She caught on to self-interest a whole lot faster than he did. Faster than Holden, too, it seemed, because that first short conversation after Kara had woken had been enough to get her started. Holden, who’d been listening and watching, had still needed an explanation. “Look at it this way,” she’d said. “Here’s this woman who’s been chasing John for over a week. He’s the one who led her team into the trap in Prague. He’s the one who led them to the motel. By any measure, he should have been the one to walk through that door. But she wasn’t surprised to see me. She was irritated, maybe disappointed, but not surprised. What’s that tell you?”

“She knew you were part of the trap at the motel.”

“Yeah, and I’m betting she knew you were there, too.”

Holden had scoffed. “That was the shittiest attack strategy known to man if they thought they were going after more than one person.”

“I’m not saying they knew. I’m saying she knew.” Jill paused. “And then there’s that bag of stuff John set up for us. Nobody randomly provides women’s clothes instead of men’s, especially not him. He knew she was running that team and that she’d be there looking for him and he just supposedly accidentally forgot to mention it?”

She swung her feet off the bed and sat.

“No,” she said. “Those two have met. Maybe not, you know, actual conversations or anything, but for the past week it’s been his brains against hers, and she’s given him a run for his money, so, yeah . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Holden said, “I’m missing whatever your real point is.”

She smiled at the floor.

Jack had always been insanely private when it came to things like feelings. He’d had to be, she supposed, to protect himself against a meddling mother and a sabotaging sister, but as a result, it’d been twenty years at least since she’d had an inkling of who he was interested in, or whether he had any interest at all.

That he deliberately let on now was his version of an apology.

Like the photo of the macaques, it was something only she’d understand.

“John likes her,” she said. “I think the feeling might be mutual.”

“Because of the clothes?”

“Because of the silence.”

She didn’t want to go into the history, so she went back to what had driven the point in the first place. “A woman in Kara’s position doesn’t withhold that kind of information without a damn compelling reason,” she said. “And it doesn’t take Jack’s level of genius to figure out what that was.” Like Clare had said, people would tell you what you needed to hear if they liked you and if it was in their own best interest.

One quick conversation had given her that.