Murphy wasn't thrilled with the idea of dealing with the FBI; our own occasional clashes with official Washington tend to make BBIs in general rather leery of federal involvements, something which she had to deal with on top of the usual police suspicions that the feds were going to muck up a case by trying to take it over. Even so, heading back to her lab seemed infinitely preferable to making herself easy for the captain to find a second time. She had a moment's thought about checking the gun in her holdout holster before she went in, but restrained herself. If a mock FBI agent was going to start shooting in a building full of cops, the opportunity she'd likely have of preventing anything was next to nil. If a real FBI agent saw a gun, that could set up a stand-off she didn't want to be involved with.

She was not surprised to find that the lab door was open. That meant the fed was probably poking his nose into all kinds of places she didn't particularly want him to; still, she'd tucked away enough samples of the evidence for safekeeping that the interference probably wouldn't do all that much damage to their case. Some of those samples were already on their way to Institute labs anyway; the Post Office wouldn't let go of them in transit without a warrant no one would know to get. "Most people wait until they're invited in," she said as she came through the doorway and noticed her assumption she'd be dealing with a man was inaccurate this once.

She staggered and nearly hurt herself on the edge of one counter as the agent turned around. Murphy recognized the other woman immediately and only the long months of practice she'd already had at concealing her Institute affiliations gave her enough control to avoid asking the first question that came to mind. Something had gone very, very wrong for this particular visitor to be anywhere within miles of her; the last time they'd been in the same room, Murphy had been handing her off to a pair of federal marshals for relocation with a new name and identity. People didn't just pop back out of the Witness Protection Program's woodwork.That was tantamount to suicide even if you knew exactly what you were doing.

"Allie Westin, FBI," said her visitor. It was not a name Murphy knew, but then, it shouldn't be. "Sorry to startle you like this, but we need to talk."

No kidding, Murphy thought to herself as she gave her own name. The other woman hadn't gone as far as having a facelift yet, so there wasn't a lot she could do beyond that to maintain the illusion that they'd never met. "So, what does the FBI want with me?" What she really wanted to know is why they were looking at each other now, scarcely six months later. From what she'd heard, getting two consecutive life sentences at Marion had curtailed a lot of Tyrone Anderson's more anti-social activities, but it hadn't prevented him from making calls which may have had much to do with other people ending up dead, people who'd been a lot less involved in the trial than Allie had been.

"I understand you've helped out the marshal service in the past. We have reason to believe you may have put yourself at more risk than you're aware of. It's not something I can discuss at length in an unsecured room."

Since Allie was the reason the marshals had come to Murphy to begin with, the chemist was rather inclined to believe there was more to it than was safe to discuss there or anywhere else around the station house. It had to be something likely to complicate her life; if Tyrone Anderson was out of jail and looking for her, the news would have come through channels. And Allie had always known how to get in touch with her on a strictly unofficial basis if she really needed to; nine weeks of watching her had made sure of that. Certainly anything that didn't require a face-to-face would have been less risky for all involved by the time things were routed through the Institute's sensitive operations section. "I think you're going to have to convince the Captain," Murphy said, "or sit on me until I'm off duty."

"Under other circumstances, I wouldn't consider taking you away from the station for this, but there's reason to believe our man may know enough to walk in unnoticed," Allie said. "I can't say I think much of your chances down here if he can. Your standard little surprises could be old hat for this guy." FBI or not, Allie understood how Murphy thought after spending nine weeks in the same five-room apartment near SLU with her before and during the trial; chances were high that she'd already spotted at least a half dozen of the 'accidents' waiting to happen to an intruder.

"I don't guess I have much of a choice then, do I?" This was making things much more interesting than she would have liked, but then, that seemed to be nothing new these last 24 hours.

"Not really. Sorry." Allie pulled a two-way radio from her purse. It was already powered up, and she flicked the transmit switch to the VOX position. "Hammer, this is Reflex."

"Go ahead, Reflex," a male voice answered.

"You're go for phase two. I have contact; we are moving. Repeat, we are moving."

