The water took what it wanted, washing pieces of her down the drain.

She was stopped, again, for however long this new pause lasted, mobilized in haste out of Bratislava to Cleveland, where target had been reliably identified. She’d known even before boarding that he’d have already vanished before their wheels lifted off, and now she waited for the reinforcements promised by headquarters, she in this room, Aaron next door, both of them two floors up from where target had spent all of eight minutes before walking out again.

—Jacques Lefevre.

—Jack, as he’d come to reside in her head.

Chasing him was like chasing summer fireflies as a kid, running barefoot through the backyard, following blips of focus-grabbing light that changed direction in no predictable pattern, showing up again but never quite where you’d been looking.

The unpredictability that had captured her attention as a child captivated her now—blips of focus-grabbing light—a series of actions that didn’t fit the official narrative. She explained the inconsistencies to Nick in her head the way she’d have explained them to him in person.

This guy, this assassin, he comes into town on clean papers.

Never would have known he was here if not for the chatter.

He has a connecting flight in Detroit that will take him to DC.

But instead of catching the flight, he changes destination, divests himself of everything he brought, including the papers, and then disappears.

Why?

She wasn’t an investigator.

Interacting with and questioning witnesses wasn’t her thing, the war room sent others for that. But she had access to the raw data in real time now.

They’d tracked down the Gulfstream flight crew while she was in the air.

They’d found the driver who’d delivered target to this hotel.

They’d spoken to desk staff and cleaning staff and followed a physical trail out of downtown toward Edgewater, and then, in a routine with which she’d grown well acquainted, target had disappeared.

Like a firefly.

War-room analysis said he’d gotten wind of his cover being blown, that his actions in Prague spoke to inflexibility and aversion to plan deviation, and that he’d still be on his way to DC. They were working to pinpoint whom he’d been sent to kill and, as a precaution, had put out a general alert to the Secret Service and the Capitol Police. Alerting all of Congress was nonviable. The news would inevitably leak, and a media frenzy would follow, and the resulting panic would complicate their job and make it easier for the assassin to carry out his objective.