“I haven’t been there in years.” Gramercy smiled. “I wonder if they still have the cookies that look like tiny peaches.”
“Who’s there?” Atlas asked.
“Nobody from the agency, first and foremost. People who will know me. Even better, Kris has a lot of friends.”
“KC?” Yardley asked.
“Yeah?”
“You can get this moving without Patel, right?”
“Oh. Sure.” She smoothed her hand over the steering wheel and gave it a pat.
Yardley nodded. “Once we’re at the residence, then, you’re our lookout and getaway car. Patel, you’ll cover me and Atlas into the residence. If Declan’s as savvy as you think he is, I have an idea where he might have found cover for Kris. Tech and Gramercy, stay here to cover KC.”
Yardley paused a moment, savoring the glow of satisfaction that often came over her when a mission went bad as a minnow bucket left in the sun, but she nonetheless knew it was going to be okay. “And by the way. Well done, everyone.”
The laughter lasted a long time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hålet, Eskilstuna, Sweden
KC dumped the Stryker behind the residence, giving its metal side a grateful pat before she traded it for the SUV the ambassador provided.
When Yardley returned with Declan and Kris, covered by Patel, she reported that after receiving Dr. Brown’s burn notice, the remaining team had disassembled the command center and were en route to Evenes.
The information they got from the marines and agents at the residence painted a picture of highly organized evacuation as soon as it went dark, including the removal of evidence from the ballroom that served as a headquarters. Everyone was safe, but Flynn’s micro drive—under guard and in a safe—had not been there when the agent assigned to retrieve it in an evacuation scenario went to find it.
The guard hadn’t been there, either. He couldn’t be accounted for at all.
Plan B it was. The Hole.
Eskilstuna, a small city of sixty thousand people, remained without electricity, but KC was enormously relieved to be right that software incompatibilities and self-isolating systems had kept the power outage from spreading much farther afield. Though thecollapse of a major node of the internet had borked a variety of essential services—from banking to air traffic control and cell service—all signs indicated it would be a temporary problem.
Small mercies.
Of course, the Hole had power. Its proprietors, the self-named Batwing and her anarchist aromantic life partner, Zinnia, had banked enough juice in the hidden back rooms of the internet café they ran as a cover to keep the server room running for years, probably, and a combination of fiberglass privacy curtains, tight security, and a well-fortified door meant no one would ever know what was happening there unless Batwing and Zinnia wanted them to.
KC came into the main lounge, where Atlas, Gramercy, and Yardley had just finished debriefing in private on a secure link with the president, the director, and several leaders of the free world. She sat down in a deep leather sofa and gave herself a moment to enjoy the delicious sensations of fleece sweats and a soft cushion.
She might as well be comfortable when she spilled her guts all over the floor.
“Lights should be on momentarily,” Gramercy said. “How’s Flynn?”
“Batwing has her set up, and she’s well into programming the countermeasure.”
As soon as they hit the Hole, KC had officially secured Flynn as her asset, and the two of them began brainstorming how to construct a Hail Mary against the device stolen from the ambassador’s residence. Kris thought she could do it, but there were a few steps in the middle. Like figuring out where Dr. Brown was headed and generally what his plan was.
KC hoped everything they were trying to accomplish against the clock would turn out to be possible. But even if it wasn’t, and despite what she’d promised Yardley, she couldn’t keep her part in this mess a secret any longer.
Standing face to face with Dr. Brown in front of the safe at Mirabel’s compound, it had been crystal clear to KC that the two of them were not on the same team.
He’d made his choices. So had she.
She scraped her thumbnail over the thin skin beside her thumb. “Gramercy. Atlas. I need to tell you something.” She waited until they’d both looked up from the pile of papers spread over a coffee table. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to file a report or what. I can do that, I guess. But I need you to know that I made it. The device. I made the device.”
She forced herself to keep her eyes on Gramercy, replaying the memory of his crooked smile on a loop to help her remember that he liked her.
