The general had given her no indication regarding the mission on the short drive from the TAID headquarters to Coronado. But he was sure willing to pepper her with questions regarding the toxin she had examined while at the Pentagon lab.

“You had said that it was possible to funnel down the toxin so that it could target an ethnicity and maybe even get to the point where it could be specific enough to focus in on a sickle cell carrier, right?”

It had taken a few moments for Riya to respond because she hadn’t thought the general had been listening to her when she’d been in D.C.

“That’s right.”

“Could it get to the point where the poison could be sprayed in or delivered through an air duct, and just be directed at certain family members?”

Riya felt her pulse rate increase. “Absolutely.”

“This isn’t just a theory?” His eyes left the road, and he peered over at her.

“No, it isn’t just a theory. That toxin was elegant in its design, and it was on its way to surpassing anything I have seen before. Whoever has developed it is a genius.”

“Smarter than you? Because everything I’ve read, and everything I’ve been told, is that you are a wunderkind. There’s nobody better.”

That stopped her up short. She knew she was good. Brilliant even. But the best?

“I don’t know, General,” she said honestly.

“I’m hoping that you’re not needed. If things go right, you won’t be. But it’s possible we’re going to need your brain. And if we do, you have to be smarter than this asshole. Got it?”

What is going on?

“All I can do is try,” Riya answered.

“That’s not good enough.” She saw his knuckles turn white as he gripped the steering wheel. “You better damn well succeed.”

So here she was walking into a huge room filled with big men, some of whom she’d met, all of them looking grim, and she could feel Gray behind her back. She might have trouble reading people, but there was no mistaking the fact that he was beyond angry.

“Take a seat,” the man who had done the introductions said. He gestured to her and the two other CDC scientists to sit down in the front row. She watched as the other two SEAL team lieutenants went to the back of the room, but Gray sat down right beside her, his body vibrating with rage. She wanted to run away, or cry. Actually she wanted to do both. But then she looked at the general at the front of the room. He was staring directly at her.

“Okay everybody, listen up,” he started. “I’ve brought you together because we have a big problem.”

She heard someone mumble behind her. “Like that’s new.” He sounded amused.

“Your lieutenants will inform you of the mission specifics, they’re being sent to us from Langley. On a high level, they are in three high profile events in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain.”

“We have extremely reliable intel that a poison is going to be used on at least one if not more specific targets and that it is sanctioned by the higher echelons of the Saudi royal family. If we were to give a heads up to either the governments of Bahrain or the U.A.E., there would be a massive shitstorm. Therefore the analysts out of Langley have determined, along with your Captain, that your three teams can handle this.”

“Fuck yeah,” that same quiet voice mumbled.

Riya raised her hand.

“Dr. Patel?” The general pointed at her.

“You’re talking about the same toxin that I examined last month, correct?”

He nodded.

“Are you sure it can be amplified to large enclosed spaces?” she asked.

“Yes. Did you hear about the Llewellyn triplets who were rushed to the hospital from the nightclub in Las Vegas two nights ago?”

“Who?” she asked.

The general grimaced. “My thought exactly. They’re some YouTube sensation. Anyway, they died. Their deaths had all the hallmarks of meningitis. As soon as it was flagged, the CDC got involved and we got involved. We knew it was the same poison used in Al Khabor. The nightclub was twelve-thousand square feet. Those were the only three people impacted.”

Holy crap.

“Holy shit,” a man said behind her.

“Dr. Patel, since you researched this toxin, would you please come up and explain the significance of the triplets being the only ones affected.”

Riya stood up and went to the lectern. She rifled through the pages in her notebook. Giving a presentation wasn’t new, but having to give it when cold blue eyes were glaring at her made her knees shake.

Just keep your eyes on the page.

“When I first examined —”

“Louder,” someone yelled from the back.

She looked up and saw Gray, her gaze skittered away from him, and she saw Drake Avery. He gave her a sweet smile of encouragement. It helped. She cleared her throat.

“When I first examined this toxin, I only had a sample of cloth. There were microscopic particles of the airborne poison. The toxin carried a fast-acting form of meningitis, something that had never been developed before. In speed, it is along the line of Ebola or ricin. After comprehensive testing, it was clear that it only impacted the Y chromosome, i.e. men. What’s more, the way it was developed, the person who was targeted was not contagious.”

