Page 50 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold (The Blonde Identity #2)

Present Day

Somewhere in Portugal

Alex

So it turned out, once Alex wasn’t about to pass out from blood loss, she was able to reevaluate her opinion on the safe house.

The walls were covered with fishing nets and rusty hooks. Taxidermied turtles, old hats, and two hundred magazines from the

summer of 1968.

“It’s... something.”

“My understanding is that it came fully furnished.” King sounded almost amused.

When Alex looked out the window, she saw they were right on the water. She heard crashing waves and squawking seagulls. The

house was at the top of a cliff, but a narrow staircase zigzagged its way to the shore. If she looked straight down, she could

just make out a rocky beach and a little cove that must have been great for smuggling.

“It was his favorite safe house for seafaring escapades.”

“Were there a lot of those?”

“There was every kind of escapade. He did it for a long time.”

“Your grandfather?” King looked at her like he didn’t understand the question. “Not your father?”

They’d known each other for ten years, and she’d never mentioned his dad. She’d never asked the obvious questions. Maybe because

she didn’t want to pry or maybe because she didn’t want to die, but Alex was out of patience. And they were out of time.

“A long time ago, you said that you’d tell me—”

“I know.”

“I don’t care how much it hurts, King. It’s time. We have to talk about it. You have to tell me.”

Honestly, the scary part was that he didn’t even try to argue. He just nodded and said, “My grandfather—”

“Was the Berlin station chief in sixty-two...” She remembered.

“It was the height of the Cold War. The Soviets and the CIA were in a never-ending chess match, constantly moving pieces on

the board. One of those pieces was an operative they called Nikolai. He was their queen. Seemingly everywhere. Doing everything.

But the thing you need to know about Nikolai is... he doesn’t exist.”

“But—”

King closed his eyes and cut her off. “He was a legend—a ghost story. Be good or Nikolai will get you . Even if he had existed—which my grandfather swore he didn’t—he’d either be dead or a very old man by now.” Alex remembered the way the two

guys at the Farm had talked about Nikolai—like he was the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. But also like he was the only dark

spot in the legacy of spies named Michael Kingsley.

“There was always chatter,” he went on. “Was he real? A lie made up by the KGB—a boogeyman custom-made to keep the Agency

guessing? My grandfather’s theory was that he was an amalgamation of a dozen different operatives operating on both sides

of the Iron Curtain. And then the Curtain fell, and the Soviet Union crumbled, and the oligarchs rose up in its place. No

one should have cared about an old spy who probably never existed.... No one did care.”

“And then...” Alex was afraid of whatever came next. But she had to know. In a way, it felt like their story had been building

toward this for ten years—longer.

“And then we ran out of milk, and my mother and grandmother decided to go to the store, and our car exploded in the driveway.”

Alex could have formed a million theories, but none would have would have come close to that.

For a long time, she just stood there, slack-jawed and stunned. She couldn’t even say she was sorry. There wasn’t a word in any of her languages that could make it better, so she didn’t say a thing.

“There was a note in the mailbox. Spokoynoy nochi .”

“Michael...”

“ Good night ,” he translated—not because Alex didn’t know but because those were the words that haunted him. “I was ten years old. We’d

just moved to the States. My grandfather had passed away, and my grandmother was living with us. Dad was out of the field,

but there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t work out of Langley. The Agency put us in transitional housing and... we were out.

We were getting out. The Cold War had been over for decades, and we had nothing to do with the Russians, but then... Dad decided to write a

book. About Nikolai. It was nothing more than ghost stories, or so we thought, but... He must have gotten too close to

something the Russians wanted to hide. Or someone .” He stopped and looked at her, piercing and stoic. “It was meant for him—the bomb. It was meant for my father, but it killed

his wife and his mother, and the guilt... I lost him too.” He looked out the window. “It just took him a lot longer to

die.”

“Michael...”

“He loved my mom too much, and it broke him. He became... obsessed. The world’s foremost authority on someone who doesn’t

exist. But now...”

He looked at her through the shadows, found her gaze, and held on tight.

“Now Nikolai wants us?” she guessed, but he just shook his head.

“Now Nikolai wants that ring.”

“And so...”

She’d never seen him look so hard—so lethal. “Now we go get it.”