Taylor Hanson had seen almost every major city in the World under the cover of darkness. Being adored by the public and despised by numerous rogue nations is not conducive to daytime sightseeing. He had a hundred hats to hide his hair and sunglasses to mask his piercing blue eyes. These adornments were able to fool fans about eighty percent of the time. Trained assassins who with a contract on his head were not so easily deceived. So, for the most part, he only went out at night.

And at night he was pretty free. Trained assassins he could deal with, provided he was with his brothers, and with no fans around he wouldn't be endangering them. It was at night that he had Louvre in Paris, toured the canals of Venice, and looked out of the crown of the Statue of Liberty. Beautiful and exciting places that he felt fortunate to see at his age.

Fort Marcy Park in Washington DC at night, however, was pretty non-spectacular. A few monuments erected to honor the small-gods of politics and a poorly maintained footpath.

Taylor had no idea on why Merchant insisted on meeting here.

If a map of all the powers of Government and Military were drawn on an enormous diagram, the brothers Hanson would be penciled in directly beneath the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--a pretty good place to be.

As far as Taylor could tell, Merchant would be penciled on an entirely different piece of paper across the room in a filing cabinet marked, "Nothing Interesting Here". He always had information that no one else seemed to have and contacts that no one else knew existed. Still, all the research Taylor and his brothers had done suggested that he didn't even exist in an official capacity. Taylor thought maybe, now that he was an outsider, he could actually come right out and ask Merchant what he was all about.

But he didn't care about that right now. Right now he cared about Zac.

"MERCHANT!" he called into the park.

In fact no meeting had been requested this time. Zac had not been back at the white house, Zac had not been at the cave, Zac had not been in any of the area hospitals. It was likely that neither Zac _nor_ Merchant were here in Fort Marcy Park, but Taylor needed a lead - and badly.

There was no answer. Taylor hit the lock on his car and started walking.

* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - *

"Hey Mom, it's Isaac...Yeah...yeah...He's fine - the album's going to be great..." Taylor had been opposed to the idea of calling their parents.

'You'll just scare them,' he suggested.

But Isaac insisted. Sure, Zac wasn't 'missing', but he wasn't here either. And it was possible that he had just gone on some crazy short trip - maybe even called home and told the folks about it.

"So have you guys heard from Zac?" Isaac held the phone away from his ear in an effort to dampen the tirade of concern that his mother unleashed. "Mom..."

He waited some more as she continued.

"Mom..."

Still the flood came. It was beginning to seem like maybe Taylor had been right about this whole thing.

"Mom wait...no he's fine we know exactly where he is. He was just uh... thinking of getting a tattoo. He was going to call you guys and find out what you thought about it."

Even that, as it turned out, was not exactly comforting to Mrs. Hanson. Isaac set the phone down on its side as she decried the indecency of children corrupting themselves with ink, and went to check the surveillance cameras.

* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - *

Taylor stumbled down the poorly-lit path at Fort Marcy park, scanning the shadows for any sign of life. There was, for lack of a better word, a "bum" stretched out on a bench about thirty feet ahead, but had not seen another soul.

"Merchant! It's about Zac!? Are you here?" he called - less confidently than before. He knew when he was being followed and now he was sure that he wasn't. It still wouldn't do to have him overheard by the wrong people. He hadn't even allowed Isaac to tell anyone at the White House. This was a family problem, and family was going to solve it.

"Hey you," he called to the bum. "Have you seen a 15 year old kid. Long brownish hair. Smaller than that bench, bigger than a vodka bottle? No? How about a heavyset guy wearing a black turtleneck with dark hair and two different colored eyes?"

"Mrmph," the bum said and waved him off. Taylor could speak several languages fluently, but "sleeping hobo", was not one of them.

Still, someone was going to tell him something, and this guy was the only one in the park. Taylor approached him and reached for his shoulder.

"Hands off the merchandise, living legend. I was just getting comfortable."

Taylor's jaw dropped.

"Even when they fire you guys, do I get any peace? No. I can't even take a nap here in the park. For what it's worth," he gestured grandly to the park surrounding them. Merchant sat up and pulled off the fake beard. "Pull up a bench, what can I do for you?"

* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - *

Zac could sense a presence over him. He had drifted back into consciousness again as the vehicle he was obviously in rolled to a stop and the engine was disengaged. There had been footsteps starting somewhere near his feet and then going around behind him - on the other side of whatever wall his back was nearly against, and then the sound of a rolling metal door opening. Probably up. Zac tried to keep his breathing slow and shut his eyes under the blindfold.

Every great warrior has a weakness. Goliath was allegedly felled by a mere stone. Samson's god left him when he lost his hair, and Isaac had absolutely no poker face. He would draw two cards, grin like a maniac, and then watch in disbelief as both his brothers folded. But Zac was more like Samson than Isaac. He didn't fuss over his hair too much, but it took a lot of work to look as good as he usually did.

So it was no small surprise when he felt a handful of his hair being grabbed and pulled--hard. Zac's inner-child approached the chalkboard in his mind and made a single mark. "That's one for you mister kidnapper. Don't think you won't be getting it back."

In fact the Postman was trying to ascertain consciousness. The kid just lay there. He was obviously breathing, so he wasn't dead. Not yet anyway.

Zac felt his feet being unhooked from whatever they were attached to. For a moment, in his mind, he entertained the notion that the postman would either sling him over his shoulder or pick him up on some kind of hostage dolly.

Instead, it was the hair again. Well at first. He was dragged about a foot by his hair, then felt a hand go under his arms and pull him the rest of the way out of the truck. He fell two feet to the ground - onto what felt like some kind of a tarp, and tried not to cringe from the pain in his ribs.

Zac's inner child made a few more marks, and then went off looking for a new piece of chalk, possibly something in red.

Movement again. This was a tarp, and he was being dragged on it. By the non-stop assault of small bumps under his injured rib he guessed it was over gravel. The gravel then smoothed into concrete, which then roughed up considerably into a doorjamb.

The inner child had pretty much covered the entire board with chalk-marks at this point, and had started using the wall.

The sound of a garage door opener was probably the sound of whatever door he had just been dragged through closing. And the smell of the place was unmistakable. Musty and faintly metallic, this was a warehouse. What was it with kidnappers and warehouses?

And what was it with unconsciousness?

* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - *

"It's Zac. We don't know where he is."

Merchant nodded thoughtfully. He had removed the raggedy coat, hat, and false beard and thrown them in a nearby barrel. He was wearing a black turtleneck. Taylor knew him pretty well.

"Well the Libyans don't have him. I can tell you that. I've been tracking them pretty aggressively for the last few days and I am confident that if they had him, I'd know."

Taylor shook his head.

"That doesn't really help me. Who does have him?"

"Well your parents have no idea, as your brother found out about ten minutes ago. No John Does meeting his description have arrived at any hospital in DC, Maryland, or Virginia in the last four hours, and none of his credit cards have been used in that time either."

"How do you...you know what? I don't care how. Have you got anything else?" He stopped actually asking "how" a long time ago. Information from Merchant was almost always more reliable than the official briefings they received from their office at the Joint Chiefs. He never revealed sources, and didn't appear to have an official contact in the actual government. When it comes to information needed for fighting international crime, results were all that mattered.

"Honestly, no. I am more than willing to help, of course." Merchant and Taylor stood up as if on cue, the former stretching his arms and yawning. How long he had been on the bench was anyone's guess, which only added to the mystery over the information he had.