She looked up and saw that everybody in the room was nodding their heads.

“It was clear to me that even though it was used as a poison, that this kind of specific virus could be developed further so that it could target specific gene pools. If that could happen, why not reverse it so instead of a poison, turn it into a treatment for things like sickle cell anemia?”

Again, she looked up. She was surprised by the number of heads that were still nodding. She shouldn’t have been. She’d read enough SEAL books to know that intelligence was part of the selection criteria. God knew Gray was brilliant.

“Dr. Patel, does this poison have to be DNA specific, or could it be used on a broad population?” Liam McAllister asked.

“The thing that makes this so extraordinary is that they can target DNA. In theory, yes Commander, they could use this toxin on the masses. But what would be the point?” she answered.

Now came the part where she needed to come clean with the general. “When I left the lab in D.C. I continued to work on the specific sequencing of the contagion. It was intriguing. As I reversed engineered the sequence —”

“What?” the general said in a deep voice. “Would you mind repeating that Dr. Patel?”

What was he going to do, send her home? Not bloody likely.

“I said that after I left D.C. last month I doodled with the sequencing of the toxin from memory. It was important work that couldn’t be shoved into some corner. Lucky for us I was able to reverse engineer some of the poisons sequence and calculate—”

“Doc,” she looked up and saw Drake Avery with his hand up.

“Yes?”

“Are you saying you figured out a way to stop the poison?” Drake asked in a friendly voice.

“I’m pretty sure I can neutralize it, yes.”

“Even after it’s been sprayed?” Gray’s voice was biting.

“If I get to the victims fast enough, I think I can, because the aerosol shouldn’t have hit them with an intense enough dose to kill them immediately.” She turned to the general. “I’m assuming these triplets took at least twelve hours to die, and that none of the normal treatments for meningitis worked?”

He gave her a surprised look. “How did you know?”

“It’s how I would have progressed the poison after a month. What they had developed last month was in its early stages.”

“Do you have notes that we can review?” one of the CDC scientists asked.

“I’ll scan them and e-mail you copies,” she offered.

“No,” Commander McAllister said. “We’ll make copies here, and provide them to you. I don’t want things on unsecure e-mail servers.”

“Mine is secure,” Riya protested.

“I’m not talking about yours, Dr. Patel,” Liam said as he nodded toward the two CDC scientists.

“I need you to break into your teams and go over your specific plan details,” the captain said. “Dr. Patel, you’re going to Abu Dhabi with Black Dawn since they’re assigned to the most likely target and you’re the one most familiar with the toxin. I trust the fact that you are familiar with members of that team will only be a plus.”

He wasn’t looking at her, he was staring at Gray.

“Captain, may I talk to you?” Gray asked.

“No,” he said. “Dismissed.” He started walking out of the briefing room. The general paused at the lectern.

“You walked a very fine line, Dr. Patel. A very fine line. Do you understand me?”

She gulped. “Yes Sir.”

“If something like this happens again, you won’t find me so understanding, do you comprehend me?”

“Yes Sir.”

He left the briefing room.

Commander McAllister stayed behind. “Max, hit the Conference Room C. Mason, you’re in One over in the annex building. Gray, you and your team will stay here with me.”

Riya watched as Max tapped one of the scientists on their shoulder. Apparently they were interchangeable.

Lucky them.

She watched through her bangs as the lieutenant named Mason escorted the other scientist out of the room. Soon she was left with Gray, Liam and the five other SEALs she’d already met. Well thank God for small miracles, at least I can put names to faces.

“Liam, can I speak to you in the hall?” Gray’s voice was a subdued roar. She jerked her head down so that the only thing she could see were her notes. Riya heard the door click. Her lip hurt, she tasted copper.

“Riya?”

It was Aiden O’Malley. She couldn’t look up. She couldn’t.

“Honey, Gray’s behaving like an ass. You need to ignore him.”

She turned another page in her notebook, and pressed down the corner. Uh-oh, she needed to stop doing that. They needed to be flat so they could be scanned. She wasn’t doing anything right.

“Let me. You guys take off. I don’t give a shit if you interrupt Gray and Liam.” Aiden sounded angry.

Oh no, another harsh voice.

