“He said once you settled down enough to get over wanting to kill me, and once you’d had a good meal and got beyond wanting to kill him, that’d probably be about the same time they realized the woman with him wasn’t you. He said they’d be eager to talk with you, and you’d know how to make that happen.”

Her mouth opened. Shut. She knocked the back of her head hard into the wall and then did it again, and again, until the aftermath of sedation mixed with the pain of skull against stone and the throbbing muted the need to hurt something.

She saw the pieces now, Jack’s strategy.

The brilliance of it made her want to smother him.

She kicked her head back again, harder. Holden moved to stop her. She held up a hand to warn him off. “You were in Berlin,” she said. “You saw what the guy gave us.”

His eyes narrowed in accusation.

“Are you stupid?” she said. “No, I’m not carrying the phone.” She reached beneath her waistband, fiddled with her pants, pulled out a SIM case, and held it palm forward. “He made me think it was my idea.”

Holden plucked the case from her hand. Examined it.

“John wants you to call them?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got a spare burner you can have, but you load this up and it won’t matter what steps your brother took to keep you on the outside. They’re going to beeline right for you.”

She cocked her head puppy dog–style and gave his bicep a pitying, patronizing squeeze. “That’s so cute,” she said. “You actually believed John wanted you at Republic Square to save me from myself?” She let the inference dangle like baitfish above a shark tank, then leaned in and whispered, “No, you see, John, in his ‘control other people for the best’ wisdom, foresaw that the Russians wanted me and him both, which meant they have plans for us both, and the only way to keep me on the outside and utilize that plan was if I made contact from the outside. So he made sure I had the means to do that.”

She snatched the SIM case back. “He also knew that if I did call, they’d try to grab me the way they’d grabbed him, and that it’d take more than just one of me to keep me out of their hands.”

She paused for emphasis. “What he really pulled you in for, big guy, was that two-man job.”

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 24

Prague 9, near Kolbenova Metro Station
Prague, Czech Republic

JACK