"And la rubia? Does she care what color your skin is?"

Perito grinned. "She likes it."

"Then don't worry about los padres. They'll get over it." She put down her bag and gestured at SubLorraine. "How is she?"

Perito pointed at the floor panels under the middle of the sub where a pneumatic sander lay, the hose snaking across the floor to the compressor outlet in the corner.

"I was smoothing down the mess you made of the instrument housing. Everything else is set-the absorbent, the activated charcoal, the oxygen, the reserve air bank, and the natural gas. I tested the turbogenerator for a few minutes, then spun up the flywheels using city power, uh-." He looked at his watch. "Two hours ago."Patricia smiled. "The most trusted and dependable employee of the eminent assemblywoman."

She moved over to the phone and dialed the Engineering Office.

Assistant Director Martinez was glad to hear from her. "The way you've been all over the news, I could've sworn we wouldn't be talking to you for a long time. Are you all right?"

She looked down at the ring and thought of the way Thomas had felt against her.

She grinned. "Actually, quite all right. I'm going to start where we left off, hex three-sixty-two, isn't it? Framing the Number Three algae farm? Unless you have some indication of a problem somewhere else."

"No, that's good. We've got that stretch; then we're overdue for the inspections of the seawall and beach plates around the refugee center."

"Well, barring problems, I don't see why I can't finish the algae farm today and move on to the seawall stuff tomorrow."

"Great. Pachefski's engineering staff has been bugging me, wanting to know when you'll get to their end, but with all your adventures, I haven't been able to tell them. You'll e-mail the inspection video at the end of the day?"

"And drop off the water samples at the lab. Right. See you."

She let two of the NGPD officers escort her up to her apartment to pick up some comfortable working clothes, but the trip, which should've taken five minutes, took over an hour.

She felt like a ship accumulating barnacles.

The first person to stop her, to make sure she was all right "after that horrible explosion," was Celeste, and then Marie ran up shouting, "Tante, I lost a tooth, I lost a tooth!" This slowed her enough for the next person, Toni, to reach her, wanting to talk about moving in with Perito, and then Consuela saw her from her office window and grabbed her to authorize some expenditures and an emergency hire. By the time Patricia made it into her apartment, there was a small crowd surrounding her that didn't quite dare to follow her inside.

She shut the door and stared at the bust of Shakespeare. Will, I should've worn the disguise.

The phone rang and she glared at it, but the number of unheard messages on the display was up to over a hundred and she didn't want to add to it. "Hello."

"Assemblywoman Alternate Beenan?"

She froze. She knew that voice. It was a hoarse and gravelly voice, the voice of a heavy smoker. The voice she'd heard on the seawall when they'd tried to kill her and Thomas.She reached out and hit the message button, causing the phone to start recording.

"No. The asseeemlywom-an, she no here. You weesh to leave a mensaje-a message?"

"Yes. There's a bomb in the school. Do you understand?"

She felt adrenaline shiver through her like ice water in her blood. "A bome?"

He snarled. "Una bomba en la escuela, estupida! Comprendes?"

"Si. Una bomba. Por que?"

"You should be asking 'cuando'!" He hung up, hard.

She ran out the door, nearly knocking over her police escort. "I've just received a bomb threat on the school! Get the bomb squad!"

The officer reached for his radio but grabbed her arm as she started for the school. "Wait, ma'am!"

"There are sixty-three kids and seven adults in there!" She twisted her arm, breaking out between the thumb and forefinger. "Call the bomb squad, dammit!"

She could hear him talking on the radio as she ran, the other cop right behind her.

She paused at the door and said, "Keep everyone out!" She threw open the door, punched the combination on the inner door, then stepped across the inner hall and pulled the fire alarm.

The bell began ringing immediately.

Down the hall, Consuela stuck her head into the hall, her eyes wide. She called to Patricia, "Es real?"

Patricia beckoned her closer and said quietly, "Bomb threat."

