She turned a slow circle, measuring distance, and continued in the direction he’d gone. They’d already lost him. She knew it in her gut, knew it from the way the anxiety racing through her system outshouted the adrenaline.

He’d slipped away like a raft pulled by a riptide out into the ocean.

Her feet kept moving, eyes scanning, but her thoughts had already rushed headlong into the mental underbrush, a fierce little four-legged creature chasing scent along a labyrinth of thorny tunnels, searching for an answer as to how this had happened in an international airport with cameras every few meters and a crackerjack team working the feeds.

Angel’s familiar voice said, “Target at gate twenty-four.”

Kara’s brain froze, and her steps hitched mid-stride.

She said, “No, that’s too far, too fast. It’s not him.”

Angel spoke over her, irritation bleeding between syllables in an unarticulated reminder that opinions—Kara’s specifically—were unwelcome and unwanted. “Target confirmed at gate twenty-four,” she said.

Kara stopped moving.

Words muddled in her head.

She could only process so much so fast, and she struggled, searching for sentences that would make Angel listen. This new data was wrong.

Frustration welled on top of frustration.

Hers was a world of facts, of cause and effect, of stray threads that tied together in ways most didn’t see. She said what she thought and meant what she said, and that earned her no favors, especially not with people like Angel, who mistook hyper-focus on accuracy and pointing out logic errors as a personal affront, as if the job had anything to do with her at all. Mission objective should matter most, ability, not personality, and priorities, not politics, but that’s never the way things worked.

She wasn’t good with people.

She should keep quiet, let Nick handle coms.

But she was on the ground. She’d been closest. She had a physical sense of time multiplied by distance, and every part of her rebelled against losing target because Angel, for whatever reasons, insisted on sending limited manpower in the wrong direction. Kara was right and knew she was right.

She said, “Gate twenty-four means he covered two hundred yards in ten seconds. Whatever you’re seeing at that gate is not our guy.”

Nick said, “Where is he, Angel?”

Kara heard frustration and, behind his frustration, doubt.

Nick would question headquarters before he questioned her.

She appreciated that about him.

He didn’t care that she was missing the “be nice,” “find a friendly way to say things indirectly” chip most women seemed to be gifted at birth.

He respected her and trusted her implicitly, which was why he’d insisted on bringing her onto his team in place of others better suited for boots-on-the-ground hunt and chase and why she’d agreed to do it.

Angel said, “Hold.”

Nick said, “We’re losing the window.”

No, they’d already lost the window.