Working… Triangle Group is listed as an electronic company with base office 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue, East Washington.

“Display map, East Washington. Highlight given address.”

Map displayed. Highlighted location is The White House.

“Yeah, even I knew that. Little power trip. Search data on Five-By Corporation.”

She leaned back as the computer fed her data, then glanced over as Roarke came in.

“You needed something?”

“Kirkendall acquired real estate near two of the targets. Prime stuff, good investment. Looks like he kept them. Using a couple of blinds, or a couple we've got so far. Triangle Group out of Five-By Corporation.”

“Triangle.” He moved toward her, brushed her out of his chair. “Logical. Five-By? Is that an indication there are two more prime players in this?”

“Five-by-five.”

“Is twenty-five?”

“No, not math. Military term.”

“You've got one on me.”

“It's like loud and clear. Like I hear you fine. Everything's solid. Like that.”

“Ah.” He looked over what she'd already done. “The White House. Don't we think a lot of ourselves? And the parent organization is ostensibly housed in the Pentagon and the UN, and I believe this is Buckingham Palace. However grand their delusions, they don't make much of a blip in the business world. I've never heard of either company. Let's just see what we see.”

“Can I leave you on this a minute? I need to update the commander. It might keep them off my ass a while longer.”

“Go on, but pop downstairs and see if all's well, will you? I left Mavis as acting host, and Christ knows what she might think up.”

She made the call, and put off her social obligations long enough to pop in on Feeney as he was wrapping up.

Once she made it down, she found all the adults, including Elizabeth, in the parlor.

“They're fine,” Elizabeth told her. “Having such a good time I thought I'd let them hang together, as Kevin says, for a little while.”

“Good. Okay. Fine.”

“Don't worry about us,” Mira told her. “It's obvious you've had something come up. We can easily entertain ourselves for a while.”

“Even better.”

In the game room Nixie and Kevin took a break from the machines. She liked having another kid around, even if he was a boy. And his mother and father seemed nice. His mother had even played Intergalactic War with them. And nearly won, too.

But she was glad she'd gone away for a while. There were things you couldn't say with adults around.

“How come you don't talk like your mom and dad?” Nixie wanted to know.

“I talk like everybody.”

“No, they have a sort of accent. It's different. How come you don't?”

“Maybe because they haven't been my mom and dad the whole time. But they are now.”

“They, like, adopted you?”

“We had a party when they did. Almost like a birthday. There was chocolate cake.”

“That's nice.” She thought it was, but there was a jittery feeling in her stomach. “Did somebody kill your real mom and dad?”

“My other mom,” he corrected. “Because I have a real mom. You get to be real when you're adopted.”

“I mean your other. Did somebody kill her?”

“Nuh-uh.” He began to pet Galahad, who'd deigned to stay and have his belly rubbed. “Sometimes she'd go away, and I'd get hungry. Sometimes she'd be nice, and sometimes she'd hit me. 'Smack the crap out of you, little bastard.'“ He grinned when he said it, but it wasn't a pleasant expression. “That's how her face looked when she hit. But my mom now, she never hits, and she never has that face. My dad either. Sometimes they get this one.”

He drew his eyebrows together and tried to look stern. “But mostly they don't. And they don't go away, and I don't get hungry, not like before.”

“How did they find you?”

“They came and got me from the place where you have to go if you don't have a mom or something. You get to eat there, and they've got games, but I didn't want to stay there-and I didn't for very long. Then they came and we got to go live in Virginia. We have a big house. Not as big as this,” he said, stringently honest. “But it's big and I have my own room, and Dopey came with us.”

Nixie moistened her lips. “Are they going to take me to Virginia?” She knew where that was, sort of. She knew the capital was Richmond because she had to learn all the states and their capitals in school. But it wasn't New York. It wasn't here. It wasn't home.

“I don't know.” Obviously intrigued, Kevin cocked his head and studied her. “Don't you live here?”

“No. I don't live anywhere. People came in our house and killed my mom and dad.”

“Killed them dead?” Kevin's eyes popped wide. “How come?”

“Because my dad was good and they were wrong people. That's what Dallas said.”

“That's the doom.” He gave her a pat, as he had Galahad. “Were you scared?”

“What do you think?” she snapped back, but the sympathy on Kevin's face didn't fade.

“I think I'da been so scared I wouldn't even be able to breathe”

The little flash of anger died. “I was. They killed them, and they didn't kill me, and I have to stay here for protection. Dallas is going to find them and put them in a goddamn cage.”

He slapped a hand over his mouth and slid his gaze to the door.

“You're not supposed to say goddamn,” he whispered. “Mom gets that look on her face if you forget and say it.”

“She's not my mom.”

When tears glimmered, Kevin scooted over and put an arm around her. “It's okay. She can be your mom, too, if you want.”

“I want my own mom.”

“She got dead.”

Nixie dropped her head to her drawn-up knees. “They won't let me go back to my house. They won't let me go to school. And I don't know where Virginia is, exactly.”

“We have a big yard, and we have a puppy. Sometimes he pees on the floor. It's pretty funny.”

She sighed, rested her cheek on her knees. “I want to ask Dallas if I have to go to Virginia.” She swiped at her cheeks, rose, and used the house scanner. “Where is Dallas?”

Dallas is in Roarke's office.

“You have to keep this.” Carefully, she unpinned the homer from her shirt, pinned it on Kevin's. “It's how Summerset knows where I am. I just want to talk to Dallas and nobody else, so you have to stay here and play games until I get back.”

“Okay. When you come back, we can look Virginia up on a map, then you can see.”

“Maybe.”

She knew the house, or at least the parts of it Summerset had shown her. To avoid the parlor, she took the elevator up a floor, then dashed down the corridor, and used the steps.

Part of her wanted to run away. But where would she go? She didn't want to be alone. She knew kids were sometimes. Coyle had told her there were places like Sidewalk City where kids nobody wanted lived in boxes and had to beg for food. She didn't want to live in a box, but it wasn't right, it wasn't fair that they were going to send her away. No one even asked.

Creeping past a door, she paused to listen.

She heard nothing inside, so eased around to look. It was Dallas 's office, and no one was there.

She crept to the next door.

“Gonna nail those sons of bitches. Look at the tenant list, two blocks from the Brenegan murder scene, and we've got a fucking revolving door.”

There was a sound in Dallas 's voice, Nixie thought. Kind of mean, and kind of excited, too. Like she'd heard one of the bigger kids sound at free-time in school when he talked about punching another kid.

“Two of those names are known aliases for Cassandra disciples. And one of them's a face sculptor-a dead one. Bet your excellent ass he's the one who did the work on Kirkendall and Clinton. The other's off planet doing life. I'm going to have to go squeeze him, and I hate going off planet.”

“We get lucky here, you won't have to. Every property or company I find is one away from pinning their base. Just give us some room here, Lieutenant.”