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been insulting, even contentious words, surprised him.

      “Whether you want me or not, I’m here. There’s no time to get a replacement and I have knowledge you don’t have and objectivity that you desperately need. I believe that’s why you made the call to bring me here. Am I right?”

      “What do you know about the Middle East other than your studies?” The words revealed all the disdain and upset he was feeling. “What experience do you have?” Her education meant nothing. It wasn’t experience and therefore, to him, not real. “You grew up—” He was going to say in Midwestern America; the truth was in the way she said certain words.

      “Morocco.” She cut him off and he guessed she was being deliberately vague. He could hear the edge in her voice.

      “Really?” he said and didn’t soften the sarcasm that laced the word.

      “Really,” she repeated and turned to face him. “At least, a few years anyway. Six years total—as a child and then a number of years in my last years of high school.” She seemed to draw herself taller. “My father was an economic counselor in the American Embassy in Rabat. A few years later he returned, accepting another position in the Moroccan Embassy.” She eyed him with a challenge in her eyes. “Are you done?”

      His jaw tightened. She was right, there was nothing more to say.

      “Good,” she said and began to walk away then stopped. “By the way. Call me Kate.” She threw that over her shoulder as if it were an afterthought. “One phone call?”

      “So far.”

      She stopped.

      “So the call came in shortly before 4:00 a.m.?”

      “Correct. I alerted Adam immediately and got a plan in place. Apparently that was a mistake.”

      His phone beeped. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at it for just a split second as dread roiled through him.

      “Yeah?” he snapped and then his hand stilled as his pulse seemed to speed up. He couldn’t believe their audacity and knew it didn’t bode well for them to have contacted him twice in such a short period. They weren’t following a normal pattern. “You’ve been paid, release...”

      Kate shook her head, mouthing something at him. He didn’t know what it was, didn’t care. He needed to focus on this, on what the kidnappers wanted and on how to get his sister out of their clutches.

      “Put him off,” she mouthed.

      He gave her a brief nod. It wasn’t anything he didn’t know but at least it was confirmation they were on the same page. “I can’t get it together right away.”

      The call ended shortly after and somehow during that brief time he and K.J. had formed a shaky alliance. “This time they want a quarter million,” he said to her. It was double what they had first asked for and it was nothing in the scope of what his family was worth.

      “By when?”

      “Forty-eight hours or they’ll kill her. There was no drop information.”

      “This is their second request and you paid them once.”

      He stopped, surprised, and then realized that Adam would have told her.

      “You negotiated with them successfully.” She nodded approval. “That’s promising. I suspect they’re a fragmented group but, even so, they’re testing your limits, prodding you, making you more vulnerable by not giving you the drop site, making you worry.”

      “Making me react emotionally.”

      She nodded, as if his response were normal. “The next contact should give us a drop. They have their initial demand, still I doubt if they’ll chance playing it out any longer. And that call? They were tormenting you—nothing more.”

      He thought of what he had done in those first desperate hours when he’d heard his sister was missing and what his first thought had been to do now, but there’d been no drop site and Kate was right. She knew her stuff. It was clear in her perception and instant analysis of what had transpired in the short time in which they had been together.

      “Surprised?” she asked with a smile that was more a lifting of her lips as no emotion showed in her beautiful yet deadly, intelligent eyes. “Small. Unorganized.” She wiped a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail from her face. “Not so much unorganized as brought together temporarily for a common goal. What I mean is...”

      “This isn’t what they do regularly. They have no cause.”

      “Exactly. I would say that they’re rough men needing money. Colleagues of some sort...”

      “And none of that matters.”

      “All of it matters. We need their profile to get in their heads, find out who they are, to ultimately find Tara and get her out safely.”

      She was right and he didn’t want to admit it. Yet he was beginning to believe that, despite his doubts, what she had in her head, the profiling ability she spoke of, would be invaluable in finding Tara.

      “Satisfied?”

      He nodded, his mouth set. “But you do what I say, especially if this takes us, like I suspect, into the desert.”

      “Thanks,” she said pertly, an edge to her voice.

      He had no idea if that was a yes or a no. The only thing he was certain of was that she was staying.

      “Let’s get going,” she said briskly. “I need to be briefed on everything that’s happened since you last spoke to Adam and anything you might not have told him.” She looked at him with eyes that seemed to rip through the protective layers that shielded his emotion from the world. “I need everything.”

      But as she said those words they emerged into the crowded main area of the airport and nothing was said as they made their way past a queue of passengers dressed in everything from blue jeans to sundresses and burkas. The crowd thinned near the doors leading to the outside, where the air was thick with the scent of the heated rubber of airplane tires and exhaust fumes.

      The driver had them loaded and they were leaving the airport within minutes, but it was as they exited the airport and a few miles away that chaos erupted.

       Chapter Three

      “Dell,” Emir said to the driver of his Hummer. He put his hand on his shoulder. “This is K. J. Gelinsky, she’s here to help us get Tara back.” He turned to Kate. “Dell’s a good friend. He’s had my back more times than I can count.” He knew that didn’t explain everything to Kate but it gave her a reason to trust this newcomer.

      The big, blond, broad-shouldered man had a grim look that, combined with his size, made most people back away. But despite that, his unsmiling face and rather utilitarian brush cut, there was a warmth about him few people except his close friends ever saw. His distinctive look with his bleached-blond hair was a striking contrast to his swarthy complexion, but no one would dare comment on the look, for Dell’s size intimidated most people. Emir knew Dell could be deadly but he also had a soft spot for women, children and cats. In fact, he’d seen the big man stroke a tabby, murmuring to it like it was a baby.

      “K.J.?” Dell asked her as if hinting there should be more to her name than just initials.

      “K.J.,” she agreed with an easy smile and a “don’t mess with me” look in her eye.

      Emir bet there were few people who called her Kate. It wasn’t anything she had said but rather the way she owned the initials and the odd way she had looked when he’d called her Kate despite her having given him permission. He wondered why she’d allowed him the privilege. Was it merely because he was her boss or...? Whatever the reason, it was irrelevant under the circumstances.

      He

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