Page 10 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
“I’m a mechanical prodigy.”
“No.” He wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm. “Really. How—”
“Who do you think told them about the design flaw?” She turned and swung her bound legs out of the trunk and... yeah... shimmied out. “That’s how I ended up working on a Formula One pit crew.”
He studied her voice—her eyes. “Those drugs must have really knocked me for a loop because I honestly can’t tell if you’re lying.”
“Of course I’m lying!” She laughed like he was the punchline of her favorite joke. “I wasn’t on a Formula One pit crew.”Of course not.“I was in the engineering department.”
He stopped and studied her in the moonlight. Hair blowing around her. Dark clothes blending with the night. He could just make out a smudge of dirt or maybe grease on her cheek. He didn’t know why, but it looked right on her. Like it belonged—likeshebelonged.
They had nothing in common. She was brash and bold, the center of attention and the life of the party. There wasn’t a covert bone in Alex Sterling’s body, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that thiswas King’s world—his birthright—but she was the one who was alive there.
The clock in his mind ticked louder. Her hands were still zip-tied, and he told her, “Here. Hold your hands like—”
But before he’d even finished, she put the end of the zip tie in her teeth and pulled it tighter; then she raised her hands over her head and brought them down quickly, snapping the tie in two. “Like that, O Special One?”
“Yes,” King had to concede. “Like that.” He mimicked the gesture while she found a small stick and used it to pry open the ties around her legs, and he realized that, of all the infuriating things about Alexandra Sterling—from her too-big eyes to her too-blonde hair—she was her most annoying when she was good. And, as badly as King hated to admit it, it happened a lot.
“So this is a test, right?” It was cold, and her breath was an icy cloud that surrounded them like a fog. King blew out a tired sigh, and in the stillness, even that low sound seemed to echo.
“Yes, Sterling. Everything is a test. We have to get out of here and then run the gauntlet of whatever they have waiting for us”—he motioned to the dark terrain that surrounded them—“out there.” They were on the edge of the woods. Maybe they were still at Camp Peary? Maybe they weren’t? There was only one way to find out.
“Cool.” She grinned. “Come on, if we’re being timed, I want to win.”
“And if we’re not?” It was a ridiculous question. Of course they were being timed. And videoed. And graded in a hundred different ways, and yet he had to hear her say—
“I always want to win.”
Because King was wrong about one thing. He and Alex Sterling had something in common after all.
Chapter Six
Present Day
The Shack
Alex
“I’ll handle this,” King said when they heard the doorknob start to rattle.
“Yes, because, historically, that has never gone badly.”
“Well, what’s your bright idea?”
“Rip Van Winkle?” Alex suggested.
“No.”
“Elle Woods.”
“No.”
“Dead Man’s Bluff?” she tried just as the largest figure she’d ever seen filled the doorway, backlit by moonlight. “Finally!” she shouted at the man who stepped forward, slowly. “Get in here! Now!”
The man hesitated on the threshold, as if kidnappees weren’t supposed to give orders to kidnappers and maybe he’d missed a memo.
So Alex yelled louder. “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh my—”
