“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 thisend 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 shemightbe 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. Shewanted 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.
