Yardley tossed her head. “You just told me keeping secrets means that all you learned from us was how to hold yourself back. Here’s where I tell you that I was fool enough to think when we moved in together, that was you asking for more. Now I think itwas life support for something that was never meant to be. So does finding outoneof the secrets we had from each other really fix anything?”
KC knew it wasn’t a genuine question. Even if it had been, she couldn’t make herself push any more words out of her battered, tender throat. Yardley was right. Knowing the truth couldn’t fix it.
And Yardley didn’t even know the truth.
KC didn’t have any anger left. There was a numbness that made her want to get up and start walking until she had walked to the dark other side of the earth. “I guess we’ll never really be sure what was real and what wasn’t.”
“So it’s over. It’s really over.” Yardley’s jaw was clenched, but her words were barely audible. She reached down and sank a hand into the wig lying on the chair, and her nostrils flared as she took in a huge, shuddering breath.
Before KC realized what she was doing, Yardley had hurled the wig at one of the portraits on the wall. It zipped through the room like a malformed duck and hit a particularly smug-looking balding agent who appeared to have been active in the sixties, square in the face, tilting the frame and knocking the canvas out of it.
They both watched the portrait slide to the ground, the wires of a listening device nearly as ancient as the painting following like a tail.
“They knew,” Yardley said, staring at the downed agent and the wires. “They knew this entire time.” She pushed her hands flat against her crown of braids. “I’m so boneheaded, I could laugh if I had any feelings left at all.”
The hallway went silent for a full minute, and KC sat in the numb quiet, waiting for whatever came next.
“Project Maple Leaf.”
KC wouldn’t have thought anything could shock her, but it made her cringe from her scalp to her toenails to hear the code name of the absolutely secret, dangerous antiterrorist mission come out of Yardley Whitmer’s mouth.
“I want to see it through,” Yardley said.
“So do I.” KC didn’t have a choice.
“We’ve never interacted in our work before now.” Yardley clasped her hands in her lap. Her neck was blotchy, but she looked regal and determined. “Clearly the agency made its own decision to keep us apart, but there’s no reason to assume we’ll have to interact on this, going forward, beyond the minimum. I assume we’re both capable of putting our personal feelings aside in favor of service.”
“I can persist. Assuming they don’t remove me for exposing the mission at the Capitol Hill Starbucks. And they don’t remove you because everyone in the world who’s interested in this thing has already dealt with you twelve times in the last six weeks.”
“Then I’m game.” Yardley nodded. “If not doubly motivated to put this project to bed in short order and then never think about it again for the rest of my life.”
Never think about you.That was what KC heard.
At least, if they weren’t tossed out of Maple Leaf, they could see each other for a little longer. Now and then. Sure, it would be because they were working together, but it might make the landing softer at the end if they had the chance to gracefully say good-bye as coworkers. Once KC recovered herself enough to pretend to be someone with grace.
“I’m in, too. If what the agency wanted was for our relationship not to interfere with their shenanigans, then for sure our not-relationship won’t, either.”
Just then, Atlas walked into the lobby from the hallway that led to the director’s office. “Officers,” they said. “There’s a new wrinkle to this clusterfuck of a day. Come with me.”
KC stood, wondering if the floor had tilted or if her entire brain was just reorienting itself once and for all to this new, terrible reality where she would have to relearn to walk and breathe without Yardley.
They followed Atlas down the carpeted hallway, but before they made the corner that would take them to the double doors of the director’s office, Yardley halted abruptly, settling her hands on her hips. “First things first.”
She waited for Atlas and KC to come to a stop, her eyes on Atlas. “I can understand why none of y’all made a peep when we were dating. You took a wait-and-see approach. But you knew we moved in together a year ago, and you kept the truth from us all this time. I deserve an explanation, and so does KC. Right now. This instant.”
Atlas put their hands in the pockets of their tactical pants. “I didn’t make the decision, and I didn’t agree with it, but I can tell you the reasoning I was given from the director’s office. Our intel was that your relationship was not… in a secure status.”
“Rough seas,” Yardley supplied. “Rocky. That’s what you mean.”
Atlas pressed their lips together. “It wasn’t in the interest of the agency to get in the middle.”
“Not if your problem was about to work itself out,” KC interjected. Her anger tasted like battery acid at the back of her throat. “Let us die a natural death, am I right?”
Atlas closed their eyes. “Once Maple Leaf became a priority, the decision was made that disclosure would compromise the agency’s ability to make the most of your talents.”
Yardley had gone red from her throat to her cheekbones. “That’s shameful.”
KC thought of what Dr. Brown liked to say.Silos and separation meant safety.
