“Maybe it’s the half-dozen intelligence agencies after us, but it feels like we’re in a time-sensitive situation here.”
“We are! It is!”
“Then—”
“We slept on a floor last night,” he reminded her. “We’re wearing clothes I stole from a laundromat. And I’m pretty sure we both smell like river water. So, no. We’re not going to one of the most secure banks in the world . . .” He looked at her. “。 . . yet. We’re going to take hot showers and get a good night’s sleep, and then we’re going to think this through before we do anything. Okay?”
He was saying all the right things for all the right reasons, but Zoe couldn’t shake the feeling that there was way more to the story.
So she twisted in her seat and took off the heavy sweater. It was too hot and she was too frustrated. She didn’t realize her shirt was gaping open until she felt his gaze on her—on the scars that covered her chest.
“It’s not what you think,” he told her.
“Oh?”
“I was staring at your boobs,” he said, and she couldn’t help herself—she smiled.
“See. That was a well-delivered lie. Good job.”
“Thank you.”
She could go hours without thinking of the scars and wondering exactly what had tried to kill her and was it ever going to come back and finish the job? But it was out there now and Zoe couldn’t help it.
“You know, I keep thinking, I should probably get another low-cut dress? Maybe a halter top?”
“Well, you won’t get any complaints from me but you might get cold.”
“True.” She gave a sad smile. “But maybe then people would stop trying to kill me. No one would mistake me for Alex then, would they?” She gave a sad laugh, honestly not sure whether or not she was joking.
Zoe didn’t realize she was rubbing the scar until she caught him staring, and she pulled her hand away like it had burned her. “I don’t know why I keep doing that. I guess my muscle memory isn’t the butt-kicking kind?” And she couldn’t help but feel incredibly disappointed.
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.