The Blonde Identity: A Novel

They’d made it out of town, and he kept the speedometer at exactly three kilometers over the speed limit because, according to Sawyer, anything slower looks suspicious and anything faster gets you stopped.

Most of the snow had blown off the hood, but some of the windows were still covered in frost, giving the light an icy blue haze that made it look like something from a dream. And maybe it was? She had a head injury, after all.

But Zoe wanted to at least pretend the man behind the wheel was real—the way one big, rough hand gripped the steering wheel and his eyes scanned the road, looking for anything that could possibly hurt her.

“What?” he asked after a while.

“What what?”

“I can feel you staring,” he said, but he never even glanced her way.

“I was just thinking . . . you know . . . I could be a car thief.”

He didn’t laugh, but she saw his lips tip up. She’d started to learn that, from Sawyer, that was the same thing. “You aren’t a car thief.”

She took her feet from the dash and turned to him. “The Fast and Furious franchise had to have been inspired by someone—”

“You are neither fast nor furious.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m probably more of a regular thief. You know, the kind that steals diamond necklaces while wearing ball gowns.”

The lips moved again, and she hated how warm that gesture made her. “I’d hardly call that a regular thief.”

“I probably strap them to my thigh with a garter belt . . .”

The big hand gripped and regripped the steering wheel and he swallowed like he had something in his throat. “Yeah.” Sawyer coughed. “That could be . . . uh . . . it.”

Zoe didn’t even try not to smile.

When they passed a road sign she tried to see how many kilometers it was until Zurich, but it wasn’t listed. In fact, she hadn’t seen it on any of the signs, which made her ask, “How far are we from Zurich?”

She thought he was probably doing the calculations in his head because it took him a long time to say, “We can’t exactly take a direct route.”

“I know, but we’ve been driving for hours . . .” She sounded like a grouchy child who really needed a juice box and some cheesy crackers. Which, come to think of it, Zoe really wanted some juice and cheesy crackers.

“Then take a nap.”

“I will. As soon as you tell me when we’ll get to Zurich.” But there was something in the set of his jaw, the look in his eyes.

“We’re not going to Zurich—”

“You promised!”

“—yet, okay. We’re not going to Zurich yet.”

“Maybe it’s the half-dozen intelligence agencies after us, but it feels like we’re in a time-sensitive situation here.”

“We are! It is!”

“Then—”

“We slept on a floor last night,” he reminded her. “We’re wearing clothes I stole from a laundromat. And I’m pretty sure we both smell like river water. So, no. We’re not going to one of the most secure banks in the world . . .” He looked at her. “. . . yet. We’re going to take hot showers and get a good night’s sleep, and then we’re going to think this through before we do anything. Okay?”

He was saying all the right things for all the right reasons, but Zoe couldn’t shake the feeling that there was way more to the story.

So she twisted in her seat and took off the heavy sweater. It was too hot and she was too frustrated. She didn’t realize her shirt was gaping open until she felt his gaze on her—on the scars that covered her chest.

“It’s not what you think,” he told her.

“Oh?”

“I was staring at your boobs,” he said, and she couldn’t help herself—she smiled.

“See. That was a well-delivered lie. Good job.”

“Thank you.”

She could go hours without thinking of the scars and wondering exactly what had tried to kill her and was it ever going to come back and finish the job? But it was out there now and Zoe couldn’t help it.

“You know, I keep thinking, I should probably get another low-cut dress? Maybe a halter top?”

“Well, you won’t get any complaints from me but you might get cold.”

“True.” She gave a sad smile. “But maybe then people would stop trying to kill me. No one would mistake me for Alex then, would they?” She gave a sad laugh, honestly not sure whether or not she was joking.

Zoe didn’t realize she was rubbing the scar until she caught him staring, and she pulled her hand away like it had burned her. “I don’t know why I keep doing that. I guess my muscle memory isn’t the butt-kicking kind?” And she couldn’t help but feel incredibly disappointed.

The smile Sawyer gave her was slow and dark and mildly indulgent. “Oh, I don’t know. You threw a CIA operative off a moving train and hot-wired a car.”

She couldn’t help herself. She beamed. “I did!”

“And you’re not a terrible dancer.”

“Especially considering I had to lead.”

When Sawyer’s lip quirk turned into a full smirk it felt like the greatest compliment in the world. She turned to look at the black ribbon of highway snaking through the valleys and over the mountains.

“So if we aren’t going to the bank, where are you taking me?”

The smirk faded, the hand on the wheel tensed, and she could have sworn the windows frosted over when he said, “Someplace safe.”

“Like a safe house?”

He was silent for so long that she thought he hadn’t heard her.

“More like a house . . . that’s safe,” he said, and it was like the sun had finally slipped behind the Alps and plunged the whole world into darkness. Zoe hated it, the feeling that Sawyer would have rather been back in that alley than on the way to wherever they were going. But they were going anyway.

So she tried to brighten her voice, tease him—to bring his smile back. “Are you going to blow it up with a snowball?”

“You do realize that the snowball didn’t actually . . .” He let out a frustrated sigh and shook his head and it felt, to Zoe, like victory. “No. This one won’t explode. No one knows about this one.”

“That’s what you said about the first one,” she teased but Sawyer kept his gaze on the highway.

“Even I forget about this one.” The sun slipped behind the mountains and the whole world turned gray. It wasn’t until Zoe’s eyes were closed that he whispered, “Or I try to.”

Him

He should have missed the driveway. The snow was deep and the night was dark, and the trees had grown, unhindered, for a decade. So it was mostly instinct that made him slow and turn through the tiny gap in the brush, grateful for the tall tires of the SUV as they churned through the deep snow, headlights slicing through the trees as they headed up the mountain.

Everything had changed. And yet it was exactly the same, or so it felt twenty minutes later as forest gave way to clearing and the headlights shone back at him, reflected in a wall of darkened windows.

The cabin looked even smaller than he remembered, its pitched roof holding up under the weight of a foot of snow.

He never thought he’d be glad to be back, but for the last thirty miles, his hands had been shaking and his brow had been sweating and the dark road had started to swirl before his eyes. When he moved to take off his seat belt, he was hit by a wave of pain so deep he thought he might pass out. He’d been sitting for too long, and now the adrenaline was gone.

All that remained was a deep, throbbing ache and a sticky shirt, and the relief that they’d made it, even if it was the last place on earth he wanted to be.

“What . . .” Zoe stirred awake then grinned at him, like a little girl who had been having the most wonderful dream. Her hair was a halo in the moonlight, and she looked so pure and innocent that he hated his own hands for how badly they wanted to touch her. “Where are we?”

It was harder than it should have been to tell her, “Home.”