There were fourteen potential targets. The King of Jordan and his family, the Ambassador of Oman, the President of the World Bank, a Nobel Lauriat, the King of Bahrain, his second wife and two sons, or one of the three journalists who had broken the story about the atrocities in Yemen. The last three weren’t likely, since there were three of them, and all three had different genetic make-ups, but Langley thought that taking out any one of them might make the Saudis’ point. They were all up at the dais at the front of the of the ballroom.

What the hell, why not just shoot one of them?

Oh yeah, they get sick, then the Saudis aren’t responsible, Gray reminded himself.

Gray willed Wyatt to report something. Dex, Dalton, Griff and Hunter were still coming in with nothing, but please say that Mason had this. Any other time Gray would take on the mission and not be wishing it on another team, but another time he wouldn’t have Riya in a room upstairs.

“Champagne?” a waiter asked as he walked by.

Gray shook his head. It was like he was in a James Bond movie.

Riya had explained that the gas would work best in an air conditioning vent because it would disperse the toxin throughout the space, like it had in Las Vegas. But here on the floor of the venue, it would need to be put nearer to the targets. Gray saw Aiden’s blond hair moving closer to the front of the room. Thank God Abu Dhabi was such an eclectic city and blondes weren’t that out of place, otherwise he and Aiden would be screwed. That was the reason Griff and Hunter were supposed to have been on this duty, they both had dark hair.

“They’ve got a shooter,” Wyatt came in loud and clear through Gray’s receiver. “Mason says they don’t think he has anything to do with the potential Saudi plot, it was a lone terrorist.”

Gray didn’t have to ask his men if they heard, he knew they would all be on high alert.

“There!” Hunter shouted.

Aiden turned and looked at Gray, then he started meandering through the crowd as if he wasn’t listening intently to his receiver.

Gray could hear a loud grunting. No gunfire, but the sound of fists on flesh was clear. Then there was the sound of metal hitting metal.

Was it the canister hitting the HVAC unit?

“Catch it!” Griff cried out.

A man yelled curse words in Arabic.

Gray started to walk quickly to the exit, when a voice came over the loudspeaker. “Is there a physician in the house?”

He turned his head and saw that the King of Jordan was leaning over his son who was slumped over the table. The King was clearly gasping for air. Gray couldn’t see the wife or young daughter. Had they slipped under the table? The prince was being held up by one of the reporters.

Ah, fuck.

“We got it, Gray. We got the canister before it was deployed.” Hunter said. “We’re taking it to the suite.”

“Aiden, find the other one,” Gray said into his mic. “Find the empty one that was used on the Jordanians. Riya’s going to need it.”

“I’m on it.”

It was rare that she had to wear her ‘hot suit’, but when she did, she was fanatical about it. Wyatt, God bless him, had done a second inspection for any kind of leaks before she had suited up. They had also gone through the biocontainment lab. He had helped her try to make the portable tables rest as flat as possible on the uneven floor of the bathroom.

“I don’t understand why such an expensive room would have such a poorly constructed floor,” Riya complained.

Wyatt laughed. “Riya, I’m pretty sure this is travertine, it’s really expensive stone.”

“Well it’s silly. Look, the table rocks.”

Wyatt had put paper under the legs to steady the table. So when Hunter had said he was coming in with a canister, she was ready for it. She put on her helmet, and air-purifying respirator, then waited.

She saw Wyatt asking her something.

She crimped the hose on her air supply, because she couldn’t hear him over the hissing air. “What?”

“Riya, how well can you hear me?” Wyatt asked.

“I can now. What is it?”

“The Jordanian royal family has just been rushed to the hospital. They were the ones targeted. It makes sense that the Saudis would want them dead. Their two borders butt up to one another, and without the King or his heir, the Saudis could take over.”

That had been the worst case scenario in Riya’s mind. Not only did she personally like the King because he’d married a kick-ass woman with a degree in business, but Jordan had also helped America’s military forces. She knew they were a target because they were currently being politically bullied by Saudi Arabia. She would do anything to help this ally of America stay alive.

