"Fine," Roger said impatiently. "If that's the way you want it, go ahead and get out."

"Yeah, I'll do that," Fierenzo retorted, pulling on the handle and shoving the door open. He caught Roger's eye and his head twitched fractionally toward the open door beside him. "Have a nice drive.

I'll keep Elaine company for you."

"Wait a second—Elaine's mine," Roger warned. "You keep your paws off her."

"And say hi to your dad for me," Fierenzo added with a leer. Half-turning, he started to get out.

Roger caught his arm. "Come on, Bill, we can't just leave him there."

"Sure we can," Fierenzo said. "In fact, I'd lay you odds he's already found himself another ride."

"Yeah, but what if he hasn't?" Roger persisted.

"Then he can—oh, hell." Muttering under his breath, Fierenzo pulled up the wad of bills he and Roger had put together. "Here, fella, here's what I want you to do," he said, reaching through the partition and slapping the money into the cabby's hand. "Seventy bucks. Go on up to the Faculty House and see if there's a white-haired old man hanging around waiting for a cab. If there is, take him home—he'll give you the address."

"What if he's not there?" the cabby asked, eyeing the money uncertainly.

"Then you've just made yourself a real big tip," Fierenzo said, sliding across the seat and out the door. "Come on, Ralph. And you owe me."

Roger got out after him, and together they watched the cab pull out again into the night. "You think he'll actually go up there?" he asked.

"Doesn't matter," Fierenzo said, looking around them. "Wherever he goes, Torvald's tracer goes with him. Come on, let's get back."

No one accosted them along the way, and a few minutes later Jonah was once again dead-bolting the door behind them. "Well?" he demanded.

"The tracer's gone on a tour of greater Manhattan," Fierenzo told him. "I forgot to ask you to monitor the general Gray tel band."

"Actually, we'd already thought of that," Ron said. "There were a couple of sentry reports on Green activity, and Halfdan made a few positioning changes to counter Warrior movements in Central Park. It all sounded very routine."

"It also sounds like Halfdan's coming to a boil over our disappearance," Jonah put in. "All sentries with views of police precinct houses have been alerted to watch for us."

"Well, if they're watching for you there, that's several sets of eyes not watching any other directions,"

Fierenzo said philosophically. "Anything about Roger and me? Or about a cab heading for Columbia University?"

"Not that I heard," Ron said.

"Same here," Jonah said as his mother also shook her head.

"Well, it's been an interesting evening," Velovsky said, standing up and picking up his coat and hat.

"Do I have your permission to leave yet, Detective?"

"Yes, of course," Fierenzo said, digging a card from his pocket. "If you think of anything else that could help us—"

"Just be thankful I'm not going to report you," Velovsky cut him off, ignoring the proffered card.

With one final glare at Ron and Stephanie, he headed for the door.

"I have a question," Laurel spoke up hesitantly as Velovsky maneuvered past her. "Jonah and Jordan have their private tel system. What's to keep Torvald from having one of his own?"

"Good question," Ron said soberly, looking over at his eldest son. "Jonah?"

"Very good question, actually," Jonah said, grimacing. "As long as he's got Garth working for him, there's no real reason why he can't."

"Actually," Fierenzo said, "he does."

"How do you know?" Zenas asked.

"Jonah said that tracer was a pair of carrier transmitters without a mike or anything else," Fierenzo said. "Can someone show me where that particular component would be on a tel?"

"About here," Ron said, holding up his hand and pointing to a spot just below the little finger.

"About the size of the tracer itself?" Fierenzo asked.

"About that," Ron agreed. "Why?"

"I had a close look at it," Fierenzo said. "It was roughly circular, but not exactly, and the edge was slightly ragged in at least two places."

"Which means what?" Zenas asked, sounding puzzled.

"Which means it wasn't something Garth or Torvald had prepared beforehand, ready to go in case Roger showed up," Fierenzo explained. "It was instead hastily cut out of something else. What could that have been except an actual tel?"

"Or a pair of tels," Stephanie murmured.

"Correction noted." Fierenzo looked at Jonah. "Jonah, you told us that the frequency couple your tels operate on are the safest to use as far as leakage into the main system is concerned. Yet I take it the tracer wasn't running on that exact pair?"

Jonah nodded. "It was close to our frequency couple—that's why we got feedback when they were together—but not exactly on it."

"That's what I thought," Fierenzo said, nodding. "So if yours was the safest frequency couple, why didn't Garth use it when he made up a new batch for Torvald's crowd?"

Ron snapped a pair of massive fingers. "Because he knew Jonah might still have his pair lying around," he said. "He didn't want to take the chance we might be able to listen in on Torvald's private business."

"That was my conclusion, too," Fierenzo said. "And now we come to the interesting bit. Did you and Stephanie have any trouble after you left our meeting at the Marriott yesterday? Specifically, did anyone seem to be following you, or come to your house later, or confront you with accusations about collaboration with the enemy?"

"No, of course not," Stephanie protested. "Don't you think we'd have told you if we had?"

"Of course I do," Fierenzo soothed her, a note of satisfaction in his voice. "But I had to ask. That's it, then."

"That's what?" Ron asked.

"The answer," Fierenzo told him. "I know who has Melantha."

There was a moment of stunned silence. "You what?" Jonah demanded. "Why didn't you say so before?"

"Because I didn't know before," Fierenzo said. "Torvald's tracer was the last piece of the puzzle."

"You've lost me," Zenas said, his hand gripping Laurel's.

"It's very simple," Fierenzo told him. "We know now that Torvald's been able to track Roger's movements since Friday afternoon. That's how he found out where Caroline and Melantha had gone that evening, in fact, after they disappeared from the Whittiers' apartment."

"But it was Halfdan's sons who nailed me in the Youngs' apartment," Roger said, frowning.

"Having probably picked you up during your side trip into Queens," Fierenzo said, nodding. "What we didn't realize until now was that there were actually two separate groups of Grays on hand: Halfdan's sons and Torvald's people."

"Probably Garth and Wolfe," Jonah murmured.

"Whoever, having that tracer let them track Roger straight into Yorkville," Fierenzo said. He looked over at Zenas and Laurel. "We also know there was at least one Green on hand, the old woman who got killed. With one of you on the scene, I gather word gets around pretty quickly."

"True," Zenas confirmed. "There were certainly other Greens already in the neighborhood. Most Manhattan parks have at least a couple of families living there, except for those in the south where Torvald's Grays have moved in."

"So what you're saying is that there could have been people from each of the different factions in the area when Melantha disappeared," Jonah said.

"Exactly, which is what had the water muddied for so long." Fierenzo pointed to Roger. "But now we know that Torvald could track Roger anywhere in Manhattan. We also now know that he didn't do anything to the McClungs after our meeting in the Marriott. Yet he could surely have made some serious political capital out of a family of Grays collaborating with the enemy. If nothing else, he could have accused Aleksander of using his Persuader tricks to torpedo the peace plan."