Aspirin, aspirin....there HAS to be some aspirin here somewhere! Much as I hate taking pills of any kind, sometimes you just have no choice. What do I mean by that? Well, I'm glad you asked.

  No, I won't pretend that you didn't. Tough luck. You ask and you get an answer. So settle down and listen.

  First of all, there's Jane. A wonderful girl. My precious first daughter. Also probably the most accomplished thief in the history of the world. And semi-official too.

  What? What does "semi-official" mean? So kind of you to ask. No, even if you pass out you still have to listen.

  Where was I? Oh yes. She's a "semi-official" thief because almost everything she steals she gives to various police and intelligence agencies. You know, Interpol, the FBI, Homeland Security.

  Yes, I did say the most accomplished thief in history. What would you call someone who has gotten away with stealing almost a billion dollars? And she's only 19 years old. God but she makes me proud!

  And then there are the twins. They're 11 now. My other two daughters. Hopefully the adoption will go through soon, but that's another story.

  They're beautiful and intelligent. Altogether perfect. That is, if you discount the fact that Kimiko bounces around more than a Superball, and that Kumiko could give Emily Post etiquette lessons. Yes, you guessed it. They're from Japan.

  Kimiko got here the usual way, via airplane. Kumiko's arrival was a bit more exotic. She was teleported directly to her new bedroom by a being we know only as "The Lady." By the way, we've never seen her. When she wants us to know something, she speaks to us mentally.

  Oh. I didn't mention that the twins are both mute and are also telepathic -- at least with some people. And then there's the assassin that tried to kill them. But don't worry, they got to it first. Yes I said "it." It's a long story.

  Finally, there's Ian. Good old Ian. He was 14 when he joined the party. My sort of nephew. Well I guess he is now. At least the papers that the FBI forged, ah, created for him say so. He's at least as smart as Jane, in the top 0.1% in the world on the IQ tests.

  He's also working on a couple of top secret government projects, one of which he won't tell even me about. I don't suppose that there are all that many 14 year old kids doing that.

  We first met him when we rescued him from a kidnapper, so no biggie there.

  Overall he's pretty normal, except that he's hiding the fact that he knows that Kumiko is in love with him, and he's enjoying every moment of watching her trying to be oh so subtle in trying to land him.

  You're right, she has no clue that he knows. Actually, she hasn't realized that Jane and Kimiko also know.

  No, I won't admit to getting even a modicum of entertainment from watching them dance around each other. Well of course I enjoy it, immensely, but I'll never admit it, even to you. Yes, yes, I know I just did, but can't you at least pretend that I didn't?

  Now that you've met the family, are you going to tell me that I don't need aspirin?

  Oh, you have a bottle there? Great. Gimme!

  ------------------------

  I suppose that you're right. The best thing to do will be to pick up from where my last report left off and fill you in, so that would be September of 2013, right?

  School didn't start up again after the assassination attempt until the next week. As promised, Jane had the girls' new tablet computers on hand and programmed for their needs the day after they'd broken them by clobbering the assassin with them.

  . What really upset them was, surprisingly, not the fact that someone was trying to kill them but that they broke their tablets. It seems that their teacher had beaten them to the punch, so to speak, by a fraction of a second, and brained the would-be assassin with a baseball. They felt that they should have, somehow, psychically known that he would protect them and that they hadn't needed to do anything.

  In retrospect it was rather funny how the girls were more worried about breaking their computers than they were about that thing trying to kill them

  That's what a lot of people would say, but I'm not a lot of people. Their reaction at the time could only be called heart-breaking. They were so insecure from all the abuse they'd gone through in their early years that they truly thought that I'd be more worried about things than about them. Fortunately we've gotten that worked out now.

  No, I suppose that a "normal" teacher wouldn't be able to aim a baseball quite so accurately as to hit something charging in through a door square in the middle of the forehead, but Mr. Hafiz isn't exactly normal. He's the number one drill instructor in EKAM, the Greek, ultra-elite, counter-terrorism unit. Well, he was untill he was assigned by his government to come to the USA to protect the girls.

  That's an even longer story. If you need details, you'd better refer to my previous report. You'd think that Grgur would have left you at least some sort of synopsis before it went on vacation.

