In a little over an hour they would all meet to discuss, one more time, what they could do to make Harry Wong’s life whole again.

Once upon a time, the Sisters had had patience and deferred to him one hundred percent. Since his return to the mountain, they’d treated him like an alien visitor. What Isabelle had said to him, words that wounded him to the core, ricocheted inside his mind. “We found out the hard way that we don’t need you. Back in the day, we may have wanted you…”

It was true that his chicks had bumbled their way through two missions, but when he read the final reports they’d drawn up, he had cringed at how close they had all come to getting caught. What bothered him more than anything was how cocky they had become. He could feel beads of sweat form on his brow when he remembered how they’d gone back to Paula Woodley’s house, then been brazen enough to drive the residents of Evergreen Terrace from the White House back to their homes.

As if that weren’t bad enough, they’d…what they’d done was…piss off the Secret Service, the FBI, and local law enforcement. Now they expected him to pull a rabbit out of a hat and get them all back into the nation’s capital to help Harry Wong.

Charles shook his head to clear his thoughts when a streak of lightning zipped past the window of the war room. Seconds later, a loud crack shook the building he was standing in. No one needed to tell him the lightning had felled one of the tall pines. From past experience, he knew that more trees would fall before the storm was over. It was inevitable.

The bank of clocks on the wall told him, at a glance, the time all over the world. At the moment, though, he was concerned only with local time and what it meant as far as his culinary duties were concerned. He still had an hour till lunch. At four o’clock in the morning he’d found himself in the kitchen preparing a delectable shrimp and crab casserole and cutting up greens for a salad. He’d also prepared a delicious pink ham and some honeyed yams for dinner. He’d showered and consumed a gallon of coffee that was now having its effect on his nerves. Once, a lifetime ago, he’d been nerveless.

Charles realized suddenly that the war room was quiet. All the faxes he had been waiting for had arrived, his e-mails were all downloaded. He was good to go. He looked down on the right side of his computer terminal to see the thick report that had come in from Maggie Spritzer early yesterday. Whoever her source was, he or she was good, just as good as his own hacker. He felt the nerves in his stomach jump. Maybe the girls were right, with contacts like Maggie had, did they really need him?

A blue folder with a gold star in the middle set his teeth on edge. Annie had gone ahead and purchased the Babylon casino with Lizzie Fox’s help. A done deal, and he’d had no input. Lizzie had made sure everything was buried deep. He had to be honest: it was possible Lizzie had outshone his own people. And now she was married to Cosmo Cricket, and he hadn’t even been in the country for them.