Jack laced his fingers atop the table, waited a beat, said, “Because at some point tomorrow, after nine, several armed men will come careening through that square. They’re going to grab me, haul me off, and when that happens, my sister is going to lose her goddamn mind. I need you to be there to keep her safe, mostly from herself.”

Holden’s mouth opened and shut.

In his head tomorrow’s rendezvous played out as a mirror of what he’d seen in Berlin: sister as sniper on a rooftop, brother as bait on the ground, and between them a vast no-man’s-land filled with lies and manipulation.

Danger crackled up his spine.

This right here was Jill detouring into France behind her brother’s back. This was that multiplied by a thousand life-or-death twists, because it made him an explicit accomplice in their private sibling war.

He said, “You’re asking a goddamn awful lot.”

“Yes,” Jack said. “I am.”

Holden said, “Let’s make sure I’ve got this straight. You’re about to let yourself be grabbed, and your sister—the one responsible for protecting you and keeping you safe—has no idea?”

“Correct.”

Holden snorted. “Hell no, and no thank you.”

Jack sat silent, expression fixed, undeterred.

Holden said, “You’ve got government-sanctioned killers coming after you on one side. There are underground assassins hunting for you on the other. This thing with the Russians is still anybody’s guess, and your response is to stab your one ally in the back? That, my friend, is betrayal or insanity, maybe both.”

“I know what it looks like,” Jack said. “But that’s not what it is.”

“It doesn’t matter what it is, John. She’s going to think it’s real, and putting her in that position is top-level sadist shit, and I want no part of it.”

Jack leaned forward. “I love my sister, okay? But sometimes love means doing the hard things, and this is one of those things.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Holden said. He nudged the mug aside and matched Jack’s posture. “I could’ve been killed between Frankfurt and Berlin. Your sister could have lost me a hundred times between Berlin and Prague. I can still refuse to be your tool, and nobody with any sense of probability, especially not you, rolls the dice expecting the stars to align before the numbers stop tumbling.”

“All true,” Jack said. “And if any of those variables hadn’t fallen into place, I’d be faced with a much harder choice than asking you to look after her.”

The implication settled.

Holden stared at Jack hard, sat back, crossed his arms.