ith the dawn came movement out on the street.

Max sat back from the window and watched as people hurried to work or the market. Children came out to play in the dusty square.

When Jules’s cell phone rang, Grady Morant—who wanted to be called Jones—got to his feet.

Like most operators Max had known through the years, Jones could go from asleep to completely alert in a heartbeat.

Of course, Max never had to worry about that. His solution was simply never to sleep.

At least he hadn’t slept since Gina had left.

“We got another e-mail,” Jules announced, phone to his ear. “It’s Yashi,” he told Max. “Joe Hirabayashi,” he told Jones. “Teammate back in D.C.” Back to Max. “I’ve had him watching that e-mail account, trying to trace... Yeah, Yash, go ahead. Wait, wait—you’re breaking up...” He turned, walking closer to the window. “That’s better. Go.”

Max and Jones were left standing there, staring at each other.

“You really should get some rest,” Jones said. “I heard you go out last night. After I got back. Did you sleep at all?”

Max just gazed at him. “It’s probably better if you limit what you say over the next few days to yes, sir and no, sir.”

“Fuck off.” Jones’s laughter was closer to bared teeth than true amusement. “You think you know me, asshole?” He stepped closer, lowered his voice, obviously aware that Jules was constantly monitoring the pair of them. “You think you have any idea who I am, and what I’m capable of?”

Max didn’t move. “You’re capable of putting two innocent women in danger, simply by association. What’s your next stupid human trick going to be?”

“I’m ready to go,” Jones said. “Right now. I’m rested—I’m ready to go in there and get them out. I came to you for help, but since you obviously can’t deliver, I’m just going to—”

“That’s a brilliant plan.” Max blocked his path. “Walk across the street, kick down the door and... What? How do you get off this island?”

“There’s an airstrip, about three miles up the road,” Jones told him. “I guess you didn’t make it that far. Lot of money on this island, in case you haven’t noticed that either.”

“So you help yourself to a plane and go... where?” Max asked.

“Does it really matter?”

“Considering your wife needs treatment for her cancer... You might want to work that little detail in somewhere.”

Jones bristled. “You think I’ve forgotten that for one second?”

“I think you’ve forgotten,” Max told him, “that whoever wants to find you had enough money to transport Gina and Molly here—without their passports—all the way from Germany. You really think they’re not going to invest, heavily, in tracking you down? Dream on.”

“There are ways to keep her safe,” Jones said. “There’s always a way.”

“Like, what? Like taking her to the American Embassy? There’s one in Dili,” Max told him. “She’ll be safe there—except you won’t. So what’ll you do? Drop her off? Great, she’ll be safe while she’s within their walls. But the second she steps out of that building—like, to get into a car to be driven to the airport for a flight home?—she’s a target again. How are you going to keep her safe then? You going to trust her life to some embassy guards? Maybe a few extra nineteen-year-old Marines?”

“So I won’t take her to the embassy,” Jones said.

“Ah. You’d rather have her be at risk—”

“You goddamn know I didn’t want any of this to happen, you know I don’t want her to be at risk. But guess what? She is. She would have been, sitting at home in Iowa with her mother. I did everything right,” Jones told him. “I made goddamn sure she was safe before I went to Kenya. I waited years so she’d be safe. But shit, my mistake—I didn’t factor in the possibility of her getting sick. And then she fucking wouldn’t go to Iowa without me. She refused to leave—and believe me, I tried everything. I told her I was going to disappear, because then she’d be free to go, but she said she’d wait there for me—at the camp. That if I wanted to ensure that she didn’t get state-of-the-art medical treatment, that was the way to do it and...”

Jones’s anger temporarily spent, the emotion in his eyes made him look desperate and vulnerable. “I love her,” he told Max quietly. “I took a gamble, trusting Kraus. If I could, I’d go back and do it over, differently. The story of my life, you know?”

Max did know.

Years ago, back when Jones was Grady Morant, his unit had gotten ambushed in an ongoing silent war that the United States was waging against a powerful Southeast Asian druglord.

