The guardian
(Book)

When a sacred relic goes missing, its importance is only the beginning . . . When a CIA informant from Kandahar is gunned down in a suburban area of Virginia outside D.C., special Agent Jack Saunders is tasked with uncovering a plot that could alter the fate of Afghanistan and unsettle a tepid peace in the Middle East. But when a raid on a radical safe house goes horribly wrong, Jack finds himself without support within his own government. Determined to find answers on his own, Jack enlists the aid of Cianna Phelan, a disgraced former war hero trying to put her life back together. When Cianna's brother, Charlie, returns to South Boston from active duty in Afghanistan and immediately goes missing, Cianna and Jack find themselves in a race against time not only to save his life, but to prevent an international conspiracy at the highest levels of the US intelligence community. As lives are lost in the warrens of Boston's clannish underworld, Jack and Cianna realize they are on the trail of one of the most sacred artefacts in all of Islam. And when the bullets start to fly, they realize they can never know whom to trust, and nothing is what it seems.