Evenes Air Station, Norway
Gramercy was on a video call with the president of the United States.
The comm swallowed his voice into silence, so KC could hear nothing of the conversation. They were in the basement of a Norwegian military installation. She and Yardley and Kris had arrived via helicopter shortly after noon.
She didn’t know where Gramercy had been when she spoke to him on the comm this morning, but it definitely wasn’t Virginia. Possibly he’d already been here. Evenes was the only military installation in Northern Europe with the capacity and resources to plan and equip tonight’s mission. It also had the advantage of being far enough from Stockholm to keep them dark from whoever might be looking for her, or Kris, or her and Kris, for a few hours.
KC caught sight of Yardley entering the room through a sliding door that KC hadn’t been permitted to use. This was her chance.
“Yardley.” KC touched her elbow after Yardley had given a tech a file. “A minute?”
Yardley looked around the room. “You wanted me to run you through how to use the specialized comm set for tonight?”
“No.” KC was confused. “I helped make the comm set we’re using tonight two years ago. I wanted to ask—”
Yardley stopped her by telling her to shut her mouth with lasers shooting from her eyes. “I know you wanted me to walk you through it someplace quiet.” Yardley widened her eyes so she could speak to KC telepathically.We can’t talk here, dumbass.
There were at least ten agents in the room, most of them tech, quietly working at different stations. Having participated in many ops from where they were sitting, KC couldn’t fail to appreciate the vast reach of international intelligence behind her own bank of monitors.
Or what terrible, incorrigible gossips techs were.
“Right.” She sighed. “Let’s go someplace so you can teach me how to use the comm set I helped redesign.”
“I forget about your ego,” Yardley said as she started walking toward a door behind the monitor bank where Gramercy was taking his call. “Until it rears up like one of those tiny but lethally venomous snakes.” They walked to a vestibule that led out to the airfield. “I have four minutes before one of these very humorless, very tight Norwegian intelligence officers decides I’ve gone rogue. You’d think the brisk weather and relative peace would infuse a certain amount of cheer, but they’ve always been like this. I think it’s the lack of sunlight.”
KC made herself focus. Yardley, in this moment, was so veryYardley. Funny, with prissy complaints, radiating intelligence with a disarmingly femme affect. This kind of woman was very much, generally, KC’s type. She was helpless to such a woman, and never more so than when she met Yardley, who epitomized the type and had long legs, besides. It was all KC could do not tofall into their old, delicious pattern, where KC teased and feigned grumpiness so Yardley would flirt her out of her grump, and then they would both enjoy the resulting canoodling.
She missed her so much. God. She hadn’t spent this much time with Yardley in months. Longer. But they weren’t on vacation, and Yardley wasn’thers, and even if she might kiss KC back if KC made a move, it would be out of habit, not because of… anything else.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Yardley said. “I definitely don’t have time for that.”
KC’s laugh sounded shaky. “I just wanted an update on Kris. On the micro drive.”
“You’re not gonna love it. I don’t love it. Flynn’s in custody, of course, but the kind of luxury custody reserved for people the agency wants to keep for itself. However, she’s threatening to notify The Hague because they won’t let her contact her boyfriend. I insisted it be Atlas who interrogate her, one, because that’s their thing—they once interrogated the leader of a bloody coup while in a tank and stopped a war—and two, because I have very few options for sympathetic operatives. I haven’t been debriefed since, but I’ve gathered Flynn immediately gave everything up that she will ever be willing to give up.”
Yardley gave KC a significant look.I have made myself clear about what you are permitted to give up, which is nothing whatsoever.That’s what her look meant.
KC had to steel herself to keep from taking a few steps back in an instinctive bid to escape thinking about what Yardley had said to her as they were leaving the safe house. She hadn’t felt a feeling that passionate from Yardley in a long time, if ever, andshe didn’t know what it meant. If it was about the mission, or about her, or them. Or something altruistic related to Yardley’s professional trust in her.
There were dozens of ways it made KC uncomfortable. Not even her relief in knowing the black op was temporarily protected helped alleviate the churning worry and guilt.
“The drive?” she asked.
“I told Flynn to hand it off, and she did. I couldn’t work out a reason to hold on to it now that I’m the mission lead and I have the agency’s resources at my fingertips. My recommendation, and Flynn’s, as well as yours—which I told them—was that they take it right out to the airfield and rocket it into the sun.”
KC nodded in adamant agreement. “Destruction is the ethical choice.”
“However, this is the agency, so—”
“—they want their shiny new toy. Sure.” KC looked at the overcast sky. The agency’s behavior didn’t surprise her, but she did hate it.
“And Flynn made it clear to them that the driveisthe device. As soon as it’s plugged in, it’s a lit fuse, and it won’t stop until it runs out of fuel, at which point it’s burned up and useless to everybody.”
“But what if theywantto light the fuse?” KC sighed. “I don’t love these moments where your own side is being as big of an asshat as the alleged enemy.”
“Mm-hmm. Of course, we have the maker, so it’s actually worse, because even if we do light the fuse, we also own the factory.”
KC’s blood ran cold. “You’re certain she’s safe? Flynn.”