His entire team had been wiped out. At least that was what the official reports Max had seen all said.

Apparently Morant’s body had been found. Or—more accurately—some body parts had been recovered along with his dog tags. But there wasn’t enough of him left to verify his identity via fingerprints or dental records.

Rumors started, as rumors tended to do with the lack of identifiable physical remains for a soldier listed as KIA, but they were all written off as wishful thinking.

When the rumors persisted, rumors of an American being moved from prison to prison, there’d been a halfhearted investigation. It had cost too much time and too much money though, and eventually had been dropped. Results: inconclusive.

It wasn’t until recently, until DNA testing was established, that proof came to light that the body buried in Grady Morant’s grave was not, in fact, Grady Morant.

It was about that same time that stories of Chai’s new first lieutenant, allegedly an American and former Special Forces soldier, started circulating.

Grady Morant hadn’t died in that ambush. Instead, he’d spent years in a hellhole of a prison in Southeast Asia, tortured by his captors. Praying that someone would find him, that someone would come for him and bring him back home.

A few years ago, Max had felt sorry for Morant. It was clear, after meeting him, that those years in prison had been very real. He hadn’t sold out his unit, as everyone had assumed after hearing he was working for Chai. He wasn’t a deserter—on the contrary, his country had deserted him.

Life sucked.

But in Max’s eyes, all the bad shit in the world didn’t excuse what Morant did when the very drug lord he’d been fighting had finally come to his rescue and set him free.

Max would’ve rather died. He would’ve rather rotted in that prison than go to work for the enemy.

And here this piece of shit loser—at the very least a liar, smuggler, and thief—had found happiness. He’d found love. Molly Anderson had actually married the son of a bitch.

Okay, yeah, sure—life had thrown another suckbomb at them. But Max had absolutely no doubt whatsoever—once they got Gina and Molly safely home—that Molly would win her battle with cancer and live a long happy life.

As Mrs. Loser Morant or Pollard or Jones or Smith or whatever new alias he picked out for himself.

Shit, with his luck, Jones would probably go to trial for his various crimes, and get off on some technicality.

While Max lived on in misery.

While somewhere, hundreds of miles away from his personal hell, Gina raised a dead man’s baby.

“Life doesn’t give do-overs,” Max told Jones now.

“No,” the man agreed. “Just second chances.”

“Okay,” Jules said, coming back to join them, snapping his phone shut. “Here’s the deal. Our guy sent another e-mail. He wants a phone number so he can contact us and give us further instructions. Yashi’s setting up a number that Emilio won’t be able to trace back to us. The call will get forwarded to my cell.” He looked at Max. “I know you want to speak to Gina, but there’s no way to ask for that. We want the kidnapper thinking Jones is alone. And we don’t want to make too many demands—not at this point. After we get Testa on the phone—”

“I know,” Max said.

“I did ask Yash to make sure the last four digits of the fictional number is the same as your personal cell phone. I wanted Gina to know—if she somehow sees it—that we’re out here. It’s a long shot, but...” Jules shrugged.

“Thank you,” Max said.

“Yashi’s also calling the Jakarta CIA office,” Jules reported. “See if we can’t track down ol’ Benny. Either way, I’m trying to get that surveillance equipment.”

“How about military assistance?” Jones asked.

Jules shook his head. “Everyone in this area’s on standby. Terrorist threat level’s still high, and our case continues to be mega-low priority. I know this is driving you nuts, sweetie, but we’ve just got to sit and wait.”

Molly pretended to faint.

Gina wanted to applaud, it was done with such perfect timing, but Emilio didn’t leap to assist her. Instead, his squirming grandson still in his arms, he stepped back, well out of whacking range, barking out a command in what sounded like Italian.

Tiny Angry Crowbar Guy came into the room. He stopped short at the sight of the Molly doing her Swan Lake finale imitation. But then he quickly hopped to it, helping Gina put the mattress back down on the floor. The entire time, however, he eyed her makeshift weapon, now leaning against the wall.

