Page 10
KC tried to stop herself, but the spiral had well and truly pointed itself downward. The Unicorn was known to be able to convince anyone of the veracity of their cover. So what had Yardley convinced KC of? Who was Yardley when she was with KC? Why was she with KC at all?
Yardley suddenly turned to face her. “I don’t care if they can hear us. We have to talk about this.” Her voice broke on the last word, not with tears. Probably with the same hot, dry disbelief that KC was currently swallowing over.
“Okay,” she said. Or didn’t say. Her feelings were so loud inside her body, it was hard to maintain her connection to reality.
Yardley leaned forward. Her eyes were brown, not their natural blue, rimmed by false eyelashes and sparkling shadow. Yardley almost never wore makeup. “Because we haven’t talked about this.”
“We’re not supposed to!” That was what burst out of KC’s mouth.
And then, appallingly, without warning, she had so many words, she couldn’t stop them.
“We’re not supposed to , Yardley, and I don’t mean because of the agency, I mean because that’s how it is with you and me.
I’m not supposed to ask you why you’re crying in the shower.
I’m not supposed to tell you the real reason why I can’t sleep.
We’re not even supposed to talk about why we’re not talking anymore or why you’re sleeping in the guest room or moving out, not beyond ‘this isn’t working,’ ‘I miss us,’ ‘maybe we moved too fast’”—KC stopped just long enough to suck in a shallow breath—“which, if I ever said it or agreed when you did, that was a lie. I would’ve moved in with you after the first day we spent together.
The first time you talked to me at that party.
I felt like we had everything with each other, and then everything wasn’t enough.
” She shoved her hands into her hair and pulled to keep herself from crying.
“ Yes , I held myself back because I had to keep the agency’s secrets.
Yes. Yes. But then I think I just got in the habit of holding myself back.
Maybe you did, too, I don’t know, but I don’t think I know how to talk to you, Yardley, not anymore. If I ever did.”
When she stopped, another thought sheathed her skin in icy prickles. Had Yardley been pretending in the van? The Unicorn would be able to do that as easily as breathing. “Did you know ?”
“No! I didn’t. Did you?”
“No.”
“But how didn’t you?” Now Yardley’s disconcertingly incorrect brown eyes searched her face.
“Doesn’t Tabasco know everything, isn’t that their whole deal?
Whenever I had a problem and Atlas told me, Tabasco’s got it , I would relax.
Tabasco could solve any problem, figure anything out.
But you didn’t know it was me? I can’t square that. ”
“Says the superspy.” KC’s heart was pounding in a way that made her think it could stop any moment.
“You’re the expert in body language and observation.
Though it bothers me less to think you might have made me than the idea that everything we had, you made up.
Isn’t that what you’re good at? Convince people to believe what you tell them, like some kind of Jedi mind trick? ”
KC knew that wasn’t fair. She’d felt her entire soul shy away from her mouth as soon as she said it. But god , the hurt. It was an entirely different magnitude than what she’d felt in the middle of the night, burying her face into Yardley’s side of the bed for a single breath of her.
Yardley stood up, then sat back down again. She looked away from KC for a long minute, and when she looked back, KC knew for sure that the passionate furor in her face was one hundred percent real.
“My heart has been broken .” Yardley pulled off her false eyelashes and snapped off her sparkling earrings.
Her hand dove into her pocket, emerging with a tissue she used to roughly erase her lipstick.
“I have stayed up into the middle of the night with you, crying, begging, talking, arguing, holding your hands and trying to find the words to give us a chance. I knew I couldn’t show you my entire self, and I had gotten in too deep, just like my granddaddy, but the fact is that every single lie I told you wasn’t about you , KC.
It was about the cruel sacrifice required by duty to my country. ”
KC couldn’t avoid thinking of the nights Yardley was talking about, nights of circling, desperate conversations she tried to leave behind when they came to nothing.
She’d been close to telling Yardley the truth so many times, wanting nothing more than to boil down those tangled and confusing talks to a single problem they could tackle together.
If I just told her. If I told her, it would fix us.
“But we know everything now,” she said, wildly, “so that means no problems anymore, right? Because that’s how I thought it would work.”
Yardley tossed her head. “You just told me keeping secrets means that all you learned from us was how to hold yourself back. Here’s where I tell you that I was fool enough to think when we moved in together, that was you asking for more.
Now I think it was life support for something that was never meant to be.
So does finding out one of the secrets we had from each other really fix anything? ”
KC knew it wasn’t a genuine question. Even if it had been, she couldn’t make herself push any more words out of her battered, tender throat. Yardley was right. Knowing the truth couldn’t fix it.
And Yardley didn’t even know the truth.
KC didn’t have any anger left. There was a numbness that made her want to get up and start walking until she had walked to the dark other side of the earth. “I guess we’ll never really be sure what was real and what wasn’t.”
“So it’s over. It’s really over.” Yardley’s jaw was clenched, but her words were barely audible. She reached down and sank a hand into the wig lying on the chair, and her nostrils flared as she took in a huge, shuddering breath.
Before KC realized what she was doing, Yardley had hurled the wig at one of the portraits on the wall.
It zipped through the room like a malformed duck and hit a particularly smug-looking balding agent who appeared to have been active in the sixties, square in the face, tilting the frame and knocking the canvas out of it.
They both watched the portrait slide to the ground, the wires of a listening device nearly as ancient as the painting following like a tail.
