Page 13 of Princess of Thieves

He purses his lips. “Well, she’s a wonderful woman.” He gives a little cough. “Was. Had cancer. It was so sudden, aggressive—stage four. I moved heaven and earth to get her every treatment I could, drove her up to Johns Hopkins, enrolled her in any trial that would take her—the whole works. But it wasn’t enough.” He lets out a long, controlled exhale.

And I feel it. I feel the grief of losing someone before their time, someone who was your rock, who was always there for you, to give you advice, to comfort you, to reassure you that the world made sense and that good people would prevail, even if in this moment, the bad guys and bullies were getting the upper hand.

“She would always quote that line,” he says. “You know, about how whenever God closes a door, He opens a window. And I took that to heart. Now, I’m just not sure if it’s true.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “She sounds like an incredible woman.”

“Oh, she was,” Guy says. For the first time all evening—maybe since I’ve been here—he relaxes. He seems less like a polished Southern gentleman robot and more like a human being. He leans back in his chair and pushes up his sleeves a little. “She liked her bourbon neat and could swear a blue streak once she’d had a few in her. She was a wicked Volunteers fan, and you can imagine how that rubbed my daddy the wrong way. God rest his soul. She’d get righteously angry whenever they lost the quarterfinal, and then get mad when Daddy would tell her not to make such a big deal out of it.”

I snort. “I can appreciate that.”

“Indeed,” Guy says. He lets out a long, slow exhale. “Well, so that’s why I ended up back here, to be honest. It put things in perspective. I came back here to get her affairs in order, and I just found...I never left. I got a job in the district attorney’s office, and, well, it just stuck. It’s not exactly what I wanted to do, but—”

“Because you have to work with people like the sheriff,” I finish for him.

I’ve cleaned my plate and am ready for seconds, but Rosa is nowhere to be found. I chew my lip, wondering if it would be too rude to just grab a serving spoon and dump more of this cornbread dressing onto my plate.

“Well, that’s part of it,” Guy says. “You sure are a straight shooter, Maren—never miss a target.”

I snort before I can stop myself. He doesn’t know how right he is. Literally, the last person I hit with an arrow was Rob, and I goddamn meant to.

“I could have gone private,” Guy says. “Kept up the family law firm, taken a lot of cushy cases, charged $350 an hour, and just lived my life that way. But I didn’t like that for myself. Seeing what’s going on in Sherwood, getting the lay of the land here—I just felt something had to change.”

“That’s an understatement,” I say.

“You’re right,” Guy says, nodding at me. “A lot has to change. Maybe everything has to change. That’s what I’m hoping to do one day.” But he trails off, tapping a finger to his chin. “Hey, what do you say to some champagne?”

“What?” I straighten in my seat. “What for?”

He smiles and reaches for a little bell I didn’t see before. The tinkling sound draws Rosa in from the kitchen. She nods. “Mister Guy?”

“For the two of us,” he says. “The Grand Cru, 2009. I think it’s time.”

I only understand the year from that sentence, but it’s enough for me to know that it’s fancy and expensive.

As Rosa disappears, I stare at him down the length of the table. “What for? Are we celebrating something?”

“Well, I was hoping to keep it a surprise, but I suppose now’s as good a time as ever,” he says. Rosa swings back in through thedoor with a silver bucket of ice and a green bottle with a dusty-looking label.

“Part of my mission,” Guy says, getting to his feet, “is busting out everything that’s rotten in Sherwood from the inside, and I do mean everything.” He nods at Rosa, dismissing her, and takes the bottle from her hand with a strong grip. He holds the neck in one hand and throws a towel over the cork. “I don’t like the way things have been run around here. That’s why I think I was drawn to the public sector instead of practicing privately.” With a deft twist of his hand, he loosens the cork a little.

I frown at him. “Oh?

“Yes. Yes, indeed, Miss Maren. And I’m sorry to tangle you up in this, but you’re a part of that project.” With one broad hand, he grips the bottom of the champagne bottle, and in a single twist, he pops the cork. A few spatters of foam hit the floor, just as Rosa reappears with two coupe glasses.

“I’m not going to lie,” I say, “I’m not following.”

Guy takes the coupes from Rosa in a single hand and fills them both easily from the spurting bottle. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t expect you to,” he says. “I’ve had John Lackland arrested.”

My heart squeezes. “What?” I say, almost involuntarily. I scooch back in my chair. Uncle John arrested? I don’t even know where to start. I’m sure he’s done all kinds of illegal things, but...

“The evidence was in plain sight,” Guy says. “Fraud, racketeering...all the things the RICO fellows will have a field day with. The sorts of thing your father would have had a field day with.” He takes a few steps toward me, bearing both glasses.

I stare up at him as he draws closer, the champagne fizzing and popping in his hands. I hate that I’m feeling so vulnerable. I hate that this is all winning me over, but it’s all that I ever wanted, in a way. I wanted Daddy’s work to catch the bad guys, to be continued. I wanted Uncle John to rot in prison foreverything he did to me and to everyone else, and I wanted to be free, to be beautiful, to be valued, to be treated better than I was, to be treated well.

“Here you go, Maren,” Guy says, handing me my glass. “Santé.”

“Sláinte,” I say, and tip the glass into my mouth before I can think. A trickle of champagne escapes the corner of my mouth at the same time a faint tear escapes the corner of my eye.

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