Or itcouldbe Yardley was getting cynical. Project Maple Leaf had her overexposed.
Ten weeks ago, just as the leaves were turning red on the oak tree outside the window of the bedroom Yardley used to share with KC and there had still been a chance, however faint, of salvaging their three-year relationship, Toronto became the testing ground for a completely new kind of digital weapon. Whendeployed, it killed every cell tower, internet signal, and communication line in a thirty-mile radius around the city. For forty-seven minutes, the device grounded planes, imperiled hospital patients, and shut down electronic systems of every imaginable type and function, causing not a little panic.
No one took credit for the stunt, but the word on the street was that the weapon hadn’t worked as advertised. Something technical had gone wrong. Still, the promise of a digital device capable of delivering mass chaos came through loud and clear, and the agency was desperate to lock it down before it could be perfected and sold.
Yardley had spent two months chasing leads around the globe, with ever-diminishing returns. Today, her mission was to break into the suite of a woman whose web activity suggested to the agency’s analysts that she might be involved in the weapon’s development.
“Status update on the door?” Yardley leaned down to ease off her heels so she could take the stairs more quickly. The target’s suite was twenty flights up.
“Tabasco’s working on it.”
Dang it. If Tabasco was handling the tech, that suite’s lock would be hacked in no time. Less than no time.
Tabasco was a technical agent, one of dozens who worked in the bowels of the headquarters building. To a field agent like Yardley, the techs were largely interchangeable, known to her only by their code names, but Tabasco was the exception. According to the rumor mill, Tabasco was a child genius who’d hacked the red phone on the president’s desk. The director was said to ask for their reports personally, eschewing all other technicians.
Yardley started to run.
Growing up, she’d loved nothing more than to drive around the Piedmont with her granddaddy, listening to his stories about the years he’d spent spying on the Russians. No question, those stories hooked her but good, and they were absolutely the reason she was currently barefoot, quads burning, trying not to pant as she flung her body up flight after flight. Unfortunately, not once in all those stories he’d told her, over all the years she’d made him tell them, had Yardley Whitmer Senior of Cary, North Carolina, bothered to mention how much time spies spent running.
Yardley never remembered this when she let herself sleep late instead of going for a run.
She stopped on the tenth-floor landing, chest heaving, and gave herself over to self-censure. KCneverskipped a run, and she wasn’t even a spy. She was a web marketing freelancer for companies that sold things like health supplements and sustainable T-shirts. In fact, KC had been running a lot in the six weeks since they broke up.
Not that Yardley could blame her. Miles running the Glade Stream Valley in Reston, Virginia, was a thousand times better than the miles of awkward silence between them as they lurched side by side through the death of their relationship.
She made herself start climbing again, ignoring the burn in her throat—the same burn that returned whenever she thought about weddings and empty, cold sheets and what KC used to do and didn’t anymore.
Or how fast she’d fallen for her at that backyard picnic where they first met. How much they’d laughed, especially the first year, when Yardley’s life was a whirlwind of missions and covert ops and briefings in between trying out food trucks with KC, exploring the city, walking in the summer heat, and kissing like it was the only reason to keep breathing.
Not now, Whitmer.
She rounded the final landing. “Second suite past the fire door,” Atlas said. “We’ve almost got the code. Tabasco’s impressed. It seems either the target or someone working with them reprogrammed the lock with their own layer of security.”
“That’s fantastic,” she panted. She stopped in front of the suite, keeping her head down and away from the hallway camera. “Not easy to impress Tabasco. So glad to know there’s a new and exciting barrier to the successful completion of this op.”
“Hold on,” Atlas said, chuckling. “Almost there.”
Yardley retrieved her phone from her clutch and leaned against the wall, gazing and poking at the screen to give the impression of mindlessly scrolling as she waited.
Her own phone was back in Virginia, but Yardley’s texts and voicemails forwarded to her field phone when she was on assignment. If she were captured, everything would be wiped remotely to prevent the sensitive details of her personal life from falling into the hands of the enemy, but there was nothing compromising on the screen cradled in Yardley’s palm. The only human communication she’d received all day was a single text from KC.
guy in a big truck came by to pick up your moving pod, gave me attitude because i told him it’s not ready & you’re not here. maybe deal with that
KC worked from home. She didn’t like being interrupted. She’d barely looked up from her computer when Yardley lied and said she had to take a last-minute trip to New York for work.
It used to be that when she was in the field, Yardley’s phonewould fill up with messages from her girlfriend. Memes KC thought were funny. Videos of baby pigs—Yardley’s favorite kind of animal videos. I love you’s. I miss you’s.
She sighed. She’d forgotten to change the pickup date on the POD. Most of her things were boxed up and loaded into it, but the apartment she’d leased wouldn’t be ready to move into for another two weeks, and both her presence in KC’s house and her absence from it seemed to irritate KC equally.
She never smiled anymore. When they first met, KC’s elfin smile was the first thing Yardley had noticed about her. It was a tricky one, curled up at the edges, and it came with freckles and short strawberry hair that had made Yardley feel like she’d been handed a bouquet of fancy spring flowers.
“Anything?” she asked Atlas in a low voice.
Obsessive spy craft provided such an excellent distraction from the quivering pulp left of her heart.
“Thirty seconds.”
She blew out a slow breath.
