With the sight of her concerned face he realized just how very angry he was, and guilty for it. Furiously angry because furiously afraid. Where is Mark, damn you all? "Captain Quinn," he put her on notice that this was duty-time before she could fling herself on him. She skidded to a halt in mid-fling, and came to a species of attention. The others piled up behind her.

"We were just coordinating with ImpSec for a raid on House Bharaputra," Quinn said breathlessly. "You've come back to yourself! You were cryo-amnesic—have you recovered? That Durona doctor said you would—"

"About ninety percent, I think. I'm still finding holes in my memory. Quinn—what happened?"

She looked slightly overwhelmed. "Since when? When you were killed—"

"Start from five days ago. When you came to the Durona Group."

"We came looking for you. Found you, after nearly four bleeding months!"

"You were stunned, Mark was taken, and Lilly Durona hustled me and my surgeon off to what she thought was going to be safety," Miles cued her to the focus he wanted.

"Oh, she was your doctor. I thought—never mind." Quinn bit back her emotions, pulled off her helmet and pushed back her hood, raked red-tipped fingers through her smashed curls, and began organizing the information into its essentials, combat-style. "We lost hours at the start. By the time Elena and Taura got another aircar, the snatchers were long gone. They searched, but no luck. When they got back to the Durona Group, Bel and I were just waking up. Lilly Durona insisted you were safe. I didn't believe her. We pulled out, and I contacted ImpSec. They started to pull in their people, who were scattered all over the planet looking for clues as to your whereabouts, and sent them to focus on Mark. More delays, while they worked through their pet theory that the kidnappers were Cetagandan bounty hunters. And House Ryoval had about fifty different sites and facilities to check on, not including this one, which really was secret.

"Then Lilly Durona decided you were missing after all. Since it seemed more important to find you, we diverted all available forces to that. But we had fewer leads. We didn't even find the abandoned lightflyer for two days. And it yielded up no clues."

"Right. But you suspected Ryoval had Mark."

"But Ryoval wanted Admiral Naismith. We thought Ryoval would figure out he had the wrong man."

He ran his hands over his face. His head was aching. And so was his stomach. "Did you ever figure that Ryoval wouldn't care? In a few minutes, I want you to go down the corridor and look at the cell they kept him in. And smell it. I want you to look closely. In fact, go now. Sergeant Taura, stay."

Reluctantly, Quinn led Elena and Bel out. Miles leaned forward; Taura bent to hear.