“Sawyer—”
He wheeled on her. “There’s a reason I don’t sleep, Zoe. But you should. Go back to bed.” He reached for the tuxedo shirt and tried to pull it on, but he fumbled with the studs.
“Here.” She pushed his hands away and let her delicate fingers dance over the buttons. “At least you got a nice tuxedo out of the deal.”
He huffed out a cold, dry laugh. “Lot of good it’ll do me.”
She must have looked confused because he turned to stare into the fire.
“It’s not like the movies. My job . . . it’s not parachuting onto embassies or playing high-stakes poker . . . My job is using people.” He said the last words very slowly, like they were so heavy it was a miracle he ever managed to climb out of that river. “I lie, and I deceive, but, most of all, I get people to trust me. Steal for me. Tell me things they shouldn’t. I use people, Zoe. And, sometimes, they get hurt.”
Zoe felt brave for some reason—or maybe just stupid—but she had to know. “People like Helena?” He kept quiet but shuddered at the name. “You do sleep, you know. And you talk while you do it. Was she your girlfriend?” she asked slowly. “Your wife?”
“She was nothing. No one. She was”—he drew in a ragged breath—“expendable. And now she’s dead.” He wrapped the extra blanket around Zoe’s shoulders and turned her toward the fire. “Go to sleep, Zoe. Nothing else is going to hurt you tonight.”
Zoe wanted to argue—to fight—but her eyelids were too heavy and her limbs were too weak, so she just lay in the glow of the fire, trying not to think about the man who had the power to hurt her most of all.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Her
Zoe woke up to the feel of a cold fire and a bare back and the overwhelming sense that Sawyer wasn’t where he was supposed to be. She pushed up a little too quickly, and the room spun as she heard a deep voice say, “Good morning.”
He was sitting on the one chair they hadn’t burned—had it propped against the nearly rotten door, as if he could keep the rest of the world at bay through force of will alone.
He must have found some clothes somewhere because he was dressed in jeans and a cable-knit sweater. Mr. Michaelson’s coat—dry now—was draped over her layers of blankets. The designer tuxedo jacket was balled on the dusty floor beneath her head.
“You went shopping?” she asked, still groggy.
“I got you something.” He pointed to a pile by the fire. Jeans. A shirt and sweater. A pair of old boots. “The sizes are probably wrong, but . . .” He ran a hand through his wavy hair. “Hope you’re not picky.”
“I wouldn’t know if I were.” She gave a reluctant grin.
He didn’t smile back, but he got those deep creases around his eyes—the kind that made men look distinguished and women look old and proved that the universe is unequivocally unfair. But they sure looked good on him in any case.
“No, I guess you wouldn’t.”
That time she didn’t ask him to turn around. He just did it, pulling out two steaming cups of coffee and some food from a small sack as she tugged on the hodgepodge of clothes. The shoes were too big but he’d bought two pairs of socks and a big stack of bandages for her injured feet so she really wasn’t going to complain.
“Okay.” She tugged on the heavy sweater. “I’m decent.” She sat back by the fire and took a sip of the too-strong coffee, grateful for the warmth. “So did you conjure all this by magic or . . .”
He shook his head. “There’s a town about a half mile upriver. I figure we can walk there, catch a train. Maybe get a car.”
It was a solid plan, a perfectly viable option, but the fact remained that she didn’t know where they were going or what they were going to do when they got there. And there was something else, too—something she hadn’t had the nerve to think—much less say—until that very moment.
“Why’d she do it?” Zoe blurted while Sawyer examined the bottom of her feet. For the most part, the cuts were small and shallow, but he carefully layered antiseptic on each one before wrapping her foot in a thick bandage and helping her into the first pair of socks.
“What?” He looked up from his position on the floor.
“Alex. I get why she stole the drive from Kozlov, but why didn’t she take it to the CIA?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
But there was something in his tone—in the way he wouldn’t quite meet her gaze—that made her say, “You have a theory, though.” She was right, but he looked like he’d rather fight another assassin than tell her. “Sawyer? Why would Alex run?”