"Is that why the man in black came inside?" Pepper asked.

I didn't like the way she put it. "Man in black." Men in black are always trouble, without a doubt. I said, "No, I don't think so. I think he was more of a random intruder, though I can't be sure. But be on the lookout for more guys like him, just in case. And there might be other people, too-real official-looking people who have badges and guns." The fear level in the room rose a notch. It radiated from both young parties.

The PDF took forever and a day to sort itself out through Adobe. This no doubt had something to do with the fact that it was more than six hundred pages long (score!) and chock-full of images.

"But don't get too worked up about it," I added. "I don't think the government knows about this place-"

"You don't?" Domino interrupted.

"I don't," I confirmed. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here right now, doing this. As I was saying, I don't think they know about the factory, and I'm d.a.m.n sure they don't know anything about you guys. So if people do come poking around, the odds are very, very good that they aren't looking for you. you." I found that it was easier to keep cool when I was forced to keep cool so other people wouldn't panic.

Pepper said softly, "They'll be looking for you. you."

"Sort of. They'll be looking for this. this." I pointed at the screen. Then a miserable thought broke through the surface and whispered nastily, They might be looking for this, but they might be looking for me, too. Just like Ian. And just like those other chimps, whoever they were They might be looking for this, but they might be looking for me, too. Just like Ian. And just like those other chimps, whoever they were.

But I didn't spill that part. Instead, I said, "Someone sent me some information that's very important. He didn't know it, but he accidentally alerted some very nasty people to the fact that I wanted it. Let me be clear," I said, tearing my eyes away from the screen. "It's got nothing to do with you. But that doesn't mean you won't get caught in the middle if you're not careful. I don't want you caught in the middle, okay? I want you to keep your heads down and stay out of sight, and if that means leaving, then you have to go find someplace else for a while. And by the way, that cell phone number I gave you doesn't work anymore."

"It doesn't?" Pepper sounded worried.

"It doesn't, but I'll get you a new one as soon as I can, okay?" I reached for my purse again and pulled out my wallet. Inside, I had more than two thousand dollars in cash. I handed the whole wad to Pepper. I've got half a dozen bank accounts under that many ident.i.ties. One or two, the government flunkies might catch, but I wasn't worried about every single one of them getting frozen, and these kids might need to be mobile.

"You're just giving us...that's a lot of money."

"Not as much as it looks like," I said. "And yes, I'm giving it to you-on one condition. If you do do get caught, you've never heard of me. I don't know you're staying here, and you've never seen me before, and you didn't even know anyone owned this building, got it?" get caught, you've never heard of me. I don't know you're staying here, and you've never seen me before, and you didn't even know anyone owned this building, got it?"

She nodded with all the gravity of a black hole, but I wasn't finished yet.

I said, "I'm not fooling around with you here-or you, either, Domino. These people who are looking for me, if they get hold of you, you have have to convince them that you've never heard of me. If they don't believe you, they're going to f.u.c.k you up to convince them that you've never heard of me. If they don't believe you, they're going to f.u.c.k you up bad bad. Do I make myself understood?"

"Yeah," he said, still playing it cool and bored.

I restated, "I'm serious!" because I didn't think he grasped exactly how serious I was. "If you tell these guys the truth, you're f.u.c.ked way way worse than I am. If they think you know anything at all, they'll never let you go. Total ignorance is your only recourse, dude." worse than I am. If they think you know anything at all, they'll never let you go. Total ignorance is your only recourse, dude."

"I said, I got got it." it."

"Good. Now shut up, and both of you leave me alone for a few minutes, all right? I need to concentrate, and you don't need to see any of this."

"Is it p.o.r.n?" Domino asked.

"No, it isn't p.o.r.n, p.o.r.n," I told him, and shooed at him with my left hand. "It's way more boring than p.o.r.n, I promise. Go out and get yourselves some hot chocolate or something. The joint around the corner is still open. Will you do that for me, please? I'm only trying to look out for you here." I wished it hadn't sounded so much like I was pleading with him, but it did sound that way, and it worked.

