Which he did for aliving.
Trouble indeed.“Um, that was a joke,” she said lamely.
Now maybe shedidwant to leap off the cliff.
“Watch yourself out here. And I don’t just mean the trails.”
Huh?
But he climbed into his truck and drove off, dust swirling as he disappeared down the road.
Nimue dove into her camper, door slamming behind her. Sitting down in front of her setup, she booted up her system, the servers’ hum a lifeline in the chaos of her thoughts. Maybe she hadn’t dug deep enough on this man.
Something haunted him and she was going to figure out what.
She grabbed some ice water, then plunged into the web’s underbelly, hunting for the ghost she’d glimpsed in Liam’s eyes. His name hadn’t turned up anything, but maybe facial recognition would.
She fed in the image of him that she’d taken from her surveillance camera.
Facial recognition took three hours to deliver the answer.
Oh, Liam.
A Swiss newspaper photo showed Liam in climbing gear, expression shattered by grief. She fed the article through translation software. Team of climbers. Fatal accident on treacherous ridge. A girl named Christiana, lost. Liam, her climbing partner.
Haunted, indeed.
Her chest squeezed. She’d found his pressure point, all right—the perfect lever for gaining his trust. Act as if she needed his help.
Emberly would applaud her field work.Locate weakness. Exploit connection. Mission accomplished.
Her stomach lurched.
Maybe she wasn’t cut out for the operative life. Maybe she was really beginning to like this guy. The guy who didn’t just pull her from the edge but also made her want to stay.
Attachment spelled death in her world. The Bratva didn’t forgive, and they didn’t relent. And worst of all, they turned loved ones into weapons. The thought of them using Liam against her turned her cold.
And now, vice versa. If she let him get close and if something happened to her…
Although, assuming he might grow to care for her was presuming a lot, maybe.
Maybe this Christiana hadn’t been just a climbing partner…
She slammed the laptop shut, hands trembling.
The Bratva’s pursuit she could handle. This sudden free fall into something possibly, well,realwith Liam Kingsley? That terrified her more than any Russian assassin ever could.
SIX
For a man who’d once given paragliding tours off the Swiss Alps—multiple runs a day—jumping off this bridge should be child’s play. Bungee jumping had always delivered the rush he needed. But that was before.
Then again, if this didn’t snap him out of his funk, nothing would.
Liam’s knuckles turned white against the Navajo Bridge railing. Noah balanced at the edge of the four-hundred-sixty-seven-foot plunge into Marble Canyon, casual as someone checking his mailbox. The green thread of the Colorado River snaked far below, deceptively peaceful. This stretch eventually fed the Grand Canyon, but while the canyon Liam had been seeing every day was up to eighteen miles wide at some points, here limestone walls squeezed the space to under a thousand feet. Vertical walls plunged straight down, smooth as glass, daring him to leap.
Funny, despite Noah’s wild appearance, Liam hadn’t pegged his boss for the adrenaline-junkie kind. Everything in Noah’s day was too exact, too controlled, too scheduled. Even if he couldn’t seem to find time to get a haircut.
But life was full of surprises. Like yesterday, the sudden—and painful—rush of feelings when he’d sort of, a little, saved Nimue from taking a header off the cliff during their run. Instinct, and yes, for a second, he had been back on the mountain, listening to Christiana scream.