The Blonde Who Came In from the Cold (The Blonde Identity, #2)

by Ally Carter

“I don’t suppose you have a Faraday pouch handy?” she asked, and King pulled one from a drawer. “I’ve never been more insulted in my life,” he said as she dropped the dead man’s cell phone inside, where no signal could get in or out. And, together, they kept searching his pockets, but there was nothing else. No papers. No IDs. No credit cards or cash or handy If found, please return to . . . stickers.

“We can’t trust the Agency. So I guess we have no choice but to trust . . .” She searched his eyes and King searched his soul. It was like a whole other person who whispered, “Each other.”

But that was when King saw it—a tiny image on the dead man’s skin. He dropped to a crouch and pulled back the sleeve to reveal the tattoo—a triangle made out of three sharp daggers.

Technically, the little airstrip on the outskirts of Lisbon didn’t exist, but then again, neither did the woman who was standing on the tarmac, waiting for King when he arrived. White hair blew wildly around her face, and her lips were painted the same shade of red she’d worn since he was a child.

She looked like she might have a derringer in a thigh holster. Like there was a German scientist she had to get over the wall, right then. She was even wearing a hat.

It was grainy in a way that suggested someone had blown the image up from a much wider shot, so either the photographer was very bad—or the target was very good.

The photo was so blurry, it was hard to tell much besides the fact that he was a generic-looking white guy between twenty-five and forty-five.

“He just popped up about a year ago, making deals.” “What kind of deals?” “Arms. Technology. Muscle-for-hire. A veritable one-stop shop for covert goods and services.

He’s not just brawn, Michael. This one has brains. We want to know what he’s selling and to whom.”

“There’s been chatter.” The wind was cold and the clouds were dark and threatening rain, but that wasn’t why she shivered. “Our man has been doing business with someone.”

“Someone named Nikolai.” Blue eyes looked into his. Piercing and icy calm.

“Your father doesn’t know. And he won’t hear it from me. But he still has friends at the Agency. Allies—and enemies.

“Nikolai doesn’t exist, Merritt, you know that.”

“If Nikolai were real—which he isn’t—he’d be . . .” King trailed off and tried not to blush scarlet, but Merritt only cocked an eyebrow. “As old as me?” She laughed. “Oh, dear boy. The thing you need to know about old spies . . .” She inched closer and dropped her voice, but it was the look in her eyes that stopped him. “We have absolutely nothing to lose.”

“Someone has a sick sense of humor.” King waited for his heart to stop pounding, but Merritt merely answered with a sigh. “Or a good sense of history?” She tucked her hands in her pockets. “In any case, we need ears in that house, and I thought you might like to be the one to put them there.”

Just well-placed bugs and scandalous secrets that weaved across the decades like a fuse. King had spent his whole life waiting for the boom, but something in his eyes must have given him away because Merritt pulled back.

“I tried to spare you, you know,” she admitted. “But the man owns a private compound. On an island.” “The Agency has divers. Submarines. Probably a mermaid or two.”

But, for the most part, we would be sending a team in blind, so we need to get boots on that island. There’s only one weakness that we’ve found—one potential access point. He only owns half the island. The other half was undeveloped until recently, but a new business just opened its doors on the far side.”

“It’s a high-end retreat. For wealthy couples whose marriages are in trouble.”

At some point during the past six years, King had become someone who looked at home on a private jet on its way to a private island, and Alex didn’t know what to make of it.

Alex thought that was a very good point, but then she spotted a basket of snacks and decided that if she had to die at thirty thousand feet, at least she could go out with a belly full of Pringles.

“The owner owes me a favor. This individual is very private.”

That guy was calm, cool contempt, but this guy was indifference. Alex wanted to throw him off that airplane just to make him scream.

“Oh, I stand corrected, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to convince people that ours is a marriage in trouble.”

Michael Kingsley was, without a doubt, the most brilliant person she had ever known. He was also the dumbest, and it was all Alex could do not to roll her eyes.

“The problem will be getting anyone to believe we made it this long.”

Alex shouldn’t have gotten so much pleasure out of another person’s suffering, but she’d spent the last two years having the CIA burn away all of her compassion, so she thought she might as well kick back and relish the way King twisted and squirmed.

The plane was lavish but small, just a (CIA-issued) pilot in the cockpit and four club chairs in middle—facing each other two by two.

“Why, Michael Kingsley! You mean there’s someone you hate more than me?” She almost sounded offended, but then he glared in her direction. “You’re why I’m going to kill her.” He looked like a two-year-old who really wanted to have a temper tantrum, but it sounded like so much work.

It was nothing but a rooftop poking through a layer of fog and surrounded by mountains. “The peaks are tall enough that cloud cover makes satellite imaging an issue.”

“Yay. There are volcanic tunnels. And . . . excellent. It was once a stronghold for pirates.” She was almost certain that was his sarcastic voice, but she didn’t want to ask him.

“Have you looked at this?” He sounded . . . scared. Or at the very least concerned. “I have!” Alex sounded excited. “I’ve always wanted to see a black sand beach. Do you think they thought of sunscreen? I hope they thought of—” “This isn’t an all-inclusive beach vacation.” “Oh, I’m pretty sure they’ll feed us.” “This is a mission!”

And that we’re the fifth team the Agency has tried to send in.

I know one side is black sand beaches and waterfalls and hot springs while the other is nothing but volcanic rock and a real steep climb, sheer cliff faces, and an old fort with literal cannons.

“Who’s Nikolai?” He blinked—too fast—and spun on her. “How . . .” “They teach lip reading at spy school.” Alex felt almost guilty for a split second, but then she watched his features change and harden. “Who’s Zoe?” It wasn’t a question—it was a dare. “I asked first.”

“Okay, Mr. Dixon. Let’s get you ready to spend the next week with your loving wife of—” Alex examined her own cover sheet. “Six blissful years. No way! Six? What was I? A child bride?”

Officially, it was called pocket litter. Someone back at Langley had probably spent a week figuring out everything from the kind of gum Mr. and Mrs. Dixon would chew to the places stamped on their passports.

There was an entire life spread out on that table, but none of it was real, and Alex didn’t know why she felt so jealous of a woman she’d never meet but had to be.

“I didn’t ask who you were working with or what you were doing. I asked how you were.”

“I infiltrated the stronghold of a dictator who shall remain nameless with nothing but a push-up bra and a stiletto in my heels.”

Doesn't Sound comfy.

It wasn’t a large island. According to their intel, just a little over twenty square miles, but the peaks seemed to rise forever, rocky and jagged like a knife sticking out of the Atlantic and trying to stab the sky.

They saw waterfalls and lush green foliage. Even the places that were hard and gray were also lush and green, and Alex couldn’t make those two facts make sense, but there they were, right in front of her eyes.

There was a lone road zigzagging up the jagged rocks, and the whole thing looked like it had been carved into the mountain ages ago and had spent the last few centuries trying to fight the sky.

Because of course it was. That was what she’d signed up for: fake names and fake loves and fake lives. They’d just landed on the island of one of the most dangerous arms dealers in the world, but somehow she felt safer there, as Mrs. Donna Dixon, than she’d ever been as herself.

And then the most infuriating man that Alex had ever known presented her with a four-carat Harry Winston. “For the cover.”

He closed his eyes as if to silently remind himself that Merritt was an old woman and a living legend and it would be a great mistake to kill her. “Alexandra Sterling,” he ground out, “will you be my fake wife?”