THE CASE OF THE LOST LOVE

When I first met Laura, she tried to kill me - and came pretty close to succeeding. There's a long scar along the length of my right thigh that I'll have for the rest of my life. Laura has never said anything about it to me, but it was obvious that she'd been going for my femoral artery. And she didn't miss by much. If she'd succeeded, I would have probably bled out and died.

That's pretty impressive for a skinny little slip of a girl who's maybe eleven years old.

And now Laura was standing in my apartment. And she was covered in blood. Again.

Laura shoved a double-handful of crumpled currency in my direction. Like her, the bills were also soaked in blood. I took the money with the hand that wasn't holding a .45 automatic - I admit that I tend to get a little tense when someone bangs on my door in the middle of the night.

"I want to hire you," Laura said. Her strange green eyes met mine. She's a tiny girl, with long dark hair, pale skin, and a slender face. Someday, she's going to be a heart-stopping beauty.

"Laura," I responded slowly as I carefully looked her over. "Is any of that blood actually yours?"

Laura was wearing a knee-length dress that used to be white with blue trim. At the moment, it was mostly brownish-red. More dried blood was matted into her hair and smeared on her face. Her hands and bare feet were almost completely covered as well.

Laura frowned slightly. I think she thought my question was trivial.

"No," she replied.

"Did you kill somebody?"

"Some kidnappers, but that's not important. I want to hire you to..."

"Bath," Marie interrupted firmly. Marie is my partner and girlfriend. All she was wearing was a pair of men's pajama tops. I had the bottoms. That's how we usually slept. I'd grabbed a gun and pulled on a robe - in that order - before answering the door.

Laura frowned at me again. The conversation was really not going as she'd expected.

"Into the bathroom, young lady," Marie said sternly, holding her hand out to Laura.

Laura sighed and took Marie's hand. Don't ask me why, but Laura defers to Marie.

While Marie pulled Laura into the bathroom, I walked into the kitchen, dumped the blood-soaked money into the sink, and ran the faucet. It turned out to be five hundred dollars in newly-issued twenties. I dropped the soggy mass of bills into the dish rack.

Laura was now naked and sitting in our bathtub. Her dress and underpants was soaking in the sink. She seemed a bit put out, but she was cooperating.

Marie had rinsed Laura off until the worst of the dried blood was gone. Then Marie plugged the drain and the tub began to fill with hot water. Laura absent-mindedly wiggled her toes. Some dried blood that had been caught between them came loose and disintegrated in the bath water.

"The kidnappers you killed. How many of them were there?" I asked.

"Three," Laura said calmly.

"Laura, do you remember the talk we had about killing people?"

"Which one?"

"Any of them! You can't just go around slaughtering anyone you're unhappy with!"

Laura shrugged. "They were going to kill the boy they'd kidnapped. You and Logan have told me that sometimes you have to kill to save lives. That's what I did."

Then Laura closed her eyes and smiled blissfully as Marie began working shampoo into her hair. The shampoo turned red.

I let out a defeated sigh. "Do the cops know about it?" I asked.

"They should," Laura purred - she was obviously enjoying the shampoo. "They were trying to break down the door when I left. There must have been a patrol car somewhere nearby when all the shooting started."

Marie gave me an alarmed glance. I think I gulped.

"Did you hurt any police officers?" I asked nervously.

Laura shook her head. "No. Logan said I should never do that. It's bad for business."

Okay, that was a relief. The cops in this town are generally corrupt, stupid, brutal, and incompetent, but there are a few who actually try to do their jobs. And all of the cops - the few who are good and the many who are bad - tend to become very, very focused if a fellow officer was killed or injured.

Oh, and by the way, the Logan that Laura kept mentioning is the biggest gang-boss in the city. He's her dad.

"Do the police know you're the one who killed the kidnappers?"

"No. They never saw me."

I didn't doubt that. Not being seen is something Laura does well.

"Are you absolutely sure that the men you killed were actually kidnappers?" I asked.

"Yes. They had a boy named Tommy with them. He's a neighbor and he's nice. His parents paid two thousand dollars to get him back."

Marie and I exchanged glances. The Thomas Oberlin kidnapping had been in the newspapers for the last two days. I had a pretty good idea what tomorrow's headlines were going to look like.

A thought occurred to me. "Laura, the money you gave me... was that part of Tommy's ransom money?"

"Yes, Tommy said I could keep some of it. He also promised not to tell the police about me."

"How did you get involved in this in the first place?" I asked plaintively.

"I know Tommy. He and his parents live just down the street from where I live. So when he was kidnapped, I decided to go look for him."

I gave Laura a long look. "How did you find him?"

"I followed Tommy's scent from his house. Then the kidnappers put him in a truck and I lost him. But the truck had been used to transport cleaning supplies - it had a distinctive scent of its own. I was able to follow it across town, to an old house where the kidnappers were keeping Tommy. I heard them say that they were going to kill Tommy because he had seen their faces. So I stopped them."

I tiredly rubbed the bridge of my nose. So far, it had been a fairly typical conversation with Laura - somewhere between alarming and exasperating.

"You said you want to hire us?" Marie asked curiously. She was still washing Laura's hair.

Laura opened her eyes and gave us an approving smile. I guess we were finally done with silly questions and getting with the program.

"Yes," Laura said eagerly. "I want you to find someone. His name is Josh. Josh Foley."

Laura was sitting at our kitchen table. She was wearing one of Marie's old robes - it looked like a tent on her - and her wet hair was neatly brushed. Marie put a cup of cocoa in front of Laura. Laura smiled briefly at Marie and, for a split-second, she was just a little girl. You had to know her to realize that she was also an incredibly dangerous little girl.

"Who's Josh Foley?" I asked.

Laura took another sip from her cocoa. "He was a slave of the Egyptian."

I grimaced. The Egyptian was dead, but he used to be the worst gang-lord in this city - deeply tangled up in the ugliest vices and crimes that could be imagined. He was the most powerful mind-controller that anyone had ever seen, and had existed by psychically feeding off the suffering of others. That was a bad combination. The people under the Egyptian's control lived a helpless life of nigh-constant misery and degradation.

When we first ran into Laura, she and the girl who eventually became our secretary - Sooraya Qadir - were on the run from the Egyptian. Sooraya is a Muslim girl from Afghanistan. The story is long and characteristically bloody, but Laura was the one who broke Sooraya loose from the Egyptian's control. When Marie and I first encountered Sooraya, she had been about four months pregnant. Since then, she's had her baby, who's a fine and healthy boy.

There are things you don't ask, or even think about, if you can help it. Sooraya was maybe sixteen when we met her. By then, the Egyptian had been selling her body for years.

I didn't like the math.

I've done things in my life that I'm not proud of, but I'm also one of the people who finally ended the Egyptian. I hope that counts for something when I'm at the pearly gates, having that long, long talk with Saint Peter.

"Did you know this Foley guy?" I asked.

Laura shook her head.

"Why do you want us to track him down?" I asked.

"That's not important."

"Did Sooraya know him?" Marie asked.

"Yes," Laura replied. "However, I don't want Sooraya to know about your investigation."

"Why?" I continued.

"She wouldn't like it."

I thought about that for a few seconds. Then I asked, "What do you know about Foley?"

"He's American and is between seventeen or eighteen years old. He's slender and has blond hair and blue eyes. He vanished after we killed the Egyptian."

"Is Foley from around here? Or is he an out-of-towner?"

Laura shook her head. "I don't know."

I was silent for a long moment. I'm the boss of Domino Investigations. I make the final call whether or not we take a case. And under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have taken this one. The client obviously had secrets and was giving us some odd conditions on how we were to do our job. That was a combination sure to result in trouble.

"Okay, you've hired us," I said. Marie gave me a quick look, but didn't say anything. Then she put a cup of cocoa in front of me and sat down.

Laura seemed pleased.

"But we do have to get you home," I added.

That made Laura frown, "Really? I want to help you."

Marie and I both cringed at the thought of Laura "helping" us. About the best we could hope for was that the number of corpses would only be in the single digits.

"You may have hired us, but we do things our way," I told Laura firmly. "And that means we work on our own without the boss looking over our shoulders."

Laura took a slow and thoughtful sip from her cocoa before replying. "Okay. Logan always says you should hire good people and then leave them alone to do their jobs. And he says you two are the best you are at what you do."

I am embarrassed to say that a pre-teen killing-machine quoting her crime-lord father managed to fill me with a certain sense of quiet pride.

"What else does Logan say about us?" Marie asked with an amused expression on her face.

"He says that you're both cute. And you're a lot of trouble. Did you two used to sleep with him?"

I think cocoa actually came out of my nose. I staggered over to the sink (the money was still drying in the dish rack), grabbed a washcloth, and used it to cover my lower face until the coughing fit subsided.

Marie ignored me and reached over to carefully take one of Laura's hands in her own. "Laura - sugar - you're too young to talk about things like that."

Laura shook her head in obvious confusion, "Why? Don't women sometimes talk about men when they're together?"

Marie nodded very seriously. "They sometimes do. But... well... it's strange when one of the women is as young as you are. It's even stranger when the man being talking about is kin."

Laura listened intently, as if Marie were dispensing vast wisdom. Laura isn't good at playing by society's rules. The bastards who raised her hadn't wanted her to be well-adjusted. They wanted her to be an emotionally isolated and socially distant killer. Logan was trying to help her, and Laura was trying her best to learn, but turning her into a real human being was a slow process.

My coughing fit subsided. Wiping cocoa from my face, I sat back down at the table.

"Why the sudden interest in Foley?" I asked hoarsely.

Laura considered my words for some time before answering.

"I can't tell you that," she said finally.

It was still early enough that we decided not to immediately take Laura home. Instead, we got Laura dried off and dressed in some old clothes, and then bought her breakfast in our favorite diner. Then we dropped her off at the hotel that Logan uses as his headquarters. Laura waved at us just before she walked in the front door.

At the news-stand just outside our office, Marie picked up a newspaper. The headline screamed "KIDNAPPERS SLAUGHTERED, BOY RESCUED". The accompanying article was full of enthusiastically described carnage, but fairly low on actual facts. However, it did say that Thomas Oberlin was back with his family, and that the cops were unsure who had butchered his kidnappers.

And it turned out that the kidnappers were a gang who had been bedeviling cities all along the East Coast for the last year.

"Their M.O. was to always murder the kids they snatched," Marie said angrily.

"I'm not mourning their loss," I told her. "I'm just uncomfortable with Laura being the one who killed them. Maybe she should, y'know graduate high-school, or go on her first date, or maybe even grow a pair of boobs, before she starts deciding who lives and who dies."

"It would be great if she could just have a regular childhood," Marie conceded.

"Logan's daughter? I'm not sure that's possible."

