Get the drive.
But when she closed her eyes, what she heard was the faint, whooshing white noise of her comm and what she liked to pretend was the sound of Yardley breathing, even though it probably wasn’t. She slowed her own breath down to match it, the same as she used to do when she wrapped her arm around Yardley’s middle and closed her eyes in their bedroom, letting the warm, breathing aliveness of the woman she loved lull her to sleep.
That kiss. That kiss in the closet that smelled like towels fresh out of the dryer, like the sheets at an expensive hotel in the District where she’d splurged on a date with Yardley last year.
The way, when KC found her mouth, Yardley had made a noise like it hurt in the best, brightest way, and her skin was so hot, everywhere, against KC’s palms, and she couldn’t get enough even as she couldn’t quite convince herself it was happening.
But it had happened, and it had done something to KC like itdid to see her mother’s gold watch on Yardley’s wrist after she’d implied she left it in Virginia. It meant she’d never taken it off except when she had to. It meant she hadn’t taken it offyet, and so there was more than just that encounter in the dark to work with. There was the conversation they’d had, halting and difficult, but real.
Trust.
Tonight, KC had decided to let the heavy fabric and loose neck of the sequined, oversized black satin T-shirt she wore tell her body how to move. The woman she was pretending to be was young and insouciant. Spoiled. Sharp. The dress was so short, KC wore black briefs and fishnets essentially as pants, but she liked the knee-high, patent leather Docs. Their platform soles changed her gait, changed her attitude, and cloaked an arsenal of tech.
No one will look too close, Yardley had said, tapping through a tablet, double-checking mission details.They’ll be insulted you’re not packing a gun.
I hate guns, KC had said, which made Yardley laugh.
So do I.
It was funny. When KC had imagined Yardley Whitmer in her role as a financial consultant, she’d pictured her gliding through airports in a silk blouse with her roller bag, distant but polite with the tedious finance bros. She’d told herself that her Snow White princess saved her fullest, most secret, weirdest self for KC and KC alone.
But the Yardley who built dioramas in the basement, who snorted at KC’s most juvenile Monty Python references and made herself caches of salty, slightly revolting snack foods in case she suddenly needed them for fuel because she burned even more calories being alive, beinga little too much, than KC did running forty miles a week—
That Yardley did not belong only to KC. That Yardley was the Unicorn.
In the ballroom, coordinating the mission, she talked fast, and she was always two steps ahead. She moved constantly, pacing, gesticulating, throwing off beams of energy. She absorbed dossiers and details, briefing documents and updates from the analysts, from tech, from Atlas and Gramercy, like they were KC telling her a story—her round chin balanced in her hand, her long legs crossed, nodding her head, taking it in.
The first time KC had kissed her, it was because Yardley asked her to, after hours at that party talking, flirting, eating, finding ways to touch KC’s hair, hand, arm, and shoulder. KC had slowly wrapped her hand around the bodice ties of Yardley’s white sundress. She’d pulled her mouth close, and through the silky cotton of those ties, like they were wicks pulling melted wax, she felt Yardley go entirely still.
She’d asked Yardley against her mouth, holding her to a wall hidden from the partygoers—the smoothest KC had probably ever been—if she still wanted the kiss, and Yardley had closed her eyes and beggedpleasein such a broken voice, KC knew that the kiss was going to lead to their first everything.
It was a lot, how it was between them. In the beginning, KC had been where Yardley could put it all.
They’d hurt each other the most by holding back, because KC was who the Unicorn came home to. KC was Yardley’s person, her respite, her soft sheets and hot mugs of coffee and long, lazy mornings in bed. Just KC. Even when she hid the truth and didn’t give Yardley everything she deserved, she’d still been the person the Unicorn chose, the person Yardley Whitmer took to meet her family, and that meant their relationship had always been real.
Real, and messed up, and imperfect, and falling apart.
But things that failed could be put back together. How many times had KC taken her own lines of painstakingly assembled code and cut them into pieces, rearranged them, rewrote them, so she could fix them and make them work?
She’d made Yardley a promise in that linen closet, and she intended to keep it.
“Confirmation from Atlas, the device is onsite.” Yardley’s voice in the comm was buttery and tart at the same time. It was the same voice she used on the phone with her mama. That made KC smile.
“Does it include confirmation the product is for auction?” Out the car’s window, she could just see the lights from Mirabel’s compound, curving along the long driveway. There were two cars in front of them and few more trailing behind. Some of the guests would be arriving by water, others landing at a private helipad a mile away on the far side of a forest preserve to be shuttled to the property by Mirabel’s staff.
“Affirmative.” Atlas’s voice came in. “This is a one-stop shop.”
“Tech is reporting at least one more RSVP.” Yardley exhaled. “No intel.”
“Copy.” KC had a sinking feeling about that RSVP, but there wasn’t any point articulating it. They’d prepared for every contingency that could be prepared for. “Sidebar. Has Absolute Tosser finished interrogating the asset’s unexpected visitor?”
Absolute Tosser was not Gramercy’s code name, but it had been enthusiastically taken up in the last hours of the mission, as Gramercy had been the one to take Declan Byrne into custody at the ambassador’s residence to determine if he posed an intelligence risk. It had made Kris pretty touchy, which wasn’t agreat combination with her current stage of pregnancy and her desperation to see Declan.
Yardley laughed. “Indeed. Our lovebirds are sequestered in monitored custody.”
“I think he’s a fine young man,” Gramercy came on. “With a lot going on at the moment.”
All of this, of course, was simply chatter. A way for KC to test if she had nerves, if she was thinking clearly, if she was focused. But she felt good, as calm as she did when she settled in around the third mile of a long run and everything smoothed out.
