She continued into the luggage hall, where waiting passengers milled around dozens of carousels, and she meandered between them, knowing she wouldn’t find what she was looking for, searching for the sake of being thorough, and moved on toward customs. She had nothing to declare.

They’d traveled light, but even hauling the one backpack while in pursuit would have made her too obvious, too visible, so she’d left her stuff with Aaron in the arrival terminal. Not that hunting without it ended up mattering in the long run.

In her ear, Nick confirmed his arrival at gate twenty-four.

Ice in his voice said no sign of target.

Silence followed. Angel returned with an update that sent him rushing the crowded corridors ten gates back the way he’d just come, and a minute later she corrected with another change of course that wasted their most critical minutes.

Nick, normally calm, unflappable, said, “Whatever the hell is going on in there, get it fixed, and get it fixed now.”

Angel bit back, and the two of them argued in clipped code-speak.

The tension created anxiety, made Kara want to pull the earpiece out.

Angel wasn’t Nick’s boss, though she often spoke to him as if she was.

Liv Wilson was her real name, and Liv was a politics-playing, ass-kissing ladder climber who’d say one thing to your face and something else entirely in committee meetings, which left work-oriented, non-game-playing people like Kara confused and wary and often looking a little bit crazy. Liv was every girl in high school who’d maintained social status by tormenting the awkward misfit who’d just wanted to be left alone, and she was every adult woman who saw competence in other women as a threat to her own position and who’d sabotage in a hundred petty ways, even if that damaged the team itself.

Kara despised her, but personal feelings had nothing to do with work.

Liv ran headquarters support and had the war room at her disposal—the engineers and analysts, the specialists tied directly into foreign and domestic intelligence and law-enforcement databases—she had front-door access to aggregated consumer data and financial institutions and a worldwide network of Internet-connected cameras and devices, and for anything not willingly shared, her team had backdoor channels to take what they wanted. Liv had the ability to tap information most people didn’t know existed, and they needed her fully vested in the operation, not sabotaging from the back end.

In Kara’s ear, Nick said, “Give me eyes on the connection.”

Angel said, “Boarding in fifteen. No sign of target.”

Kara exited customs without luggage, without even a purse.

Officials, curious, pulled her aside.

She answered their questions with the truth, said she’d rushed ahead of her travel partner to meet a friend and that her stuff was still coming. They nodded her on in a way that would never happen when entering the United States.