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clutched Davey’s hand as the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire shattered the night.
    “Hurry!” Charlotte pleaded. “They could hit the raft!”
    Jack tossed a glance over his shoulder as they rocketed across the water.
    “What if they follow us?” This from the Jane.
    “By the time they figure out which way is up, we’ll be airborne,” Jack said. “Now everyone hang on. It’s time to haul ass.”

Chapter Three

    Jack ended his cell phone call and gazed across the treetops at the marina where he’d left his plane. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, he was in Charlotte Whiteside’s hotel room. She was down the hall with her brother and his girlfriend, who were being checked out by some Thai doctor the concierge had managed to scare up at 0400 hours.
    David Whiteside was safe. Mission accomplished. Jack had about sixteen things he needed to be doing right now and not one of them involved standing on Charlotte’s balcony, waiting for her to come back here and collapse on that giant bed.
    He needed to leave. Now. He’d fulfilled his obligation to Mark, and the honorable thing to do would be to disappear into the night like the elusive Spec Ops warrior that he was.
    But Jack didn’t want to do the honorable thing. He wanted to do Charlotte.
    A lamp went on in the room behind him. The sliding glass door scraped open, and he turned around to face her.
    She nodded at his phone as she stepped outside. “Who’d you call at this hour?”
    She still wore the sea-soaked clothes she’d had on in the dinghy, and the wind had turned her hair into a riot of yellow curls. She looked drained and disheveled and so goddamn pretty he wanted to pull her inside and throw her down on the bed.
    Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets right along with his phone. “Just talked to a buddy of mine at the embassy. They’re sending someone down from Bangkok to talk to Davey and Jane.”
    “Why do they need to talk to him?”
    He gazed down at her, knowing he couldn’t give her too many details, but wanting to, so maybe she’d understand better what he was about to do. Because she wasn’t going to like it. He didn’t know Charlotte very well, but he knew that much.
    “Did Davey tell you what he was doing on that island?” he asked.
    “He went down there for an interview. Jane’s his photographer, so she went, too. He said they were invited.”
    Yeah, invited to be used as jihadists.
    “He give you a name?”
    She shook her head, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. It was the one smart move the kid had managed so far.
    She eased closer, watching his face carefully. “I’m guessing it’s not Chanarong.”
    Jack just looked at her.
    “I’m also guessing it’s someone affiliated with Al Qaeda. Someone important.”
    “Where’d you get that?”
    “Jane told me. She said some of the people on the island were speaking Arabic. She thinks the place is some sort of training camp.”
    It was. It was also a staging ground for a major operation, but Jack didn’t say that. Jane had told him the name of the man they’d come to interview. He was a leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Al Qaeda affiliate based in Southeast Asia.
    “Looks like Chanarong’s got himself some new friends,” Jack said vaguely.
    The less Charlotte knew about all this, the better. But he had a feeling she understood much more than she was letting on because her eyes were shadowed with wariness.
    “Your brother and Jane were very, very lucky to get out of there alive.”
    That hadn’t been the plan. Jack didn’t know the plan--not exactly--but he felt pretty sure it involved the building he’d seen circled in red on that map of Manila. What better way to smuggle a bomb into the American Embassy than to have two American tourists waltz it right through the door?
    Or maybe just one of them. Probably Jane. It was certainly no accident the militant leader on that island had selected an American couple to come interview him. He probably