Page 40 of Tangled

“Why? You need another helicopter rescue?” The way he saidyouwas definitely theyooof New Yorkers.

“No.” Tristan reconsidered. “Probably not. Do you have an aunt or somebody in your family named Mary Bell?”

Logan’s tone switched to one that was serious, sinister, and all New Yorker. “Why the hell do you want to know?”

“Whoa there, old chap. It was just a question.”

“It’s never just a question when you drop the name Mary Varvara Bell.”

Funny, Tristan hadn’t mentioned her middle name. “Forget I said anything.”

“You didn’t ask anything, and I didn’t tell you anything.”

“Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly the attitude I would take if anybody asked me about my Aunt Mary.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Imagine Michael Corleone at theendof the movie crossed with Hannibal Lecter.”

Wow.“Are you serious?”

“In a designer skirt.”

“Are you serious about the Hannibal Lecter part?”

“She can get in your head and figure out stuff about you that you didn’t know about yourself and then convince you to do shit that you never thought yourself capable of. Maybe not so much the cannibalism or chianti parts.” Logan paused.“Probably.”

“But she took over for your grandfather?”

“Yeah. He ran the family business like abusiness.She runs it like a third-world dictatorship.”

“Yikes. I’m surprised the Malefactor wasn’t grooming you to take over.”

“Yeah.” A syllable that held a world of resentment. “The business isn’t something you turn over to someone. It’s a thing you have totake.”

“And she took it.”

“She was ready the minute he went into hospice, a week before he died. A couple of people died, and a couple of others came to sign contracts instead. She sat by my grandfather’s bedside, held his hand, and then whispered to him that all he owned was hers now. So he died pissed off and threatening to slit her throat, but he was gone.”

“Jesus, Logan.”

“Yeah, he overlooked Aunt Mary because she was a woman. He was old-fashioned like that, so he never saw her coming. Like, who did he tell all his how-to-crime stories to and loan seed money to? Four young white guys. Did he loan money to my female cousins?No.Did he pay for them to go to Le Rosey and make connections?No.So my Aunt Mary did it on her own, and she did itverywell. And then she took everything from him. How do you know about her?”

And there was the reason Tristan hadn’t talked to any of the other guys about the letter: because they would start asking questions. “I read a news article about her. Saw her last name was Bell. Thought of you.”

“Yeah. Sure. Okay. Well, don’t poke that bear with a stick, Tristan. It’s not worth it.”

21

Merry People of Sherwood Forest

Colleen

While Colleen and Tristan worked their butts off writing an Anonymity program for her, even though Colleen was sure they should have been working on figuring out how to get all that GameShack stock for the crazy people in the letter, she found time to occasionally pop onto the Sherwood Forest stock market forum.

Dear Merry People of Sherwood Forest: