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She walked a few paces away from Miller, then returned.

When she directed her attention to him again, he flinched.

“Every decision you’ve made for a very long time,” KC said, “has been about what you are afraid of. It’s been about isolating and protecting yourself from what you know you actually want.

You don’t have to feel bad about that, because a lot of us do that.

I’ve done that. But eventually we have to try . We have to risk.”

Yardley watched him flush with hectic color and have to master himself as he looked out one of the dark squares of wavy glass fitted in the leaded windows.

KC sat back down. She leaned forward, her forearms stacked and balanced on her crossed legs. Her thinking pose.

Yardley crossed the room to stand next to the arm of Miller’s chair.

“What we need to know, in what you can imagine is an urgent manner, is where Dr. Brown is now.” She offered this as a request softened with her native accent and relaxed posture.

“It’s so critical, and it would offer the kind of help that might help the agency understand better the…

liberties you’ve taken with your cover.”

“I’m not privy to that,” Miller told her, his tone dropping into a more confidential register that told Yardley he liked not having to answer to KC. “It was my understanding he spent most of his time at headquarters.”

KC shook her head. “He hates Langley. Always wants to work from the field if he can, or from a covert location if he can’t.”

Miller’s brows drew together. “Not CIA headquarters,” he said. “The black op’s headquarters. In Leesburg.”

Yardley’s heart skipped a beat.

The black op’s headquarters. In Leesburg. Which the agency did not know about .

“Leesburg, Virginia,” she clarified.

Miller still looked confused. “It was in my report. Dr. Brown told me about it so that I could let him know if anyone in the London cell seemed to be interested in dealings with the op. I never heard anyone mention it, but I passed on that I was surveilling for mention of Leesburg in my report immediately following that visit from Dr. Brown.”

“Date?” KC asked.

He closed his eyes. “August. Not last summer. Summer before.”

“Filed how?” KC already had a laptop open.

“We have a secure channel.”

“File drop?”

Miller nodded. KC typed furiously. She spun the laptop around and showed the screen to Miller. “This is the channel you use?”

“Yes.”

Yardley crossed to put her hand on KC’s shoulder. Her skin was as hot as a brick oven. “KC, you made this file drop channel for Dr. Brown?”

“That I did.” KC had finished typing what looked like credentials into a login box. The display changed, and now Yardley was looking at long lists of encrypted file names. KC kept typing, then stopped and pointed. “Those are Miller’s. Brown’s been blocking them.”

“I told you, I’ve done everything according to protocol,” Agent Miller said smugly.

“If you don’t stop lying, I’m going to unlock your handcuffs and smack you and have these two film me so I can share the video with your children.” Julia said this in her poshest accent, with a smile.

KC was clicking through the files, skimming each one quickly, looking for something. When she found it, she spoke directly to Yardley. “No one else but Dr. Brown knows about this supposed black op headquarters in Leesburg.”

Yardley felt the information snap into place as her hands curled into fists. “That’s because Dr. Brown is the headquarters.”

KC’s self-satisfied smile boosted Yardley’s confidence that they had this op in the bag.

“Dr. Brown liked to reward me with little bits of personal information about himself, like treats,” KC said.

“He talked about the real estate market a lot. How he was trying to find the perfect place to relocate where he could entice his daughter to move, but her husband was tight-fisted with money. Leesburg came up a few times.”

It was clear Dr. Brown had never imagined KC had thoughts of her own.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Julia said. “Can I just say? Sometimes I get extremely weary that my enemies can’t be arsed. Where’s my Moriarty? I didn’t think espionage would be so much about catching men with their hands plunged into the biscuit tin.”

Yardley and KC both laughed.

“Most of the men I have been around these last years,” Miller said, in an irritatingly defeated voice, “are only looking to find meaning.”

“Well, can’t these men take up woodworking?” Julia asked. “My dad has really gotten into fermenting vegetables. Won a ribbon at his local fair. He was chuffed.”

Yardley watched KC return her attention to the laptop, her hands flying over the keys. “You’ve got this to the team?” Yardley asked KC. “I can grab a comm set.”

“No, we’re good. Atlas just sent through that we’re wheels up from RAF Northolt in ninety minutes.” KC looked at Julia. “Give us a ride?”