The two of them trotted back downstairs, stuffing their pockets with cash that would surely be gone by sunrise. I wished I could put them up someplace, but they wouldn't let me. I know. I've tried it before.

The little s.h.i.ts had decided they were home, and they weren't going anywhere.

Fine. They could stay here and get interrogated, then.

I didn't like it, but I didn't know what to do. I could've killed them, I guess. I won't say the thought didn't cross my mind, because it did, and it wouldn't have been any skin off my nose to plunge a tooth or two into Domino's greasy little neck. But I couldn't do that to Pepper. Her powers of cute were too strong, and she relied on her brother too much for me to take him away from her-though for a second, I considered it. I could leave him behind and travel with this kid, and...

And then I came to my senses, and I started reading as fast as my comprehension would allow.

Coincidentally enough, I was reading about a break-in.

My Bad Hatter buddy had sent me an inventory of Holtzer Point's contents, following a breach of security some years previously.

I didn't see anything about Bigfoot sperm or Jimmy Hoffa; in fact, most of it looked dull as h.e.l.l. This is no doubt due to the fact that I didn't have a secret decoder ring. There were code words for people, and projects, and subjects, and expeditions, and...and I had no idea what else. To tell you the truth, most of the time I couldn't even infer whether or not I was reading about a person, or a place, or a mission, or whatever.

To save time, I ran a keyword search. "Jordan Roe" turned up nothing. Neither did Ian's serial number, at first. Then I got crafty. I tried "JR" since the army loves abbreviations so much, and I landed a hit.

My first two matches were abbreviations for other things, but the third had potential. I scrolled back, and up, and around until I found the section that was being discussed. Wouldn't you know it-I'd landed in the chapter wherein missing items were cataloged.

To sum it up more concisely than the government did...someone had beaten me to the punch. Files pertaining to "JR" had been among those stolen by the intruder. I brainstormed my way around the facts and kept on scrolling, hoping to stumble on something useful. h.e.l.l, I would've settled for some kind of confirmation that "JR" was in fact "Jordan Roe."

And then I found it. A different abbreviation, one I hadn't thought to scan for: "J. Roe." A joke about a j.a.panese pop singer sprang immediately to mind, but I was a good girl and didn't say it out loud-even though there was no one to hear me.

I just kept on reading, and collecting more questions than answers.

A few pages down I found some more serial numbers, and I felt like a real b.o.o.b. Ian's was right there, hyphenated a little differently, but still in sequence. It was odd to see it-proof of everything he'd told me, and proof that yes, the government was quite certain that vampires exist. Of course, this was also proof that we could be captured, and that we were flesh and blood. We could be altered, and hurt.

I ran my finger over the screen and touched the other serial numbers that didn't match Ian's.

We could be killed.

Sure, I knew that part already. And I knew it had nothing to do with garlic, or crosses, or sunlight. We don't die easily; it takes a lot of fire or firepower, or a lot of cutting. But without our heads, we're the same goners as everyone else.

And then there's the sun. That's one legend with some truth to it. More than a few seconds of direct sunlight and our skin begins to blister. More than a few minutes and we're a bubbling, vampire-shaped blob that's too far gone to save.

When I was a young fledgling of a night-stalker, I accidently got myself a smidge of sun poisoning, and I don't mind telling you, it was completely f.u.c.king miserable. If there are worse ways to shuffle off this mortal coil, I don't want to know about them.

I shuddered with the memory of it and returned my attention to the PDF.

Again, I wished I'd had more time to talk to Ian, and I resolved to make more time when the danger was somewhat past. Even if the case ended, and even if I gave him everything he wanted, I wanted more from him than money. I wanted to know what had happened, and why.

