Hayes said, “We have no record of target as a US citizen.”

Kara’s breath caught at the flagrant denial.

Data analysis and fact-checking kicked in.

She opened her mouth and shut it again.

This wasn’t about facts. Hayes already had the facts.

This was one of those between-the-lines things that people not like her easily grasped, and in catching that, everything she knew, everything she’d experienced, everything she’d learned from Frankfurt to Vienna flooded her head, reconfiguring and reshaping memory. She understood now, in this instant, the indisputable fact that Hayes, in asking her to fill Nick’s shoes, hadn’t overlooked the ways not being good with people made her a poor choice for team lead. He’d taken advantage of it.

Her head pounded.

She fought to prevent awareness from seeping into her voice and continued on as if he’d never spoken. “What about jurisdiction?” she said.

“We’ve got a twenty-four-hour lock. After that, it’ll be touch and go.”

“Understood,” she said, and he ended the call, and she threw the phone hard onto the bed. So much brainpower, so much ability to work with data, and yet only now she finally fucking understood.

Nick had wanted her on his team specifically because she was an analyst.

As far as the rest of headquarters was concerned, that made her redundant.

And Aaron, he was new, just a kid, so no great loss to them there.

They’d both just become the sacrificial offering to flush a target.

They were reverse bait playing bait for the trap.

And they were there to take the fall if the rails collapsed.

She stared at the phone as if it was toxic, trying to find a way through.

She didn’t know where the new guys fit into this, didn’t care. Far as she was concerned, they were on their way to facilitate the plan that would get her killed. But Aaron, she cared about Aaron. He had every right to know what was about to go down, and telling him would be treason.

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 28

Rio Grande Valley, East of Matamoros
Tamaulipas, Mexico

JILL

SHE CREPT TOWARD THE RIVERBANK, CAREFUL TO AVOID DISTURBING the marsh grass and desert foliage that grew lush off the rich water supply, and stopped just short of the edge. Behind her, to the left, Holden squatted low, and beside him, José Luis guarded the open-deck kayak he’d carried on foot from where they’d left the truck.

They were about fifteen miles inland from the ocean.

Desert to the south.

Irrigated farmland to the north.

The outskirts of Matamoros, city of half a million, a few miles to the west.

Here the land was quiet and parched and sunbaked, even in winter, even at the banks of the Rio Grande, where the river, nearing the end of its eighteen-hundred-mile journey to the ocean, meandered in long, languid curves. The slow-moving water separated border from border.