His chin dipped a bare millimeter.
I leaned back and propped my feet on his desk. He looked at them pointedly but didn’t ask me to move, so I stayed where I was. With him looming over me, it was easier to watch his face when I was tilted back.
“I’m guessing they don’t want money because you would’ve given it to them.” I waved at the drawing and the shiny rocks. “You love your nephew, that much is clear. So they want something you’re not prepared to give.” I thought about it. “Or they want something the empress isn’t willing to give.”
Torran’s expression remained flat, but the tiniest of flickers proved that I was on the right track. What could kidnappers want that a literal empress would refuse to provide in return for her grandson? Empress Nepru had the collective might of the Valovian Empire at her fingertips. She was smart and resourceful. The FHP delegates had underestimated her and paid a steep price.
So the kidnappers had asked for something extraordinary. And whatever it was, Torran wasn’t allowed to say.
I rubbed my face. “Investigating would be so much easier if you could talk to me. Why would you agree to promises that make finding your nephew harder?” My eyes narrowed in anger. “Does someone not want him found?”
Torran stared at me for long enough that I thought he wouldn’t answer. “Finding Cien is our main priority,” he said at last. “But the situation is delicate and my options are limited. I had hoped to return to better news.” His hands clenched on the edge of the desk, frustration etched into the tense lines of his body.
“What can you tell me?”
“Cien has been gone for too long. I need you to find him. Soon. I know you took this job only for the money, so I will double your completion bonus if you find him in the next ten days.”
For now, I ignored the question of how he knew about my financial situation and focused on the important part of his statement. “What happens on day eleven?”
Torran’s expression turned bleak, but he didn’t answer.
I sighed and stood. “I’m going to finish cooking dinner because my team needs to eat. After that, I expect a comprehensive brief of everything you’ve learned so far. We’ll get everyone together to go over the data, because maybe talking through it will reveal something new.”
Torran’s lips pressed into a grim line, but he nodded. On impulse, I reached out and touched his arm. “We’ll find your nephew,” I said as gently as I could. “My team is good at finding lost things.”
His eyes were as desolate as I’d ever seen them. “I hope so,” he murmured.
Dinner was a decidedly subdued affair. The Valoffs didn’t eat with us, despite the fact that it was dinnertime in standard time and midday local time. We’d gotten used to eating with Torran’s team, and we all felt their absence.
Outside, the sky was dark. I would never get used to a “noon” that was in the middle of the night. I couldn’t decide if the two-day cycle was better or worse than a single short day, but my body was certainly on team “sleep when it was dark,” even though it wasn’t that late in standard time.
The war had never reached Valovia, so we’d never had to acclimate to the two-day schedule. And I’d never been on any planet that had such a short solar day. It was going to completely wreck my body clock.
I glanced around the table. Everyone was concentrating on their meal, but Kee was eating with the sort of focused intensity she usually reserved for solving difficult puzzles. She was beating herself up for not finding the information on the kidnapping sooner, as if that would even have been possible with Torran refusing to help.
After dinner, we headed for Torran’s private office. He intercepted us in the hallway and directed us to another room in the family wing. It looked like it had originally been a bedroom, but all of the furniture had been replaced. Now half a dozen desks with large workstation displays crowded together on one side of the room and a collection of chairs took up the other half in front of a huge wall display.
Kee sucked in a breath and looked around with wide eyes. Torran had better lock the door when we were done or Kee would spend all of her time in here.
“Please have a seat,” Torran said, indicating the chairs. Nilo stood at the front of the room, next to the display, but the rest of the Valovian team was already seated. Eli plopped down between Havil and Chira while Kee bounced over to sit next to Varro. Lexi sat in the back, as far from Nilo as she could get without leaving the room. Anja looked torn, but she sat next to Chira with a smile when the other woman waved her over.
I leaned against the back wall, too wound to sit. Torran joined me. “How was your dinner?” he asked.
“Peachy,” I muttered. In truth, dinner hadn’t done much to blunt my annoyance at him for keeping his nephew a secret, and I was in a fighting mood, so my best bet was avoidance.
Unfortunately, Torran hadn’t gotten the memo.
He frowned at me. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s been a long day,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s hear what you’ve found so far.”
Torran stared at me for a moment longer before turning his attention to Nilo. The other Valoff stepped forward and the screen behind him turned on. Nilo had lost some of his easygoing charm. His face was set in lines of grim determination.
“Approximately seventeen standard days ago, an unknown team broke in, tranquilized Cien, and escaped with him. We tracked them to the edge of the city, where they abandoned their transport. Flight data does not show any ships leaving the area, so we believe they took a smaller craft that remained hidden in the trees.”
“We saw a team of four on the video,” I said. “Were there more?”
Nilo nodded. “Four infiltrated the house with four more in lookout positions and one securing the transport.”
That was an interesting split, but if they knew that Cien was alone and unprotected, it made sense to send a smaller team into the house. If four trained adults couldn’t subdue a child, then more wouldn’t necessarily help.
“How long was it before Cien’s disappearance was noticed?”
“Three hours,” Torran said, bitterness in his tone. “I found him missing upon my return.”
My heart winced in sympathy. A missing child was every caregiver’s nightmare. I touched Torran’s arm in comfort and he nodded, once, sharply, but didn’t say anything else.
When I didn’t ask another question, Nilo resumed his brief. “The kidnappers have been in contact twice. Both messages originated on Valovia but from different cities each time, and each message was one-time use, with no reply address supplied.”
“They don’t want to negotiate,” Kee murmured.
Nilo nodded. “I am not at liberty to discuss the content of the messages, but you are correct.”
“What’s their motivation?” Lexi asked. She sounded cool and professional, her mask firmly in place.