She’d expected Liv Wilson or one of Liv’s deputies.

Instead she got Steven Hayes.

He said, “We have a match on target in Dallas, Texas.”

The news seeped into her brain, filling the cracks between what she already understood. She hadn’t seen the footage, wouldn’t conclude prematurely—target may have finally made a mistake and unwittingly pinged their radar, as statistically it was inevitable that he’d eventually slip—but she’d seen enough of this now to know that if it wasn’t accidental, and with him it was really damn hard to know what was an accident, then they were meant to see this.

She said, “Where and when?”

“Greyhound. Bus departed for Houston ten minutes ago.”

Just like a firefly.

She did the math in her head. Dallas to Houston by bus . . . Depending on stops and average speed, they were looking at roughly four or five hours, give or take.

Hayes said, “We’ve got a plane on its way to Burke Lakefront. Should be landing within the hour. Equipment and new team members all on board. Briefing material will be to you shortly. Be on the tarmac to meet it.”

She ran those numbers, too.

Adding an hour for the plane to arrive and time for departure, Cleveland to Houston was also four or five hours, give or take. Factor in travel within Houston and they’d still be behind him, too slow, too late, chasing blips of light.

There was also the issue of Christopher Holden and the blonde.

They hadn’t been spotted since Prague, but that didn’t mean they’d vanished. If her theory about the three of them working together held up, then they, too, were headed for the United States, and Jack showing up in Texas pointed to the southern border as their entry point, and what they had on their hands here was a tri-assassin rendezvous, and she was headed straight for that mix.

She said, “This will lead us into another trap.”

“We have a terrorist on American soil, preparing to assassinate one of our political leaders,” Hayes said. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting for ideal circumstances.”

The answer made her bristle, not its bite or the condescension that treated her concern as cowardliness, but that, terrorist or not, assassination plot or not, the same foreign operation that had already taken her best friend and half her team had moved to US soil, and there were now jurisdictional issues at play and the potential complication of interagency collision or an accidental bullet in her back from local law enforcement responding to the scene of a perceived crime.

None of that seemed to matter.

She chose her words with as much caution as someone used to speaking her mind could summon. “Is the operation still dark?” she said. “Because extrajudicial killing of a US citizen in a high-density urban area carries high risk of civilian injury and heightened exposure to scrutiny.”