When he saw the phone on his desk, he decided he wasn’t going to call Ibrahim. No, he was done with all that. Giving them the chemicals that they wanted wasn’t going to serve anyone’s best interests. And the money they’d paid him up until now—well, he would pay it back. He would find a way. He was out. For the sake of his family, he was done.

Jake muted his cell, went to the lab, and spent the next hour and a half diving into his work, lost in thought, or at least trying to lose himself in thought.

As he was finishing up, two FBI agents showed up and grilled him about Ibrahim and Blake, but he denied any knowledge of what the agents were asking about. He told them he would be glad to help if he could, but that he was sorry he knew nothing about those men. “Never heard of them.”

“What about Fayed Raabi’ah Bashir?”

“Isn’t he that terrorist?”

“What do you know about that?”

“Nothing. Just what’s in the news. They say he’s in the country. Is that true?”

“What have you heard, specifically, in the news?”

The female agent asked all the questions while the other agent, a guy who looked to be a tired forty, silently took notes in his journal. They’d introduced themselves when they first arrived, but Jake had been too nervous to catch either agent’s name.

“Sir?” she said. “What have you heard?”

“I just . . . That he was responsible for that attack in Detroit last summer and other bombings somewhere in the Middle East. That’s it.”

“Mr. Reese, did you fly to New York City last weekend to attend the funeral of Jon Murray?”

“I know the senator. I served on an advisory committee during some congressional hearings.”

“And that was enough to justify a flight up there to attend the young man’s funeral?”

“I wanted to show my support for the senator. Listen, I haven’t done anything. I don’t know anything. If I hear of any terrorist activity, I’ll call you, okay? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some very important work that’s waiting for me.”

The two agents exchanged glances, and then the one who’d been taking notes closed up his notepad while the woman handed Jake her card.

“Call me if you think of anything.”

“Okay.”

Finally, when they left, Jake hastily returned to his office, only to find a note on his desk from Gracie: Ibrahim called again. Sounded urgent. He didn’t leave a message. What do you want me to do if he calls back?

He wanted nothing more to do with this.

He left Gracie a message not to accept any more calls from Ibrahim and, hands shaking, shredded the note and deleted the voice message waiting for him without listening to it.