Page 29

Evenes Air Station, Norway

Gramercy was on a video call with the president of the United States.

The comm swallowed his voice into silence, so KC could hear nothing of the conversation. They were in the basement of a Norwegian military installation. She and Yardley and Kris had arrived via helicopter shortly after noon.

She didn’t know where Gramercy had been when she spoke to him on the comm this morning, but it definitely wasn’t Virginia.

Possibly he’d already been here. Evenes was the only military installation in Northern Europe with the capacity and resources to plan and equip tonight’s mission.

It also had the advantage of being far enough from Stockholm to keep them dark from whoever might be looking for her, or Kris, or her and Kris, for a few hours.

KC caught sight of Yardley entering the room through a sliding door that KC hadn’t been permitted to use. This was her chance.

“Yardley.” KC touched her elbow after Yardley had given a tech a file. “A minute?”

Yardley looked around the room. “You wanted me to run you through how to use the specialized comm set for tonight?”

“No.” KC was confused. “I helped make the comm set we’re using tonight two years ago. I wanted to ask—”

Yardley stopped her by telling her to shut her mouth with lasers shooting from her eyes. “I know you wanted me to walk you through it someplace quiet.” Yardley widened her eyes so she could speak to KC telepathically. We can’t talk here, dumbass.

There were at least ten agents in the room, most of them tech, quietly working at different stations. Having participated in many ops from where they were sitting, KC couldn’t fail to appreciate the vast reach of international intelligence behind her own bank of monitors.

Or what terrible, incorrigible gossips techs were.

“Right.” She sighed. “Let’s go someplace so you can teach me how to use the comm set I helped redesign.”

“I forget about your ego,” Yardley said as she started walking toward a door behind the monitor bank where Gramercy was taking his call.

“Until it rears up like one of those tiny but lethally venomous snakes.” They walked to a vestibule that led out to the airfield.

“I have four minutes before one of these very humorless, very tight Norwegian intelligence officers decides I’ve gone rogue.

You’d think the brisk weather and relative peace would infuse a certain amount of cheer, but they’ve always been like this. I think it’s the lack of sunlight.”

KC made herself focus. Yardley, in this moment, was so very Yardley .

Funny, with prissy complaints, radiating intelligence with a disarmingly femme affect.

This kind of woman was very much, generally, KC’s type.

She was helpless to such a woman, and never more so than when she met Yardley, who epitomized the type and had long legs, besides.

It was all KC could do not to fall into their old, delicious pattern, where KC teased and feigned grumpiness so Yardley would flirt her out of her grump, and then they would both enjoy the resulting canoodling.

She missed her so much. God. She hadn’t spent this much time with Yardley in months. Longer. But they weren’t on vacation, and Yardley wasn’t hers , and even if she might kiss KC back if KC made a move, it would be out of habit, not because of… anything else.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Yardley said. “I definitely don’t have time for that.”

KC’s laugh sounded shaky. “I just wanted an update on Kris. On the micro drive.”

“You’re not gonna love it. I don’t love it.

Flynn’s in custody, of course, but the kind of luxury custody reserved for people the agency wants to keep for itself.

However, she’s threatening to notify The Hague because they won’t let her contact her boyfriend.

I insisted it be Atlas who interrogate her, one, because that’s their thing—they once interrogated the leader of a bloody coup while in a tank and stopped a war—and two, because I have very few options for sympathetic operatives.

I haven’t been debriefed since, but I’ve gathered Flynn immediately gave everything up that she will ever be willing to give up. ”

Yardley gave KC a significant look. I have made myself clear about what you are permitted to give up, which is nothing whatsoever. That’s what her look meant.

KC had to steel herself to keep from taking a few steps back in an instinctive bid to escape thinking about what Yardley had said to her as they were leaving the safe house.

She hadn’t felt a feeling that passionate from Yardley in a long time, if ever, and she didn’t know what it meant.

If it was about the mission, or about her, or them.

Or something altruistic related to Yardley’s professional trust in her.

There were dozens of ways it made KC uncomfortable. Not even her relief in knowing the black op was temporarily protected helped alleviate the churning worry and guilt.

“The drive?” she asked.

