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“He’s watching the manager to make sure he doesn’t call up and warn Abahdi that we’re coming.”

Ahh. She wouldn’t have thought of that.

“Nice work, sweet talking the manager. That’s what I was talking about when I said you should use your gender to help you.”

“Don’t piss me off, McCloud.”

“Only time you’re not pissed off is when you’re having screaming orgasms in my arms,” he muttered as the door opened.

He timed that comment intentionally so she couldn’t respond. Bastard.

“I’ll go first,” he breathed.

She shook her head sharply. “No. Let me go first. Abahdi’s a Middle Eastern man. In his world, women aren’t threats. He won’t pull out a weapon and make this a shootout of it if I go first.”

Ian looked dubious for a second and then nodded in decision.

She lifted a stack of towels off a cleaning cart they passed and covered her handgun with the white terry cloth squares.

At her nod, Ian eased the key card into the lock and turned the knob smoothly.

He held the door open for her and stood back as she walked forward.

“Mr. Tariq? I brought you and your daughter more towels?—“

Abahdi leaped to his feet as she moved quickly into the room.

She turned the folded towels so he could see the black, round bore of her pistol and spoke quietly, soothingly even.

“I urgently need to speak with you, Mr. Tariq. Perhaps we can step out into the hall and let your daughter sleep?” Salima was passed out across one of the beds with a blanket pulled over her.

Abahdi’s gaze shifted to the window, back to her gun, to the open door, and back again.

“Please. I mean you and Salima no harm. I just want to talk.” To that end, and to gain his cooperation, she lowered the towel-covered gun.

Of course, her target didn’t know how quickly she could fire it from her hip or that she could hit a two-inch target at twenty feet every time when firing from her side.

The Palestinian nodded reluctantly. He stepped out into the hall and Ian moved away from the wall, flanking him. “If you’ll come with us, Mr. Abahdi, we have a few questions for you,” Ian murmured in Arabic.

Yusef stiffened sharply. Tried to turn around. But it was too late. Piper pressed her weapon lightly into his ribs. Ian took the man by the arm and led him into a room a maid was cleaning.

The maid looked up, startled, from making a bed and Ian jerked a thumb at the door. She scuttled out.

“Sit down, Yusef.” Ian planted a chair in the middle of the open space in front of the window.

The Palestinian sat. His facial expression was calm. He was completely at peace with what he’d done. There wasn’t even a hint of fear—or madness—in his steady, intelligent gaze.

This was a true fanatic of the worst kind. He believed all the way down to the bottom of his soul in his cause. He knew he had God and Right on his side. Nothing they could say or to do him was going to sway him from that certainty.

She made brief eye contact with Ian and headed back for Abahdi’s room to search for the vials of virus samples. She poked around quietly, and it was quickly apparent that the virus wasn’t there. As she’d expected.

Piper made a quick cell phone call. “The virus is not here. We need an FBI agent in here to babysit Salima Abahdi. She’s asleep in Room 316.

If you have an Arabic speaker experienced with kids, send that agent in.

In the meantime, a search of the hotel would be in order.

Not that I expect to find the virus here.

This guy won’t go on vacation with his daughter anywhere near that stuff. ”

“Roger, ma’am.”

In under a minute, a man in a suit knocked quietly on the door.

“Babysitter?” she murmured.

The agent nodded and she thanked him as she slipped out. “We’ll be down the hall.”

Ian sat on the bed in front of Abahdi as she entered the room. He ordered her quietly, “Close the door.”

She turned in time to hear Ian ask pleasantly, “Where’s the virus, Yusef?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about?—“

“Sure you do. The three coolers you carried out of the house in South Sudan a few days ago. You loaded them in a Land Rover with Salima and drove away while those two Americans stuck around to burn the place down.”

Abahdi gaped.

“Remember all those poor girls in the body bags in the basement? Their eyeballs blood red and staring at you as you worked in your lab?”

Fear flickered in Yusef’s eyes for a second only to be replaced by stony resolve.

Crap. He was going to stonewall them.

Piper stepped forward. “Your wife. Marta was her name, yes? I’m so sorry for your loss. What a horrible tragedy. And for your daughter to witness it…so sad. I lost my mother when I was very young. It’s a terrible blow to a child. I don’t know if Salima could survive losing you, too.”

