Page 64 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
She hadn’t really meant to say it, and luckily, Merritt’s laugh cut her off. “A what?”
“Nothing.” Alex took a sip and sank down onto the sofa. “Just something my sister... Nothing.”
Merritt walked back to the window and looked out at the water. Her white hair stood in sharp contrast to the black night, and Alex studied her reflection in the glass: she looked like a woman who had seen everything. She’d been to all the places and done all the things, and now her whole life was one long case of déjà vu, but she wasn’t even mad about it. Because, this time, she still had a chance to change things.
“He has a photographic memory.” The words floated acrossthe darkened room. “Did he tell you? Michael? His grandfather had one, too.” Merritt smiled at a memory. “In 1969 the KGB infiltrated the CIA headquarters in Berlin. Do you know what they got?” She turned and looked at Alex, who was smart enough to stay silent. “Nothing. Just a single piece of paper that said ‘Khoroshaya popytka, tovarishchi.’”
“Nice try, comrades,” Alex translated, and Merritt raised her glass in a silentcheers.
“He had committed the files to memory—all of them. Every form. Every letter. He carried three decades’ worth of secrets around in his mind until the day he died.”
“Okay.” Alex wasn’t entirely sure what the point was, but she was sure that Merritt had one.
“Michael is like him.”
“I see.” Alex didn’t see, though. Not really. It was like asking someone who had lived their whole life underground to describe the sun. “Michael’s father is good too.” Merritt’s face went darker, like an old-fashioned lamp and someone had just turned the oil down. “Or he used to be.”
That was it—the point of the story, and Alex stayed quiet and still and let the shadows ask the questions. “You see... Michael’s father hasn’t been in the field for a long time. And he hasn’t been... himself... for even longer.”
Merritt caught Alex’s gaze in the reflection, but she didn’t turn. She didn’t have to. She knew Alex well enough to know she’d have to ask—
“What happened?”
“His wife died,” Merritt said simply. She sipped her drink and turned from the window. “To this day, I don’t know which was harder on Michael—losing his mother or watching his father... fade. It didn’t just break Michael’s heart, Alexandra. It broke him.” Merritt gazed into the distance for a long time, but then her expression changed, less sadness, more all-seeing, all-knowing deity. “I know he’s hard on you.”
Alex just sat there, blinking, trying to understand the sharp turnof the conversation. She’d been the villain of the Michael Kingsley Story for so long that she couldn’t quite keep up.
“I won’t take unnecessary risks, I promise. I’ll—”Keep him safe. Be careful.“Find a way to get to Kozlov. I’ll do it by myself if I have to.”
“Oh, I don’t thinkhe’sthe one he’s worried about.”
Of all the cryptic things that Merritt might have said, that one was the biggest mystery to Alex, but she didn’t ask a single question—not until Merritt placed the crystal tumbler on the bar cart, then walked toward the door, and suddenly, Alex had to know—
“Can I do this?” Alex cringed a little, but she couldn’t hold the words back, so she didn’t even try. “Am I good enough?”
Merritt’s smile was a whisper in the shadow, soft and easy to miss. “You will be.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Alex
It was another week before Merritt found them in the galley kitchen, arguing over the proper way to fry an egg—
“No part of a fried egg should be crispy, Sterling. If it’s crispy, you did it...”
But King trailed off when Merritt appeared in the doorway, smirking as she said, “It’s time.”
Of course, by then Alex had already spent several days shopping and planning and watching King do geometry in his head. (Which was honestly kind of sexy, though she would have rather died than say so.)
Finally, the conditions were right and they couldn’t put it off any longer. She didn’t want to think about how—if it were up to her—she might have put it off for forever.
***
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Alex asked as they crouched on the cliffs that looked over Kozlov’s compound. The helicopter had left that morning, taking Irina and Kozlov back to Moscow. They weren’t due back for another week. The movers and decorators were gone, and the house was finally settled.
This was their window. If they were crazy enough to take it.
But maybe Alex was getting older—or maybe King was just rubbing off on her—because for the first time in a long time she thought that crazy might be overrated.
