Michelle graduated with honors. Gabriel and Sara were both there for the ceremony, applauding when she walked down the aisle to accept her diploma. They went out to eat afterward, but once they were home, Gabriel couldn’t stay. He was preoccupied, and very worried, from the look of things.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” Michelle asked.

He shook his head. He bent to kiss her, very gently. “I’m going to have to be out of the country for two or three months.”

“No!” she exclaimed.

“Only that. Then I have a job waiting, one that won’t require so much travel,” he promised. “Bear with me. I’m sorry. I have to do this.”

She drew in a long breath. “Okay. If you have to go.”

“You’ve got a job waiting in San Antonio, anyway,” he reminded her with a smile. “On a daily newspaper. It has a solid reputation for reporting excellence. Make a name for yourself. But don’t get too comfortable there,” he added enigmatically. “Because when I get back, we need to talk.”

“Talk.” She smiled.

“And other things.”

“Oh, yes, especially, other things,” she whispered, dragging his mouth down to hers. She kissed him hungrily. He returned the kiss, but drew back discreetly when Sara came into the room. He hugged her, too.

He paused in the doorway and looked back at them, smiling. “Take care of each other.” He grinned at his sister. “Happy?” he asked, referring to the changes in her life.

Sara laughed, tossing her long hair. “I could die of it,” she sighed.

“I’ll be back before you miss me,” he told Michelle, who was looking sad. He wanted to kiss her, right there in front of the world. But it wasn’t the time. And he wasn’t sure he could stop.

“Impossible,” Michelle said softly. “I miss you already.”

He winked and closed the door.

Michelle liked the job. She had a desk and three years of solid education behind her to handle the assignments she was given.

A big story broke the second month she’d been with the newspaper. There was a massacre of women and children in a small Middle Eastern nation, perpetrated, it was said, by a group of mercenaries led by a Canadian national named Angel Le Veut. He had ties to an anti-terrorism school run by a man named Eb Scott in, of all places, Jacobsville, Texas.

Michelle went on the offensive at once, digging up everything she could find about the men in the group who had killed the women and children in the small Muslim community that was at odds with a multinational occupation force.