"Candace?" Todd called.

"Up here," she said.

He looked up. Candace crouched about fifteen feet up on the limb of an evergreen, she had the flare pistol in one hand with the other bracing her against the trunk. "What are you doing in a tree? I didn't know you could climb trees." He pulled his mask off and smoothed down his hair, grinning up at her.

"You said.... Where's the guard you warned me about?" She pulled off her own mask to look down at him.

"Still running, with the other two, I think. I had to kill one of them.... But I got the information I wanted, I know who hired them. I just don't know why."

He stepped forward to catch her as she dropped the last few feet and they hugged each other with relief. "I'm sorry you had to..." she murmured in his ear.

"Me, too." He kissed her. "You've got mask hair," he said.

"Oh!" She ran her fingers through her tangles for want of a comb. "Oh, that voice! How did you do that? Whose power was that?"

"That's actually my original power. Or non-power. Remember I said my job was to convince people?" He showed her the microphone in his mask and the tiny bud-like speaker cones he could scatter around an area while they walked back to the SUV. "It helped that in high school when everyone else wanted to play guitar in a rock band, I was building my own speakers and wiring sound boards. Actually worked as a roadie for a couple of groups."

Later, on the way back down the mountain, he told her, "His name was Paul. Paul Doncaster, they called him Donk." She understood him to mean the man he had killed. "And the guy that hired Donk was a crooked State Patrol lieutenant named Frank LeJeune."

She looked at him. They'd been married fourteen years, she knew he didn't want to tell her the rest. But he would.

Todd set his teeth in a grimace. "From the Marshalldale office. We'll call Leo as soon as we get down to where cell phones work again."

* * *

The screaming outside turned out to be from the state cops out of the parked car down the street trying to arrest the two FBI agents who had been hiding in the bushes. One of the federal agents was a small brunette woman with a penetrating howl.

Leo stood around enjoying kibitzing while the four law officers tried to settle their jurisdictional dispute before calling in any superiors.

Krystal, Kendra, Tessie and Kenny watched through the windows for a bit then Tessie drew Lady K away for a private talk in the kitchen.

"Urban?" said Kay. "Is that really you?" It seemed unlikely that the grizzled old street warrior had become this little pig-tailed blonde pixie.

Tessie wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, it's me. But I'm Tessie too. Do you really think you can help my daddy?"

Kendra nodded. "Yes," she said. "I really think I can."

Outside on the lawn, Leo made a suggestion. "Why don't you guys shoot each other? That would solve the whole thing."

Three of the law officers snapped at him, "Shut up!"

The fourth put one hand on one ear and held his cell phone to the other. "Yes, sir," he mumbled then closed the phone up, looking satisfied. "That was Lieutenant LeJeune, he's got a meeting at the airport then he's gonna come over here and sort out Fred and Wilma."

Meaning the FBI agents, all pairs of which were called Fred and Wilma, or Fred and Barney if more appropriate, or very occasionally, Wilma and Betty, by local cops all over the country. Any third agent was automatically Dino. Generally speaking, the Feds hated the nicknames.