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He bellowed in Arabic, “These police are El Noori stooges! They came into this neighborhood to attack Dharwani women. They misuse their position to show disrespect to our women and blaspheme the name of Allah. They are frauds!”

The crowd froze in shock. And then a low, angry buzz began to build.

He gestured toward the tall woman—who turned out to be a teenaged girl—and her companion whom Piper had saved. They cowered against the building at their backs, trapped by the gathering crowd and unable to make an escape.

He yelled, “Are we going to let El Noor’s men cane our women in the streets as if they are common whores? These are God-fearing women, and those animals would abase our wives and daughters! Will we let those black-hatted bastards rape them next?”

The buzz grew into a roar. The crowd heaved and swayed around him, growing quickly as people melted onto the street and joined the seething mob.

Other voices began to shout insults at the two religious policemen.

The crowd began to jump up and down in a tribal ritual as old as Africa, the entire mob circling slowly to the left.

The rotating crowd collapsed in upon itself in a crushing mass of grabbing hands and violent intent.

He looked around frantically for Piper. There.

He spotted her just as someone banged into her from behind.

She went down to her knees. Frantic, he jumped forward, dragging her to her feet as the crowd surged around them.

Fuck . She’d lost her hat and her blond hair spilled down around her face in a blatantly feminine display.

Thankfully, the crowd was too focused on the religious police to notice her. Yet. A mob like this could turn in an instant.

“We need to get out of here,” he shouted at her in English over the din.

“Ya think?” she shouted back.

He spared a scowl for her and shouldered his way through the mob.

Male screams erupted from the center of the enraged ring of locals. The crowd roared and nearly knocked him off his feet as it heaved forward. Someone must have hit the religious cops.

Once the mob saw blood, the feeding frenzy would begin in earnest. He only hoped he and Piper were far enough from the epicenter of the violence to avoid the fallout. If El Noor was smart, he would attack this instant. Hell, the crowd would turn on itself, it was so blindly enraged.

Ian used his height, bulk, and sheer brute strength to muscle a path through the crowd. Piper clung to his belt like it was her only lifeline. Which probably wasn’t far from the truth. They burst clear of the mob. Dusk was settling around them.

“C’mon,” he growled. What in the hell was he supposed to do with her now? Her cover was blown. The locals knew she was a she , and furthermore, that she was a foreigner. He had to get her off the street and properly robed ASAP, before the mob he’d stirred up turned on her.

Swearing under his breath, he started out toward his place. He’d paid enough protection money to the locals over the past several months that she ought to be safe there.

“Where are we going?” she panted, hustling to keep up with his running stride.

“My place.” They ran for several blocks, until things quieted around them enough for running to draw more attention than walking. He slowed to a rapid walk.

“Don’t you want to stick around and observe the situation?”

“That’s what I was doing when you decided to play Rambo,” he retorted dryly.

“He was beating that girl for showing her ankles! She explained to him that she’d grown taller recently and her family couldn’t afford longer robes for her. Somebody had to do something !”

“And that somebody just had to be you?” He felt a certain reluctant admiration for her courage and commitment to doing the right thing, but not if it was going to get her killed.

She scowled. “Look. I just blew my mission and probably my career. But an innocent girl’s life was at stake.”

“I know the feeling,” he snapped, the syllables as bitter as the metallic dust in his mouth. “You just screwed up my mission, too.”

By the time his bosses at Defense Intelligence got a replacement observer read in and placed over here, EL Noor’s Palestinian contact would be long gone. And the U.S. would have no idea where or when he or any other terrorist planned to strike.

He’d gotten confirmation from a local source that a Palestinian had been seen in Khartoum recently. And rumor had it the Palestinian was on El Noor’s payroll. Some kind of scientist.

Nobody seemed to know what kind of scientist, however. Ian’s local informants were just beginning to trust him enough to fork over timely and legit intel. He was close to finding out what El Noor was up to. Very close. He felt it in his bones.

