The Blonde Identity: A Novel

Sawyer hadn’t been lying. He really didn’t sleep. Except when he did. It was always like that—bits of the night like black holes where stars used to be, moments where he lost his hold on the present and got sucked into the past. And he hated it. Because, to Sawyer, nothing was more exhausting than what happened in his dreams.

So that was how he ended up back on the floor the next day, shirt off, pushing himself as far and as fast as he could while lying still.

“Eighty-nine. Ninety. Ninety-one . . .” His arms burned. His chest ached. And he knew he was only halfway through the minimum when the covers rustled, and a small voice said, “You’re up early.”

He lost count and laughed, a sound he didn’t quite recognize when he first heard it. “You’re up late,” he corrected, and she glanced at the clock by the bed.

“Is that three . . .”

“P.M.? Yes. That’s why the sun is shining.”

He pointed to the bright light behind the gauzy curtains, but Zoe was unflustered and unconcerned as she stretched. But then she stopped suddenly, looking down at where he sat, sweaty and shirtless on the floor.

“Did you really do a hundred push-ups or did you start counting at like eighty-five?”

He didn’t laugh. Nope. Not at all. But it was all he could do to bite back a smirk as he pushed himself upright. “Now I have to start from one . . . again. Since someone made me lose count.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“One. Two.”

“Are you flexing your muscles right now?”

“No. I’m using my muscles.”

“He said,” she went on, “flexally.”

“That isn’t a word.”

“He said, glisteningly.”

“Still not a—”

“Ooh! Breakfast!” She must have spotted the croissant and fruit he’d pilfered from the buffet and brought back to the room.

“More like lunch,” he said, but she just groaned in response.

“This is so good. How long have you been up?”

“I didn’t—”

“Sleep.” She actually rolled her eyes. “Which is a lie. But I’ll allow it. When did you get out of bed?”

“Sunrise. I searched the perimeter.”

She looked at him like he was an idiot. “Do you mean you walked around the boat? Is that what that means?”

“I can take my croissant back, you know.”

“No.” She scooted to the other side of the bed. “I need this. I’m working out too.” She brought it slowly to her mouth. “It’s so heavy. I should do a few more reps.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh at her words or groan at the sight of that nightgown in the light of day, so he crashed to the floor again, push-ups totally forgotten.

“I . . .” She started then trailed off as he took a towel and rubbed it over his sweaty chest. He’d have to take a shower soon and pray Mr. Michaelson packed something other than stuffy blazers.

“What?” he asked.

“Uh . . .” She shook her head and jerked her eyes away from his chest.

“Zoe?” he prompted.

But she looked like maybe she wasn’t sure if she should admit it, share it, like maybe she trusted him with her life but not her secrets. Sawyer totally knew the feeling. His whole life was classified.

So she peeled off a layer of fluffy croissant and shrugged. “I was going to say I never sleep this late, but maybe I do? Maybe I never rise before noon because I’m up all night doing brain surgeries. Or fighting fires. Or . . . I don’t know . . . managing a sex club!”

He coughed as he took a drink of water.

“A classy one,” she added, sounding defensive of her nonexistent sex club. “With masks.”

Yeah. Sawyer was definitely going to need that shower soon. He wanted to turn away, but everywhere he looked he saw her. Damn mirrors. Sawyer had spent his whole life looking over his shoulder, but right then he didn’t want to know what was behind him. And he sure as hell didn’t want to think about what was in front of him, so he just sat there, trying not to think about anything at all.

Not Kozlov or the drive or Alex—definitely not the woman who was (finally) pulling on a robe. Because the one thing he knew for certain was that Zoe probably wasn’t going to be safe without him and she sure as hell wasn’t safe with him and so Sawyer genuinely didn’t know what to do.

“So what’s on the agenda for today?”

“Oh no,” he told her as he jumped to his feet. “Don’t put this on me. This is your plan.”

“Fake dating is a good plan. It’s very good spying.”

“You say that like it’s a real thing.”

“It is!” she exclaimed then cocked her head. “Except, technically, we’re not fake dating. We’re fake married. And double technical—”

“That’s not a real term.”

“—we’re not faking. We’re undercovering—”

“That’s definitely not a real—”

“So we’re not a trope. We’re a mission!”

How could she do that? Sleep in another woman’s clothes in another woman’s bed—on another woman’s honeymoon—and wake up beaming and glowing as if she wasn’t the meat in life’s shit sandwich?

“If you say so.”

“I do! But for the sake of argument, let’s say we were doing it your way—assume we spent the night on the dirt floor of some safe house and roasted a raccoon over an open fire for supper. What would your plan be then?”

“Well, first of all, I wouldn’t eat raccoon. Ever.”

“You might,” she shot back and he tried not to roll his eyes.

“Second of all, we’d need to lie low. Keep moving.”

