Page 63

“Only time you’re not pissed off is when you’re having screaming orgasms in my arms,” he muttered as the door opened.

He timed that comment intentionally so she couldn’t respond. Bastard.

“I’ll go first,” he breathed.

She shook her head sharply. “No. Let me go first. Abahdi’s a Middle Eastern man. In his world, women aren’t threats. He won’t pull out a weapon and make this a shootout of it if I go first.”

Ian looked dubious for a second and then nodded in decision. She lifted a stack of towels off a cleaning cart they passed and covered her handgun with the white terry cloth squares. At her nod, Ian eased the key card into the lock and turned the knob smoothly. He held the door open for her and stood back as she walked forward.

“Mr. Tariq? I brought you and your daughter more towels?—“

Abahdi leaped to his feet as she moved quickly into the room.

She turned the folded towels so he could see the black, round bore of her pistol and spoke quietly, soothingly even. “I urgently need to speak with you, Mr. Tariq. Perhaps we can step out into the hall and let your daughter sleep?” Salima was passed out across one of the beds with a blanket pulled over her.

Abahdi’s gaze shifted to the window, back to her gun, to the open door, and back again. “Please. I mean you and Salima no harm. I just want to talk.” To that end, and to gain his cooperation, she lowered the towel-covered gun. Of course, her target didn’t know how quickly she could fire it from her hipor that she could hit a two-inch target at twenty feet every time when firing from her side.

The Palestinian nodded reluctantly. He stepped out into the hall and Ian moved away from the wall, flanking him. “If you’ll come with us, Mr. Abahdi, we have a few questions for you,” Ian murmured in Arabic.

Yusef stiffened sharply. Tried to turn around. But it was too late. Piper pressed her weapon lightly into his ribs. Ian took the man by the arm and led him into a room a maid was cleaning.

The maid looked up, startled, from making a bed and Ian jerked a thumb at the door. She scuttled out.

“Sit down, Yusef.” Ian planted a chair in the middle of the open space in front of the window.

The Palestinian sat. His facial expression was calm. He was completely at peace with what he’d done. There wasn’t even a hint of fear—or madness—in his steady, intelligent gaze.

This was a true fanatic of the worst kind. He believed all the way down to the bottom of his soul in his cause. Heknewhe had God and Right on his side. Nothing they could say or to do him was going to sway him from that certainty.

She made brief eye contact with Ian and headed back for Abahdi’s room to search for the vials of virus samples. She poked around quietly, and it was quickly apparent that the virus wasn’t there. As she’d expected.

Piper made a quick cell phone call. “The virus is not here. We need an FBI agent in here to babysit Salima Abahdi. She’s asleep in Room 316. If you have an Arabic speaker experienced with kids, send that agent in. In the meantime, a search of the hotel would be in order. Not that I expect to find the virus here. This guy won’t go on vacation with his daughter anywhere near that stuff.”

“Roger, ma’am.”

In under a minute, a man in a suit knocked quietly on the door.

“Babysitter?” she murmured.

The agent nodded and she thanked him as she slipped out. “We’ll be down the hall.”

Ian sat on the bed in front of Abahdi as she entered the room. He ordered her quietly, “Close the door.”

She turned in time to hear Ian ask pleasantly, “Where’s the virus, Yusef?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about?—“

“Sure you do. The three coolers you carried out of the house in South Sudan a few days ago. You loaded them in a Land Rover with Salima and drove away while those two Americans stuck around to burn the place down.”

Abahdi gaped.

“Remember all those poor girls in the body bags in the basement? Their eyeballs blood red and staring at you as you worked in your lab?”

Fear flickered in Yusef’s eyes for a second only to be replaced by stony resolve.

Crap. He was going to stonewall them.

Piper stepped forward. “Your wife. Marta was her name, yes? I’m so sorry for your loss. What a horrible tragedy. And for your daughter to witness it…so sad. I lost my mother when I was very young. It’s a terrible blow to a child. I don’t know if Salima could survive losing you, too.”