All she’d been able to do was remind herself over and over again that Dr. Brown had said to keep the op a secret until she heard directly from him.
Directly.He had been explicit.
So KC would just have to be grateful that the president and the director hadn’t asked her any questions about Dr. Brown’s whereabouts or his involvement with the weapon.
What the president had given KC was an opportunity, as Gramercy pointed out—the opportunity to find Kris Flynn, figure out how bad the mess was and how many copies or versions or pieces there were of the weapon, and clean it up in time forDr. Brown to answer the SOS that KC had left for him in his encrypted inbox.
With one ear to the hallway, she got to work. It didn’t take her long to track down a couple of Canadian hackers who owed her a favor. Almost as soon as she posted her request to them, she got a message back from one and heard a noise from the hallway at the same time.
Footsteps. Still far off, but KC needed to move.
She decrypted the message.
Take a look at this,it said.
There was a small package of code that appeared to have been transmitted from a household smart device. KC scanned through it as fast as she could until she heard the doors clang open at the end of the hall. Then she wiped the laptop and leaned it against the wall on the far side of the room as though someone had left it behind after a meeting.
Yardley appeared in the doorway. “Did I give you enough time?”
“For what?”
She glanced at the computer. “If you weren’t quite ready for me, I could step out and get us something to drink.”
“Were you watching me on the camera?”
Yardley narrowed her eyes. “No, but I was certainly hoping thatTabasco, if left alone for the first time since her run this morning, would engage in a bit of tradecraft. You surely haven’t been sitting there this whole time waiting for me.”
“Maybe I took a power nap.”
Yardley sighed. “Where’s Flynn?”
KC sighed back, but her heart rate hadn’t slowed down. “Probably in trouble. After she bounced from the Ritz, she hackeda smart device, some kind of appliance that’s connected to Wi-Fi, to send a signal.”
“To whom?”
“Hard to say. Anyone who would know it was her, looks like.”
Yardley tapped her finger against her bowed upper lip. “If she’s talking to the world with a toaster oven, that means she doesn’t have her phone on her. Or access to a computer.”
“Probably not.”
“Her phone and computer weren’t in her suite at the Ritz. I assumed she’d taken them with her. Then she drops momentarily out of the Sisters’ eyesight and disappears, but she doesn’t have her things with her anymore. That says ‘kidnapped’ to me.”
“Or on the move and not interested in being located by the wrong people.”
“Where did she send it from?” The easy cadence of Yardley’s fast-paced questions was pleasantly familiar.
“I can’t tell, but it doesn’t matter. It’s an old signal, I think. If it were actionable, I doubt my source would’ve given it to me.”
“But you don’t know for sure? Do you want to grab that laptop and take another look?” Yardley issued this challenge with a raised eyebrow. Sassy.
“Don’t you have to teach me how to waltz and wear emerald earrings that double as poison darts?” But KC walked over to retrieve the laptop. A few seconds, and she restored the message she’d wiped. It took a few more to rapidly scan through the rest of the package she’d been sent. Then her eyes crossed. “Holynight.”
“What?” Yardley sat down on the broken chair across from hers.
KC double-checked what she was looking at. “Weren’t we alljust at a briefing? It was my understanding that at a briefing, information is shared.”
“KC.” There was a warning in Yardley’s voice that KC usually only heard when she flipped through the streaming menu options for too long, searching for the perfect show.
