Engaging the Enemy by Elizabeth Moon Page B

privateering.”
    â€œI could, yes. But that would have required setting up lines of communication specific to spying. Privateers can report directly to local consuls; I…have access to those reports.”
    â€œWhy do I feel you are more than a master sergeant of cadets?” Grace asked the sky.
    â€œWe should get back to fishing,” MacRobert said. “Just in case.”
    â€œYou’re right,” Grace said. “Meet you on the river tomorrow?”
    â€œCertainly. You know my habits, I’m sure. At least, I hope it was you camped over there across the river. Very discreet. I’m sure you were there days before I happened to notice it.”
    â€œI hope so, too,” Grace said. “Good fishing to you.”
    â€œAnd to you,” he said.
    Grace worked her way back upstream against the current, forbore to bother the big trout under the log, and went after the much smaller ones well upstream, frolicking in clouds of midges.
    When she got back to the house, the grocery truck was there; the delivery driver had another story to tell about idiot tourists. Someone had overturned a boat in the lake in a particularly stupid way, and there was another case of bluetick fever who had walked into the clinic thinking he just had a headache.
    â€œWhat about the children?” Helen asked. “They’re outside all morning, at least—”
    â€œYou use repellent on ’em, right?” the driver asked. “The good stuff, in the blue bottles?” Helen nodded. “They’ll be fine. Check ’em over every evening—”
    â€œWe do that,” Grace said. “Bathtime.”
    â€œWell, then. Shouldn’t be a problem. But if one of ’em complains of a bad headache, get ’em to the clinic. This tourist must not have used the right repellent and lay down someplace where sheep had been; the medic—he’s my brother-in-law—said there were tick bites all over him and a couple of ticks on his back.”
    â€œWill he be all right?” Helen asked.
    â€œProbably,” the delivery man said. “But he won’t be out of the clinic for at least ten days, Sam said.”
    â€œThat’s too bad,” Grace said. Helen looked at her sharply; Grace said nothing more.

_______
    Grace was in bed reading one of the old books that had been in the house when they came when Helen knocked on her door. The book was a mystery, which she didn’t ordinarily like, since she could nearly always figure out who the criminal was by page fifteen, but this one was old enough to be interesting for its historical data. “Come in,” she said.
    â€œYou put those ticks out there,” Helen said.
    â€œOut where?” Grace asked.
    â€œWherever—how did you know where he’d be?”
    â€œThere are four good places to hide from the house while watching it, and be unseen from the road,” Grace said, without looking up from her book. “I put a good-sized jar of blueticks in each, yes.”
    â€œSo—you made him sick.”
    â€œI hoped to, yes.”
    â€œThat doesn’t bother you?”
    Grace laid the book facedown on her chest and looked at Helen. “Bother me to give tick fever to someone working with those who killed your husband, Jo, Gerry and Myris, and all the hundreds of others? Not a bit.”
    â€œYou knew someone would be watching us—you figured out where—are there more?”
    â€œNot that I know of, no. That fellow had someone on night shift for a few days, but for the last while it’s been just the one, in daytime.”
    â€œYou knew this and didn’t tell me? The children—”
    â€œHe wasn’t after the children, Helen, or I’d have taken him out. He was watching us, reporting to someone else, and that someone might have done something—sent assassins or whatever. But I’d have known that in time to protect you.”
    Helen’s