So rather than waste time tracking a man they would never find, he put Murph and Stone on locating the slippery information merchant. They had the advantage of knowing that he would have run soon after Kenin contacted him to get information on the Corporation. With that starting point, it still took twelve days of data mining and fact-checking to discover another of L’Enfant’s lairs, one in a most unlikely place.

Cabrillo added, “You’re also becoming predictable.” He shot a significant glance at the attractive nurse.

“Ah,” L’Enfant said, “I wasn’t aware you knew my penchant for pretty nurses.”

“Now you’re deluding yourself. If it was just pretty ones, we never would have found you. But sisters who are also nurses are a rarer breed of cat.”

L’Enfant’s single eye glittered as he looked at the nurse. “My last ones were actually twins. Not identical, mind you, but twins nonetheless.” He clapped his right hand into the claw-like pincer of his disfigured left. “Leave us, my dear.” When the nurse had gone, L’Enfant said, “You have not tracked me here to discuss my medical staff, I presume.”

“You presume correctly.” Cabrillo waited for the shadowy man to figure out why he’d come.

L’Enfant studied him for a moment and finally asked, “Why the disguise?”

“I needed to cross through some nasty neighborhoods to get here. I didn’t want to look like an attractive target for a mugger.”

“You always were a careful planner. Okay, what else may I presume? I have wronged you by speaking of the Corporation to Kenin, something for which I must atone.”

Juan nodded while L’Enfant adjusted the oxygen cannula under the ruin of his burned nose.

“I presume that my atonement comes in the form of tracking down Admiral Kenin for you.”

“Correct.”

“And you came to me in person rather than reaching me through more conventional ways in order for me to understand that if I fail to find him, my life is then forfeit.”

“Four for four. You should go into the soothsaying business. Do you know where Kenin went to ground?”

The man shook his reptilian head. “No. Don’t think I don’t have feelers out there, but he knew what he was doing when he rabbited.”

“‘Rabbited,’ really?” Juan said with a smile. “Last time I read someone ‘rabbiting’ was an old spy novel.”

“You prefer ‘on the lam’?”

“I prefer to know where he is,” Juan said sharply to remind the information broker that this wasn’t idle banter.

“I will find him.”