Page 25 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
“But how—”
“Because of this.” There was an emergency exit in the corner—a lever labeleddo not push. alarm will sound.
And then he pushed it.
Instantly, alarms began to wail. Lights began to swirl. King pushed Alex between a gap in the slots and into the next aisle while security guards shouted and headed toward the open door. A moment later, King was leading her down a dim and narrow hallway markedemployees only.
“Just out of curiosity, what is your plan? Exactly?”
“My plan is to keep us alive, Sterling.”
“And you’re doing a phenomenal job. What with us being handcuffed and hiding in a place where it is literally impossible to hide.”
“This is a blind spot.”
“Oh, is it? You psychically divined that, did you?”
“There’s nothing to steal here. Nothing to protect.”
But all she did was cock an eyebrow. “So what’s your big plan now?” He stopped in front of a service elevator and started punching numbers into the keypad. “Seriously? That’s never going to...” But Alex trailed off when the doors slid open.
King just took her hand and said, “Come on.”
Chapter Fourteen
Nine Years Ago
Cartagena, Colombia
King
King didn’t complain because it wouldn’t have mattered. If Merritt had wanted this to be a solo mission, it would have been. If she had thought him ready to be on his own, he would be. And, most of all, if this job hadn’t required a certain kind of female operative, he wouldn’t have been walking down the stone streets of the walled city at that moment, holding the hand of Alex Sterling.
All spies are chess players, but Merritt was a grand master. King knew she was a dozen moves ahead and well aware of the endgame and she wasn’t going to share. But, in the meantime, King had other problems. Specifically, he had three:
There was the mission.
There was the woman.
And there was the hat.
“I can’t believe you wore that.”
“Wore what?” Alex tilted her head up to look at him, and the wide brim of the big white hat tipped back, exposing the long line of her throat to the sun.
“Could you have found a bigger hat? Perhaps one that doubles as a hang glider or maritime vessel?”
“Someone sounds jealous.”
“Someone is on a mission,” he growled in her ear, but Sterling, being Sterling, simply smiled as if he were the love of her life and not the bane of her existence.
Her dress was white with a long skirt that flowed around her in the breeze. The air was hot and stifling—the high was expected to be in the nineties, but with the heat of the Colombian sun it felt like triple digits and King thought his skin might actually catch fire. Sterling, on the other hand, looked like a cone of soft serve ice cream—cool and smooth and swirling.
“What’s wrong with my hat?” She sounded almost petulant—like for all their slings and arrows,thatwas the thing that had finally hurt her.
“You know the objective is to blend in?”
“And see, here I thought the objective was to not get caught.”
