The Blonde Identity (42)

So she cocked her head. She tried to tease. “Don’t you know? Sometimes villains make the best heroes.”

The smirk he gave her was warm and sweet and wrapped around her like a blanket. “Then, lady, I’m the hero of your dreams.”

She didn’t say what she was thinking: That’s what I’m afraid of.

“Come on. We need to get out of here before Kozlov sends someone to finish the job.” He stood and she started putting on her shoes. “Can you walk? I can go get a car.”

“I can walk.” Her feet didn’t hurt that much as she put pressure on them and slipped her arms into Mr. Michaelson’s coat and her hands into Mr. Michaelson’s pockets and—

“Wait,” Sawyer called. “I’ll take that coat and you can . . .”

But he trailed off as her fingers brushed against something and she pulled out a piece of plastic. It took her a moment to register what it was because that black card with the little golden C didn’t belong in such a dusty, ancient room.

“What’s . . .” And then she remembered. She laughed. “Oh. Well, we probably don’t need the key to my Paris hotel room.”

She started to toss it on the fire, but Sawyer was already lunging for her, shouting, “No!” There was panic in his voice she hadn’t heard before—like he’d rather lose every gun and knife and safe house he owned than part with that thin piece of plastic.

“What is it?” She stared at the face she no longer recognized because, in that moment, he was a stranger—a trained operative trying to pick the perfect lie. “Sawyer . . . Why do you have the key to a room we can never use?” But Sawyer just kept staring at the card—at her—as if he wasn’t sure which one was really worth saving. Which was how Zoe knew—“It’s not a hotel key, is it?”

She studied the card. Solid black with that little golden C. No chip or strip on the back, so it probably wasn’t a credit card. But it mattered. One look at him was enough to tell her that it mattered a lot.

“What kind of card is it, Sawyer?” She dangled it over the fire, and he cocked his head like we both know you won’t drop it—which she wouldn’t have, but she didn’t pull it back either. “What—”

“It’s a kind of . . . membership . . . card.”

“Membership to what?” she snapped, and Sawyer thought a long time about the answer.

He could have killed her, knocked her to the ground and taken it, left her there with her wanted face and her blank memory, but instead he told her, “A bank.”

“What kind of bank?”

“The Swiss kind.”

The card hadn’t touched the fire, but it felt hot in her hand anyway. “Ooh! Do I have a Swiss bank account?” She felt suddenly excited. “Whoa. Am I superrich? Is that why I’m in Europe? Do I . . .”

He shook his head, and for the first time since she woke up, he looked tired, like this whole thing was a river and he was swimming against a current that was just a little too strong. He ran a hand through his hair; it had dried by the fire and was sticking up and wavy and wild. It made him look younger, but his eyes . . . his eyes looked like he was a million years old. It was like they’d both lived a dozen lives since Paris.

Then a chill that had nothing to do with the cold went down her spine.

Paris.

She remembered falling snow and ice-covered streets, the way she’d stood with all her worldly possessions in her cupped hands and watched him change before her very eyes. He’d said something about the lip balm—about Alex. But the card had been right there—that little golden C glowing beneath the streetlights.

“This was why.” She saw that moment differently. She saw everything differently. “This was why you chased me.”

“Zoe—”

“You were willing to let me swim across an ocean until you saw this! Why?” And she knew. “You don’t think this is mine, do you? You think this is Alex’s.”

“It’s the kind of thing . . . It fits. From what I know about Alex, that fits.”

He nodded toward the card, and Zoe gripped it a little tighter then slid it back into the pocket of the coat . . .

Of Sawyer’s coat.

And, suddenly, the whole world went cold again.

“Why did you have it?” She was practically breathing fire, but he just looked at her like she hadn’t been paying attention.

“Because it’s not trash.” His voice was calm and matter-of-fact, but he couldn’t meet her gaze.

She limped closer and he inched back, like she was the one who could kill him with her bare hands, and in that moment, maybe she was.

“I left this card on the dresser when I emptied my pockets after Paris. So why was it in your pocket last night?” She asked like she didn’t know, like she wasn’t already begging, pleading, praying she was wrong.

And in his defense, he didn’t answer.

But in her defense, he didn’t have to.

She knew. She knew. And it broke her. “Because you were leaving me.”

“No.” Sawyer reached for her but Zoe pulled back.

“You were. You were going to ditch me. Abandon me.”

More than knowing he’d only offered to save her to get his hands on that card . . . More than being lied to and led on . . . More than being strangled and shot at and drowned . . . The thing that hurt her most was simple.