“They knew,” Yardley said, staring at the downed agent and the wires. “They knew this entire time.” She pushed her hands flat against her crown of braids. “I’m so boneheaded, I could laugh if I had any feelings left at all.”
The hallway went silent for a full minute, and KC sat in the numb quiet, waiting for whatever came next.
“Project Maple Leaf.”
KC wouldn’t have thought anything could shock her, but it made her cringe from her scalp to her toenails to hear the code name of the absolutely secret, dangerous antiterrorist mission come out of Yardley Whitmer’s mouth.
“I want to see it through,” Yardley said.
“So do I.” KC didn’t have a choice.
“We’ve never interacted in our work before now.
” Yardley clasped her hands in her lap. Her neck was blotchy, but she looked regal and determined.
“Clearly the agency made its own decision to keep us apart, but there’s no reason to assume we’ll have to interact on this, going forward, beyond the minimum.
I assume we’re both capable of putting our personal feelings aside in favor of service. ”
“I can persist. Assuming they don’t remove me for exposing the mission at the Capitol Hill Starbucks. And they don’t remove you because everyone in the world who’s interested in this thing has already dealt with you twelve times in the last six weeks.”
“Then I’m game.” Yardley nodded. “If not doubly motivated to put this project to bed in short order and then never think about it again for the rest of my life.”
Never think about you. That was what KC heard.
At least, if they weren’t tossed out of Maple Leaf, they could see each other for a little longer.
Now and then. Sure, it would be because they were working together, but it might make the landing softer at the end if they had the chance to gracefully say good-bye as coworkers.
Once KC recovered herself enough to pretend to be someone with grace.
“I’m in, too. If what the agency wanted was for our relation ship not to interfere with their shenanigans, then for sure our not-relationship won’t, either.”
Just then, Atlas walked into the lobby from the hallway that led to the director’s office. “Officers,” they said. “There’s a new wrinkle to this clusterfuck of a day. Come with me.”
KC stood, wondering if the floor had tilted or if her entire brain was just reorienting itself once and for all to this new, terrible reality where she would have to relearn to walk and breathe without Yardley.
They followed Atlas down the carpeted hallway, but before they made the corner that would take them to the double doors of the director’s office, Yardley halted abruptly, settling her hands on her hips. “First things first.”
She waited for Atlas and KC to come to a stop, her eyes on Atlas.
“I can understand why none of y’all made a peep when we were dating.
You took a wait-and-see approach. But you knew we moved in together a year ago, and you kept the truth from us all this time.
I deserve an explanation, and so does KC. Right now. This instant.”
Atlas put their hands in the pockets of their tactical pants. “I didn’t make the decision, and I didn’t agree with it, but I can tell you the reasoning I was given from the director’s office. Our intel was that your relationship was not… in a secure status.”
“Rough seas,” Yardley supplied. “Rocky. That’s what you mean.”
Atlas pressed their lips together. “It wasn’t in the interest of the agency to get in the middle.”
“Not if your problem was about to work itself out,” KC interjected. Her anger tasted like battery acid at the back of her throat. “Let us die a natural death, am I right?”
Atlas closed their eyes. “Once Maple Leaf became a priority, the decision was made that disclosure would compromise the agency’s ability to make the most of your talents.”
Yardley had gone red from her throat to her cheekbones. “That’s shameful.”
KC thought of what Dr. Brown liked to say. Silos and separation meant safety.
Whose safety, though? That was the question that was really coming to bear for KC at the moment.
“Shall we?” Atlas pointed down the hall. With a hmpf and a toss of her head, Yardley took off at a brisk pace that meant Atlas had to walk faster to hold on to the lead. They navigated KC and Yardley to a second lobby that KC knew led to the transportation bay.
“Whitmer, if you’d like to change, that’s been arranged for you in the locker room adjacent to this area.” Atlas indicated the direction Yardley was meant to go. “Once you’re finished, we’ll be taken to the White House to be briefed.”
KC stopped short. “The White House?”
“Everything will be covered at the briefing.”
With this, Atlas strolled away to the double doors, already open and letting in cool air and the chemical smell of the transportation bay.
“Do you know anything about this?” KC asked Yardley.
“No.” Yardley tipped her head and seemed to scrutinize KC. She still had color in her cheeks, but her eyes were sharp and assessing. “You covered me pretty quick in that Starbucks.”
“I’ve been trained. And I don’t skip workouts.”
There was a time Yardley would have laughed at KC teasing her, but her assessing expression didn’t change. “You don’t. Ever. In fact, you’re really strong. Decisive. You’ve always been observant, but you haven’t worked as an operative. Have you wanted to?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“That’s a nothing answer. Lots of people don’t want to be in the field. Do you?”
KC remembered too late that the Unicorn was a notoriously exacting and ruthless interrogator. “I don’t run for my health,” she hedged.
“Officers,” Atlas said to the transportation bay. “If we could.”
Yardley strolled in the direction of the locker rooms in stocking feet, moving in a way that was so arrogantly unconcerned, it made KC think of seeing her for the first time at the barbecue.
The way she carried her shoulders in that diaphanous white picnic dress. The intelligence in her gaze that pinned KC in place right before she smiled. Like she’d planned that moment. Like it was happening exactly the way she wanted it to.
I’m going to marry that woman , she’d thought, as though Yardley had put the desire in KC’s body herself.
If absolutely everything had been different, they could have been so, so good.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
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- Page 5
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- Page 9
- Page 10 (Reading here)
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