“So it was the four royals?” she asked, “or were there more people in their entourage affected?”

“How did you know?” Wyatt asked.

“Because a lot of the time they have distant relatives act as assistants and bodyguards. My guess is that they might not have been as sick, unless they were a close relative.”

“One lady was convulsing. A couple of others, not too bad.”

Riya nodded. “Get me that canister, I’m sure I can counteract it. If I can do this fast enough, we can get this to the hospital and save them,” she said urgently. She let loose the hose so she could take a deep breath.

She thought she heard a banging, then Wyatt went and opened up the door to the suite. It was Hunter and he had his modified oxygen tank. She crimped her hose again so she could hear.

“Do you want me to put it in there?” he asked pointing to thick plastic curtains covering the bathroom entrance.

“No. What is it?” He was going too fast and she was having trouble hearing him.

“It’s the tank from up on the roof. Do you want me to go put it in your clean room?” Hunter asked again.

“Does this hold the deployed canister that was used on the King and his family?” she asked as she took the modified oxygen tank out of Hunter’s hands. Then she looked at his hands. She wilted. All they had were protective gloves. Just leather to keep them safe. She hated that.

The suite door opened again. It was Gray with Dex was right behind him.

Gray was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him. He practically yelled, so she could finally hear him in the receiver over the hiss of the air. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Since this has the canister with the toxin used on the King, I’m going to analyze it. It should be extremely close to what I examined last month. This will just have a genetic tweak or two that I need to comprehend in order to develop the counter-sequence. Once I have that, the antitoxin will take minutes to create, but it will then need to be administered as quickly as possible. It’s the analyzing process that takes the longest.”

“That’s not the canister that was used on the Jordanians. This is the one from the roof,” Gray clarified.

“Where’s the one used on the King?” she asked.

“Aiden’s trying to track it down.”

Riya’s stomach clenched. They didn’t have time to waste. The amount of time it took to process things through the centrifuge, thermal cycler and fluorescence reader would take hours. Minutes mattered.

“When does Aiden think he’ll be able to retrieve it?” she asked.

“They closed off the entire room. Nobody’s allowed in, otherwise I’d send the whole team down to help search.” Gray was obviously frustrated. “As it is, Aiden’s going to have a hell of a time finding and then taking the canister out of there.”

“I’m down here looking too, Gray,” Dalton said in his ear.

Thank God for small miracles.

Riya took her time thinking it through. The Jordanians were the target. They would have used the same toxin in the room, and had a back-up going through the HVAC units. The triplets had all died in under sixteen hours. She needed to make a command decision.

“There’s almost a hundred percent probability that this contains the same toxin as the one in the ballroom. I need to get to work now,” she decided.

Gray stepped in front of her, careful to keep space between them so he didn’t touch her suit, he didn’t want to risk damaging it. “Riya, are you sure?”

“Gray, be logical. What are the chances this doesn’t contain the same thing?”

“Riya, it’s my job to expect the unexpected. So far, things have gone wrong, so it seems to me this could, too.”

“That wasn’t logical,” she grimaced. “What’s worse, if everything had gone perfectly, you would say that because things had gone perfectly, now was the time that something would go wrong.”

He had the good grace to look sheepish. She laughed, and it fogged the inside of her mask.

Gray looked serious, “How much time do they have to live?”

“There’s a child, right?”

“A twelve-year-old girl.”

“She probably has ten hours max. Using only portable equipment, it’s going to take me five to six hours to get the antitoxin developed, and then she’ll need to be injected and have at least one to two hours for it to flow through her bloodstream. Gray, this is like meningitis. Even if she doesn’t die, she can end up deaf or with brain damage.”

She paused and took a deep breath.

“Gray, there just isn’t any time to spare.”

He nodded. “Do your thing, Buttercup.”

As Gray watched her go through the inner door of the containment room, he turned on Wyatt.

“She can’t hear us, right?”

