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“André all but fired me.”

“Okay. Then you’ll just ride along with me for lack of any other ride to where you’re headed.

You won’t technically be working with me.

But I need you to get your head back in the game.

Help me figure out where Yusef turned his virus loose.

You can sort out your job or lack of one later. But right now, I need you.”

Ian stared hard at her, and she stared back, weighing whether or not he meant any of it. Was this all part of an elaborate interrogation ploy to get her to spill her guts? Thing was, she’d already laid her guts on the table for him. She just didn’t know if he believed her or not.

“Be square with me, Ian. Are you playing me or not? We’ve got no time for this.”

“You’re right. We don’t.” He shoved a hand through his hair.

“I don’t make a habit of working with people I don’t trust. But there is no one else.

I need you to look me in the eye and swear you’ll be dead honest with me from here on out.

No lies. No evasions. About anything. No matter what I ask you, I need the truth to the very best of your ability to give it to me.

That’s the only way this is going to work.

I can’t work with you if you’re not honest with me. ”

She stared at him long and hard. Honest had never been part of her M.O.

Ever since she could remember, she’d survived by hiding her true self.

By being less like her mother than she really was.

By pretending to agree with her father’s brand of madness.

By hiding her dreams. Hiding her feelings. Hiding everything about herself.

“Take it or leave it,” he prodded.

She ought to walk away. Let Ian and the government flail through this crisis on their own. But she still felt a responsibility to do the right thing. To atone for stopping Ian from destroying the virus in Sudan. To make up for her family’s crimes. To redeem her own reputation.

She capitulated to that little voice all at once, abruptly, not daring to second guess the impulsive decision. “Fine. I swear to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from now on,” she blurted.

“Can I believe you?” he challenged.

She shrugged and risked a look up into his eyes. “That’s up to you. I can make you promises all day long, but what matters is how your gut answers that question.”

He made a sound of disgust. And that was the problem with blown trust. Even if she one-hundred-percent kept her promise, he wouldn’t necessarily believe her.

She added soberly, “Even if you don’t believe me, we still have a crisis on our hands. And I still know more about the PHP than anybody on earth who’s not an actual member.”

He swore under his breath. She would take that as an acknowledgment that she was right. He asked heavily, “Did you find anything in the plane to indicate where it might be headed?”

“There were navigation maps of Idaho, Nevada, and southern California,” she answered. “How do those link up with what you found in the back of the plane?”

“Alarmingly,” he answered dryly. Still not going to tell her what had been under that tarp, huh? She elected not to push him for details just now. He was being pretty prickly at the moment. Maybe later, after she’d restored his trust in her, he’d tell her what he’d seen.

Maybe . He didn’t exactly strike her as the forgiving type.

Ian asked her abruptly, “Did you see anyone in the compound you didn’t recognize? Someone new?”

She thought back to the cluster of men who’d captured her and Ian. “Yes. Tall guy. Dark, full beard. Wore the black parka with the hood. I might have seen him the last time I observed the compound, but he’s the only person I don’t know by name or recognize on sight.”

“No idea who he is?”

She shook her head. “None.”

“He was the guy who frisked me,” Ian commented. “I thought he might be an ex-cop, given how efficiently he searched me. Too bad we don’t have a picture of him to run through the FBI facial recognition data base.”

She frowned. “I might have one. Last time I was in Idaho, I took a bunch of surveillance pictures of the PHP compound. I might have caught him without realizing it. If he has grown that beard in the last six months or so, I may have him on film and not even know it. I sent all those pictures to Doctors Unlimited before I left for Sudan.”

“Can you call DU? Have the pics sent to the FBI?” Ian asked tersely. “Get the boys there looking for a guy who matches our description and get an ID on him?”

“Yeah, sure.” It took her a few minutes to contact an IT guy at Doctors Unlimited and have him forward the pictures.

She pocketed her phone and nodded at Ian.

She, too, felt the weight of time slipping by.

Somewhere, a lethal virus was incubating.

Growing. Coiling like a viper getting ready to strike.

“What the hell is your family up to?” Ian growled as he paced the confines of the room.

If only she knew. Speaking of family … “Have you checked in with your brother-in-law recently? Maybe he has picked up a money trail on Yusef.”

Ian shrugged and pulled out his cell phone. He surprised her by putting it on speaker and setting it on the table between them. Alex Peters picked up on the second ring.

