She shoved a shim between hatch and rim to ensure egress stayed open, unloaded equipment within the shelter of the rooftop wall, used a drain gap as the opening through which she minimized her heat signature to nearly nothing, and worked a slow, tight grid up the face of each park-fronting building.

If there were others, they’d come ahead of the rendezvous, just as she had.

If there were others, they’d be searching, just as she was.

She couldn’t know when, couldn’t know where.

Focus pulled her into a Zen trance state: she and the rifle, she and the scope, probing rooftops and windows and doorways and shadows, just as she had in the past, hunting for threat, hunting to win. A matte Mylar blanket kept her warm.

She maxed out the drain-gap range, crawled to the next, and started again.

When she reached the end, she’d start over.

This would be her routine until the sun rose.

Movement on a fourth-story balcony caught her eye.

She broke from the pattern, searching for what training and natural sight had alerted her to. Curtains and shutters blocked normal sight.

Glass, if no one was touching it, did well enough at blocking heat.

The thermal scope let her peek between the overlap.

She found the heat signature on the floor, in a narrow gap between balcony doors, and with that find, euphoria rushed in. What she saw here was too elongated for a dog or cat, looked as close to a prone sniper as she’d probably ever get, but she had no way to know if the body was Russian or American or civilian or something else.

She could put a bullet through that window.

Taking the shot was easy.

The aftermath was what had the potential to hurt.

She’d need to get closer.

She searched the streets and trees for signs of a trap, the way she would have had this been Clare’s doing, then dosed a few syringes for a range of bodyweights, and tossed them into a purse, together with standard kill-kit fare. She stuffed padding up her bra, pulled a blond wig over the black cap that hid her hair, tugged on a tunic blouse with enough color and frills to belie the truth of the black skin suit underneath, and pulled on a jacket, like a normal person would in these temperatures.

She headed back down the ladder.

Jack would try to stop her if he were there.

He’d say what she was about to do was going to draw unnecessary attention and put her at unnecessary risk, and he’d offer her a half dozen brilliant but time-consuming and patience-zapping nonconfrontational options to solve what she’d just as soon fix with a few broken bones.

For him, fighting was always a last resort.