Steam filled her bathroom, and she left her jeans and Larke’s flannel on the bathroom floor and got in, turning her side jets on high, the waterfall fixture like a rainforest shower.

Yes, she’d missed this. Her easy, simple, uncomplicated, focused life.

One void of assassins, thugs, and global terrorist plots.

She washed her hair, shaved her legs, then got out and pulled on her pajamas and bathrobe, put her hair up in a towel.

She was brushing her teeth when she heard a thump. Turned off the water and listened.

Nothing. So maybe it had been a wave, banging her boat against the dock, although she had pretty strong ballasts for that.

Still, all seemed quiet, so she went downstairs, brewed a cup of hot cocoa, then headed back upstairs, then outside to her deck and up the final stairs to her rooftop.

Maybe she wouldn’t flip on the lights around the deck quite yet. She didn’t need Pip calling out to her.

Instead, she sank down on one of her loungers, the one that overlooked the city, and curled her feet up under her bathrobe. Blew on her hot cocoa, took a sip, then set it down and pulled off her head towel. Shook out her hair to air dry.

It wasn’t Alaska, but maybe she should stop comparing. Alaska was in her rearview mirror.

A shuffle, and she jerked, but a hand slipped around her mouth. “Don’t scream.”

What if Tae had come and gone and this time she vanished for good?

That thought had possessed most of Colt’s brain the entire time he trolled Lake Union in the darkness, searching for her houseboat.

Or worse, what if she’d been taken at Sea-Tac by one of Petrov’s hired thugs and—

Nope. He wouldn’t go there. Wouldn’t let the worry take root, find his bones. But what if—

Aw, he hadn’t a hope of not imagining a dozen brutal outcomes.

And his father had actually suggested that he not go after her. But he’d made promises.

Besides, Tae . . . needed him.

Maybe this was a stupid idea. What his father said about Colt living as if his life didn’t matter to him might be true. But only because some lives mattered more.

Like Tae’s.

Colt didn’t want to take a good look at any reasons but the obvious—she had the ability to manufacture a vaccine that the world just might need.

Please, no. But if it came to that, he would make sure she was safe to do her job.