She slid to the ground and righted herself, and stood there in her bathrobe and bare feet, head high and haughty. He said, “You know who I am?”

She nodded.

“No,” he said. “Who I really am.”

“Karen McFadden’s kid,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “That means you know who I was trained by and have an idea of what I’m capable of. So tell me, why are you trying to make me your enemy?”

Wilson didn’t answer.

He said, “This. You. Here. Do you have any idea why?”

She blew a frustrated raspberry, as if the possibilities were endless.

He said, “You think killing me will stop the assassination? There’s more than one assassin and more than one target. The only person who can stop it is me. I’ve been trying to do that, but you keep giving me reason after reason to move it forward instead.” He cut her hands loose. “Clearly, you’re an idiot. I want to talk to your boss. Make the call.”

Wilson coughed out a laugh. “That’s not going to happen.”

Defiance in both laugh and words said she was immune to threat and pain and death, and with that declaration, the past imposed itself on the present, and he was twelve again, living in Athens with Raymond Chance, the closest thing he’d ever had to a father, dropped off on his doorstep for safekeeping, which was the word Clare used when she needed to abandon her kids again so she could jet across the globe.

Ray’s past had caught up with him while they’d been there, a past that should have died in Prague at the same time Ray had officially died, and it’d come in the guise of a former Stasi agent who’d never believed the stories and never stopped searching.

Jill had stumbled upon the man first.

She’d knifed him and called for Ray, and Ray had hauled the guy south, to where homes were sparse, and had marched him to the edge of a barren cliff, put a bullet in his head, and shoved the body into the ocean.

Ray had stood there for a solemn moment, and said, “I know your mom ain’t one for killing if there’s a way killing don’t need doing, but there ain’t no turning an ideologue, you understand?”

Jack hadn’t, but Ray hadn’t expected a reply, either.

“You can’t persuade or buy a man driven by the righteous belief of his cause. Show mercy, he’ll stab you with it. Threaten and torture, you strengthen his resolve. This here is the only way to keep him from coming back.”

In time Jack had learned to see what Ray had seen, and he saw it now.

Liv Wilson was an ideologue.

But he hadn’t brought her here to persuade her.

Jack offered Wilson her phone.

“Make the call,” he said.