Farther down the endless doc.u.ment with its tiny font I found more of what I was looking for-an admission that Jordan Roe had been decommissioned. As I was already aware, its top secret stash had been sent to Holtzer Point. But according to the PDF, it wasn't there anymore. It hadn't been there for years.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n," I said.

Some other thief had stolen the stuff I wanted to steal.

I tried to tell myself that this was a lucky break-because now, I did not have to break into a high-security facility and sift through boxes upon boxes of stale old paperwork. Now, all I had to do was find the thief and wrestle it away from him.

It might not be that difficult. The feds already had a suspect.

I didn't have a name for him, but I jotted down his serial number. Mr. 887-32-5561.

I noted from the lack of a 636 that he wasn't part of the supersecret program. Good. Then he wasn't a vampire, or anything else interesting enough to warrant supernatural caution on my part.

This was not the world's safest a.s.sumption. So, I vowed to revisit it later.

I scanned the doc.u.ment for more clues. Mr. 887-32-5561 was a military man (woman? Oh, screw it-masculine p.r.o.noun for convenience), but I had no idea which branch of service he'd been a part of. He'd gone AWOL shortly before the burglary and was presently wanted by the military police. He'd been on the lam for nearly eight years by now, and as an internal memo noted, it was as if he'd "stopped the planet and got off."

I liked him already, and I psyched myself up for the prospect of tracking him down. I had every advantage, after all. I was not a bulky, c.u.mbersome government agency without a clue in the dark. I was a thief-the very best of my kind-and I was slumming down the food chain after a man who might be a professional soldier, but was surely only an amateur stealer.

I said to myself, "Self, this is going to be a piece of cake."

And I tried to make myself believe it.

5.

Yes, yes. I should've known better than to say something like that out loud, in front of G.o.d and everybody. And sure enough, it eventually came back to bite me in the a.s.s.

I clapped the laptop shut and, since the kids weren't back yet from whatever errand they were running with their fresh influx of cash, I left them a note saying that I might be gone for a while. I tried not to make it sound like too much of a formal good-bye, because I sincerely hoped I wasn't abandoning them (and all my stuff) once and for all; and besides, I didn't want them to freak out when they discovered I'd left. I needed them nice and calm, not wondering if they ought to report me as a missing person-especially since I'd just wound them up with a whole slew of warnings before ushering them out.

I closed the place up behind me-not so tight that they couldn't find their way in, but tight enough to deter any casual trespa.s.sers-and then I struck out for home.

Home was a calculated risk. I figured I'd scope the place out, and if I spied even the faintest hint of security breach or goggle-eyed operatives, then I'd hightail it elsewhere. But I didn't yet have any good idea where Elsewhere might turn out to be, and there were a handful of things I'd prefer to destroy or collect from the old homestead if it were at all possible.

I parked my car on the edge of my neighborhood, at an easily accessible spot that would also make a straight shot of a getaway point. There's nary a convenient parking s.p.a.ce on any curbside of Capitol Hill, so I had to leave the Thunderbird parked entirely too close to a stop sign. But seriously, if the city meant for drivers to keep their cars thirty feet away from the corners, they'd mark the d.a.m.n corners with paint or something. I'm convinced that it's a conspiracy to write more tickets and bring in more revenue-so if I looked at it that way, then really, I was just doing my part to support Seattle's public servants.

I mean, if they caught me.

And if I felt like paying the ticket, depending on where my Elsewhere turned out to be.

I took to the rooftops, even though I've already made a disclaimer on the subject. But it's not every twenty-four hours that I pick up a vampire client, end up on the receiving end of a break-in, and inadvertently tangle with Uncle Sam. So really, it's a wonder I managed to keep it to such a minimum.

I wasn't sure what time it was, but it was pretty late and pretty cold. Tar paper under my feet gave way to expensive shingles and slanted roofs that were tougher to cling to than the open, flat s.p.a.ces of downtown's old industrial district. I slipped, caught myself with less silence than I would've preferred, and regained enough footing to leap over to a freakishly large evergreen of some sort, where I crouched and hovered and hoped for the best while I got a whole row of stink-eye from a family of crows that had been happily sleeping there.

