Page 22 of The Blonde Identity

He peeked over.

So she—

“Stop doing that!” he spat.

“Stop doing what?”

“Just... wait there,” he said with exaggerated patience before leaning over to peer at the deck below.

It extended farther than the top level, with at least fifteen feet between them and the frothy strip of water that spread out in their wake.

“Ooh,” she said, and he spun on her.

“I thought I told you to stay back.” He was whispering, but he was also kind of shouting. She wasn’t sure how that worked exactly but she guessed it was something they taught at spy school.

“What are we looking for?” she asked just as a voice drifted up from down below.

“Melanie! What should we do with the luggage for the Michaelsons?”

She and Sawyer scooted back just as a woman came up a staircase, a young man on her heels.

The woman, Melanie, stopped on the little deck and looked back at the younger man. “The Michaelsons’ flight was canceled because of the storm.”

“But they shipped their luggage ahead. It’s here. What should I...”

“Take it to storage. Oh, and bring up a case of white? Lorenzo’s running low.”

The young man must have said something, but the words were lost on the wind and soon there was nothing but the sound of birds overhead and the water lapping against the hull and... silence.

The deck below them stayed empty, and Sawyer studied her, anow-or-neverlook on his face as he slid over the edge. Maybe she really was afraid of heights, she realized as she looked down and he looked up, impatience all over his face.

“Come on,” he whispered.

“It’s high.”

“It’s not even ten feet.”

“That’s high!”

“You’ve jumped off two bridges in the last ninety minutes!”

“People were shooting at me! Guns are scarier than heights. It goesguns”—she drew an imaginary line in the air then dropped her hand ten inches—“heights. Everybody knows that!”

“I have a gun,” he mumbled under his breath. For a moment, he looked like he was considering pushing her overboard. But instead he held up both arms like she was a toddler who was refusing to go down the slide. Oh, how she wished there were a slide.

“Come on.” He cast a nervous glance in the direction of the disappearing woman. “I’ll catch you.”

Maybe it was the words... Maybe it was the gesture... Maybe it was the tone... But somehow she believed him. Sure, it was probably just because a sprained ankle or broken leg would slow them down even more. Butwhydidn’t matter. It was enough that it was true, so she inched toward the edge.

“Any day now...”

And rolled onto her belly.

“Oh, we’re doing it this way,” he said, stepping closer.

And lowered herself down as far as she could go.

She was just starting to contemplate how long her arms could hold her when she heard a chuckle and felt the cold wind on the back of her thighs.

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