When Daryl got downstairs, the major players from all four communities were sitting or standing around the living room and looking tense. But that didn't stop him from storming up to Jesus, until his face was an inch away. "Ya ever burst in on my woman again like that while she's in bed - and I swear to God, I'll - "

"-Daryl!" Rick sounded like a father scolding an angry child.

Daryl stepped back, his eyes still flames, and found Carol standing before the end table, casting him a look that was part amusement, part chastisement. He came and stood beside her, his anger simmering down to a slow burn.

"Your woman, huh?" she whispered.

Daryl searched her eyes, but she seemed amused, and not angered, by his word choice.

"We've got a problem," Rick said. "Three of those women we rescued from the harem took off in the middle of the night with a rifle and one of our pick-up trucks."

"How?" Daryl asked. "Didn't we leave a guard at that house?"

"Jonathan," Michonne answered. He had been a former security guard and had stayed behind to keep watch over Alexandria during the war. "It looks like maybe they seduced him after Eric was asleep. Offered him...a little fun. In the process, they got hold of his rifle, which has a silencer, and shot him. Eric didn't even wake up."

"They shot the guard on the wall as well," Rick explained. "Mark." He was one of the construction workers who had fought in the war. He'd survived that horror, only to be shot down within his own gates.

"They took one of the work pick-up trucks," Michonne said. "The keys were still under the visor." The workers often left them there so if someone needed the vehicle, they wouldn't have to chase down the last driver.

"Fuck," Daryl muttered. "And the other three?"

"They're still here," Rick said. "One of them found Jonathan's body when she got up to go to the bathroom. She woke up Eric, and he came and got me. They claim they had nothing to do with it, that they were asleep when it happened, and that they don't ever want to go back to the Saviors."

Malik, who stood with one arm slung over the mantle, leveled his cool, dark eyes on Carol. "I told you I should question the women."

"They've been put through a psychological wringer by the Saviors," Carol replied. "I just didn't want – "

"- You imagine these women to be unwilling," Malik interrupted her. "But how goes the poem? She who complies against her will / is of her own opinion still."

Carol took an angry step toward him. Daryl placed a hand gently on her shoulder. "Let 'em say his piece."

Carol stilled.

"Members of a harem live in the lap of luxury in comparison to those who surround them," Malik said. "They are fed well, clothed well, and do not have to work dangerous jobs. To be a wife of a powerful man is a position of prominence. Even if we had not destroyed their people and looted their home, even if they were disgusted by Negan and Simon...even then, they might not see their liberation as a gift. They might fear their liberty. Perhaps a warrior such as yourself cannot possibly understand that."

Carol swallowed. "Unfortunately, I understand that fear all too well. But I didn't think they would..." She shook her head. "Where do you think they're going?"

"I imagine they are going to another outpost we know nothing about."

"You said we eliminated the threat."

"I said we likely eliminated the threat. And I said I did not think the Saviors would attempt to attack us again. I still do not. It would be foolish for them to do so. Yet who knows how far vengeance may compel them. We had better be sure. We must find this outpost."

"I can track 'em," Daryl said. "The women."

"So can I," Tex volunteered. "I've done my share of hunting."

Rick grabbed his rifle. "I'll go, too."

"I will talk to the remaining women," Malik informed them. "The ones who chose to stay. I will determine what I can determine."

Carol didn't object this time, but she breathed in and put a hand on her stomach.

"I will not torture them," Malik assured her. "If you would like to sit in on the interrogation, you – "

"- No," Carol said.

"I would," Sasha said. "I'd like to sit in."

Malik look surprised, but he nodded.

[*]

Malik led Sasha toward Eric's house as the sun finished rising in a blinding kaleidoscope of color over the roof. "You may observe," he said. "But do not speak. At all."

"I'm just curious to learn a new skill."

"It took me seventeen years to perfect this skill. You will not learn it today. But you may observe."

"Okay. I hear you." Sasha wondered what Rosita saw in this man. He was good-looking, in a swarthy, brooding sort of way, but his bedside manner left much to be desired, and he lacked humility. Of course, in that sense, Sasha supposed, they were peas in a pod.

