“Oh,” I breathed out in relief. “Well, that sounds like something Knox would do.”
“I helped him with his case against your mother last year,” Azura said with a knowing look.
“Ah, so you know the whole mess, then.”
“I do.” Alright, so she looked lethal with her smoky, dark eyes and put-together appearance, but there was a glint of humor in her eyes. “Anytime you want to unshackle from Dr. Spencer, I’m here for you. We’ll find a loophole.”
My stomach clenched with dread.Wait, dread?Oh my God, I didn’t want to unmarry Spencer. This couldn’t be happening tome. I was in love with him, and I wanted to not divorce him. The horror. “Appreciate it.” I glanced at the man near the car who was pulling sleek black cases out and positioning them at the edge of the trunk to access. “Is that… why you’re here?”
“No.” Azura waved that away. “I had a moment of inspiration about your case while I was hiking on Christmas day.”
“Hiking on Christmas?”
From the car, and without even looking up, the guy shouted, “She’s absolutely mental. Pretend she’s sane when she tells you things like that.”
“You’re the hired muscle today,” she shot back with a scowl. “Hush.” The man laughed, and Azura turned back to me. “We mostly celebrate Hanukkah unless we visit his family. But that’s not the point. The point is, while I was staring at a river from the viewing area up top, I realized I knew how to survey your land for blockages without having to actually visit it.”
The guy behind her held up a drone. “I’m her muse.”
Azura looked long-suffering. “Sorry, that is Tristan, my husband. And yes, he’s the drone pilot.”
“You thought about all this—me—on Christmas while you were hiking?” I clarified.
Tristan leaned away from the car, around Azura, and caught my gaze. “Mental.”
“Dedicated,” Azura corrected primly. “And I want to help,” she added a little more gently for me. “What do you think? Are you up for an impromptu drone reconnaissance mission? I’m not charging,” she rushed to add.
I frowned a little. “Then… Wait, you came all this way just to help me? You’ve never met me.”
Azura shrugged. “You can send us away. I won’t be offended. I only do things that interest me, these days. Cases I like. Paid or unpaid.”
“It’s because I’m a gagillionaire,” Tristan added seriously, coming to join us with the drone in his hand. He also had what looked like a motorcycle helmet under his arm. “She doesn’t have to make money now that she has a sugar daddy.”
Azura turned a feline glare his way. He grinned back. Turning back to me, Azura ignored her husband completely by asking, “What do you think?”
“I think it sounds smart,” I replied honestly. I shifted from one foot to the other as sinister misgivings wound their way through my thoughts. “I just… Sorry, but what’s the catch?”
“I’ve met your mother,” Azura said, her mouth turning down at the corner. “I don’t blame you for suspecting hidden agendas. I promise you, I do these kinds of things all the time.”
“Saving the world is our hobby,” Tristan smiled. I was pretty sure he meant that unironically.
As I looked between them, it struck me how many similarities I saw between their relationship and mine with Spencer. Azura seemed like a reserved, hard-working kind of woman, and Tristan was clearly all lighthearted joie de vivre. They looked comfortable with each other. Happy, even. Maybe…
I gestured to Tristan. “Show me how it works.”
“Great. Let’s do it.” Tristan handed the drone to Azura and fitted the helmet over his head. A mic popped on, and through a speaker, I heard Tristan say, “The drone is P.U.M.A. We call her P, and she’s controlled with eye-assisted tech and my haptic gloves.” He held up his hands, which had unassuming, black leather gloves over them. I could just make out little haptic pads on the fingers and palms.
“Seems very gagillionaire,” I said.
Azura snorted. “He’s proud of P. Other gagillionaires around the world have been trying to bribe him for the tech, but he won’t share.”
“Gagillionaires rarely do,” Tristan quipped, his voice lower and distorted through the mic.
Azura settled the drone on the ground and then pulled out her phone, tapped it a few times, and brought up a camera feed of our feet. She gestured to my house. “We can watch from inside if that would be more comfortable for you. Tristan will pilot her from out here.”
“What is he going to look for, exactly?” I asked, leading the way back to my porch.
Azura picked through the snow carefully, holding up her pinstriped, pressed pants and doing her best not to get snow in her pumps. “We did a little research on the flight here. Tristan has a vague idea of what a diverted river or dammed-up water source might look like from above.”
