“It’s exactly like you thought!” The young agent with the shaved head had practically thrown himself across Ben Ellison’s desk, and he was twitching with excitement. “We followed up on that geoelectric survey you ordered. Searched all the caves that showed up on the scan. The divers found two caves with underwater entrances and all kinds of stuff in them, like they’d been inhabited—the bigger one you can only get to through a tunnel that opens up seven fathoms under the waterline at low tide! No way it was people who dragged all that junk in there! We’re still working on an inventory. But one thing’s for sure: these tails like to party. Empty liquor bottles all over the place.”

Ben Ellison nodded wearily. Ever since the Secretary of Defense had decided to join forces with the FBI and throw as many resources as he could into tracking down the mermaids, Ellison had been working until well past midnight every night and then getting up again by five. The clock in the corner of his computer’s screen showed that it was already after one in the morning. He was so tired that he couldn’t even remember this young man’s name, and he didn’t particularly want to. It was all he could do to tolerate the hordes of incompetents who’d been assigned to work under him recently; keeping track of who they all were seemed like an unnecessary bother. He didn’t plan to stay in Anchorage any longer than he had to, anyway. “And the other cave?”

“A lot smaller. A lot less stuff. But what’s so incredible about that one—you’re not going to believe this—I brought the items they found to show you, because it’s too nuts unless you see it for yourself . . .”

Ellison was mildly annoyed by the suggestion that there was anything he couldn’t believe, and he glared impatiently as the pale young man hoisted a black leather duffle onto the desk and unzipped it, pulling out a small portfolio. At first Ellison winced at just how predictable the contents were. In fact, the portfolio held exactly what he’d been bitterly sure the search would turn up, sooner or later: Dorian’s drawings, creased and rumpled but utterly unmistakable, all showing the same dark-haired mermaid whose portrait Ellison kept neatly folded in an inside pocket.

Ellison looked up. “You say these weren’t in the main cave?”