Holden took her hand, held her fingers, waiting for her to look at him, and when her gaze tracked over to his, said, “Listen, if you need to fight him to make it better, by all means get it out of your system. But that’s going to create exposure that puts us all at risk—me included—and I don’t want to be there when it happens.”

“I’ll behave in public,” she said.

“I have your word?”

She had given him that, but hadn’t given him the name of the rendezvous location until they’d settled in at the rental secured off Airbnb, a one-bed, one-bath rural cabin on the north edge of town that didn’t require ID verification and had keyless check-in. She’d tossed the restaurant name out in passing, as if she’d already mentioned it hours ago, as if he’d automatically know what she was talking about.

Which he had, but that had been beside the point.

He’d stood, picked up his jacket.

She said, “Where are you going?”

“Need to see the river,” he said. “Map the area.”

She cocked her head and studied him. “John’s not going to sell us out.”

He strapped on the Desert Eagle. “It’s not him I worry about.”

“We weren’t tracked here, either.”

He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “You, my dear, might be fully comfortable walking into unfamiliar territory and improvising your way out, but I like to know where the exits are.”

She stretched out on the bed like a long cat exposing its belly, daring a hand to touch it, and said, “Are you coming back? Or do I have to come find you?”

“Would you?” he said.

She offered a sly smile. “I think so.”

That was probably the last bit of truth he’d gotten out of her.

She led him now in a slow stroll through the museum, down hallways and past exhibits, then out the back and along a walkway toward the river.

He understood then.

The museum provided free parking, a place to stash the car. The river taxi that passed by once an hour provided a way into town that bypassed the traffic and the camera grid. A simple plan. Easy. Convenient. It’d have been simpler and easier and more convenient if she hadn’t tried to turn it into a power play.

The flat-bottomed boat took them south along landscaped hike trails and bike trails, past overlooks and beneath pedestrian bridges, then through floodgates into the downtown loop, where the roar of music rose and crowds thickened and colorful seasonal lights draped bridges and filled the branches of hundred-year-old cypress trees, and let them out a stone’s throw from their destination.

The boarding zone and the bridge became bottlenecks.

Bodies clustered, hemming him in.