Dinah smiled at Xavier who set a new glass of orange juice down and headed back inside to the bar.  She had the patio to herself today and the peace and quiet was a relief from the constant hovering at home.  They were all so sweet and she was bearing up but her temper was getting frayed, so when she'd seen the weather report and realized that a few days of balmy late January temperatures were expected at the beach she'd transferred her daytime lounging post from the great room at the commune to the patio at the hotel.  Marc dropped her off late morning when he headed to his office to handle what Reno and Anja couldn't and picked her up when he was done.  Sometimes they had dinner here or at one of the places on the oceanfront and sometimes they went back to the house.  A couple of times they'd just stayed the night here.

The weather was going to turn cold again in a day or two and as she sipped the juice she considered doing the days at Vaurian for a while, with Jolie for company.  Marc would enjoy it and he liked Julian and Spence, she thought as she yawned and rubbed her bulging stomach where the babies were kicking again.  She'd have to talk to him about it tonight.  Right now she, thought, maybe a nap was in order, as she cracked her jaw yawning again.

She dog eared her book to mark her place and stood up taking the book and the rest of her juice with her.  She was suddenly parched, she realized and headed over to the bar before going upstairs to get a refill.  Then, stocked up on juice she headed for the elevator, telling Leslie where she'd be if anyone was looking.  As she stepped into the car one of the guests joined her.  She smiled at him, a medium tall gentleman with reddish gray hair and black eyes who always struck her as a bit off, but she wasn't paying all that much attention to transient guests these days.  She pushed the button for four and waited for the car to move.  When it got to four without an intervening stop she shrugged and figured he'd forgotten to push a button, or maybe he just liked to ride elevators.  Either way she didn't care.  She wanted a nap.  So she juggled the book and the glass, getting the key out of her pocket and was opening the door when she felt a hand at the small of her back pushing her forward, stumbling and dropping the book, into the room.

As she fell she felt a hand come out to stop her from calling out. She reached up and clawed at it with her nails, a momentary satisfaction when he cursed and she felt blood spurt where she'd got him, but then there was pain, and a brilliant white light of agony and then there was nothing.

He laughed then and lifted her carefully, checking the fetuses in her womb.  They were sleeping, knocked out from the drug he'd slipped in her juice, just like she should have been.  It didn't matter, he thought, she's out now.  Then he zapped them both out of there, back to his hiding place, back where he'd come from and where he could keep her until he didn't need her anymore.

Downstairs in the kitchen Mabel suddenly looked up and started moving towards the lobby where she found Jeeves, standing at the elevator. Neither needed to say anything. They took the elevator to the fourth floor and found blood and broken glass and no Dinah.

Meanwhile Marc had been in a rather contentious meeting with several of the other Houses, arguing over minor things he didn't give a crap about. So when he and Cola arrived back at the Refuge he was far from in a good mood. Cola dropped him at the commune and it was only then he remembered that Dinah was still in Virginia Beach. He walked in to chat with Christopher who was acting up when he felt it. Whatever it was it made him stagger and he knocked over a vase. He stood there staring down at blood. No, it wasn't blood, it was.. "Dinah!" He zapped out straight to the Hotel.

Jeeves saw him emerge in the hall outside Dinah's apartment.  "I was just preparing to call you, Mr. Rogatien," he said, moving so Marc could enter the apartment.

Marc took the several steps at a run. Blood. There was the blood. Broken glass. "Dinah!" he shouted pushing past Mabel, searching the small apartment, afraid she'd cut herself and passed out or something. She was nowhere to be found.

"Whom would you like me to notify, sir?" Jeeves asked, sharing a glance with Mabel.

He sank down on his knees looking at the blood. "I ... where is she?"

"Who should... never mind," Mabel said and picked up the phone. Tabitha answered it and in quick clear concise words Mabel explained.

In seconds Stephen arrived, followed closely by Trevor, Anja and Laz.  Stephen moved to where Marc was and put a light hand on his shoulder.  "We'll find her.  First we need to let Trevor process this place, see what it can tell us about what happened."

