Page 84 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
“Because you got hurt.”
His body had gone taut with tension. It took all of Alex’s strength to admit, “I got made.”
“You’re clean.”
“The shooter—”
“Won’t bother you.”
“But—”
“I found him,” King blurted. “He won’t talk.”
“But—”
“Hecan’ttalk, Alex,” King said, harder now. “He won’t talk. Everagain.” She wanted to ask a million questions, but he just squeezed her tighter. “No one is ever going to hurt you again.”
When Alex closed her eyes, she felt something soft and wet brush across her forehead, but that was silly. She was imagining things. It must have been the drugs. The blood loss. It must have been anything else because Michael Kingsley didn’t give forehead kisses.
But when he said, “Sleep,” for the first time in her life, Alex did exactly as she was told.
Chapter Forty-Five
Present Day
Somewhere in Portugal
Alex
In the end, it was the sound that woke her.
Part of Alex’s brain never slept, of course—the part that was always listening and worrying and wondering when her luck was going to run out. But she’d slept on the island eight years ago. And she’d slept in Berlin. And she’d been sleeping for hours, it seemed, because when Alex opened her eyes again, the sky was dark outside the tiny cottage and the only sounds were crashing waves and the deep, steady breathing beside her.
So, it turned out, the common denominator wasn’t blood loss (too bad). It was King.
She looked at the other side of the bed and the man who was stretched out with his shirt off and one arm thrown over his eyes like the moonlight was going to blind him.
His hair was so much longer now, and she never thought she’d see him with a beard. She certainly never thought she’d like it. His hair was darker too, like he hadn’t seen the sun in ages, and Alex had to marvel at the difference. People can change in a decade, and spies change more than most, but as she studied the man in the moonlight, she could barely remember the boy from the bar with the perfectly pressed shirt and squeaky clean perfection.
“It didn’t scar too badly.”
She hadn’t realized he was awake, but there he was, staring at heracross the expanse of white sheets that he must have found tucked away somewhere because they weren’t even a little bit dusty.
He turned on his side, hand reaching out carefully—like he was afraid to touch her. But he didn’t reach for the bandage and the wound. He reached for the rough patch of skin the size of a nickel.
“I had a good doctor, I guess,” she said as his thumb made a slow, gentle sweep over the scar. Back. Forth.
“You could have bled out tonight.”
“It was just a graze,” she told him. And it was true.
“You could have said, ‘Oh, hey, King, remember when we were being shot at? It turns out I got hit.’”
“I got grazed.” But when she tried to sit upright, she swooned.
“You got shot,” he corrected. Then he tugged her down beside him. He closed his eyes and whispered, “Again.”
Chapter Forty-Six