Marie nodded in sad agreement.

"Why are we taking the case?" she asked me.

I shifted uncomfortably. "You know, I'm not sure. Normally I wouldn't get involved in something that seems so sketchy right at the very beginning. But I'm pretty sure that Laura wouldn't ask us to do something like this unless she had a darn good reason."

Marie didn't argue with me.

"I want you to take the next few days off," I told Sooraya.

For a change, we had actually managed to beat Sooraya to the office. She's an incredibly conscientious employee. Normally, she's there when we show up, with the coffee made and the mail neatly sorted. This time, we were waiting for her when she opened the door. And now she was sitting at her desk, rocking her baby boy in her arms, and not particularly happy with what I had just told her.

"Is something wrong, Miss Domino?" she asked.

I'd already decided to tell Sooraya as much of the truth as possible, while not violating our agreement with Laura. "We've got a case. It has to do with the Egyptian."

Sooraya flinched and clutched her baby close. The Egyptian was long gone and that was the effect that just his name had on her.

"I... I can s... stay," she stuttered. "I'll help."

I shook my head. "Sooraya, we appreciate the offer, but just take a couple of days off. Don't worry, you'll be paid. We'll call you when we're done and you can come back."

Sooraya nodded - I could tell that she was relieved. Then she picked up her purse and diaper bag, put Hassim up on her shoulder, and more-or-less fled the office.

I spent the next hour making some quiet inquiries over the phone. It turned out that the police didn't have anything that pointed directly to Laura in the death of the kidnappers. In fact...

"The cops think Logan might have been the one who killed the kidnappers," I said after hanging up the phone. Actually, that was a pretty reasonable mistake on their part. Logan and Laura have a markedly similar approach to homicide.

Marie gave me a coldly amused smile. She was curled up on the easy chair, with her feet tucked under her body, flipping through a phonebook and taking notes. Her skirt was riding up enough to reveal a distracting amount of leg.

"In other words - case closed," Marie chuckled.

I nodded. Logan is the prince of the city. Some of the police might not be happy about that, but they had to live with it. In most towns, the cops are the biggest, toughest, meanest gang. Not here. Here, they aren't even close to being top dog.

The phone rang. Marie quickly snatched it up before I could. I don't think she approves of my phone manners.

"Domino Investigations. How may I help you?" she asked politely.

An unhappy, rumbling sound came out of the phone's earpiece.

Marie closed her eyes for a moment. Then she opened them and said, "Okay, Logan."

She ruefully handed me the phone. "It's his highness," she said neutrally. "And he's pissed."

I warily put the phone next to my ear. "What do you want, Logan?"

"The next time Laura is in trouble - any kind of trouble - you come right to me," Logan growled.

"We dropped her off at your place the first thing this morning!" I pointed out.

"Which was hours after she showed up on your doorstep! Which means I didn't have any lead-time to clean up this mess! The next time, you come straight to me. No delays, baths, slumber parties, hair-braiding sessions, or any other sort of girly crap. Understand?"

I felt myself getting mad, "Look, Logan..."

"No," he interrupted. "You forgot something really important, Dom. I'm not Laura's boss. She's not just somebody in my gang. I'm her father. She's my kid. When she's in trouble, I want to know about it immediately."

I hesitated. "Okay, I see your point."

"Good. Now, what's this about Laura hiring you?"

"That's none of your business, Logan. She's a client."

"She's my kid!"

"She's my client!"

The conversation was clearly heading into the, "Screw you! No, screw you!" phase. That's when Marie gently took the phone back from me.

"Do you have something to say, Logan?" she asked. Then she silently listened to Logan's furious response.

"Are you done?" she asked after Logan finally ran out of words.

The reply was short.

"Okay, Logan," Marie replied quietly, but firmly. "Laura hired us to look into something that she thinks is important. If you want the details, you should ask her. And if I decide that there's something about the case that's hinky enough that I should talk to her father, then I will. Look, sugar, it really boils down to this - do you trust us or not?"

There was a pause. And then another short reply.

"Then that settles that," Marie said matter-of-factly. "Is there anything else?"

Yet another short reply.

"Okay. Goodbye," Marie said. Then she hung up the phone, leaned over the desk to give me a quick kiss, went back to her chair, and picked up the phonebook again.

"How do you do that?" I asked plaintively.

Marie looked up and gave me a tiny smile. "You used to buddy-fuck him, Dom. I used to sleep with him. There's a difference."

I really couldn't argue with that.

We spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon making the obvious checks.

There were several Joshua Foley's or J. Foley's in the phonebook. However, they turned out to be dead ends. A quick check of the available city and county records didn't turn up anything useful. It looked like our target wasn't from around here.

Some of the reporters at the local papers make side-money by doing research for us. They started checking through the newspaper morgues, but since that was usually a long process, we'd have to be patient.

"I'm not sure the legit world has anything to tell us," Marie suggested.

"If Foley was the property of the Egyptian, and was originally from out of town, that's not too surprising," I said.

"So it's time to start talking to bad-guys?" Marie suggested.

I nodded.

My preferred source for rumors and information on the powered-thug part of the world was a big, friendly galoot named Fred Dukes. Unfortunately, he happened to be out of town. That meant I had to find another source.

"For God's sake, Domino..." Pietro said disgustedly.

Pietro is hard to pin down if he doesn't want to talk. So I have to firm with him. At the moment, we were in his apartment. Pietro was in his big brass bed, covered only by a thin sheet. I was straddling him and had a switchblade up against his throat.

Mortimer - Pietro's boyfriend - was next to him on the bed. He was handcuffed hand and foot to the bed-frame. Unless you count the welts Pietro had put on his back, butt, and thighs with a riding crop, Mortimer was naked.

"Hi, Dom!" Mortimer said to me. Since he was handcuffed face-down, it took an effort to crane his head up to look at me.

"Hey, Mort. How's it going?" I answered, all the while keeping my eyes on Pietro.

"Same old. Same old. How's it with you?"

"Business as usual."

Marie impatiently reached down and slapped Pietro on the side of the head. Even I winced. Marie was not being gentle.

"The keys to Mort's cuffs," Marie demanded. "Where are they?"

Pietro shot her an angry look, but wisely decided to cooperate. "In the nightstand drawer."

Grumbling to herself, Marie got the keys and freed Mortimer.

"Look, Rogue, it's okay," Mortimer protested. "We do this all the time."

"Goddammit, Mortimer! He's using you!" Marie exploded.

Mortimer rolled over and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his wrists and ankles, and wincing as his welts on his backside came in contact with the blanket. He was a short and scrawny little guy, but he had a surprisingly well-muscled body.

"Everybody uses other people, Rogue," Mortimer told Marie calmly. "The only question of what both sides get out of it."

Pietro and I frowned at each other in surprise. Mortimer was one of those guys who's been put on this Earth to be used and abused by others. Among other deficiencies, nobody was ever going to think of him as much of an intellect, but what he'd just said was a bit surprising in its depth.

"What you always seem to get is beaten to a pulp!" Marie pointed out.

Mort smiled tiredly at Marie, "C'mon, Rogue. It's great that you care, but... well... I don't judge you and Dom. Maybe you should do the same for me and Pietro?"

Marie sighed distractedly as she expertly cuffed Pietro's hands to the headboard of the bed. "One of these days, Pietro's going to hurt you really bad. You know that, don't you, Mort?"

"It's not like that, Marie," Mortimer said in a surprisingly gentle voice - like he was explaining something awkward about the world of adults to his kid sister.

Marie shook her head in exasperation, grabbed a pillow, and dropped it onto Mortimer's lap. "At least keep the little Mortimer covered up while we're here. And be quiet while we talk to your boyfriend."

Mortimer nodded and - keeping the pillow pressed to his lap - got out of the bed and sat down in a wooden chair in the corner of the bedroom. Meanwhile, Marie finished cuffing Pietro's ankles to the foot of the bed. That left Pietro well-secured, but I didn't bother to get off of him.

"What the hell do you want?" Pietro snarled up at me. His ice-blue eyes were filled with rage.

"I want to talk," I replied.

He shook his head. "Have you considered a phone call? This is getting old, Domino."

Still straddling him, I smiled down at Pietro and rocked my hips slightly. "Pietro, I know for a fact that at least one part of you is enjoying this."

Pietro wasn't wearing anything under the thin sheet that was all that separated his body from mine. You might say that he obviously had a firm interest in our conversation.

Closing his eyes, Pietro took a deep breath. Then he opened them again.

"It's been years since that business down in Mexico," he said as his eyes met mine again. "When are you going to let it go?"

I actually used to work for Pietro. It's a long and embarrassing story that demonstrated a lot of bad judgement on my part. It ended when Pietro abandoned me to die. After shooting it out with what seemed like a fairly big part of the Mexican army, I staggered across the border with a couple of bullets in me. After I healed up, I tracked Pietro down and delivered my resignation in person. You could see the aftermath of that conversation in a scar on Pietro's chin, another just above his right eye, and in the crook of his once-broken nose.

"Tell you what," I said bleakly. "You don't mention Mexico and I won't start cutting off parts of your body. Does that sound like a fair deal?"

Pietro had the common sense to know that he was on dangerous ground. "Okay. Okay. What do you want to know?"

"After the Egyptian died, I know you and some of the other small-timers picked over what Logan and Lehnsherr left of his operation. There was a kid named Josh Foley who was being held prisoner by the Egyptian. He was a teenager with blond hair and blue eyes. Did you happen to run into him?"

Pietro smirked at me in that way of his that pisses me off. "Yeah," he said.

"What happened?" I asked.

Pietro hesitated.

"We sold him," Mortimer said quietly from the other side of the room.

"What?" Marie asked in obvious surprise.

"Foley was one of us - he had powers. A guy was on the lookout for someone like him," Mortimer told Marie. "He gave us a thousand bucks for the kid."

Huh, so Foley had powers. We hadn't know that.

"You sold him," Marie said very flatly, her disapproval was glaringly obvious.

Mortimer couldn't meet her eyes. "I didn't like the idea... but, yeah."

"What's Foley's power?" I asked Pietro.

"He can heal people," Pietro responded shortly. "Cuts, bruises, broken bones - even bullet wounds. He'd look at them, maybe touch them, and they'd heal up in seconds. He could also cure diseases."

"Who bought him?"

Pietro sighed. "A lawyer named Brett Dawson handled the deal, but he wasn't the buyer. He was fronting for someone else."

"Any idea who?"

Pietro shook his head. "No idea. I just wanted the money, so I didn't bother to ask any questions."

None of this was ringing any bells for me. And that bothered me. I like to think I have a pretty good handle on what goes on in this town.

I looked at Marie. She shook her head. This was all new to her as well.

