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The small of Piper’s back still tingled from where McCloud’s hand had briefly come to rest on it as they were shown into Dharwani’s house and introduced themselves. His wife . The notion was titillating.

She wondered idly if he had a real wife back home.

She seriously doubted it given the way he’d fallen into the sack with her.

That and the way he’d stumbled a little over calling her Mrs. McCloud.

The guy’d looked shell-shocked to hear the words coming out of his mouth.

She would’ve ribbed him about it if it wouldn’t have blown their cover.

It wasn’t as if she was ever going to marry.

She was all about the job. About establishing her credentials and playing with the big boys.

Proving she could do the same work as the men and do it just as well, if not better.

Her boss had finally given her a legit field op.

It even had the sex and danger. Now all she needed were drugs and rock-and-roll, and she would have it all.

She shook her head. Guys like McCloud were trouble. She knew the score. They would float in and out of women’s lives without a backward glance. But then, that was her M.O., too. The two of them were perfect for each other.

Piper stared at the long, food-laden table in Dharwani’s dining room, surprised. Huh. This was going to be a celebratory feast? A thank-you for saving his niece?

Huh. Who’d have guessed there was any honor left in this shell of a failed civilization? Still, she kept her guard up as she was politely seated with the women, down the table a ways from Ian, and served a heaping plate of exotic North African fare.

Where did Dharwani get all of this bounty? More accurately, where did a local thug get the wealth to fund such opulence? His little strip of Khartoum real estate, comprised of a few dozen struggling family-owned businesses, couldn’t possibly be netting him this kind of cash.

Hmm. What else could Dharwani be dealing in? Information? Terrorists for hire? Was this the guy the PHP representatives were in Khartoum to meet…and maybe pay for some service?

She’d spotted one of the PHP leaders in a hotel lobby in the respectable part of town a week ago but had been forced to duck out of sight lest she be spotted, herself. By the time she’d dared risk peeking out of her hiding spot, the PHP man had been gone.

It had been exhausting and frustrating trying to do the surveillance by herself, but it wasn’t like she knew anyone trustworthy to invite to help her.

She had briefly considered asking Ian to spell her and let her get one decent night’s sleep, but that would involve telling him far too much about her mission.

So, she’d suffered in solitude. But now, excitement filled her at possibly stumbling into success, after all.

She risked looking at Ian, seated next to their host—lucky dog. He and Dharwani conversed easily. The two men appeared to have recognized a fellow warrior in one other and bonded instantly. It was infuriating.

She was the one who’d dived in front of that religious cop to save Dharwani’s niece, a gangly teen named Halma who seemed shaken after the day’s attack.

Piper had tried to talk to Halma at the women’s end of the dining table, but the girl threw suspicious looks at her, mumbled something about it being unclean to speak with infidels, and turned away almost immediately.

Piper couldn’t exactly identify herself as the soldier who had rescued the girl. Apparently, Dharwani thought that had been Ian. And Ian was happy to let the man think so. Chauvinist jerks. Both of them.

Left to muddle along with the women, she endured stories of childbirth and chickenpox while Ian got to talk politics and religion and power struggles with a warlord.

The men’s conversation tickled at the edge of her hearing, offering her just enough snippets to tantalize her, but not enough to glean anything meaningful. It wasn’t fair, dammit!

Ian caught her gaze and smirked at her from his place of honor.

Her gaze narrowed in promise of retribution until she abruptly remembered her ‘place’ in this little charade and looked down hastily. She stared down at her clenched fists until she regained her composure, and then she smiled apologetically across the table at her hostess.

For an instant, sympathetic understanding shone in the older woman’s eyes. Yup, having to put up with men’s arrogance was a universal burden of women everywhere.

Her hostess, introduced to her as Fatima Dharwani, leaned across the table.

Piper had yet to figure out if she was Dharwani’s wife or mother, but either way, the woman clearly reigned supreme among the other females of the house, who seemed to be a collection of near and distant relatives and servants.

Fatima glanced toward the men, lowered her voice, and asked in halting English, “You know girls? Girls to south?”

Piper was surprised enough at the woman’s attempt at English that she almost missed the question itself. “Girls? To the south?”

The matriarch nodded. “The Black One…buy sick girls. He make them in…how you say…lorry…away they go. No one see again. No come back.”

