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They headed outside, where an army of police cars and government vehicles had gathered, filling the parking lot silently in the gathering dusk with dozens of flashing lights. Ian commandeered a vehicle from the FBI contingent, and she and Ian pulled away from the garish scene.

“Where to, now?” she asked.

Ian was grim. “I don’t know. But I need some quiet to think this through, and it was a zoo back there.”

She talked through what they knew of Abahdi aloud. “Somewhere between South Sudan and Los Angeles, Yusef dropped off the virus. I got the definite impression he turned it loose, himself. My gut says we’re not looking at a middleman.”

“Someone paid for that house, the lab equipment inside,” Ian commented.

“And paid for the girls he gathered virus samples from,” Piper added. “Fatima said El Noor was paid to find those girls and ship them south. Yusef didn’t have the resources to do all of that on his own.”

“Okay. So there’s somebody financing Yusef, but Abahdi turned the virus loose personally. Are we agreed on that?”

“Yes. He was far too smug back at the hotel. He got his revenge in person. And his rage was such that he would have insisted on doing it himself.”

“Odds are he flew from Africa to South America off the radar, literally and figuratively,” Ian speculated. “Which means he came into U.S. airspace from the south.”

Piper shook her head. “The government has excellent radar coverage of U.S. airspace. He came in very low on a small drug plane, which I don’t see him doing with those big coolers and with his daughter. Or, he drove across the border.”

Ian took up the thread. “He could have come in by boat, which opens up all the east coast cities as targets, too. He either attacked someplace in South America, which I highly doubt,since he took great pleasure in calling me a pig, or we’re looking at a U.S. city as his target.”

“He said the wrath of God is coming. I read that to imply a big population has been targeted. Which means a big city.”

Ian called Alex to see if a money trail on Yusef had been identified yet. Piper crossed her fingers, but as Ian listened to Alex, he shook his head in the negative. Rats. They were back to square one. The United States was a big place with a lot of large cities, every one of them a potential target.

“Ideas?” Ian asked. “I’m open to wild-ass guesses at this point. We’ve got no time, and I’ve got no idea how to proceed from here.”

“You don’t think the FBI will get him to talk?” she responded.

“No way. I’ve questioned guys like him before. He’ll die under the most extreme torture without a peep. He’ll lose himself in a fanatical religious hallucination.”

“What if they drug him?” she asked hopefully.

“Chemicals aren’t nearly as effective as everyone would like to think. With enough willpower and a little madness, he can defeat drug-induced questioning or at least side-track it. And he only has to hold out a few days. Just until the outbreak occurs.”

Outbreak. The word resonated like a death knell through her. Thousands of people sickened and dying from a horrendous viral attack that she’d stopped Ian from preventing. Had Ian not been forced to rush in to that burning house to save her, he’d have been able to stop the Scientist from loosing his killer virus, or at least he could have tracked the guy and known where the virus was about to strike. When the dust of this catastrophe settled, all fingers were going to point at her.

This was her fault.

Ian stretched out a cramp beneath the camo netting draped over him and Piper and then settled back into place on the mountainside above the PHP compound. Coming to Idaho was a long shot, but what else did they have to go on?

It all came back to the money. Two seemingly unrelated players—Abahdi and the PHP guys—had abruptly come into windfalls of cash. Both players seemed to be using it for nefarious, yet to be determined, purposes. Maybe each group’s goals were related, maybe not. But they had nothing else to go on.

If Abahdi could be made to talk, the FBI was certainly the bunch to do it. In the meantime, he and Piper were going to pick up the PHP thread of this whole puzzle and see where it led them.

Like he said. A long shot.

More like a Hail Mary.

The PHP compound across the valley was as private and closed off as Piper had described it. A tall, crude wall made of logs like an Old West fort surrounded the cluster of cabins and gardens. Beyond the wall, several metal pole barns looked like a car and tractor repair set-up.

He and Piper had been parked here for hours, and except for the lazy swirl of wood smoke from a few chimneys, they’d yet to see a single movement of interest. The weight of time ticking by lay heavy upon his shoulders. Memory of those dead girls staring out of their plastic bags still made his skin crawl. He didn’t even want to think about thousands of people dying the same way.

“These guys nocturnal, or what?” he muttered to Piper.

“Nope. Just quiet. I told you that before.”

“You weren’t kidding,” he retorted. “Walk me through what goes on in each building, again.”