"How did you find out about this Dawson guy?" I asked Pietro.

Pietro shifted uncomfortably. "My father sometimes had dealings with him. Once I took off on my own, I got in contact with Dawson and he gave me a list of things he wanted. Mutants with healing powers were on a list. A year or so later, I heard that the Egyptian had someone who could cure diseases that the doctors couldn't do anything about. He sold Foley's services to the very rich. When you guys took out the Egyptian, we bee-lined to where he kept Foley locked up and grabbed him."

"Where can we find Dawson?"

Pietro laughed. "He died in an electrical accident a few months ago. So you can look for him in one of the hotter parts of hell."

I raised an eyebrow. "An electrical accident?" I repeated.

"Yeah, that struck me as weird, too," Pietro said with a malicious grin. "So, by all means, Dom. Keep investigating."

I ignored that. "How did Dawson pick up Foley?"

"We traded Foley for the money at a truckstop just north of town. Dawson had a couple of tough-guys with him. I didn't recognized them - they were out-of-towners."

Mortimer was swooshing the riding crop through the air - and Pietro was looking pretty nervous - when we finally left Pietro's apartment.

Hank McCoy is Logan's number-two guy and knows just about everything that goes on in this town. We gave him a quick phone call and asked if he knew anything about a lawyer named Brett Dawson.

"He did some work for us," Hank said thoughtfully. "Dawson was a pretty sharp lawyer, but he was also a guy with expensive tastes. Nothing too strange, just women and gambling. But he was always short of cash and looking for a quick payoff. He worked for us a couple of times, but it was just to keep some of our small fry out of jail. Logan didn't trust the guy so he was never going to get a big money case from us. Eventually Dawson figured that out and moved on."

"Why didn't Logan trust him?" I asked immediately. Logan has scarily good instincts about people. It's one of the reasons he's on the top of the heap in this town.

"He thought Dawson was playing too many angles. He worked for the Santini's back in the old days. And for a while he was doing legal work for us, Lehnsherr, and the Egyptian all at the same time. Logan told me he didn't like how that smelled."

"Did you ever hear about the Egyptian having a healer working for him?"

Hank paused before replying. "Huh... that's quite the subject change, Dom."

"Yes, it is. The healer was a guy named Josh Foley."

"I didn't know his name, but the Egyptian did have a healer. And he was a pretty good one, as I understand. He could do more than just patch up the usual bangs and bruises - he could also heal diseases. The Egyptian rented out his services, but we never had anything to do with that."

That was no surprise. Logan had been adamant about his people keeping their distance from the Egyptian. And I was pretty sure that had been a smart move.

Some leg work and few more phone calls confirmed that Dawson used to have an office in a fairly fancy office building, and a swanky apartment in one of the flashier parts of town. He died over a year ago in a freak accident involving a downed powerline. The details of his death were sketchy enough that it sounded suspicious. Dawson's office closed down when he died. His secretary had moved out of town and was now living in Denver. He had no family or business partners.

As near as I could tell, that left us with only one immediate option.

"I know what you're thinking. And it's a bad idea," Marie warned me.

"Erik can be reasonable," I countered. "I've talked to him before."

Erik Lehnsherr was Pietro's estranged father. He was also the second biggest ganglord in town - right after Logan. And it was no secret that he devoted every waking hour of his life to figuring out how to take Logan's place. The big ticking time-bomb in this burg is the conflict between Logan and Lehnsherr. Someday it was going to explode and absolutely nobody was looking forward to that day.

Logan and Lehnsherr were a study in contrasts. Logan delegated power and responsibility to his underlings. Lehnsherr ran everything from the top. Logan was wild and feral. Lehnsherr was a formal and old-fashioned kind of man. Logan started his gang on the docks. Lehnsherr first appeared in the business district.

On the other hand, they also had a few things in common. Both were mutants. Both were smart. Both were men that you didn't want to cross. And both had ruthlessly seized the opportunity Prohibition had given them to make truly obscene amounts of money, while simultaneously grabbing lots and lots of power.

I dropped a dime into a payphone and called a number that not too many people know.

Lehnsherr agreed to meet us, but he imposed a few conditions. Since we were the ones asking for the meeting, we were forced to play ball.

We were going to meet at Mason's, which is arguably the best restaurant in town. However, it's a formal and stuffy kind of place. If you want to get in, you have to dress right.

I hate wearing a dress.

I had on a long black evening gown that Marie got me for my birthday a few years ago. I normally only wear it once or twice a year - and Marie usually has to bribe me with promises of exceptionally exotic sex in order to get me to do even that.

I just hoped that I wouldn't turn an ankle in the high-heels I was wearing. I wasn't used to them, either.

On the other hand, Marie looked amazing. She was wearing a green and yellow number from one of the most popular designers in the city. Heads were turning all around us and the valet who parked our car had a hard time speaking coherently as he stared at her.

"Why the hell do you bother with me?" I asked with an amused shake of my head.

"Don't be silly, Dom. You look great," Marie said. She'd done something with her makeup that I couldn't even begin to duplicate. She looked like an elegant lady who did that sort of thing all the time. I looked like an over-dressed gun-moll who was better with a handgun than with a tube of lipstick. Which was the truth, I suppose.

Once we got inside, the Maitre'de greeted us by name and immediately took us to Lehnsherr's table.

Lehnsherr stood to greet us.

"Domino," he said as he kissed my hand. I suppose it was possible he'd finally gotten over that back-alley incident with the baseball bat. That had been some years back, when I was working for the U.S. government. Lehnsherr was newly arrived in this country - and already on the shady side with the law.

Then Lehnsherr's eyes went to Marie.

"Rogue..." he said quietly, a gentle smile on his face that I'd definitely never seen before.

Marie smiled back at him and then leaned over and kissed Lehnsherr on the cheek.

"Erik, it's so good to see you again," she purred. Her southern accent was suddenly more apparent. That was a sure sign she was putting on the charm. But the warmth in her eyes certainly didn't seem faked.

What the hell?

"I didn't know you knew one other," I said once we sat down.

Yes, it took some effort on my part to make sure that didn't come out sounding incredibly bitchy.

Actually, it shouldn't have been a surprise that Marie and Lehnsherr were acquainted. Marie had spent a lot of time in Logan's gang. In fact, she used to be a pretty trusted member. So she and Lehnsherr should have run into each other somewhere along the line, but the way they were acting towards each other was surprisingly friendly.

"I used to carry messages between Logan and Erik," Marie explained to me.

Marie was obviously enjoying how surprised and uncomfortable I was. I began to wonder if I could convince Pietro to loan me his riding crop.

Probably not. He'd seemed a bit angry with me when we left his apartment.

"Rogue was one of the few of Logan's miscreants with whom I was willing to talk," Lehnsherr chuckled. "I got in the habit of taking her to dinner when we met. It gave us time to discuss something other than business. I enjoy our time together. I hope she feels the same way."

What was even weirder about this was that the charmingly demure amid mildly flirtatious Marie was also the person who kept reminding me just how dangerous Erik Lehnsherr really was.

Erik ordered wine - we weren't consulted about the choice - as he and Marie chatted about everything from politics to the weather. I added a few comments, but I was very much an outsider in their conversation.

Dinner consisted of game-hens with a sage and parsley glaze, backed up by potatoes and cabbage in some sort of spicy sauce. It was outstanding. Dessert was a cherry cobbler accompanied by an alarmingly dark coffee. It was also excellent. And that was when Lehnsherr finally decided to talk business.

"I understand you have some questions?" he asked.

Marie glanced at me. Obviously, a proper Southern belle wouldn't sully herself with such masculine issues.

"There was a shyster named Dawson," I began. "Before he died, he did some work for you - among other people."

Lehnsherr nodded his head.

"Why would he want a buy a mutant?" I asked.

Lehnsherr paused and then put down his coffee cup. His face was expressionless. I'd just scored some kind of hit.

"A mutant, you say?" Erik said idly.

It was time to be careful in terms of what I said. "Yes. A mutant with healing powers."

Erik shook his head, still trying to act barely interested. "I wasn't aware of that."

"Any idea what he was doing?"

"I'll see what I can find out," Lehnsherr said with a thin smile that was as hard and cold as a diamond at the north pole.

I didn't ask any more questions. I was already worried that I might have given too much away.

The drive back to our apartment was silent at first. I had a lot going through my mind and Marie read my mood. We had Foley's scent, but I was worried that we wouldn't get much more. He might not even be in the country.

And there was something else.

"Lehnsherr's obviously up to something," I told Marie.

"I know," Marie replied. "The idea of Dawson buying a mutant really bothered him."

"I understand that, but it really seemed to get to him. Why?"

Marie was silent for a while before she answered. "Erik doesn't like the idea of ordinary people using mutants. He thinks that normal folk and mutants won't be able to get along in the long run. He's sure there's going to be a war and that one side won't survive."

Turning her head, Marie looked out the car window at the buildings passing by. I think she didn't want me to see the expression on her face.

"I'm not sure that Erik is wrong about that," she added softly.

"I know," I said slowly. "There are those anti-mutant laws springing up all over Europe - and in some places here in the States. This city is pretty tolerant of our kind. That's why so many of us live here. But it wasn't always that way. There used to be a lot of trouble. Even some lynchings."

Marie turned to face me. There was a strange smile was on her face.

"Say it," she ordered.

"Say what?" I asked.

"Tell me why this dirty, grimy, ugly, vicious city is so willing to live-and-let-live with our kind. Go on, Dom. Say it out loud. I want to hear you finally admit it."

I didn't say anything as we drove a few more blocks. I don't like being put into a corner - even by Marie. But I had to admit that she had a point. It was something I didn't like to talk about. The idea galled me.

But just as I don't like being cornered, I also don't think much of people who won't admit the obvious.

"It's because of Logan," I said quietly. "Logan runs this city. And he makes damn sure that people like us can survive here. He makes sure that the anti-mutant and anti-human nutjobs don't get a foothold here."

Marie smiled and curled up next to me, her eyes bright and eager. I shivered as she pressed her lips against the hollow of my neck.

"Honest girls are good girls. And good girls get rewarded," Marie whispered in my ear as she drew the hem of my dress up over my lap. Then she adeptly hooked my panties all the way down to my knees. Marie is startlingly good at undressing women. She's been doing it a lot longer than I have.

"This isn't a good idea," I warned her desperately as the shoulder straps of my gown slipped off my shoulders. "I'll end up wrecking the car."

Of course, I didn't really mean that. At the moment, there was nothing more important to me in the world than that Marie should keep doing what she was doing.

I gasped as Marie ran her tongue along the outside edge of my ear. Simultaneously, her strong hands began pushing my thighs apart.

