Page 26

He said, “Are you sure nothing was taken?”

“All my electronics are here. What little jewelry I have is still in the remains of my jewelry box. Everything’s just…smashed.”

“So you think this was a random act of vandalism?” he asked doubtfully.

“What else could it be?”

Damn. That was what he’d feared. He heard evasion in her voice.

She had some idea of who’d done this but wasn’t planning to share her suspicions with him.

He pressed to test a little bit. “Let’s not touch anything more and call the police.

If nothing else, they can lift prints and make a report for your insurance company. ”

A stubborn expression flashed through her eyes and she opened her mouth, obviously to protest. Closed it again. Took a deep breath. And finally, said merely, “Okay.”

He leaned toward her and placed a light hand on her shoulder. “I can’t help you if you won’t let me, and I can’t protect you if I don’t know who to protect you from.”

She surged up off the couch. He got the impression she would have paced if she hadn’t been impeded by World War Three all over her floor. “I don’t need your protection!” she burst out.

“That doesn’t mean I’m not going to offer it to you,” he replied evenly.

“Gah!”

What was her problem?

Given that the question was unanswerable in the absence of more information, he pushed it aside and fished out his cell phone.

He found a non-emergency local police number and called it.

He reported the break-in and that the place was secure and the occupant safe.

The dispatcher said she’d have a unit there in a half-hour.

Which worked out perfectly. His pants and shirt were still warm out of the dryer and back on his body when a cop knocked on her door. The pictures and statement the officer took were routine except for the part where the guy flirted with Piper the entire damned time.

The cop finally left and Ian closed the door after him in relief, grousing, “Jeez. Ballsy dude to act like that with me here the whole time.”

Piper waved a breezy hand. “He asked me about ten seconds after I took him into the bedroom if you and I are dating.”

“And you said no. Which he took for permission to do his damnedest to get in your pants,” Ian replied sourly.

Now why did that irritate him so much? They both were free agents, after all. Khartoum had been…well, Khartoum. Nothing was ops normal in that place. What went on there stayed there as far as he was concerned.

They’d both been under huge stress, isolated and alone. Yeah, that was it. Two ships crossing in the night. Nothing more. If she wanted to sleep with some bonehead cop, more power to her.

“He only wanted my phone number,” Piper commented mildly.

“Did you give it to him?” Fuck. He had no business asking that. The question had just popped out of his mouth before he could stop it.

Her right eyebrow arched. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I told him I was leaving town for a few weeks, and he told me I could stop by the police department and pick up a copy of my report when I get back. And then he gave me his phone number.”

Ian clenched his teeth shut and bit back the sarcastic response that jumped to his tongue. Her social life. Her decision. “Let’s get out of here. Is anything left here for you to pack for our op?”

She sighed. “I doubt it. Let’s just go.”

He waited for her to close and lock the door on the wreck of her life. They turned to climb the stairs to street level, and he reached out to cup her elbow supportively.

“I can go up a staircase by myself,” she snapped.

He frowned. “I was just being polite. My mother would shoot me if she caught me not exercising the manners she taught us boys.”

“Yeah, well, you can keep your manners to yourself.”

He shrugged. “You’ve had a rough day. I thought you could use a show of support.”

“I’ve got things under control,” she declared.

Right. And that was why she sounded on the verge of angry tears.

She reminded him of his baby sister when Katie used to stomp her foot and insist that her big brothers let her go along on their adventures.

They never had, of course. She was too little to tag along on their junkets through the woods behind their family home. She’d have gotten lost or hurt?—

His attention lurched back to the present as Piper snapped, “And I can open my own car door.”

“Sheesh.” He let go of the door handle and threw his hands up in surrender. “Get your own door then if it’s that big a deal to you.”

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.

Not exactly 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 safe territory. “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.

“Who’s the founder?” he asked.

Wow. That made her whole body go tense.

“Guy named Joseph Brothers. Born and raised on a farm in Pennsylvania in the middle of Amish country. He was exposed to a fair number of Amish, so he was familiar with and presumably admired their non-technological way of life.”

“Why didn’t he just join them, then?”

She shrugged. “He was more ambitious than that. Thought in larger terms. It wasn’t enough to choose that kind of life for himself and quietly go about it—which would have been the Amish thing to do. Instead, he got the notion that he should share the wisdom of choosing that lifestyle with others.”

“Does he have a family?”

“Couple of kids.”

“Let me guess. He wouldn’t let his wife go to a modern medical facility and she died of some totally preventable complication.”

“Actually, no,” Piper surprised him by replying. “His wife left him.”

Ian nodded in comprehension. “Fled to the land of blow dryers and cell phones, huh? That must really toast his muffins.”

“He was well on his way to rejecting technology before his wife’s…defection. That was merely the event that pushed him over the edge into action.”