“Would you prefer the police in your house?” Nolene asks Ross, bottle feeding a lamb in a long-limbed slump on her lap and looking softer and lovelier than I’ve ever seen her. “Because she’ll try to escape the moment an opportunity presents itself.”
“That’s a problem the two of you will have to manage,” Ross insists. “I’m not having this woman locked in a room twenty-four-seven. Not in my home.”
“All right,” I agree, Saba sprawled like a huge furry ottoman at my feet. “Amy will be allowed outside as long as one of us is with her at all times. But she doesn’t set foot outside the sanctuary.”
Ross nods. “I want your promise no more harm will come to her.”
“You have it,” I say without hesitation.
Nolene frowns. “If Highness Hutchinson is allowed to wander all over the place, we’ll need to keep up our disguises. And I don’t want to be wearing a ski mask all day. Not in this heat.”
“You still have those Zorro masks?” I ask Ross. “The ones we wore when we crashed Mel’s bachelorette party?”
“Yeah, they’re packed in a box somewhere. You know Mel, she hates to throw anything away.”
“Dig them out for me, will you,” I say. “They should do the job.”
Ross rolls his eyes. “Won’t we look stupid.”
I summon up a smile. “Finally a disguise to match your IQ.”
“Right back at you, buddy.”
“What about the people you have working at the sanctuary?” Nolene asks.
“I’ll tell them to take a leave of absence, starting today.”
“We’ll fill in for them,” I offer. “Amy can help.”
A spark of interest lights up Nolene’s face. She’s probably calculating how soon she can get Amy to muck out a stall.
“I’ll remove any visual references to the name of the sanctuary,” Ross says. “How long do you intend to keep Amy here?”
“About a week. That’s the deadline we’ve given the father. It might be less if he makes his announcement before then.”
Ross shakes his head. “I don’t understand. This isn’t the sort of action AFD engages in. We never hurt people. Ever. That was our policy right from the start.”
“In this case,” I say slowly, “there were...extenuating circumstances.”
“If you knew what the father did at his lab,” Nolene interjects, her voice hushed because of the lamb now asleep on her lap, but her tone still fierce, “you wouldn’t have a problem with what we do to the daughter.”
Ross turns on her. “Yeah, I’d still have a problem. First, your issue is with thefather, not the daughter. Second, I don’t have to know what the father does at his lab; it’s pretty much what nearly every animal researcher does, and yeah, it’s always bad. But what’s done to the animals is never an excuse for what we do to people.”
Nolene’s lips thin. “Why? Because the law says so? The same law that legally protects research experiments on animals? Well, that law is wrong. And when the law is wrong, the right thing to do is to break it.”
Ross throws her a disparaging look. “I’ve read the same books you have. Don’t bother quoting from them.”
“Ross, why can’t you see it?” Nolene asks. “We’ve had years and years of legal campaigning. What real difference has it made?”
“I agree there’s a need for both underground and above ground action,” Ross says, “but neither Gandhi nor Martin Luther King endorsed violence and look at the revolutionary goals they achieved.”
I let out a tired sigh. “You two, save it for the lecture hall. What’s done is done.”
“Doesn’t mean it can’t be undone,” Ross counters. “Extreme actions can cause extreme public opposition. From a PR standpoint, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.”
“I realize the risk,” I admit.
“What if the deadline passes?” Ross asks. “What if the father refuses to meet your demands?”
