“We move out in an hour. You don’t have time to tell it twice. Go.”

Her mouth opened. No words came out.

She struggled to break the interconnected puzzle into separate pieces that would be easy for logic to follow, that wouldn’t create accusations and set off a time bomb of cascading repercussions. She started at the end.

“He followed us here,” she said. “Like he did in Frankfurt.”

The room erupted in an echo of “What? When? You didn’t tell us. Why?”

She dug fingers into the bedspread to keep them still, focused on the foot of the bed to avoid eye contact. “Went out for coffee about an hour ago,” she said. “Spotted someone I thought was him on my way back, wasn’t sure, had to confirm, and by the time I found him in the feeds, he was already gone.”

Juan said, “So he’s running recon for a hit.”

Kara said, “If he wanted to hit us, he would have already done it.”

Aaron said, “Riiight. Cuz assassin dude totes just wants to be friends.”

The sarcasm shorted her train of thought.

A joke, maybe, but a joke he’d never have thrown at Nick or Juan if they’d offered the same assessment under similar circumstances, and that made it not a joke; made her the joke. For a brief second her cheeks burned and her skin flushed with the shame of old humiliation. She was that kid again, mom in prison, dad unable to cope, sneaking out with the .22 before school to hunt rabbits and squirrels to provide a semblance of dinner for her sisters, showing up in clothes too big and shoes too small and sometimes mucky, because she didn’t always have time to wash off before the bus arrived. The kid tormented by teachers and bullied by classmates, and written off as stupid by everyone who should have cared because she was poor and dirty and afraid to speak. But at least they’d had the balls to come right out with it.

She’d known where she stood with them.

This thing Aaron did, that so many men did, passing off belittlement as humor, slithering down an escape-hatch variant of learn to lighten up if called out, spinning their own bias as her personal failing, that was just chickenshit cowardice.

She said, “Walk us through your thought process, Aaron. Explain how you got to that conclusion. Help me see what I’m missing.”

He smirked, almost winked. “It’s not that important.”

“It was important enough to interrupt. Clearly, we need to hear this.”

Aaron glanced at Nick and then Juan. Said, “You know, with the thing about how you didn’t think our guy was running recon.”

Kara waited.

Aaron placed hands behind his back and stood military at ease.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said.

She said, “Well, when you do have something that matters, let us know.”