The Green And The Gray

39

The sunlight had long since faded from the woods outside Caroline's window, the darkness growing roughly in proportion with the increase in growling from her stomach. If Sylvia was still on her promised eight o'clock dinner schedule, they should be leaving in the next fifteen minutes.

Caroline hoped so. Not that the dinner itself was all that vital, though certainly she felt like she could eat a small cow at this point. But far more important than food was the new note she had carefully wrapped around one of the sticks of gum in her purse.

She lay back on the bed, staring out into the darkness, thinking back over the note. Roger: Green Warriors moving NYC Tue night from N—sweep S w/Damian behind them—must intercept before buildings fall. I love you, C.

Was there anything else she should say? There was a bit of room left at the bottom of the gum wrapper, and she was getting the hang of this Lilliputian writing technique. But anything else would be pure speculation, and she couldn't risk being wrong. Better to just stick with what Sylvia had told her and let Roger draw his own conclusions.

Assuming Roger got the note at all. And that was a big assumption, even with the credit card payment to point him to the right place. Maybe all she was doing was spinning her wheels, idling away her time until Sylvia finally let her go home.

Sylvia.

Caroline rubbed thoughtfully at her cheek. Something had happened after their aborted lunch, something that had set her mental alarm bells clanging. But in all these hours of idleness, she still hadn't figured it out.

Her stomach gave an extra-loud growl, and she winced as a brief ache wound its way through her.

Maybe she would do better to wait until after dinner, and a quieter stomach, to try to figure it out. At least wait until she'd gotten a side salad and maybe some bread tucked away inside her. If the waitress was efficient enough—

And suddenly, there it was. Waitress. On the way back to the Green estate, Sylvia had commented that the waitress would have already cleared away the dishes.

Which was true enough... except that Caroline had never used the word waitress in Sylvia's presence.

She'd always used the term server.

She closed her eyes, fighting upstream against her hunger, forcing her mind to think. So Sylvia knew the word waitress. Was that such a big deal?

Yes, it was. Because Sylvia claimed to have never been to a restaurant before. Sylvia didn't even know how to order a meal at a restaurant.

Yet she knew a female server was also called a waitress.

Caroline felt her throat tighten as the past twenty-four hours suddenly came into a new and devastating focus. Sylvia had been lying right from the very start. She'd lied about her ignorance of human society and customs. She'd lied about wanting to learn more about Caroline's people. She'd probably even lied about not knowing how to play chess.

She'd almost certainly lied about the Greens' upcoming attack on the Grays.

Rolling onto her side, Caroline sat up on the edge of the bed, the sudden movement sending a wave of light-headedness over her. If the battle plan was a lie, then she had to destroy that note immediately. The last thing she could afford was to take the chance that Roger would find it and give it to the Grays.

Or did chance have anything to do with it?

Sylvia the naive, sheltered Green might not know how Caroline could pass a note. She would have no idea that Caroline's credit card could instantly show where they'd been.

But Sylvia the cunning liar would know all those things. Which mean that the only reason they were going out tonight was that Sylvia already knew Caroline's previous note had been found and passed on to the Grays.

This whole thing, in fact, had been a setup, she saw now; a clever and subtle manipulation of Caroline's unwillingness to stand by while innocent people died.

But then, the woman had said it herself, straight to Caroline's face. Deception has always been a part of warfare.

Slowly, she lay back down on the bed. There was no Damian, then. The whole story of a second Groundshaker had been nothing but a red herring, something to deceive and distract the Grays.

So what then was the Green plan? Did they expect Melantha to topple the skyscrapers while the Grays hunted in vain for a phantom Damian? Could a Persuader like Aleksander force her to commit mass murder, the same way Cyril had tried to force her to give herself up outside Lee's market? If they hid Melantha inside that crowd of Warriors she'd seen practicing last night—

She frowned at the ceiling. There had been a crowd out on the lawn, hadn't there? Nikolos had nearly gotten run over twice, in fact, while trying to make his way over to Sylvia. There had been way more than the sixty Warriors Velovsky had said Nikolos could field against the Grays. In fact, if she added in the ones in the trees and those shooting from inside the house, there could have been as many as a hundred fifty of them out there.

And suddenly, an icy chill caught her by the heart as it all fell into place. Thanks to her first note, the Grays would be expecting the Greens to attack with a Groundshaker, which would probably get them spread out and away from the tallest buildings. If they also received the message now waiting in her purse, they would furthermore gather together at the north end of the city, preparing to take on Nikolos, Damian, and sixty Warriors. Instead, they would find themselves facing two or three times that many.

And they would be slaughtered.

Her hands curled into fists. So that was the true secret behind this hidden Green territory. And when she and Roger had threatened to stumble into that secret, Nikolos had calmly taken the opportunity to twist the potential leak to his own advantage.

Caroline had sent Roger on a mission of mercy to the Grays, hoping to save their lives. Instead, she had unwittingly conspired with Nikolos to destroy them.

"No," she muttered aloud. She wouldn't accept that. She couldn't. There had to be something she could do.

She could start by destroying her current note, which would at least keep the Grays from walking into an Upper Manhattan ambush. But it was too late to retract her first note, the one identifying Damian as the chief Green threat. Even if the Grays avoided the trap, they still wouldn't know anything about the true number of enemies they were facing until it was too late.

Somehow, she had to find a way to warn them.