As Gina rearranged the sheets and blankets, the vertically challenged man showed his stuff by effortlessly lifting Molly into his arms and carrying her to the bed.

Molly secured her spot in the race for the Best Actress Oscar by making the journey without shrieking or even opening her eyes.

In fact, it wasn’t until she was on the bed, Gina leaning over her, that her eyelids even started to flutter.

Bravo.

Emilio was again shouting down the hall, and a dark-haired woman appeared, head down and shy, handing him several bottles of water before she again vanished.

“She needs to go to the hospital,” Gina told Emilio, because they might as well try Molly’s idea now that fighting their way out was no longer an option.

He gave the bottles of water to Crowbar Guy, who angrily held them out to Gina. She took them, mostly so that he wouldn’t end up throwing them at her.

God, he scared her.

“As you can see,” Emilio told her, “these, like the food, are sealed.”

Gina opened one bottle, helped Molly sit up, helped her take a sip.

“She’s burning up,” she lied to Emilio, although, damn, Molly’s skin did feel warm. As a matter of fact, she was showing signs of dehydration. “Are you okay?” she asked Molly, suddenly realizing that her entire Meryl Streep-worthy performance hadn’t been a performance at all.

Molly was pulling away from the water with a grimace, pushing away Gina’s hand. “Bathroom,” she said, and Gina helped her up and into the tiny tiled room as quickly as humanly possible.

Urp. She closed the door on Molly’s intimate conversation with the toilet, letting her very real concern for her friend color her voice. “She’s been doing this for hours.” Another lie, but why not? “She’s severely dehydrated, with a high fever. Last time she was this sick, she started having seizures.”

Emilio looked shaken at that news, although his dismay was probably also an act.

“She needs to go to the hospital,” Gina said again.

Emilio shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

“Are you really prepared for her to die?”

From the bathroom came the sound of running water. Gina opened the door a crack, peeked in. Molly was at the sink, splashing water onto her face. Now was not the time for her to emerge, saying what she usually said after her rare bouts of morning sickness, “Wow, I feel so much better now.”

Gina took the now-open bottle of water with her as she slipped into the bathroom. No point leaving it out there for them to monkey with.

“I’m going to help you get back out there, and into bed,” she whispered to Molly. “I told them you need a hospital, so act like it, okay?”

Molly dried her face with a towel. “I don’t want them to know that I’m pregnant,” she whispered back.

“I know,” Gina said. “I told him you were running a fever. Make it look good.” She opened the door as Molly leaned on her.

Emilio was still out there, his grandson now on the floor, playing with their extra cans of food. The man moved, so that he was standing between them and the child as Gina helped Molly back into bed.

Like what? Gina was going to grab the little boy and threaten to break his neck?

God, what an awful idea. Would she do it—if it meant getting her freedom? What a twist—the hostage taking a hostage. She could demand Emilio surrender his gun. And once they had that gun...

Except what if he called her bluff? There was no way she would ever actually hurt a helpless little child, and surely Emilio would know that just by looking into her eyes.

People who take hostages, Max had told her once, had to be prepared to kill them. They had to be willing to end at least one human life. If they weren’t, the negotiators would sense it, and they’d send in the takedown teams. They’d just kick in the doors and end the standoff without any bloodshed.

At least, without any innocent bloodshed.

“Your grandson is beautiful,” Molly told Emilio as Gina handed her the bottle of water and opened a second one. “His name is... Danjuma?”

The boy looked up at his name, then laughed as one of the cans rolled away. He crawled after it.

“The resilience of children amazes me,” Emilio murmured as he, too, watched the little boy. “Just last month, his father—my son—was executed, right in front of him.”

Oh, God.

“I’m so sorry,” Molly said.

“His mother,” Emilio continued. “My daughter-in-law—you met her a few moments ago—was certain they would kill him, too. They do that, sometimes. Kill children, particularly our boys, so they don’t grow up and become soldiers for the opposition. Instead, he was spared. Instead, he was thrown into prison. All three of them were—my wife was with them, you see. She watched her only son die.”

