Page 5 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
It didn’t matter that her wrists were still cuffed and the room was still dark and she wanted to sneeze—just a little. It was a room that felt like it had never been clean and never would be. Just four walls she couldn’t even see, but she could tell the floor was concrete and the chair was metal. It made a scraping sound when she moved, and Alex had to bite back a grin. That fact was going to prove handy.
And speaking of hands, she gave hers a jerk in the darkness. They didn’t make a rattle or a clang, so she wasn’t handcuffed to the chair itself, and whatever was on the other side of those cuffs had a little give. If she could get it to break...
She pulled harder.
And then she heard it—a groan in the darkness—a low, aching sound that meant one thing: she wasn’t alone.
Alex went still. The pain faded and her senses sharpened and, suddenly, she could smell everything, hear everything—feel everything about the room around her.
There was a sound, like a foot dragging across concrete. And a voice saying—
“Hello, Alexandra.”
And just that quickly, Alex knew who she was going to kill first.
Chapter Three
Ten Years Ago
Camp Peary, Virginia
No one knows anything about the Farm. Officially, it doesn’t even exist. Baby Alex had first heard the term on one of the two dozen spy movies she used to watch under the covers in hospitals, ready to shoutWrong sister!to anyone who might want to try to cut her open.
The spies in the movies were tough. They were fearless. They knew how to stab with pencils and strangle with string, and they never, ever cried because their twin sister was about to have her heart pulled out of her chest and then sewn back together—again.
They wore fancy dresses and drove fancier cars, and they didn’t need the person in the twin bed on the far side of the room because they weren’t half—they were whole. And they learned it all on some farm in Virginia.
It didn’t matter how many stalls she had to muck or tractors she had to drive, nine-year-old Alex had sworn that she was going to learn to do those things too.
It wasn’t until much, much later that Alex learned it wasn’tthatkind of farm. What the CIA grew at Camp Peary, it turned out, were secrets. But that was okay. Alex had a knack for those too.
So it didn’t seem quite real, that January morning, as Alex gazed out the tinted windows when the bus stopped at the gates. German shepherds circled, sniffing at the wheels. Guards scanned for bombs, but Alex was more concerned with the man who was staring holes in the back of her head from the row behind her.
She turned and whispered, “Oh my gosh, wasthisthe bus I wasn’t supposed to get on?” She gave a gasp. Then a giggle. “This is so embarrassing.”
“You seem pleased with yourself.”
“Me?” She turned in her seat and watched the gates swing open. “Absolutely.”
When they climbed off the bus ten minutes later, the sky was the color of gunmetal and the parking lot was rimmed with piles of dirty snow. Alex’s breath turned to fog in the chilly air, but she could have stood there for an hour—a day—taking in the sights and sounds of that place that had loomed so large in her imagination. In reality, it was just a collection of neat, government-issue buildings surrounded by dense forest. On the drive, she’d spied (Ha!) shooting ranges and an airstrip and fractured glimpses of glistening water through breaks in the trees. It was all perfectly... ordinary.
“So this is it?” a voice asked from behind her, and Alex turned to take in a shadow that was the wrong shape—a voice that was the wrong tenor. The sky was just dull enough that she would have looked stupid in sunglasses, but she still had to squint against a glare as she looked up at a guy who was definitely notThe Guy. Alex tried not to think about why she felt so disappointed. “I’m Tyler.”
He held out his hand and Alex took it because she was going to play nice, she’d decided. Make friends. She was a new person here, and she was going to learn how to be a million more people. No one knew about Zoe or the hospitals. If anything, her history might have been an asset. Not a lot of people could almost kill someone in the womb. At spy school, that might make her a badass.
So Alex looked up at the new guy and told herself to smile. He looked... nice. The human equivalent of a photograph that had been put through so many filters that it couldn’t help but look appealing, lines blurring together until there were no shadows anymore. He was attractive and easygoing and probably just not-threatening enough to make people feel like they could tell him their secrets. If so, he was in the right place.
So she asked, “Is that allowed?”
He exhaled about a third of a laugh. “Excuse me?”
“Names,” she went on as he held open a door and they followed the group inside. “Or is Tyler a code name?” He gave her a lookthat said he didn’t know if she was teasing or serious. “Because if you’re going with Tyler, I guess I could beFalcon. OrDragon Rider. OrGemini.”
“I don’t know much about astrology.” He sounded leery, like the CIA might have just invited a crazy person into their inner sanctum. What Tyler the Kind of Boring didn’t know was that Alex’s sarcasm was the most ordinary thing about her.
“I guess I’ll just be Alex, then.”
Tyler smiled down at her. “Alex, it’s my pleasure.” And the thing was, he even sounded like he meant it and not in an overly creepy way.
