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“When I asked my granddaddy about that time in his life,” she told Atlas, “the only thing he could say for himself was, ‘I kept her safe.’ He told me that, and I felt something I couldn’t put a label on.

” She closed her eyes. “Admiration for his patriotic sacrifice, mostly. But then I asked my nan to give me her side of the story, and she said, ‘Every time your granddaddy left town on business, he took off his wedding ring and left it on a dish on top of the bureau. I thought he had a second family in Atlanta. I was convinced he had a different ring, one his other wife had given him, and he wore that when he was with her.’”

“Aren’t they married, though?” Atlas asked. “Your grandparents.”

“That’s right.” Yardley fastened the watch back onto her wrist. “She let the ink dry on their divorce agreement, and then she invited him to stop by sometime for a glass of tea. She made him sit in her wicker chair and drink sweet tea and prove to her there’d been more to their marriage than her loyalty and his lies.

” She met Atlas’s eyes and smiled. “A year later, they got married again, only this time she made him pay for a wedding at the Biltmore, and if you don’t know what all that means, I’m not sure how I could explain it to you. ”

Atlas laughed. “My people are from southern Georgia. I know what that means.”

“They are? You don’t even have an accent!”

“I’m a spy,” they deadpanned. “But Marla sees the real me.” Their accent rolled out like a pearl from a fresh bay oyster, and one of the knots in Yardley’s middle loosened at the connection to her handler.

She’d hoped it would be enough to share a house with KC, even if it wasn’t the life she wanted, but it only created more distance between them. It got harder to tell KC what she felt. Yardley’s solution was to pretend as hard as she could that everything was okay.

It turned out that was the lie that swamped their emotional intimacy so utterly, it broke her heart.

And no matter what she did, there was nothing to fix the fact that if she’d ever told KC the truth and demanded what she dreamed of, she’d be putting the woman she loved in danger for the rest of her life.

“Thank you for understanding,” she told Atlas. “And for listening.” She stood to leave. Her entire body was sore with feelings, like one word or noise could make her cry. “I should get downstairs.”

“You know, Whitmer.” Atlas gave her a small smile.

“Secrets aren’t the only way to keep a person safe.

There are ways to share this work with a family or a partner.

They aren’t easy. There are no guarantees.

But my mama lost her husband, my dad, when she was only thirty-nine, and he was a schoolteacher. Life isn’t safe. You understand?”

Yardley nodded, swallowing back tears. She understood that Atlas was a kind person and an excellent mentor. Maybe if she’d had this talk a few months ago. A year ago.

But the doc had already called this one. She and KC were beyond help.

Yardley’s New York driver’s license was still warm when she stepped into the sleek black Lincoln.

Her gray trousers were tight, the tech disguised as a push-up bra taking the girls up and over, and her gray suit jacket was a puff-sleeved, lace-appliqued confection.

The wig she’d been given was so high, it was kissing angels, and frosted besides.

There was no chance she would blend in at a Capitol Hill Starbucks full of black cashmere sweaters and designer strollers.

But she was pretty sure that was the point.

Her driver pulled over to the curb. “The van’s a few blocks to the northeast. I’ll be circling, listening on your channel. Should be able to get here in three to five if you need me.”

“You bet,” Yardley said with a shiny smile as she climbed out of the car, drawing her voice into her nose as she tapped on her comm. “Don’t you fucking take a break.” She slammed the door shut, startling a woman with an oversized fuzzy scarf, and minced to the Starbucks entrance, cleavage bouncing.

Atlas’s voice came into her ear. “He’s by the merch. Black suit. Tabasco’s standing by, monitoring your front-facing video and audio. They’ll let you know what you can do for them.”

Yardley met Devon Mirabel’s eyes while wealthy mothers and college students looked on in ill-concealed shock.

She gave him a sharky smile and a brusque wave, obviously unbothered by the attention.

“I like a man in a suit,” she said by way of greeting, reaching her arms out and stepping into a New Yorker’s version of a Continental embrace, which involved a lot of personal-space-bubble violation.

“And you wear it well, buddy. I’m Ashley. Feels like I’m meeting a celebrity.”

