Page 9 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
“They’re going to try to torture me, but they’re too late.” She drew a dramatic breath. “Becausethisis torture.This.Waking up, restrained in the dark, with you should have been outlawed by the Geneva convention.”
He felt a tug on his hands, like she was making sure he was still with her, and then Alex went silent in the darkness. It was his turn to lash out, but King was too busy thinking... and remembering... and smiling.
“Come on, Sterling. It’s not like it’s the first time.”
Chapter Five
Ten Years Ago
Somewhere in Virginia
King
The first thing King noticed was the darkness. Then the smell. Then the feel of sweat sliding across his skin even though it was the middle of winter.
It was hard to get his bearings because something was over his head. His hands were zip-tied behind his back, and his legs were bound at the ankles, and even though the space was small, it felt like he might be adrift out in space, too far away to see the stars. Or else he was lying in a grave somewhere, too stupid to know he was already dead.
But that wasn’t it either.
King... remembered. Everything. Always. It simply wasn’t in his DNA to forget, so that might have been the weirdest thing about coming awake in the dark with no clue where he was or how he’d gotten there. But then he shifted slightly—a dull ache shot through his arm, and he flashed back to the Agency doctors lining them up for a routine shot after dinner.
“B-twelve, my ass,” he said to the darkness. He didn’t actually think the darkness would talk back.
“So it turns out”—the voice was wry and more than a little condescending—“spies lie.”
When he was five, King’s grandfather had bought him his first bicycle without training wheels. They were living in Vienna at the time, and as it turned out, bikes and centuries-old cobblestonesdon’t mix, so King had fallen and scraped his elbow. No matter how many times his mother washed the wound, he could always feel a little piece of grit under his skin. They said it was in his head, but King knew better. It was a part of him now, and he’d either have to cut it out or learn to live with it.
That was how it felt when he met Alex Sterling.
He’d known she was trouble from the moment she clocked him in the hotel bar. The place had been crowded, and he’d been alone in the dimmest corner, damn near a part of the wall. She shouldn’t have seen him—but she did. And he’d hated her for it then. He hated her more now for how pleased she looked when she pulled the bag off his head and smiled down. “Did you miss me?”
King didn’t even bother with an answer, because no. How could he miss her when she was always there? Everywhere. All the time. For the last month, she’d been behind him on the ropes course and ahead of him in the cafeteria and beside him at the shooting range, drilling bull’s-eyes and giggling in a way that made her part prodigy, part psychopath.
She was oxygen and he was too stubborn to breathe, so it was fitting, he supposed, that she would be the person he’d be locked inside a small, enclosed space with, sucking up all the available air.
Time was ticking away and there was no chance they weren’t being monitored, so King twisted and turned and tried to get his bearings.
There was hard metal above him, a scratchy fabric underneath. “I think we’re in the trunk of a car,” King said for no reason other than to make his mind start working.
A light flickered on, faint and golden. After the bag and the darkness, it was like staring at the sun. “No.” She sounded smug as she finished twisting two wires together. “We’re in the trunk of a 2012 BMW 5 Series.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No. It’s not.”
No, it wasn’t.Though he wasn’t going to say so, not with her lying smushed against him. The two of them were far too close, andthe trunk was far too tight, and her hair looked far too golden in the light, and... Wait.How was the light on?Not that it mattered. King had to get to work. He tried to turn so that he could reach the emergency latch with his bound hands, but when he tugged, it didn’t do anything because the Central Intelligence Agency wasn’t about to make things easy.
“Yeah. They disabled the emergency release, but that’s not a problem.” She was tearing at the upholstery.
“Why aren’tyourhands behind your back?” He felt cheated.
“They were.” Sterling didn’t look at him; she was too busy feeling along the walls of the trunk. “I shimmied my legs through.”
“You shimmied?” He sounded like a snob, but what he reallywaswas jealous. Why couldn’t he shimmy?
“The model matters, you see,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Because everyone knows the 5 Series had a design flaw that...” She slipped her still-bound hands into the hole she’d made and, as if by magic, the trunk popped open.
“How did you...”
