I looked around the room. “What happens in eleven days?”

As one, the Valoffs froze and then pretended that they hadn’t. “What do you mean?” Chira asked, false cheer in her voice.

“You all aren’t as smooth as you think you are,” Lexi murmured.

When no one volunteered any more information, I said, “We’ll assume that we must find Cien in the next ten days. I want everyone to split into groups with each group containing at least one member from my team and one from Torran’s. Torran’s people will go over the information they’ve collected so far. My people will ask questions and look at the assumptions. Let’s work together to see if we can find something that was overlooked.”

When no one moved, I clapped my hands. “Now, people.”

Varro stood and offered Kee help up. “I’ll take you to the transport.”

She beamed at him. “Thank you. I need to stop by my room to grab a few things,” she said, then she turned to Anja. “Would you mind helping me? I’m probably going to have to take the transport apart to get to the data store. I could use another set of hands.”

Anja rose with a smile. “Of course.”

As the three of them left, Varro murmured something I didn’t catch.

Eli, Havil, and Chira moved to one of the desks and began discussing the timeline from the night of the kidnapping. That left Lexi, Nilo, Torran, and myself. “You want me to deal with Nilo?” I asked Lexi subvocally over the comm.

She silently shook her head. “I’ll deal with him,” she replied. “You try to pry more information out of their fearless leader.”

I laughed to myself. I’d have better luck prying information out of a locked safe deep in the heart of the Imperial Palace.

Chapter Twenty

Torran and I spent the next four hours huddled together in front of our desk’s workstation display. The rest of our people did the same, with the exception of Kee and Varro, who’d remained with the stolen transport after Anja had returned.

At one point, Luna wandered in, found all of us far too boring for her, and wandered back out again.

I had to give the Valoffs credit—they’d done a thorough and meticulous investigation. The timeline for the kidnapping was broken down into detailed, minute-by-minute increments.

But the kidnappers had been thorough, too, and they’d left very few leads.

There was nothing obvious that Torran’s team had overlooked, and helpless frustration sharpened my temper. I hadn’t felt this antsy when I’d thought we were hunting a ring, but a ring wasn’t a child. Cien had already been gone for two and a half weeks, poor kid.

I stood and stretched the knots out of my back, then checked on the others. “Find anything?”

Eli shook his head. “Nothing yet. Their work is solid.”