She hadtoldthem not to do that.
Yardley rose to her feet inside the small van. “I’m afraid our orders have been compromised. Impossible to know how far up the chain the breach goes. Can’t risk following directives.” This was a blatant lie, but Atlas let out an exhale that sounded distinctly like relief. “My circle of trust is now the people in this van and Agent Nolan. Soldier, get out of the driver’s seat.”
“Ma’am.” He looked at her desperately.
“I will court-martial you right back to the New Jersey suburb that hatched you. Get up.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He got up and moved to the passenger’s seat.
She grabbed her laptop and started the ignition, looking back over her shoulder at Gramercy. “Get cover on us.”
He gave her a look, one beat longer than necessary, just long enough for Yardley to see his gratitude. He’d beenhopingshe’d change the plan.
Yardley was so thankful in this moment when KC’s life was in her hands to have trusted the right people that she made a small prayer promising she would start going to St. Anne’s Episcopalian every Sunday she could. She put the laptop on the dashboard while she peeled out to race down the road through the trees, her eyes burning with her desire to see the lights of Mirabel’s circular drive, willing it closer. She could hear a helicopter above, no idea whose.
A line of gunfire spit up gravel alongside the van.
Not their helicopter, then.
She glanced at the screen and watched KC take a step toward Dr. Brown. “I know the asset.”
“Flynn?” he said. “Who doesn’t?”
“I mean, we’ve gotten reacquainted.”
KC must be close to him, because Dr. Brown’s face filled the screen of the laptop, which was why Yardley was able to see his paternalistic affect drop and shift to interest. “What do you have in mind?”
He pulled out a gun, which KC looked at long enough for Yardley to identify it as a SIG Sauer P229. His duty weapon.
“Insurance,” he explained to KC. “You have to understand that what you’re implying about your close relationship with Flynn throws my trust that you’re with Maple Leaf into question.”
KC reached down and, to Yardley’s absolute horror, grabbed the muzzle of the gun. It swept up in her field of vision as KC guided Dr. Brown to aim at her head. “I trust you even if you can’t trust me.”
Then KC turned around, her back to Dr. Brown, and pushed the computer panel back into view. She pulled out the drive where he wouldn’t be able to see it before looking over her shoulder at Dr. Brown. “Let me close this up, and we’ll get this party started. Like I said, I know Kris. She’s my asset now. I’m privy to a few tricks no one else is.”
Dr. Brown started to say something, but just as the van rounded the last curve and Yardley spotted the lights pouring from the house—guards everywhere, obvious chaos growing among the most dangerous guests in the world—she watched KC connect the micro drive to the computer panel.
“Fuck,” Atlas said as another burst of gunfire from above grazed the road next to them. “I am over this.”
The house went black.
Then the outdoor lights.
Then the lights over the water across the channel.
Every feed in the van blinked off at the same moment Yardley’s comm link to the carriage house dropped out, and all she could hear was the helicopter, the van’s engine, muffled shouts, and occasional gunfire from Mirabel’s property.
“She deployed the cyberweapon,” Gramercy said, somewhat unnecessarily.
But Yardley’s vision had narrowed down. She turned off the van’s headlights and barreled over the driveway, around the house over landscaped beds, until she spotted the shape of the carriage house. Then she hit the brakes, flung the door open, and hurtled toward the entrance.
She stumble-ran over the lawn, almost tripping over the drone downed in the grass six feet from the sliders. The interior of the carriage house bedroom was pitch black, then lit suddenly with the piercing horror of a muzzle flash when Dr. Brown’s service weapon discharged.
“KC!”
She sprinted through the dark, aiming for where the computer panel should be, praying to every deity she’d ever heard about that she wasn’t about to discover her girlfriend’s lifeless body, when her jeans were snatched from behind and she was shoved back toward the door she’d come in.
“Get down!” KC hissed against her face.