And now he was going to have to fucking bug out and abandon the whole op because Piper couldn’t keep her damn Pollyanna streak in check.

He turned around abruptly and she ran right into his chest. He grabbed her upper arms and yanked her up against him, nose to nose, snarling furiously, “Some girl getting a beating is kid stuff in Khartoum. She was probably lying there thanking her lucky stars that he didn’t chop her feet off.

She wasn’t fucking worth blowing your cover— and mine —over. ”

“That’s cold hearted of you,” she snarled back.

“Get your head out of your ass or get out of here, Pollyanna. This is no place for do-gooders or hot, single females.”

He released her with a little shove and whirled away from her. He stomped off toward his hooch. Right now, he didn’t give a damn if she followed or not. Let Darwinian selection do its thing. If she was too stupid to live, this place would most certainly oblige and remove her from the gene pool.

“Where are you going now ?” she asked from beside him, sounding aggrieved.

“To pack my gear and leave. Because you blew my goddamn cover.”

“You’re the one who charged in to the rescue. I didn’t ask you to bail me out.” This time she was the one grabbing his arm.

He stopped again. “Uncle Sam writes my paychecks. It’s my job to protect idiots like you from yourselves!”

“I didn’t ask for your protection!”

“That doesn’t relieve me of my duty.”

“Now who’s being stupid? You’re standing on a sidewalk in plain sight announcing at the top of your lungs to everyone within earshot who you are!”

She was right, and that didn’t help his foul mood one damned bit.

He swore under his breath and stormed away from her but froze one block shy of his digs.

Very slowly, he plastered himself against a wall in the deep shadows of an alley.

Something was wrong. He observed the street before him carefully.

“What do you see?” Piper breathed from behind him.

“Nothing. And that’s what worries me. It’s too quiet.”

Thankfully, she didn’t make any ignorant comments about quiet being a good thing. Something was off. He felt it in his gut. But what?

A lone figure came into view, shuffling down the street.

He knew that odd, halting gait. The blind charwoman who cooked his breakfast each day, squatting on the edge of the road beside a small wood fire.

Ever since soldiers had put her eyes out a few years back, day or night made no difference to her.

“Mala,” he whispered as she drew near.

She swerved into the alley and whispered back, “Monsieur Ian?”

“ Oui. C’est moi . Could you step closer where you cannot be seen, please?” He added playfully, “I promise, I’ll behave.”

Mala swatted at his upper arm, striking it unerringly. “Who de foreign lay-dee wit’ you?” she asked in her pidgin English, showing long teeth, yellow even in the last dregs of twilight.

Piper scowled. “How did she know I’m foreign?”

He suppressed a grin. Mala’d confessed to him once that the scents of soap and deodorant on foreigners’ skin gave away their nationalities. But he wasn’t going to be the one to share the hag’s secret.

“What are you doing out on a night like this, ma chère ?” he asked. “You know to stay inside when Dharwani and El Noor tangle.”

She shook a skinny finger with knobby knuckles at him. “To stay indoor, hidin’ like a rat, da rat gotta wish ta live.”

“True,” he replied wryly. “Still. Do you need me to walk you home? A pretty young thing like you has no business teasing the boys like this.”

She cackled at that. “No, no. You take-a d’advantage of ole’ Mala, met’inks..”

“Damn. You caught me.”

More cackling. “’Tis I who do you da favor dis night.”

The grin disappeared from Ian’s face instantly. “How’s that?”

“Me hab’ message for d’ foreign woman and huh’ man.”

Ian frowned. Piper’s man? Not . “What’s the message, Mala?”

“Someone wanna talk ta youze. Jus’ talk.”

“Yeah, right.”

“His word on it, Monsieur Ian.”

“Who?”

“Dharwani.”

“Sifwan Dharwani? In the flesh?”

The charwoman nodded. “Dat girl you save. His sister’s daughter. He wanna t’ank you right.” Her sightless eye sockets turned unerringly toward Piper. “Bof’of ya.”