When they stepped into Eric's house, the three remaining women were sitting nervously side-by-side on the sofa. Carl stood leaned against the wall, a rifle in his hand, guarding them. Through the open door frame, Sasha could see Eric shuffling around in the kitchen.

"Leave us," Malik told Carl. He called into the kitchen, "You, too. Out the back door." Carl and Eric departed.

Malik's demeanor changed. His voice softened. So did his eyes, almost as if a backstage lighting technician was fiddling with switches somewhere behind those brown orbs. "This is my friend Sasha," he told the women. "She is going to sit with us while we chat so that you ladies feel more comfortable." He motioned to a chair, and Sasha took it. Malik took the arm chair next to the couch, rested his elbows on his knees, and leaned forward in a confidential manner. "You must be frightened," he said, "knowing what those women did last night. You must be afraid we think you support their actions. I can assure you that is not true. I was in a position very much like yours once…"

[*]

Tex dropped to his haunches and touched the tire tracks. It appeared the women had skidded to a stop near an abandoned car, probably to get gas.

"Ain't as unproductive as we thought, huh?" Daryl asked. "Know how to steal, sneak, and siphon."

"I had a gorgeous wife who was also extremely competent." Tex stood straight. "I guess I shouldn't have assumed. But Tammy would have died rather than join Negan's harem. I just…I thought these women couldn't be fighters." He nodded to the tracks. "Looks like they went west."

The men climbed back into their pick-up and pressed on. Daryl drove, and Tex rode shotgun. Rick sat in the back with one of the ham radios they had picked up at the Sanctuary. It crackled, and he picked up the mic. "Come in."

Sasha's voice drifted through faintly. "Not to disparage all your hard work tracking…but in case you lose the trail, the last outpost is at Fairfax High School. At least, that's the only other outpost the other wives have ever heard of. They don't know how big it is, but it was considered secondary to Mt. Vernon, so it can't have more than sixty men at most. Probably fewer. One of the women who fled? Negan took her from her husband to give her as a gift to Simon. But we didn't kill her husband at the Sanctuary or in the Kingdom. Her husband leads that outpost."

Isaac's voice shot through the radio next, louder and clearer than Sasha's. "The women are likely there by now. Don't approach the outpost on your own. If a fight breaks out, you'll need back-up. We're sending reinforcements, and we'll scout it out together. Rendezvous at the large Anglican church just off Main Street. It's near but not too near. We can leave the cars there and move in on foot. You've got a map?"

"Roger that," Rick replied.

Daryl hit the accelerator just a little harder, and the engine purred forward.

[*]

An AR-15 rested between Carol's knees. She leaned her head back against the backseat of the sedan and closed her eyes. "I'm an idiot," she said. All the people she'd callously killed to protect her own, and she hadn't even wanted to let those women be interrogated.

"You're compassionate," Michonne told her from the front seat as she drove. "You wanted to give them some time to recover from the shock. It's no different from rape, as far as I'm concerned, what they went through. Negan threatened them. It was join my harem or else… And after the ordeal they'd been through, you didn't want to sic Malik on them right away. I get it."

"Malik's not so bad," Rosita insisted from the front passenger seat.

"Well, you would say that," Michonne told her. "You are sleeping with him."

Rosita rolled her eyes. "Well he clearly knows what he's doing."

"In bed?" Michonne asked in a voice that was almost a chuckle in itself.

"I don't need to know how he does it," Rosita said, "as long as he gets the job done."

Michonne chortled.

"I meant in the interrogation room."

"That interrogation didn't go at all as I imagined it would," Sasha said from the backseat. "I thought I'd learn some tools of intimidation. But he just…charmed them."

Rosita jerked her head around. "What? How?"

"I sense a little jealousy." Michonne followed the C.A.T. van, which was being driven by Isaac, off the highway. A sign at the end of the ramp read Farirfax...6 miles.

"I can't explain it, exactly," Sasha told her. "But he made them feel like he sympathized with them, that he understood them, that he was on their side. He became a completely different person. Like a switch was flicked and…" She shook her head.

"That would never work with me," Rosita said.

"Maybe that's why he likes you," Michonne suggested. She turned left and checked the rear view mirror to make sure Jesus's car was following.