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She leaned forward eagerly. “Did you know that quote was only attributed to him decades after he’d died, in a biography? There’s no evidence he actually said those words. In fact, he was less of a radical than elementary school history books give him credit for.”

Ian replied thoughtfully, “A bunch of bubbas in Idaho probably wouldn’t make that distinction.”

“Nope. Not hardly,” she responded sourly.

Ian took another pull on the vodka. “What’s your assessment of these PHP guys?”

He was interested in her opinion? Whoa. She should get him half-drunk more often.

She shrugged. “Hard to tell what they really want. They have a fenced and heavily guarded compound that no outsiders are allowed inside. They don’t make trouble in the local area.

Live almost entirely off the grid. Self-sufficient bunch.

Mostly male, ranging from their 20’s to 50’s.

A few wives and girlfriends who appear as committed to the cause as the men.

I would’ve called them a garden-variety separatist group until this trip to Sudan.

Now, I don’t know what to think of them. ”

Ian’s only contribution was to grunt, “huh,” and take another swig of vodka before commenting, “K-town doesn’t sound their style. Not many white-bread American rednecks hanging around these parts.”

“I know. Right?”

“If Dharwani’s heard about them, they must be poking around the criminal underbelly of this town. Could they be looking to buy black-market military hardware?” Ian suggested.

She frowned. “Doesn’t fit their profile. They strike me as the kind to make a grand political statement rather than a simple terrorist attack.”

“I dunno. A man-portable missile through the front door of the U.S. Capitol Building would be a hell of a political statement.”

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. But her gut told her that wasn’t what the PHP guys were up to.

Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part.

They had shown themselves to be long-term planners.

And they were certainly capable of plotting and executing a terrorist attack they perceived to be a grand political statement.

But why Sudan? Why Khartoum? She’d been asking herself those questions obsessively ever since she got here and still had no answers.

Frustrated, she turned her attention to Ian’s problem. “What’s your target doing here?”

He made a face. “Above my pay grade. I was just told to look out for a Palestinian who might be working the local marketplace.”

“Is he buying or selling?”

“That’s what I’m supposed to find out.”

“The Scientist, huh? What kind of scientist?”

“No clue.”

It was an ominous moniker, though. Reminiscent of old-school biological or chemical warfare scares. They sat in silence for a minute, letting their brain cells marinate in vodka.

Eventually Ian asked, “What are you going to do next?”

“After tonight, I can’t very well hang around town by myself. Everyone knows I’m a girl, now. I’m pretty much dead in the water for observing, here. You?”

He nodded in commiseration. “Same. I’m blown. I’ll break the news to my boss tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry about that, by the way. But I won’t apologize for saving Dharwani’s neice from that beating. It was barbaric and uncalled for.”

Heavy silence fell between them. This mission had been a gamble for her. DO well, and her reputation in the CIA as a top operator would be made. Fail, and watch her career go down in flames…the way it was spiraling toward a fiery crash right before her eyes.

Morose, she stared at nothing and pondered exactly how done her career was when she got back to the States. She suspected this was it for her in the field. If she was lucky, she wouldn’t be fired and would only be chained to a desk for the rest of her career.

Ian broke the somber mood abruptly, declaring, “To hell with work. Let’s go off the clock for a while. Whaddiya say?”

“Meaning what?” she asked cautiously.

“Meaning, how do you feel about taking a nice, long bath? Water from the roof should still be warm.”

“Ohmigod,” she groaned. Even the idea of a bath was enough to make her orgasmic. It was even sexier to think of doing it in Ian’s bathtub.

Sheesh, she had it bad for him. She tried reminding herself that he was a casual fling and nothing more. But something in her gut didn’t seem to want to listen to her.

Ian grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes on the bath.”

While the big tub filled, she stripped out of her clothes behind the questionable privacy of strings of beads straight out of the late 1960’s that had replaced the bathroom door.

Ian was undoubtedly enjoying the show, but she was too focused on her first real, immersed-in-water bath in over a month to care.

The water was only lukewarm, but she totally didn’t care about that either as she sank to her neck in blessed wetness.

She just sat for a while in bliss, reveling in slowly turning into a prune.

Eventually, she dunked her hair and commenced giving it a good scrub. Her nails felt great against her scalp.

But then other fingers joined in, big, blunt fingertips that massaged her head and neck deliciously. She groaned and let her head fall back into Ian’s hands.

“I’ve died and gone to Heaven,” she sighed.

His hands moved from her neck to her shoulders and then dipped into the water to massage her upper arms.

“Lean forward,” he murmured.

Her entire back got the full treatment from his strong, probing fingers, which found and worked out every last kink in her muscles.

Jelly. She’d turned into a gelatinous mass of gooey goodness in his hands.

“Scoot forward,” he muttered in her ear.

A little confused and a lot mellow, she didn’t have enough energy to ask why but merely did as he asked.

A great mass of water displaced upward as he stepped into the tub behind her and sat down.

Powerful legs stretched out on either side of hers and all of a sudden, a muscular body pressed against her back from neck to tailbone informatively.

“You don’t fight fair,” she groaned as his hands slid around her waist to cup her soap-slippery breasts.

“Never said I did.”

She mumbled something incoherent that didn’t even begin to resemble a word as he nibbled his way across her shoulder and kissed her neck.

By the time they’d pushed each other over the edge into oblivion, there was more water on the floor than in the tub, and a sharp chill bit into her wet skin as the ceiling fan blew across it.

Ian heaved himself upright and stepped out of the tub before bending down to scoop her up in his arms and carry her, wet and cold, to his bed.

He laid her down on the cotton sheets and came back with a towel to dry her.

Then he surprised her by blowing out the lamps and opening his bedroom window.

A sultry breeze wafted across her body, warming and soothing her at the same time.

He stretched out beside her and she summoned the energy to roll against him, draping her leg and arm across his big heater of a body. She warmed quickly and made a sound of contentment as she nestled under his arm, her head on his shoulder.

The last words she heard before she passed out were, “Sleep, Piper. I’ve got you.”