Anyone who spent more than five minutes with them knew they were close.

She loved Nick—if love was the right word—as much as Nick loved her, and because of that, assumptions they were sleeping together were easy to come by.

They weren’t and never had and probably never would.

Not that the chemistry wasn’t there, and not that they hadn’t discussed it more than once, just that neither of them wanted to risk destroying the friendship if the relationship soured. So he mostly kept his relationships out of sight, and she mostly kept hers off his radar, and that kept everything else on the table, including respect.

Aaron would figure it out eventually.

He was a smart kid. Quick. Funny. A marine sniper who’d more than earned his place. If shit ever met fan, she’d put her life in his hands without a second thought, but he was also young and cocky, in the same way a lot of guys were before life-altering mistakes handed humility a two-by-four and an invitation to knock them on their asses. Until then she preferred downtime that wasn’t filled with petty sniping and passive-aggressive humor.

Juan Marino was none of that.

At forty, he was older than Nick, calmer than Aaron, and had seen enough death to live by the rule that no amount of life energy was worth wasting on drama. He wasn’t a friend, exactly—mostly because she wasn’t the type that people wanted to have as a friend—but he rolled with her quirks and gave her space to do her thing, and she was happy to let him do his.

Juan shut the blinds, and the room went dark.

He scooted past her bed and toppled onto his own.

They were rebooked on the four-thirty to Berlin.

Accounting for check-in and security, they had about three hours before they needed to bug out. He’d use the time to sleep. Ideally, she would, too, but with the speed her mind was running, any attempt in that regard would be an exercise in frustration. She’d missed something in that terminal.

It had been fog of war, heat of the moment.

She needed to go back and see.

She cranked up the music, set the secure line, and patched in.

She didn’t have the bandwidth to pull all the data that’d be waiting now, but ten minutes of footage from the three cameras she’d noted right after target had vanished should get her what she wanted. She located target’s primary file.

Front matter that had been empty now had a high-res scan of his passport.

The photo stopped her before she even got started.

She zoomed in until his face filled the screen.