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The briefer grinned. “You’re looking for someplace to settle. A simpler way of life. Not sure about going entirely off grid but definitely interested in being more self-sufficient.”

“How did we hear about this place?” Ian fired at the guy.

The briefer passed a slightly crumpled pamphlet across the table. Piper couldn’t help the shudder that passed through her at seeing the PHP pamphlet. Everything it stood for made her faintly ill.

“You okay?” Ian murmured to her.

Damn him and his mad observation skills. “I’ll be fine,” she snapped.

“Future tense. Not fine now. Why not?”

Sometimes, she seriously wished he were a little less quick on the uptake. She huffed. “I’m good, now. Everything’s fine. Perfect.”

The pucker between his brows deepened, but he said nothing more.

The briefer picked up with, “A military transport will fly you to Montana. A pick-up truck will be waiting for you. The two of you will drive to Elkville. Rent a cabin in the Trout Creek Fishing Camp just outside of town, then commence your surveillance op. Your cover is that you’re enjoying a hunting and fishing vacation while scoping out the area?—“

The briefing room door slammed open and Ian’s boss burst in, announcing without preamble, “New plan. We may have spotted Abahdi. Or rather, his daughter.”

“Where?” Piper blurted. What was Abahdi’s target?

“California. Theme Park. Three guesses which one and the first two don’t count.”

She groaned while Ian leaned forward and asked, “Los Angeles basin is the target of the biological attack, then?”

“Unknown, but possible.”

Piper’s mind raced. The one thing they didn’t know about Abahdi’s test tubes of killer virus was whether he would pass them on to someone else or if he would use them himself. Her instinct was that the man would want personal revenge for his wife’s death.

The general continued, “I’ve called Andrews Air Force Base. A flight crew sitting alert has already been launched to fly you two to Orange County. They’ll be ready to go in under an hour. Find Abahdi, verify his identity, apprehend him, and make the bastard sing.”

Piper glanced over at Ian in time to see the infinitesimal nod at his boss. Message received and understood. No holds barred on this one. At all costs, all extremes, find out where those coolers of biological samples had gone.

“Do I have time to swing by my place and grab my kit, sir?” Ian bit out.

“We’ll pull generic go-bags for you and a kit for you.”

“I need one, too,” she added sharply. No way was she going to Idaho unarmed while Ian had a full compliment of weapons and gear.

The general briefly looked startled. “Of course,” he replied, continuing with, “Marines are scrambling a helicopter to the roof to pick you up. In fact, we need to head upstairs, now. We’ll talk as we walk.”

Piper was a little shell-shocked at the speed with which events were moving.

She’d never even been close to an operation with this kind of push behind it.

Her surveillance missions had been sleepy affairs where she set up shop somewhere obscure in the guise of doing humanitarian aid work and watched someone equally obscure from a safe distance. Like the Patrick Henry Patriots.

What in the hell had those guys gotten themselves involved in? Worry vibrated through her body unpleasantly as an elevator whisked them to the roof. The all-too-familiar faces passed through her mind’s eye. None of them were hardcore terrorists. She would bet her life savings on it.

She followed the men outside onto a rooftop terrace and a terrific view of downtown Washington, D.C.

“I’ll have the techies send you an updated briefing en route,” the general told Ian.

God, even her temporary boss acted like she was hardly part of this op. “And why aren’t we sending in the entire west coast FBI contingent to grab this guy?” she asked.

“The virus. Can’t spook him into turning it loose in the middle of a frigging theme park. We don’t know for sure if this is our guy, either. We need a solid ID on Abahdi, and a very quiet grab. Followed, of course by a fast and complete confession.”

A growing thwocking noise made her look over her shoulder. A white-topped helicopter with a dark green body was coming into sight. “Holy cow. Is that Marine One?” she blurted. Surely, they hadn’t scrambled the president’s own chopper for her and Ian.

“Same unit. Same birds. Not tasked to POTUS today, however.”

POTUS—President of the United States. Whoa.

A short set of steps folded down just behind the cockpit and she and Ian jogged over to them.

Intellectually, she understood that she didn’t have to duck under the rotors well over her head, but she did, anyway.

A Marine with practically no hair and more bulging muscles than ought to be legal gave them a fast safety briefing she didn’t hear a word of.

The bird lifted off and swooped away to the south toward Andrews Air Force Base.

