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“Yes, ma’am.” He got up and moved to the passenger’s seat.

She grabbed her laptop and started the ignition, looking back over her shoulder at Gramercy. “Get cover on us.”

He gave her a look, one beat longer than necessary, just long enough for Yardley to see his gratitude. He’d been hoping she’d change the plan.

Yardley was so thankful in this moment when KC’s life was in her hands to have trusted the right people that she made a small prayer promising she would start going to St. Anne’s Episcopalian every Sunday she could.

She put the laptop on the dashboard while she peeled out to race down the road through the trees, her eyes burning with her desire to see the lights of Mirabel’s circular drive, willing it closer.

She could hear a helicopter above, no idea whose.

A line of gunfire spit up gravel alongside the van.

Not their helicopter, then.

She glanced at the screen and watched KC take a step toward Dr. Brown. “I know the asset.”

“Flynn?” he said. “Who doesn’t?”

“I mean, we’ve gotten reacquainted.”

KC must be close to him, because Dr. Brown’s face filled the screen of the laptop, which was why Yardley was able to see his paternalistic affect drop and shift to interest. “What do you have in mind?”

He pulled out a gun, which KC looked at long enough for Yardley to identify it as a SIG Sauer P229. His duty weapon.

“Insurance,” he explained to KC. “You have to understand that what you’re implying about your close relationship with Flynn throws my trust that you’re with Maple Leaf into question.”

KC reached down and, to Yardley’s absolute horror, grabbed the muzzle of the gun. It swept up in her field of vision as KC guided Dr. Brown to aim at her head. “I trust you even if you can’t trust me.”

Then KC turned around, her back to Dr. Brown, and pushed the computer panel back into view.

She pulled out the drive where he wouldn’t be able to see it before looking over her shoulder at Dr. Brown.

“Let me close this up, and we’ll get this party started.

Like I said, I know Kris. She’s my asset now.

I’m privy to a few tricks no one else is. ”

Dr. Brown started to say something, but just as the van rounded the last curve and Yardley spotted the lights pouring from the house—guards everywhere, obvious chaos growing among the most dangerous guests in the world—she watched KC connect the micro drive to the computer panel.

“Fuck,” Atlas said as another burst of gunfire from above grazed the road next to them. “I am over this.”

The house went black.

Then the outdoor lights.

Then the lights over the water across the channel.

Every feed in the van blinked off at the same moment Yardley’s comm link to the carriage house dropped out, and all she could hear was the helicopter, the van’s engine, muffled shouts, and occasional gunfire from Mirabel’s property.

“She deployed the cyberweapon,” Gramercy said, somewhat unnecessarily.

But Yardley’s vision had narrowed down. She turned off the van’s headlights and barreled over the driveway, around the house over landscaped beds, until she spotted the shape of the carriage house. Then she hit the brakes, flung the door open, and hurtled toward the entrance.

She stumble-ran over the lawn, almost tripping over the drone downed in the grass six feet from the sliders. The interior of the carriage house bedroom was pitch black, then lit suddenly with the piercing horror of a muzzle flash when Dr. Brown’s service weapon discharged.

“KC!”

She sprinted through the dark, aiming for where the computer panel should be, praying to every deity she’d ever heard about that she wasn’t about to discover her girlfriend’s lifeless body, when her jeans were snatched from behind and she was shoved back toward the door she’d come in.

“Get down!” KC hissed against her face.

The breath shuddered from her body. Yardley’s vision grayed out in her relief. KC was alive. “Are you bleeding? Did he get you?”

“For fuck’s sake.” Strong hands yanked her to the floor. “I’m fine, but you’re going to get the both of us killed.”

“I am not.” She was. Yardley had forgotten her training and made herself a target for Dr. Brown, who was still shooting at them.

She felt woozy, but there wasn’t time to put her head between her knees.

KC took her hand, pressing her damp palm into Yardley’s, and Yardley wanted to bring it to her lips to kiss it.

KC towed her outside. It was literally a circus on fire. Yardley recovered herself enough to remember what to do. “The van!”

KC got them to it, Dr. Brown somewhere behind them. She tossed Yardley through the open driver’s door and shoved her into the center space so she could take the wheel. Yardley was about to sing hosannas to KC that she was alive and well and looking so good besides when KC peeled out.

She glanced at Yardley sprawled on the van’s floor. “You almost got yourself shot! I knew you’d come with the van, but you were supposed to be getting my Morse code on how to pick me up, not barrel in there like a rodeo bull!”

