Chapter One
Shannon narrowed her grass-green eyes as she glared at the prisoner who was tied in a spread-eagle position. His arms and legs were tied to the posts on the bed with steel chains which he couldn’t break no matter how hard he tried.
She inspected her nails. “Faris, I’m getting rather tired of this. Where is Ra’ad Khan?”
Her nemesis, Ra’ad Khan, was a former captain of the Iraqi Republican Guard. He’d ditched the army to join a Middle Eastern terrorist cell. Intelligence information showed that he’d landed in San Diego four weeks ago, and she was desperately searching for him while she’d set up base in an abandoned warehouse. The old, derelict building was now her personal headquarter. Shannon was a Sergeant Major in the United States of America’s army – and her current mission was to capture Ra’ad Khan, if not alive, then dead.
After a lot of false starts, she’d finally managed to catch his underling Faris Naheen who was currently her resident guest. Faris would talk, she was sure – all she had to do was to find the motivation to make him tell her all his dirty secrets.
He sneered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re mad. It’s illegal to tie me up like this. I’m an American citizen. You can’t do this to me. If your superiors get to know about this inhumane treatment, you will lose your job.”
“Not if I give them Ra’ad Khan’s head on a platter. And you, dear Faris, are going to help me do that,” she said with confidence.
“I don’t know who this man is that you’re talking about?”
She narrowed her eyes. “What nonsense? How dare you claim not to know your boss?”
Faris wriggled his hands to twist the chains. There wasn’t much he could do to free himself, but she enjoyed the consistent effort he made.
“He is not my boss. I’m an ordinary man. All I have is an electronics shop downtown which I own. I’ve never even been arrested for a speeding ticket. You can check it with anyone.”
“You’re a terrorist.” She whirled to point a finger at him.
He screamed. “What crap is this?”
She sighed. “Faris, terrorism is also illegal in America. Or did you forget about that small detail before you enlisted in Ra’ad’s terrorist cell?” She hummed slowly as she paced around the room, close enough so he could see her without lifting his head.
The quicker he broke, the faster she could move to the next part of her mission. Faris was unimportant. He didn’t know much, but he was a link to Ra’ad. Did he know where Ra’ad was? She doubted it. But he could point her in the right direction.
“You’re mad. Crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am not a terrorist. A poor man is what I am. Let me go!” he yelled.
“Yell all you want,” she said in a bored voice. “No one is going to hear you. We’re far away from civilization. And dear Faris, I’ve proof that Ra’ad was given electronic equipment from your shop to make a bomb.”
“That’s not true.”
Sashaying over to him, she bent to thrust her face near his. “Yes, it is. I’ve pictures of you together in the shop. My assistant was monitoring your shop and caught him in the camera. If that imbecile hadn’t dawdled in placing a call to me, I would’ve caught you both red-handed.”
He blinked his eyes rapidly. “Maybe…I sold something to someone without knowing their identity. I am not required by law to see their IDs before selling anything.”
“Good try!” she said. “But I also have recordings of your phone conversations with him. And in that you’re discussing how you would gather the relevant equipment to make a bomb that can be detonated by remote from a distance.”
He blinked rapidly as if trying to come up with a reasonable explanation of why he would be discussing such a plan with a known terrorist. “I’m not saying anything else. I want my lawyer.”
“You’re not getting one,” she said in a dismissive
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