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searches,” Maria said gloomily.
    “Three?”
    “At home when Angel’s at home. Maybe sometimes at the airport too.” Luke looked pissed off at this, and no wonder—he’d got the longest hours. But then he was the most highly qualified.
    “Four?”
    “Angel’s slightly larger shadow.”
    Karen cracked a smile at that. “Five?”
    “At home when she ain’t there.”
    “Right. There is to be a firm crossover. She doesn’t escape your sight. Understood?” We all nodded. “Then off you go. Mission starts immediately.”
    She picked up her pen and started writing again and we all turned to go like dismissed schoolchildren. Then something occurred to me.
    “What if Angel wants to go out? Shopping, or to the pub or something? Is she going to be quarantined?”
    Karen Hanson smiled. “Well done, Four. And since you’re so observant, you can escort her whenever she leaves the house.”
    Luke grinned and pulled me out of the room before I could complain.
    “And that’s what you get for being concerned,” I grumbled as he shut the door.
    “It’s very sweet of you,” he kissed my forehead. “Well. Angel. Where do you want to go?”
    “What am I, a Sim?” Angel said. “I need to go home. And think about all of this.”
    “So I guess I’m coming with you,” Luke said.
    “And I need to do some shopping later,” Angel said.
    “So that’s me, too.”
    “And I need to come and secure that chapel of yours,” Macbeth said. “Who has air-con?”
    Ted didn’t, so I drove him back to Angel’s alone, trying to think, while Macbeth took his latest motor, an Alfa 159, and Luke drove his undercovermobile, a silver Vectra. Angel got in Luke’s car, judging it to be the safest, but not by a huge margin. I think she was more shaken than she let on. She had said once before how she hated guns. Now she knew she’d be travelling with one wherever she went—or if she was with Macbeth, with half a dozen.
    And she wasn’t the only one who needed to think. I had to fit into my head not only the global knowledge that IC and Greg Winter were spies—not an actress and a songwriter, but spies , like me (well sort of) — but that Angel knew about SO17. I didn’t have to lie any more. I could tell her about me and Luke. I could talk to someone about it all.
    Despite the hot, still air inside the car, I felt myself breathe easier.
     
    Back at Angel’s house, all was chaos. Macbeth had driven off somewhere unknown to gather some security equipment of dubious legality, and was now drilling holes in the ancient stone of the church, fitting enough microphones and cameras to cover a talk show. The electric drill droned on and on and there were wires everywhere as he connected everything up.
    Luke went around checking locks on doors and windows and told Angel to get metal shutters fitted to them all. Angel protested loudly that this was a fifteenth century church and that she wouldn’t be allowed because of its Grade I listing, but Luke paid no attention.
    “Do you want someone to break into your house?” he asked, and Angel made a face.
    “Well, no, but—”
    “Get the shutters. They’ll roll back into the wall—”
    “But the walls are ancient!”
    The argument was stopped by Macbeth, who came in and said to Angel, “You should get some shutters on these windows. Fifteenth century glass ain’t cheap to replace.”
    Angel then got into a conversation with Macbeth about fifteenth century glass, about which he appeared to know an astonishing amount, and Luke stretched back on the sofa and looked up at where I was leaning over the balcony of the baron’s gallery, watching it all.
    “You okay up there?”
    I shrugged and nodded.
    “Bored?”
    More shrugging. More nodding. I was too polite to say, “Yes, out of my mind.”
    “Want me to come and keep you company?”
    Before I could shrug and nod again, he’d disappeared under the gallery and started up the narrow stone staircase that winds up to the gallery.