Marc let Stephen lead him aside and sit with him on Dinah's couch. "I saw something Stephen. I.. I felt it. She was afraid. Angry. Confused."  Trevor and Laz were collecting evidence and looking for a hint as to what was going on. Anja went downstairs to talk to Mabel and Jeeves.

Oh shit! Shit! Shit!" Stephen thought.  "Marc, I hate to ask, but can you show me what you saw...felt, there might be something that will help," Stephen said, zapping a bottle of scotch and a glass.

Marc passed a hand over his eyes and showed Stephen the bare second or so connection he'd had with Dinah.

Stephen saw it and saw the nascent tendrils that had begun to form whose matching ends, he knew, he'd have seen in Dinah's mind if he could have looked.  He poured a full glass of scotch and handed it to Marc.  "Drink it," he said.

Marc drank it. "She's sick. Who'd ... Someone here from the worlds?  I need to get in the CE rig and see if I can find her," Marc said finishing off what was left of the scotch.

Laz stepped over.  He looked at Stephen who nodded.  "Marc we can send it out, but if you can look at the DNA in the blood, tell us if it's just one or more than one person's and if it's Dinah, it would save us a lot of time."

"Right, sure," he said. He took a vial that Laz handed him and turned his hand up revealing his sigil which began to glow. A helix arose from the vial and turned in a 3D hologram in front of them.  Marc studied it a moment. "Not Dinah's, thank god. But," he squinted at it, studying it and frowning.

"What?" Laz asked, accepting another vial from Trevor for Marc to examine.

"It's similar to hers. I'm not sure.  Could be a member of the House. Or..." Marc looked over at Stephen. "Does she have any relatives alive?"

Stephen paled.  "Only her father," he said.

Laz handed Marc the second vial of blood, looking from one to the other.  "The council declared him renegade years ago, when she was a child."

Marc examined the DNA and nodded his head.  "Dinah's."

"They did," Stephen said when the helix disappeared.  "I was there.  But I lost track of him not long after and have never been able to find him since."

"Would he take Dinah," Marc asked, his voice going cold.

Stephen hesitated, remembering the few times he'd met the man and everything he'd been told of him.  "He's certifiable, a paranoid schizophrenic though I'm not a shrink.  He's certainly capable of it.  And if he thought he had reason, he wouldn't hesitate."

"You knew something was wrong?" Anja asked Jeeves.

"Yes, miss," he said.  I've been in service for a long time."

"But how did you sense it? Was there something specific that triggered it? Something almost unconscious?  Something about a guest acting oddly?  What?"

"It isn't like that miss.  It's an intuition, I suppose, if you must call it something."  Jeeves looked over at Mabel.

"It is not something we can quantify," Mabel explained.

"I see. Tell me about the people staying here at present,"  Anja settled for.

Mabel lead her in to the office and pulled out the records. "There are the usual, of course. I'm assuming you aren't suspicious of them?"

"No, only someone you don't know that well, or someone who you might, now, have doubts about?

Jeeves stood in the doorway and shared a look with Mabel.

"There was only one transient," Jeeves said.  "He's been here since December nineteenth, though he was gone for a few days, January third and fourth and then again on the eleventh and twelfth.

"Is he in now?" Anja asked.

"I think he is," Mabel said, grabbing her keys. Third floor. She lead the way to the elevators. "Marc okay?" Mabel asked. Jeeves had joined them and the three exited the elevator as it reached the third floor.

"No," Anja replied. "He's terrified for her I expect."

They came to a door and Mabel knocked, calling out, "Mr. MacIntosh?"

Jeeves looked at her and then nodded.  Mabel unlocked the door, calling his name again.  The room was empty.  Jeeves moved into the room and checked the closet and the drawers and then the bathroom.  Nothing but some hairs on the sink and a spot of blood on the floor.

"Don't let anyone in. I'll get Trevor," Anja said. "Leave everything as it is."

"Yes, miss," Jeeves said, moving to lock the door and guard it.

Anja found Trevor and told him what they'd found. He followed her down to the MacIntosh room and surveyed it, then knelt to take a sample of the blood spot and he bagged the hairs.

