Nadine had been the A-C troubadour assigned to double Serene during Operation Infiltration. I knew and liked her, and that she was also in Serene's Secret Club seemed obvious. Meaning a really well-trained A-C likely willing to take the smart risks would be watching my children. I was good with this.

"Okay, she's awesome."

"I'm glad you think so." Nadine came in with Francine and another woman I didn't know. The third could have been their sister, though-same Dazzler gorgeous, same blonde hair, similar features. As I thought about it, she probably was their sister. After all, I'd never asked Francine and Nadine if they were related. "You're Colette, aren't you?"

She dimpled. "Good guess."

"Which sister are you, oldest, middle, or baby?"

"Baby." Colette laughed. "Francine's the middle, so she tries harder. You're good."

"No, I'm really slow, but sometimes I can catch on."

Francine grinned. "Oh, don't sell yourself short. We never said we were sisters."

"Yeah, you only all look a lot alike." Different enough to double me and Serene, who were not all that similar seeing as she was a typical Dazzler and I was not. Better looking than me by far, but the beauty of doubles was that as long as they were close enough, expectations covered the rest.

"Better late than never," Nadine said with a smile. "Now, it's time for me to take over as nanny and for you all to get back to the business of running this country."

Of course, we didn't leave immediately, seeing as I had to kiss and hug the kids goodbye several times, plus go over what they should and shouldn't have, do, and all that jazz. Then they had to hug and kiss King Benny goodbye even more than they had me. Did my best not to be bitter. Happily, Pierre had whipped up a schedule of how we did things and Nadine was a quick study. Plus the kids liked her, which was an added bonus. Oh sure, not as much as they liked King Benny, but I was getting the feeling that no one was going to compare to King Benny in the short or long run.

"I know I'm not needed downstairs," Dad said. "I'll help Nadine so you can relax fully, kitten."

Amy was torn between staying with Nadine or coming with us, but Christopher put his foot down about Becky being around a ton of people. So Amy stayed with Dad, Nadine, and the kids, and it was decided that she would be on the phone with Christopher, listening in on anything of importance and adding in as needed.

"I thought Raj was supposed to fill you in before you started," I said to Colette as the rest of us, King Benny included, headed back downstairs.

"He'll go over it all tonight, but since I'm living here now, I came over early to get settled in."

"We're all in a room together," Francine said, before I could ask. "The Operations Team did a great job."

"Yeah, they always do. Are you two sharing?" I asked Len and Kyle.

Len nodded. "Yep, we're used to it."

"And there's plenty of sitting rooms and stuff around here when someone has to hang the sock on the door," Kyle added, then blushed bright red.

Francine and Nadine giggled, but Colette gave Kyle a look I could only think of as interested. Well, both he and Len were smart, and intelligence was the Dazzler weakness.

Managed to control the Inner Hyena. "Good to know. Good to know. It'll be a change from the Embassy, though. No Elves here, at least not on a regular basis."

"Yeah," Len said quickly, presumably to keep us off the sock topic. "None of the White House staff live on the property anymore, but they used to. But there's staff here around the clock."

"Meaning that all of you need to remember that you're no longer in a secured facility," Vance said. "And I don't mean from a guns and bombs standpoint, because I know that shielding was put onto the entire complex. I mean that the walls will have ears and all of you need to restrict yourselves to casual chat about nothing when you're not in closed-door meetings."

Heaved a sigh. "Well then, I hope we're meeting everyone in a room like that, because I what I need to discuss is definitely not for the general public at large."

CHAPTER 34.

WE WERE BACK in the big meeting room from earlier in the day. Had a sense of dej vu-nothing like what I'd had during Operation Civil War, but still, the total feeling that I'd been here before doing this exact same thing was strong.

Of course, there were actually more people in here than we'd had before. Supposedly everyone had the high security clearances by now, even Abner Schnekedy, who was sitting with Culver, who had wisely kept her maiden name for business. Vance hadn't been kidding-Abner seemed to be almost vibrating from the thrill of being here. Well, better to have someone keen on the job, especially since I certainly wasn't winning the New Job Excitement Challenge.

Happily, the rest of Jeff's cabinet had been selected while I wasn't around and, other than nodding and waving at those now in the Inner Circle, nothing else was required of me in regard to this.

Chuckie was sitting between Jeff and Mom. He passed me a sign-the "keep quiet" sign. Meaning now wasn't a good time for me to share anything I was thinking.

"We have about thirty minutes before dinner," Mom said. "Kitty, we're discussing the Camp David peace talks."

