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Her brain told her the roof was the best place for all of
them, that the ladder was the only way up and that she needed to move. She
heard Kim call Kerry’s name.

The brothers seemed to be arguing, interrupted by grunts and
harsh breathing and impacts she didn’t want to picture. She needed to climb.
She knew that. It was important. She closed her eyes and raised her foot to the
next rung but she couldn’t make herself shift her weight, couldn’t make herself
rise farther from the ground. With her eyes closed, she couldn’t see the roof
in front of her but she knew it was there.

Someone grabbed her, rough and powerful. Had to be Bob, but
even an angry giant wasn’t strong enough to make her let go of the ladder, to
make her fall.

More scuffling. The ladder shook. “Now, Kim,” Kerry barked.
“Go.” Percussive sounds of fists on flesh. Swearing. The hands on her fell
away. Isabelle climbed another rung.

“You’re doing great, Isabelle,” Kim said, sounding
breathless. “You can do this.”

Isabelle opened her eyes. Bob was down, sprawled on the
driveway, writhing and holding his gut, his face a mask of blood. This just
couldn’t be happening.

“Hang on, Isabelle.” Kim took off his shoes and climbed atop
her thirty-gallon plastic trash cans tucked under the overhang of the garage
roof. He pressed his palms flat to her roof’s shingles, though he had to reach
above his head to do it, and as she watched, his feet lifted off the trash
cans. She thought he must be levitating, there was no other explanation. But as
his feet rose higher, she saw he was pulling himself up, his hands shifting on
the roof to help him leverage his body weight. How strong was he? Soon he had
his shoulders above the roofline. His feet followed. It was a more impressive
display of power than she’d seen from either of the bigger men below her.

The ground scuffle continued. From the sounds of it, she
guessed Kerry was frustrating Steven’s attempts to get close enough to cause
damage.

Then Kim was above her, his hand out to her. She looked up.
Oh
my.
His lip was split, one cheek purpled near his eye. Swelling had
distorted his beautiful, expressive face.

“Come on, Isabelle. Let me bring you up.”

He was strong enough to do it. If she’d ever doubted it, his
levitation would have convinced her. But he was so above her. So far up there.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Got that right, bitch,” said Bob as his hand closed around
her bare ankle.

“Isabelle!” Kim said. She was so close. He sat near the
roof’s edge, his legs spread wide, his bare feet on the shingles, his body
leaning toward her and he tried to imagine a seat secure enough to allow him to
just lift her to the roof, out of Bob’s reach. He’d have to treat her like
cargo, like equipment—she was too frightened for anything else. But equipment
didn’t wriggle unpredictably and make his tentative stance a disaster. To belay
for her, he needed her cooperation, but between Bob’s grip and her terror of heights,
she was understandably uncooperative.

“The ring,” Kerry called. “Toss it to me.” Kerry was playing
block to Steven on the ground, a lanky, bearded guard in a three-piece suit. It
had been Kerry’s idea to split up, volunteering to keep the other men occupied
as long as he could.

“Isabelle?” Kim said.

“Take it,” she said, holding up her hand.

Kim pulled it off her blood-smeared finger and passed it in
a sparkly arc to his brother. Below, Bob swore and let go of Isabelle to go
after it, and Kerry danced to stay out of reach of the goons. If the two of
them got him, his brother wouldn’t stand a chance, and as often as Kim had
wished Kerry to go down in a crumpled heap, he couldn’t wish it now. He needed
him. He and Kerry were going to have to keep the ring moving. He clasped
Isabelle’s wrist.

“Grab me,” he said.

“Kim.”

“Don’t think. Just do it.” His head hurt. He was glad he
didn’t have to stand up to do this.

“I can’t.”

Down below, Bob said, “Hold him.” That didn’t sound good.

Kim stayed centered on Isabelle. He had to trust Kerry. He
had to trust himself. “You can,” he said. “Who broke into your house?”

A crease appeared between Isabelle’s eyebrows. “Steven.”

“And who was behind it?”

“Bob. What—”

“Does that piss you off?”

“Kim…”

He pressed the balls of his bare feet against the top rung
of her ladder, it was seated on the ground, a far better brace than the gutter.
“Why did you and Steven break up?”

“Kim…” She was actively scowling.

“He was with someone else. Another woman. Does that make you
mad?” He squeezed her wrist roughly.

She grabbed him back.

No anchor. No rope. Only the hope her anger was stronger
than her fear. Kim pulled up, getting her weight as high as he could as fast as
he could, then scooped her close with his free arm while he lay back on the
roof. She fell on top of him. So far so good. “Climb me,” he said. “Go!” He let
go of her wrist and grabbed her thigh, pushing up against her butt. His other
hand connected with her flailing foot and pressed it to the roof beside him,
giving her something to push against. “Go, Isabelle!”

She was scrambling. Scrambling wasn’t paralyzed. He could
work with scrambling. He kept his own hands moving, bracing behind her knees,
chocking behind her heels until she was off him, above him, safely on her stomach
on the garage roof.

