There is a storm in the distance/
The wind breathing warning of its imminence/
There is a lighthouse five hundred yards down/
You and I will be safe there/

"Brad Pitt," Claire commanded.

Obedient, Peter began to twist and blur his form kaleidoscopically, jaw getting squarer, hair bleaching to blond. "What do you think?" he asked when the transformation was complete, grinning at her in a distinctly un-Peter-like movie star way.

"Turn back, turn back!" she said, giggling. "You're giving me incestuous thoughts!"

He laughed and shifted into his own body. "He's way too old for you," he said sternly, watching the broad, thick-fingered hands mold themselves into his long, articulated ones with only a small pang of disorientation. He was finally getting used to this ability, feeling confident enough to think that they might just pull this off. His show-face bravado was only for Claire, to hold her head above water—when he really stopped to think about what he was doing, it made him feel stupidly audacious and very afraid. He'd spent two days in the care of these people, and it ranked right up with the most horrible experiences of his life thus far. Now here he was, apparently desperate to run back into their clutches, and he wondered what, exactly, he was thinking.

"Humphrey Bogart," was Claire's next request, snapping him out of his depressive downspiral—if for no other reason, he was glad he'd taken her along because she seemed to be able to pull him out of his own self-doubt with only a smile or a gesture. He'd never had a niece before, and he was finding the whole experience delightful; he felt as if he'd been waiting his whole life to have someone to spoil and entertain—in some way, he had known she was that person from the very first time he'd met her. Intense, visceral connections like they'd had simply didn't happen every day.

"Humphrey Bogart?" he said, surprised. "How do you even know who that is?"

"My dad has a thing for old movies," she explained, rolling her eyes. "Casablanca was one of the few that I actually liked."

"I assume that would be your stepdad and not Nathan that you're talking about?" Peter asked. "Because I think Nathan hates Casablanca."

"Yes, I meant my stepdad," Claire confirmed, trying not to think about it so that she wouldn't get sick with missing him—so far, she'd been able to beat the feeling down by convincing herself she was angry at him, but she knew that wouldn't hold her for long.

"You know, I'm starting to get a sense of how incredibly confusing your family relationships are—we practically have a soap opera, here."

"People in soap operas fall in love a lot and come back from the dead," she said optimistically, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. "There are worse things."

"Well, we've certainly got the back-from-the-dead part down," he said wryly. "Though I do think I've got you beat in the death count."

"Nope, sorry," she argued blithely. "I've died three times, too: I got a stick through my head, got shot, and got blown up by a radioactive crazy man. We're tied."

"I have a feeling I might pull ahead, after this," he said, feeling the unwelcome weight of reality trying to settle onto his shoulders.

"We're not going to think about that," Claire said resolutely. "That's for us to deal with tomorrow, and there isn't any point dwelling on what could go wrong and ruining our night."

"Yeah, you're right," he admitted. "Sorry for being such a downer."

"I'll forgive you if you go make us some popcorn," she said, pushing him off the couch and picking up the remote. "I'm going to see if Casablanca is on."

---

Mr. Bennet entered Nathan's office without knocking, which made him angry, but not angry enough to start another fight over it—he still hadn't gotten his energy back from the last one, and Nathan knew how to pick his battles. Mr. Bennet, face unnervingly unreadable, non-interpretable, crossed the room and dropped a piece of paper on Nathan's desk.

"What's this?" Nathan asked, picking it up.

"You told me to write you a memo if there was a problem," Mr. Bennet said flatly. "I wrote you a memo."

Nettled at having his words thrown back in his face, Nathan glanced at the paper—it was set up in a normal memo format, but it only had one line. "'Peter and Claire are gone'," he read, petty annoyance suddenly burned away by concern. "What? What do you mean, they're gone?"

"I mean, I've looked everywhere for them and they aren't here," Mr. Bennet said tautly.

"Where did they go? When did you last see them? Do you think The Company got them?" Nathan shot, rapid-fire, trying not to panic.

"That's what I thought at first, but it's not likely," Mr. Bennet told him. "I checked their rooms, and most of their things are missing. I doubt the Company would have given them time to pack, so my guess would be that they just…left."

"Oh no," Nathan said, closing his eyes, "they've gone after Thompson, haven't they? Those little fools."

"Indeed," Mr. Bennet said grimly.

Nathan pulled open one of his desk drawers and took out the gun that he'd kept there ever since Mr. Bennet had tried to kidnap him in Las Vegas. "We need to go after them," he said shortly. "Peter is sweet and he's very brave, but he's completely incapable of taking care of himself, he's got no common sense. From what I've seen of Claire, I take it she's the same type, and the combination of the two of them could very well be lethal."

"My thoughts exactly," Mr. Bennet said. "Now, I know that we've had some—differences, but I am absolutely willing to get over them in order to keep my daughter safe. Whatever I may think of you as a person, there's still no one else I'd rather have at my back in a crisis situation."

"Agreed," Nathan said. "I assure you, there will be no more distractions and no more arguments, not while we're on business."

"Claude can watch Candice while we're away," Mr. Bennet told him. "With any luck, we'll only be a few days."

"All right," Nathan said, sliding the clip into his gun with a cold mechanical click. "Let's do this."

---

Peter hung the phone up, distinctly uneasy with the knowledge that there was really no going back now. He'd jumped in the river, and sink or swim, there was no changing course and no pressing pause. It was a feeling a little like being drunk—heady, dizzying, and terrifyingly out of control.

"Well?" Claire asked impatiently, trying to read his face for any indication of how the phone call had gone.

"He bought it," Peter told her. "He's coming."