Page 19

Ulrikagatan Street, ?stermalm, Stockholm

KC took a seat at the small table in the galley kitchen of the flat.

It was downright tatty for this address in the posh ?stermalm neighborhood.

How did the agency find these places? Was there a top-secret registry of properties all over the world with one working tap and painted-over light switches?

Although she couldn’t pretend there wasn’t still a small part of her that was actively being bowled over by these surroundings.

She’d never been to Europe. Never taken a transcontinental flight, much less on a top-secret military jet that traveled at near-hypersonic speed.

She’d been to Stockholm in surveillance footage and on body cameras, had familiarized herself with significant traffic patterns and landmarks, but seeing it with her own eyes hit different.

Travel was one of many promises Dr. Brown had dangled in front of her that had not materialized.

“Hmm.” Yardley was walking in a small circle, her hand over her mouth, her eyes focused on something that was definitely not in the room. She sat down on the foot of an iron-frame bed in the corner of the studio and whipped her dark hair into a ponytail with an elastic on her wrist.

She’d been like this since they landed. As soon as they arrived at the flat, KC had collapsed on top of the bed’s lumpy mattress and dropped into a dreamless sleep. She woke up four hours later to the sight of Yardley still pacing.

On the Darkhorse, when KC had been caught off guard by Yardley’s question about Dr. Brown’s absence from Project Maple Leaf, Yardley had noticed. And KC had noticed her noticing.

No one else could have seen the way a single muscle at the inner corners of Yardley’s eyes tensed, or known that muscle only tensed when Yardley was attempting to independently verify one of KC’s claims, like, Of course I wiped down the kitchen counters after I made myself an everything bagel.

At this point, it was starting to seem downright laughable that KC had never guessed Yardley was the Unicorn.

She couldn’t be sure when Yardley would strike. It set her nerves on edge, which meant she had devolved into old patterns whereby she attempted to distract Yardley from whatever bone she was gnawing.

“Is it bad I slept so long? I had no idea I was that tired.” KC unscrewed the top of a water bottle she’d found in a well-stocked mini-kitchen area.

“Ordinarily, I’d go for a run now, but obviously that’s not a great idea, as much as I’d like to see the city firsthand instead of through a monitor. ” She took a big gulp of water.

“Mm.” Yardley was tapping her knee, thinking.

“Weird that this safe house is an apartment in a regular building. I mean, I knew that’s how it works sometimes, but it was still strange to pass by those kids downstairs.”

Yardley nodded, crossing her legs. Still, terrifyingly, thinking.

“Maybe I will go for a run. Probably there’s a disguise somewhere in here, right?”

“Third floorboard from the front window is hinged. Pull up. There should be a basic street disguise. Better than a ball cap and sunglasses, at any rate.” Yardley crossed her legs the other way.

In a completely different time, place, and life, KC would have stalked her across the room, accused her of brattiness while possibly biting the cap of her shoulder, and a few hours would have passed that culminated in panting, dehydration, and lassitude, as well as full distraction.

She had no idea how to get the Unicorn’s attention without detonating something.

“Or I could just wear this.” KC grabbed a hooded sweatshirt from the enormous standalone wardrobe and pulled it on. She’d swapped her flight suit for joggers and a T-shirt before she fell asleep.

Yardley finally looked at her. “It says ‘CIA’ on the back in big yellow letters.”

“Ironic, right? A spy would never. Perfect cover.”

Now Yardley’s expression had shifted, and her attention was fully on KC, but with scary flames in her bright blue eyes.

She leaned back and crossed her ankles, holding up her body on forearms like she’d just taken direction from a fashion photographer.

“Where would you go if you had to take cover near Stockholm?”

“H?let,” KC said without hesitation.

“The Hole?” Yardley tipped her head.

The effortless translation reminded KC that the Unicorn was a polyglot. That Yardley was a polyglot.

Which, sure. Yardley could accurately and delightfully mimic anyone.

But KC had believed that was an artifact of her having survived a childhood without siblings and with an opinionated mother who obviously adored her but absolutely did not understand her.

Maybe childhood was where Yardley’s facility with languages had begun, but clearly there was a great deal more to it than that.

There had been so much more to everything.

It made KC feel hopeless not to be able to turn the clock back and claim the right to a do-over, knowing what they knew now.

