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“We don’t know for sure she was locked up, she didn’t send it directly to the agency, and it doesn’t have to be a toaster oven.

It could be one of those fancy refrigerators I wanted to get but you talked me out of because you said it was just a fridge with a giant iPad—though, for the record, that is not an uncool thing to have. ”

“No? Agree to disagree.” Yardley reached across the table and turned KC’s laptop toward herself. “Can you see anything else?”

“You mean do I know where she went after the Ritz? No. Could I find her? Depends. If she doesn’t want us to find her, we won’t.

What this tells me is she’s smart and resourceful, and she knows she has a reason to keep herself as far out of the way of trouble as possible.

Not to mention she’s pregnant, so now she’s probably ten times sharper and has grown fangs and claws. ”

“You’re right. She’s smart. Maybe smarter than us.

What that tells me is that you recognized Flynn’s work on the hotel lock because Flynn wanted to be recognized.

” She rolled her squeaky chair around the table and pulled up close to KC, who rotated to face her.

At some point in the minutes she’d been gone, she’d brushed her hair shiny and put on lip gloss.

“How likely is it that Flynn’s work wouldn’t change after years and years? ”

“Unlikely, unless she wanted someone specific to notice her.” Her eyes were the right color again—the fathomless dark blue of an underwater dive. KC could smell her lip gloss, mixing with the familiar lavender of her soap.

“Someone specific like you? Like your old Daisy Duke contacts?” One corner of Yardley’s mouth quirked into a smile.

God. How long had it been since Yardley smiled at her like that?

How long since they’d teased each other, or worked together even on something as simple as placing an order for dinner?

It was more potent than KC had counted on, with Yardley so close—her sticky lip gloss and full mouth and bluer-than-blue eyes—and the rush of intimate associations swamped KC’s focus so completely that she didn’t even try to think.

She simply let KC-and-Yardley take over.

Their way of communicating that had never failed but that they hadn’t used in so long.

She reached out and slid her hand under Yardley’s hair, gripping her nape at precisely the same moment that Yardley threaded both of her hands into KC’s hair, and god .

What a relief to touch her and be touched.

Her arms broke out in gooseflesh so fast, she had no choice but to squeeze her eyes shut tight again so she could just feel .

Feel Yardley’s lips against her own, the softest pressure, only asking.

Feel the sound she made, such a good sound from her throat that it skipped over KC’s brain like a bad needle on the best record ever, anticipation and frustration all at the same time.

Feel her heart bang in her chest, throb between her legs in time to Yardley’s breath panting against her mouth.

Feel the way her entire body went still in warning.

“Oh,” Yardley breathed. “I didn’t mean to.”

It would have been a funny thing to say if KC couldn’t feel Yardley’s lips against her upper lip and her thumb circling over her ear, sifting her hair.

Her touch, her nearness, her tenderness, her want, kept it from being funny.

It wasn’t funny because it had been so long that even those things—Yardley’s breath, Yardley’s fingers in her hair, her lavender skin—were enough to set off aching, insistent, reckless desire, the kind only sated by skin against skin.

It wasn’t funny because Yardley’s nape was hot, and because Mirabel hadn’t fired his stupid gun, and because KC had been crushing on the Unicorn for ages, and she could almost taste Yardley and knew just how she melted and went hot and alive when KC softly bit her bottom lip.

So she bit it.

Yardley’s legs laced between hers with a soft moan that sounded like a prayer.

“I didn’t mean to,” KC whispered.

Yardley smiled against her mouth. They hadn’t even really kissed, only touched their lips together. But if KC didn’t do something quick, she was going to really kiss Yardley, and that wouldn’t be fair.

She wasn’t being fair.

She didn’t want to be fair.

She didn’t want this blackmailed job, one arm wrenched behind her back by the people who were supposed to be her col leagues. Didn’t want to lie anymore. Didn’t want everything she’d been foolish enough to hope for to be reduced to this miserable, flaming bag of shit.

She wanted to want, and get what she wanted, every urgent grind and gasp leading to more, more, more.

She wanted a kiss that would force their love back to life, a kiss that would take them back to that party and give them a chance to start completely over and not fuck it up.

Everything she couldn’t have. That was what KC wanted.

She eased back, everything hurting, her body protesting leaving Yardley’s body with pain. “Hey.”

