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casually she had handled it.
    She had been told it was important documents. But when she picked it up, the weight indicated something of more substance than paper.
    Jean-Philippe had handed her the plane ticket and given her instructions on the method of delivery during the layover at Heathrow. He would be joining her later, he'd told her. There was business to attend to in Berlin that required his attention. He had just flown back from the Middle East and she had picked up his extreme unease the minute she’d met him. Something had gone wrong with the ‘big deal’ he had been working on for over a year now.
    Perhaps it was the overly wrought explanation that had first triggered Hannah's suspicions after she'd boarded the plane and had a chance to think. She and Jean-Philippe were lovers, had been for two years. But they had known each other since childhood and as Jean-Philippe had entered the shadowy world of high level, black market oil trading in Berlin, Neeley had blindly followed. He'd never bothered to explain himself before so why the change?
    It came to her as clearly as if the elderly man seated next to her had shouted it in her ear. It was a bomb. Neeley knew it with a certainty that pulsed through her stomach. She had to clench her teeth to prevent herself from screeching out her knowledge.
    Many of the people Jean-Philippe was affiliated with had Middle Eastern names and the Arab world was frothing at the mouth to strike at the Americans. And the plane she was sitting on was an American carrier with many American passengers, most of them servicemen. And there had been much talk among Jean-Philippe’s associates of a major deal in the works and the concern that the Americans would mess it up and if that happened, then there had to be payback. Had that just happened in Mogadishu? And was what she held in her hands the payback?
    She'd looked up the aisle. The pretty American stewardess was greeting passengers hurrying through the door. Once that closed, there would be no way out.
    Neeley stood, carefully holding the package under her arm. She mumbled apologies as she forced her way to the aisle and then to the front of the plane.
    "We will be departing shortly," the stewardess said as Neeley approached.
    "I don't want to go," Neeley muttered. Her thoughts focused on getting off the plane.
    She felt the weight in her hands. Jean-Philippe. His name rolled through her brain with the accent she had acquired from her summers in France. He had betrayed her and she didn't have a clue why.
    There was nowhere she could go in the city. The only people she knew were Jean-Philippe's. All she had was the plane ticket. And what could she do about the bomb? It had to be several kilograms of explosive from the weight.
    That was when Gant had appeared and changed everything.
    Gant had simply reached out and taken the box. Neeley at first couldn't obey his simple command to follow, so frozen were the muscles in her legs. She finally walked empty handed behind the tall American soldier. His face was leathery from exposure to the sun, his eyes bright blue. He wore a black leather coat and carried his bags and the box effortlessly even though his body looked gaunt, the skintight against his cheekbones.
    She remembered noting all these details of his appearance while she followed him out of the airport. She also remembered the lack of fear, now that the bomb was in his hands. She asked no questions and, when they arrived next to the battered Volkswagen in the long-term parking, she allowed herself to be tucked into the front passenger seat. She dimly remembered not being surprised as Gant squatted next to the open door and carefully opened the package, confirming her worst fear as he revealed the explosives. Without hesitation he began humming as he defused Jean-Philippe's lethal package.
    No one approached them or even seemed to notice the oddly humming man hunched intently over his prize or the young girl rocking slowly to and fro