"Is there anything 1 can doT Jesse asked.

"Yes." Isabel hesitated a bit, then quietly said, "Tell me that you still love me. “

"Oh, baby, of course I do. I love you. I miss you. I want to be with you. “

"I was afraid you wanted to move on." He heard doubt in her voice.

The thought had crossed Jesse's mind almost every day over the last two months, but he'd tried to push it out as quickly as it had entered. "Iz, I tried to go with you guys. You wanted me to come to Boston instead. I'd still come with you if you wanted me to. There's nothing I want more than to be back with you. “

"Okay. Good. Because I love you, too," she said. "I don't know what's going to happen to us. They don't seem to have given up their search. Sometimes it feels like we're never going to find peace. “

He agreed, but didn't want to tell her that. The situation with the Feds had escalated in the time since he had found out his wife was half alien. First the shadowy government men had tried to force him to inform on his own wife, resulting in his being forced to kill an agent to defend her. And then, just when things seemed to be calming down, Tess came back to Earth with Max's baby and blew up Rogers Air Force Base. The assault the federal agents had launched at the West Roswell High graduation ceremony demonstrated how determined these men were to capture or kill Isabel and her friends.

Clearly, given today's actions against them in Wyoming, the government men had not abandoned the chase. What will make them finally give it up? Is there a way to help Isabel and Max and Michael find some kind oj peace? "You'll have peace, Iz. Well have peace. We'll be together again, and someday we'll tell our gray-skinned, big-eyed alien kids all about your misadventures after West Roswell High." He hoped she would hear the humor in his voice, and take heart in it.

"What makes you think the kids won't look like you!" she asked. Clearly he had lifted her spirits.

"Well, Max's baby was fully human, so I guess we can hope for the best," he said. But as he listened for a reply, he heard another voice over the line… Liz's voice, coming from somewhere near Isabel. She said something he couldn't make out, and then he heard a crackle on the line.

He heard Isabel cry out briefly, followed by the same from Liz. Next came a banging sound.

Then the line went dead.

1 he ride to the nondescript building in the outlying warehouse district took half an hour or so, during which time the three prisoners were kept closely guarded. The boy was still unconscious, and the two girls stayed very still, given the armed guards bracketing each of them.

Colonel Bertram rode in the front of the transport vehicle rather than take a chopper back to base; the Humvees didn't get second glances from the locals, but black helicopters might tend to attract more attention, so they were housed nearby. Besides, Bertram didn't want to let this group out of his sight.

He was convinced that at least one of the detainees was a fugitive the Special Unit was looking for. Bertram was not a part of the S.U., but he had served with Matthew Margolin back in Vietnam, and had stayed friends with him during the three decades since. The secrets both men carried of atrocities committed by their group during the war were binding enough, but in addition Bertram actually liked Margolin.

The colonel wasn't ultimately clear on what it was that the Special Unit did… other than covert ops… or why it wanted these kids, but the things he had seen this morning told him that whatever it was, it was something very unusual. The teenage boy had actually appeared to change his face, and he had knocked down several agents with a gesture of his hand. And then there were the strange ash-piles the troops had found in the warehouse, heaps of dusty residue that apparently had been human beings at some point not too long before.

Bertram wasn't sure whether the kids were some kind of psychics or experiments run amok. Sure, the idea sounded like some kind of science-fiction story or something. Hell, he had loved Stephen King's Firestarter, but he was reasonably certain that The Shop and Lot Six didn't actually exist. Though if it does, it's exactly the type of thing that Margolin would be involved with, he thought. And Matt does look a little like George C. Scott from the movie. He chuckled to himself.

Several minutes later, the caravan arrived at the underground "office," and the three captives were placed in solitary cells equipped with reinforced steel bars.

Bertram put the soldiers who had been in the transport on guard duty. They knew what the kids… or at least the boy, when he was conscious… were capable of, and would be more alert than new assigns. He made his way back to his office and sat behind his desk. Using a series of protocols and passwords, he logged in to a database from his desktop computer.

He and his men had been led to the warehouse by an anonymous tip, and had arrived to discover that the police were already on premises. According to these files, the tipster appeared to have been right on target. One of the girls was wanted in conjunction with the destruction of Rogers Air Force Base near Roswell, New Mexico, in May 2002. Tess Harding. The report was vague about the extent of her involvement, but clearly marked her as a person of interest who should be detained for questioning. Agents were referred to a number that Bertram recognized as a Special Unit line.

Very interesting, he thought. What could a small blond teenage girl from New Mexico have to do with the immense explosion that had decimated Rogers? She doesn't exactly fit the al-Qaeda profile.

Bertram scrolled down the page to see if he could discover any further clues to the mystery before calling Margolin. A few lines onto the second page, he felt a shot of adrenaline hit his system. Linked to Tess Harding were six other names of possible accessories, and fellow persons of interest. He clicked on the first two files to open them.

Maxwell Evans opened first. Doesn't look familiar.

Isabel Evans. His mouth opened, and he shut it with a snap. That was the other girl they had captured. Her hair was wilder now, and she looked as though she had lived a lot of years since the picture was taken, but it was undeniably the same girl.

He hurriedly clicked the other files open.

Elizabeth Parker. Nothing. Maria DeLuca. Nothing again. Kyle Valenti. Nada.

And then Michael Guerin. Bertram smiled. Another hit. This was the kid they had zapped into submission. The one who had changed his face and used the weird powers against them. Guerin had quite a file built up as well, including several brushes with the law, and a murder trial at which he'd been found not guilty. Since he was a juvenile, his record was supposed to be sealed and expunged, but this was a military intelligence file. We don't expunge anything, Bertram thought.

He noticed that all of the kids were from Roswell, which made sense, if they were connected to this Tess Harding girl. The only thing he knew about Roswell was the myth about UFOs and a supposed government cover-up of the existence of aliens and…

The thought hit Bertram like a shot. What if this Guerin kid isn't some kind of Lot Six psychic mutant, but a real, live alien? He knew the notion was absurd, and yet it could almost make sense. This could be what the Special Unit is about.

There was only one way he was going to find out the truth, and he knew just the man who could tell him.

He picked up the phone and dialed Margolin's number.

Washington, D.C.

Matthew Margolin was pleased. A few minutes ago he had heard from Agent Harrison that the Roswell group had been located in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and local agents from the field office had been dispatched to capture them. He paged Bartolli, then grabbed some of the things he'd need.