She pointed to the lavish suite and the countryside beyond the balcony doors. “Check. And check! Gosh, I’m good at this! Spying is obviously genetic.”

He wanted to tell her she was wrong—that families have no role in covert operations, but that wasn’t true, and he knew it.

“So what would you do . . . if you weren’t burdened with me?”

You’re not a burden he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her again that she wasn’t expendable or collateral damage. But if he wasn’t careful she was going to be all those things, and it was just a matter of time until she got hurt—one way or the other.

“Well . . .” she prompted.

The problem was that he knew exactly what he’d do if he didn’t care about her. But at some point in the past thirty-six hours his priorities had shifted in a way that made him a worse spy but a better person and he wasn’t at all sure how to feel about the trade-off.

“Sawyer . . .”

He collapsed onto the carpet with a groan. “If it were just me, I’d shake a few trees. See what falls out.”

She dropped onto the bed and exclaimed, “Okay! I’m rested! I’m ready! Let’s go shake trees!”

“The last thing I shook literally exploded, so . . . no.”

She crossed her legs and looked at him. “Okay. The ship will dock sometime today, and we’ll get off and—”

“The ship was supposed to dock this morning but it got rerouted because of ice.”

“Oh.” She bounced again, coming up on her knees. “Then Plan B! We’ll—”

“No!” He didn’t mean to snap. He didn’t want to yell. But there’s only so much optimism a man can take before it breaks him, being that close to something he can never have and never feel. Sawyer was in the Worst Case Scenario business, and he couldn’t let himself pretend otherwise, no matter how tempting it might be—how tempting she might be.

“We have to find my sister.” That time, Zoe’s voice was soft. “We have to find her before they—”

“They already have her!” He hadn’t meant to say it, and he really hadn’t wanted to shout, but she had to know . . . She had to brace herself because . . . “The CIA probably had her before you even woke up from your nap yesterday. And that’s the literal best-case scenario—that she’s tied up with a bag over her head in some government facility that doesn’t officially exist, because . . .” He trailed off because there were some things even he wasn’t callous enough to say.

“What’s the other scenario?” She drew the robe tight around her in a way that had nothing to do with skimpy nighties.

But he was shaking his head. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

“What’s the other scenario?” She looked like someone bracing for a hit, trying to convince themselves they’re tough enough to take it.

“Don’t, Zoe—”

“What is it?”

It was harder than it should have been to admit, “Kozlov has her.”

“And she’s dead?” Her voice cracked.

She wanted the truth—needed it on some level—and that’s the only reason he said, “And she’s not.”

She was silent for a long time—perfectly still—but then she bolted off the bed and across the room. She reached for the sliding glass door and tried to open it, but the safety latch was on, and no matter how she tried, she got nowhere. Story of his life.

“Zoe . . .”

“This darn . . .” The door rattled and banged.

“Zoe . . .”

She slammed her palm into the glass, so he reached around her to release the latch. The door slid open, and she rushed outside and gripped the rail.

“I could be wrong,” he told her, but she just stood there, pulling frigid air into her lungs like she wanted to freeze herself from the inside out.

“That happen a lot?” She cut a look over her shoulder.

“More than I’d like.” He wasn’t making a joke and he didn’t smile.

“Is there anything . . . Is there anything I can do to help her?”

He’d lain beside her all night, listening to her breathe and coming up with plans—dozens of them—one after the other. But there wasn’t a single option where she wasn’t likely to get hurt, and Alex would hate him if he got her sister killed. Worse, he was pretty sure he’d hate himself. So that’s what made him say, “No.”

His hands were on her shoulders then, turning her, making her look at him—making her see.

“I may be wrong, Zoe. Alex is smart and ruthless and . . . If I was going to bet on anyone, it would be her. They may not have her. Hell, she may have them, for all I know. I just . . . I just want you to know that in this business . . . in this life . . . people like Alex—and me—we don’t get a happy ending.”

She looked at him with more pity and compassion than he’d seen in decades. “Then what do you get?”

Not you, he thought. I’ll never get you. He wasn’t sure where that thought had come from but, in the end, it didn’t matter.

“If we’re lucky? Another mission.”

“Okay.” She belted the robe tight and looked out over the icy landscape. “And us?” Us? Us? There is no . . . “Then what do we do? What do I do? Where do I go? What . . . What do I do?”

As a spy, there were three questions Sawyer asked every moment of every day.

Who can I trust?

What do I need?

And how do I get out?

What he hated more than anything was that, when he looked at her, the answers to those questions were as blank as her memories.

So he drew a deep breath and said, “Does Mrs. Michaelson have anything besides skimpy lingerie and backless dresses?”

She choked out a laugh, her breath foggy in the cold air. “You have something against lingerie and dresses?”

Sawyer bit back a grin. “I do not. But they’re not exactly appropriate for what I want to do next.”

She sounded genuinely leery when she asked, “What’s that?”