But he hadn’t quit.

  Finally he’d used one shaking, sore leg—he wasn’t even sure which one was the bad one anymore, they both felt like jelly—to boost himself up and over, onto a three-foot ledge that ran the length of the building, sixty-some feet up.

  Cursing, he’d dragged himself onto the flat surface, breathing hard, nearly sniveling with exertion.

  “Doesn’t look so hard from the ground, does it?” Cannon said. He was sitting a few yards away with his mismatched legs dangling over the edge. He looked cucumber-cool, as though he could lead a high-powered board meeting anytime.

  Erik thought about pushing him off for general spite—knowing his belay buddy would break the fall. But that would’ve taken too much effort, so instead he dragged himself to a sitting position beside the other man. “I’m up here. Now talk.”

  “Look around you.” Cannon gestured to the upper levels of the climbing gym, where the original floors of the warehouse had been gutted and replaced with tall beams, making the place feel like a pillared coliseum. The padded floor seemed far away, the other people small and unimportant. “Now picture open air. Just rocks and sky and a few climbing buddies. And tell me this isn’t worth a little butt chafe.”

  Erik grimaced and ignored a faint, wistful memory of hiking with his granddad, back before everything had gotten so complicated in the family. “I don’t need a hobby, I need information. Where does Pentium stand on the NPT deal?”

  “We’re out.”

  It took a moment for the words to penetrate, another for the irritation to rise. “You brought me all the way up here to tell me that? And what the hell do you mean, you’re out? It’s going to be a huge breakthrough!”

  Cannon shrugged. “True, but the head honchos think the ethics may be a tad squidgy—it’s based on stem cells, after all, and fair or not, that raises the whole specter of experimenting on human embryos. After that brouhaha last year when our steroid testing kits gave false positives on a half dozen of baseball’s finest, and the class-action lawsuit the year before, we’re trying to keep a low profile.”

  “The ethics are fine,” Erik said. “But don’t let me talk you into it. I’d just as soon Pentium stayed out of the mix.”

  “Then you’re in luck.” Cannon turned his attention back to the open space surrounding them. “And you already know why I made you climb up here to get your precious answer. You needed to climb.”

  “Bull. I need to finish this deal before I—” Erik broke off. “Never mind. How the hell do we get down?”

  He wasn’t looking for a friend, wasn’t looking to bounce his problems off a near stranger. Though he was willing to bet that Cannon was on the up-and-up, and that he’d told the truth about Pentium’s status in the NPT deal, that didn’t make them buddies.

  “We rappel.” Cannon briefly outlined the procedure, and then was gone, leaping out into open space tethered only by his main line and the safety belay. He swung in and pushed off the wall once, twice, three times, his artificial leg making a weird, mechanical sound as it absorbed the shock.

  Determined to ignore the twist of nerves in his stomach and the raw chafe of his harness, Erik double-checked his attachment point, muttered something uncomplimentary about Cannon, and pushed himself off the ledge while letting the rope play through.

  He was braced for pain when he swung in and pushed off. There was pain, yes, a singing jolt of impact that ricocheted up both legs. But that sensation was lost in another.

  The feeling of flying.

  It only took a handful of seconds for him to reach the ground. A few heartbeats. One slow exhale. But it was long enough to remind him of the rush of speed and wind and adrenaline he’d once craved, once lived for.

  In that moment, he remembered himself.

  Then he hit the padded floor too fast. His bad leg howled pain and buckled, and he fell off to one side. When he reached out to catch himself, his arms fouled the lines.

  He landed on his face. In public. The crash helmet Cannon had pressed on him absorbed most of the impact, but pain thrummed from his heels to the top of his head. He groaned and rolled onto his back just in time to watch a small crowd gather.

  Otto looked sheepish. “Sorry, dude. I thought you had it under control.” Translation—he’d been flirting with the coeds.

  A strange woman bent close. “Are you okay?”

  “He’s fine,” Cannon said. He shooed the others away and tossed Erik’s cane, so it landed a few feet away. “And don’t tell me it hurts. If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough.”

  He walked away, headed for the locker room on one flesh leg, one metallic one.

  Erik cursed Cannon, cursed his relatives and any children who might be unlucky enough to have the heartless bastard as their father. Then he pushed himself up, stripped off that godawful harness and hauled himself to his feet. His legs were shaking—both of them—and he was soaked with sweat, but there was no way he was getting naked in a communal shower, so he headed for the door, pausing only to pay for the dubious pleasure of using the wall, the rental equipment and Otto’s so-called spotting.

  “You’re all set.” The gum-popping girl at the front desk waved him past. “Luke took care of it.”

  Erik nodded curtly and stalked past.

  He tried to tell himself that he’d achieved his goal, that they could cross Pentium off their suspect list, because why would they care who bought NPT if they weren’t still in the running for the deal?

  But as he hit the street and the sharp fall air chilled the damp shirt to his back, he found himself thinking not of the case, but of Meg waiting for him in his house. On his turf. Surrounded by his things.

  He wasn’t sure what to call the emotion that rattled in his chest. Wariness, maybe, or fascination. But as he collected his Mercedes, her image was firmly in the forefront of his mind, along with Cannon’s parting words.