"I don't see how that can happen," Marie whispered, her breath intimately warming the side of my face. "After all, Dom, aren't you just so damned lucky?"

By the time I found a safe and out-of-the-way place to park the car, I was naked.

When we got to the office the next day, I felt a pang when I saw that Sooraya wasn't there. I'd gotten used to her. She was a good kid and a great employee. I even liked her baby - Hassim was a quiet and well-behaved boy.

Before she became my partner, Marie used to be my secretary. Without a hitch, she effortlessly slid back into her early-morning secretarial routine. Making coffee. Sorting the mail. Doing some filing. Giving me a long kiss after putting a cup of coffee and the important mail on my desk...

Okay, Sooraya doesn't do the part with the kissing. That part is reserved for Marie.

"Is there anything else I can do for the boss?" Marie asked quietly. Her tone of voice carried a world of suggestion. How she could still be randy after last night was beyond me.

"You could do some more research on Brett Dawson," I suggested.

Marie gave me a pout and sat down at Sooraya's desk. However, the phone rang before she could begin. Marie picked up the phone and exchanged a few words. Then she quickly reached for a legal pad and began scratching on it with a freshly sharpened pencil.

Since I was momentarily as useless as the proverbial tits on a boar, I kept my mouth shut and sipped my coffee. I tried to do a quick review of possible leads, but my mind kept returning to the highlights from last night. Marie had done her formidable best to make it as spectacular as possible.

Marie finally put down the phone and turned towards me.

"That was our reporter friend at the 'Daily Herald'," she reported. "A Joshua Foley vanished from Buffalo about five years ago. He was twelve years old at the time. There was no ransom note and no indication that he was a runaway. And his description matches what we've been given - blond hair and blue eyes. A picture of Foley is on its way by courier."

I frowned wordlessly. Everything fit, but I'd like to have confirmation that the Josh Foley who vanished from Buffalo five years ago was the one who ended up as the Egyptian's property.

I reached for the phone on my desk.

Emma Frost is a psychic rich bitch. And maybe I was a little in love with her.

It's a long story.

"Dom," she purred over the phone. Emma's voice is a study in high-class sensuality. And if you were smart, you also noticed the dangerous undertones.

"Hello, Emma," I responded. Still at Sooraya's desk, Marie rolled her eyes. Things are more comfortable between Emma and Marie than they used to be, but Emma still drives Marie a little crazy.

"How's your girlfriend doing?" Emma asked as she simultaneously put a psychic image in my head of Marie dressed in a scanty red dress, leaning up against a dockside lamp-post as she whistled at passing sailors.

"She's fine," I replied, trying my best to keep a straight face.

"How can I help you?" Emma asked. The image in my head shifted to one in which Emma and I were together in a bathtub filled with champagne. Of course, what we were doing to each other in the tub couldn't exactly be described as bathing.

"It's about the Egyptian," I said. And all of a sudden, Emma's psychic game-playing came to an end.

"What is it?," Emma said unhappily.

"Did you ever hear anything about the Egyptian offering the services of a healer? The kind of healer who could do things that a doctor couldn't do?"

Emma sighed. "Yes. The cost was tremendous, but he supposedly had someone who could cure the incurable."

"Do you know anyone who took the Egyptian up on that?"

"Yes."

"I need to talk to them."

Emma seemed to think it over before answering. "I think that might be possible."

Percy Andrews was a pretty good advertisement for a communist revolution. He was genetically rich, handsome in a vapid kind of way, boundlessly arrogant, spoiled rotten, and smugly self-satisfied.

I don't know what pressure Emma used to get Andrews to meet with us on such short notice, but it worked.

We met him in one of the fancier breakfast places in the Garden district. After we sat down at Andrews' table, a skeptical-looking waitress put menus in front of Marie and I. Marie's eyes went wide when she saw the prices. I didn't even bother to look.

"So you two are private eyes," Andrews marveled at us. Seating next to him was a buxom and pretty brunette who was in full makeup and wearing an expensive Van Dyne dress despite the early hour. I've seen her kind before - a rich man's doxie taking her turn squeezing whatever she could out of a moron with money. She dismissed me immediately as no real rival, but her eyes were cold as she examined Marie.

"Domino Investigations," I said as I dropped a business card on the table in front of Andrews. "I'm Domino. This is my partner, Marie."

"Also known as Rogue," Andrews said with a self-assured smile as he interestedly examined Marie. "A former member of Logan's gang. And once very close to the man himself, from what I've heard."

The brunette blinked in surprise and then tried to cover that by sipping from her glass of breakfast champagne.

"I was hoping you could help us with a case we're working on," I said.

Andrews took some time off from mentally undressing Marie and raised an eyebrow in my direction.

I took a photo of Foley out of my jacket pocket and slid it towards Andrews. The courier from our reporter at the "Daily Herald" had dropped it off just an hour ago. Copies of the picture had been distributed up and down the east-coast when Josh Foley first vanished.

Andrews picked up the picture and examined it disinterestedly. But it seemed to me that something in his eyes shifted.

"I can't say I know him," he said dismissively. He was being a bit too casual.

"Look again," I said, trying to be at least minimally polite. "He was kidnapped five years ago. He's done some growing up since then, so add a few years."

Andrews shook his head and handed my the picture. "Sorry, I have no clue who he is."

"You might have seen him back when he was working for the Egyptian."

Andrews gave me a hard look. Whatever he knew or didn't know, he wasn't going to cooperate. And the fact we were in public set a limit as to how far I could go in talking to him. But it was obvious that he had seen Foley somewhere along the line. That was reasonable confirmation that the Foley we were looking for was the guy who vanished from Buffalo a few years back.

We said our goodbyes.

Andrews' girl caught up to us on the sidewalk, just before we got into our car.

"Can I see that picture?" she asked hurriedly. She'd been running in high heels and was a little out of breath. Her voice still had a trace of the Boston accent that she'd probably spent years trying to lose.

Without a word, I handed her the picture. She examined it carefully, turning it so the light caught it better.

"His name is Josh," she said. "He's got powers."

"How do you know him?" Marie asked.

The girl made a disgusted face. "Percy picked up a disease - and then gave it to me. It was the kind of thing that doctors can't do much about. Percy paid the Egyptian to have Josh lay hands on us."

There was a trace of almost religious awe in her last few words.

"It worked?" Marie asked.

She nodded.

"Ever hear from Josh after he healed you and Andrews?" I asked.

"No, but you can tell Josh's folks that he was alive at least a year ago. Maybe he's still in town."

I shook my head. "We're not sure about that."

She frowned at that. "Hey, he had a girl with him. Maybe she can help you find him."

"What girl?" I asked.

"An Arab gal. She wore a dumpy black dress and a veil. The only part of her you could see where her hands and eyes. She did have great eyes, though. Look, I gotta get back. I told Percy that I was going to the bathroom. He's going to wonder if I'm gone too long."

"Wait! Did you hear the girl's name?" I heard myself ask - even though I already knew the answer.

The girl frowned, "Josh called her... Sura? Something like that."

"Sooraya?" Marie asked softly.

"Yeah! That's it!"

"Why are you helping us?" I asked.

She gave me a long look and then shook her head. "Josh saved my life. Maybe it ain't much of a life, but it's all I've got."

The drive back to the office was pretty quiet.

Marie spent most of the ride staring at Josh Foley's picture.

"Once you look for it, you can see the resemblance," she finally said.

I nodded. Sooraya's baby had dark skin - though not as dark as Sooraya's. But you could see Foley around Hassim's eyes and in his chin and mouth.

Josh Foley was the father of Sooraya's baby.

The door to our office was open. Marie and I entered with guns in our hands.

Our esteemed client was sitting in my chair. She was eating an ice-cream cone.

"I need a progress report," Laura said as she examined us very seriously.

I gritted my teeth for a good ten seconds before answering.

"I need you to get your skinny butt of my chair. And I need to never break into my office again. And I need you to be at least minimally polite when talking to your elders. Not minding all of the above will result in me needing to give you a bare-ass spanking. Understand?"

Laura actually looked alarmed as she got out of my chair. I reclaimed mastery of my office by flopping into my chair.

Marie, on the other hand, gave Laura a hug and a kiss. She really needs to stop reinforcing Laura's bad behavior.

Laura looked pretty flustered. Good.

"We know about Sooraya and Josh," Marie told Laura. "And we know that he's the father of her baby."

Laura frowned. She obviously didn't like that.

I couldn't help but smile grimly. "Laura, we're investigators. Our job is to find things out. You can't control what we'll learn once we go to work."

Laura thought about that, nodded in agreement, and then asked, "Do you know where Josh is?"

"No. He was snatched right after the Egyptian got croaked."

"Any idea who got him?" Laura asked.

"A shady lawyer named Dawson," Marie supplied, "but it sounds like Dawson was working for someone else. We don't know who."

"Tell you what," I told Laura. "Since the cat is out of the bag with Josh and Sooraya, why don't you just tell us what you know?"

Laura thought that over, then nodded.

"The Egyptian was trying to breed mutants," she said.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you should understand what someone is saying, but something about what you'd just heard was so weird or wrong that the words refused to make any sense?

"Breed mutants?" I repeated slowly. What Laura had said just didn't want to come together. The expression on Marie's face was just as puzzled. She was having the same problem I was.

"Like breeding a horse or a dog," Laura explained.

"Wait a minute..." Marie interrupted, "you mean the Egyptian had Sooraya sleep with Josh? So she would have a mutant baby?"

Laura nodded.

"Why?" I demanded. This wasn't making any damned sense.

"For food," Laura answered unhesitatingly.

The Egyptian had been an evil bastard. In fact, the word 'monster' fit pretty well. It was a terrible fate to be the property of the Egyptian.

Long ago, just before we killed the Egyptian, Sooraya told me that the Egyptian thought that mutants 'tasted better' when he psychically feed from them. So apparently the Egyptian had decided to breed his own food animals.

The thought of a baby in the clutches of the Egyptian made my stomach turn. I was seriously thinking that it was time for a drink.

"What else do you know?" I asked Laura. I was a bit amazed at how calm and sane my voice sounded.

Laura shrugged. "For the last few months she was with the Egyptian, Sooraya didn't work as a whore. Instead, she stayed with Josh. They had a room in the house where the Egyptian lived. The Egyptian made sure they had sex together."

For a long, drawn-out moment, we just stared at Laura.

"Why didn't Sooraya tell us about this?" Marie finally asked.

Laura's response was eerily calm. "She's ashamed. So she tells everyone that she was a prostitute for the Egyptian right until the end. And she doesn't talk about Hassim's father."

Welcome to the world of the Egyptian, where telling people that you were a pocket-change hooker was preferable to the truth that he had been breeding you like an animal.

"She told you what happened," I pointed out.