She wasn’t sure what would happen if they could, but she didn’t think they’d end up like this—suspicious and guarded, afraid of fucking up and getting hurt worse than they already were.

She forced herself to pay attention. The Unicorn was mid-interrogation. One wrong step, and KC could find herself trapped.

“Yeah, the Hole. H?let. On the E18. Eskilstuna. It looks like every other internet café near a medium-traffic train station, but it’s not. Or so I’ve heard.”

“Where?” Sometime while KC was sleeping, Yardley had changed into a black sweatshirt with a blue-and-yellow-striped heart to represent the Swedish flag, which she must have found in the wardrobe.

With the ponytail, she looked like any one of the Swedish millennials they’d seen on the street, walking into a shop or pushing a pram.

“Where have I heard? In the backroom forums, forever. I think I first learned about it when I was fourteen.”

“And it’s still there.” Yardley sat up.

“It still generates a lot of chatter. Questions. Requests. Has its own servers.”

“Why would you go there? If you needed to get gone, it sounds like too many of you know about it. You’d be made instantly.”

“It’s hacker Switzerland. Or, like, a church. You know, sanctuary. It’s always been that way. You don’t sell anyone out who’s in the Hole. It’s never been compromised in that way.”

“But if you walk out the doors?”

“You’re fair game, I would imagine. But, look.

The movies make it seem like hackers are either very glamorous or constantly running through urban streets wearing moto jackets.

Really, we’re what you’ve seen in my office—regular dorks in Patagonia fleece complaining that their new ergonomic setup isn’t hitting while we look up how to code something on YouTube.

If someone burst into the Hole sweating through their clothes, looking over their shoulder, and furiously making copies of a floppy disk while muttering, my guess is that whoever runs the place would call a doctor, not Interpol. ”

Yardley smiled. “There’s a lot out here in the field the movies are missing out on, actually, that would make for great tension and visuals.”

It took a second for KC to understand what she meant.

Peril. That was what she meant.

“I think that’s supposed to be a joke,” KC said, “except it makes clear how often you haven’t been safe when I had no fucking idea, because I thought you were at a Courtyard Marriott in Columbus, Ohio.”

She wouldn’t have said that, and certainly not in such a scathing tone, if it weren’t for the fact that her palms had broken out in pins and needles, and her stomach was churning in the familiar way it did when she felt especially anxious.

“And I thought you were underestimating your potential,” Yardley bit back, “making social-media-integrated shopping carts and branding packages. But it turns out you were breaking into Russian server farms.”

The return serve hit harder than it should have. Wasting her potential.

KC couldn’t fight with Yardley, feeling all the terror she’d missed out on in the years they’d spent lying to each other, and worry about figuring out a way to locate Kris Flynn before something awful KC had made ruined the world, all while she kept Dr. Brown’s secret even from the president and lacked any certainty she was doing the right thing.

She couldn’t feel this many feelings at once and survive.

“We can’t do this here,” she croaked. “We just have to get through the mission.”

Yardley’s full mouth had a way of getting so small, it nearly disappeared. “Absolutely, that is the way to go if you’d like to die in the field. Stuff your feelings down, ignore your instincts, don’t—super duper don’t —deal with your shit, and watch it get both of us killed.”

“Jesus Christ, Yardley.”

“ Well. ” She put her hands on her hips.

“How’s this? You said back at Langley that you don’t know how to talk to me, that maybe you never did, and then we’re going Mach 5 and you’re telling me things you never told me in three years together, even when you could have.

So here’s a truth I never told you, KC. I didn’t know a nerdy woman in a Patagonia fleece who’s a WordPress jockey, gamer, and dreamed of illustrating for Magic: The Gathering .

Maybe that’s your cover, but closer to the real truth—even more the truth than the one where you’re a spy—is a woman who forgets to eat, sits in front of her computer all day long, and runs for miles and miles and miles until she collapses into bed without talking about any feelings she has at all. That is the KC Nolan I know.”

KC gripped her elbows, hard, and swallowed. “You’re not being fair.”

“No. I’m not! But it doesn’t make anything I said less true.

In fact, it makes it more true. I’m certain the agency has been waiting to see if you’d ever demand something.

That’s the only way you get out of the basement.

I’ve been waiting for you to demand something.

I’ve been waiting for you to demand me . ”