"Understood; see you at the store. Hammer out."

The radio vanished back into that bag, transmit switch pushed back to STANDBY so it would squawk if Hammer decided he needed to check in again. "My partner's having that little chat with your captain. I'd like to get moving before things get any dicier. If something does come down before we're clear, I'm driving a gray Probe; spare key's under the pennies in the ashtray. My partner's name is John Underwood; he can tell you everything if it comes to that." Allie was gathering up the more incriminating and personal things from the counter and drawers as she spoke; she handed the go-phone to Murphy immediately, but said nothing of it's existance. The rest was small enough to go in Murphy's purse and Allie's blazer pockets. "Ready?"

"I need to leave a message for Matt Harrison; if he comes looking for me again and I'm supposed to be here, he'll worry."

"Keep it short; don't tell him anything you can avoid."

"How about a family emergency came up and I'll get back to him when I can?"

"It'll do."

Murphy nodded and pulled a blank page from the lab book. She wished she had a way to get the same information to Team Banzai herself, but at present that wasn't to be; in theory she could call the Institute, but that was no guarantee that word would reach Big Norse and there wasn't really the time for it anyway. Harrison, however, could be relied upon to tell the people who most needed to know. With this in mind, she jotted down a message that was unremarkable on its surface, most of her meaning between the lines where few but BBIs could read it. He'd still worry, of course; she didn't really have any family to justify using that excuse and neither did he, but they'd long ago worked out that key phrase between them as a crucial indicator. Little as she liked any of this, under the circumstances she felt obligated to use it now; it would not have been fair to give him any reason to think she was being coerced.

***

The O'Fallon police, it turned out, had weather-related troubles of their own by this point, but Lindbergh's call had been enough of a shock for the Chief of Police to mobilize his full contingent of auxilaries. Two of those officers met us at the end of the old school's driveway, and as he'd made the initial call, they wanted to talk to the pilot first. Lindbergh stepped back into the rain still wearing his wet clothes, a surgical glove over his bandaged fingers to keep them dry. As he'd hoped, they admitted to having one routine working frequency unaffected by the jamming World Watch One was suffering.

The younger officer braved the weather long enough to come aboard the bus for a word with Buckaroo. By this point, Rawhide and Perfect Tommy had hauled the still unconscious Dingo upstairs and out of immediate sight; neither one of them had been especially happy at leaving him in Buckaroo's quarters with Jet there, but there simply wasn't anywhere else to put him that the police weren't likely to ask about. Jet accepted it with better grace than they'd expected, considering that she'd so clearly thought him a threat earlier; perhaps she deemed it safest to stay quiet on the assumption that officers were about.

The fact remains that Buckaroo spoke to the officer in the operations bay, in easy earshot of a half dozen or more witnesses who in truth gave the conversation scant attention. It was brief and very much to the point, Buckaroo laying out a marginally edited version of events to date which omitted only Jet's identity and the incident with Dingo. The officer promised to arrange escorts as far as the county line, and to check with his dispatcher for any news which might relate to Wayback and me.

The bus pulled out with one police car ahead of it and another behind. By the time it reached the O'Fallon/St.Peters line, however, the lead car was signalling T-Bear to pull over to the shoulder where three state vehicles were waiting with lightbars flashing. A plainclothes Highway Patrol officer in a plastic raincoat leapt out of one of those cars to come aboard the bus with a hand-held police-band radio already tuned to the frequency O'Fallon had been using, and T-Bear got underway again in a matter of moments, now with the Highway Patrol running escort. Once the purpose of that brief but nervewracking stop became evident, no one regretted it. It was not the same as having main communications back, of course, but it was possible to communicate directly with the escort officers without resorting to trucker's headlight codes old enough to predate Citizen's Band radio.

Ultimately, it was by means of this improvised system that word of the incident in Earth City reached World Watch One. Initial details were scantier than people would have preferred, of course; Wayback and I were alive, but being taken to a nearby hospital. Buckaroo immediately requested clarification, which was some minutes in coming, but word that both of us had nothing worse than scrapes and bruises was universally greeted by a cheer. "T-Bear," said Buckaroo, "we're going to De Paul. Lindbergh, you were local; navigate."