She leaned back in the comfortable leather seat. Finally. A second to breathe. All of this was moving so fast.

“So. Care to tell me why you bailed out on me this morning?” Ian asked without warning.

She glanced forward in alarm at the Marine sitting just behind the cockpit.

“Oh, please. Those guys hear all kinds of classified dirt. Nothing we talk about is going to shock them or leave this aircraft. They’re professionals.”

He might be right, but she still didn’t want to talk about it. “I already told you. We can’t do that on the job.”

“We damned well can, now. It’s part of our cover to be married. Hell, it’s practically required for this job.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “The general already treats me like a glorified receptionist and coffee fetcher. I can’t afford to do anything to ruin what little credibility I’ve got with him and the other brass.”

Ian frowned. “He doesn’t know you. You’re an outsider. If he’s standoffish, it has nothing to do with your gender. He’s just cautious with people he doesn’t know well.”

“Still. This is the first high-profile op I’ve worked. I have to make a good impression.”

“The general sent you out with me. You already made a good impression or you’d have been sidelined. You brought in the evidence from Abahdi’s lab, after all. I made sure you got full credit for that.”

She heard the words, but she didn’t believe them. Ian was blowing sunshine up her butt because he wanted her to sleep with him. Her expression hardened.

“How come you don’t trust me?” Ian demanded. “I’ve had your back on multiple occasions, and we get along famously in the sack, if I do say so, myself. What else do you want from me?”

“A little professional respect would be nice,” she snapped.

“What are you talking about? I think you’re a hell of a shooter, and you handled yourself like a pro when the bullets were flying. I wouldn’t go out on this op with you if I didn’t think you could pull your weight.”

She just glared at him.

He blurted, “Is this about the flash drive and those mice? Let go of your grudge, already.”

Was she holding a grudge? Startled by the idea, she examined the notion.

She had always worked alone before. Maybe she didn’t know how to work with others.

But still, she hadn’t asked him to run into that damned burning building after her.

The intel was hers. She should have been the one to hand it over to Uncle Sam?—

Her train of thought was interrupted by their arrival at Andrews and quick transfer to a sleek Learjet for their trip to the west coast. They’d just leveled off at altitude when the laptop computer that had been in Ian’s go-bag beeped.

“Briefing’s coming in,” he announced.

The full intel dump on the possible Abahdi sighting didn’t have a lot of additional information for them.

A few grainy pictures from long-range security cameras.

A security specialist at the theme park had noticed a little girl matching Salima Abahdi’s description, accompanied by a male of the right height and build for Yusef.

In every picture of him, though, the man’s face was obscured by sunglasses and a baseball cap such that it was impossible to make a positive ID.

Which was, in and of itself, suspicious.

Piper studied the poor quality photos of the girl closely. “She looks happy.”

“Her life’s about to implode,” Ian replied grimly.

“Her life already imploded when her mother died.” Piper knew all about that one. Her mother might have run away, but the loss was total, just the same. The only thing Piper remembered about her mother was her smell. And the safe, happy feeling of being hugged by her.

Ian pulled her back into the present with, “If it comes to a grab, you take the girl. I’ll take the father.”

“I thought the grab was supposed to be low key. We don’t want to scare him into releasing the virus. Assuming he hasn’t done so already—“ She broke off, thinking hard.

“What?”

She looked over at Ian. “Would Abahdi expose himself and his daughter to the virus?”

Ian frowned. “Don’t know. Maybe. He had his kid with him at that lab where he was working on it.”

“Yeah, but the lab was tightly controlled. Fans vacated the air directly out of the basement, and the containment chamber for the viruses he worked with looked pretty decent. I would interpret that to mean he didn’t want to kill his daughter.”

Ian nodded. “Let’s follow your logic. If he doesn’t want to kill his kid, he probably hasn’t turned the virus loose on Los Angeles. Where, then?”

“If we’re excluding Los Angeles, then we need to exclude all of southern California. Given wind shifts, he couldn’t be sure of his daughter being safe if they accidentally got downwind of the virus release.”

“It’ll carry on air, then?” Ian asked.

Piper sighed. “Lassa fever spreads by nearly every vector known to man, including airborne vectors. If Abahdi has successfully hybridized some sort of Ebola-Lassa cross, I would expect it to go airborne.”

“Translation into dumb soldier talk, please?”