Ian didn’t bother to look over at his companion. He could do without ‘I told you so’s out of her. He asked Mala, “Where is Dharwani?”

“I take-a youze ta him.”

He glanced over at Piper and muttered, “You packing?” And her answer had better be yes or he was going to take her over his knee and blister her butt for jumping Sudanese law enforcement types without a fucking firearm in her possession.

She nodded once, tersely, in the affirmative.

He commented under his breath, “It could be dangerous for us to go back into the hot zone to make this contact. It could be a trap.”

“He’d be a hell of a contact to make, though,” Piper replied low. “Particularly if he’s feeling grateful.”

That sent Ian’s eyebrows skyward. An astute observation. “What the hell. Lead on, Mala.”

The blind woman shuffled further into the alley, back toward the way they’d come. Ian glanced over at Piper. “Are you going to be able to keep your mouth shut and act like a properly respectful woman?”

She blinked owlishly, with exaggerated slowness, at him. Sarcastically, if he wasn’t mistaken.

He rolled his eyes and muttered, “Only way you’re going to come off as respectable is if you pretend to be my wife.”

“Why not your sister?” Piper retorted quickly. Nervous about posing as his woman, was she? Even after all the gnarly things they’d done to each other?

At least she didn’t argue about being under his protection. “I have no reason to bring my sister into a hellhole like this. But I might bring my wife to take care of my…needs. And a dutiful wife would follow her husband to Hades and back.”

“Jeebus,” she muttered in disgust.

Privately he shared her opinion, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of saying so.

They followed Mala’s shambling progress in silence for several blocks.

The waiting stillness over the whole city was palpable and worrisome.

Fun with pulverizing religious cops must be over.

He flinched to consider the reprisals that would land on this neighborhood because of it.

No help for it, though. He’d done his duty and saved the American citizen.

He didn’t see any movement whatsoever as they approached the street where the incident had occurred.

Mala murmured, “Dharwani’s boys, dey tied dose El Noori boy’s bodies to Jeeps and drag-ee dem past El Noor’s compound.”

Piper swore under her breath. “They’re asking to be shot.”

Ian retorted, “And the alternative—continuing to live in this hellhole—is any better?”

Piper was silent, but Mala snorted. “Monsieur Ian, he understan’ Khartoum.”

Yeah. Well enough to know that this meeting with Dharwani was an enormous risk.

It could be a huge coup for him to make the contact, or it could be a death trap.

He would feel better if he went in by himself.

Piper was too big an unknown at this point.

Unpredictable. And so damned naive! But he doubted he’d get in to see Dharwani without her.

Mala took Piper’s arm and let herself be led along for another block until Mala told them where to turn. The woman’s sense of direction was uncanny.

Mala stopped. “Chile’, no respec’ible woman wear dese boy clothes.

Ya gotta not mak-ee Dharwani mad. Here be my melaya .

It be no proper abeya , but it be better ‘dan nothin’.

” The woman peeled off her outer wrap, leaving her dessicated body swimming in a voluminous caftan that hardly revealed more than her previous covering.

“I’ll return it to you as soon as I can,” Piper murmured.

Ian was startled when she deftly tucked one end of the voluminous piece of cloth under her left arm, wrapped it around her body like a bath towel, draped the long end over her head, and then anchored the loose end around her left forearm.

Voila. Instant transformation from commando chick into female biblical figure. Freaky.

Mala’s bony hand pointed across the street. “Ovuh’ dere.”

He looked over at a block-long series of boarded up storefronts. So this was Dharwani’s home base, eh? Good to know. He filed the tidbit for his next, and last, report.

He stepped off the crumbling curb and Piper did the same beside him. Instantly, a pair of heavily armed men stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the boulevard, a silent challenge. There would be more where those two came from.

“Three paces behind me,” he hissed.

She dropped back immediately. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure her eyes were appropriately lowered. Surprisingly enough, they were. Now, if she could just behave herself through the rest of this outing, maybe they’d both get out of it alive.

A bloody big ‘if’ to hang his neck on.