Molly was buying this story, completely. She had tears in her eyes. Gina wasn’t sure why he was telling them this. Was it to win their sympathy? To make them understand why they were here, as his hostages?

“Who are they?” she asked.

“Bad men,” was his reply. “Greedy men, who stand to lose a great deal, should order and law come to East Timor.”

“Do they have names?” she persisted.

“Their names would mean nothing to you,” he said. “To me, and to my neighbors, they are cause to tremble in fear.” He turned back to Molly—obviously he’d identified her as a better audience for his dramatic tale. “In prison, my grandson was separated from his mother for quite afew days. Imelda—Danjuma’s mother—was frantic. When at last they put the boy back into her arms, she was ready to do their bidding.” He glanced back at the door, moving closer and lowering his voice so that his daughter-in-law wouldn’t overhear.

Assuming she could even speak English.

Molly was clutching Gina’s hand, quite obviously believing every awful word of this story.

All Gina could think was, where was Emilio’s gun right now, and how could she gain possession of it?

Was his story true? Maybe it was.

If there was one thing Gina had learned in life, it was that people were capable of doing terrible, atrocious things to each other.

She thought of Narari, back in Kenya, dead at age thirteen. And Lucy, who she’d helped to save, whose older sister was still back there, nearing her baby’s delivery date—knowing that when her child was born, she’d have to be cut again.

She thought about the terrorist she’d nicknamed Bob, who had told her his story while he held her hostage on that airplane. She’d been sympathetic—his life had been one struggle after another. She’d seen him as a person, instead of a hijacker with a gun.

He’d seen her only as a means to a bloody end.

“I don’t know all that they did to Imelda,” Emilio continued, his voice quieter but much harder now. “She did tell me that, before she left, with Danjuma in her arms, they made her thank them for killing her husband. My son.” His voice broke. “Forgive me.”

“For turning around and kidnapping us?” Gina said. “No problem—we’ll forgive you—just let us go.”

But Molly was murmuring, “That’s terrible.”

“They told her,” Emilio said, tears in his eyes, “to find me, and tell me that they had Sumaiya. My wife. If I wanted to see her again, I had to...” He gestured to the room around them. “I haven’t used this room in over ten years, well, not for what it was intended. Yes, at one time, I made quite a fortune dealing in... others’ misfortune, it’s true. But that was years ago. My... skills have dulled. I knew it would be easier to lead Grady Morant here—have him come to me—”

Molly interrupted him. “There has to be another way to get your wife out of that prison.” She turned to Gina. “You could call—”

Gina squeezed her fingers, hard, also warning her with her eyes not to say Max’s name, or to mention his affiliation with the FBI. She spoke loudly over Molly, just in case she didn’t get it. “My brother? He’s a police officer in New Jersey,” she lied to Emilio. “Maybe he knows somebody in, I don’t know, the FBI or CIA or something—someone who could help.”

Molly got it. Ix-nay on entioning-may Ax-may.

Emilio, meanwhile, was sadly shaking his head. “It’s too late.”

Gina knew that that was her optimistic friend’s least favorite sentence. Molly sat up again. “It’s never too late.”

“Sumaiya is dead,” Emilio told them. “The message came this morning, from a contact within the prison. Her body was buried in a mass grave last week. I suspected as much—my repeated requests demanding proof of life—you know, as we did with the television in the warehouse? They have all been ignored.”

He turned to Gina, who was trying to make sense of this latest twist in his tale. “I can see you are not impressed. Why should you believe anything I tell you? My fortune came from ransom money. I held you at gunpoint and packed you into a shipping crate, took you halfway around the world against your will. I can assure you until I drop dead from exertion that I have nothing against you, that I didn’t wish to harm you, that my singleminded goal was to save the woman I love.”

If he had started to cry, Gina would have remained skeptical, but he didn’t. Instead, both his voice and eyes got hard. Bitter. Angry.