“Hey, Ian. I was about to call you.”

“You got something for us?” Ian replied quickly.

“Maybe. What can you tell me about El Noor? Did you ever personally see him while you were in Sudan?”

Ian glanced over at her questioningly and she shook her head in the negative. “Neither of us ever saw him. There were a lot of rumors about him, and we saw his guys plenty. They wore black berets and kicked butt whenever they showed up. Why do you ask?”

Alex’s scratchy voice replied, “I did a little digging, well, a lot of digging, actually. I’m not convinced he actually exists. Someone is paying the bills and fronting a group of thugs in Khartoum, but I don’t think there’s any such warlord living in Sudan.”

Piper’s jaw dropped.

“Who is he, then?” Ian asked, sounding as shocked as she felt.

“Good question. The money trail is as sophisticated as anything I’ve ever seen.

Shell companies, accounts in tax havens, nesting corporations, the works.

This guy doesn’t want anyone to know who he is or where to find him.

One thing I know for certain: he’s no garden variety warlord from the slums of Khartoum. ”

Piper leaned forward. “So you’re telling us that the PHP guys and Yusef Abahdi are working for someone outside of Sudan who only pretended to be El Noor in Khartoum?”

“That’s the gist of it. El Noor could be anybody. No telling who he wants to target or why.”

Ian interjected, “But we do know the guy is probably financing some sort of terrorist attack in the United States. Probably a biological attack, and probably on a good-sized city.”

Alex answered, “And we know El Noor paid for a helicopter that the PHP took delivery of.”

“What about a small, fixed wing airplane?” Ian asked. “Did El Noor buy one of those for the PHP?”

“What kind of plane?” Alex asked.

Piper supplied, “A Cessna 210.” She rattled off the tail number, adding, “But that number may be a fake.”

Alex sounded distracted as rapid typing fired off behind his voice. “Lemme look into it. I’ll call you back.”

“Roger,” Ian bit out. The call ended.

She stared up at him. “Did you see anything in Khartoum to indicate that El Noor wasn’t real?”

Ian frowned. “There was something…” His voice trailed off. “I’d have to review my scope footage…”

Whoa. His gun sight also recorded video? Her scope hadn’t been anywhere near that high-tech. He picked up the telephone receiver mounted on the wall and asked for a laptop computer to be brought into their room right away.

It took a few minutes to get him connected to the Internet, but in short order after that, Piper sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder, watching him fast forward through video telemetry from Khartoum.

“Here it is,” Ian announced.

She recognized the dusty street. From the angle of the sun that would have been a morning shot. Ian slowed the footage down to normal speed. A group of men in El Noor berets piled out of a Jeep in front of a store and disappeared inside?—

“Hey! I recognize that!” she exclaimed. “That’s from the day we met. They dragged out that shopkeeper and beat him to death. You must have taken this footage right before I spotted you.”

“And I spotted you back,” Ian retorted. “Here’s the piece I was looking for.”

She looked at the screen and flinched as one of El Noor’s thugs slammed a rifle butt into the shopkeeper’s skull. “God, that’s violent.”

“And efficient. Watch the precision with which these guys kill their target and then pummel his corpse into hamburger.”

It was nauseating to witness again, but in spite of feeling sick she leaned forward to watch the attack more closely. Now that he mentioned it, Ian was right. Those guys were military in their precision. Each punch and kick was targeted with incredible efficiency. Minimum effort for maximum damage.

“Is that Krav Maga they’re using?” she asked.

“A little hard to tell, since Krav Maga is based on an actively resisting opponent. But that would be my guess,” he replied.

“Where did a gang of illiterate Sudanese kids from the slums learn sophisticated Israeli self-defense tactics?” she murmured. A flash of white at one of the attackers’ throats caught her attention. “Wait. Go back. What was that?”

“Where?” Ian asked.

“Pause it…right…now.” She pointed at the screen. “See there? This attacker’s throat is weird. It’s white.” And it didn’t look like a scarf or piece of clothing at the guy’s collar.

Ian highlighted the section of the shot and enlarged it. “Lemme see if I can enhance the pixilation on this.”

It took a minute for the computer to clarify the rough edges of the screen shot, but when it finished, Ian lurched back hard in his seat while she just stared.