He sat up and checked on her. She wasn’t moving except for
the rapid rise and fall of her back as she panted and gasped. “Perfect. You
were great, Isabelle,” he said, unable to resist touching her, even if it were
only a reassuring press of his hand against her calf. “Hang on.”

Still seated at the roof’s edge, he turned back to the scene
below.

“Kerry,” he said. He clapped his hands. Kerry looked up and
pitched him the ring. Kim was relieved to catch it in spite of his dizziness.
There was blood on Kerry’s shirt. Someone had managed to punch him in the nose,
but he was free of whatever hold Bob had been ordering. Evidently, the old boy
was still pretty light on his feet.

“No, Kim, you’ve got your hands full up there. I’ll keep
it,” he shouted. He dodged out of Steven’s grasp, put his hand in his pocket as
if dropping the ring into it and sprinted up the street. Kim gaped after him as
he led Steven and Bob on a merry chase. He’d have sworn Kerry winked at him.
Kerry. As if he were enjoying the danger. Maybe he didn’t know his brother as
well as he thought.

Winking or not, Kerry had bought him time, and he wouldn’t
waste it wondering. Isabelle lay on her stomach on the roof, her hands in fists
near her shoulders, eyes tightly shut, forehead pressed to the shingles. She
was breathing fast. Soon, she’d hyperventilate, or worse. His pulse beat loudly
in his swollen face, pounding out his own fear at seeing her like this. She
needed help. This time, he didn’t have a tool—didn’t have a freaking clue—but
here he was, armed only with his desperation to be the man she needed.

He took a deep breath to slow his racing heart. “The police
will be here soon. We’ll be just fine up here.”

In slow motion, she turned her head sideways against the
roof until her eyes were just visible over her arm. “K-Kerry?” She stuttered
over the name as if she were cold.

He struggled to find a casual tone, to assure her, to help
her. “Showing off again. No way are those numbnuts going to catch him. He went
to school on a track scholarship, still runs marathons, whatever.” He shrugged.
Kerry’s athletic skill wasn’t the impressive thing here. It was that he was
testing it with two men chasing him, one of them who was actually a serious
threat. Isabelle didn’t need to hear that part.

He stretched out on his side, next to her. “You did great,
Isabelle.” He stroked her arm. She was trembling badly. Her fists were still
clenched and her eyes had closed again as if she couldn’t bear seeing the roof.
He wanted to hold her. He needed to talk to her about Austin and about what
Kerry had said back at the loft. He’d made the mistake of waiting before, with
the Jules situation. He didn’t want to make it again. If anything about
Isabelle Caine were clear to him it was that the longer her wounds festered the
less likely she was to forget them.

And yet he couldn’t talk to her about serious things right
now. She wouldn’t hear him. She couldn’t. Nobody this frightened could.

“I should have realized from the start you weren’t a
gym-climbing kind of woman, that you’d thrive on the excitement of buildering.”

Her eyes opened, but nothing else moved. “W-what?”

“Urban rock climbing. An up-close tour of the city’s
architecture. Spider-Man stuff. Cops frown on it, though, so we’d best stop
until they’ve been and gone.” He congratulated himself for keeping it light.
Maybe he could do this after all.

“H-how many women are you dating?” she asked.

He started at the non sequitur. Not a good sign, though her
gaze seemed calm and direct. Her hands were still fisted to either side of her
head.

Kim decided to go with it. “One,” he said, “or rather,
none.” He glanced toward the edge of the roof, just in case, but seeing
nothing, stayed focused on Isabelle. “There’s someone really important, someone
like no one else. Someone who demands the best from me.

“Being with her makes me feel special and alive and whole.
But just when I thought she’d said yes, she stormed out. It’s actually pretty
complicated and I don’t know why. I just want to be with her.”

She swallowed, looking a little moist around the edges. Damn
it. Kim didn’t want to make her cry.

“Someone ob-ob-obsessive about certainty?”

What? He shook his head, which didn’t help the nausea.

“Kim! Help me with the ladder.” Kerry’s head and shoulders
were visible above the roofline and rising fast. Kim tore himself away from
Isabelle and lurched toward Kerry, his pounding head making his legwork sloppy
and his balance for shit. He gave Kerry a hand up and the two of them hauled
the ladder up behind him. Kerry’s cheeks had flushed beneath his beard, but he
was barely breathing hard. No sign of the bad guys below. Kerry had well and
truly lost them. If they had any brains at all, they wouldn’t be back. Isabelle
had curled up on her side, probably to see what the noise was about. Her arms
were drawn close in to her body, her fists still clenched.

Kerry followed him over to her with all the awkwardness of a
non-climber, making Kim’s shoddy transit graceful by comparison. Kim brushed
her hair from her forehead, sitting where she could look at him without seeing
the edge.

“We have a few minutes yet to wait for the police,” Kerry
said formally, as if the top button of his dress shirt weren’t scandalously
undone, his tie peeking rakishly from the depths of his trouser pocket, spatters
from a long-dried bloody nose staining his shirt front. “Shall I have a look at
the ring?” He dusted off his hands and raised his eyebrows at Kim expectantly.

