Twelve hours after Finch and Reese returned from Las Vegas, the Machine gave them a new Number. A man was very angry about his ex-wife and her new boyfriend and planned to kill them both. Reese disarmed him with only a little difficulty, and threatened him convincingly enough that he requested a transfer from his company the next day and left town.

Before Reese had time to put on a clean shirt, a pay phone rang again.

And again.

And again.

"I suppose it's backlog," Finch said wearily, after their fourth Number in three days. "Threats that weren't processed while the Machine was fighting off Decima's virus."

Reese simply grunted and tried to sleep while he had the chance.

The aging blue minivan pulled stopped next to the booth. The driver, a woman past middle age, already had her window down as the border agent approached. She held out a stack of five Canadian passports.

He opened the first one and glanced at the photo, then at the driver. "Ms. Dawson?"

"Mrs. Yes."

He looked into the van. The girl in the passenger seat smiled happily at him. In the middle seats were two boys, a little older. He matched them all up, then held the last passport questioningly.

The woman glanced in her mirror, scowled, and twisted around. "Paul, wake up your sister."

The boy reached over his seat and waved around blindly. A teenage girl sat up, pulling her ear buds out impatiently. "What?"

"There she is," the driver told the gate agent. "Sorry."

"Just like my kids," he assured her. "Purpose of your visit?"

"Just vacation. Visiting relatives."

The girl in the front seat said, "I'm going to take fencing lessons."

"I see," the guard said. He raised an eyebrow at the driver again.

"It's a day camp," she explained. "She's going with her cousin. I figured it was better than video games 24/7."

He nodded. "Good luck with that. Anything to declare?"

The woman shook her head. "Just our clothes and personal items."

"Live animals? Produce?"

"No."

"Firearms? Liquor?"

"Nope."

There were five cars in the line now. He handed the passports back. "Welcome to the United States."

"Thank you."

He opened the gate.

The woman's knuckles were white in the steering wheel.

"Damn, Sarah, way to blow the script!" the older boy said.

"I didn't!" she protested.

"You totally did," her sister called from the far back seat.

"Mom. I didn't. Right?"

Her mother glanced over her shoulder, then changed lanes and accelerated. "Visiting your aunt and uncle, remember? Vague, no details?" Her voice was tight, her eyes hard on the road.

"But I adding thought details would add very– vera–"

"Verisimilitude," the younger of the boys said. "And you were supposed to stick to the damn script."

"That you didn't have any lines in," her older brother added.

"Michael," their mother said tightly. "Language."

"If we have to go home because she screwed this up …"

"I didn't do anything wrong!"

"All of you," the mother said firmly, "shut up. We're okay. Just hush. I need to concentrate."

The van fell silent for a moment. Then the smaller girl twisted around. "It's okay, you guys. It's okay."

"Sarah Rose, hush."

The woman focused intently on the road ahead, and then on the road behind. On vehicles that passed them and vehicles that stayed behind them. On overpasses and bridges. On the police car waiting on the side of the highway. On breathing.

She took one hand off the wheel and laid it flat on the center of her chest. There was usually a gem there, an emerald. But it was packed away, hidden under the carpet under the rear seat. Just in case.

She had worn the emerald for many years. She missed its weight and its warmth.

She ran her thumb over the ring on her left hand, smooth platinum with small bumps where the emeralds were inlaid. It wasn't the same, but it helped.

From the very back of the van, her oldest child said, "I have to pee."

"In a while," her mother snapped. She put both hands back on the wheel and her knuckles went white.

"I know you told me the Numbers never stop coming," John said, red-eyed and bleary three more Numbers later, "but this is ridiculous."

Finch looked at him through eyes that were even more bloodshot. "Even I could not have anticipated that so many people in the Greater New York area harbored such murderous intent."

He might have said more, but his cell phone chirped with an alert.

Samatha Groves, who very much preferred to be called Root, was bored.

Her captors brought her books, old paperbacks that had been thoroughly searched. They brought her paper and breakable markers. But they provided no television, no radio, and certainly no computer. Control or one of her flunkies came for a brief visit every day. A doctor came in to check her wound until it healed. Three times a week they let her go out to the courtyard for an hour, but there was nothing to do there except look at the sky and walk in circles.

