Page 120 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
A ringing sound pierced the air, and King watched from the shadows as Tyler checked his watch. Then preened.
“I know there’s nothing I can do to you, King.” Tyler was pulling a phone from his pocket, keying in the code and answering the call. “But when I think about all I can do toher...”
A gruff voice on the other end of the line was saying, “We have her. It’s done.” But King already knew—even before Tyler turned the phone toward the shadows. King didn’t have to see the screen to know what he was seeing. He could already hear the video—the screaming.
“Let me go!” Blonde hair blew in the wind as a big man dragged her through the streets. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to eat your intestines on crackers. I’m...”
Certain. King was finally certain.
“That guy’s not with the Agency, is he?”
It was so clear then. It should have been clear all along, but King had been too tired and frustrated and blinded by love to notice.
“No. Let’s just say he’s an... associate of mine from my... other... endeavors.”
“Because you’re Nikolai.”
“Don’t be silly. Nikolai is a ghost story.” He gave a low, dry chuckle in the dark. “But ghosts can come in handy, can’t they?”
“Why create your own reputation when you can just steal someone else’s?” King guessed.
“Power hates a vacuum, Kingsley. Don’t tell me a smart guy like you doesn’t know that? Someone was always going to take over where Collins and Kozlov left off. It might as well be me.”
“Were you theCollinsor theKozlovof this enterprise?”The CIA mole or the world-class thug?
“Oh, don’t kid yourself.” Tyler’s expression turned to granite. “I was both.”
King stepped out of the shadows. “If you hurt her...”
“I don’t want to hurt her!” Tyler shouted. And then he laughed. “I want to hurtyou. The Great Michael Kingsley. How many months didyouspend in deep cover, huh? How deep didyougo? Because I went deep, Mike. I went so deep that I don’t think I ever came out. Until the day I realized, I didn’t even want to.”
“You can turn yourself in, Tyler. Get help.”
“I don’t need help! I did my part for the cause, and now the cause is going to do its part for me. You think you’re so great. So special. But what did you ever do? Hell, what did your father do? And your grandfather? They were desk jockeys. Bureaucrats. They...” Tyler trailed off as he thought, then, in a flash, decided— “You’re right.” Tyler raised his gun and pointed it at King’s heart. “I don’t need you anymore. I have her.”
“You will never have her. You’ll never even know her.”
“I already have her! I already know her! I... What? Why are you smiling?”
King couldn’t help himself. It was too perfect—too right. And King almost felt sorry for the man.
“What?” Tyler shouted again.
“If you really knew Alex...” There was a crunch behind Tyler, a footstep and a breath. “You’d know she has a twin.”
At first, Tyler seemed confused when he turned—when he saw her. Because, in that split second, there weretwoAlexes—one who was still on his phone, shouting, “I’m going to choke you with your own kneecaps!” and one who was smirking, almost flirty when—
“Here.” King tossed the wrench through the air and she caught it.
And then Alex knocked Tyler out cold.
She wasn’t even breathing hard, and she didn’t have a hair out of place as she stood there, wrench in her hands, staring down at Tyler’s unmoving form. “Was that good enough to clear our names?”
“That was enough,” said the woman in the long, dark coat and the short, white hair who stepped out of the shadows.
“You took your time,” King complained.
“You can’t rush perfection, Michael. Things had to be airtight; you knew that,” Merritt said just as the screaming stopped coming out of the phone that was lying on the ground next to Tyler’s outstretched hand.
