Yardley answered with a watery laugh, visualizing the assembled agents in the ballroom. “No. It’s—”
A door opened suddenly at the far end of the hall, and Yardley and the ambassador turned to see who had come in.
KC.
The light from the bulletproof clerestory windows picked up every single shade of her improbable hair, chestnut against her neck, bright as a copper kettle where the sun had bleached it, rich mahogany where Yardley had watched her raking her hands through it during the briefing, leaving it in untidy wisps and curls. Her heavy black jump boots, issued with her flight suit, moved as silently over the glossy floor as the feet of a feline creature who lived in the deepest part of the forest.
Dramatic, yes.
But no lies detected.
“Ah,” Amanda said with a laugh. “I see.”
Yardley sighed helplessly.
“Good luck,” the ambassador said. “There isn’t a camera on the entrance to the linen storage room on the east side of the ballroom.”And with that helpful bit of intel, she disappeared behind the door she’d emerged from.
Before Yardley had a chance to take a deep breath, KC spotted her.
She watched KC pull her shoulders back infinitesimally. To Yardley’s credit, she didn’t run down the hallway and tackle her to the ground. She did sit up straight and cross her legs and stick her bosom out. Once KC started walking toward her, Yardley threw in a hair toss. She was going to need every bit of what she’d learned from cotillion class, her sorority sisters in Chapel Hill, and at her mama’s knee.
“Ma’am,” KC said when she’d stopped in front of her, recognizing Yardley’s superior status in a clipped, neutral voice.
Oh, so it was going to be like that.
“Nolan,” Yardley returned, rising to her feet. “I trust you had a good flight.”
“Uneventful. What service should I report to?”
With that question, Yardley picked up on what KC was trying to hide, which was her excitement. Her hyperfocus. Yardley knew that feeling of arranging every bit of intelligence from a good briefing into multiple configurations, like it was a puzzle, in order to look for possibilities, options, opportunities—or maybemissedopportunities.
“You should report to me.”
That was fun to say, but she should probably be clear.
“We should have a preamble to official report,” she said.
KC’s brow furrowed. “A preamble? Is there a pre-report step?”
Yardley shook her head. “What I mean is, can we talk?”
“Talk?”
Yardley glanced down at her gold watch. They had time. KCalready knew more about the schematic of Mirabel’s estate than the rest of the officers in the briefing put together.
She looked up and realized KC had noticed the watch, which Yardley had strongly implied she’d left at home. Her heart skipped a beat.
She really didn’t want to give back this watch.
“KC.” Yardley ignored how her thigh muscles went weak and her vision had zeroed in on KC’s mouth, her breathing, and every bit of skin visible on a fully dressed woman in a coat.
“Ma’am?” That question was accompanied by the tiniest quirk at the corner of KC’s lips.
“Follow me.” Having crammed all the haughtiness she could manage into that command, Yardley began walking down the hallway. She couldn’t quite pull it off and had to check that KC was following her. Twice. But she was, so it had worked. Yardley took a small passage she’d noticed earlier, probably for caterers and service people, and followed it until she spotted a brass handle fitted into a door that was hidden in the wall. “In here.”
She opened the door. A light automatically clicked on, harsh in the small room lined with shelves stacked with dozens of folded white linens.
KC let the door shut behind her. Yardley reached over and turned the lock, then smoothed her hands down the front of her thighs, nervous in a way she was not accustomed to. She’d walked into some of the diciest possible situations in the world, but she had never been nervous. The stakes had never promised so much and had so much power to take everything away.
