the divots from the volleys Lindsey had launched at her. Lindsey was a man. He didn’t want their help. His idealism would keep them from doing what was necessary.
And he’d completely derailed her plans. She had come under the pretense of a grand adventure, playing a game she understood with rules she knew how to bend.
Now, she was adrift. Undirected. With Lindsey as her rival, Louna had been able to channel the restless swirl of emotions Tennyson had stirred up when he’d rescued her from Harlow’s studio.
In a single conversation, Lindsey had destroyed her target.
What good was a thief with nothing to steal?
The guard led her back to the front desk, and Louna forced a smile and thanked him as she signed herself out. She left the building, hunching her shoulders against the cold and making her way to the car.
To Tennyson.
A gust of breeze ruffled his short hair, giving him a wild, wind-tossed look despite his motionless stance. “He won’t come?” he asked, his expression grim.
It was phrased as a question, but the dark look in his eyes told her he already knew the answer. Louna shoved her hands deep into her pockets, huddling in her coat and trying for an airy tone. “It may take a little persuading, but all will be well.”
“He wouldn’t take the earbud either,” Tennyson guessed. “Did he warn you about me?”
“Should he have?” Louna asked. Her words failed to relax his stony expression, and the sight of it made her chest constrict.
Impulsively, she leaned forward and pressed a faint kiss to his lips. “What could he say that I don’t know already?” she asked. “That you are trouble? You are dangerous? Mon loup, I’ve known that since Vietnam.”
He didn’t smile, but the hardness in his eyes faded into something less fierce. She could read the war he was waging against himself—Lindsey doesn’t want help—We can’t leave him—He knows this is my fault—and she set a hand against his chest to still the torrent of doubt.
His gaze found hers.
“We will help Lindsey,” Louna said. “A legal fight isn’t as exciting as a prison break, but victory is victory. Don’t give up now.”
He exhaled, finally resting his hands on her hips and drawing her closer. His head lowered, and she angled her mouth toward his, but he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he rested his forehead against hers and said softly, “You were surprised when you saw him.”
She shrugged one shoulder and tried to squirm free, but he held her fast.
“You thought Lindsey was a woman.”
“It is a woman’s name,” she said stiffly.
A smile cracked his serious mood. “That’s why you watched me when you called him bien-aimée. I looked it up when you were inside—I heard it as bien ami, so I thought you were saying good friend—I didn’t realize it was another term. You were testing me.”
Heat flared over Louna’s face. She wasn’t used to this—the way Tennyson saw past her actions to the motivations behind them. She didn’t like it. She wanted to push away, but he threaded his fingers together behind her back and dropped his face to rest his brow on her shoulder.
“And that kiss?” he said.
A hint of challenge edged her voice. “You didn’t enjoy it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He was quiet, letting her settle into her reaction, and she breathed out through her nose. “You could have warned me,” she muttered.
“I never thought to clarify.”
His lips brushed her neck as he spoke, and the angry flush faded into something more pleasant. “Well,” she said, feeling the steady thump-thump of his heart under her fingertips. “I could be persuaded to forgive you.”
“Not over the comms,” Jean-Claude said.
Louna sighed as Tennyson lifted his head and stepped away. “What now?” she asked.
“Now,” Tennyson said, unlocking the car. “We see whether you can steal a court case.”
Louna grinned.