Page 10 of Riggs
“So she can hear it from you and not a gossip site,” I say. “We’re going to choose what we can choose.”
She looks at me as if I’ve set something heavy down for her and she hadn’t realized she was holding it. “Okay,” she says again, and this time it sounds like relief.
We do the loop. I watch our mirrors. A sedan lingers too long a lane over, then peels off when it’s clear we aren’t interesting. The drizzle graduates to rain and then back again, like Seattle is exhaling in stutters. Nolan peels us into the hotel’s garage—concrete, painted numbers, the empty echo sound that always throws off a tail. We roll into our slot, engine ticking, and I’m out first, scanning—the stairwell door, the elevator bank, the valet’s private entry. No stray bodies, no trash can that moved since yesterday, no license plates I don’t like.
“Clear,” I say. I help her out because that’s the cover now and because I want to. My palm finds hers. It’s warm. We step into the elevator and it dings like a polite robot.
On the fifteenth floor, the hallway is thick carpet and tasteful art that looks expensive and means nothing. I key us in, shoulder the door with the habit I can’t unlearn, and we enter the suite. Floor-to-ceiling windows glow gray with rain, the skyline smudged like a watercolor left out in a storm. There are two rooms—living area and bedroom—plus a bathroom big enough to do yoga in.
“Take five,” I tell her. “Shoes off, breathe. I’ll sweep.”
She abandons my hoodie like it’s too warm and pads into the living room, fingers pressed to her mouth. I start with the obvious—door jams, peephole, the safe. Then the less obvious—HVAC vents, behind the TV, baseboards, under the bed with the flashlight. My hands work, my brain hums, and under it all that damn kiss keeps replaying, an unhelpful greatest hit.
When I finish, I wedge the door with the portable lock, set the alarm on the balcony slider, and finally allow myself to look at her properly. She’s on the sofa, knees tucked under, phone dark now. Watching me.
“All clear,” I say. “We’re good.”
“Good,” she echoes, and then: “Riggs?”
“Yeah.”
“That thing you did back there.” Her voice is soft but steady. “I know you did it to keep me safe. I’m grateful. And I also… liked it. Both things can be true.”
I’m not a guy who stumbles, but I feel it, the internal misstep. “Yeah,” I say honestly, because lying now is a bad precedent. “Me too.”
We sit in that for a beat. Rain drums on glass. Somewhere down on the street a siren flares and fades.
“So,” she says finally, brightening, shifting the subject without pretending she isn’t. “Since we’re pretending to date… what’s our first fake date in Seattle?”
“First order of business,” I say, grateful for the pivot, “is food you can eat without giving a tabloid a gif to dine on. Second order is checking in with your schedule. You’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning. I’ll stage the route. We can do dinner tonight if you’re up for it—hotel restaurant, corner booth, in and out. We’ll give them a picture and make sure it’s the one we like.”
She grins, surprised. “You’re kind of devious.”
“It’s a living,” I say.
She stands, crosses to me with her bare feet whispering on the carpet. She stops within reach and, for a second, neither of us moves. I can smell rain in her hair and something warmer underneath it, something that makes it a little harder to breathe.
“Okay, Mr. Devious,” she says. “Let’s make a plan.”
“We’ve got one,” I tell her. “We’ll make it better.”
Her smile softens. “And the rules?”
“We’ll keep them,” I say, and I mean it even if a part of me already hates that I do.
“Even if you have to…” She lifts a brow, teasing again.
“Even then,” I say, and because it’s both cover and truth, I reach and tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It’s nothing. It’s everything. Her breath catches, quick and quiet, and we stand there like a match held a millimeter from the striking surface.
The comm on the console chirps—Rae confirming our alias is registered, the hotel staff is briefed, the service elevator can be ours if we need it. The moment breaks into practical pieces.
“Time to work,” I say.
“Time to work,” she agrees.
But when we head downstairs later, my hand at the small of her back for anyone watching and for me, both, I know that what happened in the terminal wasn’t just a tactic. It was a line we stepped over and then drew behind us. And now my job is to make sure that line holds while we figure out what the hell to do with the heat we carried back with us in the rain.
4