"She tells me things she doesn't tell anyone else."

"Why do you want us to find Josh?" Marie asked.

Laura paused for a moment, as if putting her thoughts together. "Remember when I told you that I was going to marry Sooraya someday?"

Marie and I both nodded. Laura had said that back when we first found her and Sooraya - she said she was going to take care of both Sooraya and her baby. At the time, it had struck us as a combination of a child's conceit and Laura's lack of knowledge of how the world actually worked. It was both strangely beautiful and strangely sad.

For the first time, Laura seemed uncomfortable. And she couldn't meet our eyes. "I don't think Sooraya wants me to be her husband."

We didn't say anything. It was Laura's show.

Laura looked at her hands and flexed her fingers. For a second, I thought she was going to show us her claws.

"Sooraya likes me. And maybe she loves me. But it's not the way I want it to be. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I said quietly. Marie just nodded.

"But Sooraya loves Josh. So I want you to find him. I want Sooraya to be happy."

Marie stirred uneasily. I could tell what was bothering her.

"Laura, are you sure about that?" I asked carefully. "Sooraya would have every reason in the world to associate Josh with something she'd rather forget."

Laura's eerie green eyes met mine.

"I'm sure," Laura said with total certainly.

Our client was gone. And that left Marie and I alone to discuss where the case was going.

The problem was that the case was hitting a brick wall.

Working a longshot, Marie made a few quick phone inquiries and determined that Joshua Foley wasn't back with his family in Buffalo. That hadn't been likely, but you never know. Sometimes, by random chance as near as I can tell, the universe pukes up good news.

"Everything is dead-ending with Brett Dawson," I told Marie. "He's the guy who bought Josh, but it's no secret that Dawson was fronting for someone else. But after Dawson and a pair of goons picked up Josh, the trail goes cold."

"And it's a good bet that Josh isn't even in town any more," Marie suggested.

I nodded. "Nobody has heard anything about a currently available mutant healer-for-hire. Also, Pietro didn't recognize the muscle who was with Dawson when they picked up Josh. Whatever else you might want to say about him, Pietro does know all of the thugs, losers, and low-lifes in this town. So they weren't from around here. Which means that Josh is unlikely to still be in the city."

"What about talking to Xavier?" Marie suggested. "He has some trick for tracking mutants."

I shook my head. "The one time Xavier did that for us, he had problems because he was searching the entire city. If we go to him for help, we'll be asking him to search the eastern seaboard. Or the entire damned continent."

Marie hesitated before making her next suggestion. "The Tinman?"

I took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. We didn't really know the limits of what Doc Strange could do, but...

"Not yet," I said slowly.

Marie nodded. I could see the relief in her eyes.

I drummed my fingers on my desk, trying to think of some angle we could pursue.

"I think we're out of luck," I told Marie. She nodded her head regretfully.

Then the phone rang.

Marie met my eyes. Then she shook her head, got up, and walked over to the coffeepot. She muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like, "If you can't be good, you might as well be lucky."

"It's not like I can control it!" I growled in her direction.

"Just answer the darn phone!" Marie snarled as she refreshed her coffee cup.

It was Emma.

"How's your case going?" she asked. Her voice was dangerously nonchalant.

"What the hell are you up to, Emma?" I asked bluntly.

Emma sighed. "I have something for you. But we had better talk about it in person. When can we meet?"

"Now," I shot back.

I could almost see her smile. The impression of quick kiss on my forehead appeared in my mind.

Emma hadn't been in our office for quite some time. In fact, she'd only been there once before - back when we first met. She had walked in the door and told me quite a few pretty, pretty, lies. I almost died chasing Emma's lies.

Then, a little while later, it was Emma's turn to find her life hanging by a thread. I saved Emma. And that was after the part where she stripped me naked, chained me to a concrete floor, used me like a cheap whore, and made me like it.

Like I said, our relationship is kind of complex.

Emma ignored Marie and smiled at me. Then she gestured to the man who was with her.

"I believe you have already met," Emma said with a smile that bordered on the wicked.

Tony Stark grinned at us. "Hello, ladies. It's good to see you again."

Stark is the real deal. He was a pilot, an adventurer, a genius, an inventor, and a world-renowned businessman. He was what guys like Andrews liked to pretend they are. Andrews was more or less just playing with grandpa's money, fiddling around the edges and making more money as long as he let compound interest do the work and didn't actually try anything on his own. Meanwhile, Stark was taking what he'd inherited and making it into an empire that was going to change the world.

He was also one hell of a handsome man. And the arrogant bastard knew it.

Marie and I once did a job that involved Stark and another ridiculously rich guy named Wayne. By the time it was over, everyone involved had agreed it would be best to keep it a secret. That was how we knew Tony Stark.

I frowned skeptically at Emma and Stark. "So what do two of the richest people on the Eastern seaboard want with a pair of gumshoes?"

"We're here to save your lives," Stark said calmly.

Marie and I exchanged a long look.

"You've stumbled onto something big," Emma added. "Something very dangerous."

Marie smiled. I think I managed not to do the same.

"I mean it," Emma said as anger flashed in her eyes. "This could easily get worse than that business with Doctor Banner."

Marie's smile vanished. My eyes narrowed as I closely examined Emma's face. The Banner case had been spectacularly ugly.

Stark spoke up. "That lawyer you've been asking about. Brett Dawson? He worked for an outfit called Amalgamated International Mechanics. Those who've heard of them just call them AIM. And they are really bad news."

"I've never heard of them," I said slowly.

Stark's face was grim. "They're an American-European organization of scientists. Although 'mad scientists' might be a better way of putting it. They're the people to go to if you want to buy a death ray, or a radiation bomb, or an airplane that flies faster than anything the RAF or the Liftoff currently has in the sky. And you want to stay the hell away from them, Domino."

"They're that bad?"

Stark nodded. "Worse. AIM is more than a little crazy, but they aren't a bunch of kooky professors bumbling around the laboratory. They kill people who get in their way - and they're good at it."

"How do you know about them?" Marie asked.

"I'm an industrialist, ladies. Remember? And Stark Industries builds everything from warships to toasters. If I have a design that's on the edge of current technology, then AIM wants to steal it. If you live in my world, then you know about AIM. Emma is in the same boat."

Emma just nodded grimly.

"Why the hell didn't you tell us this sooner?" I asked Emma.

"I wasn't sure! I had to talk to Tony and confirm that what was going on was actually about AIM! And you certainly wouldn't have listened to me if I'd asked you to put the case on hold!"

Well... she was right about the last part.

Stark spoke up again. "We've always known that AIM has an interest in this town. We thought it was limited to the Frost Enterprises research division, and the Stark Industries shipyard and aircraft manufacturing plant on Independence island. But it turns out that there's a third target that we're only now becoming aware of - the large number of mutants who live in this town."

"Why does AIM care about mutants?" Marie asked.

Emma gave me a grim smile. "Mutants are a mystery, Marie. Nobody knows why they've suddenly begun to appear, and they can do things that should be impossible. We are walking, talking, contradictions of the modern world's understanding of biology and physics. Of course an organization of outlaw scientists would be interested in us. We should have seen that before."

About then, AIM tried to kill us.

Emma opened her mouth to say something more - and then her eyes rolled up suddenly and she collapsed to the office floor without a sound.

I instantly drew my .45 semi-automatic and aimed it at door. Marie lunged for her purse. Stark backed away from the center of the room, groping under his well-tailored jacket for a weapon.

The lights in my office flickered out. Marie and Stark cursed simultaneously.

I heard the office door swing open - I deliberately leave it a bit squeaky - and I put three quick shots into the center, lower right, and lower left of where I knew the door was. In the muzzle flashes, I could see a guy with some kind of submachine gun absorb at least two slugs. He screamed and fell backwards. In the brief glimpse I caught of him, he seemed to be wearing some kind of goggles and a padded vest.

Then I pivoted in my chair and slid to the floor. Just before my ass hit the carpet, I put two more shots into the center of the open window behind my desk. That was purely speculative. I was hoping Marie and Stark would control the front door, while I dealt with the only other obvious route into the office.

The guy who had been coming through the window staggered and slumped. A quick series of shotgun blasts roared out from him, punching holes into the far wall and the ceiling. I fell flat to the floor in horror - dear God, did he really have a fully automatic shotgun?

Marie's .44 revolver barked. She was covering the door.

The light fixture in the ceiling exploded and quivering lances of electricity slashed from it and throughout the office. The office went from darkness lit by occasional flashes of gunfire to pure incandescent-white illumination.

Behind me, Marie screamed, and I think I shouted, "No!".

Lightning ripped across my desk as I rolled to my side and finished off the guy slumped in the window with a shot to the head. His brains splattered against the window frame... and into the second guy behind him out on the fire escape. The second guy recoiled in horror and I lined up a shot on him with the last round in my pistol. Then my gun was caressed by one of the bolts of lightning that was still whipping around my office. The world turned into white-hot pain.

Then the lightning passed and I collapsed onto my face. I heard the thudding of a submachine gun from the other side of my desk. I couldn't move as my muscles convulsed and heaved, but I managed to lift my head. I saw the second shooter in the window finally push his dead friend out of the way. He carefully aimed his shotgun at me...

Then his throat opened up in a shower of blood. Behind the now collapsing gunslinger, I caught a brief glimpse of little Laura. Her claws were out and they gleamed silver-bright in the lights of the street. Her face was oddly serene.

Then another bolt of electricity hit me. And everything went dark.

"Where are we?" I asked. My voice sounding strangely distant. Everything felt wrong. I tried to move, but my body didn't seem to want to do much of anything.

"A house I keep near downtown," Emma said as she leaned over me. She took a moment to check my pulse and examine my eyes. Her own eyes were badly bloodshot and she had a nasty bruise on the side of her face.

"Marie?" I asked. My heart was in my mouth.

"She's fine," Emma reassured me. "She got knocked out by electricity - just like you."

"How about you?"

Emma shrugged disgustedly. "Fine, but a little embarrassed. These AIM agents had a device that emits psychic interference. Normally it's used for psychic defense, but they maxed it out and hit me when I didn't have my defenses up. It knocked me for a loop."

I tried to sit up and failed. "How'd we get out of my office alive?"

From off to the side I heard Stark's voice. He sounded tired. "Well, it really helped that you took down the leading two gunmen in the first second of the fight. You're pretty fast on the draw, Domino."

"There were more of them," I said as I stared at the ceiling and waited for my arms and legs to cooperate.

"Marie got the second guy who was coming through the door," Stark continued. "Then the electrical fixture on the ceiling went nuts - a neat trick that I'm going to figure out how to do, by the way - and knocked Marie flat. Fortunately, I had a weapon out by that time and I dealt with the next few guys who were trying to come through the door. Meanwhile, your esteemed client kept the window and the fire-escape under control."

