Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Every nerve in Fallon’s body fired at once. She spun.
Isaac.
His mask was pushed up onto his forehead. Dark jacket, open collar, his sleeves pushed to his forearms. A glass of something amber in his other hand.
His fingers were still on her elbow. Not gripping. Just there, warm and steady through the silk of her sleeve, like he had every right to be touching her.
“Isaac.” His name came out before she could decide whether to say it.
“Fallon.”
She pulled her elbow free. He let her.
Her pulse was hammering but she kept her voice even. “What are you doing here?”
“Same thing everyone else is doing. Enjoying the party.”
“You’re working.”
“I’m not.”
“Your team—”
“Isn’t here. No team, no client. Just me and a twelve-hundred-dollar ticket.”
She scanned the crowd behind him while she processed that.
No earpieces on nearby guests. No one watching them with professional interest. No subtle perimeter, no staged positioning, nothing that read as an operation.
Just partygoers in masks, drinking and laughing and watching the elaborate circus go on around them.
She and Cassandra had actively avoided locations where Zodiac Tactical might be present all week. But this wasn’t Zodiac. This was Isaac. Alone, on his own time, at an event he had no professional reason to attend.
She had a stolen USB drive pressed against her hip and the one man in the world who could connect her to criminal activity was standing two feet away with a bourbon in his hand.
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” he said. “I’ve worked three different high-end events this past week. You weren’t at any of them.”
“That was deliberate.”
Something shifted in his expression. A flicker of recalculation, quick and controlled. She’d said too much. A pickpocket might avoid a crowded room or a venue with heavy security. A pickpocket didn’t track a specific firm’s schedule and build her calendar around their absence.
“Deliberate,” he repeated. “You knew where I’d be.”
She shot him a half-smile, trying to defuse. “I knew where Zodiac would be. There’s a difference.”
“How?”
“A girl has to have some secrets.”
“That’s not a secret. That’s surveillance.” His eyes narrowed a fraction. “How are you tracking my firm’s schedule?”
“I’m not tracking anything. I just pay attention to which events have private security and which ones don’t. It’s not hard to spot if you know what to look for.”
He studied her for a long beat. She held his gaze and kept her breathing even. The lie was thin, but it was plausible enough to stand if he didn’t push it.
He let it go. For now. “But here we both are.”
He was alone. He’d come alone, on his own time and dime, to an event he had no professional reason to attend.
“You crashed a masquerade to find me,” she said.
“I didn’t crash anything. I bought a ticket. The foundation’s doing important work, apparently.”
Her jaw tightened at that. He didn’t know how bitterly ironic that statement was, and she couldn’t tell him.
And as much as she wished she could stay here and flirt with him—and she didn’t deceive herself into believing that wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do—the computer drive in her pocket was more important than her own wants.
She needed to get out of here.
“Walk with me,” she said. “I can’t stand in one place too long. Occupational hazard.”
He fell into step beside her. She steered them away from the main crowd, toward the south end of the grounds and the hedge maze. The lights from the party thinned out here. The music softened into something distant and atmospheric.
“The masks must make your job easier,” he said.
She didn’t confirm or deny.
“How do you pick them?” he asked. “Your targets. What makes one rich person’s pockets more interesting than another’s?”
“Maybe I just like pockets.”
He laughed. Short, surprised, genuine. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.”
His hand found her elbow again as they walked, guiding her around a low hedge border she’d already seen. She didn’t need the help. She should pull away. She didn’t.
“Come on.” He nudged her, the gesture almost playful. “Give me something. I bought a ticket and put on a mask for this conversation.”
She pointed at the top of his head where his mask sat. “You took the mask off.”
“It was itchy. Stop deflecting.”
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “Why does it matter to you? Why I pick who I pick?”
“Because I’ve been thinking about it since my watch somehow went missing, and every answer I come up with makes you more interesting.” His thumb traced a small circle against the inside of her elbow. Casual. Devastating. “Which is a problem, since you were already pretty interesting.”
“Sounds like you need to hang out with a larger variety of people.”
“You have no idea how true that is.” He held her gaze, and the warmth in it was worse than any interrogation. “I just want to know if there’s a reason. That’s all.”
