Zoe started to correct her—should have corrected her. She was already drawing a breath and trying to remember how to say I don’t have a husband in German . . . when she followed the woman’s gaze to the ring on Zoe’s finger, and she realized she was wrong. Of course she was wrong.
She did have something, after all.
Him
Sawyer didn’t have to worry about finding her, he tried to tell himself. If he’d learned anything since Paris it was that he simply had to follow the path of death and destruction she’d inevitably leave in her wake. But as he reached the little town with its quaint shops and charming buildings, he didn’t see any bleeding corpses or active fires and he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe he’d missed her.
Which was fine, he told himself. He should let her go.
He should run faster.
He should be worried, he thought.
He should be relieved.
Then he heard a sound on the cold, thin air and he knew what he was going to see even before he turned: a train waiting at the station, and a woman in a hodgepodge of clothes running across the platform.
For a moment, Sawyer imagined what it would be like to walk away.
Zoe was neither his mission nor his problem, and the guy he’d been two days before might have turned up his collar and disappeared on the wind. He would have called in some favors and receded back into the shadows—the only place he ever felt at home.
But now when he thought of home he didn’t see shadows. He saw light and he heard laughter and he knew that it wasn’t a place, it was a feeling. And he was terrified that if she got on that train without him, he’d probably never feel it again.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Her
Zoe wanted to look out the window and watch the little town slip away as the train pulled out of the station and headed into the Alps, but she knew to keep her head down and the collar of Mr. Michaelson’s coat turned up. She didn’t want to be seen. But she didn’t want to admit who she was hiding from, either—not until a figure appeared in the corner of her eye and a deep voice said, “Can we talk about this?”
When Sawyer dropped into the seat beside her, she wished it came with an ejector feature. All she wanted to do was kick him out—of that seat . . . of the train . . . of her life. She had no choice but to reach for the safety information pamphlet in the seatback in front of her. It was riveting stuff. Plus, knowing her luck, she was probably going to need the emergency protocols sooner or later.
“Zoe . . .”
“I’m reading.”
“Zo.”
“Don’t call me Zo. My friends call me Zo. Or they would if I could remember having friends. Which I don’t.”
“And that’s not my fault!”
But she just huffed and turned the page of her safety card so that she could read it again. In German this time. Because safety was important.
He looked up and down the nearly empty train car. “Where are we going? Please tell me you didn’t ask for a train to Zurich? Please tell me . . .”
“Of course not. I bought a ticket for the first train out of town. I didn’t even ask where it was heading.”
He blew out a relieved breath. “Good. I guess that’s . . .” But then he trailed off. He seemed to remember. “How’d you buy a ticket?”
She was still holding up her safety card. （It was just as riveting in French.） Her left hand was right there, practically at eye level, and she heard it in his voice the moment he realized . . . “You sold your wedding ring.”
There was real heartbreak on her fake husband’s face, and it shouldn’t have given her such satisfaction, the wave of shock and disappointment that filled his eyes. But it did. And she didn’t try to hide her self-satisfied grin. She was tired of hiding, period.
“We aren’t actually married, remember?” Did she sound childish? Yup. Did she care? Not even a little.
He gave a long-suffering sigh. “Where are you even going? What are you going to do when you get there?”
“I’m going to save my sister.”
“Alex can save herself,” he said and she scoffed. “She can. All she has to do is come in from the cold. Pick up the phone. Walk into any embassy. Get on a plane to Langley. Sure, she’d have to answer some questions from some extremely unpleasant people, but Alex can save herself.”
The train was at full speed then, the trees nothing but a snowy blur outside the window as Zoe turned to face the glass. But what she saw was him, a reflection on the window, a ghost behind her back.