“Are you okay?” His hands were running over her face and her neck. His hands were everywhere.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you hurt.”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you—”
“Sawyer!” She had to make him stop. She had to make him see. “I . . . I’m sorry.” She read the confusion on his face. “Don’t get mad. But . . . I have a confession to make. I might have . . . uh . . . lied.”
Sawyer looked at her, like why are we talking when we could be kissing, but he managed to raise an eyebrow and say, “What kind of lie?”
“I did have Marc turn off the live feed from the cameras, but I also had him send a link to MI6.”
Sawyer tensed. She couldn’t read his expression, and that’s what worried her. “You did?”
That time, when she pointed into the distance there really was a dark speck breaking through the clouds and coming closer. Just about ten minutes too late. But, well, better late than never, she supposed as a second dot appeared on the horizon.
“And Interpol.”
Sawyer raised an eyebrow when a third helicopter rose above the blanket of clouds.
“And that would be Mossad.”
He huffed out a sound that might have been a laugh—or a curse. She couldn’t tell over the roar of the helicopters that were now so close she could make out the disapproving glares of hot guys in expensive suits and dark glasses. Sawyer saw them, too. She felt him bristle or maybe shiver. Every muscle in his body went tense. Everything seemed to change.
“Sawyer?” she asked, but he was already pulling her closer and kissing her deeper, even as the helicopters circled and the ice blew and figures all in black literally started rappelling down on cables.
“You chose me,” she whispered again because it felt like the only thing that mattered.
He touched her forehead with his, the air thick with white breath and swirling snow. His voice was barely more than a whisper. Like an oath. “Always.”
Before she could kiss him again, a man landed on the ice in front of them, shouting, “Which one of you is”—he checked his notes—“the Denominator?”
Chapter Sixty-Four
Her
So it turns out, if you plan a hostage exchange that results in the death of a rogue CIA operative, a criminal mastermind, and two henchmen, people are going to have a lot of questions. Or so Zoe thought as her life became a blur of snow and ice and whirling blades, badges and empty rooms and truly terrible coffee. Question after question, person after person, until Zoe started to wish she’d grabbed a parachute and followed her sister off that mountain.
“You must be tired.” The man on the other side of the table had probably given his name in the helicopter. She assumed he was MI6 because his accent was crisp and smart and he looked like the kind of man whose official title was His Grace, the Duke of Hottington—but everyone called him Hots for short—because that’s where Zoe’s mind went after eight cups of coffee.
“Where’s Sawyer? I really need to talk to—” Was he in trouble? Had he been arrested? Given a medal? Zoe had no idea. She just knew she needed Sawyer and a bathroom and not necessarily in that order. “Can I please talk to Sawyer?”
“In a bit.” Hots gave her the kind of self-deprecating smile they obviously taught at spy school. How else could he and Sawyer both be so good at it?
“I won’t keep you long. But I do need to show you something.” He laid a picture on the table. She looked down on snow and rocks and a bright blue strip of fabric discarded on the ground. “Our team found this at the base of the mountain.”
The parachute was ripped.
“She’s okay,” he rushed to add. “Or, at least, we assume so, because . . .” Hots dropped something else onto the table. “A courier delivered this an hour ago.”
The flash drive.
Hottington leaned closer, studying Zoe in the harsh overhead light. And Zoe heard it—“Courier? Why wouldn’t she bring it herself? Why—”
“I don’t know. But Alex is alive, Zoe. And no one is chasing her anymore. She’s alive, and, eventually she’ll stop running.”
Zoe didn’t realize how heavy that worry had been until she let herself put it down. It almost didn’t seem real, but Kozlov was dead and Collins was gone, and Alex was alive. Alex was going to be okay. So why did Zoe feel so awful?
“Miss Sterling?”
It took an embarrassingly long time to realize he was talking to her.