“Who gets to decide what innocent is?” she said. “I mean, what does innocent even mean? Because you can’t tell me the people we go after don’t say the same thing about the people they go after. That’s like saying if a murderer murders only other murderers that negates murder.”

He thought for a bit. “I’m okay with that.”

“Then that makes innocence a variable that changes by day or dictum.”

“Don’t do the philosophical thing on me,” he said. “I’m not that fucking smart.”

“You’re a fucking liar is what you are.”

He clinked his glass against hers.

She stayed with the job for him, to watch his back, and did the job because it was her job, but any thrill she found was as a puzzle solver discovering connections other people missed and running her pack ahead of the prey. That was what she was good at, was supposed to be good at anyway. This target called it all into question.

She rechecked the hallway cameras.

Nick’s door opened. He stepped out and into center screen.

No movement elsewhere.

She stretched a foot from her bed to Juan’s and nudged him.

He opened an eye.

“Nick’s on his way,” she said. “Get the door.”

“What time is it?”

“Move-your-ass time.”

Juan groaned himself up.

The room echoed with the rap of knuckles on wood.

Juan slid his feet to the floor. Two steps took him to the door.

He said, “That you, Mary?”

Nick’s voice said, “Just the sheep.”

Juan turned the tumbler, held the door open long enough for Nick to wedge his way inside. Juan returned to his bed, and Nick rounded over to hers. He sat.

He said, “Show me what you’ve got.”

She scooted over to make room, started with the vanishing point, and traced target’s trajectory with her finger. “Watch him,” she said.

Nick leaned in closer.

“Show me again,” he said.

She stopped, rewound, replayed. They went at it like that, round after round after round, and finally he said, “Have you seen something like that before?”

“Never exactly like that.”

“Similar?”

“It’s like Cold War tradecraft mixed with stage magic.”

He said, “You don’t pull off a stunt like that without a lot of practice.”

“Nope. But this isn’t what I called you for.”

“There’s more?”

She shut down half the tabs and started over with the others, tracing time stamps for Nick the way she’d done on her own. She showed him how their target had followed her into passport control and out of the terminal, and how he had loitered within throwing distance of the crew as they gathered, and the way he’d trailed them to the hotel, and then she played the footage from the lobby cameras that had made her reach for the phone.

Nick sucked in air. “He still in the building?”