Ignoring the antique furnishings, expensive paintings, and gilded accents in the grandiose hallway, and ignoring her bitter anger over Merry’s illness, Jaq gripped Harp’s hand and darted into the stairwell. She hoped her question came out in a whisper but couldn’t tell as her pulse pounded in her ears. “Do you think she saw us?”

“She’s probably coming to see what’s taking me so long. But she stopped to talk to someone at the end of the hall.”

For a second, Jaq let herself drink in the sight of Harp. Lean, muscular build snug in his jeans, black tousled hair, dark brown eyes that softened when he looked at her. Wanting to touch every sharp plane and angle of his face, she ignored the urge and turned from him to peer back the way they’d come.

Down the hall, the sun shone brightly, more vivid and warm than she’d ever seen. The rich and expensive carpet ran down the hallway, exhibiting more wealth here in the servants’ wing than in any lander’s home. Even his room had been nearly as large as her apartment and, though sparsely furnished, the expensive woods had screamed wealth. His sheets had been luxurious and looked as if they’d be soft to the touch, but he’d been hard, masculine, heartbreaking, as he’d leaned on his bed with that dangerous glint in his eyes.

His warm breath tickled against her ear, and she leaned into him for a second. His nearness brought it all back. As if he’d never left, they clicked. His mere presence made her more complete, powerful, as though she could do anything from making him beg for her touch to climbing into the sky.

But she had climbed into the sky. On her own. Even if she’d been out of sorts and not quite whole for the past year, she didn’t need him.

She stole up the steps. He’d follow.

The wide foam-covered treads muffled their steps. The circular walled-in staircase rose up and up, windows letting in the light. On each landing, a pot full of bamboo decorated the otherwise utilitarian stairwell. She didn’t dare look out, or down toward the ground. They didn’t talk until they’d gained a level. The door to the stairs beneath never opened.

“If she saw me, we’ll have company soon. She’ll want to know why the guy who’s supposed to be singing in the dining room is running off into the stairwell with a girl.”

“And you say you haven’t been sneaking off with girls?” She nearly missed the next step as she kept plodding on.

“Nothing. No action in months,” he groused, but she ignored him.

She hadn’t gotten any either but she couldn’t quite believe a man as virile, as responsive to women as Harp, wouldn’t have gotten a piece of tail now and then.

Following rumors of a girl who knew several languages, he’d found her on the streets and rescued her from despair by offering her a place at Mother. Only five years older, he’d seemed so much more experienced but kept his distance for a few years. Later, when she’d matured as a woman and an agent, they became friends and he made her whole, shared himself with her—body, emotions, and all. He was her first live-in lover, the first man she’d ever really wanted, and he’d been quite adept at making her crave him to pieces.

Then he’d ripped her heart right out of her body without warning. No fucking warning. Things had been perfect. Too perfect. He just woke up one morning, rolled out of their bed, and said goodbye. Off to deep cover, baby. It’s been real.

She’d had a few disastrous dates since him. That she’d not been able to get hot and bothered was all Harp’s fault. She’d gotten to the point where she’d considered picking up a random guy to have sex for sex’s sake, to flush her ex out of her system. She hadn’t.

“Dick,” she muttered at him.

He didn’t answer. He’d always read her perfectly. He knew exactly what was going on inside her, running hot and cold, needy, pissed and hurt. Wasn’t it the way of life as a lander? The bitter ironies that made their lives hollow shadows?

They ascended the stairs in tense silence, but she couldn’t wipe away the feel of his stare on her ass. She hadn’t been turned on even once in a year. In his presence for a minute and she slicked her panties, but she couldn’t take him back, even if he wanted her again. She would not take him back. She couldn’t live through that hurt again.

“What was it like, living in the clouds?” Hand on the door, ready to step into danger, she hadn’t meant to ask the question.

“You know I grew up on one of these.”

She’d forgotten—well, not really, but she didn’t think of it. Of course they’d both shared their histories, but he didn’t talk about it much and he didn’t remind her he’d given up the life of the filthy rich only to take down the corrupt ones.

“It’s the same as down there, except the smog doesn’t cover everything, hovercars don’t make a constant buzz of background noise, and the sun shines. Early. Oh, and people spend their money like they have a goose laying golden eggs to refill their accounts.”

She snorted. “It’s not the same. Up here, everything is clean. Fresh. Sparkly. There’s no hope down there. People get sick. They work their fingers to the bone for nothing.”

“People up here despair, too.”

His bleak tone brought her around to peer at his serious face. “What happened?”

Her arm fell to the side when she realized she’d nearly stroked his hair, as she’d used to do when he’d come home from a tough day.

“Later.” He slid an arm past her, brushing her waist to send tingles all over, and opened the door.

