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He went around to his side of his truck as she slammed his truck’s passenger door shut with a resounding crash. “Maybe don’t break my truck,” he commented mildly as he slid in the driver’s seat.

Piper alternated between radiating anger, upset, and a hint of post-traumatic shock during the drive to his place. Notexactly the best frame of mind in which to launch an important mission. There was no help for it, though. Apparently, she knew more about the Patrick Henry Patriots than anyone else in the intelligence community. She needed to get her head in the game, like it or not.

He tensed as he unlocked the door to his apartment, and he breathed a sigh of relief to see his things were intact and not trashed. He should cut her a break. It would suck to have all his personal stuff destroyed.

Piper looked around with undisguised interest. If only she knew how rare it was for him to bring a woman here, not only because he wasn’t home often enough to pick up women in D.C., but also because he considered this his private sanctuary. It was a simple place with all the guy comforts—a big bed, a huge television, the latest game console, and a shower head he could stand under without having to duck his tall frame.

“I don’t know about you,” he commented as he moved into the kitchen, “but I always crave good, old-fashioned American pizza when I’m overseas.”

She laughed. “Nobody does pizza like Americans.”

“What do you like on yours?”

“Anything but anchovies or pineapple,” she replied.

He ordered a couple of loaded large pizzas from his favorite delivery place and grabbed two beers out of the frig. He flopped on the leather couch beside Piper

“Beer?” he offered.

“Umm, okay.”

“Relax, already. I’m not going to leap on you and ravish you,” he joked.

Piper tensed, relaxed, tensed again, and finally leaned back, as far away from him on the couch as she could go.

What the hell? What was going on in her mind? Not that he had much experience at reading women. He retreated to safeterritory. “Have you got any initial ideas on how we ought to track the PHP?”

“Carefully,” she blurted.

“They’re dangerous?” he asked around the mouth of his bottle. He was a great deal more interested in her answer than he let on. But given how tight she was already wound, he made a conscious effort to keep his body relaxed and sprawled on his end of the couch.

She shrugged. “A year ago, I would’ve answered that with a firm no. But now, I don’t know.”

“Talk to me about them.”

She winced fractionally, as if she’d known the question was coming but still disliked it. He filed the reaction as interesting and something to analyze later. He also declined to mention to her that he had nearly total audio recall.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

Avoiding the subject, huh? Now why was that? He checked his first impulse, to tell her to start at the beginning and leave out nothing. Instead, he merely asked casually, “How long have they been around?”

“As an organized group, about twenty years.”

“Longer than I expected,” he replied mildly.

As he’d hoped, his lack of aggressive interest made her wax a little more talkative. She continued, “They bought their compound in Idaho about fifteen years ago. Started with a half-dozen guys and a few of their families. It has grown slowly but steadily since then. My best estimate is that they’ve got around fifty members in total.”

“Small group to be making so much trouble.”

Another one of those infinitesimal frowns creased her brow for an instant. What wasn’t she telling him? “Who’s the leader?” he asked, probing carefully.

“They don’t believe in centralized government. What makes you think they believe in centralized leadership?”

Huh. Interesting. “Surely, they’ve got a charismatic character or two who act as de facto leaders of the commune.”

An unwilling grin tugged at her mouth. “I expect they’d take serious umbrage at the word commune. The second P in their name does stand for ‘patriots’ after all.”

The obvious next question was why a group of supposed patriots were being investigated for terrorism ties. He avoided something so direct, however. At the moment, he was more interested in figuring out what was making her so jumpy about briefing him in on these guys.