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“Yardley.” KC’s voice saying her name made Yardley’s heart wrench in her chest with a burst of pained adoration. “Hand me a helmet?”

She felt around under her seat until she came up with a comically large ballistic helmet.

She unbuckled it before holding it out to KC, who took it, her fingers sliding over Yardley’s.

They made eye contact for the first time since they’d parted ways before the mission, and, for a long moment, held it.

I love you , she thought. She didn’t care if it was too much to feel, too soon or too late. It was true.

KC smiled her elfin smile.

She put the helmet on. Then, to Yardley’s dismay, she stood up on the top rung of the ladder and waved her arms. She did something Yardley couldn’t see or understand until she heard the rotors.

She was signaling their helicopter to cover them.

By doing semaphore out the hatch of a Stryker under fire.

Yardley put her hand over her mouth, staring at KC’s fishnet-covered legs on the ladder.

This woman. This fierce, talented woman. Yardley would never love anyone else. She would never love anyone more.

“Fire on three, then take a hard left toward the road out, right past the explosion.”

“Shit,” Atlas said. “I hate explosions.”

Yardley laughed, tears streaming from her eyes, the laughter and tears finally melting away every feeling but excitement to see what was going to happen next.

“Yes, ma’am. Ready on your count.”

There was a short burst of fire from the helicopter.

“One, two, three!”

On three, KC crouched down on the top rung, and the Stryker jerked with the release of a thirty-millimeter round from the cannon.

There was an unholy boom from the tank.

Oh. The tank .

A thousand gallons of liquefied petroleum gas, enough to service the entire complex, had just gone up in flames. KC was blocking their exit. Once the fire got started, the road would become impassable.

“Get us the fuck out of here, Patel!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

KC lifted one leg off the top rung and bent her body completely over the top of the armored vehicle. Yardley waited for fear to fill her up as KC’s precious self lit red in the light of the exploded tank of propane, but it didn’t come.

She was elated .

She got it then, she really did. This was what it felt like to go all in. It was love alongside terrifying risk. Love with total acceptance.

And if Yardley couldn’t help but remember with a pang the way her mama liked to complain that her precious only daughter had never learned anything the easy way in her whole life—because it was true—Yardley had to believe that was okay.

Even if it took a big, deafening explosion at the end of the world for her to let herself feel what it meant to love KC with her whole, entire heart, she could simply be grateful to feel it.

If she had to initiate a long courtship from square one, that was what she would do.

She did not want to do that, but she would.

She would hang out at KC’s sweaty gym in those tight leggings that made her booty look bigger than it really was.

She would pretend not to know how to use the weight machines and compel KC to help her.

She would bake cookies and learn to play RPGs and lower her neckline.

She was her mama’s daughter. Terrifying, manipulative courtship that dazzled the mark was in her blood.

Her daddy had bought a ring for her mama’s cousin when they met, and her mama had him in a tuxedo standing before a preacher inside of six months.

KC’s boots descended a few rungs, and her head ducked into view.

“Goddammit.” She looked at Yardley. “Get up here with me. I need your tall… everything.” Yardley flew up the ladder, squeezing her body next to KC’s.

The view was improbable—the explosion just behind them, helicopters above, boats racing on the canal.

Bursts of light from guns. She took a very sharp mental picture so that she would remember.

It was these kinds of failures of the creative potential of the human spirit that were a good reminder to do what Flynn— Kris —had said. Choose love instead of fear.

“What do I do?” she asked.

“I’m going to unlatch the cannon, but I can’t reach the last—Can you see it?”

Yardley looked. “I’ve got it.” She bent, KC warm and alive along her side, and freed the latch.

Crouching down, KC shouted, “Patel! Tap the brakes!” KC grabbed the back of Yardley’s shirt and pulled her down. The Stryker lurched, and a horrible clang banged the top of the armored vehicle.

“Yardley, here.” KC stood up. The cannon had fallen to its side, only hanging on by a fat bouquet of wires. KC reached over to unhook them. “Watch that I don’t get hit by it as it comes off.”

Yardley surrounded KC with her body, the explosion behind them, the empty road ahead. The cannon slid, metal on metal, and toppled over the side, hitting the road hard.

“I didn’t want to ride into urban Stockholm in an armored vehicle with a cannon on top during a blackout,” KC explained.

“No.” Yardley grinned. “You’ve thought of everything.”

“I did, didn’t I?” She slammed shut the latch, took off her helmet, and hopped into the commander’s seat, pulling down the periscope. “All right. Nice work, Patel. You a gamer?”

He laughed. “Yeah. Nothing like this. More of a Stardew Valley guy.”

“It’s fun, though, right?” KC moved the Stryker along seemingly without effort. From the bumps and multiple turns, Yardley guessed she was doing evasive maneuvers.

“KC, a briefing, if you would,” Gramercy said. “Now that the firefight seems to have faded into some distance.”

“Sure thing.” KC shifted gears and pulled the periscope to a more comfortable position.

“We’re skirting the edge of the nature reserve until the cover runs out.

Fingers crossed the bridge is clear enough we can get through and back to the ambassador’s residence to retrieve Kris’s copy of the device.

I couldn’t let Brown have Mirabel’s copy, and I didn’t want to get shot, so the best plan was to use it. ”

“Because of how Kris designed it,” Yardley said. “The Fuse.”

“Yes. It’s worthless now.”

“You may have created a bigger problem,” Gramercy said mildly, “having shut down the power throughout the Continent.”

“No,” KC said. “Mirabel’s on his own grid.

The device has likely already jumped it, but even if it did, it’ll run out of juice somewhere outside of Stockholm.

Northern Europe is a bad environment for this program.

Because of the geography and the weather, they don’t connect their systems as tightly in this part of the world.

The hospitals and trains are safe. I checked.

Kris told me everything she could about what she thought it could do. ”

“Jesus H.,” Patel said. “Ma’am.”

“That’s why, in addition to the cool factor, we’re driving this baby.

I don’t know what we’re going to find at the ambassador’s residence, but I doubt we’re going to like it.

My highest priority is Kris. Keep her and Declan out of danger and keep anyone from getting the brilliant idea to put her in a locked room and force her to code this monster all over again. ”

“Plan A is sound,” Atlas said. “What’s plan B?”

The Stryker hit smooth terrain. KC downshifted. They must’ve made it to the road. “You mean if the residence resembles anything like what’s in our rearview?”

“Let’s say anything that’s not plan A,” Atlas said.

“The general everything-is-tits-up-and-sideways plan is the Hole.”

“I haven’t been there in years.” Gramercy smiled. “I wonder if they still have the cookies that look like tiny peaches.”

“Who’s there?” Atlas asked.

“Nobody from the agency, first and foremost. People who will know me. Even better, Kris has a lot of friends.”

“KC?” Yardley asked.

“Yeah?”

“You can get this moving without Patel, right?”

“Oh. Sure.” She smoothed her hand over the steering wheel and gave it a pat.

Yardley nodded. “Once we’re at the residence, then, you’re our lookout and getaway car. Patel, you’ll cover me and Atlas into the residence. If Declan’s as savvy as you think he is, I have an idea where he might have found cover for Kris. Tech and Gramercy, stay here to cover KC.”

Yardley paused a moment, savoring the glow of satisfaction that often came over her when a mission went bad as a minnow bucket left in the sun, but she nonetheless knew it was going to be okay. “And by the way. Well done, everyone.”

The laughter lasted a long time.