along with the teleport? Or did your wrist go, while you
stayed behind and wondered how long it would take to bleed to death?

Or what?

All the questions were intriguing ones. Malone sighed, wishing he knew
the answer to even one of them.

It was somewhat comforting to think that he'd managed to progress a
little, anyway. The kids hadn't meant anybody to find out about
them--but Malone had found out about them, and alerted all the cops in
town, as well as the rest of the FBI. He knew just who they were, and
where they lived, and how they performed the "miracles" they performed.

Anyhow, he knew something about that last item.

He even knew who had his notebook.

He tabled that thought, and went back to feeling victorious. Within a
few seconds, the sense of achievement was gone, and futility had come in
its place. After all, he still didn't know how to catch the kids, did
he?

No.

He thought about handcuffs some more and then gave up. He'd just have to
try it and see how it worked. And if the teleports took his wrist away
he'd ... he'd ... he'd go after them and make them give it back.

Sure he would.

That reminded him of the notebook again, and, since the thing was being
so persistent, he decided he might as well pay some attention to it.

Dorothea had the notebook. Malone tried to see himself barging in on her
and asking for it, and he didn't care for the picture at all--no matter
how Good Queen Bess felt about it.

After all, she thought Mike Fueyo was basically a nice kid.

So what did she know?

He closed his eyes. There he was, in the Fueyo apartment, talking to
Dorothea.

"Dorothea," he muttered. "You filched my notebook."

That didn't sound very effective. And besides, it wasn't really his
notebook. He tried again.

"Dorothea, you pinched your brother's notebook."

Now, for some reason, it sounded like something covered by the Vice
Squad. It sounded terrible. But there were other ways of saying the same
thing.

"Dorothea," he muttered, "you borrowed your brother's notebook."

That was too patronizing. Malone told himself that he sounded like a
character straight out of the 3-D screens, and settled himself gamely
for another try.

"Dorothea, you _have_ your brother's notebook."

To which the obvious answer was: "Yes, I do, and so what?"

Or, possibly: "How do you know?"

And Malone thought about answering that one. "Queen Elizabeth told me,"
was the literal truth, but somehow it