Kim blinked at him. All these years and he’d never suspected
his brother hid an adventurous streak beneath his pinstripes. He fished the
ring out of his own pocket and passed it without a word.

Kerry pinched the band between thumb and index finger on the
side opposite the big gem, holding it in his lap. The heart-shaped stone looked
almost black.

“H-horrible, isn’t it?” Isabelle said, her voice a thin
imitation of the scorn she was probably trying for. Kim smiled at her show of
chutzpah. His finger was wrapped up in a curl he hadn’t realized he’d been
playing with. Silky, his lioness. If she was his. If he still had a chance with
her. He tried not to get his hopes up.

Kerry held the ring high, putting it between him and the
overcast afternoon sky. The gem caught the light, glowing deep zinfandel-red.

The sound of two winded men—heavy slaps of shoes on
pavement, harsh breathing—reached them from the ground. No brains at all. No
ladder either.

“Pity I don’t have my board here,” Kerry said, digging a
jeweler’s loupe from his trousers.

“Board?” Kim wondered crazily if Kerry still carried the
pencil sharpener.

“Normally, I’d shine a light through the stone itself with
the rest of the room dark.” He fitted the loupe to his eye and held up the ring
for another look. “What do you know about this piece?”

Kim looked to Isabelle.

“Steven hid it in my house,” she said, only her mouth and
eyes moving. Sweat beaded on her lip. She was holding it together, but just
barely. Kim hoped the police were close and not just to silence the ongoing
grumbling of the thwarted giants below.

“It’s been there at least two months,” he told Kerry. He
surprised himself by keeping quiet about where it had spent time since then. As
recently as this morning, he’d have loved the thought of telling Kerry he was
holding something Kim had fished from a sewer. Instead, he felt compelled to
ask, “What are you looking for?”

“Evidence. Silk,” Kerry said distantly.

Kim would have thought sitting still would help his head and
queasy stomach, but Kerry was making him work at this conversation. “In
English?”

The loupe dropped into Kerry’s palm with the ease of long
practice. “Sorry. Silk is a term for straw-like inclusions that interfere with
the light. It’s distinctive to rubies.”

“Rubies? So the ring is valuable?”

Beside him, Isabelle made a noise of disgust that hardly fit
with her pallor and near-fetal position. Kim brushed her wrist and traced her
clenched fingers, bringing her cold hand to rest on his knee where he could try
to warm it between his. Kerry, on the other hand, was practically burning with
excitement.

“Rare enough to find pigeon’s-blood rubies,” he said. “One
of this size and quality is almost completely unheard of.”

Who was this man and what had he done with Kim’s stuffy
brother? His heroics today were blowing open Kim’s whole idea of the man. It
was humbling and weirdly disorienting.

“Worth a lot, then,” Kim said.

“The larger, the more rare. This stone is roughly three
carats. At just one carat, a natural ruby is worth twice that of a one-carat
diamond, but a three-carat ruby is worth ten times that of a diamond of the
same description.” He was nearly vibrating with excitement.

“And this is a ruby?”

Kerry looked at the ring with obvious reverence. “I believe
it is. And unless I miss my guess, it’s part of an historic set—earrings,
choker, tiara and so on. Dates to the nineteenth century. Tsarist Russia.”

“How can you possibly know all that from looking at one
ring?”

Kerry shrugged. “The set went missing five or six years ago
from a museum on the West Coast. I remember seeing the FBI bulletin.”

“A bulletin from five or six years ago?”

“Never thought I’d see a ruby like this in person.” Kerry
popped the loupe back into place and gazed into the depths of the stone that
had caused Isabelle such grief. He seemed to have forgotten Kim was there, thus
missing Kim’s naked astonishment. Kim couldn’t imagine remembering a years-old
FBI bulletin. On the other hand, ask him about the limestone chimney he’d
bested in coastal Mexico his first summer climbing, and Kim could describe
every toehold and crack, every patch of moisture, every scent.

Kerry hadn’t taken on his father’s business to be a superior
prick, Kim realized, nor was he playing the dutiful son card. Kerry actually
loved his work, loved it with a passion.

“Isabelle!” Steven’s voice cut through the quiet moment,
alarmingly close by. “Hurry!”

Kim saw the fool at the edge of the roof. He was on hands
and knees and gesturing urgently. But Steven wasn’t the most pressing
problem—now that Kim was paying attention, he saw Bob was coming up behind
them, over the roof’s peak. Before Kim could shake himself into action, Bob
grabbed Kerry and the ring went sailing. It struck the shingles and began
rolling. Bouncing. Traveling fast. Kerry dived after it as if a man possessed
as Kim was still gathering his woozy-headed wits.

Steven perched at the roof’s edge, hands in front of him
like a catcher as the ring bounced closer. He was red-faced with exertion. “I’m
sorry, Izzy,” he puffed. “I never meant this to happen.”

Now he was sorry? Kim steadied Isabelle’s shoulder as she
made a valiant attempt to sit up, willing the bad-news ring to bounce off the
roof before anyone else got hurt. Especially Kerry. The man carried his center
of gravity too high. He wasn’t paying attention and Bob was hot on his heels.
Kim shouted a warning.