“Since she’s dead, my goal has changed. The last thing I wish to do is give them what they want. I’m not sure how to protect you, since my enemy is here, all around us—everywhere on this island, on neighboring islands, too. I’d take you to the hospital in Dili, but I fear you’ll be less safe there. I do have a friend who is a doctor, though. My new plan, if you’ll agree, is to take you to his home where you’ll receive the care you need. You’ll be safe there.”

“Why not take us to the American Embassy?” Gina was on her feet. Could this really be happening? Was he really going to just... let them go?

“There is none on this small island. And even if there were...” He laughed. “By helping you, I don’t want to harm myself. Imelda, Danjuma, and I will have to leave our home forever, but we won’t find sanctuary in your America, I can guarantee you that.” He shook his head. “After I drop you at my doctor friend’s, you may be able to convince him to fly you to the nearest embassy. He has a plane, although his pilot could be too easily bought. You see, it won’t take long for my enemies to realize I’m gone. At which point there’ll be an extensive search for the two of you.”

He was fumbling in his pocket for something. His gun? Gina took a step back as he pulled out... a cell phone? “Here,” he said, holding it out to her.

She opened it, hardly daring to believe... But the icons implied that both its battery and reception were strong.

He was getting something else of out his pocket now, too. A piece of paper. “My contacts in Jakarta have spotted Morant. He’s here in Indonesia. Call him.” He handed that to her, too.

It was... a printed e-mail? With a phone number on it. I await your further communication. G.M.

Although, hang on!

This was a phone number that Gina knew—at least in part—by heart.

The last four digits were the same as Max’s number. She had to sit down.

Holy crap, Max was here, too.

The entire rest of the world was falling apart, and Max was here, trying to find her.

“Call him,” Emilio said again. “Tell him I’ll be taking you to the residence of Dr. Olhan Katip, on the north side of this island, Pulau Meda. We are near Pulau Wetar. Katip has a gated estate—”

He may have kept talking.

But Gina had stopped listening. She stood up and moved out of range as Molly tried to snatch both the phone and the paper from her.

Heart pounding, Gina dialed the phone, praying that life couldn’t be so cruel as to make that number a mere coincidence.

At about ten A.M., Jules’s cell phone rang again.

Jones was rummaging in the kitchen, searching among the well-stocked shelves for something to eat that was loaded with carbs.

He settled on one of the three cans of Beef-a-Roni that were front and center.

Which was quite a luxury—his not having to take a can from the long-forgotten back of the shelf in order to keep the apartment’s owners from realizing they’d had unauthorized guests.

Jules had told him that this place was used by the CIA as part of an ongoing investigation into terrorist activity.

The terrorist in question lived two houses down from their kidnapping suspect.

What a lucky coincidence. Or it would be if Jones believed in either luck or coincidences.

He knew how things worked out here on these isolated little islands. Chances were if a suspected terrorist had moved in practically next door to Emilio Testa, there was a good reason for it.

Whatever the connection, this place was a godsend. It had kept them dry during the predawn rain showers. Without this apartment, they’d have been out on that roof last night, all night.

Of course, that was still an option for tonight—should they have to wait that long to kick down Emilio Testa’s door.

Because today’s fucking had started with news from Jakarta that Benny, Jules’s CIA contact, had turned up extremely dead.

Jules and Max were in the middle of a discussion about whether they should stay here or leave. Whether Benny’s death had anything to do with them. And whether Jules should go all the way back to Jakarta to get that surveillance equipment they wanted.

But now Jules looked at his ringing phone. “Okay,” he said, loudly enough to include Jones in the conversation. “This isn’t Yashi—it’s a number I don’t recognize. It could be our man.”

Jones came out of the kitchen. “I should answer it, then.”

“I’m putting it on speaker,” Jules agreed. “Remember, he might have his phone on speaker, too.”

Jones felt adrenaline surge through him, and he forced himself to have faith in Jules’s promise that Testa wouldn’t be able to locate them via satellite, thanks to Yashi back in D.C. He forced himself to focus. It was easy to stop listening while amped up. It was easy to hear only what you wanted to hear, or misunderstand even the simplest of communications.

