CHAPTER 47.

I FELT A SURGE OF WARM FEELINGS, which was ACE's way of hugging me in my mind, and then I felt him leave my mind. ACE certainly knew how to make an exit.

I opened my eyes. "Christopher, you're staying here. Prepare for something."

"What 'something' am I supposed to prepare for?"

"I have no idea, but I think it's going to be bad."

Christopher rubbed the back of his neck. "Really? That's it?"

"Yeah." I looked around. "Just how many people can the Dome actually hold?"

"Most of our people, if necessary."

"Really? It doesn't seem that big."

I was treated to something other than a Patented Glare-I got a Derisive Look. Nice to see he was branching out. "Kitty, you've been with us how long?"

"Close to two and a half years. Why?"

Buchanan sighed. "There are lower levels."

I stared at them. "There are? Seriously?" Truly, no one told me anything. I couldn't wait to discover what else I hadn't been told. I was sure it would be at a completely inopportune time, whenever the next surprising bit of information appeared.

Christopher shook his head. "Why am I surprised? At all? You were given briefing materials on every single A-C facility when you were made the Head of Airborne."

"Oh. Right. Those." The huge binders full of boring blah, blah, blah that I'd pretty much ignored this entire time. Well, we were all still alive and kicking, for the most part, so I decided the Binders of Boredom could wait a little while longer.

I took Jamie back and hugged her. "You be good for Uncle Christopher, Jamie-Kat. Mommy's got to go for a while, but she'll be back very soon."

Jamie looked up at me and gurgled. During Operation Confusion she'd been able to show us where all our kidnapped team members were, which was why they were still alive. I wasn't sure how much of that was Jamie and how much was ACE, but all I saw were her pretty blue eyes looking at me trustingly. I wasn't going to do anything to betray that trust.

Lorraine and Claudia came over, babies in their arms. Lorraine was a buxom blonde and Claudia willowy with brown hair a shade the hair dye industry would kill for. They were the perfect example of what Dazzlers were-gorgeous, brilliant, and really nice.

"You're leaving us and racing off?" Lorraine asked after we'd all hugged and exchanged baby kisses.

"Yeah, I am. I need you all here, safe and on guard."

"On guard for what?" Claudia asked.

"I don't actually know. But I think it's gonna be big."

The girls exchanged a look. "You've talked to ACE?" Claudia asked.

"Yes. I didn't get much. I mean, I got some, but not much." Not much I really understood yet, anyway.

Lorraine nodded. "For what it's worth, yesterday Paul said ACE felt more . . . absent than he ever has before."

"Yeah," Claudia chimed in. "He said it was as if ACE was really distracted by something."

"Did he say if ACE felt uneasy?"

They both shook their heads. "Paul's had a lot going on with-" Claudia slammed her mouth shut.

"With the high security stuff I'm not supposed to know right now, yeah, I figured."

Lorraine looked pointedly at Christopher. "Don't you need to help your wife or something?"

"You're so subtle. No, actually, I probably need to stay here and make sure Kitty doesn't hear anything she's not supposed to."

"What would it really matter?" Claudia asked. "I mean, it's never been bad for us to have Kitty in the loop."

"Half the time, she's the one who discovers the loops," Lorraine added.

Christopher shrugged. "To me? I don't really care at this point. I can't imagine how it would affect our diplomatic mission and she's already guessed half of it or more. However, if you all want to keep Reynolds in place, then Kitty can't hear it from any of us, because if she knows or, worse, we tell her, then his job's at risk."

"Fine," Lorraine said with a sigh. "We don't want Chuck out of the picture."

Claudia nodded. "He does too much for us."

This was the first time I'd heard either one of them use Chuckie's first name. "When did you two decide to get off Jeff and Christopher's Let's Hate Chuckie bandwagon?"

"We were never on it," Claudia said. "We just didn't want to get into an argument with Jeff, Christopher, or the other guys about him."

"You never said." At least, not to me. I hoped that someone had told Chuckie.

"We weren't Captains before," Lorraine said with a wink. "And after working with him, it's hard to understand why they're still acting like Chuck's anything but our friend."

"But then again, Jeff and Christopher tend to be a little slow sometimes." Claudia laughed, and I knew she was thinking about Operation Fugly.

"True enough." Lorraine grinned.

"I'm right here," Christopher said while reverting to form and offering Patented Glare #5 to all of us.

"Hey, I didn't call you slow. Right now."

"What restraint. Look, are you heading off or staying here?"

"Malcolm and I are leaving. You're staying. Pull in my dad and Jeff's parents if you're able to."

"I have a list," Claudia said. "We'll go through it and analyze who we can move in here when."

"I don't think it's a good idea for us to have a lot of people coming in with none going out," Christopher told her.

I opened my mouth, but Buchanan took my arm. "Let them figure it out. We need to go, Missus Chief."

