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Piper gulped. The odd acoustics of the padded walls were familiar to her.

She would never forget the advanced interrogation techniques that had been part of her CIA training in Virginia.

She’d known this moment was coming ever since she’d uttered the words, “Hi, Daddy.” But she couldn’t stop her knees from knocking together or her teeth from wanting to chatter.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she blurted to Ian.

He perched on the edge of the table bolted to the floor in the middle of the room, and folded his arms, studying her. “How’s that?” he asked evenly.

At least he sounded like he was willing to hear her out before he condemned her out of hand. But his eyes were cold. Closed. So unlike the open, generous lover she’d come to know over the past few weeks. Right now, he looked every inch the angry intelligence officer she knew him to be.

“I’m not one of them. I think my father and brother are more than a little crazy and in need of watching. That’s why I’ve been tracking the PHP for the past two years on my own time.”

He moved so fast she didn’t even have time to react, grabbing her shoulders, lifting her out of the chair and slamming her back against the spongy wall.

He snarled in her face, “That’s exactly what you would say if you were secretly working with them, infiltrating the government intelligence apparatus to find out what was being said about them, any actions that might be planned against them. ”

He looked furious. Murderously so. God knew, if he decided to kill her, she wouldn’t be able to stop him. He was right about one thing. She would never be the Special Forces soldier that he was. He had eight inches in height and sixty pounds of solid muscle on her.

She answered candidly, “If I had admitted they were my family and that I thought they were nuts, would anyone have taken me seriously?”

Ian’s gritted, “Probably not. Without a credible threat from them, you’d have been ignored.”

“Hence, I watched them myself and waited for something to change. The minute my dad and brother headed for Sudan, I reported it to my boss.”

“But you still didn’t tell him who you were, or who they were to you, did you?”

“Well, no.”

He flung her away from him and paced a restless circuit around the tiny room.

“How’d you convince André Fortinay to send you after them?” he threw at her.

She held her position carefully, not moving in any way that would provoke the tiger in him to attack her. Smart girl.

“I told André I had a gut instinct that something had changed with the PHP and they were becoming dangerous. Which wasn’t a hard idea to sell given that they were headed for Khartoum, the birthplace of many of the world’s biggest terrorists. And I wasn’t wrong that they’re dangerous, was I?”

Ian powered down fractionally. He’d been in the business long enough to know that gut instincts were worth paying attention to. And her gut had been right, damn it.

“Why did you lie to me?”

Crap. He was back in her face, possibly even angrier than before, his voice low and charged. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth. I never lied to you.”

“Don’t split hairs with me. You didn’t tell me about your association with the PHP. And you damned well should have.”

“Would you have trusted me if I had?”

“I fucking don’t trust you now!” he burst out. “What has all of this been? A ploy to spy on the government on behalf of your family? Blood’s thicker than water, isn’t it, Piper?”

Pain sliced through her. If their positions were reversed, she wouldn’t trust him, either.

“Blood may be thicker than water, but it’s not thicker than right and wrong.

My family is doing something bad. Really bad.

And I’m doing my damnedest to stop them.

If I hadn’t blown the whistle on them, nobody would be watching them.

Nobody would have any idea that they’re working for a terrorist.”

Ian stared hard at her, his hand hovering dangerously near the deadly field knife in its sheath at his hip. “You do realize that every bit of intel you’ve ever given Uncle Sam on the PHP is now discredited, right?”

“I’m sorry,” she tried in desperation. “I should have told you. I should have trusted you. I was wrong.”

He was silent, stress tight across his forehead.

“What was that under the tarp?” she asked in a blatant attempt to distract him and diffuse his anger and betrayal. “It looked like a big motor. Why did you insist on going back to have another look at it?”

His jaw tightened and he said nothing.

He wasn’t going to answer her? Did he distrust her so much, then? A hot knife of hurt pierced her, startling her. Since when did she care so deeply what he thought about her? They’d hooked up a few times, but that did not a relationship make. Right?

Wrong , a little voice in the back of her head whispered to her.