She heard footsteps, and then the door closed again. A man’s big hand slowly pulled the notebook out of her grasp. She had no choice but to look up. Aiden had a compassionate smile on his face.

“Honey, you need to quit biting your lip.”

She touched it and winced.

Then all of her emotions, her questions, bubbled out, in a forlorn cry.

“Why is Gray so mad at me? I don’t understand.”

Riya was horrified when she felt a tear track down her face. She never, ever cried. Not ever.

Aiden walked to her side of the lectern and pulled her trembling frame into his arms. “He’s angry because he’s scared to fucking death.”

“That makes no sense at all,” she choked the words into the front of his olive green t-shirt. She sucked in a deep breath then pushed out of his arms.

No, this wasn’t right at all.

“Aiden, my country needs me. This toxin might behave like meningitis, but it isn’t. It’s something else. I’ve almost got it. If I can analyze the pure form, I can reverse the virus before it gets to the lethal stage.”

“Those are some pretty big ‘ifs’,” Aiden said.

“Yes they are,” Gray said.

Riya whirled around to see Gray and Commander McAllister standing in the doorway.

“If we do our job right, it’s never going to come to that, now is it?” Aiden asked his Lieutenant in a steely voice.

“The reason we send you out on these missions is because they’re fluid. It’s up to you to make sure the bad guys are stopped.” Liam’s voice held just as much steel as Aiden’s. “Dr. Patel, Gray has put in a formal protest for you not to be on this mission. What is your decision?”

All three sets of eyes were on her. She kept her gaze on the Commander. “This is my area of expertise. Nobody knows more about this toxin than I do. I promised the general I would do it, not because it’s in my field, but because I needed to be involved. I have to help my country, just like the three of you have been doing for years.”

“Then you’re going with Gray and his men.” He pushed open the door. “Get your asses back in here,” he called out. In seconds, Wyatt, Dalton, Dex and Griff filed into the room.

It had been a hell of a long flight to Abu Dhabi, and Gray hadn’t said a word to Riya the entire time. He’d been busy with Dex, and she’d been on her laptop furiously going over information coming in from Las Vegas, that she was sharing with the two other CDC scientists. The truck spit them out at one of the myriad of buildings on the Al Dhafra Air Base. It would have seemed like dream weather compared to what it had been in Saudi Arabia last month if it weren’t for the fact that his blood pressure was through the roof.

For fuck’s sake, part of the million dollars’ worth of training the good ole U.S. of A had given him was meditation and relaxation techniques to do when in stressful situations, but nothing had prepared him for this. He watched as Wyatt helped Riya out of the truck and he and Griff flanked her as they headed for the building that housed officer quarters.

On the flight over from NAS to the United Arab Emirates, he’d devoured every bit of information he could on the toxin, the delivery system and Dr. Riya Patel. How the fuck hadn’t he realized just who he was in love with? He’d known she was a genius, but he hadn’t realized she was the highest ranking fucking figure in this field of study. Hell, she was on track to win major awards, maybe even the Nobel. Thank God she was a little clumsy and awkward at times, otherwise he might be too intimidated to touch her again.

Gray winced as Wyatt grabbed Riya’s arm when she stumbled. He looked at the ground and saw nothing but flat surface where she was walking. God he loved his woman. He shoved out of the truck. Goddammit, he needed to be the one assisting her when she tripped over nothing.

“I’ve got her,” he said as he caught up to the trio.

Griff gave him the stink-eye.

“It’s okay Gray —” Wyatt started.

“I want to walk with Gray,” Riya interrupted Wyatt. “I’ll meet you inside.”

“Wyatt, work with Dex to have everything set up when Riya and I get in there. I want to go over the plans one last time,” Gray instructed his subordinate.

Wyatt nodded. Griff continued to stand there next to Riya.

“Porter, do you need an engraved invitation to leave?” Gray snarled.

“If you’re going to be this much of an asshole to me, then yes. I’m not leaving her alone with you.”

Riya straightened to her full height of five foot nothing and looked Griff straight in the eye. “It’s fine. Your lieutenant and I need to get a couple of things straightened out before this mission takes place. I want to make sure that the wax has finally been cleared from his ears, otherwise things could go badly.”

