She took it, inhaling sharply when the static shock made her fingers tingle.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Yes, I just wasn’t expecting static electricity out here.”
He smiled and turned ahead again, tugging gently, leading her forward.
She heard it before she saw it—the gentle burble of running water, somewhere through the trees.
He led her another hundred feet along the unmarked path until the trees opened and she saw what she’d been hearing.
The waterfall wasn't large. It wasn’t dramatic or thundering or even the kind of thing that ended up on a postcard. It was something better—a series of falls stepping down dark, flat rocks into a wide, shallow pool. The late October light cut through the surrounding trees at a low angle, splitting in the mist into a prismatic display above the water. The sound of it was constant and even, like white noise.
“Oh,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” Patrick said from beside her.
They stopped at the edge. Colorful leaves drifted down, floating lazily into the water only to be swirled and carried away.
It was idyllic. Peaceful. The sound of the water. The shafts of golden sunlight. The smell of earth and leaves and clean, fresh air.
Patrick’s hand wrapped around hers, prepared to pull her back if she lost her balance. She knew, in that moment, that he wouldn’t let her fall.
“Anthony Varro was watching me.”
She said it matter-of-factly, accepting the truth of the picture the pieces were showing her.
Patrick’s thumb began moving gently, slowly, along hers. “What makes you say that?” he asked, not like he was asking a question, but like he’d reached the same conclusion.
“The evidence,” she answered, mentally recounting the points even though he knew them as well as she did. “He was at my crime scene—one of them, at least. And then he was in the parking garage at my office, talking to my supervisor. And then he turned up dead less than two miles from where I was staying. “ She paused. “He has—had—all the hallmarks of a mid-level hitter.” She paused again. “I think I stumbled onto something I wasn’t supposed to, and refusing to sign off on that case had bigger consequences than an LOA.”
“Keep going,” Patrick encouraged quietly.
“But someone took him out first, before he could get to me. And whoever did that had access to a CIA-developed assassination compound.”
“Yes.”
She turned and looked at him, fighting the urge to fall deeply into his blue eyes. “Was it you? Did you kill Anthony Varro?”
“No,” he said, eyes blazing. “But had I known, I might have.”
Her chest squeezed. “Why?”
In response, his head lowered slowly, making his intentions clear, giving her time to protest. She didn’t. Because at that moment, the only thing she was one hundred percent sure of was that she wanted to kiss this man who held her hand and wouldn’t let her fall.
He paused a hair’s breadth from her lips.
That was when she threw caution to the wind, rose on her tip toes, and kissedhim.
26
IMPORTANT THINGS
PATRICK
There weren’tmany instances when Patrick felt off, and almost never when he was tending at the pub. It was his second home. He felt comfortable here, surrounded by family, friends, and the townspeople he’d grown up with, doing something he enjoyed.
Tonight, however, his mind was on other things. Specifically, the moment beside the waterfall when Morgan Sullivan had risen onto her toes and kissed him.