Page 24

But she hadn’t done that. She’d held so much of herself back that KC had felt rejected.

How much had Yardley contributed to that feeling over their years together, breezing in and out of KC’s life between missions, maintaining the illusion of a busy social calendar so she would have plenty of excuses for why she had to walk out the door?

KC had held back from her, too, beyond what she’d had to do to keep her cover intact.

Yardley had been truthful when she’d said she’d never been completely sure that she was what KC wanted.

But what reason had she given KC to be vulnerable when nothing she’d done had communicated what she really wanted?

No reason at all. Probably because Yardley had been telling herself all along that it didn’t matter. She couldn’t have it.

“Oh, damn,” Yardley whispered. “Excuse my mouth, but I don’t know how to fix this, Nan.” How was she supposed to manage loving someone the way she wanted to love KC? In her life?

Her nan laughed. “God help you. But you are no shrinking violet, as much as your mama’s always tried so hard to get you to act like one. I think you’re up to it. And if you’re not, well, KC will have no problem finding someone to mend her up. She’s a firecracker and an affecting flirt.”

“Nan!”

“Just a warning to keep you motivated, my dear. I’m guessing you better go.”

“I’d better. Thank you. I love you the whole ocean.”

“And I love you every fish in it. Be careful.”

Yardley set the receiver in the cradle. It was still dark, but the city was moving from its preoccupied nighttime hum to the energy of a new day. She didn’t have much time to get what she and KC needed and return to the safe house.

Something to make this mission successful and, Yardley hoped, to get to the bottom of what KC was hiding.

She took the alley behind the building with the market, then walked briskly off the main roads until she was on a small road parallel to Str?ndvagen that had a pedestrian tunnel underneath the busy street and would spit her out within a block of the Hotel Diplomat.

None of the bellhops and valets under its red awning paid her any attention as she strode into the lobby and straight to the women’s restroom.

At this time of the morning it was serenely quiet, with not even a faucet dripping in the marble-clad, cavernous space.

She locked the hydraulic hinge on the door, then counted the oversized pink-and-black marble tiles on the wall until she found the ninth one, three up.

She pulled out her pocketknife and rammed its blade along the gap in the grout.

The tile eased out. She grabbed the metal case inside and pulled it down onto one of the vanities, wheeling the number combo lock around until it clicked open.

From it, she took a comm set, a laptop in a Hello Kitty shell with a cross-body strap, and a signal kit, then locked up the case, shoved it back in the hole behind the tile, and replaced the marble.

Yardley had hides like this all over the world, but this was one of her favorites because the Diplomat’s bathroom always had a dish of tiny Marabou chocolate mints.

Yardley grabbed six, unlocked the door, and slipped out, putting the sparkly strap of the case over her shoulder and unwrapping a chocolate as she waved at the valets.

The fifteen-minute walk back to the safe house took forty-five due to Yardley’s various evasive maneuvers. By the time she was approaching the flat, she knew there was no way everyone wouldn’t be awake and angry with her, despite the box of pastries she balanced by its string on her finger.

She’d altered her typical posture-perfect stride to mimic the antisocial scuttles of the black-clad Swedes heading into work. She took the main pedestrian walkways instead of skulking in the alleys—skulking attracted attention this early in the morning—and blended with the purposeful crowd.

All of this meant that as she approached the safe house, she immediately noticed the man standing in the street.

He wore expensive-looking wired headphones. She might have dismissed him as an urban music lover pausing to adjust the sound mix on the player cradled in his hand if it weren’t for his utter stillness.

When the man reached up to adjust his headphones, Yardley caught the quick twisting motion of his wrist as he flipped open the dish of a disguised parabolic microphone.

Spy.

Dang it . The pastries in the box were still warm.

She hadn’t worn a comm set because the one provided by the agency was hidden in a hole in the box spring of the bed KC and Flynn were sleeping on, and she hadn’t wanted them to wake up.

The comm she’d just retrieved from the hotel would have to be set up before it could connect.

She couldn’t signal for backup. Or warn them.

Yardley wove backward through the crowd as unobtrusively as possible, mentally setting her view above the man so she could anticipate where his associates might be.

In front of her, leaning against a set of building stairs, she spotted a woman stopping to smoke a cigarette whose lips were moving between every fake puff.

Yardley marked the silhouette of a sniper’s stand on top of a bakery on the corner.

Headphones was crossing the street now, and Cigarette had stubbed out her cover and started toward the apartment building.

Absolute focus sparked at the base of her skull, slowing her heart rate and sharpening her vision. She approached Cigarette at the steady, purposeful pace of the crowd until she could clearly see her face.

Yardley didn’t know her.

Cigarette briefly made eye contact with Yardley.

Cigarette didn’t know her, either.

Good.

She changed the trajectory of her walk, speeding up when she noticed Cigarette murmuring into her comm. Yardley brushed past her, blocking out the rest of the street noise by pure will, nearly tripping and calling attention to herself when she caught the word Cigarette had spoken as Yardley passed.

Tabasco.

Her higher cognition dropped out, and she turned around and ran toward the alley alongside the safe house.

When she got there, she reached up to yank down the ladder to the fire escape.

No doubt they’d seen her, and certainly they’d heard the screech and clang of the ladder, so she didn’t worry about the rubber-on-metal noise of her boot soles.

She just climbed to the third floor as fast as she could.

They were after KC, and they knew her code name. A spy with a laser-assisted sniper aiming at them and their code name in the wind was a dead spy, so Yardley didn’t care to think through why any of this would be the case until after she had protected KC’s precious body.

She wrenched open a window and threw herself into a random apartment. A young woman immediately started screaming.

“Get out! There’s a fire!” Yardley yelled in Swedish.

She ran out of the apartment with the woman, and as she reached the door to the apartment where KC and Flynn were supposed to be safe, she heard the voices of an American man yelling in the stairwell and a British woman yelling back.

Cigarette and Headphones, on their way up. They knew where to go.

Flynn hadn’t, but they did.

Before she opened the door, she yanked down the fire alarm in the hall.

She slammed the door behind her and found Flynn already standing up in distress at the sudden noise.

“Get down! Curl up in the bottom of the wardrobe.”

Flynn moved fast and shut herself in, but Yardley was already shrugging off the laptop strap and disentangling the mangled box of pastries from her wrist, focused on locating KC.

There she was—crouched in a fighting stance in the space behind the door, eyes alert.

“Man and a woman in the hall in less than ten seconds,” Yardley shouted over the wail of the fire alarm. “Probably armed. Looking for you, so put that hood up and keep your head down while we fight.”

“You laughed and fell down all the way through that trial kickboxing class we took, and we’re going hand-to-hand with two armed hostiles?” KC yelled.

Yardley put her palm on the doorknob and looked over her shoulder at KC. “Don’t worry about me. I fight dirty.”

With that, she smashed the door open into Cigarette’s shoulder on the other side, pulled the door back and smashed it again, and then leaped out and tripped her as she reared back in pain.

“Got it,” KC said, and as Yardley stomped on the small of Cigarette’s back, she watched KC crouch and swing her legs across Headphone’s ankles, bringing him to his knees for just long enough for KC to stand up and wrench back his arm, grab his gun, and drop out the cartridge, which she stuffed in her pocket.

Yardley wished this was a date.

It would’ve been one of the best they’d ever had.