  The heck with background. You'll just have to catch up on the fly or something. I just don't have the patience to go through the whole thing again just to get you up to speed.

  Oh, that's fine with you. Great. You're a prince. Yes, I'm kidding. I know your rank just as well as you know mine.

  So, here's what happened after the twins got back to school.

  ---------------------

  It was two weeks later that we received a letter from Mr. Hafiz. I'll just read it to you. It'll make more sense that way.

  "Dear Miss Katt - oh, I mean Ms. Knight. I do not know why I keep mixing you two up.

  "I must apologize for using this method of communicating with you, but your CIA is probably monitoring everything I do now, so sending you a letter from the school is the best I can do. There are certain things that we do not want those at the CIA to concern themselves with at this point, no?

  "Please not to worry. I shall slip this letter into the interoffice mail that goes directly to the school board's office. I shall also make sure that several other letters that should have gone into the regular post will be misdirected along with this one. I expect that whomever finds them will be a bit irritated and then drop them into their outgoing mail and forget about them.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Like you, I have learned over the years that misdirection is the foundation of secrecy. Yes, I made it a point to do some research on you and your family. After all, since your two daughters are in my class, I feel some sense of responsibility for the trauma that they sustained, thus I felt that it was an appropriate action.

  "I am sure that you have wondered why I told your daughter Jane so much about myself over the phone, when the two of us had never met. It was because I had been indulging my curiosity.

  "That there was a new security system installed just a week before school started was only a small surprise. Many schools have been doing this since the regrettable tragedies that have occurred lately. What did surprise me was the extent of the network. It was, of course, expected that there would be numerous cameras deployed, but what was not to be expected was the rather substantial number of additional cameras that were hidden from the sight of anyone but an expert -- which I must modestly admit to being.

  "My curiosity was more than piqued by that, and I made it my business to find out what this "Hornet" security company was. Just the fact that the emblem of the business is a pink hornet was, shall we say, a significant prod.

  "I sent a routine query to my government about this Hornet company, though I did not really expect any kind of substantive reply. But, one must be thorough in our business, yes? You could say that I was considerably surprised when I received a rather complete dossier on it. When I discovered that the actual owner of the company was not the titular CEO but was instead a 19 year old girl, my surprise and my curiosity intensified. When I read further and found that there was some sort of connection to Interpol, though my people didn't know exactly what that connection was, I must admit to being excited.

  "I should explain. I have been here for almost two years, and my skills are languishing from disuse. This information that I had received about your daughter gave me a reason to feel like I could perform a real service for my government while I was here on this red goose, uh, wild goose chase of an assignment.

  "We both know that it turned out not to be so much of a goose after all, no?

  " I was very very careful in investigating Hornet Enterprises, LLC. Such a nondescript name. I applaud you. But I digress.

  "What was most interesting was that I found out almost nothing beyond what was in the report that my government sent me. That was most disturbing. Every business has a weakness, a means of access through which a persistent person may reap a reward of information. Hornet Enterprises proved me wrong. It did not have one.

  "My thoughts on this were intense and totally fruitless. While I was wondering what to do next, the attack occurred. So I took the bull by the horns and called your daughter.

  "Her response was more than I could ever expect. She did not bluster or try to misdirect. She listened to me. Very few people are good listeners by the way. That told me more than anything else. She is a professional, much more so than most who run what they call a 'security business'.

  "When I combined that fact with the extraordinarily sophisticated survellience system she installed and the attack that has taken place, I knew that you were far more than you let people know. How much more is something that I believe you must reveal to me if we are to continue to protect the school should there be another attack.

  "I say 'we' for the simple reason that if your teenage daughter is all that she appears to be, and I am quite sure that she is, I cannot help but wonder what kind of woman her mother must be. The answer to that question is: Formidable.

  "I look forward to finding out how formidable. I also hope that you will prove to be formidable enough.

  "Your servant, Xandros Hafiz"

  "Wow Mama, he sure takes a long time to say anything, doesn't he? I'll bet that he gets along great with Kumiko. He sounds almost as formal as she does when she's on a roll."

