Holden followed the cobblestones to where he had a view of both exits to the building she’d entered. His luggage was an issue. He’d condensed the items from Itzal’s cases into a single bag, but even one bag, no matter how bland, would stand out over time and make him visible, in the same way patterned shoes and bright clothing made a person visible. He couldn’t afford to be seen with the weapons, couldn’t afford to leave them.

Down the street the basement door opened.

The sister trotted up the stairs, clothes a different color, body a different shape.

He gave her time, space, and started up after her.

She looked so much like her mother.

There were buyers who’d want the children for no other reason than revenge.

Clare—Catherine—Catalina—Karen . . .

One didn’t easily escape a legacy like that.

“They’ll find you,” he’d told them. “You’ll end up running hard. You could use an ally, a friend.”

He wanted them alive, wanted her alive.

And want was a dangerous, dangerous thing.

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15

Alexanderplatz
Mitte, Berlin, Germany

KARA

SHE THUMPED THE RETURN KEY IN FRUSTRATION, HARD ENOUGH THAT the laptop jumped. Nick stopped pacing. Aaron stopped bouncing the stress ball. Juan opened his eyes.

She hadn’t been going for attention but had it now regardless.

She waved them off and went back to trying to ignore them.

They were too many bodies in too tight a space, an entire kill team sequestered and on edge, waiting for go, while the sense of impotence mounted.

Every repetitive motion, even those she couldn’t directly see, was a gust of wind over a sand mandala, turning what should have been straightforward if tedious work into a struggle to keep big-picture focus.

She was tired, desperately needed sleep.

Obsession wouldn’t let her mind shut down.

As of last night target was in Berlin.

The war room had picked him up outside the central station and then lost him again. There’d been no sign of him this morning, but he was still here, of that she was certain. SIGINT and HUMINT both pointed to an early meeting with a Russian handler, and this guy hadn’t gone through all the effort of misdirecting attention just so he could up and leave before he got what he came for.

The intelligence channels had all gone quiet.

They had the time but not location.

The war room was hunting, and her team was on standby, and where the others had taken to pacing and sleeping, she had gone digging and had found an anomaly in the Berlin flight manifest.

She wasn’t an expert on predictive modeling.