Conversation over.

They didn’t have time for it anyway.

“This is the medical level.” He ushered her into a foyer with fake plants, a few couches and three glass security doors blocking access to business centers already abuzz with workers arriving at this early hour.

“We’ll want the one on the left, the viral research division.” She’d memorized everything about the Giant’s floating island.

“You can’t get through without ID.”

“I have one. I told you. And a cover story to go with it.” She patted the courier bag she still wore. “It’s foolproof.”

“I’ll go. Everyone will recognize me and I won’t be questioned. If you go, you’ll be asked for your credentials and have to wait while they screen them. It’ll take you much longer. You sit here on the waiting couches and fill out one of the visitor forms you’d need to get through there anyway. I’ll be out before you’re done with them.”

“I haven’t even told you what we’re looking for.” She glared at him. He was so bossy. His eyes focused on the door and not her.

Four men, nearly identical in green scrubs, passed their identification cards through the reader at the door in the middle. She and Harp turned to the visitor desk and read the sign instructing visitors to fill out forms, don a lab coat from the wardrobe against the wall and wait on an escort. Harp grabbed the tablet with the form and a lab coat, closing the wardrobe door with a soft click.

Thoroughly ignoring them, the four men continued through the first security doors and stopped before the inner door as the first closed behind them. Sealed in the security area, one by one they placed their hands on a pad for print analysis before the inner door opened.

“You can’t get through without a crack or a bought code, maybe even a palm skin to fake your prints, but you’d need someone’s security files first.”

She had all those, all the security cracks, but he was right, it’d take him minutes while it’d take her maybe an hour by going through the forms and checks.

“Stop chewing your nails,” Harp said in an offhanded manner as he nodded toward the couch.

An operative always knew when to accept help to accomplish a mission. In this case, the mission was much more important than her ego. Much.

“We need the antidote for V534b.” She plopped on the couch and grabbed the tablet with the visitor access request.

Shrugging into the lab coat, Harp nodded and winked at her before he went through the door to the viral research lab.

Alone, she swayed in her seat as anxiety waved over her, hot and suffocating. All these years at Mother they’d only worked together once, and it had been a simple, nonthreatening surveillance mission. She’d never seen him walk into danger. With a force of will, she kept her foot from tapping and her legs from forcing her off her ass to pace uselessly. The words on the form blurred in front of her.

To grip the touchpen, she stopped chewing on her thumbnail and wiped her hand on her jacket.

“Let’s see,” she murmured.

Name. She couldn’t put Jacqueline Robinson.

“Jackie English.” She grinned at what she’d written on the tablet before she erased it.

The man who’d prompted her long-ago pastime of scribbling her dream married name had walked through security doors and out of her protection.

She slammed down the tablet and stood in one motion. After crossing the waiting area once, twice, she plopped back down again and forced her glassy stare toward the tablet in her lap. She emptied her mind, relaxed, and tried to let the time flow by.

She’d missed Harp.

Missed the way he made her crazy, the way he made her melt at a touch, the way he made her feel at home, but she couldn’t let him be her home again. His leaving had nearly broken her. She didn’t have the luxury to fall apart. Merry needed her. Unsure how much time had passed, she jerked when the door slid open.

A woman came into the waiting area. Skinny, long blond hair pulled back, bright red nails flashing, the newcomer didn’t glance at her. Identical to her surveillance photos, Madame Ochre brushed by into the viral research area and left behind a stream of floral perfume. Jaq wrinkled her nose.

From all the reports, Madame Ochre didn’t involve herself in the work behind Giant Corp. There could be only reason she’d brought herself to the third level.

Harp was in trouble.

Harp headed straight for the medical storage room. He thumbed through the orderly files and grabbed the V534b folder, thick with sample blister packs. After shoving it into the top of his jeans at his back, the lab coat fit a little tightly, but it’d do for now.

The door to the storage room darkened. It’d been too easy. He should’ve known.

“I thought you were up to something, with all your sneaking around this morning. All I had to do was wait for your security code to come up. What on earth could my favorite singer want here in the lab?” The lights bore down on Vera’s slender frame, accenting the cruel twist of her glossed lips. She slung her long tied-back hair across her shoulder and petted the blond tresses over her pert breasts. Her type didn’t do anything for him—the type being “not Jaq”—but he recognized the beauty that entranced Ochre.

With not so much as a shift of his shoulders beneath the coat, he responded as John Singer. “I wanted a lab coat for my routine this morning.”

She smirked at him, eyes glinting. She didn’t believe the cover any longer. In the case of a blown cover, the less said, the better. He snapped his mouth shut with an audible click.

