Reaching to touch his arm, Mandi said quietly, "You gave me the opening I needed in there. Thanks."

Regarding her silently for a moment, Cade said, "You didn't need me at all, Mandi. After I saw the playback, I asked John why you didn't handle the whole mess yourself."

Letting her hand fall to her side, Mandi said, "That wasn't the plan, Ed.

That's all I can say."

A woman called Mandi from the doorway.

Mandi nodded to let the woman know she'd heard and turned back to Cade to ask, "What's your issue-cell number?"

"Forty-two-eighteen. Yours?"

"Zero-two-two-one."

Although he knew that the cells were recharged and reissued in no particular order, Cade grinningly said, "Wow, that's a low number. You must be somebody special, ma'am."

Laughing, Mandi said, "No, not me. They just handed me one from a box."

An awkward moment of parting was developing. Cade curtailed it by extending a hand and saying, "I'm off in search of dinner. See you later, milady."

Catching her lower lip between her teeth for a moment as she shook hands, Mandi said, "Yeah. See you later, Ed."

As Cade left her to head for the door, a guy asked, "Have you been debriefed?"

Thumbing at the console that was being packed into metal suitcases, Cade said, "It's all on tape. John has my number."

'Debriefed', thought Cade as he entered the hallway. What kind of a putz came up with that word? Probably a politician.

Chapter Seven

Mandi watched Cade leave the room and wondered how such people came to be.

She'd met a few others somewhat like him since her arrival on Earth and her involvement with the NIA. None of them had talked much and few had been as smilingly sociable with her as Cade.

She paused by the door to help the two men who were working to angle the long commo equipment trunk through the narrow hallway to the corridor.

One guy grousingly asked, "How the h.e.l.l did they get it in here in the first place?"

Grasping the top strap in her right hand, Mandi lifted it out of their hands and said, "I'll hold it. You guide it."

After a moment of staring, the men steered the trunk through the door frame and into the corridor, where Mandi put it down on end for a guy with a two-wheeled dolly.

One of the guys marveled at the way the leather-and-metal handgrip on top had been deformed by her grip and said he was going to replace it just to have this one as a souvenir.

When John saw Mandi at the door of 835, he excused himself from the two women who'd been hostages and went to her, leading her a short distance away from everyone else.

"Mandi," John enthused, "I just wanted to say that I've never seen anything like that in my life. It was amazing. I can't tell you how happy we are to have you aboard."

"Thanks, John. Can you tell me why you wouldn't let me go in there alone?"

Expecting her to simply accept his words, Mandi's question appeared to take him somewhat aback, but he recovered and said, "No. I'm sorry, but I can't."

"Can you at least tell me whether it was your idea or someone else's?"

He shook his head. "No, Mandi. I'm sorry, but..." A thought seemed to occur to him and he asked, "Where's Cade? He hasn't been debriefed yet."

For some reason, it gave Mandi a twinge of pleasure to say, "I believe he went to see about some dinner, John. Besides, what debriefing is really necessary? You have it on tape."

John regarded her thoughtfully for a moment.

As he was about to say something else, Mandi asked, "Was he 'debriefed'

after what happened earlier today? From what I've heard, he just filed a police report and left."

"You know about that, huh?"

"Yes," she said flatly. "Ringer told me why the car blew up. What's going on, John? Why all the secrecy?"

Looking pained, John said, "Look, Mandi, talking could cost me my job. Give me a break, okay?" After a short sigh, he added, "Here's some good news. We think we may have all the copies of the pictures sold to WNN. The risk at the moment is that someone who had a set may have posted them on the internet.

n.o.body's admitted to that, but the only way to know for sure is to wait and see."

Thumbing over her shoulder at room 835, Mandi asked, "What about the tape of what happened in there?"

In a firm tone, John said, "It goes into an NIA vault. One copy goes to Washington. That's it."

"Does Washington get copies of all your incident tapes?"

"Well, no, but this one's not exactly routine and I've been ordered to supply a copy."

Altogether unenthused, Mandi muttered, "Uh, huh. Is there anything else, John? I have to go do some things."

