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Ian’s head whipped up off the concrete toward her.

Daddy? Daddy?

Her father was a member of the PHP? Someone shoved his head back down, but not before he got a good look at “Daddy.” Sonofabitch. It was Joseph Brothers himself, founder of the damned group. Brothers. Roth. B-Roth-ers. Son of a bitch.

His mind raced. No wonder she’d known so bloody much about this group. No wonder she’d spotted the threat when no one else had ever head of these guys. And no wonder she’d been so damned interested in finding out what her father was up to in Sudan. Jesus H .Christ.

Could she be trusted? Was she one of these extremists? She’d been all hot and bothered to prove she was as good as one of the boys—was that all about gaining acceptance into the ranks of these nutballs?

What had she told the PHP about her mission…or his? About him? Had she managed to tip off her father that the two of them were coming when he’d been in the store buying steak? It would explain how easily they’d been spotted, tonight.

“Who’d you bring home with you, Pipes?” one of the others asked.

“That’s Ian. I told him we wouldn’t be able to sneak in here without getting caught, but he just had to try.”

“Who the hell are you, Ian?” Brothers growled.

“I guess I should say, ‘Hi, Dad,’ too. Piper and I got married a few months back.”

He caught her gasp since she was lying right next to him, but he prayed the others hadn’t. She turned her head to stare at him intently. God, he could see the wheels turning in her head.

Moment of truth. Would she back up his legend, or roll on him and give him up to her family? He stared at her grimly in the flickering light, awaiting her next move.

She extended her hand to grab his and give it a squeeze. “Can we please get up off the floor? It’s cold.”

Dammit, what was she going to do? Go along or give him up? He was hoisted to his feet, and to buy time he made a production of brushing himself off. He looked over at her expectantly. This was either going to go very well or very badly in the next few seconds.

Piper took a step closer to him and slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. “Dad, this is Ian Smith, your new-son-in-law. Ian, meet my father, Joseph Brothers.”

He breathed a partial mental sigh of relief. Now for the second hurdle. Would Daddy Dearest buy it? Brothers stared at him hard, like he was examining the interior of Ian’s soul, for a long minute.

Then, abruptly, Brothers boomed, “Well, let’s quit standing around here and get acquainted!”

Piper’s hand tightened convulsively around his arm.

She was as tense as he was. Of course, the nutballs weren’t nearly so likely to blow her head off with all those shotguns pointed this way.

Speaking of which, the shotguns started parking over shoulders and relaxing along thighs.

Praise God. For a minute there, he’d thought they were toast.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. He’d known something was weird about Piper and the PHP. His instincts had been shouting it at him from the very beginning, but he’d been so besotted with her in the sack that he’d let sex distract him from digging for the truth.

God, to think he’d almost been done in by a woman. His siblings would laugh their heads off if they ever found out. He’d always been the stoic one. The one who never mixed women and work.

Of course, Piper could still do him in. They weren’t clear of this compound, yet. And they still didn’t know what the PHP guys had to do with the Scientist. Why had Brothers and his partner-in-crime burned Abahdi’s lab down for him?

Piper kept her hand tucked under his arm as they were herded toward the big, central gathering building inside the log fort. Lanterns were lit around the room and embers in the big fireplace stoked to life. Lawn chairs and wooden stools were pulled into a rough circle in front of the hearth.

“Sit, boy. Tell me about yourself,” Brothers ordered.

Jesus. Their legends weren’t built for this kind of personal interrogation. Ian glanced over at Piper for help. Thankfully, she picked up the ball he lobbed into her court.

She laughed a little as she said, “We met at a firing range.”

“Hell of a shooter, your daughter,” Ian added sincerely. “Did you teach her?”

Brothers leaned back in his chair and stroked his mutton chops while studying Ian shrewdly. “I did. What was she shooting?”

Ian glanced sidelong at Piper and caught her infinitesimal nod out of the corner of his eye. “As I recall, it was a modified Sig 550 sniper rig.”

“Still target shooting, are you, Pipes?” Brothers asked.

“I won a couple of competitions last year,” she replied. “Ian’s a decent shot, too.”

He allowed his mental snort to escape his throat. Decent? He was a military sniper, for god’s sake.

“Oh yeah? What do you shoot?” His father-in-law skewered him with a sharp stare.

“Pretty much anything, sir.”