On the days when she didn't go outside they let her shower in a barren little shower stall next to her cell. They provided carefully-measured plastic cups of shampoo and conditioner and soap, and a washcloth and towel of the same thin, tearable fabric that covered her bunk. They gave her a comb for her hair, but at least two guards watched her until they got it back. Apparently they thought even a cheap plastic comb could become a weapon in her hands.

They weren't wrong, of course.

The food was boring, served on paper plates with break-away utensils.

Root had created an exercise plan for herself and she went through some variation of it twice a day.

Beyond that, she was bored spitless.

She announced her boredom, loudly and repeatedly, to the cameras that always watched her.

The Machine, so far, had been unable to respond.

She never stopped watching and listening. But the longer there was no response, the more tedious her imprisonment became.

"That is one damn fat cat," Reese commented, looking over Finch's shoulder.

"Indeed." Finch tried to focus on the feline in the photo. The black and white housecat was sprawled on top of a stone wall in the sun. It was evening or morning, judging by the orange quality of the light. The cat had a white face with a black marking that looked like Charlie Chaplin's mustache. The feline appeared smugly content, as resting cats usually did.

More fascinating than the cat, however, was the tiny notation in the lower corner of the photo that indicated it had been taken with a cell phone on the previous day.

Of course, Harold had no guarantee that the picture had been taken by Christine Fitzgerald on her own phone. She might easily have scrumped it off some internet site. But he was irrationally certain. This sprawling cat was something that Christine herself had seen during her day, something that she'd been amused enough to take a picture of.

Aside from the scant instructions, 'find a kitty', it was the first actual communication they'd received from her. The first detail from her vacation or retreat or sabbatical – or new life – that she'd shared.

It felt like the first tiny crack in the vast iceberg.

"Mr. Mustache," Reese said.

"What?"

"The cat. We should call him Mr. Mustache."

Harold turned very deliberately to stare at him. "Do we really need to assign a name to a creature who presumably resides on the other side of the planet?"

"No, we don't need to," Reese agreed readily. "But we're going to anyhow."

"I … you … are really quite impossible, Mr. Reese."

John grinned in the way he reserved for when he'd managed to successfully provoke Harold. Then he flopped onto the couch, in another move that was characteristically John Reese.

Finch turned back to his screen, more amused than annoyed. Christine named hard drives. Reese named animals. Harold mostly only named himself.

It tickled at his brain, this photo. Not the cat itself, but the imprint. Because if the file held date information, it also likely carried geographical data. He could examine it, decode it, find out precisely where Christine was at this moment. It wasn't technically cheating on his promise that he would not attempt to keep her under surveillance, since she'd send him the photo without stripping out the data. She must have known …

… of course she'd known, and she'd sent it anyhow. She was either testing him …

… or trusting him to keep his word.

With great regret and greater resolve, Finch deleted the photo.

The woman moved through the house on bare feet, all but silent. Light leaked through windows from the yard, and tiny LEDs blinked at the windows, indicating that the alarms were armed. The air conditioner hummed softly. A tiny breeze pulled at her cotton nightgown. Beyond the walls, she could hear distant traffic, thin now in the pre-dawn darkness.

A child snored softly, down the hall.

No sound had alerted her; no footfall had woken her. Downstairs, two well-trained Rottweilers had not stirred. There was no one in the house that they did not know. No one close by or trying to gain entry.

Yet she glided silently through the halls, with a long dagger in her hand.

This was New York, the heart of enemy territory, and she did not sleep well or long.

She reached up with her free hand and touched the emerald that hung around her neck. It was warm, as always. Solid.

A bed creaked softly behind her. She froze, the blade low and easy at her side. Covers pushed back with a quiet rustle. Feet touched the floor, and the bed creaked again. Then nothing.

"It's alright, Michael," she called. "It's just me."

Another creak, footsteps on the bare floor, and then the boy came out of his room. He glanced at the knife, then moved close to her free side. "What's wrong?" he asked quietly.

"Nothing. All secure. Go back to bed."

"Are you going back to bed?"

She sighed, very softly. Her children were too well-trained, too observant. They knew how often she walked the floors at night, at home and now here. They worried, and talked among themselves when they thought she couldn't hear. If she sent her son back to bed, she was quite certain he would lie awake and listen to her not sleep. "Not just yet," she admitted.

"I'm kinda hungry. Could we get a snack?"

Go back to bed, she wanted to say. Go back to sleep. Trust that nothing will harm you here. Let me be alone in my restlessness. Don't worry.

