It's early November. A couple of weeks pass during which nothing too exciting happens. Alexandra plays with telephones. Esteban recovers from his flu and goes out on the town a lot. Angelina and Gavin ease back into training from their respective injuries. The Inquisition installs a second computer at the hospice (letting the new one be an insecure computer, and the original made more secure and less useful for everyday computer things). Tina starts using the new computer for school and to play games.
One of Tina's games worth mentioning is called "Ytl". In it you explore a city, Myst-like, but you sometimes run into other people playing. It's less puzzle oriented and more explore oriented. Plus you can click on various icons to tell it what you're thinking, and that effects the game. Tina and her friends play it a lot. Esteban plays a little and finds it pretty compelling (though he runs across an empty bordello in the city with bondage equipment inside) and Thielo plays once and finds it boring and illogical. Apparently one of the goals is to "find your bottle" but the game is coy about what the others might be. It's published by Electronic Arts and made by Carnelian Crusade.
Angelina receives a letter from cousin Vinnie indicating that the Antinellis are scared of her now (Vinnie doesn't know why) and that the head of the Family has declared her a "strega" and not to be approached. After that, Angelina spends some time buying slinkier clothing for Gwen (who seems made to wear that sort of thing) and then setting up dancing and other dates for Gwen and Gavin. Gavin bears it with good humor. Esteban and Angelina come along on at least one of these things, making it more of a team night out than a date.
Gavin has an interesting dream which seems significant. He finds himself in a palace, populated by moving statues and paper puppets. There's a King, a Fool, a man with two faces. A Knight approaches Gavin and leads him into the barracks. Entering a room, Gavin finds himself facing an armored man across a fire, who is performing a ritual with bronze, iron, and steel powder and a shield. Then the man is in combat next to a kingly figure. The King is struck by the arrow, but suddenly the arrow is in the shield instead. In another room of the barracks, Gavin sees the same ritual being performed on a book.
It takes Gavin a while to ask Angelina for help, and she lets the actual mages know and they gather the material to help Gavin perform the ritual. He thinks it will help his power of taking other's wounds - letting the shield buffer the wound when he takes it. There's a lot of debate about how to test it (especially since Gavin does the ritual on a bullet-proof vest) but none of them get tried due to an interruption.
"I'd rather get shot by a rubber bullet than not know how the experiment turned out." -Alexandra
Horace comes into the lab where the team is kibbitzing about tests for the vest and asks if they've seen Dan. No one has since last night. They spread out and find Dave on the floor of the practice room, emaciated, passed out, and with terrible sores. Doctor Staadler identifies his condition as advanced AIDS. Reviewing the security camera, it seems that Dan took a car very early that morning. Esteban calls Ryan Morrison, and remains in communication with him for much of what follows. Trying to figure out what Dan might have taken, the team discovers that the secure computer won't boot and then that its hard drive has been removed.
TNI has a Lojack-like system installed in their cars, and in about an hour it turns up the car at the Portland airport. The team heads there to sniff around, and manages to find that a man in a wheelchair and two big guys got on a charter flight at 6AM. While everyone else heads back to the Hospice to pack, Esteban persuades the tower that he's an FBI agent, and gets them to check the flight plans for charters that left around then. There were only two: one to Japan, and one to Newark in one of the latest fast executive jets. Already suspicious of the possibility, the team decides that Dan has gone to N.Y. to meet with the Bad Man. Ryan says the Inquisition is dowsing for Dan as well, but that the process is slow.
On the plane to New York, the team plots strategy fairly inconclusively. Gavin gets an airphone call from Abel, who tells him that Gavin should determine if Dan was coerced or not, and if not, Dan should be terminated. Gavin agrees with this sort of method for dealing with traitors.
In New York, surveillance is the order of the day (or really evening by this point). Gavin and Angelina keep and eye on the Dealership (the Bad Man's offices) but see nothing. Esteban cruises gay bars and discovers that he can charge off any kind of flirting. The Strausses check the streets near Broadway shows. No one turns up Dan. The team is beginning to conclude that they will have to deal with the Bad Man, but no one is very enthused about that. The Dealership isn't open, so they turn in for the night.
Early in the morning, Ryan calls them and tells them that the divining has put Dan in Morristown New Jersey. The team and a local Inquisitor driver, Austin, head down there. In another couple of hours the Inquisition has an address: 412 Oak Street. It's in a lower-middle-class 60's house sort of neighborhood. They stake out the house, determining that the shades are drawn and they can't see in. After most people have left the neighborhood for work, they swing into action.
Austin waits in the car and Esteban goes around front while the others head around back. Esteban calls the house (Ryan having provided a phone number) and tries to sell the man who answers the phone insurance. By strange coincidence, the man on the phone sounds like Bobcat Goldthwait. He claims not to need insurance, but Esteban keeps him on the phone for a while while Thielo picks the lock of the back door. Just as the man is hanging up, the team bursts through the door finding the man (let's call him Bob, though they never learn his name) in the kitchen in his bathrobe. Angelina points a gun at him and he puts his hands up. Alexandra slaps the squid on him as restraint. On close examination, Bob is pretty cut up, though he has bandages on his wounds.
Leaving Alexandra in the kitchen, the rest of the team lets Esteban in and heads upstairs. Just as Alexandra has gotten around to asking Bob if there's anyone else and he's telling her someone is upstairs, someone shoots at the team from one of the upstairs bedrooms. Angelina takes a shot though the wall at him and then Thielo rushes in and tazers the man (who turns out to be Dan with a lot of bandages on his face).
Meanwhile downstairs, Bob has gotten out of the squid somehow and runs for the back fence. Alexandra misses him with her crossbow, and then Thielo and Angelina arrive and shoot Bob a couple times, but the bullets pass right through him. Bob easily vaults the back fence and Alexandra throws her squid after him. Angelina follows Bob over the fence, but finds that he's running too fast to catch. The squid has grabbed a terrier in the other back yard, and takes some persuasion to get loose.
After that, the team does a quick search of the house, finding very little, and bundles Dan into the SUV and from there into a waiting private plane to go back to Seattle. Gavin clearly might have dealt with the traitor right there, but Ryan orders him brought back for questioning.
In the Seattle safehouse, Esteban lays some mojo on Dan and gets him to tell the story. Dan is fed up with a life of creeps and creepy things, and when the Bad Man called him, he took the chance to get his own life back. In exchange for the disk, the Man gave him a cure, and in exchange for a new identity, Dan owes favors later. What was on the disk? Dan had downloaded a lot of dossiers, as well as a list of names and cities for TNI west coast personnel. Angelina upbraids him a bit for being a traitor, and he has nothing to say for himself.
After the story is out, Esteban pats Dan on the back and leaves. Eponymous arrives and lets everyone else know they are to leave too. As they depart down the corridor, they hear two shots behind them, close together.