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A few moments later, the agent who’d been left with Salima passed by the open door, carrying the child down the hall wrapped in a blanket, still sleeping peacefully.

God knew, that peace would be shattered when the little girl awoke.

But at least she got one last night of sweet dreams before her life went the rest of the way to hell.

Ian got on his phone and made a quick report to his boss. He pocketed the device grimly. “HQ says to find the virus ASAP.”

She replied heavily, “I think the virus will announce itself soon enough.”

He nodded. “If we can give the government and health care system any kind of a head start on knowing where to mass their resources, lives will be saved.”

They headed outside, where an army of police cars and government vehicles had gathered, filling the parking lot silently in the gathering dusk with dozens of flashing lights. Ian commandeered a vehicle from the FBI contingent, and she and Ian pulled away from the garish scene.

“Where to, now?” she asked.

Ian was grim. “I don’t know. But I need some quiet to think this through, and it was a zoo back there.”

She talked through what they knew of Abahdi aloud. “Somewhere between South Sudan and Los Angeles, Yusef dropped off the virus. I got the definite impression he turned it loose, himself. My gut says we’re not looking at a middleman.”

“Someone paid for that house, the lab equipment inside,” Ian commented.

“And paid for the girls he gathered virus samples from,” Piper added. “Fatima said El Noor was paid to find those girls and ship them south. Yusef didn’t have the resources to do all of that on his own.”

“Okay. So there’s somebody financing Yusef, but Abahdi turned the virus loose personally. Are we agreed on that?”

“Yes. He was far too smug back at the hotel. He got his revenge in person. And his rage was such that he would have insisted on doing it himself.”

“Odds are he flew from Africa to South America off the radar, literally and figuratively,” Ian speculated. “Which means he came into U.S. airspace from the south.”

Piper shook her head. “The government has excellent radar coverage of U.S. airspace. He came in very low on a small drug plane, which I don’t see him doing with those big coolers and with his daughter. Or, he drove across the border.”

Ian took up the thread. “He could have come in by boat, which opens up all the east coast cities as targets, too. He either attacked someplace in South America, which I highly doubt, since he took great pleasure in calling me a pig, or we’re looking at a U.S. city as his target.”

“He said the wrath of God is coming. I read that to imply a big population has been targeted. Which means a big city.”

Ian called Alex to see if a money trail on Yusef had been identified yet.

Piper crossed her fingers, but as Ian listened to Alex, he shook his head in the negative.

Rats. They were back to square one. The United States was a big place with a lot of large cities, every one of them a potential target.

“Ideas?” Ian asked. “I’m open to wild-ass guesses at this point. We’ve got no time, and I’ve got no idea how to proceed from here.”

“You don’t think the FBI will get him to talk?” she responded.

“No way. I’ve questioned guys like him before. He’ll die under the most extreme torture without a peep. He’ll lose himself in a fanatical religious hallucination.”

“What if they drug him?” she asked hopefully.

“Chemicals aren’t nearly as effective as everyone would like to think. With enough willpower and a little madness, he can defeat drug-induced questioning or at least side-track it. And he only has to hold out a few days. Just until the outbreak occurs.”

Outbreak . The word resonated like a death knell through her.

Thousands of people sickened and dying from a horrendous viral attack that she’d stopped Ian from preventing.

Had Ian not been forced to rush in to that burning house to save her, he’d have been able to stop the Scientist from loosing his killer virus, or at least he could have tracked the guy and known where the virus was about to strike.

When the dust of this catastrophe settled, all fingers were going to point at her.

This was her fault.

Ian stretched out a cramp beneath the camo netting draped over him and Piper and then settled back into place on the mountainside above the PHP compound. Coming to Idaho was a long shot, but what else did they have to go on?

It all came back to the money. Two seemingly unrelated players—Abahdi and the PHP guys—had abruptly come into windfalls of cash. Both players seemed to be using it for nefarious, yet to be determined, purposes. Maybe each group’s goals were related, maybe not. But they had nothing else to go on.

If Abahdi could be made to talk, the FBI was certainly the bunch to do it. In the meantime, he and Piper were going to pick up the PHP thread of this whole puzzle and see where it led them.

