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what might lie in store. It was unlikely they wanted her to go back to Pakistan, blend in, and start killing radical elements. All that would have taken was the right price and the release of her daughter. That would hardly be “bad news” to a mercenary.
    No. The scenario suggested a suicide mission, though even there she saw problems. Why go through the trouble of hijacking a skilled assassin, then waste her on a mission that anyone with a family could be forced to execute? Because she was a woman? That made no sense. Any whore could be paid to get close to someone in power. Any whore with a child could be coerced into killing him.
    And what of the other two Americans at the airport? Yasmin didn’t think they knew the identities of these three men. They had behaved as though the three were Pakistani security. The African American was right: the Canadians weren’t sophisticated enough to have made that level of deception necessary. Her abduction was a covert operation within the FBI that the other agents had not known about.
    All she knew for certain was that, before too much longer, she would have answers. And given that they still held her daughter, she probably wouldn’t like them.

CHAPTER 2
    BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
    A llison Dearborn looked spellbound at the medusa as it parachuted through the large tank of the aquarium. She had just told Ryan Kealey she loved the colors of the jellyfish, and he said he understood. Then, suddenly, Kealey turned his back to the curved glass of the aquarium tank.
    “You okay?” she asked, her blue eyes following him.
    He nodded. She wasn’t convinced.
    “What are you thinking?” she asked.
    “Just random—”
    “Ryan? Don’t try to smoke me.”
    He smirked. “It isn’t that... . I don’t know if I can explain,” he told her. “It might sound a little crazy.”
    Allison shrugged. “I’m a psychotherapist. Without craziness, I’d be unemployed.”
    His smile broadened, but he remained silent.
    “We’ve got nearly an hour before Julie’s dinner at the convention center.” She hooked her arm in his. “Come on. Give it a shot. I want to know.”
    Kealey patted her hand and glanced back at the tank. Allison took a moment to admire this man, who was not only a good friend but also an exemplary patient. Lean and of medium height, his dark hair nearly reaching his collar, Kealey had dressed for the banquet in a Caribbean-blue collared golf shirt, navy Dockers, and loafers. He looked good, and he looked healthy, relaxed. He was certainly in a much better place than when they had first met. There was a long way to go, but he was making progress.
    The creature was hovering now, barely drifting, its bell expanding and contracting with slow, rhythmical pulsations.
    “The medusa could be at rest right now or hunting its prey,” Kealey said. “You can’t tell the difference by looking at it.”
    “Fascinating and deflecting. What’s that got to do with—”
    “Bear with me,” he said.
    “Fine. How do you know this?”
    He raised the brochure he’d picked up at the exhibit’s Pier 4 entrance. “I read this while you were on the phone. It describes the creature’s survival mechanisms, like those venomous tentacles. It doesn’t wait for its enemies to mature. It eats their eggs. It’s a perfect biological machine. Tell me, how would you go about injecting humanity into something like that?”
    “I wouldn’t try. It’s not a human being.”
    “Exactly,” he said. “It’s the same with some people. People who watch other people and hover and kill for a living—they’re not quite human beings, either. I was thinking, How do you instill that, or if lost, how do you get that back?”
    “There are numerous approaches to rehabilitation—”
    “On the surface,” he said. “You acclimatize someone. Do you really change them?”
    “You mean brainwash?”
    “That’s a little harsher than I meant,” Kealey said. “You scrub out so much in the process. I’m