The resolve cracked just a little.

Following her lead, Ian asked quietly, “Where’s the virus?”

He shook his head. “It is done. God is great and has answered my prayers.”

Crud. What did that mean? “I saw your lab, Dr. Abahdi. Read your notes. Most impressive. Engineering a virus like you did with the equipment you had available…that was world-class work. But here’s the thing.

My government needs to know where the virus went.

And I’m afraid Uncle Sam isn’t going to take no for an answer. ”

He shrugged. “Giving the Great Satan an answer at this point is meaningless.”

She glanced over at Ian, and his eyes were black with worry. Yup, he read this guy the same way she did. The virus had already been released. Mother of God .

Tamping down on her panic, she asked as calmly as she could manage, “I’m fascinated by your work. Can you tell me a little about it? Were you able to modify the incubation times along with combining spread vectors and lethality factors?”

Abahdi just looked at her. His pain was so deep, so crystallized, she could see it in every pore of his skin, every hair on his head.

She spoke solemnly. “I understand your rage. I accept it. I will not shake you from your course. You are bent on dying…and so you shall. But are you willing to sacrifice your daughter to have your revenge as well?”

Ian’s gaze snapped to her and then back to their prisoner, measuring, testing her assessment. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this guy was totally committed to avenging his wife’s death. He had nothing else to live for. Except maybe the daughter.

Abahdi pressed his lips more tightly together.

“Really?” Anger crept into Piper’s voice.

“You’re going to throw away your own child’s life, too?

My father might have been a crazy sonofabitch with extreme political beliefs, but he never would have sacrificed me and my brother.

You’ll never see Salima again. We’ll raise her to hate you and everything you stood for with all her being. ”

With every word, more fury infused Piper’s voice. “We’ll turn her into your worst nightmare, Yusef. Is that what you want for your daughter? For her to know that your revenge was more important to you than her life ?”

By the end of her tirade, she was battering at Yusef emotionally, pouring out rage and grief at him she didn’t even know until then she had inside herself.

The man had the good grace to look at least a little taken aback. For a few seconds. But then that diamond-hard resolve glittered in his stare once more.

Rage literally poured off the man. It disturbed the air around him like heat devils in the desert. If she reached out with her hand, she would be able to touch it. Feel it. His fury was so palpable, it had taken on a life of its own. It writhed around Abahdi like a sycophantic serpent.

It was arguably one of the most frightening things she’d ever seen. Here was a man of intelligence and resolve, a man of action. And he was motivated by so much rage that murdering thousands or millions of innocent civilians was a shrugging matter to him.

She looked into his eyes for signs of the monster within him, for surely Satan himself had consumed this man’s soul.

But instead of the Beast, she saw only a man.

A self-satisfied man. She might even call that expression one of smug satisfaction.

He was not a reasonable man. He was a fanatic.

Lost to them. Furthermore, the man was convinced he’d already gotten his revenge.

Which made her blood run cold. What had he done? There was very little she would put past this man and his invisible cloak of rage.

Ian picked Yusef up by his shirt front and the man did not resist. It was almost as if he welcomed violence. Ian snarled from a range of about four inches, “Where is it, Yusef?”

“Go to hell, Yankee pig.”

Ian flung Abahdi back down into the chair. “I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of losing my temper and burying my fist in your face. You’re not worth it. But you’re done, Abahdi. It’s over.”

The Palestinian laughed. “Oh, no, American. You are wrong. It is just beginning. The wrath of God is coming for you. For all of you.” Abahdi’s laughter changed in pitch.

Took on a maniacal quality as it turned into a cackle of encroaching madness.

No doubt about it. He’d already turned the virus loose.

“Sir?” An FBI type appeared in the doorway. “Everything okay in here?”

“Take him. He’s yours,” Ian snapped. “This is positively Yusef Abahdi. Take his kid into custody, too. Use her as necessary to break this sonofabitch. Drug him or water board him or whatever you do to people like him to make him sing like a bird. Find out where the virus is.”

The FBI agent spoke into a microphone in the collar of his shirt, and faster than Piper could believe, a half-dozen FBI agents rushed into the room, cuffed the Scientist, and hauled him out.