Like he said. A long shot.

More like a Hail Mary.

The PHP compound across the valley was as private and closed off as Piper had described it. A tall, crude wall made of logs like an Old West fort surrounded the cluster of cabins and gardens. Beyond the wall, several metal pole barns looked like a car and tractor repair set-up.

He and Piper had been parked here for hours, and except for the lazy swirl of wood smoke from a few chimneys, they’d yet to see a single movement of interest. The weight of time ticking by lay heavy upon his shoulders.

Memory of those dead girls staring out of their plastic bags still made his skin crawl.

He didn’t even want to think about thousands of people dying the same way.

“These guys nocturnal, or what?” he muttered to Piper.

“Nope. Just quiet. I told you that before.”

“You weren’t kidding,” he retorted. “Walk me through what goes on in each building, again.”

She was able to name who lived in most of the cabins and pointed out the community building, barn, and equipment shed. He was right—the pole barns were a shop facility.

“What about that big building over there?” He pointed at the farthest building beyond the others.

“That one’s new since the last time I was here. I honestly don’t know.”

“So, if the PHP is doing something new, it’s likely to be contained in that new building.”

She shrugged. “I highly doubt they’re building a nuclear bomb in there if that’s what you mean.”

“You know these guys really well. How long have you been watching them?”

She shrugged, her shoulder lifting against his. “I’ve kept tabs on them for a while.”

“Why these guys? They’re a pretty obscure little group.”

“Until they went to Khartoum,” she replied sourly.

“After dark, let’s go down and have a look in that new building,” he suggested.

Horror crossed her face. “Are you crazy?”

“Not at all. Something has changed with these guys. That’s the one physical feature that has changed recently. Let’s check it out. It’s not like they’ll have pressure pads and laser beams guarding the place.”

“I can’t agree to this plan. It’s dangerous and it’ll tip off the PHP that we’re watching them.”

She couldn’t agree? “I’m not asking your permission, Piper.”

“And why’s that? I’m the expert on these guys, not you. I should be the one making the call, and I say we stand off and watch them for a day or two.”

“We don’t have a day or two for leisurely surveillance on these guys. Tick tock, baby. Tick tock.”

“I know we’re on a short clock. But you’re underestimating them. Which is irresponsible.”

“Not at all,” he ground out. “It’s called taking a calculated risk. The time crunch demands that we move this investigation along. And if you don’t have the cahones to take a chance in the field, go home. I’ll handle this on my own.”

She threw up her hands. “Oh, now we’re getting to the heart of the matter. You don’t like having me out here! You want to do this alone and get all the glory for yourself!”

He rolled onto his side to stare at her. “I beg your pardon?”

If she seriously thought he did this job for glory, then she didn’t know him in the least. Yes, he took deep satisfaction in his work, and he was the first guy to appreciate an attaboy from his boss.

But it had always been about doing the right thing, protecting his country and family.

It had never been about personal aggrandizement.

“You heard me.” Her voice quavered with a little less resolve than before.

“I heard you. I just can’t believe what I heard.” His voice dropped into a low, dangerous tone. “If you ever accuse me of doing my job for glory again, we’re going to have a serious problem.” And that was as much of a warning defining his line in the sand as she was going to get out of him.

Piper fell silent. Hopefully, she was digesting his warning and becoming one with it. Eventually, she murmured, “For security, they mostly rely on good old-fashioned guard dogs. Which are not to be underestimated. They’ll rip your throat out and are noisy as heck.”

He accepted her surrender to his authority out here—and her unspoken apology—with grace. He replied easily, “Dogs are one good bone away from quiet and your best friend. Let’s head back to town and pick up some steaks. We can be back here before dark.”

“You’re nuts.”

“I’m a man on a tight schedule. We haven’t gotten any texts from my boss, which means Yusef isn’t talking.

You and I both know that, if he hasn’t talked by now, he’s not going to talk at all.

It’s up to us to figure out where he dropped his virus bomb.

And those people down the hill are our best bet at getting an answer. ”

Piper was uncharacteristically quiet on the ride back to town. She seemed inordinately ill at ease being back here. Like she’d gone back to her old high school and realized that, as an adult, she no longer fit in.