License Invoked

Fio

"Shh!" she said, clapping her hand over her mouth and whispering through her fingers. Her ridiculously made-up eyes were huge. "Secret identity. Come on, be a sport, Liz. Don't tell."

"I won't," Elizabeth whispered back, "but you do have to cooperate with me. I'm here to protect you."

"Protect away," Fio

Lloyd Preston wrapped one arm around her lean waist. Elizabeth saw the possessive look on his face, and knew she had to get him on her side if she was expecting not to be locked out of dressing rooms and stage wings, accidentally on purpose. In all the wide angle photographs of Fio

"You do understand that I've got to investigate any threats," Elizabeth said over Fio

The man growled. "I know about you. I can do all the protecting she needs. Go home."

"That isn't possible," Elizabeth said. She cleared her throat and pitched her voice higher. "I will be riding with Fio

"Not a chance, sunshine," Preston said flatly.

Elizabeth fixed him with the stare that she had perfected in years of cadet service to teachers and school librarians.

"I know who you are," she said with great confidence, although all she had to go on was the information she had gleaned from reading the glossies. "You've been with Fio

"And you can?" Preston regarded her with suspicion and dislike. The feeling was mutual. Elizabeth knew his type. He was the kind of big brute who got loud and dangerous in pubs, and waited for his mates to quiet him down so the police wouldn't have to come in and arrest him when he beat someone bloody. The short, dark-haired woman with the peculiar eyeglass frames standing with the roadies was keeping a close, anxious eye on them, and looked as if she was going to rush in at any moment. The good-looking, brown-haired man at her side put a hand on her arm. They must be familiar with Preston's blustering.

"Come on, children!" the manager said, clapping his hands together to break them up. "We're all tired. Here are the cars. Fio

"And me," Elizabeth said.

"And who the hell are you, duckie?" the manager said, wheeling on her. He was a dark-haired, well-built man with a clipped beard. He looked about twenty-eight, except for the fine creases in his skin next to his eyes and mouth, which suggested he was actually in his middle forties.

Elizabeth pulled him away to a handy overhead streetlight, and showed him her badge from OOPSI.

"Ah," the manager said, his eyebrows climbing high on his forehead. "I'm one of those people who doesn't need to be hit on the head with a brick, love. I believe. I absolutely believe. Of course you'll join us. I'm Nigel Peters, ringmaster of this circus. Glad to have you here." He clapped his hands again. "Everybody! The band in car two. Everyone else in car three. Anybody else will have to cab it, I'm afraid. I think these bloody hearses only seat sixteen."

There was a strained guffaw from a couple of the roadies, each of whom had charge of what looked like a container-load of baggage. Elizabeth hadn't properly appreciated how much of an entourage or how much equipment a musical group needed on tour. She suddenly realized that every luggage cart on the pavement belonged to Fio

Elizabeth had much to think about as the limos arrived, each stretching on and on like a clown car at the circus. My heaven, but American cars are BIG, she thought. With the hall-monitor training foremost, she managed to help shift everyone in the parties into the cars, got Fio

"Thanks, dearie," Fio

Well, well, Fee Kendale. She and Elizabeth hadn't seen much of one another since coming down from St. Hilda's College, Oxford. They'd been friends then, but had lost touch immediately after graduation. Her family said she had gone abroad. How interesting that it had turned out to be true, although she wasn't as far away as her father had made it sound. What's more, it easily explained what must look to an outsider like a coincidence. Lord Kendale knew Elizabeth was in the Secret Service; he even knew which branch. She ran into him occasionally in the corridors of power, and he always remembered to have his secretary send her a card on Christmas and her birthday. She only hoped that he hadn't exaggerated the nature of the threat just to get an agent on the case whom he knew he could trust. And he'd known perfectly well where Phoebe had been all these years she was supposed to have been "abroad." Elizabeth wondered how many of Fio

Phoebe had been intractable even as a child, always going her own way no matter how much her father pleaded with her. It was going to be hellish keeping Fee from slipping away from scrutiny when it became onerous, but now Elizabeth had a weapon she might be able to use over her to keep her in order: her deeply dark, secret past.

As the airport disappeared from view, Elizabeth realized with a shock that she had forgotten to look for her U.S. counterpart. After the Phoebe/Fio