Almost opened my mouth, but Chuckie shot me a quick glare and I managed to control myself. "Okay, when are they happening?"

"We feel it's imperative to get those back on track as soon as possible," Hochberg, who was sitting on Jeff's other side, said. He looked a lot better than he had earlier, which was good-clearly the promotion to VP had been an ego-booster.

"After we make good on the promise we made to Club Fifty-One," Raj said. "We did say they'd get a thank-you ceremony." Club 51 was the most vocal of the anti-alien organizations out there. But Raj had managed a brilliant switch at the end of Operation Epidemic, and he was right-we did need to make good.

"Do we really think any of them will show up?" Hey, it had to be asked.

"I think so," Chuckie said. "Some of them, anyway."

"They're spread out all over the country-how will we manage a ceremony that doesn't give them an excuse to complain that we made them spend a fortune to get to the ceremony?" Hadn't realized I was coming into this meeting to be Negative Nelly, but someone had to ask the hard questions.

"There are ways," Jeff said. "However, I think this is something that can go to committee." Heads around the table nodded. "Great. Folks, I think I'd like to take a break before dinner and actually take a look at the Oval Office. Fritzy, I've been advised that my things are out of your office, so if you want to take a little time to see if you want a different chair, now's the time." This earned chuckles from the room. "I'd also like to do a small religious ceremony in the Oval Office, which is restricted to immediate family."

The nice thing about religion was that most normal people felt that it wasn't their place to tell someone else how to worship. So the room divided up fairly quickly, with Antoinette taking most people into a parlor for predinner drinks while the rest of us went to the Oval Office. I had Colette and Francine stay with the majority of the Planetary Council, but Alexander, being a close enough family member, was coming with us. Which was fine with me.

Mom didn't allow the Secret Service to join us, which of course meant an argument. Jeff said that Len and Kyle could be there as security, and Evalyne and Joseph subsided, mostly because Mom pointed out that we were inside the White House and could probably manage not to be killed in the next thirty minutes.

Once we were in the Oval Office, Jeff jerked his head at Chuckie, who tossed some scanners to Raj, Lorraine, and Claudia, who all went over the room at hyperspeed. "All clean," Lorraine said as they finished up.

"Now," Claudia added. "It wasn't clean earlier."

"I had the Operations Team check, and the moment our security was in here we had Dulce scan the complex as well," Reader said.

"Tons of bugs," Tim said. "Most of them homegrown, but not all."

Chuckie rubbed the back of his neck. "I had this place swept yesterday."

"There are a lot of people coming in and out, Vance just gave me the 'speak softly and only in rooms you know are safe' lecture. But, since we are safe in here, Jeff, is there really a ceremony you want to do?"

"Yeah, baby, there is. It's brief, and then you can tell us what you've been wanting to tell us for at least an hour."

He looked at Gower, who walked over to Jeff and put his hand over Jeff's hearts. "Lead well and true, always do what you know to be right, protect the weak and helpless, and never capitulate to evil." Gower took his hand away and stepped back.

"That was it?"

Jeff grinned. "Told you it was short."

"We don't stand on a lot of ceremony," Gower added with a laugh.

"Don't try to lie to me, I had a Royal Wedding, remember?"

"Should I hook Amy in now?" Christopher asked.

"As long as your phone isn't tapped, yeah."

Chuckie put his hand out and Christopher tossed his phone over. Chuckie plugged something into it, grunted, unplugged, and tossed the phone back. "Clean. Kitty's was, too. So we have that going for us."

Chose not to mention that Chuckie was now the head of one of the agencies most responsible for phone taps. Why spoil the mood? "So, can I finally tell you guys what I've been thinking?"

Christopher put his phone on Jeff's desk. "I'm here," Amy said. "Not on speaker on my side."

"Go ahead, baby. You can start by explaining just what you and the jocks were doing earlier today."

"Give us guilt if and only when someone says that we were spotted. Otherwise, we've discovered at least part of what's going on."

Gave everyone the Recap Girl Update on what the boys and I had discovered, including that Hacker International was on the case, and that we felt that Strauss had been going for Mastermind status.

"So, you think that Villanova and Evan, Armstrong's former driver, are in charge now?" The way Chuckie asked, he didn't think that.

Which was fine, because I didn't either. "No. I think they're trying to continue a plan that should have been aborted the moment Strauss died. Meaning someone else is likely to think they can take over like Strauss would have. As for who, my money's on Zachary Kramer."

"Not Cliff?" Jeff asked.

"No. I don't think Cliff's involved with the Fem-Bot craze at all."