“Lorry? You mean a truck? How many girls?”

“Yes, yes. Vroooom . Truck.

“How many girls?” Piper repeated.

“Thirteen. Twenty. Dying fever or blood sick.”

Piper frowned. A fever from this region that killed people? The ebola outbreak that had ravaged West Africa last year had never really caught a foothold in the eastern part of the continent. “Lassa Fever?” she tried.

A vigorous nod. “Yes, yes. Lassa.”

Blood sick . What was that? “Hemophilia?” she guessed.

“No, no. All body make blood...” Fatima touched her gums, then pointed to her eyes and belly. “Blood everywhere. Then die.”

Comprehension dawned. The woman was talking about a hemorrhagic fever. Here? In the Sudan? Piper breathed, “Ebola?”

“Ebola, yes. And Lassa.” A vigorous nod.

Why on earth would anyone ship truckloads of girls out into the countryside, or perhaps more accurately, away from Khartoum to places unknown? Was Dharwani running a prostitution or slavery ring? Is that how he got so rich? But with sick girls?

Fully a third of all Lassa victims died, and Ebola mortality could run in the 95 to 98 percent range under the right conditions.

Even with the best medical care available, Ebola mortality ran a solid 50%.

Although progress had been made in developing treatments during the big Ebola outbreak of 2014, commercial quantities of antivirals to fight it had been too slow in coming.

Regardless, with both of the fevers Fatima had named, the illness and death were messy, painful, and by the end, extremely contagious. Not the stuff of prostitution.

Piper reviewed the brief conversation so far, looking for more clues to the woman’s meaning. Fatima said The Black One was buying the girls. The Black One . A bolt of understanding struck her. “Black” translated to noir in French. El Noor . Got it.

Piper leaned forward urgently. “El Noor is trucking girls with Lassa and ebola to the south. What’s he doing with them?”

A shrug. “No come home. Poof . Gone.”

“To South Sudan?” Piper asked. “Or just to the southern part of North Sudan?”

“South Sudan. Cross border. No follow. No find.”

Why was this woman telling her all this? Fatima was staring at her expectantly. Piper mumbled, “Uhh, thank you. That’s very interesting.”

The woman rocked back on her cushion, expansively satisfied. As if Piper had comprehended something vitally important at long last.

But she didn’t understand anything at all.

Why in the world was El Noor shipping sick girls to South Sudan?

Surely, he wasn’t trafficking the young women.

They would be far too expensive to restore to health.

God knew, there were plenty of impoverished, homeless, healthy young women who could be kidnapped into the slave trade.

She glanced up the table at Ian and was startled to see a grave look upon his face. Dharwani was leaning close, whispering in Ian’s ear. Apparently, this was the true confessions course of dinner.

Ian nodded once, tightly, and Dharwani leaned back, speaking volubly once more. He made a short speech about his gratitude for Ian’s rescue of his niece, and for exposing the El Noori spies pretending to be religious police.

Yeah, right . She would bet he’d be singing that tune to anyone who’d listen for the next few weeks. It was that or bring the local Muslim clerics and Sudanese government down on his back like a ton of bricks for allowing his people to tear two legitimate religious policemen limb from limb.

While servants commenced clearing the table, Fatima waved Piper to her feet. To her chagrin, Piper was led away from the men and into a small, stuffy sitting room with the other women. She felt naked and exposed without McCloud nearby to keep an eye on her and rescue her if need be.

Someone turned on a CD player, while Fatima pulled out a water pipe and commenced smoking. It smelled too sweet for tobacco. Must be hashish.

Blue, pungent smoke swirled thickly around Piper and a headache began to pulse at the base of her neck. Just what she needed. To get stoned with a bunch of Sudanese women while McCloud picked up all the hot intel. Which she had utter faith he would keep to himself and refuse to share with her.

Several of the teen girls began to dance, not in the traditional Middle Eastern style, however. Rather, they gyrated in a hideous parody of twerking that made her giggle uncontrollably. Crap. She was getting high on the fumes.

She fought to concentrate on the gossip floating around her. It took nearly an hour, but she was finally able to turn the women’s conversation—which was taking on a distinctly slurred quality—to the political events of the local neighborhood.