Morgan stared at him. “Lincoln. That’s—your father almostdied. And you’re taking me to the same cliff?”
“It was sabotage. Someone deliberately compromised the gear.” He glanced at her. “The person responsible was caught years ago. It’s not a concern now.”
“Who would sabotage rappelling gear?”
“Someone with a grudge against Linear Tactical. My dad wasn’t the target—just the one who happened to grab that rig.” Lincoln’s hands loosened on the wheel. “He doesn’t talk about it much. But I think it changed how he sees things. Made him think about how fast everything can end.”
Morgan understood that. Two weeks ago, she’d been preparing for a conference. Now, she was a fugitive with federal charges and a head full of data that could get people killed. Everything could change in a breath.
The vehicle pulled into a small clearing, and Morgan understood why he’d brought her here.
The cliff fell away before them in a sweep of ancient stone, dropping hundreds of feet to a valley floor that looked like a painting—green and gold and rust, threaded with the silver ribbon of a distant stream. The air was different up here, thinner and sharper, carrying the clean bite of elevation.
She walked to the edge and felt vertigo pull at her stomach. Not fear exactly. Just awareness. The world was verylarge and she was very small and her problems—the data, the panic, the fuzzy edges of memories that should be crystal clear—seemed to shrink in proportion.
“We’re going down there?” she asked.
“Yes.” Lincoln was already unloading gear from the back of the SUV—ropes, harnesses, carabiners, equipment she didn’t recognize. “This is one of Linear Tactical’s training routes. The rigging stays up year-round—they maintain it regularly, and I checked it myself last week.”
“But your father almost died here.”
“From sabotage. Not from the cliff itself.” He looked up, met her eyes. “I won’t let you fall. I promise.”
He helped her into the harness with hands that were steady and sure, adjusting straps, checking buckles, explaining each piece of equipment and its function. His competence here was different from his competence with computers—less cerebral, more physical. He moved like someone who knew exactly what his body could do.
“The key,” he said, positioning her at the cliff edge, “is to trust the system. Your instincts will tell you to grip tighter, to fight the descent. Don’t. Let the rope do the work.”
Morgan looked down. The drop yawned beneath her, vast and hungry. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You can.” No hesitation. No doubt. “You’ve survived worse than gravity, Morgan. This is just physics.”
Just physics. She almost laughed.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
The first few feet were the hardest. Her body screamedwrong, wrong, wrong!as she leaned back over nothing, trusting rope and hardware and Lincoln’s steady hands on the belay. The harness bit into her thighs. Her fingers ached through her gloves from gripping the rope too tight.
But he talked her through it, that steady voice somehowreassuring in its lack of false comfort—good, keep your feet flat, that’s it, let out more slack, you’re doing fine—and slowly, impossibly, she began to descend.
Her heel scraped against stone, dislodging pebbles that tumbled into the void below. Wind gusted up from the valley, cold and clean, carrying the smell of pine and distant water. She could feel her own heartbeat in her throat, her temples, the tips of her fingers.
And then something shifted.
Somewhere between the cliff edge and the valley floor, Morgan stopped thinking about coordinates and dead ends and the fuzzy edges of Ms. Delacroix’s face. There was only the burn of rope sliding through her grip. The solid press of stone beneath her boots. The vast blue bowl of sky wheeling overhead as she descended, foot by foot, into the waiting earth.
Her body, doing what it was designed to do. Moving through space. Existing in the present moment instead of drowning in the past.
She made it down.
Her legs were shaking when she touched solid ground, her arms burning, her palms raw. But she was laughing—actually laughing—a sound she barely recognized.
Lincoln descended beside her a moment later, smooth and controlled where she’d been jerky and uncertain. He unclipped from his rope and turned to look at her, and the expression on his face made her forget how to breathe for a moment.
Not his usual analytical assessment. Something else. Something she didn’t have a name for.
“You did it,” he said.
