Not Kozlov or the drive or Alex—definitely not the woman who was （finally） pulling on a robe. Because the one thing he knew for certain was that Zoe probably wasn’t going to be safe without him and she sure as hell wasn’t safe with him and so Sawyer genuinely didn’t know what to do.
“So what’s on the agenda for today?”
“Oh no,” he told her as he jumped to his feet. “Don’t put this on me. This is your plan.”
“Fake dating is a good plan. It’s very good spying.”
“You say that like it’s a real thing.”
“It is!” she exclaimed then cocked her head. “Except, technically, we’re not fake dating. We’re fake married. And double technical—”
“That’s not a real term.”
“—we’re not faking. We’re undercovering—”
“That’s definitely not a real—”
“So we’re not a trope. We’re a mission!”
How could she do that? Sleep in another woman’s clothes in another woman’s bed—on another woman’s honeymoon—and wake up beaming and glowing as if she wasn’t the meat in life’s shit sandwich?
“If you say so.”
“I do! But for the sake of argument, let’s say we were doing it your way—assume we spent the night on the dirt floor of some safe house and roasted a raccoon over an open fire for supper. What would your plan be then?”
“Well, first of all, I wouldn’t eat raccoon. Ever.”
“You might,” she shot back and he tried not to roll his eyes.
“Second of all, we’d need to lie low. Keep moving.”
She pointed to the lavish suite and the countryside beyond the balcony doors. “Check. And check! Gosh, I’m good at this! Spying is obviously genetic.”
He wanted to tell her she was wrong—that families have no role in covert operations, but that wasn’t true, and he knew it.
“So what would you do . . . if you weren’t burdened with me?”
You’re not a burden he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her again that she wasn’t expendable or collateral damage. But if he wasn’t careful she was going to be all those things, and it was just a matter of time until she got hurt—one way or the other.
“Well . . .” she prompted.
The problem was that he knew exactly what he’d do if he didn’t care about her. But at some point in the past thirty-six hours his priorities had shifted in a way that made him a worse spy but a better person and he wasn’t at all sure how to feel about the trade-off.
“Sawyer . . .”
He collapsed onto the carpet with a groan. “If it were just me, I’d shake a few trees. See what falls out.”
She dropped onto the bed and exclaimed, “Okay! I’m rested! I’m ready! Let’s go shake trees!”
“The last thing I shook literally exploded, so . . . no.”
She crossed her legs and looked at him. “Okay. The ship will dock sometime today, and we’ll get off and—”
“The ship was supposed to dock this morning but it got rerouted because of ice.”
“Oh.” She bounced again, coming up on her knees. “Then Plan B! We’ll—”
“No!” He didn’t mean to snap. He didn’t want to yell. But there’s only so much optimism a man can take before it breaks him, being that close to something he can never have and never feel. Sawyer was in the Worst Case Scenario business, and he couldn’t let himself pretend otherwise, no matter how tempting it might be—how tempting she might be.
“We have to find my sister.” That time, Zoe’s voice was soft. “We have to find her before they—”
“They already have her!” He hadn’t meant to say it, and he really hadn’t wanted to shout, but she had to know . . . She had to brace herself because . . . “The CIA probably had her before you even woke up from your nap yesterday. And that’s the literal best-case scenario—that she’s tied up with a bag over her head in some government facility that doesn’t officially exist, because . . .” He trailed off because there were some things even he wasn’t callous enough to say.
“What’s the other scenario?” She drew the robe tight around her in a way that had nothing to do with skimpy nighties.
But he was shaking his head. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
“What’s the other scenario?” She looked like someone bracing for a hit, trying to convince themselves they’re tough enough to take it.