“Let’s see this routine. Come.” With a turn, ponytail fanning around her, she left the storage room and passed back through the workers, who wouldn’t look him in the eye. They’d never hesitated to point her in his direction. For the first time he regretted his decision to keep to himself, remain squeaky clean and avoid the others here at Giant Corp.

Filing in behind them, two of Madame Ochre’s silent guards—hulky, large and massive—kept pace. The folder scraped against his skin. Their beady eyes would surely catch how the folder stuck out, but they didn’t demand he hand over his prize.

They weren’t too bright. If it’d been him, he’d have patted down any suspicious character first thing. The folder at his back would get him pitched over the edge of the island. His skin itched, the urge to scratch taking up most of his thought process.

He had to get rid of the folder. Where was Jaq? She’d better have gotten out as soon as Vera showed herself.

In the waiting lobby, the swinging door of the wardrobe exposed a row of lab coats, crisp and green. He’d closed the door. There hadn’t been time for another visitor to have come through security. So only one person could have opened that door.

Jaq.

He sidestepped toward the wardrobe. The two guards glared at him before following him over. With a tilt of his head toward Vera, who also frowned darkly at him, he backed toward the wardrobe. His shins bumped into the lower edge of the wardrobe and the garments hanging inside brushed against his back. Was it his imagination, or could he feel Jaq’s intense stare boring through him?

“A moment, Madame Ochre. Just let me change this lab coat. This one is a little tight.”

A puzzled expression crossed her sharp features as he lifted the bottom of the coat in a motion to pull it over his head to remove it.

“No. Leave it,” Vera shrilled.

He froze, but the sure fingers at his back sent goose bumps over him. The folder lifted silently and smoothly from his jeans. Good girl. Jaq had all she needed. All she had to do was make her rendezvous.

The guard’s rough hands yanked down his lab coat and patted him down. “Nothing.”

“Come on.” One of them gripped him by the arm and half dragged, half pulled him behind, but no one moved toward the wardrobe and Jaq.

They wouldn’t take him to the great hall to perform while they ate. They were past the subterfuge, but until they tipped their hand, he was still John Singer. The silence from the usually talkative Vera would’ve normally had him cajole, play the crowd pleaser, but that time was past. He could take the guards, but he didn’t want to stir things up until Jaq had time to get the hell out of there.

The guards took him to the large Ochre apartments, a place where they mixed business with more intimate entertaining in the couple’s large living room. On entering the posh suite, the guards forced him to his knees while they stood at the door, one on each side like little tin soldiers. He waited, muscles cramping, while the sun cast shadows that crept across the floor like the hands of a clock. He wondered where Vera had disappeared to. They thought to make him sweat, he was sure, but when time passed and no alarm rose, he held out hope that Jaq got away.

The head of Giant Corp, the man behind all the swindles, the corporate thefts and just plain murders, finally swept into the room, wife trailing behind him, to stand in front of a large white sofa at the side of the monochromatic room. He was a short stocky man, only a few inches taller than his wife. His white suit was spotless, his black tie perfect, and his shoes buffed to a midnight shine. His skin was ruddy beneath his slicked dark hair.

With a grandiose wave, he gestured to the balcony framed by the open sliding doors and fluttering white curtains. “It’s a nice view, isn’t it?”

A cold sweat chilled Harp’s skin. This balcony had seen leapers over the years, and they hadn’t leaped of their own accord.

“Monsieur.” He nodded and once again Harp wondered what Ochre’s first name was. He’d been unable to unearth his background and Mother didn’t have the intel in its databanks. Ochre’d paid handsomely to wipe out his past.

“You always struck me as a man of action instead of a mere singer. Vera tells me you’ve been acting suspicious. There’s always a reason for strange behavior. Will you tell me here and now, or must we do this the hard way?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m John Singer. Just a musician.” Harp figured he had about half a minute before things got ugly. The intel on Ochre was that as his business had crumbled, he’d become more and more vicious. In the past year, Harp had watched the man grow leaner, the hardened light in his eye becoming desperate.

The guards grabbed his arms from behind. Focused on Ochre, he hadn’t seen them move. He pulled from side to side, but they held him in a solid grip.

“Vera, you may go now.” Ochre stood in the middle of the room, his body relaxed, as his wife walked up to him and kissed him in a carnal, hungry meeting of mouths. Lips wet, she backed away, finger-waved to Harp, and shut the door behind her. In an unhurried manner, Ochre ignored him, strolled to his desk, pulled a roll of wire out of a drawer and tossed it to his captors.

Wrestling, tugging and a few hard punches to the gut still ended up with Harp bound about the torso, arms pinned to his side. He’d underestimated the goons. He’d played this wrong.

Now he’d been roped and tied with remotely controlled wires which punished its victims by crushing them to death.

