She quirked her sideways grin and said, “Imagine the second. Now, go.”
He found his pants, pulled them on. She said, “Hold on.” Reached a hand up and grabbed his shirt. The kiss was deep and sweet. His eyes were mostly closed, and when he’d opened them, briefly, he saw that hers were, too.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m done with you.”
He barked a laugh and stumbled after John Smith, buttoning his shirt as he went.
It was maybe four thirty, five in the morning. A thin mist hung low, and the sky had softened enough to hide the stars. His breath was fog. His head, too. He didn’t push it, focused on motion, working out the cramps in his legs, getting some blood flowing. He knew the thoughts would come, and the memories, and they wouldn’t all be of sexual abandon.
And by the time he’d caught up to Smith, he was…what? Not himself. He wasn’t sure what that meant anymore. The self-assured agent? The idealist willing to kill for his country? The father who taught his children to hate bullies?
The most wanted man in America had his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the peaks Cooper had noticed the day before, the spires rising from the ridge like fingers. “How’s your balance?”
Cooper looked at him, auditioned a dozen smart-ass remarks. Then he started moving, heading for the base of the tallest spire. Smith joined him. They didn’t speak, just walked, the ground rapidly growing steep, tree cover falling away. At first Cooper’s mind ran in a loop, replaying everything he’d learned the night before, looking for holes, desperate for them. Within half an hour, though, the incline had grown intense enough that thought was replaced with action, step step step breathe, step step step breathe. Soon he was using hands as often as feet, the rock rough against his fingers. The base of the towers was a scree field, loose flat stone that skittered and slipped beneath his feet. It was noisy and treacherous, every step holding the risk of picking the wrong rock and surfing it down, a sure ticket to a broken leg at the least. They were both panting now, Cooper’s shirt soaked with sweat.
The fingers turned out to be towers of blocky boulders fifty yards high. Smith started on one side; Cooper pulled himself up the other. The grips were solid and broad, and he climbed with confidence as the ground fell away. There was a heart-stopping moment when a foothold crumbled, but his arms held, and he jammed his toes in a narrow crack and continued up. After a few minutes Cooper tilted his head back and saw that the top was only twenty feet above. Energy surged through him, and he pushed into motion. No way was Smith beating him there.
If it had been a race, they’d have needed a replay to confirm the winner. Cooper thought it had been him by a nose, pretty much literally, hauling himself face-first onto the rocky peak. And then they were sitting on top of the world, and for just an instant, grinning at each other, no thought behind it, no promises, just two men recognizing the essential stupidity and joy of what they had done together.
The summit was about eight feet wide. Cooper crawled to the other side and looked over, felt vertigo twitch in his belly for the first time. On this edge the ridge fell away dramatically, a sheer drop of four hundred feet. He pushed back and sat cross-legged. Dawn now, the sky bright though the sun still played coy. “Nice view.”
“Thought you’d like it,” Smith said, looking at his hands. There was blood on them, a scrape, and he wiped them on his pants. “You okay?”
Cooper heard the multiple meanings in the question, had a flicker of insight into the man. There would never be just one thing happening here. Always levels. He couldn’t turn off his gift for tactical thinking any more than Cooper could turn off his patterning.
Even now, patterning the man. “I just got it.”
“Got what?”
“Helen Epeus. Epeus built the Trojan horse. And Helen, she was the reason for the war. There was no woman waiting for you. It was a joke.”