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KC didn’t balk. She reached up and touched the diamond lariat resting on Yardley’s bare sternum and cocked a hip. The room got quieter in some places. Louder in others.

Yardley broke out in shivers.

“It’s not a terrible party, but I’m more the backyard barbecue type.” KC flashed her elf smile at Yardley, and the memory of the Virginia heat when this woman had touched her for the first time chased the shivers right off Yardley’s skin.

Tabasco was fully in her powers tonight.

“Is he usually this hard to pin down?” KC asked, meaning Miller.

Yardley knew Max wouldn’t let the fingertip of a woman like this fondle the chain of diamonds on her chest without erotic retaliation.

She grasped KC’s hand and ran her own fingers down her forearm and back up again.

Then, she lifted KC’s hand to her mouth and kissed it with a flick of tongue that made a woman twenty feet away gasp.

Yardley found her in the crowd and winked.

“What a sweet gig these gray-templed white dude agents get.” She kept hold of KC’s hand and moved indecently close.

“Ritzy cover, fancy flat, intelligence flowing as freely as top-shelf cognac, occasional soft check-in at your pleasure. Never mind U.S. spies leaving calling cards around the city like a car warranty salesman, please do enjoy your game of snooker at your exclusive club that my taxes pay your membership for. His failure to check in seems more like he hasn’t turned to me.

Otherwise, whoever has been tapped to clean up behind him would’ve come for us.

I’m thinking Dr. Brown is keeping his cover with Miller.

Probably to maintain the channel of intel. ”

“I want Miller. I want to know where Dr. Brown is.”

“We’ll get him. We have so many excellent people working together on this.” Yardley moved her face alongside KC’s. “You’re not alone anymore,” she murmured.

“I’m not.” KC smiled against Yardley’s cheek, making her eyelids heavy at the familiar, fleeting sensation of KC’s lips on her skin.

The last thing Yardley remembered from their conversation yesterday before they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, fully dressed beneath a knitted blanket KC pulled up from the foot of the bed, was KC saying, Kittens. Did you ever think we should have a kitten?

The question was the first thing she’d thought of when she woke up to find KC gone, and what rang through Yardley’s head like church bells was that “we.”

She’d rolled over. Paper crinkled under her shoulder. When she pulled it out, it was a note in KC’s precise handwriting.

If I could take anything back, it would be when I told you that you never wanted to just be with me and talk.

I accused you of this, in a fight, in a crappy Swedish apartment that smelled like a dead plant.

I would take that back because I never let you just be with me, and for that I’m so sorry, and that apology is directed at us both.

Because if I had known how much more I could feel, for you, for me, for us, I would’ve found a way like I did with my game.

I have something else that if I told you, I’d have to kiss you.

But I’ll wait for another moment that’s about nothing but you and me.

Yardley had pressed the note to her chest and then arranged for Batwing to send it securely direct to her nan’s address with a request to Nan to keep it safe until she got home.

She was considering if Max, at this point, would press Daphne against the wall and kiss her like a sailor on leave, when KC stepped back. “What the actual fuck,” she whispered.

At the same time, Julia’s voice came over Yardley’s comm link. “Miller’s just walked in with his girlfriend. Driver forgot to ping me.”

“Come the fuck on ,” KC said. “He is kissing her. Nice, Mr. Miller. Nice. I’m sure Amybeth knows all about this. Oh, and Emma just had a baby. You worm.”

“Explain.” She said this as Max would to Daphne, but her significant eye contact communicated to KC that she needed to catch Yardley up, and fast.

“ Miller. ” KC nearly spat the name. “David Miller. I knew he was David Miller, but I thought it was a code name or his cover. I didn’t know he was David Miller of Marigold Street, Reston, Virginia.”

Yardley glanced at the entry. Miller was sliding a trench coat from a woman’s shoulders to give to the valet. “You know him? You’re sure?”

“Oh, I am sure. I went to kindergarten through tenth grade with his daughter Emma. We weren’t BFFs, but we shared an obsession with this MMA fighter, Josh Matherly.

For different reasons, obviously. Doesn’t matter.

I went to her house after school a lot, and we watched his fights on TiVo that we made her older brother record for us. ”

“You are a miracle,” Yardley said. “Very sincerely.”

“My point is that I knew her dad. He was around. He had some kind of job in government, but the hours were all over the place.” KC shoved her hands through her hair. “Naturally. And he went on business trips. Probably a lot like the kind of business trips you went on.”

Yardley could feel the eyes of a large number of assembled partygoers on them, trying to figure out if Max’s deal with Daphne had gone south. “Dang it.”

“I am incensed. Emma adored that man.”

“Listen,” Yardley said softly. “We’re going to have to—”

KC put her hand on one cocked hip. “He fucking stopped coming home.”

“What do you mean?”

“He left for his ‘business trip,’ and then the next time he was expected back—and I’m sure his wife, Amybeth, had some kind of clearance, at least to know who he worked for and when she would see him—he didn’t come.

Emma told me that her mother checked in with his work, so you know what that likely means, and she got nowhere, which, we can guess what was up there, too, especially if Amybeth’s contact was Miller’s handler—”

“Dr. Brown.”

“Right. Yeah. Anyway, they got to the part where they were talking to the cops—I’m sure the agency loved that—and then Amybeth got an email.”

“From Miller.”

“From her husband , yeah. Email account she didn’t know he had.

He told her that he hadn’t been happy, and he had tried, but the stress of his work and how few people understood really isolated him.

He told her to tell his children he was sorry and to help them understand, and also, he’d transferred half their money to himself, and he hadn’t been paying the mortgage .

Then , Emma’s brother somehow figured out that David and a woman from Nottinghamshire, here in England, were involved.

A professor. They went back over a year.

And get this. She has a twelve-year-old kid, and he’s been playing stepdad. ”

Yardley had already known about the woman on Miller’s arm, and the child whose school function they’d attended, but KC’s personal knowledge of their target introduced a number of new variables.

For instance, Yardley now knew the most likely explanation for why Miller had been avoiding them.

Even a CIA agent operating under deep cover couldn’t abandon his family without consequence.

Miller had gone rogue.

It meant he was almost certainly in Dr. Brown’s pocket, but it also meant—thank the sweet baby Jesus—they had leverage. Sweet, sweet leverage.

“Well, then. New plan, given that we’ve been dealt this unexpected hand of beautiful cards. I need to parlay with Julia. We have to figure out how to make sure Miller doesn’t recognize you before we want him to, especially given that you’re the most interesting thing at this party.”

“Tell me what to do.”

Yardley reached over and hooked her finger underneath one of the teeny tiny straps that held up KC’s dress, lifted it up, and let it fall halfway down KC’s arm.

“Be infatuated with me. Trail me around like my shadow makes you horny. Be ready to follow my lead. I’m Fred Astaire, you’re Ginger Rogers. ”

KC turned the tables and grabbed Yardley’s shirt placket between her thumb and forefinger. She slid it through her fingers—knuckles dragging over bare skin all the way down to Yardley’s sensitive belly—then looked up through her false eyelashes. “I can do that, Max.”

The guests were drinking, sparkling, talking, and trying to pretend they weren’t gulping down the drama unfolding right in front of them.

If they only knew that what they were really seeing was what could happen if you weren’t afraid anymore, knocked down your walls, and found love on the other side.

“Ready?” Yardley asked.

KC smiled. “I am. Finally.”