Right on cue, a phone rang. Only it wasn't my phone, Serene's phone, White's phone, or Vance's phone that was doing the ringing.

CHAPTER 64.

DUG THE BURNER PHONE out of my purse as the three of us stopped in front of the elevators on the Zoo's second floor. "Uncle Peter?"

"Miss Katt, you did a lovely job today."

"Thank you. Thanks for not letting anyone shoot or blow up my husband."

"You're welcome. There was limited activity of our kind related to his excursion today."

"Nice to know. They saving it up for something better?"

"Indeed they are. I'm glad you've realized."

I actually hadn't, but decided now was the time to give it a shot. "They're going to hit us at the National Convention?"

"That seems to be the case, yes."

"Oh goody. Something to look forward to. Um, did you or Uncle Victor accept a contract on anyone there?"

"No."

"Did Siler?"

"You would have to ask him."

"Fantastic. Thanks for the heads up. So, anything else I should know about?"

"Only that we are leaving tonight."

"You are?" This wasn't good news. Of course, my feeling upset that the top assassins in the world were leaving town was indicative of just how bad things were and how far out of my depth I felt.

"We will be back next week. However, we have business elsewhere."

"I'm so glad you'll be back, I hope. And I don't want to know about your other business. Do I?"

"No, you do not. Keep your head down while we are gone. I fear our business might have been ordered to remove us from your proximity."

"Or it could be legit and that means you need to take the job." I was counseling an assassin about killing someone. Go me. Would have asked how my life got this complicated but I already knew. Just hoped they were going to kill someone evil versus someone good. Decided not to guess the odds on that being the outcome.

"Correct."

"Can I ask you an out of the blue question before you go?"

"Certainly. I do not guarantee an answer, of course."

"Of course not, but you're still more forthcoming than anyone else I work with."

He chuckled. "Perhaps because I see you differently than most."

"Probably so. Is there any way you can get me in touch with Chernobog the Ultimate?"

He was quiet for a few seconds. "Why?" Was glad he hadn't asked "who" because I was both sure that he knew who Chernobog was, and was also just not up to playing verbal and mental mind games at the moment.

"We have her son in severe custody, just like we have Annette Dier. But we need answers, and probably assistance, from her, and she's hella hard to find. She was in Cuba, but either she's gone underground or moved, because we've had teams searching there for a year and they've only found traces."

More quiet. "We need to meet with you before we leave."

"Not that I mind, because it would be nice to see you two, but why?" Chose not to ask why I'd said that, nor worry about the fact that it was sincere-I'd gotten as attached to them as they had to me, apparently.

"Because of who our next target is."

"Do I have to go to the cemetery?" I sincerely hoped not. Any lie I could come up with for why I wanted to go there wasn't going to fool anyone.

"No. We will come to you."

"To our Embassy complex?"

"Somewhere nearby, yes. I'll contact you shortly. Hold onto the phone." With that he hung up.

Dropped my Special Burner Phone back into my purse and looked at Serene and White. "Well, that was weird. And yeah, I'll tell you about it later. But first, what's the plan on Chernobog?"

"You mean aside from asking your uncles to set up a meeting? I don't know, I've been with you." Serene hit the elevator call button. "Your uncles want to meet with you face-to-face?"

"Yeah. I've done it before. Usually means I'm the safest girl in the world."

"Jeff, Chuck, Malcolm, your mother, and pretty much everyone else wouldn't agree."

"Oh, I would support Missus Martini on this one," White said as the elevator arrived. He held it open, but didn't go into the car. "I'd like to ask if you've considered why, once you asked the Dingo to set up a meeting with Chernobog, he instantly wanted to meet with you."

"In the ten seconds since the call? Not really. If we'd like to ponder that right now, though, and I can see by your expression that you would, then my guess is that their current contract relates to Chernobog in some way."

White nodded. "That's my guess as well. Serene?"

"It makes sense to me, Richard. But what does that mean we do from here?"

He shrugged. "It means that, for right now, we need to keep this between the three of us, and we also need to hope that our computer experts and Madame Olga have come up with something."

"No argument, but why?"

"Am I right in thinking that the Dingo is going away?" Apparently White had learned my Dad's trick of answering a question with another question. Decided to support someone else using one of my favorite go-to moves.

"Yeah, he said he was leaving the area, and he didn't give any hint as to how far away he was going or where, but did say that he would be back in time for the National Convention. Where, by the way, he expects Jeff to be the target of murderous attacks. And Siler probably has contracted hits he hasn't told us about. So, you're both now all caught up on my call."

White looked worried. "All of that is troubling. But I can think of only two contracts that would affect Chernobog, and if the Dingo is leaving this area to complete his assignment, that removes one of them-Russell Koslov-as the likely target."

The reason White looked worried dawned on me. "Oh. Wow. You think the Dingo and Surly Vic have been contracted to kill Chernobog."

"I do."

"Wouldn't that ultimately be good for us?" Serene asked.

"Maybe," White replied. "However, the death of the person who hacked us means we will never have any hope of retrieving what she stole. I guarantee that while our data was erased on our systems, it still exists somewhere."

"And if I were Chernobog, I'd be holding onto that as leverage. Yeah. You know, I think the Mastermind is running this action personally." Explained my theory relating to the attack on Serene and Horn.

"Let's table the rest of this for later." White entered the car, still holding the door for us. "And hope that our team here has solved what's sure to be a thorny dilemma for us already."

"I love your optimism, Mister White, but I know how our luck runs," I said as the elevator doors closed.

"Well, perhaps the young men will surprise us with good news."

We rode the rest of the way in worried silence. In short order the doors opened on the fifth floor, where Hacker International ruled supreme.