"Excuse me, Dr. Banzai, but I may be a bit more current," said the Highway Patrol officer. "I believe the I-70 bridges are closed. Could be related to your people; word is that someone was shooting at traffic from the superstructure."

"Lovely," said T-Bear, not quite managing to keep it to himself. "So where do I need to get off?" he said a bit louder.

"First Capitol," said the patrolman. "Left at the top of the ramp. You'll only have a couple inches vertical clearance when we hit the 115 bridge, so you'll want to take it easy, but I can have traffic held so you'll get both lanes to yourself."

"Delightful."

"I hate two lane bridges myself," the patrolman admitted. "But it's that or swing south to cross on Highway 40, probably 20 miles or more out of the way."

"Keep checking," said Buckaroo. "If the interstate reopens, use it."

"You're the boss," said T-Bear. He hadn't been thrilled by the necessity of crossing a bridge he was already familiar with, but hadn't seen any way around it; the concept of using a much narrower bridge with almost no manuevering room in any direction rated fairly high on his list of things not to do even when we didn't have other worries. He doubted he'd be any happier with it even if driving the bus was his main job. By the tone of his voice, Buckaroo didn't like it much either, but couldn't see any better ideas.

Upstairs, Jet was focused on as much of the goings on as she could hear without showing herself. She was a bit concerned that the patrolman would decide there was something worth investigating aboard the bus. Her experience in such matters told her that there wasn't a decent cop in the country who'd be content to leave the issue of Dingo alone, and precious few of them were apt to keep their findings to themselves even if they owed Buckaroo major favors. Thus far, the biggest legal issue was the fact that she'd have to answer for discharging a firearm in the city limits; she wasn't worried about it except for an almost painful awareness of the amount of time straightening it out would take, time she was firmly convinced we didn't have at present.

She suspected both Buckaroo and Rawhide would have agreed with her on that, but didn't bother speculating on anyone else's opinion. From the way even the patrolman deferred to Buckaroo, it was clear she'd been right to judge him the man in charge. If the authorities perceived him in that role, it was all too likely that the same would hold true for the public at large, something she would definitely want to keep in mind. It was only one small additional piece of the puzzle, but one she understood was a good bit more critical than it might appear. He was much more of a public figure than she'd initially expected, even given the logo spashed along the sides of the bus; the fact that any cop would behave the way this one was acting around Buckaroo was enough to tell her he was more than just a musician and physician. He had serious pull somewhere, that much was certain. How much of that pull she could borrow was up for grabs; how much of it she should borrow was another matter.

She would have liked the time and opportunity to ask a few more careful questions, but wasn't convinced she could risk it even if Dingo hadn't been so close at hand. New Jersey struck her as competent but was otherwise largely an unknown quantity. Another time and she might have been more willing to go with Buckaroo's judgment that he could be trusted with more than her medical records; just now she could live with Buckaroo and Rawhide knowing she wasn't operating at speed, but she wasn't thrilled with the notion of anyone else finding out. There had to be a reason she couldn't retrieve anything about people; until she knew what that reason was, caution would have to be the word of the day.

Evidently T-Bear was of the same opinion regarding the narrow bridge, for the bus stopped briefly before turning left and proceeding at a vastly reduced speed. She could feel the bridge decking vibrate slightly as the bus started onto the span, then there was a peculiar scraping noise overhead and a fractional speed drop that would have taken a professional driver -- or a combat pilot/musician -- to notice. She was not at all surprised when the noise stopped a moment later, not from anything T-Bear did behind the wheel. There hadn't been sufficient clearance for something, which had sheared away under the stress. Since Buckaroo didn't strike her as absentminded about such things, she was ready to presume that neither he nor T-Bear had known there was a legitimate clearance problem. That would mean something had been there which didn't belong. Something which ought to be laying on the pavement about now.

"Stop the tail car," Jet called down the stairs, issues of her own security momentarily forgotten. "We want that."