She tracked target digitally in ways she couldn’t from the ground, and then, one step to the next, he vanished, just as he had in real life.

The speed of it left her breathless and searching for words.

She rewound, halved the frame rate, and watched it again.

Shifting crowds hid him from the camera in that critical beat.

She switched to the third feed.

The angle put him as a dot in the background.

He knew what he was doing. He’d made the switch where he’d cover the least amount of screen real estate. She touched the image, circling the group of burka-clad women, and physically traced the path he’d take.

This time she caught the action.

She cut the speed by yet half again and, finger on the screen, tracked each painstakingly slow sliver, waited for him to shift, and hit PAUSE.

What she couldn’t see—hadn’t seen—from the ground was the ebb of foot traffic, the way it had stalled, and how close two European men had followed behind the women. Like a magician performing an in-your-face, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sleight of hand, target had slipped shoulder first between those two groups and, in one continuous movement, had swiped off the hat, rolled out of his jacket, and turned on his heels.

Just like that, the two-man group had become three.

He’d walked right past her.

She hadn’t seen him, because she’d been looking somewhere else. The desk jockeys at headquarters hadn’t seen him, because they’d been looking for something else.

Angel and her crew weren’t easy to fool, but that hadn’t mattered here.

He had known he was being watched and had set them up.

He hadn’t worn that hat to hide from facial recognition, he’d worn it for misdirection, to focus their attention where he wanted it. The light had been a beacon—the mind just couldn’t help itself—and they’d have searched for that first when he vanished. They would have realized the mistake almost immediately and adjusted for it, but by then they’d have had nothing else to reference what they were looking for.

He wasn’t in the same clothes.

He was carrying a bag he hadn’t been carrying before.

And he was no longer a male traveling alone.

She rewound and watched the vanishing act again.

The birth date on his passport put him at twenty-six.

The file put him somewhere between twenty-four and twenty-eight.

But this high-level tradecraft shit made him look like he’d just walked out of the late eighties, the time before portable technology had become such a critical part of daily life that even the world’s most wanted cycled through burners or put phones in other people’s names rather than do without.

Nobody did without anymore, except this guy.