The Blonde Identity: A Novel

She knew. She knew and he didn’t have a time machine, so where did that leave him besides cold and hungry and way more terrified than he wanted to admit?

He should have thrown that card overboard, tossed it into the fire. Because the moment she realized what it was, he knew it would change everything. Either she was going to hate him for lying about the card and the bank; or, worse, she was going to insist on going there herself. And now, Sawyer was pretty sure, it was both.

Oh, how he prayed it wasn’t about to be both.

The plan had seemed so simple in Paris: get her someplace safe, take the card. Come back for her if he needed her. But the part he hadn’t counted on was Zoe herself. And at some point, he’d made the cardinal mistake: he’d started to care. He wasn’t supposed to like her, trust her, need her. Want her.

To make matters worse, he’d lied when he should have told the truth and told the truth when he should have lied, and that’s how he ended up freezing and alone and scared out of his mind.

Because right then, Sawyer wasn’t worried about his mission. Not the drive or the card or even Alex. Sawyer was worried about Zoe and what he was going to say when he found her.

Or, worse, what he was going to do if he didn’t.

Her

By “town” Sawyer clearly had meant “living postcard” or “artisanal reenactment.” It wouldn’t have surprised Zoe to learn that the whole place was fake. It was just too perfect with its cute little shops and frozen waterfalls. Smiling people and delicious-smelling food. But this place wasn’t a dream; it was reality. And Zoe couldn’t help but feel just a wee bit bitter about it.

Because Zoe’s reality was an aching head and aching feet and being shot at and strangled and nearly drowned on a regular basis. Plus, she really needed to find a bathroom. Again.

So Zoe walked on, fueled by half a cup of coffee and the knowledge that, for the first time since she woke up in that snowbank, she knew where she had to go and what she was going to do when she got there.

So she headed across the quaint little street toward the quaint little train station. “When’s the next train?” she asked, but the woman in the quaint little ticket booth looked at her oddly, and Zoe tried to find the words. “Uh . . . Wann fährt der nächste Zug?”

The woman nodded and pointed at the sign. Five minutes. And Zoe held up a finger in the universal sign for one please. But when the woman told Zoe the price, she remembered.

Zoe didn’t have any money. Zoe didn’t have any ID. Zoe didn’t have anything or anyone or . . .

“Willst du auf deinen Mann warten?” She was aware, faintly, of the woman saying something—of the line behind her starting to grow.

“What?” Zoe asked even as her tired brain tried to translate the words: Do you want to wait for your husband?

Zoe started to correct her—should have corrected her. She was already drawing a breath and trying to remember how to say I don’t have a husband in German . . . when she followed the woman’s gaze to the ring on Zoe’s finger, and she realized she was wrong. Of course she was wrong.

She did have something, after all.

Him

Sawyer didn’t have to worry about finding her, he tried to tell himself. If he’d learned anything since Paris it was that he simply had to follow the path of death and destruction she’d inevitably leave in her wake. But as he reached the little town with its quaint shops and charming buildings, he didn’t see any bleeding corpses or active fires and he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe he’d missed her.

Which was fine, he told himself. He should let her go.

He should run faster.

He should be worried, he thought.

He should be relieved.

Then he heard a sound on the cold, thin air and he knew what he was going to see even before he turned: a train waiting at the station, and a woman in a hodgepodge of clothes running across the platform.

For a moment, Sawyer imagined what it would be like to walk away.

Zoe was neither his mission nor his problem, and the guy he’d been two days before might have turned up his collar and disappeared on the wind. He would have called in some favors and receded back into the shadows—the only place he ever felt at home.

But now when he thought of home he didn’t see shadows. He saw light and he heard laughter and he knew that it wasn’t a place, it was a feeling. And he was terrified that if she got on that train without him, he’d probably never feel it again.