The Blonde Identity (53)

The smile Sawyer gave her was slow and dark and mildly indulgent. “Oh, I don’t know. You threw a CIA operative off a moving train and hot-wired a car.”

She couldn’t help herself. She beamed. “I did!”

“And you’re not a terrible dancer.”

“Especially considering I had to lead.”

When Sawyer’s lip quirk turned into a full smirk it felt like the greatest compliment in the world. She turned to look at the black ribbon of highway snaking through the valleys and over the mountains.

“So if we aren’t going to the bank, where are you taking me?”

The smirk faded, the hand on the wheel tensed, and she could have sworn the windows frosted over when he said, “Someplace safe.”

“Like a safe house?”

He was silent for so long that she thought he hadn’t heard her.

“More like a house . . . that’s safe,” he said, and it was like the sun had finally slipped behind the Alps and plunged the whole world into darkness. Zoe hated it, the feeling that Sawyer would have rather been back in that alley than on the way to wherever they were going. But they were going anyway.

So she tried to brighten her voice, tease him—to bring his smile back. “Are you going to blow it up with a snowball?”

“You do realize that the snowball didn’t actually . . .” He let out a frustrated sigh and shook his head and it felt, to Zoe, like victory. “No. This one won’t explode. No one knows about this one.”

“That’s what you said about the first one,” she teased but Sawyer kept his gaze on the highway.

“Even I forget about this one.” The sun slipped behind the mountains and the whole world turned gray. It wasn’t until Zoe’s eyes were closed that he whispered, “Or I try to.”





Him


He should have missed the driveway. The snow was deep and the night was dark, and the trees had grown, unhindered, for a decade. So it was mostly instinct that made him slow and turn through the tiny gap in the brush, grateful for the tall tires of the SUV as they churned through the deep snow, headlights slicing through the trees as they headed up the mountain.

Everything had changed. And yet it was exactly the same, or so it felt twenty minutes later as forest gave way to clearing and the headlights shone back at him, reflected in a wall of darkened windows.

The cabin looked even smaller than he remembered, its pitched roof holding up under the weight of a foot of snow.

He never thought he’d be glad to be back, but for the last thirty miles, his hands had been shaking and his brow had been sweating and the dark road had started to swirl before his eyes. When he moved to take off his seat belt, he was hit by a wave of pain so deep he thought he might pass out. He’d been sitting for too long, and now the adrenaline was gone.

All that remained was a deep, throbbing ache and a sticky shirt, and the relief that they’d made it, even if it was the last place on earth he wanted to be.

“What . . .” Zoe stirred awake then grinned at him, like a little girl who had been having the most wonderful dream. Her hair was a halo in the moonlight, and she looked so pure and innocent that he hated his own hands for how badly they wanted to touch her. “Where are we?”

It was harder than it should have been to tell her, “Home.”





Chapter Forty-Three





Her


The snow was up to Zoe’s knees as she crawled from the SUV and trudged toward the cabin. She could see her breath in the air and smell the pines, and every cell in her body felt alive for the first time. She didn’t know there were that many stars—millions of them glistening overhead. She wanted to make a wish because surely, somewhere out there, one of them had to be falling.

“Coming?” Sawyer called from the porch.

She couldn’t believe it when the key was under the mat. Weren’t safe houses supposed to come with retinal scanners and voice-activated attack dogs and keypads that shoot acid if you type in the wrong code? Evidently not, and Zoe couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit disappointed as she followed Sawyer inside.

She reached for the switch by the door, but nothing happened when she flipped it.

“No power,” he said. “We’re off the grid. I’ll see if I can get the generator going in the morning. In the meantime, there should be some candles around here somewhere.”

It didn’t take long for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. One whole wall was windows, after all, and moonlight filtered through, reflecting off the snow outside—too bright for the middle of the night. The whole place was covered in dust and smelled like it hadn’t known fresh air in ages, and if it hadn’t been for the tall stone fireplace and old furniture, she might have wondered if they’d just unlocked a tomb.

“We should have gas for hot water and wood for fires, and . . . Shit,” Sawyer mumbled and she heard something hit the floor just as he struck a match.

Light flickered, the tiny orange glow washing over the dusty floor as Zoe bent down to retrieve the candle that was rolling toward her.

“Looking for . . .” she started but trailed off as she came eye to eye with the dark stain on Sawyer’s shirt.

Her first thought was that he’d spilled something—that she should give him a hard time for being clumsy. But the stain was wet. And the stain was very, very red. And his face was very, very white. And in the flickering glow of the matchlight she saw it in his eyes—she knew.