“Not if we talk softly. The air hisses pretty loudly in that space suit of hers.”

“Okay, then everybody speak softly.” He turned to Hunter. “Where the fuck is Griffin Porter?” He was caught between concern for his team member and batshit terror for Riya.

“Griff is chasing down the guy who rappelled off the side of the roof, I was left with the canister and corpses.”

“Three guys for one canister? That makes no sense,” Gray said.

“Actually there were four. It was definitely overkill. Griff got his mic and receiver ripped off during the fight.” Hunter fished out the broken pieces of Griff’s equipment and held it up for show.

“Fuck me running,” Gray groaned.

“He has his mobile, as soon as he has that fucker captured, he’ll call us. He knows to take him alive.”

Gray looked over his shoulder and saw Dex staring through the thick plastic. “What’s going on in there?”

“She’s got the oxygen tank open, and she’s pulled out the canister. It’s still locked shut.”

Shit, they hadn’t discussed how to open it.

“She’s got it open now,” Dex said.

Figures.

“Dex, tell me the second anything goes sideways in there, got it?”

“Roger that,” Dex agreed.

Gray turned to Hunter. “Tell me what the hell happened up on that roof. Why corpses? How did you get the canister?”

“We took the stairs to the roof. Dex’s little app is handy. We were in place when I heard the Saudis climbing up the side of the wall up to the roof. There were four of them coming up the wall to begin with. When the second to the last guy came up over the wall, he cut the line on the fourth guy. The asshole killed his buddy.”

Everybody stared at Hunter.

“It just gets weirder. They came up to the HVAC unit that is three meters from the edge of the roof. Griff’s line of sight is blocked by that big hunk of metal, so he can’t get off a shot, so he’s on the run toward us. My focus is on the fucking canister in the guy’s hand. It’s obviously been assembled, now they just have to pop that baby in the air conditioning unit and give it a few minutes and open ‘er up.”

Hunter grunted as his phone rang, and he jerked open his jacket.

“She’s cut open one of the gel packs, Gray,” Dex said.

Gray felt sweat start to form at the base of his spine at Dex’s words. He kept staring at Hunter to see if there was any word on Griff.

“Got it. Wyatt will find it. We’re on our way.”

“Well?” Wyatt asked from the couch as he leaned over his laptop.

“He’s at Heritage Park,” Hunter answered.

“Couldn’t he narrow it down a bit?” Wyatt asked sarcastically.

“Yeah, he said a cricket pitch. And, because he knew you’d ask, think a cross between a pitcher’s mound and lawn bowling,” Hunter threw back at him.

“Finish your story, Hunter.” Gray demanded.

“Okay, but remember, Griff’s Arabic is better than mine. I’ve got one guy down, I don’t want to shoot because I don’t know how fragile that damn canister is. So as I’m dispatching my guy and waiting for Griff, the two others are yelling. One is saying not to go against the King’s orders. The other is saying the Prince wants them all dead. The one who’s on the side of the King grabs the canister and I grab him.”

“Found it. I can give you directions,” Wyatt interrupted.

“Then what happened, Hunter?” Gray asked. He was beginning to understand, and it was scaring the ever loving hell out of him.

“The guy who was babbling about killing them all for the Prince grabs a rope and goes over the side of the building. Gray, he was scaring the fuck out of me. It didn’t sound like the plan.”

“Nope, sure didn’t,” Gray agreed.

“I yelled at Griff that I had the canister,” Hunter said. “I told him to follow that fucker, and keep him breathing.”

“Good plan,” Gray agreed. Hunter gave him a long look.

“Is it as bad as I think it is?” Wyatt asked.

Hunter and Gray looked at the younger man. Each of their faces was grim.

“She’s got the samples in the spinning thing. I think it’s a centrifuge,” Dex said.

Gray walked swiftly to stand next to Dex. He laid his hands against the first plastic door separating him from the woman he loved. What could he tell her? What did he really know? He watched her precise movements as she wrote something down in that dog-eared notebook. His heart was breaking for that poor family.