"You're right." I looked around. I didn't see the Peregrines or Poofs. Oh, well, better they were here with Jamie anyway. I kissed her again. "Be my good girl. Mommy loves you and will see you very soon."

Christopher took Jamie, I hugged them all again, then Buchanan and I went to the nearest gate, which, in the Dome, meant we walked a couple of feet. "American Centaurion Embassy for two, please."

The A-C working this gate nodded and calibrated. "I couldn't help overhearing, Ambassador," he said as he spun the dial. "Should we be prepared for some kind of attack?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure. But being prepared is always a good idea."

He nodded. "I'll check with Commander White."

"Do that," Buchanan said as he took my arm and stepped us through the gate before I could mention that Christopher wasn't a Commander any more.

A few nauseating seconds later we exited in the Embassy's basement. "It's a good thing you had White stay there," Buchanan said as I let my stomach settle.

"Why so?"

"I don't know how happy your grunts are with the current chain of command."

"It's been almost five months."

"Yeah. That's not a lot of time to adjust to such a radical change."

"It wasn't that radical. Everyone who moved into leadership positions had been increasing in rank for a while."

Buchanan shook his head. "I know you had a hell of a time with transition to your current roles. So did the people who replaced you. Think about what that said to the grunts."

"They all dealt with my addition just fine a couple years ago."

"Yes, but you were added into what they could rightly consider the human section. None of them can fly, so a human being in charge of the new Airborne Division made sense."

"The new position holders make sense."

"Not to them, I guarantee it. You took your two strongest agents and moved them to face positions. You said it yourself to White a few minutes ago. Crawford replacing you? Okay, I'm sure they're okay with that. Reader replacing your husband, though? I'm sure they're not happy about that at all. And then, you put Serene Dwyer in as White's replacement and moved the two women you were just talking to into the slots Reader and Crawford had had? And this was right after the Pontifex retired, which was unprecedented, and put Gower in place."

"I realize some of the older generation are old-fashioned, but they do seem aware that women can vote and hold jobs and everything these days."

"It's not that, and it's not just the older generation. Their women have jobs, jobs they feel are vitally important. Their women do the brainwork. But they don't normally go out, guns blazing. It's one thing to intermarry. It's another to have no choice."

"There are a lot of times you remind me of Jeff. This is one of them. Look, there's nothing I can do about it now."

"Pat yourself on the back for keeping White there. You heard the grunt who sent us through-he called him Commander. He wants White back in charge, and your husband too, I'm sure."

"Fantastic. Let's get upstairs and you can share this with the man who actually orchestrated it all. I'm sure the former Pontifex will be happy to hear your doom and gloom take."

Buchanan shook his head again as we headed upstairs. "You hear but you don't listen, you see but you don't observe."

"Tell me, Holmes, how do you do it?"

"Training, attention to detail, and awareness of the big picture."

"Noted. After this is over, I'll take your class. I'm already signed up for one with Mister Joel Oliver. And as I said to him, your class has to be better than the Washington Wife class."

Buchanan sighed as we reached the first floor. "I learned all of this from your mother. You were raised with her, and I know she passed things along to you."

"Never draw to an inside straight was a biggie of hers."

"Now you're just being b-"

"Hey!"

He grinned. "I was going to say 'bratty.' "

"Sure you were."

CHAPTER 48.

WHITE, ARMSTRONG, TITO, AND WALTER were waiting for us in the kitchen. Bellie was on a perch. I wasn't a great judge of parrot expressions, but she didn't look happy.

She saw me and squawked. "Bellie misses Jeff!"

"Yes, yes. Kitty misses Jeff, too. Busy times, Bellie, demand that we have to do our jobs."

"Security is job one!"

"Duly noted, Bellie."

"That was one of Antony's favorite sayings," Armstrong said.

"It's sort of a cliche."

He shrugged. "In many ways, Antony was a cliche. In others he wasn't."

Chose to not list Marling's fab personal traits at this precise time, so I looked at White. "Tell me you figured out how to keep her beak closed while we're racing off to try to figure out what's going on. And have a tonnage of bird treats on hand."

"We'll handle it, Missus Martini. Where is Christopher?"

"I kept him at the Dome. I think we're going to need him there." I looked at Bellie. "Let's leave her here and take this conversation to another room."

"I'll move her," White said. He took Bellie and her perch to the nearest room and shut her in it. "Now, what didn't you want the parrot to hear?"

Since Tito and Walter had missed it all and Buchanan had missed a lot, I filled them in on the high-level stuff, including what we'd figured out over at Olga's, what I'd asked Jeff to do, what Oliver was doing, my conversation with ACE, and what Claudia and Lorraine had told me as well. I was becoming the Queen of the Recap. Lucky me. "So, something's going on, and we for sure haven't figured it all out yet."