Don't let me hurt you with my pain.

But she had surrendered her right to grieve alone when she'd agreed to have a family. She couldn't have shut him out even if she wanted to. "There might be ice cream," she allowed.

He leaned against her. He was twelve, too big to let himself be hugged when someone might see, but it was just the two of them; he put his arm around her waist, let her put her around his shoulders.

They went downstairs together. The dogs lifted their heads, wagged their stumpy tails, but did not bother to get up.

All was safe in the house.

They had a period of eighteen hours without a new Number.

"Remember when we worried that we'd never get another Number?" Reese said. He felt better, after a whole night's sleep, a real meal, and a short run.

Finch busied himself hanging up their freshly-pressed suits in the back room. He'd finally had time to pick up the dry cleaning. "I do seem to remember such a conversation," he admitted. "But it's a vague memory at best."

His phone chirped.

"Mr. Reese?"

"I'm here, Finch."

"Todd Bradley is dead."

Reese paused, his shirt half-unbuttoned. "What?"

Todd Bradley had owed his bookie seven thousand dollars. That amount wasn't usually large enough to provoke a hit contract, but Bradley was a rude, entitled and brash young man. Reese had only met him once and he fully understood the bookmaker's desire to have him killed. Nevertheless, Finch had provided the cash to clear his debt and signed Bradley up for Gamblers Anonymous, and Reese had made it very clear to Big Al Restifo that he would not look kindly on any harm coming to Bradley. Restifo was a businessman; he was perfectly willing to accept the money, call off the hit, and agree not to take Bradley's bets any more. That should have settled the matter.

That had only been two hours before.

"What happened?" Reese demanded.

His partner sounded more weary than saddened. "Apparently Mr. Bradley felt emboldened by our intervention. He believed that his luck was turning. So he decided to press that luck by taking a firearm to Mr. Restifo's place of business and attempting to steal all the cash on the premises."

John shook his head. He'd seen the bookie's security. A punk like Bradley hadn't stood a chance. "We can't save people from their own bad choices."

"Indeed." Finch sighed audibly. "I'll send the details of our investigation to detective Fusco. He's due for an easy case."

"Call me when we get a new Number."

There was a very brief pause. "About that, Mr. Reese …"

John rolled his eyes. The little pause was all he'd needed to hear. They already had a new Number. "Let me change my shirt."

Helen Zane sat in the second row of the little classroom, in the seat furthest from the door, half turned in her seat. It gave her a good view of the doorway and the windows.

Eleven other teenagers milled around the room. Five male. Six female. She made quick mental notes about each of them. Two of the girls were clearly friends; they moved in unison, like partners. One of the boys fancied himself a rebel; his dyed black hair fell in a long swoop over his left eye. Helen's mother would have taken a scissors to it on the spot. She guessed that it concealed a major acne problem.

A very pretty blonde girl came in, and then an older man. Helen knew the man was the instructor, Jeff Kozlow. There was a younger man behind him; from their facial structure, she guessed they were brothers, or at least closely related.

"Hi," the blonde said, flopping into the seat in front of her. "I'm Hailey."

"Helen. Hi."

"Did I miss anything?" Hailey put her phone on the desk, checked its screen.

"Nope, they just got here."

Kozlow unpacked his satchel on the front desk; the younger man leaned against a second desk, looking around. "He's hella hot," Hailey said quietly.

"The younger one?" Helen asked, barely moving her mouth.

"Yeah."

He was, the girl agreed. The instructor was, well, thirty, but the younger man was in his teens. Maybe twenty. He had good cheekbones. His nose had been broken once; it had a little bend in the center. His eyes were big and brown, and his hair was probably brown in the winter, but it was streaked with light now that went really well with his tan.

He had nice wide shoulders.

He caught the girls checking him out and smiled at them. Hailey giggled. Helen smiled back, just a little warmer than polite, and looked out the window again.

"Good morning, Campers!" Jeff Kozlow said. "Welcome to No-Filter Summer Photo Safari. My name is Jeff and I'm your tour guide. This is my brother Dylan. He'll be helping us. Everybody in the right place?"

"Oh, hells yeah," Hailey murmured.

Dylan glanced over at them and smiled again.

Helen grinned. Mother would not approve. But there was nothing wrong with enjoying the scenery, as long as she didn't try to take any of it home with her. It was going to be a fun summer.

Hailey said, "Damn it, where did I put my phone?"