"I know where the real threat lies," Fierenzo growled. "It's this whole damn war of theirs. And I'm this close to rounding up every one of them I can find—on both sides—and digging up, thinking up, or trumping up enough charges to hold them."

"You do that and you'll condemn them to perpetual slavery," Roger warned, his voice grim. "They'll never pass whatever medical tests they get put through in prison. You really think the Feds wouldn't snatch them the second they found out who and what they really were?"

Fierenzo sighed, some of the anger draining out of him. "Of course they would," he conceded.

"Which is why I'm not going to do it unless I absolutely have to. Especially not to people who've lived in my city this long without causing any trouble."

Abruptly, he reached down and popped the trunk release. "Keep your eyes peeled," he said. "I'm going to let Laurel out."

She was still lying obediently still under her blanket as he lifted the trunk lid. "We're clear," he told her, pushing the clothing bags out of the way and pulling off the blanket. "Anyone nearby?"

"If they are, they're not talking," Laurel said, squinting a little in the sunlight.

"Yeah," Fierenzo said, letting his gaze harden. "Now. You want to tell me what you did back there?"

"What do you mean?" she asked cautiously.

"Don't play me, Laurel," Fierenzo warned. "I'm not in the mood. You weren't just listening there at the end, were you?"

Her eyes shifted guiltily away from his stare. "I'm sorry," she said in a low voice. "I know you told me not to. But I didn't hear anything from Melantha, and no one had mentioned her. So I decided to take a chance. I didn't think they would even notice my voice among all the others. I certainly didn't expect them to react so quickly. I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," Fierenzo said pointedly. Still, it was hard not to feel a certain degree of sympathy for her. If it had been one of his daughters who'd been kidnapped, he might not have paid much attention to someone else's orders, either.

There was the sound of a car door opening, and Roger appeared around the side of the trunk.

"They're coming," he reported. "You okay, Laurel?" he added, offering her his hand.

"I'm fine." She took his hand, and with his assistance climbed out onto the ground. "I'm didn't hear Melantha, though." She looked furtively at Fierenzo. "I even gave a quick call to her, just before we were stopped. But there was no answer."

Roger nodded heavily. "Well... we all knew it was a long shot."

"But she did hear something," Fierenzo said, the pieces finally starting to come together.

"What do you mean?" Roger asked, frowning.

"They knew who we were the minute we drove in," Fierenzo said, trying to put his intuitive logic train into words. "They also had to know we were there to spy on them."

"Granted," Roger said. "So?"

"So they didn't seem all that worried when they thought we were spying for ourselves," Fierenzo continued. "Otherwise, they'd have grabbed us while we were still in the house. And it didn't even seem to bother them all that much when the hammerguns went off."

"They looked startled enough to me," Roger said.

"Startled, yes, but not bothered," Fierenzo pointed out. "There's a difference. That implies they weren't even that worried when they realized we were spying for Grays."

He looked at Laurel. "But they did care when Laurel made that quick call for Melantha and they suddenly realized we had a hidden Green aboard. They cared a lot, in fact. So the question is, what was going on back there that they wouldn't want a Green to overhear?" He lifted his eyebrows in invitation.

"I don't know what to say," Laurel said, her forehead tight with concentration. "They were monitoring our progress through the forest, and there were bits of other conversations—just the casual sorts of things people talk about all the time. There was also a Farspeaker keeping in touch with their Commander, who must have been out of normal range."

"Aunt Sylvia," Roger murmured. "I wonder if she's the same Sylvia I met at Aleksander's place."

"I don't know." Laurel looked at Fierenzo. "But you were right. The minute I gave my call, they suddenly went from very calm to very excited. I went quiet again immediately, but it was too late."

"Wait a minute," Roger said, frowning. "You say she heard something that worried them. But after a couple of minutes they went ahead and let us go. Doesn't that mean they concluded she hadn't heard anything?"

Fierenzo thought it over. "You may be right," he conceded reluctantly. "Damn. I thought we might be onto something."

"We might still be onto half of it," Roger offered. "Because their reaction shows there was something they thought she might have heard."

"Could be," Fierenzo agreed. "Any ideas, Laurel?"

Laurel shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said. "I can't think of anything—"

She broke off as the sound of something brushing through tree branches came from their left.

Fierenzo looked that direction, his hand automatically going for his gun.

But it was only Jordan, flying rapidly through the air toward them as he angled downward on his invisible tension line.

Beside him, Fierenzo felt Roger twitch as he caught sight of the flying Gray. "It's all right," Fierenzo soothed him, wincing as Jordan's outstretched feet slammed hard into the tree trunk anchoring the other end of the tension line. A pair of broken ankles right now would not be good.

But the young Gray's legs merely bent with the impact, absorbing the momentum like a pair of coiled springs. A second later he had let go of the line and dropped onto the ground, clearly none the worse for wear. A second later Jonah slammed into the same spot on the tree and also dropped to the ground. Turning around, he waved his hand back and forth twice as if directing traffic and then held it steady.

Fierenzo looked back in the direction the two Grays had come from. A moment later he spotted the tiny tension line projector flying toward them like a small kite being reeled in, its manta ray/airfoil shape keeping it high above the ground and any potentially entangling branches. It shot toward Jonah, and Fierenzo wondered suddenly if the Gray was going to wind up with a set of broken knuckles when it hit.

But Jonah obviously knew the proper technique. Just before the projector reached him, he swiveled a hundred eighty degrees around to let it shoot past, burning some of its speed as it braked along its retrieval thread. The projector made a U-turn and finished its trip to his hand at a much more manageable speed. "Everyone okay?" he called as he and Jordan jogged to the car.

"Thanks to you," Roger said, shaking his head. "Velovsky mentioned tension lines, but it didn't sound nearly as impressive as it looks."

"Yeah," Jonah said distractedly, his eyes on Laurel. "Laurel?"

"I didn't find Melantha," she said tiredly. "I'm sorry."

"Then where is she?" Jordan asked anxiously, looking at Fierenzo.

"I don't know," Fierenzo told him. "But we won't find her hanging around out here. Everybody in the car."

"We going back to the city?" Roger asked as they all climbed in.

"Not yet," Fierenzo said, retrieving the mental thread he'd been working on back at the estate before the Warriors had so rudely interrupted. "Nestor told us Sylvia was out doing some shopping. Laurel corroborated that a minute ago when she said their Commander was out of range of everyone except the Farspeakers. Given that, what's the simplest thing for them to have done with Caroline?"

"Sylvia took her along?" Jordan suggested.

"Exactly," Fierenzo said. "And there's just a chance that Caroline might have been permitted to do a little shopping of her own."

He looked at Roger, who was frowning blankly at him. "And if she was clever," he added, "she might even have used a credit card."