Page 94 of The Blonde Identity

“You used a poor, defenseless woman—”

Sawyer couldn’t help himself—he laughed, far louder than he should have before dropping his voice. “Your sister is many things. But defenseless?” He raised a brow. “Really?”

“What kind of psycho pulls someone like her into something like this?”

Suddenly, Sawyer didn’t feel like laughing anymore. “Someone like her?What does that even mean?”

He watched Alex morph from angry to confused to... heartbroken, the look in her eyes all but screamingdo you really not know?

“She was two days old and weighed three pounds the first time they cut open her heart. They did it again six months later. And one more time before the age of four. Zoe can’t run. Zoe can’t fight. Zoe gets winded going down escalators.”

He heard the words. He knew they were true, but in his mind, he was tracing those scars in the firelight. He knew what they tasted like and where they led. Except he hadn’t known where they’d come from or why they were there. He kept waiting for this new information to change those old wounds in his mind somehow—to change her—but if anything, it just made him angrier.

“You have no idea what your sister is capable of.”

“And you do?”

Sawyer couldn’t help but think about the woman who had jumped off a bridge in Paris, shaken off a Russian assassin on theShimmering Sea. She’d tossed a CIA agent off a moving train and performed minor surgery on him by firelight. Yeah, he knew Zoe. He knew Zoe. And he—

“You may think she’s expendable, but—”

Sawyer saw red. “Don’t call her that. Don’t ever call her that!” Sawyer roared, looking down at eyes that were just like Zoe’s, only harder, sadder.

“You don’t know her,” she told him.

Sawyer was wrong. They weren’t Zoe’s eyes at all. “Then neither do you.”

He almost had the lock open when he heard the commotion outside. Through the ornate windows he saw a seaplane bobbing on the lake. A guard was already running toward the house, a laptop under his arm, and Kozlov was shouting in the hall.

“Shit! Sergei’s here,” Alex said.

Sawyer almost had the lock. He was close. He was almost finished when he heard...laughter. But not the cold, cynical kind that filled his life. No. It was the kind of laughter that was pure and good and sounded like—

Zoe.

That was Zoe’s laughter, and it washed over Sawyer like music, lilting and sweet—up until the moment he remembered where they were, and panic surged inside of him. He had to get her out of there. He had to—

“You fell for her.” Alex was staring up at Sawyer, confusion and wonder on her face, as if starting to realize—“You’re in love with Zoe.”

Sawyer wanted to protest—to tell Alex she was delusional and stupid and wrong because that had to be better than admitting she was right.

“I...” He was aware of the laughter stopping, of shouting taking its place and filling the halls, but the inside of his head was even louder—words rattling around likeThat’s crazy. Anddon’t be ridiculous. OrI barely even know her. But what came out was, “I don’t deserve her.”

He risked a look at Alex, expecting her to tease or joke or for lasers to come shooting out of her eyes. But all he saw was pity. Because he was right. And she knew it. He didn’t deserve someone like Zoe. And he never, ever would.

“Where is the traitor?”

Sawyer barely had time to leap away from Alex before Kozlov stormed into the room, laptop open. But there were no files on the screen—just a home movie of two little girls who needed braces, one of whom was doing handstands in the grass while the smaller, paler girl lay on a blanket, reading. Laughing.

“What is this?” Kozlov shouted and Alex’s busted lips curved into the smile of a woman who was holding all the cards.

“Looks like you’ve got the wrong drive there, big guy.Oops.”

Kozlov roared and threw the laptop. It shattered against the wall as the compound turned to bedlam. Guards shouting. People running. And through it all, Sawyer stood there, thinking. The good news was that Kozlov needed Alex alive—now more than ever.

The bad news was that Sawyer still had to get her out. They had to go. Now! But they couldn’t go now. She was the center of a tornado—the eye of a storm—and she was staring at him through the chaos, a determined gleam in her eye and a subtle shake of her head as she mouthed two words.

FIND HER.

---