Page 14 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
“No shit.” The footsteps stopped. “Let me guess, he wanted to know when you’ll be covering Nikolai?” The man’s voice was flat, but there was something in the inflection that made the hair on Alex’s arms stand up. “What’d you tell him?”
“That we’ll get to it just as soon as we finish our unit on the Easter bunny.” The second guy laughed like they were so funny. But, to Alex, they just sounded mean. “Of course, we’ll have to save some time for Santa Claus.” Their chuckles turned to cackles as they pushed through the double doors, and Alex stood there for a long time, until the laughter disappeared on the wind.
She didn’t know what she’d just heard, but she felt guilty. For eavesdropping. For wondering. That conversation wasn’t even classified, but somehow, it felt like the most top secret thing she’d ever heard.
“Ask me.”
Alex turned at the sound of the voice, hating herself because she hadn’t heard him—hadn’t felt him. Maybe she really didn’t belong at spy school, she wondered, but she’d rather die than admit as much, so she looked him up and down instead, as if she were already bored.
“I’m sorry. Were you speaking to me?”
“You know I was. So ask me.”
“Do you really have a photographic memory?”
It surprised him, she could tell. That wasn’t the part that’d had him worried. “The technical term is eidetic.”
“Do you?”
“It’s not photographic, per se. There’s no such thing, technically, and—”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” He didn’t move. He barely breathed. He just stood there, staring at her as the night got later and the world got darker and the whole universe seemed to narrow down to the three feet between them. “Ask me.”
“About...” But that was when she saw it. Maybe she followed his gaze. Or maybe it was the work of her subconscious and six weeks of training on how to notice reflections and catch details. It was like an echo—a hall of mirrors. A trick of the light.
Because Michael Kingsley was there—looking at her. And he was alsothere—hanging on the wall, a photo in black and white.
Slowly, Alex stepped closer to the photograph—of him.
Onlynothim. Not exactly. The suit was gray and the tie was thin and the glasses were dark-rimmed, but more than anything, there was a look in the man’s eyes that said he’d done things he was proud of (and a few more that he wasn’t).
The plaque beneath it read “The Michael Kingsley School of Cold War Studies.”
She glanced from King to the photograph. “Are you a vampire?”
Alex wasn’t prepared for the quirk of his lip, like he was amused—with her. Like maybe he actually knew how to smile. Which... oh... there it went, turning into a scowl. It was a look that said the CIA had made a clerical error—a drastic mistake. Like at any moment a black ops team was going to breach the perimeter and come take her away, and he was only standing there because he wanted to be close enough to see her sweat.
“So that’snoto vampire, then?” Alex asked, then reconsidered. “Time traveler? Shapeshifter?”
“Are you finished?”
“Ooh!” She thought of one more. “Evil clone!”
He gave her a look likeGo ahead and get them all out of your system, but Alex just shrugged as if to say she was finished.
“Grandson.” He turned to face the image in the frame. “I’m his grandson.”
No wonder he was able to carry himself like he belonged. Like he was bored. Like he’d already learned all of this in the cradle and why were they making him go back to kindergarten when he should have been working on his PhD?
“So that’s why everyone treats you like a baby duke.” Alex thought it made perfect sense. It was the first thing since she’d met him that did.
“Notice how I’m not asking you what that means.”
There was a kind of chill that radiated off him, like nothing in his vicinity was allowed to be cooler than he was. Alex felt it as she gestured toward the plaque.
“I thought no one was ever supposed to know our names?” It felt, to Alex, like an excellent point, but King just looked at the photograph.
