“What a great corker of a house,” Kris Flynn said in KC’s ear. “I guess arms dealing isn’t only about the bragging rights. There’s a fair bit of coin in it, too.”
KC and Yardley were presently crammed alongside Gramercy, Atlas, and three techs into the dark, airless interior of a twelve-foot-by-eight-foot POD container. It sat in the driveway of the home across the street from Dr. Brown’s “headquarters,” which turned out to be—as predicted—his two-and-a-half-million-dollar Leesburg pied-à-terre.
Kris Flynn’s voice was being beamed to KC from the agency’s actual headquarters, where she and Declan were safely ensconced and ready to help out in any way possible with the deployment of the countermeasure Kris had coded.
It was a clever bit of programming. Brilliant, actually. KC never would’ve come up with the solution Kris had found to shut down and annihilate her own invention, but Kris had cheerfully pointed out that she’d always been her own worst enemy, so it made sense that she’d be best equipped to identify and exploit the device’s weaknesses.
The helpful Leesburg Realtor had been willing to install a SOLD sign at the end of the drive across from Dr. Brown’s and back it up with a fake listing, which provided the cover necessary for them to drop the POD. It was the same Pack-On-Demand service container that currently sat at the end of the drive of KC’s house in Reston.
Full circle.
You know your name will be in the history books, Gramercy had told her with a smile after the briefing with the president.I can see that you don’t know, which is why I wanted to say. And why I wanted to also say that I’m not at all surprised.
It was nice to have a handler who believed in her.
KC switched her channel to audio sourced from inside the house, silencing any incoming chatter.
Dr. Brown had music playing, a country-western artist he’d once told her his dad loved. She could hear him walking across the wood floors, and she turned on the visual feed on her monitors. Yardley and Atlas were looking at the same feed. Gramercy sat in front of a different display that connected him to Homeland Security and the military.
The POD was quiet as they watched Dr. Brown enter the kitchen. He started a coffee maker and sat down on one of the leather stools at the island counter, pulling his phone from the holster he wore on his belt. The resolution from the feed was so sharp, they had all noted the shape of the micro drive bulging in his left trouser pocket. The computer where he was most likely to connect the drive was in his study.
“It’s Monday night,” she said, mostly to herself. “Nine o’clock. That means it’s six in Flagstaff.”
Yardley spun on her stool to look at KC. “Catch us up, Tabasco.”
KC watched Dr. Brown swipe, tap, and then tap again. She watched his face break out in a smile and heard him say, “Hello, Sunshine.”
“He’s calling his daughter. He calls her every Monday night while she’s making dinner.”
“You want to pull in the audio?”
“No. This is it.” She looked at him, the feed in perfect high definition. His mouth was smiling, but what KC bet no one else could see was that his eyes were sad, and when she watched him reach up and rub the bridge of his nose, laughing at somethinghis daughter said, she turned to Yardley. “He’ll deploy after he gets off the phone.”
“Copy. Give me your go when you’re ready.”
No one asked KC why she thought so or if she was sure. The confidence loosened her muscles and quieted her thoughts to the task at hand. “I’ll knock when he hangs up. I’m on the move.” She hopped down from the back of the pod.
“Copy. Tabasco on the move. Cover in position.”
It was a quiet night, the November air a little brisk as she ambled across the street.
The night she’d met Dr. Brown, when he showed up at her dorm room door, he took her to a wood-paneled seafood restaurant in Boston with a view of the harbor. At least three-quarters of what was on the menu she’d never tasted in her life. The prices ran to the triple digits.
That was where he’d threatened her with arrest and then bought her seventy-dollar pancakes and told her what she was going to do.
It was breathtaking to compare that to what she’d learned from Yardley in a cheap Swedish apartment and a banquet hall in London—with how many people they’d worked with, how many were their friends, and how much more interested she was in her own life than she’d ever been before.
KC walked up the driveway to the small porch over the grand front door.
“He’s hung up his phone call,” Yardley said. “The security system notified him of your arrival, and he checked the cameras on his phone. He’s on his way to you.”
KC knocked anyway. He opened the door before she had put down her arm.
“So you really came.” Dr. Brown smiled. It looked like a real smile to KC, despite his red-rimmed eyes.
“I’d hoped you would take the chance on me in Lidingö,” she said. “It would have been a lot easier. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to surface long enough to be here and do this.”
KC and the rest of the team had gone around and around about this approach. She was the only one who wasn’t surprised when they got confirmation from Canadian intelligence officer Jack Tremblay that Dr. Brown remained certain KC was on his side.
