CHAPTER ONE
The Ritz-Carlton, Toronto
Yardley Whitmer held her champagne flute aloft, wondering if her smile looked natural or like the grimace on a French revolutionary’s death mask.
It felt like the latter.
“But in the end, my darling Tommy, the number of guests, the number of flower arrangements—even the number of bridesmaids doesn’t matter. The only number that matters to me is three thousand five hundred and seventy-two.” The bride reached up to press a finger to the corner of her eye and give the groom a convincing, nongrimacing smile. “That’s nine years, nine months, and seventeen days,” she said. “How long I’ve had with you so far. And now, my love, the only number that matters is how many thousands of days we’ll have together next.”
Tommy leaned over and kissed his beloved, then pulled off a very tasteful clink of his crystal lowball glass against her champagne flute while the crowd of rich white Canadian guests went wild.
Yardley took a sip to rinse away the involuntary burn of tears in the back of her throat. She was the worst kind of sucker for romantic declarations. Childhood fantasies of crystal-and-taffeta weddings had trailed her into adulthood like a heartbroken ghost. Never mind that she was a lesbian, an orientation that had barred her from the ostentatious nuptials of her dreams until the Supreme Court finally came to its senses in her early twenties. By then, it didn’t matter, because Yardley was well on her way to achieving another childhood dream by becoming a case officer for the Directorate of Operations at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
In other words, a spy.
The life of a spy was incompatible with long-term romantic commitments. Yardley had known this from the outset, but with KC she’d made the mistake of letting herself get sentimental. She’d started to believe she could have a home and a woman all her own to come home to. She’d helplessly surrendered to her childhood dream by falling for a pint-sized redheaded computer nerd, and what did she have to show for it?
Six weeks of rolling over on the stiff guest-bed mattress to find the sheets cold and no KC whispering a little something in her ear, that was what.
“Security has moved off the east stairwell.” Atlas, her handler, interrupted her reverie.
“Got it,” she murmured into her champagne flute.
Sliding the long blond waves of her wig off her shoulders, Yardley subtly surveyed the ballroom. “You have entry into the suite for me?” She flicked her gaze away from an immaculately groomed man in a tuxedo whom she’d accidentally made brief eye contact with.
“Negative,” Atlas answered. “You’ll have to get in the old-fashioned way.”
The man was now strolling in her direction, smoothing both hands over his dark hair, seemingly certain of sexual conquest. She could work with that.
“Hello there.” He took a flute off a passing tray and tipped it in Yardley’s direction. “You must have been sitting in the back during the ceremony. I hadn’t noticed you until now.” There was the tiniest smear of brow gel above one of his eyebrows.
“I snuck in late.” She gave him an adorable nose wrinkle and a hint of dimple, wanting him to see her as just another moneyed, winsome blonde. “I’ve actually been dying to pop up to my room for ten minutes to freshen up before the dancing starts, but, silly me, I lost my key card.” She touched her earring to tip her camera toward the man so Atlas could get a picture.
The eyebrows drew together in a deep furrow. “Didn’t they send you the app download?”
Shoot.
“Copy that,” the voice in Yardley’s ear said. She fumbled with her clutch for her phone, buying herself a moment to listen while she tamped down a blaze of anger. The fact that this hotel’s rooms were keyed with an app ought to have been part of her briefing, but to call the preparation for this short-notice operation “scant” would be generous.
Yardley wasn’t feeling generous.
Atlas’s voice returned with a crackle of static. “Get us a device loaded with a key to any room, and tech can do the rest.”
“There it is!” Yardley sounded awestruck as she pulled out her bejeweled phone. “Oh my gosh, I’ve been traveling so much lately, I completely forgot they do the app thing for room keys here. No wonder I couldn’t find it.” She winked at the man.
“I could follow you up and show you how it works.” He knocked back the rest of his champagne, and, like an unearned promotion, another tray passed by to receive his empty just in time.
“Why don’t you save me a dance?” Yardley stepped forward and touched his lapel. “I really do need to freshen up.”
His expression went through a series of independent verifications of the likelihood her request was genuine before it smoothed out with a bland smile. “Of course.”
Atlas spoke again. “The target’s in line at the bodega, but it’s only a five-minute walk. You’ve got ten to get the job done. Fifteen, tops.”
“I’ll be back in a jiff.” She smiled, brushed against the man’s jacket as she distracted him with a quick arm squeeze, and sighted a path to the east stairwell as she slipped the phone she’d just stolen from her would-be lover into her clutch.
“Can you break the suite’s lock with the prize I got you?” she asked, safely out of earshot.
“Affirmative.” The faintest hint of feedback accompanied Atlas’s reply. These earpieces liked to kick up a fuss about being underground or deep in the interior of a vast building like the Ritz-Carlton. Presumably because the agency knew there was nothing that provided quite the same rush as the mortal fear of running a black bag operation on skimpy intelligence with no link to the outside world.
Or it could be Yardley was getting cynical. Project Maple Leaf had her overexposed.
Ten weeks ago, just as the leaves were turning red on the oak tree outside the window of the bedroom Yardley used to share with KC and there had still been a chance, however faint, of salvaging their three-year relationship, Toronto became the testing ground for a completely new kind of digital weapon. When deployed, it killed every cell tower, internet signal, and communication line in a thirty-mile radius around the city. For forty-seven minutes, the device grounded planes, imperiled hospital patients, and shut down electronic systems of every imaginable type and function, causing not a little panic.
No one took credit for the stunt, but the word on the street was that the weapon hadn’t worked as advertised. Something technical had gone wrong. Still, the promise of a digital device capable of delivering mass chaos came through loud and clear, and the agency was desperate to lock it down before it could be perfected and sold.
Yardley had spent two months chasing leads around the globe, with ever-diminishing returns. Today, her mission was to break into the suite of a woman whose web activity suggested to the agency’s analysts that she might be involved in the weapon’s development.
“Status update on the door?” Yardley leaned down to ease off her heels so she could take the stairs more quickly. The target’s suite was twenty flights up.
“Tabasco’s working on it.”
Dang it. If Tabasco was handling the tech, that suite’s lock would be hacked in no time. Less than no time.
Tabasco was a technical agent, one of dozens who worked in the bowels of the headquarters building. To a field agent like Yardley, the techs were largely interchangeable, known to her only by their code names, but Tabasco was the exception. According to the rumor mill, Tabasco was a child genius who’d hacked the red phone on the president’s desk. The director was said to ask for their reports personally, eschewing all other technicians.
Yardley started to run.
Growing up, she’d loved nothing more than to drive around the Piedmont with her granddaddy, listening to his stories about the years he’d spent spying on the Russians. No question, those stories hooked her but good, and they were absolutely the reason she was currently barefoot, quads burning, trying not to pant as she flung her body up flight after flight. Unfortunately, not once in all those stories he’d told her, over all the years she’d made him tell them, had Yardley Whitmer Senior of Cary, North Carolina, bothered to mention how much time spies spent running.
Yardley never remembered this when she let herself sleep late instead of going for a run.
She stopped on the tenth-floor landing, chest heaving, and gave herself over to self-censure. KC never skipped a run, and she wasn’t even a spy. She was a web marketing freelancer for companies that sold things like health supplements and sustainable T-shirts. In fact, KC had been running a lot in the six weeks since they broke up.
Copyright © 2025 by Mae Marvel
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