Liam’s heavy palm pressed between Jaz’s shoulder blades in a silent instruction to keep still while he ran his callused thumb over a small inked patch of skin. “A polar bear?”
“Yes.” She pulled away, tugging her shirt back into place. “A polar bear. All right? It’s a polar bear.”
“Because…?” Liam prompted.
Jaz face blazed. She’d gotten the tattoo years ago, and it had made good sense at the time. She never thought she’d be explaining it this way, though. Still facing away from him, she drew a deep breath. “Because of what polar bears eat.”
“They eat everything,” Liam paused, and Jaz knew he’d figured it out. “SEALs. Polar bears eat seals.”
“Yes, well, you were all annoying assholes at one time.” Jaz twisted back around and raised her face defiantly while Liam tried and failed to conceal his laughter. “I’d just read something that said the best way of getting goals accomplished was to write them down. Then there was alcohol. And—well—the self-pledge made great and noble sense at the time. So polar bear. Truth or dare, SEAL.”
“Dare.”
“Coward.”
Liam snorted. “Truth. What do you want to know?—And please don’t go into Fifty Shades of Grey again.”
She wasn’t planning on it. Being this close to a nearly naked Liam was difficult enough without talking about hot, kinky sex.
“Tell me about your scars.” Jaz reached out toward Liam’s torso, where all sorts of marks had left a history on his flesh. She traced a jagged white line with the same care he’d used on her tattoo. “Are these all from Afghanistan?”
Instead of the expected resistance, Liam shrugged a muscular shoulder and spoke easily. The one Jaz had pointed to was from a cut of an edge of a rusted-out ship’s hull he’d gotten caught on while scuba diving in training. There was a surgical mark on his knee from an ACL repair. Several more marks were badges from when he’d been captured by a tribal war band on a combat deployment.
“Don’t get me wrong, it was an unpleasant two days,” Liam said matter-of-factly, “but there was too much of a language barrier for them to bother with interrogation, and I knew we had a team nearby. Aiden McDane was nowhere near so fortunate.”
“And this one?” Getting up on her knees, Jaz touched a small scar cutting into Liam’s left eyebrow. Unlike the others, it was nearly invisible beneath the dark hairs, and she’d only spotted the mark now.
Liam caught her wrist and shook his head. No. Not that one. There was a seriousness there, lurking behind the silence. The kind that told Jaz she’d stumbled onto something that wasn’t meant as fodder for a game. She didn’t think anything could hurt Liam Rowen, wasn’t even sure he was capable of feeling pain, but now, in this moment, she knew she was wrong.
Quietly, slowly, Jaz leaned forward and brushed a soft kiss over the small scar that summoned a light smile. “Fine, but I get an extra question. Favorite movie scene.”
Liam snorted softly. “‘Circle of Life’ song from The Lion King.”
“Seriously?”
“Very. You?”
Jaz thought a moment. “The ‘shoot the hostage’ thing from Speed.”
“That’s more than a little disturbing,” said Liam.
Jaz laughed. “No, it’s two police guys talking about tactics. Keanu Reeves’s character says that a wounded hostage is useless to a hostage taker on the move. His partner thinks it’s nuts, but then in the next scene, it’s how they escape.”
“Why that scene?” Liam leaned forward, appearing genuinely interested.
“It reminds me how sometimes ideas that seem bad at one moment can be lifesavers the next. And sometimes it’s true for people too.”
“Yes,” said Liam. “Sometimes it is.”
It was dark by the time the weather finally settled. Having spent most of the day reworking the travel route to account for the shortened time on location, Jaz and Liam went to sleep intent on getting started at first light. Unlike Sebastian, Liam voiced no complaints about the early wake-ups or long hikes, and what he lacked in technical knowledge about climbing, he more than made up for in efficiency. For the next several days, they kept an unrelenting pace that Jaz doubted Sebastian would have managed. In fact, she was certain he couldn’t have. Hell, it was a pace she couldn’t have managed if Liam hadn’t quietly taken over all chores and repacked her rope into his pack.
If only he didn’t have that uncanny ability to know when she needed a comforting shoulder squeeze and when a few harshly said words would get her moving faster. Trying harder. Paying attention when fatigue was making her focus wane.
When they finished marking routes just before nightfall on the final day of the challenge, Jaz realized that she was glad Liam had taken Sebastian’s place.
And that made her a terrible person.
“Was Sebastian’s accident my fault?” Jaz asked Liam as they bedded down for their final night on the San Gabriel range. The sun was set for the night and the event would finish by eight in the morning, which would give them just enough time to hike out before the final bell. With all the route markers now set in stone, thoughts that had bubbled just below Jaz’s consciousness for the past few days now rose unrestrained to the surface. She was here. She was happy. And it wasn’t fair. “I mean, Devante was only in California because of me. And so was Sebastian. If it wasn’t—”
“I no longer think Sebastian’s accident was an accident, period.”
A shiver ran along Jaz’s skin. They hadn’t discussed the collision since that morning at the police station, but Liam’s tone had changed from considering to condemning. “You sound certain.”
Liam, who’d been taping up a blister on the back of his heel, paused in midmotion, then carried on. “I am.”
Jaz rubbed her face, fatigue weighing her down. “Clairvoyance courtesy of the mountains?”
Another hesitation. “Courtesy of Aiden McDane and the Trident Security team.”
“McDane, Trident security, and what, telepathy?”
Instead of answering, Liam reached into the bottom of his pack and shamelessly pulled out a cell phone, battery pack, and some boxy gadget that was probably a signal magnifier. Also known as things Jaz wasn’t allowed to have out here. “My work doesn’t stop when yours starts.” Liam punched in a code, unlocking his phone. “I received a full workup on Devante yesterday. Nothing remarkable except his childhood address.”
Liam shifted and put his forearms on his knees, creating a more direct line of sight to Jaz.
Her shoulders tensed. Beyond the tent, the hooting of a Western screech owl rang out against the silent night, but inside the tent wall, a zinging tension suddenly filled the air.
“It’s the same as Roman Robillard’s.”
“The champion Vector Ascent signed me on to replace,” she whispered.
“They’re cousins. The families lived together for a while when Devante and Roman were growing up.”
Jaz’s mind raced to catch up with the implications, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as Liam’s initial assertion slipped into place. “So the detective was right. Devante hit the car on purpose because he thought I would be in the driver’s seat and he wanted to take me out of the running. That’s probably why he rented a large SUV too, to give himself an advantage.”