Gray cringed as Griff laughed. “Riya, I think you’ve been taking lessons from my wife. Good for you.”

Gray watched as Griff gave her arm a quick squeeze before he sauntered off to the building.

She crossed her arms and looked up at him, her eyes squinting in the sun. “So talk.”

“I don’t want you to go on this mission.”

She rolled her eyes. “Try to say something less obvious.”

Who was this woman, and why was his dick getting hard?

“Dalton and Aiden just carried in a portable biocontainment unit and blue suit. Jesus, Riya, this shit will kill you dead in under an hour if you get too close to it.”

“And that would be why positive pressure protective suits were invented.” She continued to look him in the eye. “Look, Gray, I think your plan is a good one, if, and this is a pretty big if, the Saudis choose the humanitarian award ceremony here in Abu Dhabi and if they actually use one of the air ducts on the roof like you think they will. Then there is a high probability you will stop them.”

And if that didn’t work, he and his team would normally come up with a different plan to save the world, that’s what they were trained to do. But tonight one of his fail-safes involved putting a civilian in play. Not just any civilian, either. A woman. His woman.

“There is still the unlikely, but possible chance they could just set the timer-controlled canister in the ballroom and leave,” she said.

“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” Gray thought his jaw would shatter as he tried not to yell.

“You didn’t mention it on the plane,” she reminded him softly.

“It was one of the items Dex put down on his list of possibilities. We’re not all going to be on the roof, Riya. That’s not how we work.”

The hot morning wind started kicking up dust. Gray had sunglasses on, Riya didn’t. “Come on Honey, let’s get you inside before you melt.” He gently touched her elbow. She jerked away from him.

“No! You can’t all of a sudden be nice. It’s too confusing. You’re still mad, aren’t you?” she accused.

He looked at the building that was fifty meters away. Once they were inside, they wouldn’t have any privacy. He turned her around so he blocked the wind. “Riya, I sure as hell hope you know I love you.”

She looked like she was going to cry.

Fuck. Had he really blown it that badly?

“Riya. Let me state it loud and clear. I fucking love you. That’s why I don’t want you to go. Hell, I really don’t want those CDC motherfuckers on this mission, but I’d take them in a minute instead of you.”

She flinched, and turned on her heel.

Holy mother of God, he was sounding like Drake Fucking Avery.

“Riya, stop. Goddammit, please stop. I’m wrong. I’m dumb. I’m sorry.” He ran in front of her and gently put his hands on her shoulders to stop her from moving forward. Fucking-A, she was crying now.

“I cannot believe the amount of dumb crap that is falling out of my mouth.” He took a deep breath. He shoved his sunglasses up on his head and bent down so they were eye to eye.

“Number one, I love you. Say yes if you understand.”

She didn’t answer for a long time, but her tears dried up. “The Gray from yesterday loved me. I don’t know this Gray.”

“That brings us to number two. I’m scared to fucking death that something bad will happen to you. Scared to death.” He prayed she could read the truth in his eyes, but she was looking down.

“Please Riya, look at my face. Look into my eyes. See that I’m telling you the truth.”

“No, you’ve been mad at me.”

She looked lost and confused.

“I’ve been mad at this situation. And terrified that you could die. I love you to pieces, I want you in my life forever. I would fall apart if something bad happened to you.”

She shoved him in his chest so hard he fell back a step. “You dumbass, you mean to tell me that when you feel protective, you’re going to act like a pissy asshole? I can’t believe this!”

He jumped forward and grabbed her in a hug. “Now you get it. Am I forgiven?” he begged with a hopeful grin.

“I don’t want to get it. I want you to behave like a logical human being,” she wailed. “But yes, you’re forgiven.”

“I told you that the SEAL quirks were worse than your quirks any day of the week.”

“Gray, you have to take me seriously. I’m part of this.”

There weren’t enough antacids in the world to handle this situation. But…

“Riya, me and my men are going to do everything possible so you don’t have to touch that toxin, but if push comes to shove and you have to suit up? Well, you’re the scientist I trust the most to handle things.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

“Absolutely not. Riya, I’ve watched you take on every obstacle and succeed, of course you’ll handle this with ease.”

She laughed. “Yeah, well you’re a superhero, I won’t have to do anything.”

He sure as hell hoped she was right.

Please God, let her be right.