Page 13 of Edge of Danger

The crowd froze in shock. And then a low, angry buzz began to build.

He gestured toward the tall woman—who turned out to be a teenaged girl—and her companion whom Piper had saved.They cowered against the building at their backs, trapped by the gathering crowd and unable to make an escape.

He yelled, “Are we going to let El Noor’s men cane our women in the streets as if they are common whores? These are God-fearing women, and those animals would abase our wives and daughters! Will we let those black-hatted bastards rape them next?”

The buzz grew into a roar. The crowd heaved and swayed around him, growing quickly as people melted onto the street and joined the seething mob. Other voices began to shout insults at the two religious policemen. The crowd began to jump up and down in a tribal ritual as old as Africa, the entire mob circling slowly to the left. The rotating crowd collapsed in upon itself in a crushing mass of grabbing hands and violent intent.

He looked around frantically for Piper. There. He spotted her just as someone banged into her from behind. She went down to her knees. Frantic, he jumped forward, dragging her to her feet as the crowd surged around them.Fuck. She’d lost her hat and her blond hair spilled down around her face in a blatantly feminine display.

Thankfully, the crowd was too focused on the religious police to notice her. Yet. A mob like this could turn in an instant.

“We need to get out of here,” he shouted at her in English over the din.

“Ya think?” she shouted back.

He spared a scowl for her and shouldered his way through the mob.

Male screams erupted from the center of the enraged ring of locals. The crowd roared and nearly knocked him off his feet as it heaved forward. Someone must have hit the religious cops.

Once the mob saw blood, the feeding frenzy would begin in earnest. He only hoped he and Piper were far enough from the epicenter of the violence to avoid the fallout. If El Noor wassmart, he would attack this instant. Hell, the crowd would turn on itself, it was so blindly enraged.

Ian used his height, bulk, and sheer brute strength to muscle a path through the crowd. Piper clung to his belt like it was her only lifeline. Which probably wasn’t far from the truth. They burst clear of the mob. Dusk was settling around them.

“C’mon,” he growled. What in the hell was he supposed to do with her now? Her cover was blown. The locals knew she was ashe, and furthermore, that she was a foreigner. He had to get her off the street and properly robed ASAP, before the mob he’d stirred up turned on her.

Swearing under his breath, he started out toward his place. He’d paid enough protection money to the locals over the past several months that she ought to be safe there.

“Where are we going?” she panted, hustling to keep up with his running stride.

“My place.” They ran for several blocks, until things quieted around them enough for running to draw more attention than walking. He slowed to a rapid walk.

“Don’t you want to stick around and observe the situation?”

“That’s what I was doing when you decided to play Rambo,” he retorted dryly.

“He was beating that girl for showing her ankles! She explained to him that she’d grown taller recently and her family couldn’t afford longer robes for her. Somebody had to dosomething!”

“And that somebody just had to be you?” He felt a certain reluctant admiration for her courage and commitment to doing the right thing, but not if it was going to get her killed.

She scowled. “Look. I just blew my mission and probably my career. But an innocent girl’s life was at stake.”

“I know the feeling,” he snapped, the syllables as bitter as the metallic dust in his mouth. “You just screwed up my mission, too.”

By the time his bosses at Defense Intelligence got a replacement observer read in and placed over here, EL Noor’s Palestinian contact would be long gone. And the U.S. would have no idea where or when he or any other terrorist planned to strike.

He’d gotten confirmation from a local source that a Palestinian had been seen in Khartoum recently. And rumor had it the Palestinian was on El Noor’s payroll. Some kind of scientist.

Nobody seemed to know what kind of scientist, however. Ian’s local informants were just beginning to trust him enough to fork over timely and legit intel. He was close to finding out what El Noor was up to. Very close. He felt it in his bones.

And now he was going to have to fucking bug out and abandon the whole op because Piper couldn’t keep her damn Pollyanna streak in check.

He turned around abruptly and she ran right into his chest. He grabbed her upper arms and yanked her up against him, nose to nose, snarling furiously, “Some girl getting a beating is kid stuff in Khartoum. She was probably lying there thanking her lucky stars that he didn’t chop her feet off. She wasn’t fucking worth blowing your cover—and mine—over.”

“That’s cold hearted of you,” she snarled back.

“Get your head out of your ass or get out of here, Pollyanna. This is no place for do-goodersorhot, single females.”

He released her with a little shove and whirled away from her. He stomped off toward his hooch. Right now, he didn’t give a damn if she followed or not. Let Darwinian selection do its thing. If she was too stupid to live, this place would most certainly oblige and remove her from the gene pool.

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