She returned to digging through the drawer. “A girl’s gotta have some secrets,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve got your own backdoor route.”

“Canada sometimes. Usually through the islands into South Florida.”

“You have a boat?”

“Same way you have a car.”

“Cars.”

“Well, just one boat.”

She turned. The towel had been replaced with track pants.

She moved next to him and hip bumped him away from the table. “Need to get something out of storage,” she said.

He dragged his bag to the floor and stepped aside.

She lifted the dinette bench. Boxes of unused equipment waited below, phones and laptops mostly, most of them of dubious provenance, bought cheap for quick cash, and accumulated over time.

Holden let out a low whistle. “What’s on the other side?”

She tipped her chin in its direction, inviting him to look.

He raised the bench to a small armory.

She pulled an iPad mini from inventory, closed the bench, and sat on it.

Priorities were priorities, and one final obligation stood between her and washing off the road stench and crawling into bed.

She unboxed the device.

Holden watched her.

She motioned to the weapons. “Take a few pieces, if it’ll help you sleep better.” She wasn’t being facetious or patronizing.

Utilizing air travel had meant leaving all the firepower behind in Madrid.

Holden had made a few calls, had told her he would put the weapons in the hands of someone he trusted, had given her a number and a name, and had promised they’d be waiting whenever she was ready to collect them, which would be sooner than later, because she still needed to get them back to Berlin before Clare discovered them missing.

This was her returning the favor.

Holden picked up the Desert Eagle, turned it over, glanced at her, and she nodded. He added a couple magazines, a box of ammunition, and lowered the bench.

She tuned him out.

Four days of traveling dark meant four days of not knowing if brother dearest had attempted contact. If Jack was alive and if he was free—as Holden believed he would be—then there would be a message for her out there somewhere. To check just this once, and to respond once, a VPN and TOR browser on a clean device over a borrowed satellite connection was enough to avoid worrying about drawing the cavalry to her door.

Holden encroached on her peripheral space.

He said, “May I?”

She scooted over to make room and continued with the setup, loaded the browser, and began the search, hunting through gig-economy Web sites and message boards—Fiverr, TaskRabbit, Craigslist—searching for Dallas–Fort Worth postings when possible, because that was the last place stateside she and Jack had seen each other face-to-face, and that was how these things worked.

She found him in a miscellaneous Craigslist post.