“ Oh .” Julia put her hand on her chest. “Barely a day, and we’re on ride-to-the-airbase terms. Come here.”

Yardley laughed as KC smiled and stood up, grabbing Julia for a hug. “Thanks for everything.”

Julia looked over KC’s shoulder at Yardley. “This one has you locked down, I take it?”

Yardley smiled. “We’ve finally figured that out. Mostly. It’s a long story. We moved in together, but—”

Julia gasped. “Fuck me, Yards! You didn’t tell me all day that you’re engaged?”

Yardley’s neck went hot as she watched KC’s posture stiffen. “ But , I was about to say, we’re not engaged.” Yardley’s voice choked over the final word.

Julia’s brows furrowed. “You did tell me, didn’t you, that you would never move in without a ring. That’s right?”

Now KC was looking at her, arms crossed, eyebrows raised.

Yardley swallowed. “Yes, I did say that, but what I imagined was I would likely be retired. Or at least out of the field. But then there was KC, but I was still in the field, and she gave me a key and her mother’s watch, which was incredibly romantic, so it just happened.

” Yardley would die of this blush. “It’s a gold watch. It was her mother’s.”

“Yes, but is it an engagement watch?” Julia’s nose wrinkled. “Maybe a watch is a queer thing, then. Or an inside kind of gift between you? Like you had to be there. But also, you can trade the watch for a ring.”

“It’s the only thing I have from my mother,” KC interjected.

Yardley made herself breathe normally, her face flaming, her heart knocking.

“You didn’t tell me,” KC said. “At no point did you tell me that you would never, ever, ever move in without a ring.”

“I didn’t tell you,” Yardley managed. “That is true. You didn’t ask.”

“I guess you’re going to have to call the POD guy back and move out after all.”

Yardley turned to stone. But before her rational mind had even caught up to what KC meant, her heart nearly leapt out of her chest with anticipation at what it knew KC must mean.

“Wait.” Julia stepped forward. “Are you two breaking up? Are you? Because that wasn’t a quick peck Jack told me about in the banquet hall.” When Yardley looked at her, she widened her eyes. “What? I’m a spy. ”

“Because,” KC said to Yardley, ignoring Julia entirely, “ you don’t live with someone until you’re engaged. Ever. Never.” Her eyes crinkled with amusement at the corners. She’d called Yardley out, and it amused her.

“My nan has always saved for me a beautiful mine-cut diamond in a darling setting,” Yardley said. “I never thought I’d wear it.”

“Such good intel.” KC’s elf smile washed away the last of Yardley’s anxiety. “It’s going to be so much fun to date you after I kick you out of my house.”

Yardley was giddy.

Because she was that kind of old-fashioned, and she did love KC Nolan.

It would be divine to be courted by her with all of their intentions stated right out loud, with the drama and lead-up and butterflies and delicious tiny mysteries and front-step kisses and sexting and learning absolutely everything about each other while talking about the future.

Their future. Their wild, unknown, started-all-over-again future.

Yardley kissed her beautiful girlfriend.

“It would be great if someone could unlock these handcuffs from the chair,” Miller said. “If you’re finished.”

Yardley stepped away, laughing.

“You’re the one who’s finished,” Julia said. “I hope you have a second career in mind in the event you don’t end up sleeping in a steel bed welded to the wall of your cell.”

The next eighty minutes were a blur of logistics, check-ins, and overlapping conversation.

They handed Miller off to MI6 to be kept secure until the agency decided what to do with him, and then they had to rush to get to the airbase in time, rolling through the wrought-iron gates with Julia driving the borrowed van and bouncing it right off the paved drive and onto the airstrip behind it.

The Darkhorse was waiting for them, and so were Atlas and Gramercy, just emerging from a different black car with Kris and Declan. Yardley watched KC jog away from her to join them, her eyes bright, and exchange several shouted lines that were lost in the noise of the jet rumbling to life.

When KC turned back around, Yardley was still watching her, her heart in her throat, her pulse pounding in her fingertips, her whole body singing.

“Mine, mine, mine,” she whispered.

Life wasn’t safe enough not to claim what she wanted.