“I told Flynn to hand it off, and she did. I couldn’t work out a reason to hold on to it now that I’m the mission lead and I have the agency’s resources at my fingertips.

My recommendation, and Flynn’s, as well as yours—which I told them—was that they take it right out to the airfield and rocket it into the sun. ”

KC nodded in adamant agreement. “Destruction is the ethical choice.”

“However, this is the agency, so—”

“—they want their shiny new toy. Sure.” KC looked at the overcast sky. The agency’s behavior didn’t surprise her, but she did hate it.

“And Flynn made it clear to them that the drive is the device. As soon as it’s plugged in, it’s a lit fuse, and it won’t stop until it runs out of fuel, at which point it’s burned up and useless to everybody.”

“But what if they want to light the fuse?” KC sighed. “I don’t love these moments where your own side is being as big of an asshat as the alleged enemy.”

“Mm-hmm. Of course, we have the maker, so it’s actually worse, because even if we do light the fuse, we also own the factory.”

KC’s blood ran cold. “You’re certain she’s safe? Flynn.”

“Yes. But we need the other drive. We need to take Flynn off the grid. We need Dr. Brown found and this black op shut down.”

“You have people looking for him.” KC should’ve known she would.

“People, drones, hacks, assets both dirty and clean, shopkeepers all over the world who I make a point of tipping handsomely. My dragnet is utter.” When Yardley pressed her lips together, her angry dimple made an appearance.

“Okay,” KC said. Yardley was powerful, and her view of Project Maple Leaf was sharp. KC had to admit it was nice to have a boss willing to take care of things.

“I have to go. Look.” Yardley took a step toward KC. Her voice had dropped to a whisper. “I know we haven’t had a chance to take a minute.”

KC looked into Yardley’s eyes, wide and blue and kind, and let her see her more than she usually would. Mostly, she let Yardley see that she was sad. KC knew they probably wouldn’t get that minute, at least not until they made it back to Virginia and Yardley was handing her back the house key.

Not the watch. KC wanted her to keep that. She’d given it to Yardley to be hers forever.

“I’m good,” KC said. “I know there isn’t time for personal stuff.

” She had to ignore the shine in Yardley’s eyes.

There was a lot ahead of them tonight, and KC could only deal with it if she tackled her problems in order of their destructive potential.

She started back down the hall, then thought better of her exit and turned. “Hey, Yardley?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you could get some kind of Norwegian military base doctor to take a look at Flynn and the baby? So she feels better?”

Yardley smiled. “Already done.”

KC returned to the tech room and dropped into the seat where she’d been told over an hour ago to wait for Gramercy to give her instructions.

Moments later, his monitor shuttered to black.

He turned around in his chair, unlooping his earpiece and mic combo.

He wore a beautifully tailored suit with polished wingtips.

The matte shine of his dark tie was knotted in a perfect Windsor.

No smile, though.

Do something different. That was what KC told herself, contemplating Gramercy. This was a veteran agent sitting across from her, a man who’d been so deep undercover that his cover’s name still made lists of powerful Russian oligarchs. A man whose husband was a three-star general.

He wasn’t Dr. Brown. He wasn’t warm and immediately forthcoming.

He couldn’t be counted on to share with her everything he was thinking, or dress her down, or give her a tech task that he dared her was impossible.

But he also had been unfailingly respectful, and there was no manual for handlers.

Nothing required Gramercy to call for a car to take him to Reston in the wee hours so he could wheedle and cajole KC into doing her job.

If she didn’t count the baby mission at the steakhouse, tonight’s op would be the first time the agency actually tasked her with the kind of work she’d trained so many years to do.

Maybe she couldn’t wipe the weapon she’d made off the face of the earth, but she could make sure it was only in the hands of people she more or less trusted to do the right thing.

“I can do this,” she told her handler.

“I know you can.”

She nodded, noticing that even this mild vote of confidence made her feel like she’d won a medal. “I want to do this.”

Then Gramercy did something he had never done before.

He smiled.

It was a great smile, not at all like KC might have expected. His bottom teeth were a little crooked, and his thin face creased along all the lines KC had noticed, but the effect wasn’t actually dapper or dashing. His smile made him look real. She’d never really thought of him as real.

KC smiled back. “So.”