I watch it through the window.
People are on their way to work. A woman is walking a dog. Two kids on bikes are cutting across a parking lot. It’s an ordinary Tuesday morning in a city that means nothing to me, and I’m about to get on a plane and stop being myself for however long this takes.
‘Months,’Sam said.
‘Maybe longer.'
I look away from the window.
The airfield is small, private, and the kind of place that doesn’t appear on any public registry. The plane is already on the tarmac when we pull up, a small twin-engine that looks like a dozen other charter planes and is registered to a shell company with no connection to the Bureau.
Every detail is designed to withstand scrutiny.
Cole parks, and we both get out. He opens the back of the SUV and hands me a single carry-size, dark canvas bag, alreadypacked with everything Marco Reyes needs and nothing Ryan would recognize.
He holds out his hand, and I shake it.
“Clean entry confirmed on the other side.” Cole’s voice is level and certain. “Diego will make contact within an hour of landing. You won’t need to find him. He’ll find you.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“He will.”
I nod once and pick up the bag.
“Reyes.”
I turn.
He looks at me for a moment with those sharp military eyes, steady and certain, the eyes of a man who has done difficult things and made his peace with the cost of them.
“Come back.”
Not good luck or be careful, just those two words.
“That’s the plan.”
I walk to the plane and don’t look back.
***
The flight takes just under an hour.
I spend the first part of it in the small bathroom at the back of the cabin.
The mirror is narrow and slightly warped, but it does the job. I put the contacts in first, dark brown, covering the green completely. Then I check the beard, ten days of growth, fuller than I’ve ever worn it, changing the shape of my jaw enough that even people who know my face would need a second look. I smooth the jacket and adjust the collar, and I look at the man in the mirror.
Marco Reyes looks back at me. Dark eyes, heavy jaw, and a goddamn expensive jacket. The kind of man who moves throughdangerous rooms as if he owns them because he’s learned that confidence is the only currency that matters in those spaces.
I study him for a long moment.
He’s convincing.
He’ll have to be.
I go back to my seat.
The rest of the flight I spend looking at nothing but the flat brown landscape below and the thin line of the Rio Grande appearing and then disappearing beneath scattered clouds. The border from up here looks like nothing. Just a line on a map. Just geography.