  If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough.

  THE WAY MEG SAW IT, there was a pretty fuzzy line between scientific curiosity and plain nosiness. She figured she’d stepped over that line the moment she moved out of Erik’s living room and into his high-tech office. But the door was open, and he hadn’t told her any part of the house was off limits, had he?

  Okay, she was rationalizing, but something compelled her to cross the vibrantly patterned Oriental rug and slide into the soft leather chair behind his desk. A desire to understand Erik, perhaps, or the effect he had on her.

  They were on opposite sides of a pitched battle. He was the enemy, representing the big business and industry her father had warned her against for so many years. And Erik was no prize on the personal level, either. He was suspicious and reactive, and wanted to blame her for an attraction that clearly went both ways.

  “Why do I always pick the complicated ones?” she said, thinking back to her two past serious relationships. She had to think back a ways, to before she started working at BoGen.

  Benjamin had been a fellow grad student who’d shared her enthusiasm for the extreme outdoors. He’d had a mean, jealous streak she’d ignored for the most part, but when he’d quit school to “find himself,” she hadn’t been at all tempted by his offer of a shared sleeping bag in Alaska.

  After him had been Foster, a stockbroker who worked long hours and liked fine wine and fast airplanes. It had taken her nearly three months to figure out that he’d also liked juggling girlfriends. What she’d thought were his deep, reflective silences were actually moments when he was scrambling to remember his cover story.

  At least Ben and Foster had been kind to her, for the most part. Erik hadn’t even bothered with that much. Then again, maybe that made him more honest than most, in an antisocial sort of way.

  “Face it,” she said out loud, “you want him, but you don’t always like him.”

  Rather than echoing back, her words were deadened by the pleated blinds covering the single, wide window, and the built-in shelves that held everything from paperback novels to a wooden ship model in an expensive-looking glass case.

  The ship seemed out of place, a touch of whimsy in an otherwise utilitarian workspace.

  Aware that she was invading his privacy and not sure she cared, not even sure what she was looking for, Meg slid a stack of folders from one side of his desk to the other. She murmured, “Well, well. What have we here?”

  The motion had revealed a framed picture tucked into a corner alcove.

  The photo was grainy with age, and the six clustered figures wore clothes from another decade, in styles that had already come and gone at least once more in the years since. The picture showed what looked like three generations, with an older man standing behind a smiling couple in their thirties, with three boys, dark haired and happy, arranged in the foreground. The quality of the outdated clothes spoke of wealth, as did the marina in the background, where a large sailboat called the Amadeus lay berthed.

  Meg couldn’t find Erik’s adult features in the faces of the three boys, who ranged in age from probably nine or ten to midteens, but she had to guess it was his family portrait. It seemed strange to think of Erik as having brothers, and she shrugged off the faint twist of envy she habitually felt at the thought of siblings. She would have liked a brother or sister, but her parents had been too intent on their separate goals.

  Would things have been different between her parents if they’d had more children? Would her mother have felt compelled to stay then? She stared at the photo, trying to force the answer, but there was nothing but six static smiles and a twinkle of humor in the old man’s eyes.

  “This is getting me nowhere.” Though she was almost reluctant to set it aside, she tucked the photo back where she’d found it before she rose and began pacing the room. She wouldn’t turn on the computer—that would be taking the snooping thing too far—but there had to be something in here that would give her leverage when it came to dealing with Erik on the professional level.

  And maybe the personal one, a thoughtlet whispered in her brain, and for a change she didn’t shove it away. Yeah, she agreed mentally, maybe the personal one.

  But when she finally found her leverage tucked behind the model ship, it was nothing like what she’d expected, and nothing she could, in good conscience, use in the negotiations.

  But it sure explained a hell of a lot.

  ON HIS WAY HOME, Erik phoned the detectives to let them know that Pentium had moved down to his “probably not” list, and to see if they had come up with anything.

  “Nothing on the trace evidence from Dr. Corning’s home,” Peters said, frustration edging his tone. “This guy is either damn good or damn lucky.” There was a pause and the sound of rustling paper. “The techs came up with a possibility on the security videos from the hospital, though. Looks like a young man, late teens, early twenties, wearing loose jeans, a dark sweatshirt and a skullcap. The video caught him walking away from the elevator just after it fell.”

  “That doesn’t sound very concrete,” Erik said as he pulled off the highway, headed for his place in the ’burbs.

  “True, except that we can’t find him entering the building.”

  That got Erik’s attention. “All the entrances are videoed?”

  “Yes, and my people are good. We’ve got a decent shot of the lower half of his face, and new recognition software on beta-testing from the feds. We can’t find him entering the hospital that day or five days prior.”

  “No ID?”

  “Not yet. We’re having to extrapolate the upper half from averages, and haven’t hit on anything. But when we showed the picture around, one of the construction workers recognized him. Said he threw the kid off the site the day Dr. Corning went into the cement form.”

  Ice sluiced through Erik’s veins. “And he’s just telling you this now?”

  “Said he’d forgotten all about it until he saw the picture. Sadly, that’s life with eyewitnesses.”

