“Me, too. Where are we going?”
In answer, he pulled into the driveway of an ordinary house. The windows were dark, and she saw no sign of welcome within. Her misgivings flared to life.
“I’m sorry.” The regret in his storm-cloud eyes puzzled her. “But there’s nothing else I can do.” He leaned over as if to touch her cheek, but he pulled his fingers away at the last moment, contact aborted. “I wanted that kiss, by the way. More than you know.”
Her cheeks fired, and his words confused her enough that she spent precious seconds weighing the wrong comment. “Nothing you can do about what?”
“They won’t hurt you. Just keep calm, do as they ask, and everything will be fine.”
“They who?” she demanded, her voice gone shrill.
But he turned away, hands firmly on the wheel. Whatever came next, Foster made it clear he wouldn’t help her.
Someone jerked the passenger door open, and then a masked man pulled her from the car.
CHAPTER 1
PRESENT DAY, VIRGINIA
“I understand your father was Iranian,” the interviewer said delicately. “And you still have relatives there, including your grandfather and numerous cousins.”
He was a silver-haired man, clad in a navy blue suit. His pale blue shirt and gray tie said he was conservative, somewhat lacking in imagination. Mia had learned to read people, based on the clothing they chose.
The hotel conference room was nearly as nondescript as her interviewer. Looking around at the beige paint and the faux-wood theme, she could have been in any hotel in any part of the country. There were no windows to distract her from the inappropriate question.
She had impeccable references. At first she hadn’t doubted Micor Technologies would select her, even from a large pool of qualified candidates. Her track record for ferreting out the truth made her the ideal choice. And indeed, everything had been going well until the management had run across her ethnic background.