He wrapped his hands around her forearms a smidge too tight. She forced herself to relax into his grip like she enjoyed the threat of his dominance. “Ashley. We’ve managed to catch each other. I wasn’t sure this could happen.”

He meant that he’d never heard of her before this morning and therefore was suspicious, but his entire world was suspicious, and he liked money, power, and drama, so here they were.

Also, it would be hard for her to plunge the business end of a hypodermic full of poison into his neck in the middle of Starbucks.

Not impossible. Just hard. She’d once had a shoulder cannon pointed at her in the middle of a market in Marrakesh, so anything was possible.

“Oh, I can make whatever I want happen, Dev. Hey, you there!” Yardley lifted a hand into the air, addressing the startled barista, who was steaming milk. “What does it take to get a coffee? Do I have to hike up a mountain in Jamaica, what?”

The barista stared at her, but she slowly moved away from the steamer and grabbed two paper cups.

“All right,” Yardley said. “Let’s sit. Turbulence was a fucking nightmare out of LaGuardia.”

Mirabel gave her a reserved smile that nonetheless made his veneers glint. He was attractive in person, which caused Yardley to doubt he was all that smart. She could count the number of attractive, smart evildoers she’d encountered in her career on one hand with fingers left over.

“I must say, Ms. Thompson—”

“Mrs. Thompson. I don’t send Marshall’s shirts out and lie awake listening to his CPAP machine at midnight to lose my honorific to political correctness.”

Someone snorted with laughter in her ear. Not Atlas. They never betrayed their feelings about Yardley’s performance in the field. Tabasco.

Yardley felt her chest puff out. It surprised her, the little jolt of validation that Tabasco’s laugh had given her. She hadn’t felt little jolts in a long time.

“Pardon. Mrs. Thompson. I was surprised to hear from our mutual friend that you’d like to discuss business.” Mirabel said this lazily. “I believe—”

The barista knocked into his elbow, interrupting him to put two coffees on the table with a look Yardley translated as Ma’am, this is a Starbucks.

Yardley opened her Chanel chain bag, pulled out a twenty, and slid it in the barista’s direction.

“That’s not a tip. We need some of that lemon pound cake.

” She blew on her coffee and took a sip. “You were saying?” she asked.

“I was saying I’m surprised I don’t know anyone who’s met you.”

“I’m not.” This was the part of the encounter where she would figure out if it was an audition to make another meeting or the meeting itself—the only aspect of these things that could get tricky, primarily because the men Yardley met with usually had a business agenda, a paranoia agenda, and a seduction agenda.

It was easy to misinterpret the cues. Yardley leaned in and gave Mirabel a smile.

“I like things to happen when I say they happen, I’m not a fucking Amtrak.

It turns out you have something to keep me on schedule. ”

“That’s another thing.” Mirabel picked up his coffee, took a sip, and winced. “What’s your plan, precisely?”

She brayed out a laugh. “I like a sense of humor. I sure as fuck have your number, so I assume you have mine. Look.” The barista appeared to put the paper bags with pound cake on the table.

Yardley opened her palm, and the woman huffed and shoved the dollar and change in it before flouncing off.

“I’m young, but my money’s not, and the way things went in Toronto, I should be doubting you, not the other way around.

I’ve talked to people who say that was all you had and all you’ve got.

So far, I’m the only buyer young, cracked, and rich enough willing to risk a lemon. ”

Mirabel’s eyes widened only slightly. “Perhaps we should have dinner,” he said.

Dang it . This was an audition.

“I’m having dinner with Daddy in New York, and I don’t stand the man up.”

Mirabel’s eyes darted around the Starbucks.

The tables were mostly full. The laughter, conversation, and kids begging for cake pops provided plenty of camouflage for their conversation, but they also made Yardley aware that her work was the only thing keeping these people safe right now.

If she had backup, so did Mirabel. “My sources tell me your interest is impulsive.”

Yardley smiled, opened up her body language, and channeled every bit of Cyndi Lauper’s easy authenticity with her accent. “So was the Boston Tea Party.”

Another abrupt laugh from Tabasco over the comm—thrilling, and too fleeting—but Mirabel’s expression had soured.

“You’re losing him,” Atlas said in her ear. “Tabasco’s picking up something. Stay—”

Yardley had to keep smiling past the sharp prick of feedback against her eardrum.

