Her eyes flashed with anger, and she looked like she might try to rake him with her long nails. “You got no right to talk to me like that. You got no right to try to run me out of town. What about my husband, my kids?”

“I’m not the one running you out of town. In fact, the Others would like you to stay, if only for the excuse of killing you slowly. As for your children, Frances has been removed from your home for her own safety. Or weren’t you aware that your son was making the first moves to pimp his little sister?”

She knew. He saw it in her eyes before she looked down at the table.

“Clarence is an accessory to the abduction of a young woman, and he will go to prison.”

“What?” Fear, and a hefty dose of shock, filled her face.

“Cyrus Montgomery abducted a young woman around noon today. He managed to get out of the city with her. Every police department in every city in the Northeast is now involved in the manhunt. We will find him. The only question will be if Cyrus and Clarence are charged with kidnapping or with murder if the woman doesn’t survive.”

Sandee swayed. “What?” The word was barely a sound. “Clarence is a boy. He’s just a boy.”

“His crime is not a youthful mistake, Sandee. His actions, like yours, were an attack on the terra indigene. Going to prison is the only chance he has of surviving. The Others don’t often kill children, but I can tell you with no doubt at all that Clarence won’t last a day if we release him.”

He’d gutted her, finally got past her self-involvement for her to understand how bad things were.

“I want to talk to CJ,” Sandee said.

“No.”

“Twyla then. I want to talk to Twyla.”

“No.” Burke pulled out a photograph of the unlabeled jar of skin cream and set it on the table. “Want to tell me where you got this?”

“Piss off.”

He shrugged. “We’re testing it—along with all your other lotions—but I’m pretty sure this is what injured the Sanguinati who bit you. So you should know that, no matter where you resettle, the Sanguinati are going to be watching you from now on. They’ll know everyone you talk to, everyone you sleep with, every purchase you make, legal or otherwise. And sooner or later, they will kill you.”

“You’ve got to protect me!”

“No one is going to start a pissing contest with the terra indigene to protect you, not when it could end with the whole city being destroyed.”

“I’ll never be safe,” she whispered.

Burke leaned forward and tapped the photograph. “Tell me about this. Tell me where you got it, what you know about who’s making it—because this is a death sentence for the people of this city, maybe for people in every city. We’ll have corpses stacked floor to ceiling in the morgue just like we did after that storm last month. You tell me where you got this, and I’ll arrest you for possession of drugs and you can go to jail for a little while. Long enough for the Sanguinati to forget about you. You wouldn’t be free, but you’d have a place to sleep and three meals a day because the prisons have their own farms and grow most of their own food—and you’ll stay alive. That’s a better deal than you’ll get outside.”

In the end, she told him what he wanted to know and he arrested her for the drugs and had her taken away to be processed.

Already tired and knowing they had a long way to go before any of them could breathe easy—if they could ever again—Burke walked out of the interrogation room and found Commander Louis Gresh waiting for him.

“You heard?” Burke asked, tipping his head to indicate the observation room.

“Sometimes you’re a bastard,” Gresh said quietly.

“I got the information we needed, and I made the deal that would give Sandee and Clarence a chance to live.”

“Deal with who?”

Burke shook his head. The phone call hadn’t come from Vladimir Sanguinati; it had come from Stavros, who had been the Toland Courtyard’s problem solver—the one who made all kinds of problems disappear. And Stavros had made it very clear how the Sanguinati would respond if Burke didn’t uncover information about the new weapon the humans had developed to smear on their skin.

Thank the gods it hadn’t been meant as a weapon against the Sanguinati. It was petty and personal and cruel, but he was confident the investigation would confirm that Sandee Montgomery had been the intended target.

“I have work to do.” Burke pushed past Gresh and almost ran into Monty.

“Steve Ferryman and Roger Czerneda are here,” Monty said. “They have information—something we need but can’t show to the terra indigene. They’re waiting in your office.”

The three men hurried to the office, Burke in the lead.

Oh gods, Burke thought when he saw their faces.

Roger Czerneda pulled a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. “License plate number. I’ve already sent it to the authorities in the Intuit communities that might be anywhere along the route.”

“Where did you get this?” Monty asked.

Louis Gresh took the paper. “I’ll call the motor vehicle department and start looking for the vehicle’s owner.”

The moment Gresh was out the door, Burke turned to Ferryman. “What else?”

Ferryman hesitated. Then he opened a manila envelope and pulled out a piece of paper but didn’t turn it around for them to see. “The Intuits have communications cabins near the tip of Lake Superior, one in the Midwest Region and the other in the Northeast. They’re located close enough to deliver messages from one region to the other via citizens band radios. An urgent message came in from Tolya Sanguinati, who had received it from Jackson Wolfgard.”