“We just found out we both work for the agency.” Yardley heard the caution in KC’s voice as she confessed this to Kris. “After being together three years, the last one after she moved in with me. But, like she said, we broke up. Weeks ago. And again yesterday.”
“Oh, I’ve been there, I have,” Kris said. “Though your situation is a bit like Mrs. and Mrs. Spy. Well, don’t stop now, I’ll be needing the whole tale. I already know your secret names. Heard you calling her Yardley from the corridor.”
Yardley retrieved a chair from next to the wardrobe and sat down with the two women.
“Can I have a cup of tea, too?” KC asked.
It was a bold question. One of Yardley’s little love bids had always been bringing a drink or a tea to KC. Had KC asked it out of habit or to test her feelings?
Clearly, she was going to spend this whole mission perseverating on everything non-mission-related that KC did like she was a seventh grader nursing a crush on her lab partner.
“Chamomile?” she asked.
“Please.”
KC turned back to Flynn.
Yardley almost missed the tell—one long second of meaningful eye contact shared between Flynn and KC, after which the tension in KC’s shoulders eased by a degree.
Whatever secret KC was hiding, Flynn had just taken up part of its burden.
Wow. She hadn’t reckoned that KC would send her for the tea in order to telegraph a message to Flynn unobserved. Project Maple Leaf was finally getting interesting.
And very dangerous for her heart.
“I don’t think we have the time it would take to get into Yardley and my story right now, unfortunately. Or fortunately?” She smiled. “I decrypted the data on the USB in your hotel safe, which led us to Mirabel. But we need to hear the story from your perspective.”
Flynn blew out an exhale. “You know I was near yanked out of my office in Dublin.”
“When was this?”
“End of August, the twenty-sixth. You lot turn up, your mister suit-and-tie, who told me that I had to go with him or be arrested and detained by the U.S. government for my role in an act of terrorism from our Daisy Duke days. He had an arrest warrant and an ID, the kind in a little black leather case.”
KC didn’t react. Yardley, now desperate to hear the rest of this story, was not about to interrupt.
“I wasn’t permitted to go home,” Kris said. “He took me in a car to an airfield. All of my personal belongings were confiscated in a hangar except for what I’d grabbed and shoved into my bra before he made me leave my office. Mirabel was there, too.”
“Who was the agent?” KC leaned forward. Likewise, Flynnhad put all of her attention on KC. They were friends again. Friends trying to figure something out.
“Don’t I wish I knew? Can’t tell the men in black apart, and he only flashed that ID at me for a second. In any event, I didn’t see him again after Mirabel took me to that hotel and told me I had to help him with a job or they’d go after my Declan. So of course I start questioning if it’s really the CIA who’s got me. You lot don’t put Irish nationals in a Canadian hotel, do you, and threaten to hurt the people we love?”
“No,” KC said.
“It depends,” Yardley murmured.
KC and Kris looked toward the kitchenette.
“Sorry. Don’t mind me. But in this case, no, I don’t think it’s the CIA.” Not because the agency had scruples, but because Flynn had been picked up so soon after the demonstration in Toronto. Even the Sisters hadn’t known much yet, and what they knew, they weren’t sharing. The CIA hadn’t had enough intel to act on. If they had, Yardley would’ve been briefed. Probably.
“What did Mirabel want you to do for him?” KC asked.
The kettle clicked off, and Yardley let her attention split as she poured hot water and stirred honey into the warm mug on the countertop. Part of her listened to what quickly became a mind-numbingly technical conversation between Flynn and KC, but the part that made her the Unicorn—that kept her alive and two steps ahead—was more interested in the big picture.
Someone claiming to be CIA had come for Kris Flynn right after the weapon’s demonstration in Toronto, taking her into custody ostensibly for the same long-ago hack into the EPA that brought KC into the agency. According to the story Flynn was telling KC, she’d escaped her kidnappers, been recaptured, andescaped again before finding her way to this CIA safe house. Flynn did verify that she’d been the one who sent the SOS message the CIA intercepted—via a smart thermostat, not a toaster oven—but she’d been put on a plane shortly thereafter, and nothing came of it.
There was no reason to assume Flynn hadn’t been followed here, or sent by Mirabel or another actor close to the device. No reason to take her story at face value.
Nonetheless, Yardley’s instinct was to believe her.