He was standing watching Marc trying to keep himself together as he and Stephen spoke of Dinah's father.

"I've got one more sample Marc. If you could would you see if it is the same or different?"

Marc nodded, still numb luckily so the anger was only a faint glimmer somewhere deep inside.  He examined the DNA and announced, "The same as the other."

"We know who it was then," Trevor replied. "A guest here. We'll see if we can trace him."

Laz nodded.  "I'll get on it."

"I'll help," Anja said.

Trevor nodded. "Check back if you find something."  Then he turned his attention to Stephen and Marc. "Stephen, I need you to tell me everything you know about Dinah's father. Marc I need you to listen, so if you hear something that rings a bell or strikes a chord you can tell me."

Stephen nodded and thought for a moment.  "The files are back in my office.  There's some old pictures of him, the council minutes when we argued about him and the transcripts from the trial.  There's also all the information I could get at the time on the other women and the children he fathered on them." Stephen sighed.  "It was pretty sordid, the whole thing and he took a long time to catch up to.  I met him when he awoke, about hundred years ago or so, and he was already pretty sick, but not full blown.  He stayed on Home for a while and then left, and the next thing I knew he was fathering children and sterilizing them when they weren't what he was aiming for which, as he explained in graphic detail at the trial, was child who combined all three of the great gifts.  As he went on he stopped sterilizing and started killing the children and then he decided to kill the mothers as well."

"Christ," Marc paled.

"Let's go back to your office Stephen, I want those pictures. We'll contact everyone and pass them around. Maybe someone will have an idea we can follow up."

"Sure," Stephen said, and they said good by to Mabel and Jeeves and zapped back to Stephen's office.  He asked Tommy to get coffee and scotch and then started to open the file cabinet in the corner, a secure unit that required more than just an aluminum key.  He pulled a couple of thick accordion pocket folders as well as some regular manila files and handed them to Trevor.  "Everything's there, the pictures are in the front of the one on top."  He watched Trevor for a moment.  "His name's Angus, and he's the smartest man I've ever met, bar none and cunning as hell."

"Thanks. We'll broadcast the photos and I'll review the file to see what we can find. Marc?"  Trevor asked.

"What," Marc replied.

"We'll find her."

"I'll get the word out, through Baz and Ian, plus Tabitha will work the old ones and the exiled, also Tsura's father's people.  Natha will get Dinah's network looking.  Laz is probably putting the word out to his as well." Stephen said.  "And I'll send word to Carmine so he can start looking on his end.  Who should I notify on the worlds or do you want to handle that?"

"I, uh, I'll do it," Marc said. "I need to do it."

"He's right Marc," Stephen said.  "We'll find her, we'll get her back."  Stephen took a deep breath.  "Trevor is there anything else you need from us right now?"

"No, I don't think so. Let me go see what I can find out. But if anything occurs to any of you. A word you might have heard, anything, please let me know."

Once Trevor left Marc turned to Stephen. "I was... otherwise occupied back then."  Stephen could almost hear the guilt, the idea that if he'd been paying attention none of this would have happened. But they'd all been more than aware of the danger.

"I need to go to see NC and a few others," Marc said. "I'll be back."

"Hang on a second," Stephen said.  "Take a close look," he said carefully, "at what you saw when you saw and felt her being taken.  A close look at where in your mind it happened."

"What does it matter? Are you saying I didn't see it?" Marc asked, the anger he'd been struggling to contain beginning to bubble upward.

"Humor me, please.  It's important.  Just take a look at your mind, not at what you saw, but where you saw it, where it happened."

Marc turned his attention inward. He replayed the few moments before he turned into a basket case and examined it.  When he came out of the trance like state he'd been in looking at it, he met Stephen's eyes. "And what good does it do me now?" he asked.

"It's a connection to her, however tenuous.  As long as it's like that she's still alive," Stephen told him.

Marc blinked, then closed his eyes for a second as he took a deep breath. "Yes. Thank you for that, Stephen. It will help."

"No problem.  Now we've both got work to do to find her."

Marc reached out to squeeze Stephen's shoulder. "Yes, we do." When he let go of Stephen he zapped out and was gone.