One active device to act as a digital signature was all they’d have needed for today to have had a different ending. He was an analog agent working in a digital world, the embodiment of the ghost stories old-timers liked to tell.

You kids these days have no idea how good you’ve got it.

Advanced technology, digital tracking.

In my day . . .

She’d give just about anything to see one of those old geezers handle what her team had experienced this morning.

She went back to the first feed, forwarded past the vanishing act, and caught target on the rebound. His pants hadn’t changed. His shoes hadn’t changed.

They hadn’t needed to.

The human tendency was to watch at eye level, heads, hands, and torsos, especially in a crowd. No one followed feet in a crowd—it took too much time and was too obvious—and that’s what allowed his quick-change trick to work.

She pulled more feeds and tracked him from camera to camera, following him through the airport, until frustration hit concern and kept on rising from there.

Target had shadowed her.

He’d stood five passengers behind her in the line through passport control.

He’d followed her out of the terminal and watched her as she’d lingered.

He’d caught her interest in Emilia.

And he’d waited until the guys had joined her.

He’d known exactly how many were on the team and who they were.

Nick, Juan, Aaron, they weren’t strangers to this game—they each had a heightened sense of situational awareness that she would never have—and target had walked right past them. They’d seen him and looked right through him.

But the sequence that set her heart racing wasn’t at the airport.

The last image she had of him was the back of his jacket within a crowd on the crosswalk as he trailed their group to the hotel.

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

KARA

HER FINGERS HURRIED OVER KEYBOARD AND TRACKPAD, SEARCHING the war room’s databases, hoping headquarters had already tied into the hotel’s security system, while the specter of unmitigated disaster burned its way from her gut into her throat.

She found the lobby cameras, located Nick’s arrival, enhanced the sequence to focus in on the reception desk, and started from there.

With every forward frame, clarity formed and trepidation grew.

Target had waited just off the lobby until they’d gone for the elevators, and then worked the desk clerks. He had their room numbers, might even have their passport information. This was insanity.

The war room had access to these feeds in real time, and there’d been no alert, and not a goddamn thing in the dossier to account for the fact that target was in their hotel. He knew why they wanted him.

The next logical step was a preemptive strike.