“If you bring the truth.”

She’d been looking for the truth a long time, and knew he was part of it now. But how could she speak truth to him with lies?

She knew she couldn’t.

“You’re right. Maybe there is nothing for me here,” she said.

She rose to leave.

“Maybe there is,” he said.

She stopped. And wondered if he was being guided, too.

“You have protected Nazir, and he has told me of how you harbored Hashim. Thank you, for that.”

She knew whatever holy space had opened was about to disappear if she didn’t act. Even if it were a lie.

“Hashim is in hiding because he fears for his life, because of what you believe he did. And because our government is looking for him, too.”

“It’s hard not to believe he surrendered and revealed things with all the press it captured.”

“That was meant to send chaos through your cause. We already had information about the dry cleaner cell and the farmhouse.”

She knew her story must line up with what Nazir had told him. And the greater truth in what she’d come to accomplish through these lies gave her the certitude to continue.

The imam’s eyes had the ability to terrify even as they drew her in. It was a charisma she’d experienced in few leaders. The ones that had it radiated energy hard to resist.

An electric current ran through her, and adrenaline pumped in the face of this life force.

“Set up the meeting with Hashim, Miss Valen.”

She knew the feeling of having a heightened perceptive power and reckless daring from being in the middle of war zones, she also was acutely aware that she had placed herself closer to a roadside bomb being here. She trusted the empathy she saw in the imam’s ice-blue eyes was the truth.

93

93

Dominique and Kurt listened to the harsh wind thrumming at the windows of his office.

She read from a dog-eared copy of a book she held in her hands.

“‘We’re given a choice every day to go through doors and remember who we are. If we choose to avoid it, life will go on. We may even find bravery with which to confront what comes our way. But we will be blind to what we choose to not see.’”

“Prophetic for what you’re going through.”

“I was seeing it as encouraging. Your take has an ominous ring to it.”

“It doesn’t need to.”

She put the book down.

“Okay. Your turn,” she said.

“So. The imam has ice-blue eyes.”

“Yes.”

“That’s rare in his culture. Imam Mālik had blue eyes.”

“Who?”

“He was born and lived in Medina in the eighth century. He supported the Sunni doctrine of beatific vision.”

“Belief in the afterlife.”

“You’re up on your Sunni doctrine.”

“How do you know about Mālik?”