Kara moved the footage back thirty seconds, lifted a still out of the frame, enhanced the image, and ran it through the databases. Just as had happened with the guy in the ground-crew uniform, facial recognition came back with a partial match on target’s passport photo, and what should have been the lucky break that confirmed they were hunting a male and female team instead led to the impossible.

She’d already found target below the aircraft in a ground-crew uniform.

The same person couldn’t be in two places at the same time.

Frustration squeezed her from the inside.

Facial recognition software wasn’t infallible.

There were always false positives and false negatives, and this hit was a low enough match that the war room, having not seen what she’d just seen, would have likely discarded it. But it wasn’t a fluke, wasn’t a mistake.

And yet two partial matches for the same person so close together?

The only way that made sense was if they were dealing with two people who understood the way the algorithms worked well enough to pass themselves off as the same person—unlikely—or they were two people with nearly identical facial features.

She sat motionless, staring through the image, thoughts racing from possibility to possibility. Target had used quick change in Frankfurt—basic disguise, no masks, no prosthetics, just a well-planned series of clothing swaps performed with incredible timing—and, by appearance, the accomplice entering and exiting the restroom had done the same. But basic disguise had limits.

Passing a woman off as a man was straightforward enough.

Going male to female was a whole different level of difficult.

For this kind of nodal match, they were looking at identical twins. But target was male, and what she had here on-screen was either the best goddamn drag she’d ever seen or this was an honest-to-God woman.

—Target was female.

—Or, best guess, this was a brother-sister team.

She needed space from it, time and space to let the subconscious percolate on what else between the layers she might be missing. She set aside one analysis track in favor of another and returned to the departure out of Dallas.

She sorted through the angles for a view that would allow her to convince the waiting area to give up its secrets, and when she found it, she grabbed her notepad, and flipped to a clean page. She diagrammed the waiting area, marking out each key figure, like in a football play schematic, tracking physical movement and eye movement, until she had a map that told a story she only half understood.

She’d found target, but no sign of accomplice.

She’d also found Emilia Flynn, Daniel Cho, Peyton What’s-his-name, and Bill Wright, a full four-person crew, and seeing them there, observing them from a distance, answered the question of why Emilia had been in Frankfurt.

—One flight.

—Two liquidation teams.

—Two targets.