“Look, Ian. We could stand here and argue all night over whether I should have told you about my relationship to the PHP. The fact is I spotted my father and brother heading to Sudan. And I told the authorities. Now we know they have something to do with Yusef Abahdi. That’s more than we would have known had I not been tracking them on the side. ”

Ian shoved a hand through his hair. Exhaled hard. “You have to tell your boss. You have to let everyone running the op know. Now.”

She stared at him in dismay. “Really? Is putting my mistake to rights more important than finding the virus and stopping Yusef from killing thousands of innocents?”

“Your intel is discredited. You have to let the analysts know.”

But it wasn’t discredited, dammit. She’d never been anything but honest and forthright in her reports on the PHP to her boss. She’d collected data and done her level best to be objective…

Okay, Fine. She couldn’t technically be classed as objective where her own family members were concerned. Her relationship to the PHP might plausibly have put a slant on the reports, but in no way discredited them outright?—

“Make the call.” Ian held out his cell phone to her expectantly. She looked up at him in desperation but not even a hint of relenting cracked the granite facade of his expression.

She took the phone. It was five a.m. here on the West Coast, which made it eight a/m. in Washington. André, an early rise, would already be at work.

Silently, despairingly, she typed in André Fortinay’s office number. The receptionist patched her through to her boss’s desk.

“Hi, André. It’s me. I have a confession to make. A big one. And it’s going to make you mad…”

Her boss listened in grim silence as she explained her relationship to the PHP. He also listened in silence to her avowals on stacks of bibles that had done her absolute best to be objective, fair, and honest in her reports on the group.

At the end of her monologue, all he said was, “You’re off the case.”

“Am I fired?”

“To be determined,” was her boss’s terse response.

“Okay. Fair enough.” She sighed heavily. “I’m really sorry.”

“Save it. I have bigger problems on my plate at the moment. I’ll talk to you when you get back to D.C.” The line went dead in her ear.

Oh, that was so not good. André was a European and the soul of courtesy at all times. But the man had just hung up on her. She was dead meat.

Holding out Ian’s phone to him, she looked up at him bleakly. “Satisfied? I’m off the case and have undoubtedly lost my job. The career I’ve dreamed of most of my life is over.”

She turned away sharply lest he see the tears gathering in her eyes all of a sudden. She tried the steel door and was dismayed to find it locked.

“If you’ll let me out of here, I’ll get out of your hair. Good luck, Ian. You’ve got to find that virus. There’s no telling how many people will die if it runs unchecked.”

A big hand landed on the door above the latch. His arm stretched disturbingly close to her shoulder, and damned if she couldn’t feel his body heat radiating toward her back.

Oh, God. Not only had she lost her career, but she’d also lost him . A black pit opened beneath her feet and she gave herself over to it, falling, falling. She’d lost everything. She had nothing--

“Crucify yourself later,” Ian growled. “Right now, we have a terrorist attack to stop.”

“Didn’t you hear me? I’m off the case. Fired.

Gone. Security clearances revoked, Need to know erased.

I’m done .” She spared him a single anguished glance over her shoulder, but it was too much.

If she looked at him anymore she was going to break down and sob like a baby.

And she’d be damned if she cried in front of him.

She turned back to the door, yanking futilely at the immobile latch.

“In the meantime, Americans are dying.” His words pounded at her skull like hammers. “They don’t know it yet, but a whole bunch of innocent civilians have likely got viral time bombs ticking away inside them.”

Did he have a point to make? Frowning, she turned under his arm to face him. The steel door was cold against her back. As unyielding as the man in front of her.

“We’re agreed that the attack has already happened.

Yes?” he asked rhetorically. She nodded as she stared at a spot somewhere in the middle of his chest, and he continued grimly.

“We’re in damage control mode, then. We need to know where to concentrate medical resources before all hell breaks loose.

Which means this is a race against time. ”

“I’m aware of all this,” she told him gently. “But it’s not my problem anymore. It’s yours, alone.”

“I need your help, Piper.”

Her stare snapped up to his. He didn’t look demented.

“Come again?” she blurted.

“I need your help. Like it or not, you’re the expert on PHP. You know more about them than anyone else in the intel establishment.”

“But you said it yourself. You can’t trust me. Even if I am telling you the truth to the best of my ability, it’s bound to be skewed to some degree. None of my intel is reliable or actionable.”

“It’s the best we’ve got. And we’re running out of time.”