And so she smiled at Yardley’s joke, and watched as Yardley was surprised by the congenial olive branch. KC put in the earpiece and only reported what Yardley had told her to, ignoringthe rest of the rapid-fire questions Gramercy put to her. Then she disconnected and set the comm on the mattress.
Yardley had put a hot mug of tea in front of Kris and deposited the crushed box of pastries on the table. She carried over a short stack of plates to serve them on.
“Even if you don’t want to eat these”—Yardley plucked a plastic Hello Kitty case from the floor by its shoulder strap—“I do have something you like.”
She set the case on the table and opened it to reveal an extremely sophisticated bit of machinery that KC had, in fact, more than once yearned to get her hands on if the agency would ever let a tech have anything like it.
They wouldn’t, lest a tech take over the agency.
“I got this from a Ukrainian gentleman who I played cribbage with on a train.” She stacked a signal booster and comm set on the table. “I thought if we were going to hit Mirabel’s place, you might need a higher caliber of toys to play with. I’m certain, given this morning’s events, there’s plenty of chatter among people like you two who know where to find it. It would be helpful if we had schematics of Mirabel’s properties and holdings, and if we could get intel on whether he’ll stay here now that Flynn’s given him the slip.”
Yardley pushed the pastry box in Kris’s direction. “Don’t skip meals. We’ll have long days before there’s even a minute to rest. The bakery these are from is unreal. It’s run by a Nigerian couple who trained in Paris, and their semla buns are made with a sweet-potato dough.”
Her voice had dropped into the hospitable and soothing cadence of her mother’s. If KC hadn’t seen it for herself, she wouldhave no way of knowing that moments ago Yardley had dropped an agent and stepped on her back.
She thought about the deliberate stress she’d been put under in agency training—learning to lose a tail and failing repeatedly, learning to fight, to secure an asset, and most of all, to separate her own interest from the nation’s.
Yardley seemed quite literally born to the trade.
With a deep, centering breath, Kris untied the string on the pastry box and pulled out a bun overfilled with custard. She took a big bite. Her hands shook.
“How’s baby?” Yardley asked softly. “I’m sorry we didn’t have more notice and you were frightened.”
“Kicking away.” When Kris smiled, her face looked a lot clearer. “I don’t know where I stand with you lot, but I’d like to take a crack at pinning down those schematics you’re interested in. I understand that my predicament means that I am more or less the CIA’s lapdog at this time, but the sooner the other drive’s in your hands, the quicker I have a chance to get home to start forgetting this ever happened.”
“Yes,” Yardley said. “Do that. We should have about twenty minutes before we’ll hear where to meet a driver.”
“Give me a second.” KC retrieved a small plastic case from the box that had been in the mattress. “I need to reconfigure this router so we can plan without the agency seeing what we’re doing before we want them to.”
“Sure,” Yardley said. “We’ll get what we need unless we’re overridden and they decide to go with a raid.”
Kris shook her head. “If Mirabel suspects a raid, he’ll deploy the device in order to create chaos.”
A few quiet minutes passed. Kris was on her second pastry and had already jumped onto the signal KC set up, efficiently pulling packets of information from different civic and backroom sites, when she looked at Yardley with her eyes wide. “Asale. Bloody, feckin’ arse! Mirabel’s decided he’s going to put the weapon up for auction.”
Motherfucker.KC pulled her chair next to Kris’s. “He’s finished with subtlety. He’s been spraying this invitation around on the dark web like it’s an Evite to a church fish fry.”
Yardley came over to stand behind them. “That’s the guest list?” She pointed at a column of names that had just unscrambled itself on the screen in front of her.
“Looks like it.” Kris downloaded the list.
Yardley whistled. “I can’t go in. There’s not going to be a soul in that room I haven’t tangoed with, and half of them probably have a standing order to slip plutonium into my teacup the next time we cross paths. The operative has to be KC.”
KC’s stomach flipped over.
Not in a bad way.
She was starting to feel… better. Less like a hunted animal, more like a predator. Kicking ass side by side with Yardley had gotten her blood moving. Could be it was just the adrenaline making everything feel sharp and clear and a little bit easier, but KC didn’t think so.
She thought it might be that she’d come up against a bad thing and, for the first time in a long time, made a different decision.
“On the other hand”—Yardley was still studying the intel Kris was putting up—“spies change sides. I know how to disappear in a room. There’s at least ten rivalries on that list I could exploit in an act of diversion.”
But she turned and looked at KC with a question in her eyes.
“I think it should be me.” This was an auction for tech, so KC had a lot of experience with what would be important in this sale. And as soon as Maple Leaf was over, and Dr. Brown did what he needed to do to sweep up, she didn’t want to be in a basement anymore, where her circle was so small there was no hope of collaboration or sharing the very real burdens of projects and secrets.
She was going to need something like the distraction of field work to heal after she and Yardley said good-bye.
