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He was pretty sure steam was coming out of his ears.

“Fine. Throw it in.” The store could probably do with the business.

“Put in that flannel pajama set too.” He didn’t think they’d be together long enough to worry about any of this, but they might have to spend one night pretending to be intimate partners and no way was he dealing with Rowena while she wore sexy red lingerie. He’d sleep in his clothes.

He paid cash again and realized they were going to be low by the end of the day.

His alias had a bank account and credit card, but he didn’t want to activate Joe Hanssen until they were as far from Harare as possible, and hopefully not even then.

All being well, they’d be well-stocked for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours and in a junk food coma at the American Embassy in Maputo.

He paid the cheerful woman and headed to the electronics store next door.

Inside, the smell of component parts and a soldering iron wafted on the air.

He stood off to one side as the shopkeeper served a young teen and an older man who was probably his father.

Kurt browsed the phones and picked up a cheap pay-as-you-go model.

He found two SIM cards that would work across the border and another one he could use on this side if he needed to anonymously call his FBI contacts and tell them what was going on—before he headed off into the great unknown with a woman who might be an ice-cold killer.

And if she was?

He’d get her to an embassy and let them deal with it.

First though, he had to figure out what she knew and how this Dougie Cavanagh fellow was connected to Hurek.

Perhaps Cavanagh wasn’t really dead. Perhaps Bjorn had reached out to him for information about Hurek like Kurt had asked, and Cavanagh had killed Bjorn—or hired someone else to do it. Maybe Cavanagh was hiding Hurek.

On the TV screen, footage played of Nolan Gilder pressing a button to set off an impressive pyrotechnic display then shaking hands with the Zimbabwean President.

Kurt didn’t pay much attention to billionaires in general, but he looked at this one carefully now.

The man’s hair was short, his jawline was firm.

Kurt figured Gilder had to be mid-fifties but looked and acted a lot younger than he was.

It was great he was investing in the country, as long as the wealth went to those who needed it.

Kurt headed to the counter as the other customers left. He put his purchases on the desk.

“Will you need phone credit for the Mozambique SIM cards, sir?”

“That’d be great. Thanks. You have any meticais ?” They didn’t take US dollars on the Mozambique side of the border, although they might at a pinch.

“Of course. How much?”

“Fifty US?”

The man nodded, counted out 3000 meticais, and Kurt paid.

“You a tourist?”

“That obvious, huh?”

They both laughed.

Then something caught Kurt’s eye on the TV screen. News of the crash of a commercial airliner. It made his stomach clench as he should have been on a plane right now.

The shopkeeper followed his gaze. “Oh merciful heavens.” He crossed himself. “Those poor people.”

Kurt nodded then his whole body froze as he read the number of the flight that was believed to have gone down close to the Zambian border. His mouth went dry as dust.

That was the flight he was supposed to be on.

Without Bjorn’s murder and Rowena’s phone call, he’d be dead.

He remembered the people he’d seen at the gate.

The woman with the baby. The flight attendants who’d urged him onboard.

He wanted to throw up. Maybe there were survivors.

Perhaps the pilot was able to land it in the bush somewhere.

But the ticker tape said they didn’t believe there were any survivors, and he felt sick at all those lives lost.

Unease rippled down his spine.

Kurt didn’t like the coincidence of Bjorn being killed and then the flight he’d been booked on falling out of the sky—all shortly after they’d spoken about the whereabouts of Darmawan Hurek.

Was it a freak accident? Or had Kurt been the target and the other people on the plane collateral damage?

“Are you okay, sir?” the shopkeeper asked.

Kurt shook his head. “No. Not really. I’m scared of flying and have to take a flight home in a few days. Doesn’t exactly make me feel better.”

“A stiff whisky beforehand helps me.”

Kurt nodded. He’d prefer a parachute.

It was hard to process the deaths of so many innocents. He needed to call HQ and check in with them before they saw the news.

The lights and TV went off abruptly as the power went out in the store.

The shopkeeper cursed under his breath. “The ZESA. The ZESA is out again.” He threw up his hands in despair. “Every damned day the ZESA goes out.”

The power company, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, was notorious for power outages.

“How am I expected to run a business when there is never any power?”

“You have solar or a generator?”

The man nodded. “Yes, but it’s no way to live especially in my business.”

Kurt wondered how Nolan Gilder’s new factory would fare in a country that so often lost power.

Perhaps people would adopt even more solar and become self-sufficient.

He dropped the shopkeeper another ten-dollar bill to help boost the day’s earnings.

Then he loaded his purchases into a plastic bag and headed back into the rain.