Only in life-or-death stakes did she truly feel alive, and that it might be feasible to escape Clare’s shadow, and that there could possibly be such a thing as free will.

No weak-ass chemical alternative could ever come close, which made a joke out of Jack’s accusations in Frankfurt.

She’d have thought he’d have figured that out by now.

She’d been late for the flight, true. And, sure, she knew where his assumptions would travel, and hadn’t gone out of her way to dispel them, because it’d been amusing to watch him squirm. But that had all been a bonus, not the goal.

While he’d been off gathering intel on the Americans, which he wasn’t willing to share, she’d set out in search of the old-school spy guy. It’d taken her forty-eight minutes, but she’d found him, travel documents in one hand and phone to his ear, people watching over the rim of his glasses like a man absentmindedly staring at nothing in the middle of a call. His beard was gone. His jacket was a different color. He had more hair.

Unlike the Americans, he’d had nobody in his ear.

She had been certain by the end that he was really alone and relying entirely on tradecraft, and had become convinced that he was indeed male. His age had been impossible to pin down, but she’d gotten close enough to hear him speak, which had confirmed he was Russian.

She’d stuck with him until he’d boarded a flight for Vienna.

More challenging had been getting the flight manifest.

That list of names had almost caused her to miss her own boarding, but she had it with her. Subtract the women, and subtract those so clearly foreign or unique that no self-respecting spy would dare travel on them, and she had twenty-eight ways to go hunting in Moscow. Nine, if only the Slavic ones mattered.

She’d have given the information to Jack if he hadn’t been such an asshole.

No. That wasn’t true.

He had his secrets, she had hers.

She took two wigs off the shelf, one as replacement for what she’d left in the suitcase at the station, the second for variety. And she perused the hangers, pulled out pieces that she recognized and others that were new, and held them close, sniffing the age and dust. The smell would be a problem if getting in close for a surprise strike became a thing. She’d have to deal with that in its own time.

She opened drawers, sorted through random accessories and added a few select pieces to the growing pile, and then turned to the bags and suitcases. There were two wheeled carry-ons where there should have been three, a guitar case with a guitar shell inside, and an accordion case with the false accordion missing. They’d never had the real things while growing up.