  As usual Jane had been reading over my shoulder. I've been trying to break her of that habit for years, but, to tell the truth, I've given up. It's not gonna happen, so I'll put my energies into something that has a better chance of success, say, like making the tide stop whenever I want it to.

  "He also sounds very smart. He's taken 2+2 and come up with 7. How do you think we should deal with it?"

  "Well Janie, I think we're going to have to tell him everything." I grinned up at her. "Or at least enough to make him think that it's everything.

  "If you look at what he wrote on a superficial level, it seems that he knows a lot and that he told us a lot as well. What we really have is a bunch of bullshit. He didn't say anything that the FBI didn't already know, except for that part about the girls. I need to re-read that part, just a sec.

  "Ah, OK, good. He only mentions them as his students. Nothing more. He's slick.

  "Tell me Jane, where was it?"

  "Why whatever could you be talking about Mama?" Jane contrived to look innocent and extraordinarily guilty at the same time. Did I mention that she's a great actress?

  I was still feeling fairly tired, so I just gave her glare #2 instead of the full powered one.

  She threw up her hands to defend herself and took a step back. She ruined the effect though when she started laughing.

  "I give Mama. It was in one of the seams of the envelope. There was just a bit of roughness. I can guarantee that it wasn't tampered with between the time he sent it and the time we received it. In fact, it looks like the letter wasn't even opened. I think that he did manage to slip it past them.

  "The government is so obsessed with email monitoring nowadays that I think that they forgot that some people still use ordinary mail to communicate."

  "Jane Alicia Knight! Quit stalling and tell me what he really said."

  She was still laughing some but managed to get herself under control enough to talk.

  "The microdot didn't have much on it. After all, there's not all that much room on something 3 mm across, no matter what the spy movies say. He just said that we need to meet to get our future stories straight. He's leaving it up to us to figure out when and how.

  "So Mama, how are we going to arrange a meeting with a man who is likely under constant surveillance by the CIA? If we manage to disappear him for a meeting, they'll be boiling out of the ground like a fire ant colony under attack."

  "Jane honey, just when I think that you're making progress, you come out with something stupid like that."

  Got a good pout from her on that one, but she needed taking down a notch. She'd been way too successful for her own good the past few months.

  "I'll use small words. What day did school start?"

  "What? What the heck does that have to do with anything Mama?"

  "Just answer the question Jane."

  "All right. All right. September 3rd. So what."

  "Now, now grasshopper. Attend me for a bit longer. Tell me what today's date is."

  She was about to have an attack of apoplexy, but, like I said, some degree of frustration is good for a genius. They tend to think that they know everthing. Well, actually, most teens do, don't they?

  "It's October 23rd Mama."

  Hmm. Her glare was only at a 5 out of 10. I needed to prod a bit more.

  "And what's the date 16 days from now."

  "November 8th. What the hell are you up to Mama? This is getting irritating!"

  "Patience grasshopper, patience. And what do you have planned for November 8th?"

  "Nothing. You know very well that I don't. Neither do you. That's the day that school will be closed for the..."

  AH HA. She finally figured it out. Good, good. Her expression was one of chagrin mixed with humiliation. Parent/authority figure scores again!

  "Yes Jane, you were saying?" Yes I can and do rub it in when appropriate.

  "The Parent-Teacher conferences. I'm such an idiot!"

  "So do you think that you can arrange it so that nobody will be able to see or hear anything in the room that Mr. Hafiz's conferences take place in?"

  Jane recovers faster than just about anyone I know. She was glaring at me again already.

  "I'm going to let that pass, considering how dumb I was just now. I'll just arrange for a blind spot in the surveillance system, and I'll do it tomorrow. I'll tell them that I'm doing some tuning. When the actual conferences take place, there'll just happen to be an area of radio interference involving that room, and probably a couple others in various parts of the school...hmm...and some mild interference in a few others...and...."

  Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling again. Good. That gave me time to think.

  The conferences usually run anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes, mostly on the short side. Given that we wouldn't be expected to talk about both girls in the same session, we'd have two in sequence. And since they are "handicapped" it wouldn't surprise anyone if they ran a bit longer than usual. 40 or 45 minutes would give us more than enough time to brainstorm.