Gritting my teeth, I finally managed to force myself to sit up. My body was slowly beginning to get with the program.

We were in an unfamiliar bedroom that was nowhere near as opulent as I would have expected from Emma. Marie and I were laying on the bed. Emma was sitting in a wooden chair right next to me. Laura - splattered with blood yet again - was curled up in an upholstered chair. Stark stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. He looked as dapper as ever and for a moment I wondered how he managed to get through the fight without so much as a hair out of place.

"So that was AIM," I said as I leaned over to look at Marie. Her eyes were closed, but her breathing was easy. Her blouse was singed on the right shoulder and side. She was scorched around the edges, but somehow she didn't seem to have any serious burns. Electricity is a funny thing.

Stark nodded. "They had futuristic submachine guns and shotguns, bullet-resistant body armor, goggles that allowed them to see in conditions of darkness and extreme light, a psychic interference projector, and something that caused electricity to run amok. Yeah, that was AIM. So tell me, Dom, was it luck that every shot you put into an AIM goon just happened to hit them where they didn't have armor? Or are you just that good?"

"The answer to that question is 'yes'," I groaned after I leaned over and kissed Marie.

Stark smiled. "Why don't you and Marie come work for me? Tell me what's the most you've ever made in any given year as a PI and I'll double that as your annual salary."

I let out a pained laugh. "That's tempting, Stark, but I should warn you that I have a disturbing history as a bodyguard. The first time I did it, I married the guy that I was guarding. The second time, I ended up sleeping with the boss. The lack of professionalism I've displayed is truly amazing."

Stark's smile turned into a wry grin. "If you're trying to discourage me, it's not working."

Emma shook her head. "Don't waste your time, Tony. I've offered Domino positions as my head of corporate security, personal bodyguard, chief investigator, and concubine. She's turned them all down."

"The concubine one sounded kind of fun," I said thoughtfully. "But Marie said no."

"Damn right," Marie groaned as she stirred feebly and put a hand on her forehead.

"And I think Jean would have had a problem with it as well," I added with a ragged chuckle. Jean Grey is Emma's live-in girlfriend. Like Emma, she's both insanely beautiful and a powerful psychic.

"Actually, Jean seemed rather intrigued by the idea," Emma said thoughtfully. "She had some interesting ideas on how we should dress you. My favorite involved the makeup and jewelry of a royal slave-girl from Egypt's twelfth dynasty - and nothing else."

"Jean is spending too much time around you, Emma," Marie said with a groggy and painful shake of her head as she slowly sat up.

I looked at Emma. "Do you have any whiskey in this place?" I asked.

Emma shook her head, but Stark immediately pulled a silver flask out of his jacket pocket, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to me.

"I provisionally accept the possibility that you might be an okay person," I told Stark solemnly as I gratefully took an appreciative sip. It was the good stuff.

"I'm provisionally and possibly flattered," Stark responded placidly.

I handed Marie the flask.

Laura spoke up from her chair. "We're still no closer to finding Josh."

I shook my head. "Not true."

"Why?" Laura asked curiously.

"Because now we know that AIM has people here in town. We can work with that."

Then I paused and cocked my head at Laura. "Have you been keeping an eye on us?"

"No," she said. "After I left, I stopped at the news-stand across the street. I was looking at the comic-books when I saw some men climbing the fire-escape that goes up to your window."

"Don't read that trash," I said disjointedly as I gingerly rubbed my temples. "Comics will rot your brain and turn you into a juvenile delinquent."

Marie and I were finally able to walk. We were standing on the sidewalk outside of the office building where we have our office. The place was ringed with cops. Detectives spoke in low voices to one another while making a point of not speaking to us. Bodies covered with bloody blankets were laid out in a neat row on the sidewalk.

Logan was with us. Laura was next to him and he had a hand on her shoulder. She had her eyes closed and was resting her head against his arm. Scott Summers and Bobby Drake - two of Logan's heavy hitters - loomed ominously in the background. Raven and Yuriko stayed closer to their boss. They were Logan's bodyguards.

A police captain was quietly talking to Logan while asking absolutely no questions about the presence of a blood-soaked child. A young cop walked across the street and handed Laura a cup of cocoa. Reporters were being kept behind a police line, but news photographers were taking pictures in a nigh-constant flurry of popping flashbulbs - although they were careful not to take any pictures of us.

That's just how this town works.

Logan looked at me. "Thanks for the call," he said.

"You're welcome," I replied. Then I turned to the police captain.

"I need to take a look at the bodies - and maybe talk to your detectives," I told the captain. I tried not to be too abrupt. Publicly kissing Logan's ring couldn't be easy for a peace officer. Even a crooked one.

The captain just gave me a stony nod.

The Coroner was a political appointee and the typical detective in this town is chosen for his connections to City Hall - not for skill at solving crimes. So, no big surprise, I didn't get much out of the so-called experts.

That left the bodies.

There wasn't much to work with. The gunmen were all young and in good shape. I didn't recognize any of them. One had a Marine Corps tattoo on his arm. Another had a long-healed pair of bullet wounds in his legs. They'd entered the fight clean, with nothing like wallets, keys, spare change, cigarettes, matchbooks, stray papers, or anything else that might be a clue as to their identity. That was an unusual level of professionalism.

The lack of keys was interesting. I assumed there must have been vehicles with drivers that delivered the shooters, and were supposed to haul them home when the job was done. They'd obviously vanished when the hit didn't go as planned.

Two beat cops were interestedly rummaging through the weapons and equipment that had been collected from the dead. I wondered how many of those fancy guns were disappear before they got to the station. One of them was holding something looked like one of those walky-talky radios that the army is experimenting with. He was turning it over and over in his hands, obviously not sure what to make of it.

"Let me see that," I said.

Without a word the cop handed the gizmo to me. It had dials and gauges on it, but it obviously wasn't a radio. And it stank of ozone.

Electricity.

"Laura!" I called.

"No," Logan said flatly.

"C'mon, Logan. It's the only lead we have!"

Logan shook his head. "I'm taking Laura home and she's gonna to spend the next few days where I can keep an eye on her. Whether they deserve it or not, the number of bodies stacking up around her is starting to look like the Battle of the Somme."

Laura obviously wasn't happy about that. For that matter, Raven and Yuriko didn't seem too thrilled, either.

"Then you do it," I suggested.

"Which part of 'taking Laura home' didn't you understand?" he growled at me.

"Both of you stop fighting," Marie said angrily. "There's another way."

Then Marie grabbed Logan by his tie, leaned into him, and pressed her lips against his.

The sun was setting and we were a considerable distance from the center of town. As businesses closed for the night and working men went home, the streets were becoming steadily emptier. That was making things easier for us.

Marie crouched in the middle of the street and then leaned over to sniff the pavement. "This way," she said, nodding in a northerly direction.

I nodded.

Marie agilely got to her feet and grinned at me. She had the slightly elongated canines of both Logan and Laura. But her swagger, stance, and eyes were pure Logan.

Especially the eyes. And the way Marie was looking at me...

"Still not talking to me?" she asked. The grin on her face had a lot of Logan in it as well.

"I'm okay," I said shortly.

"It was the only way, Dom."

"You kissed him for a good thirty seconds! And there was tongue! And you had your hands all over each other!"

"Yep. Now, should we go over one more time what you and Emma did back in the Inner Circle case? I'd like to hear how kissing Logan was worse than that."

"It's not the same thing and you know it! And besides, I've seen you absorb someone's powers before without lip-locking them. You do it all the time."

Marie shook her head. "You know it works better when I kiss somebody. It's faster and deeper. And with some people it's a lot more fun."

I bit back an angry retort. I was being silly. And I knew I was being silly.

Marie smiled again. "But you're right - I've been a very bad girl. And after this is all done, I'll just have to be punished. Where do you suppose we can get a riding crop?"

"An equerry supply store," I said shortly.

Marie looked at me with narrowed eyes. "That was a fast answer."

"I've given the matter some thought."

Marie gave me another long - and perhaps wary - look. Then we got back onto the sidewalk and began moving again. The distinctive odor of the electricity-calling gizmo the AIM goons used on us had permeated one of their vehicles. Marie was using the enhanced senses she'd borrowed from Logan to follow it back to its source. We were basically doing the same thing the Laura had done when she tracked the vehicle of the creeps who'd kidnapped Tommy Oberlin.

I tried to keep my mind on the case. But Marie was now part herself and part Logan. And I have to admit that I wanted to lick every inch of that.

"You know, I can smell how horny you are," Marie said dreamily as she walked beside me, her high heels clicking on the sidewalk. "It's like... like... the time we were on that empty beach and it was so hot and we went skinny-dipping. And there was the sea and you tasted so hot and wild..."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Focus," I told Marie.

"I'm very focused," Marie said as she gave me the kind of look that a hungry wolf gives an unwary deer.

"Later," I said.

"Damn right," Marie whispered.

*Would you two tarts stop that?* Emma told us psychically. She was in a car a few blocks behind us. *Otherwise you can deal with AIM on your own and I'll go back home and spend the rest of the night with Jean.*

*Sorry,* I thought back at Emma. *We forgot you were there.*

It was well after sunset and as clear of a night as you could expect near the city. A yellowish half-moon was struggling its way over the horizon.

The local AIM facility didn't look like much. It was a garage near the highway that had been knocked out of business in the earliest days of the Depression. You can see it from the highway and I'd driven past it many times. There'd been a "For Sale" sign in the window for quite some time. The sign was gone now.

There were several cars neatly lined up in the parking lot. Marie's nose said that one of them was the car we'd been tracking. Despite the lateness of the hour, the lights were on in the garage.

*Emma? Can you see this?* I asked.

*I'm on that hill west of you - overlooking the garage,* Emma replied. *However, I can't sense anything inside. They must have another psychic interference device operating inside.*

As we watched, the garage's front door opened and a guy dressed in bright yellow mechanic's coveralls walked outside.

"That color really doesn't go well with villainy," Marie said dryly.

"It does kind of stand out," I conceded.

The guy in the coveralls checked the doors of the parked cars to make sure they were locked. Then he walked back inside the garage.

*I think I know where Foley is,* Emma said.

Emma, Marie, and I were in a speak-easy a couple of miles from the AIM garage. It was moderately busy and I scanned the noisy crowd critically, looking for a spot where we could talk.

"We need someplace quiet," Emma told the doorman.

The doorman - a massive bruiser with the broken nose and scars of an ex-boxer - just shrugged. "Sorry, toots. What you see is what you get."

Emma's eyes narrowed. I put my hand on her arm and squeezed gently. Emma is used to getting her way, but the doorman was just doing his job. He didn't deserve to find himself suffering the fate of people who don't give Emma what she wants.