But Jones’s mental prep didn’t prepare him for what he heard after Jules answered the call, after he himself grunted an identifier. “Morant.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d introduced himself that way.

“Hey. It’s me.” Holy Jesus. It was Gina.

Across the room, Max was still keeping an eye on Testa’s house—where no one had entered or exited since they’d started watching. But now, he turned—signaling for Jules to mute the phone—so that Gina, or anyone else listening, wouldn’t be able to hear him speak.

The relief Max must’ve been feeling had to be staggering—to actually hear Gina’s voice and know she was still alive, at least for now. But as Jules hit the mute, it was clear to Jones that Max’s focus was on making sure Molly was alive, too—without jeopardizing the women’s safety.

“She didn’t say ‘It’s Gina.’ ” Max’s words were rapid-fire. “She said, ‘It’s me.’ Don’t call her by name, don’t talk about Molly by name, either. Testa may not know who’s who, and we want to keep it that way. Ask her: Are you okay, are you both okay?”

At Max’s nod, Jules unmuted the phone, and Jones said exactly that.

“Yes,” Gina said, and Jones started breathing again. Thank you, God. He had to sit down, the relief was so intense. How did Max manage to stay standing?

“We’re both fine,” she continued. “Except Molly’s, well, she’s a little dehydrated.”

So much for Max’s theory about not naming names.

“We both are,” Gina kept going. “And it’s never fun to be a hostage—even if it’s only one man running around with a little handgun.”

Jules muted the phone, shaking his head in admiration. “She just told us—”

“Yeah,” Max cut him off, because Gina was still talking.

“I mean, Imelda’s pretty shy, and her son, Danjuma’s only a two-year-old, but... Crowbar Guy’s pretty scary. Of course, there could be more people in the house that we haven’t seen...”

Jones stood up, realizing why Jules was grinning. Gina had just told them that her captors consisted of four people, who, between them, proba-bly had only one small firearm. “Let’s go kick in that fucking door,” he said.

But Gina was speaking again. There had been a pause, a rumble of a voice in the background, and she then said, “Emilio says I’m wasting time. I’m sorry. But... Is Max with you? Because...” She laughed in something that sounded like disbelief. “Emilio is going to let us go.”

“What?”

“They had his wife,” she continued, “but he found out she’s dead, that the people who took her killed her, so he doesn’t want to... Look, it’s complicated, but I just thought it would be easier to do this if maybe Max were with you. Is he there? Can I... Please, I need to talk to him.”

Max took the phone from Jules. Unmuted it. “Gina,” he said. “I’m here.”

“Oh, Max,” Gina’s voice was thick with emotion. “Thank God—” But then she was gone.

Replaced by a male voice—it had to be Emilio. “This reunion is touching, but time is short. I’m going to bring the women to a friend on the northside of Pulau Meda, an island north of East Timor. They’ll be quite safe there until you arrive.”

A few minutes after Emilio took the phone from Gina, the excrement quite suddenly hit the fan.

One minute Emilio was calmly talking to Max on the phone, giving him directions to his doctor’s house. But then he stopped talking, as if listening to something Max was telling him. And then he was shouting.

Molly’s Italian was mostly limited to items she could order off a dessert cart, but she knew the word for hurry.

She was hearing it now, in abundance, from Emilio.

Imelda ran in, snatched her young son, ran out.

Crowbar Guy popped in, rattled off a stream of Italian, took what looked like a key ring from Emilio, then vanished.

And that nasty little gun that they hadn’t seen since climbing into the shipping container appeared, in Emilio’s very steady hand.

He aimed the barrel directly at Gina, who still looked stunned that Max had come looking for her, and that she’d actually spoken to him on the phone.

She fumbled as Emilio tossed her the cell phone, but managed to catch it.

“What is going on?” Molly asked.

“Tell your friend,” Emilio ordered Gina, “that if anyone so much as sets foot inside this house, you’ll be the first to die.”