Page 102 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
So, eventually, he’d had to come back without Alex. He’d just never planned on coming backwithher and, at the moment, that was the problem.
“This doesn’t look familiar.” Alex peered out the car window, looking around at the little dirt road that was barely more than a trail.
“Back door,” he said as he pulled the car behind a hedgerow. He turned off the engine but didn’t open the door. Instead, he just sat there, hands gripping the steering wheel like a man desperate to keep his life on the road. He couldn’t even face her when he said, “You could wait in the car.”
“Ha!” She waited a beat, studying him out of the corner of her eye. “That was my ironic laugh.”
“I know.”
“Because it’s not really funny, but it’s alsohilarious.”
“I get the picture.” He undid his seat belt and secured the emergency brake.
“BecauseyouthoughtIwould wait...in the car!” It was the punch line of a joke that wasn’t funny anymore, so King got out and slammed the door, but Alex was still looking at him like she didn’tknow whether she should be horribly offended or terribly amused. Then, suddenly, she grew worried.
She crawled out of the passenger side and studied him over the hood. “When have I ever waited in the car?” It was a test and he was going to fail it.
“Never. Okay? Sorry I—”
“Why on earth would I—”
“Because I asked you to?” He whirled, but all the fight went out of him. She was going to find out eventually, but that didn’t mean he was in a hurry to tell her. “Because I’m an idiot—which you know. So come on.”
He took off walking cross-country. After thirty minutes, they climbed a rocky hill, and he heard a near-silent wince and risked a glance behind him.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine, and so help me, if you tell me to wait in the car again, I’ll...” But she trailed off as they crested a ridge and looked down at the castle in the valley below. The sun was setting in the west, painting the sky with color until the stone walls and high towers looked like something from another age.
He’d been an idiot to buy it. It had cost a fortune to remodel, but he just kept hearing her in that damned bungalow on that damned island, talking about Scottish heroes and castles and what a dream man would look like. He’d been a fool to think it could ever be him.
“What are the odds someone is watching this place?” It was one of about five hundred questions King currently had on his mind, but at the moment, it was also the most pressing. “Because you’re acting like you think someone found your Fortress of Solitude.”
King wanted to tell her she was wrong. That he’d been careful. That no one knew about this place—no one but him and Alex and two dozen tradesmen who all thought his name was Mr. Masterson—but King didn’t know what was real anymore, so he sank to the ground and pondered the castle in the distance.
“There are forty-eight blank hours in my mind, Sterling. There are things I’ve been trying my whole life to forget, but the thing I’dgive anything to remember is just out of reach, so yeah... I’m going to sit here and wait until I’m sure we’re not walking into an ambush.”
“Again,” she added helpfully as she sank down to sit beside him.
Because they didn’t know who was after them. They didn’t know if this mystery villain was CIA or KGB or something altogether different. They didn’t know anything except they had to be careful.
But all King could do was smile and echo, “Again.”
It was dark and silent when she whispered, “I spent the last year thinking I’d never come back here.”
He didn’t say what he was thinking: that he’d spent the last year praying that she would.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
One Year Ago
Scotland
Alex
Alex had never believed in happy endings, but as the days and nights stretched out, she started to wonder if maybe her sister was right—like maybe they were possible. Like maybe one might be possible... for her.
The only person who could have known was Zoe, and suddenly, Alex wanted to hear her sister’s voice. She wanted to ask what love felt like. She wanted to know if this was it.
