“You’re fair game, I would imagine. But, look. The movies make it seem like hackers are either very glamorous or constantly running through urban streets wearing moto jackets. Really, we’re what you’ve seen in my office—regular dorks in Patagonia fleece complaining that their new ergonomic setup isn’t hitting while we look up how to code something on YouTube. If someone burst into the Hole sweating through their clothes, looking over their shoulder, and furiously making copies of a floppy disk while muttering, my guess is that whoever runs the place would call a doctor, not Interpol.”
Yardley smiled. “There’s a lot out here in the field the movies are missing out on, actually, that would make for great tension and visuals.”
It took a second for KC to understand what she meant.
Peril. That was what she meant.
“I think that’s supposed to be a joke,” KC said, “except it makes clear how often you haven’t been safe when I had no fucking idea, because I thought you were at a Courtyard Marriott in Columbus, Ohio.”
She wouldn’t have said that, and certainly not in such a scathing tone, if it weren’t for the fact that her palms had broken out in pins and needles, and her stomach was churning in the familiar way it did when she felt especially anxious.
“And I thought you were underestimating your potential,” Yardley bit back, “making social-media-integrated shopping cartsand branding packages. But it turns out you were breaking into Russian server farms.”
The return serve hit harder than it should have.Wasting her potential.
KCcouldn’tfight with Yardley, feeling all the terror she’d missed out on in the years they’d spent lying to each other,andworry about figuring out a way to locate Kris Flynn before something awful KC had made ruined the world, all while she kept Dr. Brown’s secret even from the president and lacked any certainty she was doing the right thing. She couldn’t feel this many feelings at once and survive.
“We can’t do this here,” she croaked. “We just have to get through the mission.”
Yardley’s full mouth had a way of getting so small, it nearly disappeared. “Absolutely, that is the way to go if you’d like to die in the field. Stuff your feelings down, ignore your instincts, don’t—super duperdon’t—deal with your shit, and watch it get both of us killed.”
“Jesus Christ, Yardley.”
“Well.” She put her hands on her hips. “How’s this? You said back at Langley that you don’t know how to talk to me, that maybe you never did, and then we’re going Mach 5 and you’re telling me things you never told me in three years together, even when you could have. So here’s a truth I never told you, KC. I didn’t know a nerdy woman in a Patagonia fleece who’s a WordPress jockey, gamer, and dreamed of illustrating forMagic: The Gathering. Maybe that’s your cover, but closer to the real truth—even more the truth than the one where you’re a spy—is a woman who forgets to eat, sits in front of her computer all day long, and runs for miles and miles and miles until she collapses into bedwithout talking about any feelings she has at all. That is the KC Nolan I know.”
KC gripped her elbows, hard, and swallowed. “You’re not being fair.”
“No. I’m not! But it doesn’t make anything I said less true. In fact, it makes it more true. I’m certain the agency has been waiting to see if you’d ever demand something. That’s the only way you get out of the basement. I’ve been waiting for you to demand something. I’ve been waiting for you to demandme.”
KC had never figured out what to do when she got punched besides punch back harder. “Let’s talk about that, Yardley. How exactly was I supposed to demand your attention when I couldn’t even get you to answer a text until the end of the business day? It got so that every time I heard the squeak of that one wheel on your carry-on bag, I felt sick. And you know what? I don’t even think it was ever just about the agency! When I had you, I didn’t really have you. You always want to get together with friends, go to the bookstore, there’s something you read about we need to see at the Smithsonian, you’re shopping for a contractor to redo our bedroom. It’s like a simple conversation with me isn’t enough!”
“Is that what you think?” Yardley put her hand over her chest, got up, and sat down hard on the chair next to KC’s. She started shaking her head. “That’s not it, it’s not. I’ve had so much I want to… that I justwant. For us. I wanted you to design a monogram of our initials so we can decorate every room in the house with it. I dreamed I’d take you to a Whitmer family reunion, which is an experience no one should have, they are on the Gulf Coast in high summer and they always reserve blocks of rooms in hotels known for their cockroaches. If anything wasn’t enough, it wasus. I have been obsessed with work, I have, because I didn’t thinkthere was anything else I hadpermissionto be obsessed with. I’ve been hurting.Yearning, KC.”
That was when she had to turn away, her hands gripping the edge of the table, because she couldn’t think of anything to say in response.
She’d thought she knew why Yardley smiled when they caught each other’s attention at the picnic. Why they’d gone home together. Why their bodies fit against each other so perfectly, why kissing Yardley felt so right that KC had been brave enough, finally, after Yardley invited her to North Carolina to meet her whole family, to ask her to move in.
She’d thought theyfit. She’d thought they were fated. That it was right. They were made for each other.
She’d honestly believed that if she could just tell Yardley the truth about everything, it would fix what was wrong, and they could have that feeling back from their very first hours together, before KC started to lie and fucked it all up.
“Eleven hundred ninety-nine days,” Yardley said into the silence.
KC made herself turn to look at Yardley. Her eyes were tired. “What?”
“Eleven hundred ninety-nine days. I went to that wedding. At the Ritz-Carlton.” She glanced at KC. “The bride said how many days it had been since she met the groom, how it was the only number that mattered. It’s been eleven hundred ninety-nine days since I met you. I thought I’d do anything for another eleven hundred ninety-nine. For all of them. But I never could figure out if it was what you wanted, KC. If what you ever wanted was me.”
Eleven hundred ninety-nine days. That was how long she’d had with Yardley. That was as long as she’d ever have her. Puttinga number to it made KC feel unruly, smothered by a fate that was choking the breath out of her while she kicked and screamed in a futile struggle. “I was going to fix it,” she said bitterly.
“Excuse me, ma’am, what?” Yardley crossed her arms.
“I was going to fix it! I needed to get through Maple Leaf and then resign, or get reassigned to something completely unclassified, because I wanted things, too! Maybe not a monogram in every room, and the reunion sounds awful, but everything else. I did what Icoulddo. I asked you to move in, even though that was the worst idea and didn’t change anything, and the agency hated it, obviously.”
“That was the worst idea.” Yardley nodded, her jaw tight. “The worst idea. The watch and that key and the speech at my mama’s house? Theworstidea.”
“That’s not what I meant! I meant because of this.” KC whipped her hand back and forth between them, then around the apartment. “The spy thing! Of course I wanted to move in with you, it’s just that it made everything more complicated.”
“Complicated?” Yardley lifted up her chin. This meant KC was in danger, but she didn’t care. She didn’t have Yardley. She was still embroiled in the middle of Maple Leaf and could be tossed into one of the CIA’s dark holes anytime with no one to talk to but an interrogator named Bradley who had no emotional regulation. What did she have left to care about?
