were standing here now?” Jessie asked, her eyes on the woman’s exotically beautiful face.
Mara looked stricken, her dark eyes liquid with tears. “I’ve asked myself that a hundred times.”
Jessie stared at her hard. “Unfortunately, because of you, we’ll never know the answer.”
* * *
Bran pulled out his cell to call General Holloway’s direct number. It was the middle of the night. The call would not be welcome.
“Wait!” Mara rose from her chair at the kitchen table. “I don’t want people dying because of me. Maybe there’s a way I can help.”
Bran cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “And in exchange you want...what? Your freedom? You got a man killed, Mara. You have to pay for that.”
“I got the man I loved killed. I will pay for that the rest of my life.”
He kept the cell phone in hand, the threat clear. “What are you offering?”
“I have a way to contact Ahmed. He said I should only use it in an emergency.”
He flicked a glance at Jessie, who had gone from angry to alert. “Go on.”
“I could set up a meeting, tell him that the colonel’s daughter came to see me, that she believes I had something to do with stealing the chemical weapons. I could ask him to meet me. I believe he would come.”
Bran’s gaze returned to Jessie. Mara Ramos had been at least partly responsible for her father’s death. The army would lock the woman up and throw away the key. The call was hers. Even more important, once the terrorists knew Jessie was alive and in San Diego, her life would again be at risk.
“It’s dangerous,” Bran said, spelling out the threat. “They’ll know where we are.”
Jessie’s shoulders firmed. “We have to stop these people. This is the best chance we have.”
She was right. He didn’t like it, but the longer this continued, the better chance one or both of them would wind up dead—or there would be a terror attack.
He fixed his attention on Mara. “All right, you set up a meet with Ahmed. He doesn’t show, we call in the army. You try to run, we call in the army. In the meantime, we stay right here. You do anything we don’t like, none of us will hesitate to put a terrorist in her grave.”
Her lips trembled. “I won’t run.”
“If you do this and we find these people, there’s a chance you might end up with a lighter sentence, maybe avoid spending the rest of your life in prison.”
She swallowed, wiped fresh tears from her cheeks. “I once had a naive belief that terrorism was a way to make things better for my country. I outgrew that belief many years ago. I don’t want people to die.”
TWENTY-NINE
They spent the rest of the night at Mara’s condo, taking turns napping on the sofa or a blanket on the floor. The door to Mara’s bedroom stayed open while she slept, though Jessie didn’t imagine she actually got much rest.
Too wired to sleep herself, Jessie made a fresh pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table with Bran while Hunt took a turn on the sofa. Bran had retrieved his laptop from the Navigator and set it up on the kitchen table. Jessie had spent an hour looking for info on the Army of Islam of Yemen, but aside from an old reference here and there, she found nothing.
She took a sip of coffee, glad she had brewed a new pot. “I’ve been thinking about something Mara said.”
Bran leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“I keep trying to figure out how Mara got invited to a party given by one of my father’s friends. She said there were single men there, mostly military. We’ve always figured the link was through a civilian employee at the chemical depot, but maybe someone in the army is connected to the terrorists.”
Bran nodded. “It’s possible. On the other hand, big party, maybe somebody knew somebody. Could have been anyone.” He sat up in the chair. “But even the chance you’re right isn’t good.”
Jessie sighed. “Seems like every answer we get just creates more questions.”
Bran reached over and squeezed her hand. “We caught a break with Mara. Let’s see how it plays out.”
At 8:00 a.m. that morning, Mara phoned Ahmed, told him her fears, and asked him to come to the house. Ahmed agreed, but said he couldn’t meet her till eight o’clock that evening.
The hours dragged as they waited for nightfall. They spent