Page 98 of Rescuing You

“I don’t think so.” Michael was careful to keep sarcasm out of his voice. “I rescued Leila and her sister, and I’ll be bringing them to the US as soon as possible.”

“Where they’ll promptly be taken into custody.”

“For what? Being kidnapped? Held against their will? That’s against the law now?”

“Do you know who her father is?” Michael didn’t, but Brock’s tone told him he did, giving him an advantage.

“I know who Leila is, and I know she is not her father, or her family.”

“You don’t know anything,” Brock snapped. “Her father is Saad Farad Fayad.”

The name floated only a moment before landing on the proper peg in Michael’s mind.

Fayad had worked for Saddam and then the new government.

Which tracked with what Leila had told him. He was the fence-sitter. But now that Michael had a name, he could picture the face. And remember what the Agency knew about him, along with what they’d suspected.

A man who looked like Fayad had been seen with top Al Qaida leaders—including bin Laden—in the years leading up to the attacks on September 11. After that, the same person had been seen with other terrorist leaders.

But that person couldn’t have been Fayad because those sightings had occurred when Fayad was in Baghdad.

The counterterrorist experts had assumed it was a brother or a close relative, but Saad Fayad was an only child, and though he had cousins, none looked enough like him to be mistaken for him.

Agents in Baghdad had tested Fayad’s loyalty, letting slip information to see if it was passed along.

Those secrets never got back to Al Qaida or, years later, to ISIL, the terrorist organization that had grown after the fall of Al Qaida in Iraq.

The powers-that-be in the Agency and in Baghdad had decided the man they’d seen through grainy satellite images had been Fayad’s doppelgänger.

Even so, the Iraqi man had never been trusted, which had stunted his career with the new government—and maybe led to his early retirement. Based on Leila’s description of her father, the Agency had been right to mistrust him.

Was Leila’s father a terrorist?

And then an inconsistency rose to the top.

Leila had talked about an uncle, her father’s brother.

But Saad Farad Fayad was an only child.

Apparently not.

A fact he would tell Brock, eventually. When he had more information.

“You didn’t know.” Brock’s words were smug, the tone of a man who thought he had everything figured out.

“She promised to tell me everything when she’s safe.” Michael was careful to keep his tone even. “She’s afraid, rightfully so, that her father and his men are going to catch up with her again. She wants to be able to honestly say she didn’t tell me anything.”

“Or there’s a much simpler reason. It’s time for you to face facts, Wrong. Your girlfriend is a terrorist.”

“My girlfriend was being held in a locked third-story room in a compound in the middle of the Iraqi desert.”

“How did you find her?”

He knew where Brock was going with this but answered truthfully anyway. “Her sister contacted me.”

“Meaning they knew you were coming. Meaning they could have put her in that locked room to convince you⁠—”

“She’s not a terrorist. And she has information. Information you want.”