Seriously? What she didn’t need was a comm issue.

Again. She scooted her chair closer to the table so she could lean her spy bra into Mirabel’s arm.

Gazing into his eyes, she cocked an eyebrow like the daughter of a mobster.

“Another time, hon, I’m more than happy to split a good bottle of merlot with you and yak over a steak, but that’s not why you set this up, and I don’t see any other American citizens with barrels of cash taking a meeting.

Like I said, Toronto was cute, but not cute enough that I have more time to give you than it takes to finish my coffee.

” This kind of bluff, in her experience, usually worked.

Yardley felt Mirabel’s hand on her thigh.

Good sign. She inched closer. “What have you got for me?”

Another knifelike squeal attacked her eardrum, followed by an exclamation that sounded either like bad intel or bombshell —neither option good—and then Mirabel’s hand was replaced by the very distinctive sensation of the business end of a gun.

Shoot. She hated guns.

“I see.” Yardley smiled, trying to keep her eyes from crossing while her comm exploded in her ear. “Is that all you have in your pocket? I bet you’ve got something bigger.”

The gun pressed itself hard into the tender skin over her femoral artery. “Fucking shut up,” Mirabel whispered, his accent no longer posh. “I just got some information that very much ends this meeting.”

There was a scream by the door, and answering squeals from various Starbucks patrons as a small, sweater-clad form barreled across the dining area, bounced over a chair—and then Yardley was on the ground, the wind knocked out of her, and Mirabel was already on the move toward the counter, probably heading to the back exit.

Her training took over. She flipped the body that had tackled her and lunged at Mirabel, fitting the meaty part of her palm over the back of his wrist and bending it the wrong way while using the leverage to lift herself up.

He grunted, and she scrambled to her knees.

She was vaguely aware that the person who’d tackled her was fighting with another patron—or security?

—while people emptied out of the Starbucks, but she didn’t have time to wonder who her attacker was because Mirabel had yanked her to her feet, snatched her against his body, and shoved his cursed gun back into her side hard enough to leave a bruise.

“Walk with me,” he hissed.

Yardley dropped her body weight and slammed her foot on his instep, then rose back up to collide the back of her head into his face, thankful her closer-to-heaven wig blunted the contact.

She felt another hard yank on her waistband, and the person who’d tackled her managed to pull her back down and behind their body, using it to shield her.

Then, the last voice on earth Yardley had ever thought to hear in this situation said, “Back the fuck up.”

KC?

Her KC?

Yes. Katherine Corrine Nolan of Reston, Virginia, wearing huge sunglasses and a hideous lime-green ball cap that featured the distinctive logo of the Lynchburg Hillcats, was using her own body as a shield and pointing Devon Mirabel’s gun at his face in a very competent grip.

Absolutely not.

Yardley took a hold of KC’s waistband and yanked her back two feet so that Yardley was the shield, then unarmed her to point the gun back at Mirabel.

Just in case her cover wasn’t completely blown to bits, she smiled at him. “You gotta learn to trust more,” she said, faintly gratified that her wig hadn’t slipped and her Queens accent remained intact. “But I like you. I’d love dinner sometime. Let’s keep in touch.”

Then she fisted KC’s sweater and towed her along behind her to the back of the room, keeping the gun on Mirabel until they were through the service door and down the hall that spit them out behind the building.

She headed east at a dead run, dragging KC behind her until they nearly collided with the agency’s van, disguised as an Amazon truck, which she had no choice but to pull KC into.

Even if her cover stayed intact with Mirabel, there was no way the brown contact lenses Yardley wore or the makeup designed to make her eyes look a little closer together could ever manage to fool KC.

Why in the world had she had a sudden hankering for Starbucks on a Wednesday, anyway? KC never came to the Hill. Couldn’t she have put her pink drink order into DoorDash and had it delivered?

Yardley just hoped the town where the agency set up her new identity was nice.

As she slammed the van’s door shut, she glanced at KC, who had lost her hat and removed her sunglasses and who, predictably, looked surprised. Her color was up, her eyes bright, giving Yardley an instantaneous sense memory of the power behind that tackle.

She blushed hard under her makeup.

It had been a minute since she’d blushed like this from only looking at KC.

Dang it.