Hacker International had moved into the Embassy during Operation Destruction and pretty much somehow never moved out. Buying The Zoo had made things a lot easier for all of us, since it meant they got their own space, blessedly far away from Jeff, who only rarely found them just this side of tolerable. And what a space it was.

As with all of our buildings, the Zoo was large, and the computer lab, which was state of the art, took up about half of the floor. Hacker International used the remaining space for their personal accommodations. It was nice work if you could get it, and, despite Jeff's protests and attempts to remove them, they had.

However, they'd felt the hit quite personally when Chernobog had hacked us, and hacked us easily, last year. This meant that after a short period of major sulking, they'd thrown themselves into the work of finding out what the hell had happened and ensuring it never happened again.

We entered the computer lab to see all five hackers there, along with Olga. It was kind of weird to see her without Adriana, and I had a moment of worry for Team Oliver. However, they were all more than competent and if something was going wrong, we'd probably find out soon enough.

I'd known Stryker Dane since Chuckie had found him while the two of us were in high school, meaning a long time now. It was why I knew his real name-Edward Simms-as well as other, less positive things about him. Stryker, like us, was from Pueblo Caliente, Arizona. Unlike us, Stryker's dedication to personal hygiene was limited.

He was an average-sized guy, with a reasonably impressive set of man boobs and a gut to match, topped off by a full, unkempt beard and long, curly, unkempt hair that, if he actually took care of it, would be quite lovely.

He was also a published author of the Taken Away series, wherein he made up alien encounters he claimed as being totally true that were nothing like the real alien encounters I had every day. Needless to say, Stryker's books did well, even after real aliens were shown to be living on the planet.

Big George Lecroix was tall, black, and skinny. He was to Europe what Dr. Henry Wu, who was small, scrawny, bald, and always just a little more nervous than anyone else, was to China-their best hackers.

Ravi Gaekwad and Yuri Stanislav were, particularly by comparison to the other three, very normal looking. Ravi was India's best hacker, possessed a normal body build, and also was the leading ladies' man of Hacker International, having landed Jennifer Barone as his fiancee. They were still only engaged, even though both of them would have been happy to tie the knot by now, because his family was quite traditional and they hadn't finished whatever waiting period was required prior to marriage.

Yuri was from Russia, meaning he could now only claim to be Russia's second best hacker. But he was the only one you could find easily, so that counted for a lot in my book. Yuri was also blind, not that this stopped him from doing anything, and the only one who clearly worked out. Yuri was, all things considered, kind of hunky, especially compared to his hacker compatriots.

He was also cursing in Russian as we walked into the computer lab. At someone, if the headset he was wearing meant he was on a call of some kind.

"What's wrong with Yuri?" I asked Stryker by way of hello. Now wasn't the time to stand on formality. Or mention that I liked their array of Firefly T-shirts that were today's uniform of choice. They really had created a science fiction and fantasy T-shirt rotation with pride, after I made a joke about how they always wore certain shirts on certain days. Why encourage their special obsessive madness?

Yuri ripped the headset off, tossed it across the room, narrowly missing hitting Big George in the head, and answered for himself. "How many more dead ends can we hit before we admit the truth-we can't fight or find Chernobog?"

CHAPTER 65.

"WELL, I guess that answers one of the questions we were here to ask."

"Sorry, Kitty," Stryker said. "But we're getting nothing. Less than nothing. Time-wasting, frustrating nothing."

"It's clear Chernobog has covered her tracks, and that anyone who knows something about her is afraid," Henry added nervously.

"We had a lead that she was in France," Big George added. "But it petered out."

"France is always suspect."

"There was a lead for Paraguay, too," Ravi said. "I think they were fakes, honestly."

"Why so?" White asked quickly, to forestall the arguments or offers of support clearly about to come out of the other hackers' open mouths.

Ravi shrugged. "Like Kitty said, we always suspect activity in those countries because of our past history. So, toss us some bad intel that sounds real, it sends us racing off to research a lot of nothing. Wastes our time and keeps us from finding the truth."

"The truth is out there."

"It is," Stryker snapped. "But unless we can call it a day and do an X-Files marathon, we're still not anywhere close to finding it."

Yuri finished cursing. "First, no one believes Chernobog is real. Then she is real and everyone's terrified of her. Make up your minds!"

"Deep breaths, Yuri, think calming thoughts. You guys have only been at this for a few hours."

"No, we've been at it for a year," Stryker said, patience clearly forced. "You don't think we've spent time on this? Sure, we've been working to recreate the lost data and shore up our security, but the fastest way to do that is find Chernobog and figure out how she hacked us and where she hid her copies."

"We've done the other work you guys wanted," Big George said quickly. "But that's slow going, as you know. Plus, after what happened yesterday, we were hoping to get a solid lead that could help the team."

"Wow, Jennifer's been working with you guys on the right way to talk to people who control your paychecks and living situation, hasn't she?"

"Speaking of whom, have you seen her?" Ravi sounded worried.

"Not since yesterday. She's on a mission."

"She hasn't checked in with me. At all. We always check in."

"Maybe she can't. Not that she's hurt or something," I said hurriedly. "But I think they're doing something very covert. She just might not be able to check in without blowing cover or something." From his expression, this didn't comfort Ravi all that much.

"I'm sure she and the others are fine," Olga said reassuringly, as she rolled her wheelchair over to Yuri's station. She shot me a look that said she was lying, however. Great.

"What I don't understand," Serene said, in her Innocent Voice, "is how anyone, even Chernobog, could hide her tracks so well. Our enemies found her before. And Kitty figured out where she was a year ago."

"She's got access to the highest-grade stuff," Stryker said. "We've got the best, but she's got better."