Consuela's mouth opened, then her jaw firmed. "Right. We'll need to get them out of the courtyard, too." She grabbed a teacher just coming out of her class, twelve kids behind her like ducks, and whispered in her ear. "Tell the others." She turned back to Patricia. "Straggler sweep?"

"I'll take the third floor."

"I've got two."

Patricia turned to the policeman who'd followed her inside. "Will you check this floor for stragglers?" All four-classrooms were now emptying, and orderly lines of kids who started out bored, but became excited when they saw the policeman. "It's just these four classrooms, but there's the bathrooms, kitchen, and lunchroom."

"Yes, ma'am."

Patricia ran for the stairs, heart pounding. Please be a hoax, please be a hoax!

The entire hex was being watched by the police-she didn't see how a strangercould've got in, but they couldn't take that chance.

She passed a distraught teacher on the upper landing, leading her class of fourth-graders down. "I'm missing one! Antonio went to the bathroom right before the bell, but he's not in there!"

"Right," Patricia said. "Get these kids out-I'll see to Antonio."

She didn't bother to check the bathroom, but started a methodical sweep of every room, dropping to the floor to peer under the tables, then moving on. Antonio was in the janitor's closet and jumped when she threw the door open.

She didn't bother talking to him, just took his hand and yanked.

"Hey!" he shouted, surprised.

She went out through the walkway to the play structure and shoved him in the long tube slide, then leaned over the railing to make sure he came out below. His own teacher, trooping by with the rest of the class, took him in tow.

She went back in, checked the last two rooms, then went down the stairway to one. Consuela was there before her, dithering at the door. They left together, leaving the inner door unlocked for the bomb squad.

All of the policemen were standing there.

"Is everyone out?" the corporal in charge asked.

"Yes," Consuela answered. "We did a sweep. We'll double-check with a head count. You're not going in, are you?"

The corporal shook his head. "Do I look stupid?"

Patricia, remembering her own recent bomb experience, blushed. "Hey, who's guarding the sub?"

The corporal licked his lips. "Well, I thought this was a priority. The kids and all."

"And this might be a diversion. The kids are all right, now."

He ducked his head. "Right. Carter, Matiz, and Wing, get back downstairs. The rest of us will keep anyone from entering the courtyard. You two take the inner stairway; I'll take the outer. Ladies, if you'd please join the others-if a bomb does go off in the school, this whole area will be filled with flying glass."

The adrenaline stopped flowing, and Patricia felt suddenly limp as she and Consuela were walking down the outer stairs to the waiting children. They were crowded in front of the apartment building, sitting by class. By now, some of the kids' parents, locals living in the Elephant Arms, were mingling, talking to each other and the teachers.Everyone's eyes got particularly big when the bomb squad hovercraft pulled up to the landing and the team moved quickly up the stairs in their padded armor carrying bomb sniffers and cases of other equipment.

Patricia turned to Consuela. "I think it's time for a trip to Enrico's, on me." She took her bankcard out of her wallet and pressed it into Consuela's hands.

Consuela opened her eyes wide. "The entire school?"

"And whatever parents want to go along. Definitely," she held up her watch.

"There's plenty of time until the end of school. Maybe they'll even have the school cleared by then."

Enrico's was an upscale ice cream and sorbet parlor two hexes away.

"You're the boss," Consuela said. She spread the word, teacher to parent to teacher, and got the students formed up and moving, two by two.

Patricia checked in with Perito and the police officers back on guard downstairs.

"No, nobody tried to get at the sub."

She sighed. What did they want? Were they attacking the school for revenge?

What good did that do them? Were they even attacking the school at all? Maybe this was just another form of attack aimed at her. It certainly kept her from getting any work done.

She called Martinez at the Engineering Office and postponed, yet again, telling him briefly about the bomb threat.

"Cobardes," he said. "Sin caras."

"Esto es verdaderamente demasiado!"

