Page 52 of The Lazarus Protocol

“You didn’t think I had a name?”

“Other than Nix?”

He snorted. “Phoenix is a codename. Adam works fine, Steph.”

“That isn’t a code name, it’s just a name. Like every other Steph in the world. Nothing special.”

“I’m sure that’s what you need people to believe.” He stepped back and motioned toward the remaining UTV. “How about I give you a ride to the castle? You can see if we have any shoes in your size. Get a hot meal and a shower, some clean clothes. Maybe we could even get you a new ID and a place to start getting your life back.”

“I guess you do owe me for ruining my life.”

“And here I thought you owed me for pointing that gun at me and threatening to blow my brains all over the window.”

Steph found a laugh she hadn’t expected. “Maybe we’re even.”

“One way or another we will be.”

An hour later Steph emerged from a suite of rooms on the second floor, which Adam had brought her to. She had left her wet hair down and loose with no other options for something to do with it.

“Hey.” He stood, setting aside a worn paperback book. The hallway was all gray stone except for the wooden chair and a small table next to it where he had laid the novel.

“Uh, hey.” Steph hadn’t expected him to be waiting for her, but they probably didn’t want the CIA snooping around. Former CIA anyway. Apparently, a seven-minute soak wasn’t enough time to process that and get used to it.

“This whole place is like a fairytale.” She shook her head. “I just took a bath in a clawfoot tub.”

“The CIA doesn’t swing for the fancy hotel rooms?”

Steph laughed. “Not even for the senior sales associate.”

“Mi casa es su casa, and all that.”

As if she was going to believe that offer was for real “Thanks for the clothes. I’m surprised you had anything close to my size.”

“Only ’cause my sister was here a few weeks ago and she left a load of laundry in the dryer.” He set off down the hall, and she went with him.

“How did you guys come by this place?”

“It was built in the seventeen hundreds, owned by a prominent French family, passed down in the early twentieth century to a son with a Jewish wife. In 1934 the local magistrate took it from him by legal but unethical means and gave it to a family who sympathized with the new German leadership. In 1941, the German military seized control, using it as a secret base and a prison for foreign spies.” He glanced over. “So your fairytale has a dark history.”

“The original ones are like that. Before they were turned into popular culture.” But that wasn’t what she wanted to talk about. “How did your team come by it?”

“Illegal but ethical means.”

At the end of the hall, he ducked through a stone archway, stopping at the top of a narrow spiral staircase. “Watch your step.”

She followed him down the steps, her socks sliding on the worn stone.

“We hunted down the heirs of the rightful owners and found they were all deceased, except for a small child who was given to a family who escaped to America before the war. He had no idea who he was. We visited the retirement home in Queens where he lives and told him about the castle, but he wanted nothing to do with it, so we bought it from him. At least—we paid him for it.”

“Why would that be illegal?”

He stopped at the bottom of the steps, where she could hear rock music coming from down the hall. “This place doesn’t exist. We don’t have paperwork that says it’s ours, and neither did he. But that just means no one can find us here.”

“And you brought me inside? Seems like that might’ve been a bad idea. Also, how does this place go unnoticed when anyone can fly over and see there’s a great honking castle down here.”

He snorted. “The only access is by air. The satellite blackout we have going on for one, and other measures you don’t have the clearance to know. But suffice it to say, this is a no-fly zone.”

“Why tell me even this much?” If he was being so free with this information, then what was he hiding?