"Timing would indicate that he isn't, and I think Kitty's right," Chuckie said. "Cliff rolled his last action because the timing was good and necessary, both. Meaning he'd figured out what Strauss had planned and also thought she had an excellent chance of success."

"Fritzy wasn't wrong-those peace talks need to happen soon," Mom said. "It would be nice to be able to stop whatever they have planned before we have foreign dignitaries here."

"Right, totally agree, and I have some thoughts about that, including that Kramer's probably now in bed with Ansom Somerall and at least some of the Dealers of Death who aren't in the White House with us right now. But what I've been wanting to discuss has nothing to do with this. I want to tell you who I think has the invisible helicarrier and all our missing people."

"Who?" Jeff asked.

"The person who's the opposite side of Lizzie's coin."

CHAPTER 35.

THE ROOM STARED AT ME. "I'm lost," Jeff said. Most heads nodded.

"Me too, Kitty," Chuckie said.

"I'm with you," Amy said via speakerphone. "But only because of what we were discussing right before you suddenly had a burning desire to come back to the White House."

"I'm not," Christopher admitted.

"That's because of your emotional attachments. Okay, look, I was thinking about Lizzie because she's a great kid, and she shouldn't be."

"Why shouldn't she be?" Jeff asked, sounding almost as protective as he did whenever he perceived even the slightest threat to Jamie or Charlie.

"Okay, follow me. Lizzie's parents were traitors. They wanted her to join them in their plan to literally kill half the world. She refused because she knew they were evil. At age eleven she was not only willing to defy her parents but she was willing to die in order to try to save the world. Meaning she's braver than adults several times her age."

"That's never been in dispute," Chuckie said.

"Right. So, she was rescued by an assassin, and yet she's still fighting on the side of right. And I'd bet that Siler's a lot more willing to be a good guy because Lizzie sees him as a hero and, in fact, expects him to be a hero. And she's still a great kid, still brave, still fighting for right. She had to leave her cushy school because she was protecting people weaker than herself."

"So who's her opposite?" Jeff asked.

"Seriously? Only Ames has this one? Stephanie. Stephanie is Lizzie's opposite. And not just because she's an A-C and Lizzie's a human. Stephanie only had one parent who was a traitor, not two. And yet . . ."

"She was being influenced by Clarence," Christopher said. Most of the other A-Cs nodded. Serene and White, however, did not. Had a feeling they'd joined Amy on my side of the thinking.

"Yeah? Let's look at a different scenario than the one we've all been buying for years. Stephanie was the one who gave Christopher and all the other men on Alpha Team key chains that had bugs in them, which were used against us for at least a year. We'd always thought that she'd been duped into doing so by her father."

"Well, of course," Jeff said. "She was just a teenager."

"Yeah? Lizzie was eleven. But let's continue on my little path here. What if we're wrong? What if the Original Clarence didn't actually dupe her? What if he brought her over fully way back when?"

"How?" Gower asked.

"Maybe she heard something or saw something she shouldn't have and confronted her father. Sure, most of you are terribly trusting, but Stephanie doesn't seem to suffer from that particular failing." Stephanie was a Dazzler, after all, and even those Dazzlers considered dumb as posts by the others were still MENSA material for humans. Meaning she'd have been able to put two and two together without trouble. "There was more than enough going on that Clarence was privy to, after all, so the chances are high that she caught something."

"Okay," Reader said slowly. "Let's say you're right. Are you going where I think you're going?"

"God, I hope so. I'm saying that this means that she's done all that she's done against us of her own free will."

"I have trouble buying that," Jeff said, sounding angry and dismissive.

"Because you still see her as a little girl and you love her. And she's been exploiting that for a really long time. Look, I never considered Clarence all that bright for an A-C, and while he was ambitious, he was always willing to go up the ladder by being someone's muscle or employee. Clarence wasn't an independent thinker. TCC isn't really, either, but he hasn't been tainted, so he's sweet and caring, but still, very willing to follow. But, what if Stephanie isn't like her father in that way? What if she is, in fact, quite a strong, independent thinker?"

Could see the wheels turning in Chuckie's mind. More people in the room looked as if they were considering this. Jeff and Christopher, however, were flat-out rejecting, based on Patented Glare #5 coming from Christopher and a glower from Jeff that was at least going for the Bronze in the Glare Olympics.

Forged on. "Stephanie knew where all of Cliff's hideouts were. And that means she had access to all of his information. Maybe she'd been spending all her time after disappearing not hiding from him due to fear, but hiding from Cliff so that she could gather all the intelligence she possibly could."