She went a little pale. Yardley might not have noticed if it weren’t for the fact that it made her freckles stand out in stark relief against her skin. She looked ten years younger.
This man had known her then. Not ten years ago, but nearly twenty, when KC was a hot-tempered gifted kid and a friend to his daughter, curled up on his furniture or sitting with her arms around her knees on the carpeted floor, memorizing the moves of an MMA fighter.
A girl whose own father was never home.
“You mean Cade,” KC said.
Miller nodded.
KC shook her head. She sounded more sad than angry when she said, “No. He’s not. I promise you he is not. You know something about my situation growing up, so I’m going to offer you an insight. When my dad decided I wasbetter offwith my grandma while he was gone for work for weeks at a time, he might have thought it was my grandma who was parenting. She was, best she could. That’s true. But what he didn’t realize is that he was parenting me, too. He didn’t explain why he had to be gone. He didn’t reassure me that he loved me. His parenting taught me that I was on my own, and always would be, and even deserved to be. That is a lonely lesson for a kid to learn.”
Miller cleared his throat. “Not everyone is equipped for it. I’m the type, right or wrong, better suited to this kind of work.”
“Hardly working, though, are you?” Julia said mildly.
Staring at Miller, KC scraped her fingernail over the tender spot beneath her thumb. Abruptly, she stood and crossed to the chair where Miller was restrained. “I’ve heard that before,” she said to Miller. “‘Not everyone is equipped for every role.’ ‘You’re well-suited to this type of work.’” The voice she used when she repeated Miller’s phrases was, unmistakably, Dr. Brown’s. She squatted down in front of Miller, her dress sparkling, her mouth grim. “You can make excuses,” KC said solemnly. “But I promise you, your kids are not better off, regardless of how you feel, because the thing you need to consider is that the beginning and end of howtheyfeel is notyourfeelings about them.”
KC didn’t look away. Miller, to his credit, didn’t, either.
“It hurts,” KC said. Her hand was on the arm of Miller’s chair.“Ithurtsto be abandoned. You hurt them. That is a fact. It’s devastating when someone who’s supposed to love you by default, who’s supposed to be yours to guide you and teach you and cheer you on, can’t be bothered. Because who are you then? What are you worth?”
Yardley had to close her eyes. She had to. Just for a moment, just until the surge of her breath-stealing revelation settled down.
She’d wanted to be a backstop against any harm coming to KC. From the moment they met, Yardley had tried to make her body, her life, into a bulwark against the hurt that was doled out so recklessly by the people in power—mostly, in all honesty, by the men, the Dr. Browns and David Millers of the world—telling herself the whole time that her decision to risk herself was what kept good people safe.
But seeing her incandescent, combustible KC confront one of those men with all the steely resolve and insight she’d earned for herself by walking through fire, Yardley knew she couldn’t put herself between this woman and the world. It wasn’t her job to make her body a shield against the world’s danger. She couldn’t love KC Nolan holding her breath, hoping nothing bad ever happened.
Her job was to honor what KC had made out of a lifetime of hurt. Even if KC never found a way to fix the pain her daddy, her mama, and her grandparents had visited on her by simply not showing up,Yardleycould learn and do better, because a good part of loving this woman would be about showing up. Trying. Finding a hundred, a thousand different ways to remind KC that she wasn’t going anywhere.
When Yardley opened her eyes, KC was watching her.
Yardley put her fingertip on her own sternum. She looked into KC’s eyes and mouthed,I love you.
KC smiled.I know, she mouthed back.
She walked a few paces away from Miller, then returned. When she directed her attention to him again, he flinched. “Every decision you’ve made for a very long time,” KC said, “has been about what you are afraid of. It’s been about isolating and protecting yourself from what you know you actually want. You don’t have to feel bad about that, because a lot of us do that. I’ve done that. But eventually we have totry. We have to risk.”
Yardley watched him flush with hectic color and have to master himself as he looked out one of the dark squares of wavy glass fitted in the leaded windows.
KC sat back down. She leaned forward, her forearms stacked and balanced on her crossed legs. Her thinking pose.
Yardley crossed the room to stand next to the arm of Miller’s chair. “What we need to know, in what you can imagine is an urgent manner, is where Dr. Brown is now.” She offered this as a request softened with her native accent and relaxed posture. “It’s so critical, and it would offer the kind of help that might help the agency understand better the… liberties you’ve taken with your cover.”
“I’m not privy to that,” Miller told her, his tone dropping into a more confidential register that told Yardley he liked not having to answer to KC. “It was my understanding he spent most of his time at headquarters.”
KC shook her head. “He hates Langley. Always wants to work from the field if he can, or from a covert location if he can’t.”
Miller’s brows drew together. “Not CIA headquarters,” he said. “The black op’s headquarters. In Leesburg.”
Yardley’s heart skipped a beat.
The black op’s headquarters. In Leesburg. Which the agencydid not know about.
“Leesburg, Virginia,” she clarified.
Miller still looked confused. “It was in my report. Dr. Brown told me about it so that I could let him know if anyone in the London cell seemed to be interested in dealings with the op. I never heard anyone mention it, but I passed on that I was surveilling for mention of Leesburg in my report immediately following that visit from Dr. Brown.”
“Date?” KC asked.
