She stepped a foot off the curb, and in the beat before her body slid into the car, her head ticked up and she looked right at Kara.

It seemed, for a second, that their eyes had met, but no.

Emilia had stared right through her.

And then the door shut and the taxi pulled away from the curb, and Kara stood frozen, caught between two worlds, half of her chasing their target, the other half running the odds of two special units crossing paths in the same time-space junction.

She dug through her pockets, retrieved a pack of cigarettes, and lit one.

She hated the smoke and hated the smell, but she needed the cover.

In her head she saw Emilia again, Emilia in that final glance, wearing a look of terror and death. That was an Emilia she’d never seen before.

Nick’s voice in her ear jolted her back.

Kara scanned the length of the terminal, hunting for any sign of target and searching for the other members of Emilia’s team.

Travelers passed by. Cars and buses came and went.

Her skin prickled with the sensation of being watched, and she strolled to the end of the sidewalk and back again, glancing at her phone like an impatient traveler who’d been left waiting, searching for the source of the disquiet.

She found nothing and dug for another cigarette.

Nick said, “How’s the weather?”

Kara tapped ash into a receptacle. “Gray. Bleak.”

Juan reported in. The departure gate for the Berlin flight had closed.

There’d been no sign of target.

It’d now been forty-five minutes since they’d lost him.

They’d need to adapt and do it quickly.

She’d have said as much if it’d just been Nick on coms.

She stubbed out the cigarette and glanced back toward the taxi stand, toward the glimpse of Emilia she’d caught, and tried to make sense out of what made no sense.

Juan exited the terminal.

Aaron followed fifteen minutes later with his gear and hers.

Nick was the last to make it out.

They were tired, all of them, tired from jet lag and the transatlantic flight, tired from the adrenaline dump that followed the fruitless chase, tired from disappointment and failure. Nick nodded toward a hotel in the near distance.

Kara raised an eyebrow.

“We’re rebooked on an afternoon flight,” he said. “Was the best we could get. Headquarters is pulling resources. Angel thinks we’ve got a lead on where our guy will show up next, and we’ll try to get ahead of him.” Nick heaved a strap over his shoulder. “In the meantime we clean up and get some shut-eye.”

The hotel was a few minutes on foot from the terminal.