"Amanda?" Penny tried to get her friend's attention as she was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable under her intense scrutiny. "Earth to Amanda?"

Amanda shook off her thoughts. "Sorry. Just zoned out there for a minute."

"Because I told you I was adopted?" the princess questioned.

"Oh no. No, not at all," she denied. "I was just thinking how awful it must me not to know for sure where you come from."

Penny nodded. "I guess it could be, but I never really thought about it until I needed something from my birth parents. I have a great mom and dad and I never needed to look for anything more."

"And you have no idea who they are?" Amanda probed gently, trying to get her answers. It wasn't as if she could come right out and ask if the princess was her sister-in-law.

"None," Penny confirmed, "But enough about me. I've been doing nothing but monopolizing the conversation since you got here." Truth be told, she sensed that there was something Amanda wasn't telling her, but with Amanda, she knew she had to ease into her or risk setting her spy senses on full alert. "I wanna hear all about you and your sexy spy husband. Tell me, is he as good as he looks?"

Amanda flushed slightly, feeling awkward in answering such a question knowing that Penny might be Lee's sister. "He...um...things have been good." She couldn't help smiling. "And he's such a wonderful father."

"Just good?" her friend teased. "Such a disappointment."

"Well, there's been a bit of family drama recently, that's all." Amanda nervously took a sip of her coffee as she tried to determine just how much she should tell Penny.

"Things are okay between you two, aren't they?" Penny asked worriedly.

"Between us, oh yes. Couldn't be better. It's not us...it's. Well, it's his mother..."

"But I thought both of his parents were dead. Didn't you tell me that in one of your many letters and that it was a big part of why it took so long for him to really open up to you?"

"Yes, I did. And we really thought they were, but apparently his mother's been in hiding all this time trying to keep him safe...and herself, of course." Hmm, she thought. Maybe there's a way to work this, after all. "It's been hard on him, you know, trying to deal with his mother's issues, dealing with how he feels about it and still trying to work this D'Angelo case."

"D'Angelo?" the princess questioned, her eyes wide. "Not Martin D'Angelo?"

"That's the one," Amanda confirmed. "You know him?"

Penny scoffed. "I wish I didn't. That man's a lowlife if I ever saw one."

"How so?" she inquired.

"Well, I can't prove it mind you, but you remember about a year ago, our US ambassador was murdered?"

"Of course, yes. That was awful...but I didn't think it was a murder. I thought it was just a terrible accident."

"It was no accident, believe me. Rheza doesn't want to believe it because he think D'Angelo's a saint with all his 'goodwill' trips bringing food to the poor, but I think those trips are just a cover for something else."

"Wait! He's been to Zakir? Lee thoroughly researched his travel records and didn't find anything like that, but did find that he's taken a lot of trips to Ile de Marin for- That's it!"

"What is? What's it?"

"Penny, how much do you trust your guards around here?"

"Amanda, what is it? What's going on?"

"Just tell me. Do you trust them? Have you ever felt nervous around them? Are any of them new?"

"Well, yes. Yes, of course some of them are new because Rheza wanted me to have extra protection on my trip here. The two who came here with me as my bodyguards."

"Where are they at now?"

"They're the two we left behind in the dining room."

"How'd they get assigned to be your bodyguards?"

"Amanda, I don't like that look on your face. Are you going to going to tell me what's going on?"

"I need to know," Amanda insisted in a harsher tone than she'd intended. "I'm sorry, but this is really important. I need to know everything you know about them."

"Not much." She thought for a moment. "Um...Ahmed the big, apey one...he was part of the prince's army. He was...um...I guess what we'd call a drill sergeant here. And...um...the other one, Ilham, he was his second-in-command, so to speak. They both had exemplary military records."

"Okay. So, how did they go from military to personal bodyguards?"

"They volun-" Her eyes widened in panic as she started to see what Amanda was seeing. "When Rheza and I were arguing about my coming here alone, they volunteered."

"What about the one who let me in? Do you trust him?"

"I don't distrust him. Truth be told, I don't know him all that well since he stays here at the embassy. As you know, we don't make it back to the states very often and I only see him when I'm here."

Alarm bells were ringing loudly in Amanda's head. She reached for her friend's arm. "Come on. We've got to get you out of here."

"Amanda, wait! Slow down. What's going on?"

"I don't have time to explain right now, but just trust me. Something is very wrong here."

"What do we do?" she questioned, fear written all over her face.

"Well, the first thing is not to panic. We don't want to let on that we know anything's wrong. Can you do that?"

Penny swallowed hard and nodded. "Yeah. I can do that." One thing that being married to the Crown Prince of Zakir had taught her was how to put on a mask for the outside world.

"There's got to be a back way out of here, right? Where is it?"

"Back through the dining room. Delivery entrance on the back side of the kitchen."