But how? The message Nikolos was obviously expecting her to write was a critical part of the Green plan. Would Sylvia simply take it for granted that Caroline would play her role as expected, or would she have someone check the note before allowing it to be found? Caroline herself wouldn't take such a risk. She couldn't imagine Sylvia doing so, either.

Unless...

She sat up again and went to the chair where her purse was sitting. So Nikolos wanted to be clever and devious? Fine. She could play that game, too.

Two minutes later, she had finished the addendum to her note and re-wrapped it around the stick of gum. She had tried to think like her husband, to see things in his logical, efficient, problem-solving way, and to leave him a clue that Sylvia wouldn't recognize as such. Whether she had succeeded, only time would tell.

It was entirely possible that she herself would never know one way or the other.

There was a tap on her door. "Yes?" she called.

"It's Nestor," her guard replied through the panel. "Group Commander Sylvia requests your presence at dinner."

Caroline took a deep breath. "All right," she called back. "I'm ready."

Powell gripped the kitchen phone tightly, a sense of exhilaration momentarily eclipsing the fatigue dragging at his mind. "And you're all right?" he asked carefully.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Fierenzo's voice replied, sounding a little bemused by his partner's intensity. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Gee, let me think," Powell growled, a ripple of annoyance joining the emotional mix. This, he decided distantly, must be what it was like to have a teenager. "Maybe because you've been missing for forty-eight hours?"

"Yeah, sorry about that," Fierenzo said, sounding more preoccupied than actually sorry. "You up for a little drive?"

Powell glanced at the kitchen clock. It was just past nine-thirty. "How little?"

"A couple of hours upstate," Fierenzo told him. "Little town called Shandaken."

"Never heard of it."

"You take Exit 19 off the Thruway and drive thirty miles west on Route 28," Fierenzo told him.

"You can't miss it."

"Okay," Powell said, grabbing a pad and scrawling notes. "What's there that we want?"

"There's a little restaurant called the Junction Inn where Caroline Whittier used her Visa about half an hour ago," Fierenzo told him. "I'm hoping she's left us a note on a gum wrapper stuck to the underside of one of the tables."

An eerie chill ran up Powell's back. "Cyril wasn't blowing smoke, was he?" he asked quietly. "There really is a war brewing."

"Hell itself is brewing," Fierenzo confirmed tightly. "And we've got forty-eight hours to stop it.

Maybe less."

Powell looked at the clock again. "I don't suppose you know when this Junction Inn closes?"

"Probably before you can get there," Fierenzo said. "I was hoping you could be outside when they open in the morning."

"You think that'll be soon enough?"

"I don't know," Fierenzo conceded. "But the alternative is to blow in there tonight, wake up the owner and maybe a couple of state cops and demand they let you in. That would draw way more attention than I want to risk right now."

"Speaking of drawing attention, it might not be a good idea for me to suddenly go missing," Powell said as his brain started working again. "I've got a meeting set up for nine o'clock with Cerreta and Commander Messerling."

"S.W.A.T. Commander Messerling?" Fierenzo asked.

"You know anyone else with that name?" Powell countered. "I got the ball rolling a few hours ago when I thought you'd been kidnapped by one of these gangs. You want me to cancel the alert?"

"Better not," Fierenzo said. "It might be a very good idea to have them standing ready."

"Okay," Powell said. "Anything else I should tell them? Aside from the fact you're all right?"

"Not really," Fierenzo said slowly. "In fact... let's go ahead and leave out the part about me being okay."

Powell frowned. "Tommy, you can't keep this quiet. The whole department's up in arms."

"Which is exactly how we want them," Fierenzo pointed out. "Having a missing cop in the mix should help them be a little more inspired if and when this thing blows up."

"Except that you'll eventually have to come clean," Powell warned. "This is not what they call a good career move."

"I can take the heat," Fierenzo assured him. "As for you, you never knew anything about it. This conversation never took place. Got that?"

"We'll discuss it later," Powell said, keeping his voice neutral. Like hell he would leave his partner to take all the blame himself. "So what do you want to do about the Junction Inn?"

"We still need to see if Caroline left us a note," Fierenzo said. "You think Smith might be interested in an early-morning drive?"

"I can ask him," Powell said. "But I think I should let him know you're all right."

"No." Fierenzo's voice left no room for argument.

"He gave up his whole weekend helping us look for you," Powell said, arguing it anyway. "He deserves a little consideration."

"He deserves not to have his career go up in flames," Fierenzo countered. "You tell him I'm okay and we'll be making him a party to this deception. You and I may be able to weather that kind of storm, but he's way too junior to get away with it."

Powell grimaced. "I suppose," he conceded. "Okay, I'll get him on it as soon as you hang up. By the way, I never got to tell you what I found on the branch that was in that stolen Parks truck."

"Let me guess," Fierenzo said. "Dull axe marks?"

Powell made a face at the phone. "I don't know why you even bother with a partner," he said sourly.

"Yes, just like we found on the Whittiers' potted trees, only these went about halfway up from the broken end instead of all being clustered at the bottom."

"Don't sulk," Fierenzo soothed him. "It's still a useful confirmation."

"Confirmation of what?"

"Right now, I'm not at liberty to say," Fierenzo said grimly. "Just get Smith on the horn and point him upstate. And keep your cell handy. I might have to whistle you and Messerling up at a moment's notice."

"Don't worry," Powell said grimly. "We'll be ready."