Yardley shook her head, just a fraction.

“No,” she whispered. She’d begged with only that word so many times in their fights, when they didn’t have any more words left— no, no, no .

“It’s only because of the day.” Her voice rasped over the lie, a barbed hook in her throat.

“Because of being scared earlier, the adrenaline. Being in a room with one of the most powerful people in the world. Maybe the helicopter.” It definitely wasn’t because of the helicopter, but she needed to convince herself so she could convince Yardley.

Sooner or later, Yardley would find out about the secrets KC had been keeping. It was safer, better, to put anything but a professional relationship behind them.

Yardley’s hands were still in her hair. KC made herself remember the POD in the driveway, pushing mental fingers against the bruise until it hurt enough to give her the resolve she so badly needed.

“We’ve never worked together before.” She managed to say it with some conviction. “We forgot. We forgot because we haven’t been doing anything but arguing or crying or not talking for weeks, months, and then suddenly we were doing something new together.”

“It’s not real,” Yardley said.

“It’s definitely not. How could it be?”

At last, Yardley dropped her hands from KC’s hair and pushed her chair back. KC did the same, the sting of bare truth washing away the throbbing ache of what was gone and couldn’t be recovered. “We’ll get used to it,” KC said. “It’ll get easier.”

Yardley almost looked like she might say something in response to that—KC couldn’t imagine what—but she didn’t. She took a deep breath that seemed to smooth the color from her cheeks and make her eyes cool.

“The point I was making,” she said, with that same crispness leaching into her voice, “is that Flynn’s skills must also have developed over the years.

So if she’s leaving an old calling card in her code, it’s likely because she wants old contacts to see it.

Is there anything about what you saw from the door key code in Toronto, or even this toaster oven message, that speaks directly to you or to anyone you could identify? ”

The question snapped Tabasco into focus. “Not directly to me, though it’s definitely her old signature. But you have a point. Word gets around. She might know I’m with the CIA.”

“Do you think the toaster oven message was for you? Given that you cracked the hotel door code and she knows that you, specifically, could do it as quickly as you did?” Yardley had eased her chair all the way to other side of the small table. The distance helped.

“Maybe.” KC gently shut the lid of the laptop. “What’s the plan for this mission?”

“They want us to fly to Dublin on a military jet and shake down Flynn’s partner, assumed baby daddy, for where she may be. Find a cover for you at his workplace. Or surveil him, et cetera.”

KC wrinkled her nose. “That is very—”

“Predictable. I know. But I don’t take their initial offer.

If I’m supposed to be your mentor, that’s my first bit of mentoring.

Never accept their original plan. Too many people already know what that plan is, talk too much, and usually they’ve put less than zero thought into your personal safety.

An officer in the field is an expendable officer.

They can always cut you loose, and they know it.

Also, I hate being made somewhere inconvenient and having a lethal weapon pointed at me by some petty terrorist’s understudy when I’ve got weekend plans with you. ”

KC winced as this collision of worlds caused her to rapidly shuffle through every mental image she’d ever had of Yardley at work—sitting on the edge of a mattress in a stuffy Holiday Inn Express, for example—and replace it with her curated catalog of mental images of the Unicorn.

Sprinting away from an explosion in black leather. Clinging to a balcony to escape detection in a Lisbon flat. Stealing a tuk tuk to chase a target through the traffic-thick streets of Phnom Penh.

Yardley had done those things.

The lump in her throat felt like a boulder. KC wiped her hand over her mouth, leaving her palm sticky with a trace of lip gloss. “What do you suggest?”

“Let’s not go to Dublin. I want intel that carries us right to Flynn’s front door, not intel that leads us to someone else who might have intel, and so on. Maple Leaf has been too much of that. I’m over it.”

“I can keep looking for her here.” KC tapped the lid of the laptop. “She’s bound to either pop up or run into someone who gossips about her. Could take a while, though.”

“That would require more patience than I have. I’m thinking we need a mean girl. Mean girls are incredibly efficient if you give them what they want.” Yardley turned her full attention to KC, looking her up and down with detached assessment.

“Why are you doing that?” KC crossed her arms over her chest.

“It’s nice to work with someone who literally no one has ever seen in the field. It means you can mostly be yourself, except with higher heels and less clothes.”