"Okay. So, here's what we're going to do. We're going to walk out of here nice and slowly just like we're still talking about the party...take these..." She indicated their coffee cups. "...back into the kitchen and get the hell out of here. You're not safe here."

They made their way out of the ballroom to follow Amanda's plan, both being startled by the two men being right at the door. Penny explained to the two men that they were just going to return their cups to the kitchen.

"So far so good," Penny whispered as they walked through the dining room and into the industrial kitchen. They set the cups in the sink and still in a hushed tone, she said, "This way."

They were almost to the exit, when they were halted by the voice of Ahmed, "Stop!"he commanded.

Busted, Amanda thought as she cringed a bit, but quickly recovered as she turned to find herself face to face with the two men, both of them training their weapons on her. She held up her hands, smiled sweetly and explained, "I was just asking Her Royal Highness to show me where other entrances and exits are. I mean, if we're going to make sure that this party goes off without a hitch, I have to check all points that could pose a security risk, don't I?"

The two men each grabbed one of the women, Ahmed, the larger of the two grabbing Amanda and relieving her of her revolver. "No one leaves!" he barked as they pushed Amanda and Penny back into the dining room forcing them to sit down. The men then positioned themselves to prevent escape, one at the kitchen door, the other at the room's entry door.

"Now what?" Penny hissed to Amanda.

Amanda sighed. She wished she knew.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Dammit!" Lee cursed as traffic slowed down his travel to Embassy Row.

"Lee...language," his mother scolded in a teasing tone.

He shook his head. "Now's not the time. Besides, I'm an adult. Your time for scolding me like a child is long past."

"I see," she responded in a clipped tone, trying to hide the hurt she felt. Would her son ever truly let her in? "Lee, you know that if things could have been different-"

"Well, they weren't," he responded hotly. "And now, my wife, the mother of my children is in danger because of you."

"Why do you think I stayed in hiding all these years? To prevent this very sort of thing from happening! I was told it was safe. If I'd known-" She paused as her thoughts began to whirl. "Agent Carpenter," she blurted out. "God, I'm so stupid!"

"What's he got to do with all this?"

"Don't you see, Lee? He's the one who told me I was safe. He's the one who told me I could no longer live in the safe house. All of this began happening then."

"Right, right," Lee acknowledged. "He played on your connection to his father, figuring that if you trusted his father, you'd trust him too." He realized now that all this time, he'd been investigating the wrong man. While he was still sure that D'Angelo was involved, he had a feeling that Agent Carpenter was the one pulling the strings. He picked up the phone and dialed the Agency. "Francine, listen," he commanded when the line was answered. "I need to do something for me as quick as you can. I need information on travel records for a CIA agent named Kevin Carpenter and not just him, but anyone who was traveling with him."

"That could take some time, Lee," Francine warned him.

"I know, but just get it as fast as you can." As another thought occurred to him, he added, "Oh...and see if any of his traveling companions match D'Angelo's description. Thanks."

As he hung up the phone, his mother questioned, "D'Angelo? You think he and Agent Carpenter are working together?"

"It all fits, doesn't it? Ever since I started this investigation on D'Angelo, I've been having these dreams...nightmares really. About you...about Dad...and D'Angelo was in every one of them. At first I just thought it was because of his CIA connections, but then you came back into my life and I started to realize that the dreams weren't really dreams. They were memories from when I was a kid." He glanced sideways at her. "They are, aren't they?"

"Yes," Jennie admitted. "Your father and I suspected that he was in league with Blackthorne, but we could never prove it. As you already know, we had uncovered all manner of treachery on Blackthorne's part, but never could put the whole puzzle together."

The phone rang just then and Lee picked it up, "Yeah?"

On the other end of the line, Francine told him, "We hit pay dirt. Carpenter's most frequent travel companion is one Marco Garcia who bears a suspicious resemblance to Martino D'Angelo and that's not all. Not only is he a native of Ile de Marin_"

"I already knew that, Francine," he interrupted impatiently.

"But what you didn't know is that under the Garcia name, he's made frequent trips to Zakir."

"Bingo!" That's what he'd been afraid of. "Thanks, Francine." He dropped the car phone into its cradle and growled, "Screw this!" as he stepped on the gas and veered in and out of traffic. "We've gotta get there."

"Lee, would you slow down!" Jennie cried as she held on tightly.

"Amanda's in danger. Your daughter, my sister is in danger."

"Well, we're not going to be of any help to them if we get killed along the way," she shouted.

"Hey! This is my case! MY family! I'll handle it MY way!"

Jennie shook her head. "You are so much like your father. He was that obstinate as well."

"Almost there," he assured her with a squeal of tires as he pulled into the embassy's parking lot.

"Oh, thank God," Jennie breathed a sigh of relief when Lee finally put the 'Vette in park. As they climbed out of the car, as usual with Lee leaving the keys behind, he double-checked to make sure his trusty Beretta was within easy reach as they approached the front doors of the Zakiran Embassy.