He ran between cars and past the entrance he’d followed the Mercedes driver into, around the corner, down the stairs, and through the basement bicycle door. And he hurried between storage units, climbed chain link to grab his bundle back from over the transom, and raced the stairs up. He was on the rooftop by the time Lounge Guy and Elevator Guy made it to the courtyard, and he watched them search, knocking on doors and disturbing neighbors long past the point of diminishing return, and his sister’s words were in his head again, what she’d said about the Russian in Frankfurt.

He knew who I was.

That solitary spotter had known them both.

The men at the Berlin airport had also known who they searched for.

But these two had stared right through him when he’d walked in. They didn’t know him.

Inside his head the maze shifted so hard, so fast, it almost hurt.

—Dmitry was either Dmitry or not.

—The solitary spotter was connected to Dmitry or not.

—These two were something else, related but not the same.

In response to that understanding, another beacon joined the mental maze, and Jack sighed and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes.

The enigma of Dmitry had now split into three.

The US government wanted to kill him.

His sister was sabotaging him for entertainment.

And his mother, God only knew what she was up to.

She shouldn’t even be part of the equation.

To survive the hit squad, he needed her out of his head. To get answers on Dmitry, he needed Jill out of the way. Last he’d seen of her, she’d been dragging her suitcase up the aisle to the front of the plane, the few things he genuinely needed but couldn’t carry stuffed in it. The angry half of him, the half that wanted to guarantee he got them back, had begged to GPS collar her, but she’d figure it out, and he couldn’t afford the full-blown conflict that’d hit as soon as she did, so he’d watched her go.

The part of him that trusted her knew it was better that way.

The part of him that didn’t trust her knew it, too.

The maze tilted, rotated. Strategy formed.

Here, in old West Berlin, he’d found the trail that would lead to Dmitry.

And here he’d start another, one that would draw the hit squad to him.

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 10

Friedenau
Berlin, Germany

JILL

SHE FOUND THE DOOR, THOUGH NOT WITHOUT EFFORT. THE STREETS were all so much the same, four-story apartment next to four-story apartment, balconies and windows and more balconies and windows, similar colors and shapes, and tiny tidy landscaped spaces, corner stores, neighborhood pocket parks, sidewalk cafés, and tree after tree, with leaves that had turned color weeks ago and were now mostly fallen.

The butcher shop jogged her memory.