Silence reigned as Brothers scowled at him. The fire crackled gently as the newly added wood started to catch fire.

God, this was awkward. The man was no doubt sitting there picturing all the filthy things Ian was doing to his daughter in bed.

Worse, the man would not be wrong. This was exactly why Ian had no interest in getting married for real.

His own family was hassle enough. He bloody well didn’t need to inherit more nosy relatives.

“What are your political beliefs?” Brothers fired at him.

Holy shit. Loaded question. “Pretty conservative, I guess. Piper’s told me a little about the Patrick Henry Patriots.”

“She tell you we have horns on our heads and belong in rubber rooms?”

“Not in so many words, sir,” Ian answered dryly.

Brothers laughed heartily. Without warning, though, he waxed serious. Intense. “Why’d you break into my shop, boy?”

Ian shrugged. “To see if I could do it. Piper said you guys had pretty sharp security. I didn’t think a guy like you would be too impressed by some stranger knocking politely on your front door to let you know I had married your baby girl.

I figured you’d want to know I was man enough to be part of the family. ”

That made Brothers leaned back hard in his chair and stroke his mutton chops furiously. Eventually, the man looked over at Piper. “Never thought you’d marry a man like me. Thought you’d go for some military asshole who swallows the government’s propaganda and spouts it back like a robot.”

Ian schooled his jaw to relax, his expression to stay open.

“Oh, he can be an asshole from time to time,” she muttered.

Brothers laughed. “Doesn’t let you push him around, huh?” The man’s gaze lit on him. “Good for you, son.”

He’d been upgraded from boy to son. He hoped that was a good sign.

“What do you do for a living?” Brothers demanded.

“Mechanic,” he answered, sticking to the legend the analyst had created for them.

Less chance of him and Piper getting their story wires crossed that way.

“Diesel engines, mostly.” The diesel detail had been Piper’s idea.

Tractors used the old-fashioned engines and were slightly less unacceptable to the PHP than modern, electronic, fuel-injected vehicles.

He shrugged. “I also like to hunt. Do some fishing. I carve a little in my spare time. Not that Piper leaves me much time for that. Always seems to have a list of stuff for me to do.”

The entire group of men laughed at that. Honey Do lists were universal, apparently.

Piper scowled on cue, and said, “It’s getting late. Can we bed down here, tonight, or should we head back to town?”

“Where you staying?” her father asked.

“We grabbed a cabin at the Trout Camp.”

“Might as well throw down a sleeping bag, here. We can talk more, tomorrow. Get to know Ian, here.” So.

Brothers didn’t entirely trust him, yet.

Good instincts, the guy had. Didn’t completely the buy the story of why they’d broken in to the compound.

Ian’s own instincts said the guy was buying time.

Delaying them. Why? What was on the verge of happening that he and Piper had to be kept out of the way of?

She’d had a good idea trying to talk them out of the compound like that. Although frankly, he would’ve been suspicious if Brothers had let them go so easily.

Sleeping bags were brought for the two of them to bunk down in front of the fire in here, overnight. Ian endured a few ribs about the bags zipping together and caught a scowl from his “father-in-law” over the jokes.

Jeez. Did all men go through this when they married the daughter of some redneck with a shotgun? It was a wonder anyone married those poor girls.

Brothers left them a lantern with a gruff, “Don’t sleep with the Devil, Piper.” And the two of them were left alone.

Ian visually scanned the room for surveillance measures but spotted nothing. He extinguished the lantern, and they duly crawled into their double sleeping bag by the dim light of the fire. He held his arm out in invitation, and she snuggled up against his side.

“We being watched?” he murmured against her temple.

“Not electronically, but maybe.”

“You sure they’re not using electronic surveillance? When we were lying on the floor, I think I saw motion detectors and pressure pads in the shop.”

“Really?” She started to push up on his chest to stare down at him, but he used his hand to anchor her shoulder and hold her down.

“What did your father mean by that last comment about not sleeping with the devil?”

“Favorite saying of his. Sometimes you have to sleep with the Devil if you want to catch him.”

“A cheery bedtime thought,” he muttered. Interesting. The guy thought that sometimes you had to do what you were opposed to for the sake of a greater goal? Ian filed that away for later analysis.

“We need to get out of here,” Piper breathed from behind unmoving lips. “He doesn’t trust you.”

“He doesn’t trust you, either,” Ian replied.