“Yes, please.” He couldn’t help but laugh. “Both would be great.”
“Then take me to the bank.” Oh, she was good. He hadn’t even seen it coming. And he really, really should have.
“Just so we’re clear, when I think hey, maybe Zoe could pretend to be Alex so we can access the bank box, it’s evil, but when it’s your idea, it’s genius?”
“It’s evil when it’s a secret,” she said simply, and Sawyer knew she was right. He also knew—
“It’s too dangerous.” He was shaking his head. “No. I’m not letting you—”
“I’m going with or without you, so unless you plan on kidnapping—”
He pulled back as much as he could in the tiny room. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Help me.” It was the tone of her voice that did it, pleading and desperate, but just proud enough to show that asking hadn’t been easy. “Help me end it.”
Sawyer never thought about the end. He didn’t plan for his retirement. The fact that she still thought she could get a happy ending . . . he didn’t want to be the one to tell her that was the biggest lie of all.
So he made her a deal. “We can go to the bank and check it out, and if Alex is there and shows herself, great. But we’re not going in, and we’re not taking any risks.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Yes.”
And, asshole move or not, he pressed even closer. He wanted her to remember he was bigger and stronger and forget that she could break him with a look.
“But, Zoe . . . so help me. If I so much as smell Kozlov on the wind, we put Zurich to our backs and we don’t stop running until we hit water.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I swear to—”
“Okay. Yes. Deal!”
“I need . . .” Sawyer started. “I need you to trust me. Can you do that? After last night? After this morning, if you can’t trust me, then this won’t work.”
She was a little too quiet for a little too long, biting her lip in the way that almost killed him.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Now leave.”
“No! I just said I’m not going to—”
“No. I mean get out. Please.” She might have blushed. She couldn’t meet his gaze. “I came in here for a reason . . .”
He suddenly remembered where they were. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll just wait . . .” He tried to point over his shoulder but banged his thumb on the door. “Ow. Yeah.” But the door wouldn’t open. “I’ll just . . .”
He pushed. He leaned. And then the door opened a little too quickly and Sawyer, a man who earned his first black belt at the age of fourteen, almost fell on his face.
“I’ll be right here.” He pointed to his feet and once the door closed, he was pretty sure he heard laughing.
And, worse, he was pretty sure he liked it.
Maybe that’s why he missed the footsteps—didn’t hear a thing until the gun cocked and cold metal pressed against the back of his neck and a deep voice said, “Move and I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
And all Sawyer could think was Not again.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Her
Zoe was a liar. And a fraud. And someone who should have her feminist card revoked because as soon as the hot guy with the big gun came crawling back, she let him. Worse, a part of her rejoiced at the sight of him. Because he was way better at strangling people with lingerie than she was. And he knew Alex. And spy stuff. And she was in the middle of an extremely spylike situation. So she needed someone who knew the ropes. And the guy on the other side of the door . . . well . . . he tied her in all kinds of knots. The question was, were they the kind that would hold her together or the kind that would hold her back?
He pounded on the door and she sighed, because ninety seconds of solitude was evidently way too much to ask.
“Okay! I hear you!”
But all she got was another bang or two, and Zoe knew she should open the door. She also knew she really didn’t want to. Because opening that door meant looking at broad shoulders and blue eyes and feeling things she really didn’t want to feel. Opening that door meant going back to pretending she was strong, pretending she was fine, pretending she had everything under control when the truth of the matter was, she spent most of her energy in any given moment trying to keep the rest of the world from seeing how very not fine she really was.
But what if she didn’t have to pretend with Sawyer? What if there was more than one way for him to keep her safe?