Vale shook his head. “Not here. We’ll talk in my room.” He led him up the elevator to a suite on the top floor, which Vale had converted to a command post. When the door was closed and locked, he turned to Vinci with a solemn look. “We’ve canvassed the Bronx with regular patrols, and put as many spotters as we can on the coast in case she tries to cross by water, but they haven’t turned up anything yet. It was smart of you to come straight to us, but we have to consider the possibility that Delarosa already crossed to the mainland before we established our patrols.”

“I put the men you gave me on regular routes in and around the city,” said Vinci, acknowledging the possibility that Delarosa was already on their doorstep. “I just don’t know if it will be enough.”

“What else can we do?” asked Vale. “Everyone left in White Plains is assigned to energy, maintenance, or food production; we can spare them, but do we really want word of this to spread? It’s a nuclear attack, for crying out loud—the last time someone tried to nuke the Partial army, they struck back with the biggest display of overkill in the entire Partial War. I don’t want to cause a panic or a pogrom.”

“All they need to know is that they’re looking for a human matching her description,” said Vinci. “We don’t have to tell them what she’s doing.”

“They’ll figure it out soon enough,” said Vale. “They’re not idiots.”

“Their first assumption will be the East Meadow bioweapon,” said Vinci. “The patrols I organized this morning already think that’s what they’re looking for, though obviously I didn’t confirm or deny it.”

“Congratulations,” said Vale, “your cunning ruse has struck me speechless. Did you also tell them not to share their suspicions with anybody else? Do you have any faith that they’ll actually follow that order? All it takes is one drunk soldier in a bar tonight, telling his mates about the paranoid snipe hunt he’s been assigned to by the former AWOL traitor now serving under a member of the Trust, and the suspicions will fly and the rumors will grow and who knows what we’ll have in the morning? Not three months ago this city tore itself apart in an involuntary change of leadership, because Trimble was too paralyzed by indecision to confront any of the problems her people were facing. Now Morgan’s doing the same thing, too obsessed with expiration to bother with anything else, and the city’s getting restless. A panic like this—nuke or bioweapon or anything similar—and we’ll have a riot on our hands.”