Page 85 of Recurve Ridge

The longer Mari stayed,the longer I needed to test out my theory. I stopped interrogating her in a bid to maintain the level of trust and intimacy that had developed with the woman I’d fallen for so damn hard. From the looks in the eyes of every man standing around the room where Mari had seated herself at our small table, I wasn’t alone in my vulnerable state.

Perhaps I’d been in denial for too long… but I didn’t want to shatter our fragile peace. Alan boycotted me from playing games with her, but even he saw the sense in trialing just how smart his littlesweetcheekscould be. He detached himself from the bar and whipped a paper filled with figures and statistics out of… somewhere. He worked his way around to Mari’s other side and dropped the sheet in front of her. I recognized it as one of the accounts pages from Gideon’s business he’d already spent hours diagnosing, searching for weaknesses on transfers, anything that might give us an inkling on how and where his money went.

He’d pulled this set of transactions apart, leaving little chance that she could tell us anything new. We knew where the trail led—straight to George Petersen. The mayor of New York City was as filthy as the air his coveted city consumed.

“Pop quiz, sweetcheeks.” Alan patted her head and gave me a look over his shoulder, though he still spoke to her. “Tell me what you see.”

Frowning a little, Mari bent her head over the figures. She hummed beneath her breath, running her finger across lines, then down in a zigzag pattern. The room fell into heavy silence as she worked. I could see her mind churning, the critical part of her that had been missing all along.

My stomach dropped. How much damage had we—hadI—done to her by keeping her here so I could play with her whenever I felt like it?

She reached out absently, flapping one hand.

Jon grabbed a pen from Alan’s private cocktail writing collection behind the bar and tossed it to her. She grabbed it with a mumbled thanks and kept working, circling rows of numbers and underlining others. After everyone began to fidget, she made a line straight down one side of the page and added a little arrow off the side.

“The fuck is she doing?” Jon grunted in my ear.

Across from us, Miller folded his arms over his chest as he watched her, a stormy expression taking over his face. I curbed the defense that lurched to the forefront of my mind, but I didn’t need it. Miller brooded in silence, stewing at the far corner of the room. We all knew what he was thinking, and more than a few exchanged glances confirmed my long-term fear.

“Mari’s a setup, and you’ve allowed her into our inner circle.”

“She’s not loyal to you like we are.”

“You risk everything we’ve built together.”

But I’d risk everything to give her the chance to prove herself yet again to us. To me.

Shehadbeen set up, and no part of me wanted to believe that the girl I caught running for her existence playacted through the horrors she suffered in order to gain entrance to our world. But Miller’s fears overtook that assessment. Even if her trauma was real, Gideon had inserted an oblivious Trojan horse into my home who he could take back at any time and extract crucial information from her pretty, dark head—even if he killed her in the process.

I love you.

Her reaction to those three words, nonverbal on her side though still present between us, told me everything I needed to know.

That she gave her loyalty to me, and she loved me back.

That she lovedallof us—even Miller. The way she flirted with Jon, sharing confidences, looking after Alan when he crawled in the door damaged and hurting. Falling for Will’s sweet sense of romance, an air of innocence surrounding them despite the inner turmoil I knew he suffered.

She loved us, and we all loved her back in our own ways, fucked up as our history made us. Words didn’t need to be spoken to express what actions said on her behalf.

Another frustrated sound originated in her throat as she crinkled the edges of the paper. Mari’s expressions trawled across her face no matter how hard she’d tried to conceal her fears in our early days together. I made a mental note to up my interrogation techniques, maybe plant a few false memories of my own in there as a confusion tactic, just in case.

I won’t let her be taken from me.

And I refused to let my needs place these men and her in danger. Whatever I could do now still wouldn’t save her life if he got hold of her again. Nothing would. I knew that. A heavy weight that seeded too deep in my stomach reeked of selfish guilt no matter how I justified it. The thought of losing anyone else broke me.

“He told her to tell us what she could see.” I paraphrased Alan’s words, knowing Jon was still processing everything I’d already come to terms with. He’d come so damn close to declaring himself to her—if he hadn’t already in private. But I didn’t think so.

“Shush.” Alan sent another baleful look over his shoulder, wedging his ass against the chair beside Mari. “Ignore them, sweetcakes.” He watched her fondly as she flipped the page over to check for information on the back.

She looked so damn innocent and sweet there, like she belonged between us. Beside us. My heart twitched. I had no defense against the pain that ripped through me.Wewere her place right now, though we couldn’t be her forever home, and we weren’t her forever people. Somewhere in the world, she had a home that wasn’t us, and I had to return her to her place no matter how much that thought stung.

“Finished.” She flicked the page at Alan, shoulders straight with a palpable energy I hadn’t seen from her since I first paired her with Miller for sparring. “It would help if the pages were complete. Would you like an interpretation service as well?”

Alan made a show of turning the page around and held it out to her upside down. “Which way does it go?”

“Smart-ass.” She huffed and snatched the paper back, then spread it out on the table. “Here, here, and… here. These are regular payments. Bills, maybe. Transactions that go to the same place, like a scheduled drop. It’ll be something he—theyset up as a timed transfer. Or whoever accesses the accounts.” Her eyes narrowed as she corrected the ownership slip that didn’t go unnoticed.

I wondered how much she’d guessed about who the accounts belonged to, considering no name was listed on the page.

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