Leaning his weight against the guards, he couldn’t break their unyielding hold. He had to make this interrogation last, in case Jaq needed more time to get away. When she’d shown up, she’d said she had six hours. He wasn’t sure how long ago that was. He couldn’t very well ask for the time.

Nothing left to do but string it out.

He’d deflect Ochre’s attention, and the man would never know anyone else had been involved. For that matter, Ochre didn’t know what was going on, what was involved, or who. If only he’d gotten his harmonica with the evidence into Jaq’s hands. But if all else failed and he didn’t get out, Jaq’s testimony at the Giant’s trial would bring them all down. She’d stop the vaccine from hitting the streets.

Jaq had to get away.

Ochre strolled to the balcony and nodded to the guards.

“Move.” One of them tugged at him, and he nearly stumbled forward until he locked his knees.

“I think we’d be more comfortable here, on the couch, don’t you?” Harp dug in his heels.

At each side of him, they yanked him under the arms and dragged him to the balcony. His feet flailed but didn’t catch on anything. With a thrust, they dumped him outside the glass doors onto a balcony larger than Jaq’s apartment. He rolled up onto his feet.

The sun beat down on his back.

“Take a look at the view.” Ochre smiled at him with a genuine pleasantness.

He didn’t turn to look over the railing and into the clouds beneath. A shiver rolled over him. He’d looked down before. As a youth, he’d watched helplessly as his nanny had ended years of torment, crying at odds times of the day in the middle of their lessons, looking haggard and tired all the time. With no friends for protection and no kindness from her English employers, she’d suffered for too long. One day, after receiving a summons to report to the administration offices, she’d climbed over the railing in Harp’s room and leaped.

As he grew older, he put together the clues to the kind of harassment endured by her and other landers brought to the island as servants and abused by an overseer the English family never reprimanded. He’d left home. In his infrequent visits, he’d never gone back to his room or stood on one of the balconies.

Mouth dry, he croaked, “Nice view. Lots of clouds.”

“I don’t know why you’re here. Something’s been off about you from the beginning, but you’ve been careful. You haven’t taken anything or tipped your hand. I’d started to doubt my instincts.” Ochre frowned. “Now Vera’s suspicious too. That’s enough for me.”

“I’m a musician. John Singer.” It didn’t matter what he said. Ochre planned on killing him. He’d had some plan of talking his way out, or at least placating him until he dropped his guard, but no dice.

“I don’t take chances. Not anymore. You won’t take this—” Ochre swept his arm to encompass the room, “—away from me. Whoever, whatever you are.”

“My name is John Singer. I’m a musician.”

The head of Giant stood between him and the door. His arms were useless, but he couldn’t go out like this. He dove, head first, desperate to bowl over anyone in his way. Ochre sidestepped as Harp plunged to the floor.

He hit the hard deck. The rough surface ripped across his cheek in a stinging abrasion. He groaned and struggled to his knees.

Ochre took out a control unit, and Harp sent out a silent prayer to Jaq. He loved her. He loved her more than this job. He wanted nothing more than her. And he wanted her to know it. He’d made a mistake leaving.

“Jaq,” he moaned.

This would hurt like hell. And now that he faced the end, all he could do was think of her. How he should’ve done things differently. How he should’ve married her, stayed home and had kids.

A baby. To see her round with their child would have been the crowning achievement of his life. He no longer needed to go after the corrupt. He no longer needed to ensure people on the floating islands were treated fairly. He couldn’t be everyone’s savior. He couldn’t even be his own. He wanted to be a lander. With Jaq. And Merry.

“I can’t let you go. Vera and I have worked too hard to get the cash flowing back into Giant. We were only a few years from having to forsake this island and live on the ground.” Ochre’s face took on an unhealthy pallor. “I’d never do that to Vera. Neither will you.”

Ochre switched on the remote. The wires binding Harp’s torso cinched with a sizzle and constricted violently. He couldn’t breathe. It was as if Ochre planned to pulverize him, grind his bones down to dust.

His teeth clattered. With a groan, he flopped toward Ochre.

Where was he? He couldn’t see the man through the white clouding his vision. He panted, each breath hurt. Now he knew why people jumped over. This was hell.

Ochre backhanded him across the cheek. “You’re a singer. Sing.”

Harp held back the curses. He wouldn’t give the man the satisfaction. He wouldn’t give the man anything.

A yank at his back brought him up and thrust him toward the railing. His feet scrambled for purchase on the balcony floor. The slats of the steel-girded railings bruised his skin.

“Give me a reason not to throw you over.” Ochre sounded as if he hadn’t broken a sweat.

Harper swallowed and kept his mouth shut. The wires tightened again as a hand lifted him from the floor.

This was it.