I could see my condo, and see my bedroom windows. Without blinking, I watched those windows, wondering how well my tracks had been covered and how long I had before my safe house was outted, gutted, and sifted for evidence of...crimes?

But what crimes? I was a professional criminal, yes-but Uncle Sam's sudden interest in me did not, hypothetically, have anything to do with any of my previous felonies. They were looking for me because I was looking for Ian's past. I was running because they were chasing me. I was smack in the middle of all these causal relationships that made precious little sense, but might mean the difference between my continued freedom and a fate like Ian's.

Or worse.

I didn't want to think about that. The prospect of spending eternity blind, or deaf, or hideously scarred, or mentally impaired...none of it made me want to do anything but run screaming into the night.

My windows were blank and black. No matter how hard I strained I couldn't see any hint of anything moving within, and I was patient enough to wait a full five minutes before scooting past the crows and praying they wouldn't fly off, alerting the whole world to my position.

They didn't. The crows and seagulls in Seattle are as unflappable as the kind they carve on totem poles. They live in the middle of a city, surrounded by people. We don't impress them.

I quietly thanked them for their apathy and bounced over onto my own roof. I skidded to a halt and held my breath, hoping and praying that no one had seen me or heard me, and that I hadn't kicked anything important that would need repairing.

Nothing in the world moved, and the neighborhood stayed quiet.

I was alone on the roof, except for the ruffling, mumbled protests of sleeping pigeons who were every bit as unimpressed by my presence as the crows had been in the tree. I held up a finger and said, "Shh!" as if it meant a d.a.m.n to them.

But surely if armed men in commando uniforms had stormed the condo, even such blase birds as these would've scattered, wouldn't they? I told myself it was a good sign and that I may as well let myself down into my place, just one last time-long enough to cover my tracks.

For a moment I considered firebombing the condo behind me, but that would mean even more civic scrutiny, and I'd learned the hard way over the years that fire destroys pretty much everything, but not always everything. No, I'd be better off doing a hasty Houdini than trying to scorch the earth in my wake. And anyway, my neighbors were perfectly nice, and some of them owned pets.

The thought of cooking anyone's dogs, cats, birds, or aquariums bothered me more than the thought of torching those animals' owners. Call me strange if you want, but I've been known to feed animals, and I've likewise been known to kill and eat people. So I guess the math isn't that tough after all.

In the bottom depths of my bag I keep an a.s.sortment of useful tools that I can't take through an airport screening, including a gla.s.s cutter. I leaned down over the edge of my (luckily, top-floor) condo, and dragged my little tool along my bedroom window in a small circle, popped the resulting bit of gla.s.s inside, and reached around to unlatch it from within.

Still, I didn't hear a sound.

Good.

I let myself in, moving about in full-on sneak mode-not turning on any lights, but letting my undead eyes do the grunt work on the shadows. Everything looked exactly as I'd left it, down to the unmade bed with the covers straggling about on the floor. Room to room I wandered, collecting small items and stuffing them into my bag. I picked up a notebook here, and a ring of extra keys there; I lifted a book I hadn't finished reading yet and a necklace that once belonged to my grandmother, who died before I was born.

Then I went to my drawer full of cell phones and other useful things. I picked up three or four at random and took the remaining half dozen into the kitchen, where I jammed them into the microwave and pressed the three-minute b.u.t.ton. Immediately sparks began to fly and the microwave hummed a distress signal, like I'd given it indigestion. But I wanted the phones good and dead, even though I wasn't strictly certain I'd ever used any of them.