“What?” Yardley moved to a seated position, peeking out the windows, hoping the second helicopter above was theirs this time and that it wouldn’t fall from the sky any moment after losing its computer controls. “Dang it!”

KC swerved around a pair of guards. “What made you lose your mind like that, for Pete’s sake!”

If KC was censoring her language, then she was extremely agitated.

KC cursed for pleasure. “He’s your mentor!

He was playing on your emotions! He had a gun on you, KC.

And he went bad, but it would be normal if you couldn’t believe it!

I couldn’t believe it at first. You didn’t have any comm! That’s too much for a first mission!”

KC was swerving around guests, her body low in the driver’s seat. “Too much for who, Yardley?”

“God, KC!” Yardley winced as the van grazed something very much on fire. “Too much for me, obviously! You knew enough to know I’d come with the van but not that I’d come and get you my own self?”

“I guess that’s for one of our ‘later’ conversations.” KC downshifted and looked back over her shoulder.

She was smiling.

Flirting , even.

“I knew he’d switched sides as soon as I saw him behind me,” KC said.

“I hated it, but a lot hadn’t added up for a long time.

I’ve known him forever. He thinks he knows me, but men always think they know someone, and when have you known any of them to really pay attention to anyone but themselves? No offense, Gramercy.”

“Not at all.” His voice was remarkably calm for the amount of automatic weapons fire and small explosions going off around them. He’d been here before.

“Oh,” Yardley said.

“Yeah. I was playing him . I actually had a lot of options in there as long as he didn’t shoot me, which I didn’t think he really would. Men underestimate their emotional attachments. I’m the same age as his daughter.”

“He has a daughter?”

“Gretel,” KC said. “She’s an architect in Arizona. He dotes on her.”

“I did not know that,” Gramercy said.

“Me neither,” Atlas said.

“Everyone brace yourselves!” KC shouted, and immediately after Yardley gripped the seat in front of her, the van made sickening contact with an immoveable object. “Stay down and follow me. Don’t stop moving, even if it gets weird.”

KC opened the van door and rolled out of it, and the soldier Yardley had ejected from the role of driver, obviously recognizing authority when he saw it, ripped open the sliding van door and got into a crouched, sheltering position, leading out Atlas, Gramercy, and the two techs.

“Get yourself back together, Whitmer,” Yardley whispered, her usual calm finally starting to return. “KC Nolan is a superhero, and if you play your cards right, maybe she’ll take you to dinner.”

She crouched down and followed the techs out, the soldier at the rear. That was when she realized that KC had rammed the van into the M1126 Stryker Combat Vehicle. Immediately following this realization, Yardley experienced an auditory hallucination of KC telling her, I can drive anything.

Whoa.

She’d already brought down the rear entry to the Stryker. Atlas, Gramercy, and the techs were buckling themselves into the seats that lined each side of the interior. Yardley looked at KC, who directed her to a seat behind the commander’s. She put the soldier in the second driver’s seat.

“I’ve only completed computer simulation training, ma’am.” The soldier buckled himself in.

“That’s enough for where you’re sitting.” KC got the rear door shut, then reached over her head to turn on orange interior lights. “What’s your name?”

“First Sergeant Dhaval Patel, U.S. Marine Corps, ma’am.”

KC sat in the commander’s seat, pulled down the periscope, flipped off all the lights except one, engaged the parking brake, put the massive gear shift into neutral, and yanked out a knob marked AUX MASTER, turning it on.

Well, then. This was happening. Yardley reached under her seat and found her ear protection. Everyone else followed suit. The engine was cycling, lights on the command board flashing, when KC leaned over and turned the engine to start. The Stryker roared to life.

KC jumped out of the commander’s seat and climbed up a short ladder to the side. “Patel, get on the periscope and set the cannon to the UTM coordinates 10, 5, 25, 270 East.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

KC flipped a series of latches, letting outside air in. She stood on the ladder looking out over the top of the Stryker. “Coordinates?”

“I’ve got a large white tank in sight. Point nine kilometers.”

“Perfect. Looks good from here. Disengage the parking brake and hit the gas. Aim directly at the tank in your sights. The diesel should be warm enough. Let’s hope this beast has been serviced recently and isn’t just for show.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The Stryker lurched forward, and wind, shouting, helicopter rotors, and gunfire rose up from outside the armored vehicle in a cacophony that competed with the Stryker’s engine.