She went as far up the stairs as the police would permit and waited to hear from the bomb squad.

"The call was from a pay phone outside the base exchange on Isabel Island. Of course, nobody knows specifically who was using it at that time," said Major Paine.

The bomb squad had been over the school building multiple times without results. When they'd been apprised of the normal security in the building, as well as the temporary presence of NGPD officers in the area, they declared the building clear.

Thomas listened to the recording again. "It sure sounds like the voice from that night."

They were in Major Paine's office.

Patricia had gotten over her initial fear for the children and teachers, had gonethrough relief when the building was declared safe, and was now working on a towering rage. "God damn them and their games. Martinez had it right-they're cobardes sin caras-cowards without faces. What do they want?"

Thomas shook his head. "I wonder if they just did it because you showed up again. That someone saw you arrive back at your hex."

She shook her head, disgusted. "I'd like to give them a ride on SubLorraine, on the outside, without life support." She exhaled through pursed lips, trying to expel some of the rage, and picked up Thomas's hand. In an artificially squeaky voice she said, "And how was your day, honey?" More normally she added, "What's with Sycorax?"

Thomas's mouth became a straight line.

"Oh, did something happen?"

"Something didn't happen." He clenched his free hand into a fist. "Sycorax seemed to be heading toward three freighters well beyond the EEZ when Jazz surprised the radio operator making an unauthorized transmission. The operator says he was just testing his equipment, that nothing went out, but the transmit light was on and Jazz is no fool." He released the fist and rubbed his forehead. "Anyway, Sycorax radically changed course almost immediately. It might have been some sort of rendezvous with one of the freighters or even something over the horizon. But we don't know-possibly won't ever know-not if we can't observe their activities without being blown."

Major Paine nodded. "Where's Sycorax now?"

Thomas looked at his watch. "As of twenty minutes ago, it was inland, between here and McAllen, in the Bay of Matamoras."

"I've got a V-36 we use for long-range air-sea rescue," said Major Paine. "But it's not exactly inconspicuous on a radar screen-it does have twelve-hour endurance in fixed-wing mode." He shrugged and said, "I'd have to charge you for the fuel."

Thomas shook his head. "I could probably come up with the funding, but if they can see it, it's not very useful."

"At the moment of the rendezvous, it would be good," Patricia said. "If you knew when and where, you could close pretty fast, flying low. They wouldn't know you were there until the last thirty miles or so and what's that? Maybe six minutes'

warning, tops?"

"But you still have to know when the rendezvous is. And to do that-"

"You need my submersible."

Becket looked down at the floor. He's thought of it already. He doesn't like it though."How hard would it be to train me to pilot it?"

She shook her head. "Not really an option-and I'm not just being stubborn. I could train you in basic piloting, enabling you to handle some basic operations and the bare minimum emergency procedures, in about three days. To do this remora thing, under the Sycorax, I wouldn't be comfortable with less than a month and that includes lots of trail runs using friendly boats."

Thomas looked down at his hands. "I can't ask this of you. It's not your affair."

"Well, they've, by god, made it my affair! They've shot at me, more than once, they've threatened my property and my employees and the children from my school, and they've tried to blow me up. This has to end. If this will do it, then I'm all for it."

Major Paine frowned. "I don't like it. It'll be dangerous."

She sat up and squared her shoulders. "Women and children of so high a courage, and warriors faint!" She slumped down, abandoning the posture. "I go to spy on them, not fight. And I'll do so with an invisible and subtle stealth."

Thomas stood up suddenly. "Oh, stop it, please." He looked at her and she watched him carefully, but his look wasn't anger or irritation. It was fear, and it silenced her far more effectively than his words.

We had a deal: no more bombs, no more knives.

She stood up, her head bowed, and leaned into him. "I'm sorry," she said, mumbling into his chest. "I know it's dangerous."

He put his arms around her. "Maybe I should just arrest them all? Surely one of them would testify, for consideration."