The sputtering wail of melting plastic and cooking circuitry made my ears hurt, but I ignored it and went back to my bedroom while the phones turned to mush and, very likely, destroyed the microwave. A very loud pop pop reinforced this suspicion, so I ran back to the kitchen and hit the reinforced this suspicion, so I ran back to the kitchen and hit the CANCEL CANCEL b.u.t.ton, since I'd resolved not to burn the place down. b.u.t.ton, since I'd resolved not to burn the place down.

On the turntable behind the gla.s.s door I saw a lumpy cl.u.s.ter of smoking, sparking phones, and it occurred to me that I'd better not open that door lest I set off the smoke alarm, which would not be good for my full-on sneak mode.

Back in the bedroom I lingered against my better judgment. I stood beside my bed, staring around the room and fretting, wondering what else I should take. It shouldn't have been such a major crisis; I've abandoned living s.p.a.ces before, more than once, without any heartbreak or waffling. But most of those abandonings took place at my own whim, at my own instigation-or at the very least, they happened as a result of my own criminal activities.

Maybe that was the problem.

I didn't feel like I was leaving. I felt like I was being unjustly pursued.

I wanted to muster some righteous indignation, but I was too hyped up on my own fear to manage it. I'm not often driven to tears by such things, but as I stood there, hunting desperately for something to gather-or maybe just dithering in my confusion-I almost wanted to cry.

But after a minute or two of hand-fluttering, I pulled myself together and grabbed a duffel out of the closet. I crammed it full of my most worn clothes and a pair of beloved boots that Fluevog doesn't make anymore, and I left everything else. I went out the way I came in, for whatever silly reason I couldn't tell you. But back out in the night, on the roof, beside the mildly irritated pigeons and the occasional rat that ran along the power lines, I jumped back down to the ground and walked the rest of the way back to my car.

I didn't have a parking ticket.

I didn't really expect one.

I threw the duffel bag and my purse onto the pa.s.senger seat, leaned my forehead against the steering wheel, and forced myself to think.

What now? Where should I go? What should I do?

I'd sent Ian and Cal off to Ballard, and I'd left the kids as secure as I could leave them, so I was faced with a handful of options-none of which seemed strictly ideal. I could officially and completely leave the city, pretending that I'd never heard of any of them and that I didn't owe any of them anything. But while I was prepared to insist that I owed my feral squatters nothing, I was harder-pressed to conclude that I didn't owe Ian the time of day.

True, he was the one who'd gotten me into this mess, but he did did warn me. And I didn't believe (then, or now) that he'd deliberately put me on a federal watch list and sent the men in black after me. At this point, I was already eyeb.a.l.l.s-deep in his problem anyway. There was an excellent chance that if I couldn't solve Ian's problems, I might never untangle myself from Official Interest. And G.o.d help me if whoever was after me put two and two together, realizing that the woman in the condo was in fact the thief known as Cheshire Red to all those international agencies. warn me. And I didn't believe (then, or now) that he'd deliberately put me on a federal watch list and sent the men in black after me. At this point, I was already eyeb.a.l.l.s-deep in his problem anyway. There was an excellent chance that if I couldn't solve Ian's problems, I might never untangle myself from Official Interest. And G.o.d help me if whoever was after me put two and two together, realizing that the woman in the condo was in fact the thief known as Cheshire Red to all those international agencies.

But I was getting ahead of myself. I was doing it again, a.s.suming the worst and doing my best to plot against it, even though the worst-case scenario is often either incorrect or vastly under-calculated.

None of this changed anything. I was mired in Ian's situation whether I liked it or not, and if I'd had the option of declining his case before, that option had gone out the window when I'd taken that PDF from the Bad Hatter. Logic dictated that I needed to see this through, and sort it out at the source if I ever hoped to resume my wholly understated existence.

Merely coming to this decision bolstered me a bit, and made the world look a little less overwhelming. I could do it! All I needed to do was track down the missing paperwork, hand it over to Ian, perhaps flee the country with him and Cal (hey, why not?), and start over Elsewhere, as I've done a dozen times before.