  “You looking for the punk?”

  “Of course, but you know how it is.”

  “Right.” Contrary to the popular media’s view of police work, it wasn’t easy to find someone who didn’t want to be found. “You want to fax me a copy of that picture?” Erik asked, knowing Peters wouldn’t have shared info if he hadn’t been planning to do just that.

  “It’s on its way. You headed home?”

  “Yeah. Did the locals report anything hinky?”

  “Nothing,” Peters said. “She didn’t try to sneak out, and nobody tried to get in.”

  “Thanks.” An invisible band loosened from around Erik’s chest. Part of him had expected Meg to climb out the window and take off, just to prove she could.

  Then again, maybe it was a bad sign she hadn’t tried it. Maybe it meant—

  Nothing. It didn’t meant a thing. She was who she was, nothing more, nothing less.

  The detective’s voice gained a note of finality when he said, “Call me if there’s anything I should know.”

  “Same goes,” Erik said before he disconnected the call. But both of them knew the Chinatown detectives would share exactly as much as they wanted to. Erik wasn’t a cop anymore.

  Wouldn’t be one ever again.

  The brief thought reminded him of the climbing wall. Eight years earlier, he would’ve climbed it without a harness and laughed at the simplicity. That afternoon, it had taken him nearly an hour, and he was already feeling the burn of sore muscles.

  He shouldn’t feel ridiculously pleased that he’d made it to the top and back again. Because he did, and because he wasn’t yet ready to lose that feeling, he tucked it away for future reference. When this was over, maybe he’d try physical therapy again. Hell, maybe he’d skip right over PT and just start pushing himself.

  Then he turned into his driveway and thoughts of the climbing wall fled at the sight of lit windows and the shadow of a woman passing from one room to the next on the lower floor.

  The cop in him cringed at the easy target she presented, though their perp had yet to use a firearm. But the man in him focused on her outline, on the strong, womanly curves that sometimes became lost beneath the force of her personality, the stress of the situation.

  Meg was a beautiful woman.

  But she’s not for you, his saner self reminded him. You’re not for her.

  “I know,” he said, but that knowledge didn’t stop him from wishing he looked neater, smelled cleaner and moved faster as he parked the car and climbed the front steps. It didn’t stop him from thinking that this was the first time he’d felt anticipation as he reached for the doorknob of his own house.

  He was gratified to find it locked and to find the outer keypad armed and beaming a solid red light. He tapped in the required code and used his spare key, then tapped in the second code in the coat closet, resetting both alarms. With some thought of letting her know he’d arrived and then heading straight upstairs to shower, he stuck his head around the corner, into the living room, knowing he’d last seen her silhouette heading toward the kitchen.

  The smell of cooking—rosemary and something warm—punched straight to his gut with its unexpectedness, sending him back a step into the marble foyer.

  When was the last time he’d come home to cooking? Not since that last night with Celia. Before that, he had to go back to the years B.C.—Before Cop—when the invitations to family functions had still arrived regularly, when he’d felt comfortable going home for Sunday dinner with the ’rents, his older brothers and their families. Back when his grandfather had been alive and his family had at least made an effort to understand why he couldn’t be like them.

  Meg appeared in the doorway separating the U-shaped kitchen from the foyer, and stopped dead. “You’re home!” She lifted a hand to her throat, then dropped it to fiddle with a dishtowel she’d tucked in the waistband of her business-like black trousers. She wore the tailored white blouse she’d had on earlier in the day, but had discarded the soft green blazer and her tall black boots. A tentative smile touched her lips. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “You made dinner.”

  The flatness of his words dimmed something in her eyes. “Yes. I needed to keep myself busy. To keep moving. Otherwise…” She gestured to the world beyond the sensored windows, dark now with the quick fall night. “I hope you don’t mind that I snooped in your cabinets for food and pans.”

  A shadow moved through her expression, there and gone so fast he almost missed it. But he caught it, and the fleeting, furtive glimpse put him on guard. The smell of food gained a scheming edge.

  “It’s fine. Smells good.” Reduced to monosyllables, he gestured upstairs. “I’m going to grab a quick shower.”

  “A fax came for you. A picture.”

  He nodded. “They think that’s the guy. Recognize him?”

  “No. I wish I did. It would make more sense, be more…reasonable in a way, not like any of this is reasonable.”

  Her guarded expression told him that by “this” she didn’t only mean the attacks, but also the tension that had snapped into the fragrant air between them, along with the cooking smells.

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” he said. “We’ll talk then.”

  He stumped up the stairs and tried to ignore the growing howl in his leg. The long unused bottle of painkillers in the master bath beckoned, but he didn’t dare. He needed to keep his mind sharp.

  Because one thing was clear to him. She hadn’t cooked just to keep herself busy. She’d cooked to soften him up.

  She wanted something.

  Chapter Eleven

  Meg retreated to the kitchen, to the familiar acts of checking the sautéed veggies and sauce, and boiling water for the pasta she’d found. Erik’s plentiful food stores indicated that he either cooked or had someone cook for him, but almost everything was dried, boxed or frozen for the long haul, suggesting that his cooking schedule was erratic at best.