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She plunked down on the bed and picked up the TV remote.

Lord, she’d missed electronics. She pointed the device at the TV and sighed in contentment as a 24-hour weather channel in English came on.

It would be lovely to sit here and watch repeats of the forecast over and over for the next year or so.

She snacked on the food, downed the water, and finally declared herself human once more. Along with hydration and nourishment came alertness, and her thoughts turned back to the case. What was up with those dead mice? Would they hold the key to the research being conducted at the secret lab?

She headed for her backpack to pull out the plastic bags and refrigerate the tiny corpses.

She rooted around in her stuff but didn’t spot the bags.

She tried the outer pouch. Huh. Not there.

Frowning, she dumped the entire contents of her pack on her bed.

A whole bunch of gear scattered across the bedspread, but no dead mice in bags.

They were kind of hard to miss, after all.

What the heck? She’d tucked them in the pack herself. Had they fallen out somewhere in their mad dash and hours of crawling around? She backtracked in her mind. No, she had zipped the main pouch before they’d fled the fire. And this was the first time since that she’d opened the thing.

At least she still had the thumb drive. She reached into the side pocket where she’d stowed it and froze, her hand buried inside the empty pocket. What the hell ? Surely, she hadn’t lost both of the key pieces of evidence from the lab?—

Her gaze snapped to the grocery bag of food. Ian. He’d been in her room while she was in the shower. Had he stolen her evidence?

In disbelief, she searched her room from top to bottom, and after nearly ten minutes with no sign of dead rodents or any thumb drives, she could only conclude that the bastard had, in fact, stolen every bit of intel they’d brought out of the secret lab.

Fury coursed through her. She was going to kill him.

She should have known something as up when all of a sudden he got over being mad at her in the car and had waxed all chatty with her. He must have plotted this theft hours ago, the rat!

She yanked on her filthy clothes, not even caring as grit and sand grated against her freshly clean skin. She stomped into her combat boots and didn’t bother to lace them before storming out of her room and back to the front desk.

“May I help you, Miss?” a young man with bright eyes and high-and-tight hair worthy of a marine recruit asked.

“I need Ian McCloud’s room number,” she demanded.

“We don’t have an Ian McCloud staying here, ma’am.”

She took a closer look at the clerk. He sure as hell looked like the kid who’d checked her in. “You did check me in earlier, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. At oh-one-oh-four hours.”

“The guy with me. What room is he in?”

“What guy, ma’am?”

She stared at the kid’s stone-faced expression. “Very funny. You two have had your joke. I have to talk to him right now. He took something from me and I want it back.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, ma’am.”

She planted her palms on the counter and leaned across it aggressively. She spoke low, her voice vibrating with fury. “Whatever he paid you, I’ll double it. Tell me where to find him, or else I swear I’ll bang on every door in this building until I find him.”

“I promise, ma’am. He’s not here!”

“Hah. So you admit you know who I’m talking about. Where is he? I’m a CIA field officer. Don’t make me pull rank on you and call in my superiors. They’re some severely heavy hitters.”

She didn’t technically work for the CIA, but the aid organization she did work for, Doctors Unlimited, fed data to the CIA and took requests from the agency as to where to send their medical “observers”. And right now, she was too pissed off to split hairs.

The kid’s stonewalling wavered. “He’s not here, ma’am. He left about five minutes after you checked in.”

“Where did he go?”

A shrug. “I don’t know. But he left with all his gear in a big hurry.”

Her jaw dropped. He’d gone? As in totally gone? Abandoned her here, alone? Her mouth snapped shut. Murder exploded in her heart. She was going to find him, and then shove the mice down his throat and the thumb drive up his ass.

“Did he give you any idea where he was going?”

“No, ma’am. He did drive away in his vehicle, however.”

“I need a phone. And the number for the front gate’s guard shack.” The young man was eager to help her, and a quick call confirmed that Ian had left the compound nearly an hour before, destination unknown.

Crud. He could be headed anywhere by now. Was he even who he said he was? Or had he played her for a colossal fool all along? Surely, he didn’t work for the same terrorists who’d paid the Scientist or and were doing business with the PHP guys.

Horror flowed through her.

“I need an overseas phone line,” she announced. “Where can I get one?”

“Now?” the kid blurted.

“Right now.”

“At this time of night, you’ll need the Command Post.” He gave her directions and she stomped out of the building on foot.

It was evening back in the States. A secretary took her call with a melodious, “Good morning, this is Doctors Unlimited. How my I direct your call?”

“I need to speak with André Fortinay. This is Piper Roth.”

“Oh, hi, Piper. How’s Africa?” the woman responded.

“Hot. And getting hotter by the second.”

The receptionist must have heard the tension in her voice because she said quickly, “Let me put you through to his cell phone Just a sec, sweetie.”

“Hello, Miss Roth. What can I do for you?” Her boss, the head of Doctors Unlimited, was originally from France and a faint hint of his Parisian roots lingered in his vowels.

“I need you to run down a guy named Ian McCloud. Find out who he works for. He claims to be military intelligence.”

“I have no need to run him down. He is Katie’s McCloud’s brother, and he is, indeed, with Naval Intelligence.”

Of course. McCloud. She should have associated the name with her colleague, Katie McCloud, at Doctors Unlimited. Katie was a nurse and worked exclusively with one of the organization’s doctors: a genius of a guy named Alex Peters.

“Assuming the man calling himself McCloud is actually the real Ian McCloud,” André commented.

Good point. “I don’t have a picture of my McCloud,” she admitted. “He’s tall. About six-foot-two. Built like an athlete. Brown hair sun bleached almost blond. Hazel eyes. Good looking guy.”

“That sounds like Ian.”

“How about you send me a picture of the real Ian McCloud?”

“Let me give his sister a call. I’m sure she has one she could send me.”

“Thanks.”

“How’s the rest of your project going? Immunizing lots of kids?”

“It’s an uphill battle to convince the religious conservatives to let me do it, but I’m making progress. The local women have turned out to be surprisingly supportive.”

“Keep plugging away. It’s important work you’re doing.”

Which was to say, she still was a go to track down the PHP guys and find out what they were up to.

Which meant getting back her freaking evidence.

She was grateful for the lack of a secure phone connection so she couldn’t confess to André what a screw-up she’d turned out to be on her first op to an international hot spot.

Please God, let Ian be the real McCloud. She was so hosed if he wasn’t. Not to mention, her shot at figuring out what the PHP guys were up to would be lost.

Piper waited impatiently for the picture of McCloud to come through on her email, nearly a full hour of nail-biting nerves.

At long last, her phone dinged an incoming message.

Please be him . She hit the mail button and Ian’s face, smiling and more gorgeous than ought to be legal leaped onto her screen. It was him, all right.

Her fury roared back full force. Lt. Commander Ian McCloud, U.S. Naval intelligence, had stolen her evidence. He was totally a dead man.