He shook his head and said, "No, nothing else that I can think of. Thanks again, Mandi."

Nodding, she said, "You're welcome. See you later, John."

Heading back past 835, Mandi refocused her vision and began looking inside the trunks, bags, and boxes that were lined up for removal along the wall.

She saw the outlines of all sorts of objects, electronic components, and weapons, but no tapes. Glancing around slowly, she let her vision sweep the interiors of nearby rooms from 835 to 831, but saw no videoca.s.settes of any type.

Then she realized that the large trunk was missing from the equipment lineup. Lifting slightly from the floor, Mandi flew toward the elevator alcove, arriving just as the doors opened for the two guys who'd taken the trunk on the dolly.

Landing and smiling as she approached, Mandi said, "Hi, guys. Need another hand with it?"

One grinned at her as they stood the dolly upright in the elevator and said, "No, ma'am. I think we've got it this time."

Mandi boarded the elevator and pretended to examine the damage she'd done to the handle as she scanned the trunk and chatted with the guys.

She saw three ca.s.settes in the trunk and used her heat vision to melt the fragile tape within each ca.s.sette. They -- whoever 'they' happened to be -- would realize the damage hadn't happened by accident, of course. The damaged tapes were Mandi's message to them: "No pictures."

Would it really do any good? Or would her action simply p.i.s.s somebody off enough to leak the other pictures? Mandi sighed, knowing that her exposure was inevitable, anyway, but she vowed to stave it off as long as possible. Privacy was just too d.a.m.ned hard to come by.

There wasn't really any way to pressure the authorities. She couldn't in good conscience refuse to help in matters of life and death. On the other hand, she could let them know that quite a number of their other hopes and plans involving the cooperation of a superwoman would become null and void the moment any pictures were found -- or even suspected -- to have leaked from any government offices.

Mandi mentally studied her list of agency... 'acquaintances'. That was the best that she could call them, really, even after two weeks of working with them. Most of them were more than a little in awe of her and some even seemed to fear her.

John Cooke, who was nominally in charge of this NIA op, but seemed unable to let even his star players know who was really running the show.

Alan Vosier, who reported to and took his orders from John.

Karen Phillips, who liaisoned between John and someone else, probably the nameless ent.i.ty controlling the op.

Ed Cade, who called himself semi-retired, appeared to work directly with John, and... And what? She realized that she knew almost nothing else about him.

Nothing at all.

Mandi suddenly also realized that Cade had so far seemed to come and go like a cat, disdaining such formalities as 'debriefings', although he'd filed a police report after the first incident of the day because he'd used his gun.

He definitely hadn't seemed either in awe or afraid of her. Instead of asking her dozens of questions about herself, he'd simply asked her to validate his own conclusions.

Or had he? Yes. Once, at least; in asking whether her language teacher had been human or machine. In all else, he'd simply stated his conclusions about her, and they'd been right.

Furthermore, although she and Cade hadn't discussed possibilities or been issued a plan of action, when Cade had pounced on Marjeel, he'd done so with apparently no doubt at all that she could and would deal with the other two terrorists.

How could he have had such implicit faith in her?

Mandi couldn't really envision any of the other agency people she'd met attempting much of anything without a thoroughly pre-discussed plan that had been specifically approved by someone up the chain; a plan that would cover all contingencies and especially peoples' a.s.ses after any f.u.c.kups.

That line of thinking led her back to the question of why she hadn't been allowed to go in alone. Those of consequence within the NIA knew her capabilities from demonstrations of her speed and strength at White Sands on two occasions.

The elevator doors opening at the second floor roused Mandi from her contemplations. Two men and a woman stepped aboard and moved to one side, then the doors closed and the elevator descended.

When the doors opened again, Mandi nodded goodbye to the two men with the trunk and strode out of the elevator at almost a march step, in keeping with her mood, but had no particular destination in mind.

The lobby of the Rivage Hotel seemed crowded with people in various costumes. Mandi asked a nearby woman in an alien costume what was going on and was informed that preliminaries for the first costume contest of the convention were about to be filmed for the local six o'clock news.

