"Good," the second mounted cop replied. "Youtell Loomis that it's crazy. Me, I'm not about to argue

with him. Besides, for all we know, it just might work."

"Good," the second mounted cop replied. "Youtell Loomis that it's crazy. Me, I'm not about to argue

with him. Besides, for all we know, it just might work."

"I'm sorry, ma'am," the mounted cop said, riding up to the reporter together with his partner. "We're

going to have to ask you to move."

"Do you know what's going on here, officer?"

"I said, I'm going to have to ask you to move, ma'am."

"But we're here to cover this."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I'm going to have to ask you to move back behind the barricades."

She looked to where he was pointing. "But we're not going to be able to get any shots from there!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am."

Further protestations were to no avail. Loomis had been very specific in his orders. He'd worry about

taking the heat later, but he was not about to let the media tip off the necromancer to what they were

trying to do. When Modred had first told him the idea, it had sounded ludicrous, but the more Loomis

thought about it, the more he came to believe that it just might work. It was worth a shot. They had

nothing left to lose.

"Okay, now you all know what to do," Gomez was saying. "As you come up here, I'm going to give you

your assignments and the location of your contact point. Those of you not assigned to any specific

individual will be assigned to patrol sectors and you will report to the contact points in those respective

sectors. There will be a police car parked at every contact point. The moment any of you spot the sort of

thing we've talked about, reportimmediately to the police car at your contact point and they'll call it in.

Do not, repeat, donot become involved yourselves. Got that? Okay, now form a line over here and let's

get started . . ."

"You think it's going to work?" asked Kira, sitting with Billy in the back of Loomis's car. Loomis was

outside, talking to some of the officers.

"I hope to hell it works," said Modred from the front passenger seat.

"I hope to hell Leary and her goons don't screw everything up. I can't believe they ran down our

address."

"Don't worry. After I talked to Loomis, I called Makepeace."