“There’s always a reason. Maybe I like to help karma along.” She let him have that much. “Happy?”
“Getting there.”
She didn’t have a response to that. Or she had several, and none of them were safe.
The maze entrance was just ahead now. A pair of guards were stationed at the opening, starting to set up a rope barrier. The maze was being closed for the night—too dark for guests without pathway lights.
“You really don’t have a team here? You’re not about to dump me over your shoulder and carry me kicking and screaming into some stranger danger van?”
Now he laughed outright. It changed everything about his face—made him look younger, not quite so dangerous.
And oh-so-kissable.
“Is that what you think we do at Zodiac?”
“Maybe.”
“It’s not.” He tilted his head. “At least, not usually. Sometimes.”
“So you came here alone,” she said. “No team. No earpiece. No client.”
“Yep. Just me. And solely on the chance that you might show up.”
“What were you planning to do if you found me?”
“This.” He gestured between them. “Talk. See if you’d stand still long enough to have an actual conversation instead of vanishing through a side exit.”
“And then what?”
“I hadn’t planned that far ahead.”
“A man who runs tactical security operations didn’t plan ahead? I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you want. Some things don’t benefit from a plan.”
The words landed somewhere she wasn’t prepared for. The honest answer was that she understood exactly what he meant, because she hadn’t planned for him either. Not in Boston, not last week, not tonight.
He kept appearing in the spaces she’d mapped and measured and accounted for, and he didn’t fit any of them. And standing here in the dark with his hand on her arm and the party distant behind them, part of her wanted to stop moving and let whatever this was catch up to her.
She couldn’t stop her tiny step closer.
A radio crackling on one of the maze guards stopped her. A voice came through, loud enough to carry in the quiet at this end of the lawn. “Hey—was the east service door supposed to be unlocked? It’s showing ajar on the panel.”
The warmth in her chest iced over.
The maze guard keyed his radio. “Probably the caterers. Check it and reset.” He clipped the radio back to his belt, and the two of them finished tying off the rope, hung a “closed” sign over it, and headed back toward the main lawn.
Fallon’s hand went to her hip. The drive was there, pressed flat against her body.
Safe. But the window was closing. If they checked the door and found anything out of place, if someone decided to walk the building again, if anyone pulled the security footage from the keypad—she needed to be gone. Now.
She didn’t want to go. That was the hell of it. She wanted to stay right here in the dark at the edge of the lawn with this man who’d bought a ticket to a masquerade because she might be here.
But staying meant more questions, and Isaac wasn’t the type to let her deflect forever. He’d keep pushing, keep circling, and sooner or later she’d either slip or he’d get close enough to the truth that slipping wouldn’t matter.
She stepped toward him. Her hand found his arm, fingers curling around his bicep, and she felt the muscle tense under her grip. She rose up on her toes and brought her mouth close to his ear.
“I need you to know,” she said, “that I’m actually glad to see you tonight.”
That was nothing but the honest truth.
His head turned toward hers. His breath was warm against her cheek. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You make things more…”—Intimate. Fun. Playful—“interesting.”
She pulled back just enough to look at him. Close enough that if she tilted forward an inch, her lips would be on his. She wanted that almost more than she wanted her next breath. But she couldn’t. Too much was at stake.
“I need you to do something for me,” she whispered.
“What?” His voice had dropped. His gaze moved to her mouth.
She held the moment for one more heartbeat. Wished she could hold it for a million more.
“Try to catch me.”
She kissed his cheek, ducked under the rope and slipped into the maze.
The darkness swallowed her in three steps. The hedges closed in on both sides—dense boxwood, trimmed tight, the walls close enough to touch with both hands if she stretched. No lights. No path markers. Just the geometry she’d memorized from the aerial survey Cassandra had pulled two days ago.
She knew where she was going. She would bet Isaac didn’t. That was the only advantage she had in a foot race.
First turn: right. Second: left, then immediate right again into the narrow channel that ran along the eastern wall. She moved fast and silent, her flat shoes gripping the packed earth of the path.
Behind her, she heard him curse and enter the maze. He wasn’t quiet about it. He was fast, his stride long and confident. That wouldn’t last long in this elaborate labyrinth.