Someone heralded the arrival of a camera crew and equipment and shepherded them to one side of the doors to a ballroom, where they began setting up their lights, reflectors, and other gear. Two hotel employees wheeled a big-screen TV to the same area and plugged it in, then left.

Oh, great. If John's people had missed even one copy of the pictures or failed to properly intimidate even one news hound, she could be in the middle of this crowd when some talking head said, "This footage just arrived..." and everybody saw her airlifting a taxi on that huge d.a.m.ned screen.

Would they do that after being contacted by the NIA? Oh, h.e.l.l, yes, they would, even if it meant having someone 'anonymously' send the pics to several news outfits at once so they could cover their a.s.ses later.

Mandi spun on her heel and -- again at a march step, but this time with a destination in mind -- headed for the walkway where she'd made her Atlanta debut.

Disdaining the revolving door, she used the left side door in a manner that made the mechanism ring and clatter and continued down the walkway with a glance at the spot where the explosive taxi had been.

At the bottom of the ramp she had to wait for the light at the corner to interrupt the flow of traffic. Looking around, Mandi saw the faint remains of a stain on the nearby sidewalk and spotted glitterings of overlooked shards of gla.s.s in the shrubbery by the wall. Glancing up, she saw that the cafe's window had already been replaced.

When the crossing guard stepped into the street and waved to people on the sidewalks, Mandi's march continued against the flow of more costumed people on their way to the contest preliminaries.

Across the street and up the steep steps she went; past the pool and into the lower lobby of her own hotel, with little attention spent on anything except getting past the oncoming herd of people and the crowd by the escalators.

The group waiting for the elevators in the main lobby was large, as always.

Mandi cut left and headed for the stairs, instead, dodging people who preferred the stairs as a short cut to the convention's hospitality suite in 221, which was only a few steps from the stairwell.

Traffic on the stairs thinned to nothing above the second floor and Mandi flew above the steps until she reached the fourth floor.

Through the stairwell door and down the corridor toward her room she went. A man in a suit -- one of Frank's people -- glanced out of one of the rooms and recognized her with a nod and a small salute. Mandi nodded back as she pa.s.sed, but her stride remained constant until she reached her door.

Once in her room, Mandi picked up the TV's remote as she set her purse and key card on the bed, flicked the channel to WNN, and noted the time on the screen bar.

Five-fifty-eight. Two minutes to newstime. Mandi sat on the edge of the bed and watched the remnants of an item about some event in Ma.r.s.eilles, France, that didn't seem particularly newsworthy to her.

The cell phone in her purse chirped and she reached for it with more than a trace of irritation. Someone had to choose just this moment to call her...

Tapping it on, she said, "Angel here."

"Dragonfly here. You sound a little tense, milady. Sounds as if we're watching the same channel."

Listening to the background sounds at his end, Mandi said, "Yes, we are. It sounds as if you're in a bar, Dragonfly."

"Only because I am, ma'am. I stopped in the lobby's pub to grab a burger platter. Had the bartender turn on the news, in case the newsies have used the last couple of hours to figure a way around the confiscations. Have you made any plans yet?"

"Plans?"

"Yeah. If they show the pictures, will you stay at the convention or leave?"

With a ladylike snort, Mandi said, "Leave, I'd think."

"Won't help," said Cade. "If I can make blowups, others can, too, and they'll circulate nationwide. Worldwide. Did you see the 'Dawn' lookalike contest in the program guide? If the pictures are shown, what would you say to a 'Mandi Steele Lookalike Contest'? After something like that, you'd be just another pretty tree in the forest while you're here."

After a moment of horrified silence, Mandi asked, "You're actually serious, aren't you?"

Around a mouthful of french fries, Cade said, "Yup. I know a guy who can set it up and they can build it into one of the other costume contests. It can be the first of its kind."

"The what?!"

"The first ever 'Mandi Steele Lookalike Contest'. Who knows? If you enter, you might even win. Think about it and call me back after the news."