Marie stepped around us and raised a hand to get the doorman's attention. His face lit up with a broad grin when he saw Marie. He was also missing some teeth.

"Hi, Marie? How's it going?" he asked.

"Hey, Stan," Marie responded with a smile. "We really do need someplace quiet to talk."

Without hesitation, Stan nodded and walked us over to a roped-off side room. We even held the rope for us as we walked into the empty room. After we sat down, a pretty young waitress wearing a low-slung bustier and a skimpy skirt took our orders. She had an accent straight from the heart of the Bronx and addressed me as "sweetie", Emma as "honey pie", and Marie as "ma'am".

The look on Emma's face was priceless. I was trying my best not to smile.

*Stop gloating, Dom,* Emma warned me.

*And you can stop being so testy, Emma,* I shot back. *You're off your turf. Things work differently here. Do yourself a favor and just go along with the charming customs of the primitive locals.*

*I must admit that I don't understand how Marie remains so influential. Don't people understand that she's not with Logan any longer?*

I shrugged. *Yeah, but the word's out that Logan still likes her. So folks figure that getting on Marie's bad side would be a bad move. And besides, a lot of people just happen to genuinely like Marie.*

*I notice that you don't get the kind of deference that Marie gets," Emma said. "But you and Logan were together once."

Then Emma smiled as an image of me and Logan appeared in my head. We were walking down the street together. He was over-dressed in an expensively florid cream-colored suit, while I was dolled up as a gangster's doxy - including slutty fishnet stockings, ridiculously high heels, and peroxide blonde hair. The part where I was also cradling a Thompson submachine gun was a nicely Hollywood touch.

I shrugged again. *Every now and then, Logan and I used to blow off steam by getting naked in the backseat of a car. Marie and Logan, on the other hand, were the real thing. A lot of people thought she and Logan might end up getting married. Hell, I thought they were going to get married.*

*You and Marie weren't seeing Logan at the same time, were you?*

I confess to actually being a bit shocked by that question. Which, when you think about it, didn't really make any sense given what Emma knew about Logan's love life.

*No,* I said. *When I was with Logan, I was just one of several gals who kept him company. I didn't mind - at the time I didn't want anything serious. We broke up just before Marie showed up. After Marie left Logan, Raven and Yuriko started keeping him company.*

*He's not a man who lacks for women in his life,* Emma said dryly.

*But maybe he's a man who has trouble keeping them,* I suggested.

There was something about the way Emma was talking about Logan... It was no secret to anyone that knew her that Jean was attracted to Logan. But as far as I could tell, Emma had no interest in Logan at all. I think the idea actually puzzled her. She couldn't understand what other women saw in Logan.

"What do you know about Foley?" I asked aloud. Enough talk about Logan.

"Remember the man in those dreadful yellow coveralls?" Emma began. "He was one of the AIM thugs to whom Pietro delivered Foley. I managed to get a good psychic read from him."

Marie and I both leaned forward. "So where's Foley?" Marie asked eagerly.

"He was sent to a facility out in the Pine Barrens."

The Pine Barrens is a lot of nothing much that occupies a big part of southern New Jersey. As the name suggests, it's a sparsely inhabited place filled with a lot of pine trees and not a lot else. It's a bad place to get lost in, and a really good place to hide something.

Emma took us right to the AIM base.

It was situated on some low bluffs overlooking a small river, at the end of a freshly graveled road. There was maybe a dozen concrete buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence. At first glance, it might be assumed that it was some kind of Army facility, until you noticed a modest sign at the main gate that said it was "Modern Oklahoma Pharmaceuticals Plant #1".

A quick check of county records showed that the plant had been built five years ago and was owned by a company out of Tulsa. If you tried to find out more about the company, you got a confusing tangle of phone references and post office box numbers that led you around in a big circle across a dozen states and three countries. "Modern Oklahoma Pharmaceuticals" wasn't a publicly traded company and seemed to own nothing else but the New Jersey plant. Nobody seemed to know what they made in their plant. Nobody local worked in their plant. The plant employees all seemed to stay in the facility and weren't a very communicative bunch. However, the company did spend enough money locally - mostly buying things like food - that the few inhabitants of the region were cautiously grateful for their presence.

Emma couldn't get anywhere when she tried to psychically penetrate the plant. Whenever anyone left the grounds, all she could tell was that they were small-fry with menial jobs.

I talked it over with Emma, Marie, and Tony. We came up with a series of increasingly exotic plans that involved everything from stealthy infiltrations to armed assaults on the plant. None of it was a good idea, since we didn't have anything but the most general idea of the facility layout or purpose. And we all had a strong suspicion that the four of us couldn't handle what we would run into if we entered the plant.

Eventually, we decided to try something deeply unconventional.

Marie didn't like it at all, but after an long talk she irritably agreed to give it a try.

I drove my car up to the front gate of "Modern Oklahoma Pharmaceuticals Plant #1", handed my business card to a surprised and puzzled-looking guard and said, "I'd like to talk to somebody in charge. Tell them I know this place is a front for an organization called AIM."

After about a half-hour of waiting at the gate - all the while watching an ominous-looking weather front roll into the area - I was finally allowed inside. As the sky darkened, I parked my car inside the gate, just off the track that led deeper into the facility. Then I was quickly and efficiently searched for weapons. The gate guard did such a good job that I found myself wondering if he had once been a cop. He took my .45 automatic, my .38 backup pistol, and my switchblade.

I was uncomfortable at being disarmed. Very uncomfortable. But it wasn't exactly a surprise.

Another guard walked me to the nearest building. It was about the size of a medium house, but had the same concrete-institutional look of the other buildings. The reception room just inside the door was sparse and had a vaguely military look. A guard at a desk - a woman - fumbled around uncertainly and then had me sign into a visitor's log-book. I was the only name on the first page of the book.

After that, I was led into a large and surprisingly luxurious office. The walls were lined with photos of groups of men in lab-coats, interspersed with technical instruments that were displayed on the kinds of platforms that you would normally see in a museum. A large desk dominated the back of the room, and the man behind it got to his feet when I entered. He was a short and slender fellow with a fringe of gray hair, a pair of wire-rim glasses, and coldly blue eyes. He didn't offer to shake hands as he stared at me in obvious distaste.

"My name is Jonathan Wentworth and I'm the coordinator of this plant. What do you want, Miss Domino?" he asked.

I took a cue from one of the diplomas on the wall behind Wentworth. "Pleased to meet you, Dr. Wentworth. And before this goes any further, you should be aware that I have associates who know I'm here and are prepared to make a considerable fuss if anything happens to me. That includes people with serious financial resources and mutant powers. And, just in case you haven't been informed, some buttonmen from your organization tried to kill me, my partner, and some other people just a day ago. It didn't go well for them. My friends and I are not pushovers."

Dr. Wentworth didn't react except to say, "I'm not accustomed to repeating myself, Miss Domino. What do you want?"

"I represent a consortium of interests who'd like to do business with Amalgamated International Mechanics."

Dr. Wentworth pursed his thin lips thoughtfully for a moment and then said, "What kind of business?"

"We would like to buy any mutants you have under your control. And we would like to negotiate an understanding with your organization that would get you out of the mutant business."

Wentworth shook his head. "No. Get out."

"You haven't heard our offer," I pointed out.

"I don't need to. Please don't make it necessary to have you escorted out, Miss Domino."

I took a deep breath and then let it out, trying to keep calm. "This is a chance to make a reasonable and peaceful deal, Dr. Wentworth. If you aren't careful, you might start a war."

Wentworth hit a button on his desk. "Security, remove this woman from my office."

I clasped my hands together in front of my body. A pair of rings on each of my hands came into contact and let out an electromagnetic shout.

Two guards opened the door to Wentworth's office and glanced at him. He nodded in my direction.

The floor rumbled. And the wind suddenly became to howl.

Then a thunderous explosion came from outside. Even through the concrete walls, it was loud. The lights flickered out, but then a set of reddish emergency lights kicked in almost immediately.

The guards were distracted and that was all I needed. I ducked into a crouch and pivoted into a wide leg sweep. I caught one guard behind the knees and he tumbled to the floor. The other one I punched in the balls. That was admittedly unladylike, but it was also very effective. He went down, clutching at the offended part of his anatomy. The other guard got his legs underneath his body and lunged for me, but I kicked him in the face and scrambled away as he went cross-eyed.

Wentworth was fumbling for something in his desk drawer. I vaulted the desk and shoulder-checked him onto the floor. The keen-looking machine pistol he'd been grabbing for hit the carpet. I snatched up the gun and smacked Wentworth on the side of the head with the butt. Then I shoved him under the desk and crawled in after him.

Right about then, Erik Lehnsherr tore the steel roof off of the building. Debris flew everywhere and a sizable chunk of rebar-studded concrete slammed onto the top of the desk. Once the air cleared, I poked my head out from under the desk and looked up. Erik was floating in midair above what was left of the building. He was wearing the strangest outfit you'd ever seen. It was red and purple and had a cape and something that looked like a Greek hoplite helmet. Off to the side, ominously hovering in midair, was the building roof.

Erik nodded at me and made a negligent gesture. The steel roof went flying and landed with a spectacular crash.

"C'mon, Doc," I said to Wentworth as I hauled him up. "Let's go see just what kind of trouble you've got yourself in."

The guards had run away. The lady guard who'd checked me into the building was under some debris. Without any prompting, Wentworth quickly dug her out. She had a busted leg and a scatter of bruises and cuts, but was otherwise okay.

"Stay here," I told her, "and for God's sake, don't do anything stupid like go for a gun. This fight's already over and your side has lost."

The guard wiped blood from her face and nodded. Then she looked at Wentworth. There were tears of pain in her eyes.

"At ease, corporal," Wentworth told her calmly. "Wait here until medics arrive. And do not move until they have a chance to check on you."

I have to admit that surprised me. I couldn't see Wentworth as the kind of man who cared about the people under his command. But then again, it takes all types to make the world go around.

Then Wentworth and I went outside.

A mile or two to the west, a sizable tornado was blocking the road into the plant. Shredded pine trees were being thrown in all directions. The sky was dark and sullen and lightning rippled all around us. As we watched, a wicked lightning bolt slammed into the plant's water tower. Wentworth and I both cringed away from the shockwave. The thunder was a physical blow that staggered us both.

High in the dark sky, framed by lightning, I caught a glimpse of Ororo's long, white hair whipping wildly in the wind.

I resisted the urge to get on my knees and beg for mercy. When Ororo gets rolling, it's scary.

Logan and Lehnsherr's ground troops were working their way from building to building, clearing each as they went. We could hear the occasional rip of tommyguns and the dull thump of the grenades. Off in the distance, I saw a red bolt of energy slam into the wall of a building and knock it down. A group of men tumbled out of the building, throwing down their weapons as they raised their hands.

Tony Stark was wearing some kind of steel armor and was perched on top of a guard tower. As I watched, he tossed a machine gun down to the ground. The two guards in the tower had their hands up and looked more than a little worse for the wear. Tony pointed to the ground and the guards began climbing down from the tower. Then Tony triggered the rocket pack on his back and flew off to the next target.

The ground rumbled again and a distant building split in two and collapsed. Pietro had a guy in his outfit who can cause earthquakes. I'd never been around him when he used his power. It wasn't as impressive as the show Ororo was putting on, but it was still pretty remarkable.

Maybe it was then that I really, truly, understood just how dangerous we were.

AIM guards, technicians, and scientists were being collected into a makeshift POW camp. Hank and Emma were sorting them out as Kristy Nord built stone walls to contain everyone. Then Kurt popped into existence next to Hank. He was holding onto a dazed-looking guy in zebra-striped pants and a shirt - obviously a prisoner of some kind.

Near the front gate, Logan was frowning at a map. Pietro suddenly raced up and they paused to talk. Logan pointed at a distant building. Pietro nodded and ran off.

Wentworth took it all in through narrowed eyes. Then he looked at me.

"Congrats, Doc," I said dryly. "You've managed to unite people who up until now couldn't possibly be united."

"Any further loss of life is unnecessary," Wentworth said emotionlessly. "Call off your people, Miss Domino. Then we can talk."

I nodded and began walking Wentworth over to where Logan was standing. Lehnsherr silently descended to the ground next to Logan.

In the end, Logan was more reasonable than Lehnsherr. Go figure.

At first, Lehnsherr wanted to kill everyone from AIM and leave their facility a blazing ruin, but eventually he calmed down. After a long talk with Wentworth, Logan and Lehnsherr came up with something more reasonable.

Wentworth was apparently actually fairly high up in the AIM hierarchy, and he cut a deal with us. AIM got out of the mutant research business and coughed up all of their mutant prisoners. That included some people who weren't at the plant we raided. They also agreed to pull all of their operations out of our city. In exchange, Logan and Lehnsherr would provide the occasional mutant-powered service to AIM - in exchange for a reasonable fee, of course. I wasn't exactly happy about the last part, but smarter people than me have said that successful negotiations always involve some pain for both sides.

In the end, I was left wondering if Logan and Lehnsherr were underestimating AIM. But with any luck, the fine folks at AIM had fully absorbed the meaning of that scene in the Pine Barrens.

Marie had already separated Josh from the rest of the rescued prisoners. The dead and injured from the fight were piled up next to the front gate. As I walked back to my car, I could see Josh walking among the wounded, stopping here and there to heal anyone who needed help. He didn't distinguish between our guys and the AIM people. After all that the Egyptian and AIM had done to him... well, I guess I found it surprising that he still had the need within him to help people.

By some miracle, my car had made it through the maelstrom with only a couple of busted side windows and a scatter of bullet holes. Marie and I stood next to it and waited for Josh to finish.

Josh was a fairly handsome young fellow. He was older than Sooraya, but I figured he was still due for some filling out around the shoulders. Of course, the standard-issue prisoner's outfit didn't help his appearance. A bath and a haircut wouldn't have hurt either. He also looked like he need to catch up on a few meals.

"Hi, Josh," I said as I awkwardly stuck out my hand. He took it slowly, but his grip was sure and strong.

"Hello, ma'am," he replied. "Thanks for coming for me."

I decided to ignore the "ma'am". The kid had problems enough as it was.

"That's okay, Josh," I said.

"Marie said a friend of Sooraya's hired you to get me out of here."

"Yep."

Josh smiled tiredly. "Look, you know about Sooraya and... and me. Right?"

I nodded slowly. "More or less. Maybe I don't know all the details."

Josh glanced at Marie, and then at me.

"The last I saw Sooraya, she told me she was pregnant," Josh said. He spoke with air of a man who was incapable of being surprised any longer at the curves life was throwing him.

"You have a baby boy," Marie said gently. "His name is Hassim. He's in good health and has a great set of lungs. I'm pretty sure he's going to be a handsome fellow when he grows up."

Josh stood there for a long moment, absorbing the way his world kept changing. Prisoner, free man, father - all of that in just a matter of hours. And he wasn't done yet.

"Do you know what the Egyptian did to Sooraya and me?" he asked.

I hesitated before answering. "I can guess."

"Does Sooraya hate me?" he asked us after another long silence. It seemed to me that the question came out of the deepest and most scared part of his soul.

"I don't know," I said honestly.

"No," Marie said simultaneously. I'm sure she was being just as honest.

Different points of view. Different takes on people.

We drove back to town. It took a fair amount of time to get back, but Josh said nothing the entire way. It was well after dark when we got to our apartment. We brought him a meal from a nearby all-night diner. It was roast-beef and mashed potatoes, and he made it vanish in less than minute.

That night, Josh slept on our couch. He had loud nightmares all night long.

The next morning, Josh took a long shower while Marie ran out to get him some new clothes. She's freakishly good at guessing people's measurements. Then we got Josh a haircut and bought him breakfast.

Josh looked better, but his eyes were still haunted. It occurred to me that Josh's biggest injury was something that he couldn't heal.

Over breakfast, Josh started talking. There were some things built up inside of him that had to get out. Josh told us about what the Egyptian had him do to Sooraya. And what the Egyptian made Sooraya to him. And what the Egyptian did to both of them. It was obvious what the Egyptian was after. Force two kids to become intimate. Wait for them fall in love. Then break them to pieces. All the while feeding, feeding, feeding on their misery.

What Josh told us was pretty bad. And I'm fairly sure he didn't tell us the worst.

"What now?" I asked Josh as he polished off his steak and eggs.

He finished his glass of milk and looked at me.

"I guess I should find out which of you is right about Sooraya," Josh said.

Sooraya's apartment was in walking distance. We walked him to the front door of her building.

Josh paused for a long time, obviously wondering if he should just keep walking. We wouldn't have stopped him. There are some things nobody can sort out for other people.

Then Foley took a deep breath and walked inside the building.

"Go back to the office and keep an eye on things," I told Marie.

"How about you?" she asked.

"I have to go to the post office," I said.

Marie nodded and left.

Not too far from Sooraya's apartment is a post office. I stuffed the cash that Laura gave to us into a small parcel, put a lot of stamps on it, and mailed it to Mr. and Mrs. Oberlin. I was fairly sure that Tommy didn't have the authority to dispense family funds. And it didn't feel right to keep money that a pair of desperate and frightened parents had paid to get their son back.

When I got back to the office, our client was there. She was chatting with Marie about boys. Tommy Oberlin didn't know it, but he had a secret admirer. I didn't know if I should pity the boy or be happy for him.

"You have done a fine job," Laura told Marie and I in that very, very serious tone of voice she sometimes uses.

I gave her a long look. Then I nodded my head and said, "Thanks, boss."

Laura stood up and put a one dollar bill on my lightning-scorched desk. "You deserve a bonus. That is my week's allowance. There will be more in the future."

Marie smiled, picked up the dollar, and said to Laura, "That's great. Hey, I feel like some ice-cream! Want to come along?"

Laura grinned and nodded eagerly.

Then Marie looked at me. "Dom?" she asked as she airily waved the dollar bill in my direction.

I shook my head. "You guys go ahead. I'll man the phone."

Laura and Marie were holding hands when they left the office. I've noticed that Laura never flinches from touching Marie. I made a mental note to get insanely jealous in about ten years.

I leaned back in my chair and avoided looking at the ruin of my desk and I looked at Sooraya's empty chair. I wondered how things were going with her and Josh.

I read some mail, jotted down a few responses that would have to be typed up, double-checked our bank statement, and then made a phone call to the building superintendent, reminding him that the office had some battle-damage that needed to be repaired. For the longest time, I was puzzled as to why the building's owners didn't throw us out. The fight with AIM wasn't exactly the first brawl that had come to our front door. We were the definition of dangerous tenants.

Then I did some checking and found out that Emma actually owned our building. When I confronted her about that, Emma smiled cheerfully and offered to cut me a deal on the rent in exchange for some very intimate services. I angrily told her that she was the lowest form of tramp that I had ever met. She just laughed and asked if that meant my answer was yes or no.

The memory brought a smile to my lips. My answer was ultimately no, but I won't pretend that I wasn't tempted. And if Domino Investigations ever got into a financial tight spot, it was nice to know that I had some options...

With a yawn and a stretch, I got out of my chair and glanced out the window. We'd cleaned up the worst of the dried blood and brains, but there was still some reddish stains in the recesses of the wood.

Down on the sidewalk, I could see Josh and Sooraya. He was walking her to the office.

Josh was carrying his son. For just a moment, I caught him looking into his boy's eyes. He was obviously smitten.

At the corner, Josh handed Hassim over to Sooraya and they talked for a while. Then they both paused. A goodbye kiss didn't happen.

Maybe someday it would happen. And maybe not.

Sooraya turned away to cross the street and go to work. Josh watched her walk away, the expression on his face a million miles away. Then he turned and went back the way he and Sooraya had come. The only thing that made sense was that he was going back to Sooraya's apartment.

When Sooraya entered the office, I was back in my chair. She looked at the bullet holes, electrical burns, and stains of dubious origin and sighed.

"I understand the case is over," Sooraya said. Hassim gurgled at me what passed for him as a polite hello.

"Yeah," I answered. "You have some stuff in your in-box that needs to be typed."

Sooraya bobbed her head and said politely, "Yes, Miss Domino."

Sooraya arranged Hassim into the cradle next to her desk, and then sat down and rolled some paper into her typewriter. Then she paused and looked back at me.

"Thank you for rescuing Josh," she said. It was as if she were thanking me for loaning her a pencil.

"That's okay," I replied.

Then Sooraya began typing. She's getting pretty good. Marie says Sooraya is now actually faster than her and only has a few more errors per minute - which is pretty good for someone not working in her native language.

You know, there's a funny thing about the words "lost love". It can mean different things.

Josh and Sooraya were once in love, but then it was coldly and deliberately stolen from them. But they were also separated from each other. Each of them were literally lost from the only person they'd ever loved.

"Lost love" can be both a feeling and a person. And, ultimately, there's a lot more lost love in this world than otherwise. That tells you something about our world.

I figured the odds were stacked against Josh and Sooraya sorting things out and maybe finding once again what the Egyptian had given them - and then taken from them. But at least they now had a chance. I hoped they would be happy with whatever they hashed out between them.

So that was the end of the case. It wasn't exactly a happy ending, but it was as close as any of us could hope.