"Wait pause!" I say, a little too loudly. Dimitri freezes the footage. "That's Lissa!"

Dimitri leans forward to get a better look. "So it is."

I squint my eyes, trying to make out the licence plate. "Hey, can anyone here make out what the licence plate is?"

A few more people crowd around, and Christian steps back to stand next to my father. The moroi couldn't really do anything useful here.

"I got it!" Guardian Sokolov says, waving a scrap of paper up above our heads. I take it off him and compare his observation notes to the clip. And he was correct.

"Thank you, Guardian Sokolov." Dimitri says with a tight-lipped smile. If you could even call it a smile. His lips were hard and looked like they were set with super-glue. I was one of the few lucky people who saw his real smile. I also knew how soft and passionate those lips of his could be... No Rose. You need to focus on this. I mentally scold myself.

I reluctantly pull my gaze away from his lips and focus on the task at hand. There would be plenty of time to enjoy those lips later. "Okay, someone get some leads on the licence plate!" I order, watching as a couple of guardians shake their heads and walk out. Obviously, some people just don't want to help a newly graduated female guardian—well fine. I have enough people here to get the job done. Their loss. Lissa would be incredibly grateful for her rescue and I would put in a good word to the allocations board on Lissa's behalf to all these people helping me—they deserved it.

I observe the guardians doing multiple things, all working around each other in that efficient way guardians did—just not as well as they normally would. Being a high-risk moroi, Lissa was being fretted about by all of us. I generally had a field job, so I didn't have the extra training some of the court guardians got when they started their jobs here, so it was quite fascinating to watch them pull apart the footage, slow it down and all that to get even the tiniest detail. Despite my lack of training in this area, I knew one thing—every detail was important.

I was enjoying being an observer and were about to go and ask some of them some questions on particulars when someone just had to come and ruin my fun. Wait. What am I saying? Lissa being missing was certainly not fun. But either way, as I said, he just had to come and ruin my fun.

Dimitri pushed through the crowd of obsequious guardians, and just from the look on his face, I knew he was going to say something I didn't want to hear. "Roza you need to go back to your apartment and get some sleep, please. You have faced more strigoi today then some of these guardians would see in their entire careers. You need to rest."

I roll my eyes. "And you fought none?" I say sarcastically. Dimitri gives me a don't even go there look, but I continue. "If I need sleep, then you do too. So, don't tell me what to do."

Dimitri takes a step closer. Dangerously close. Not attacking and killing dangerous, more like attacking and removing clothing, but nevertheless close. I had the slightest feeling he was doing it for effect. Make me acquiesce. "Rose this could take hours. Days even. I want to sleep too. If you can't do it more yourself, sleep for me?"

"Then come back with me if you need sleep." I say. My next words were definitely not safe to say in a building full of serious guardians, but I put on a seductive air and spoke. "You and I need more than sleep comrade."

I watched his eyes light up—and then he turned back into his deadpan guardian self. "You know I can't Rose."

I groan. "No, I don't know Dimitri. You have no more information to add than I do. They need you as much as they need me. Which clearly isn't much." I snap and turn on my heel and walk out before I could say something stupid. I was proud with my self-control tonight, but it was wavering.

I actually got some sleep despite my arguments and wake up in the middle of the moroi night. I smile to myself when I realise that Dimitri had snuck in and had his arms wrapped tightly around me. I slide out his grip while still managing to maintain his deep slumber. My heart stops a little when his smile turns into a frown. Even his unconscious state notices my presence, or in this case, lack thereof. Part of me wanted to go back and cuddle back up to him, but I just knew I had to get out and do something.

I changed into some clothes and silently leave the building. As soon as I left the building, the 'midnight' sun rays hit my face, basking me in the gorgeous summer heat. I walk, to no particular place, and find myself stopped in front of one of the gardens I built during my earlier imprisonment. I mean earlier. I had been imprisoned twice before. Once, wasn't really imprisonment as it was more like a very restricted period. The second I was wrongly accused of murder. These gardens were built during my first 'imprisonment'.

Standing in front of the garden, I realise I was standing in front of a person. I was standing in front of Guardian Sokolov. "Why aren't you with Christian? Shouldn't there be more than one guardian there because of you know, what happened to Lissa?" I ask, sitting down next to him. I came out here to clear my head from problems, but obviously this wasn't something to easily escape from.

Guardian Sokolov sighs. "There are three of us on his team now, so they let me off. They thought I needed the rest." He really did look like it. He had dark under-eyes and just looked sluggish.

"Oh. Okay." I chill out a little. "Hey, thank you for your help today Guardian Sokolov. Lissa would really appreciate it."

"Call me Nikolai."

"Okay, Nikolai. Your help is really appreciated, and I am happy you decided to help us."

"So Belikov told you what we found out then I take it? I hope you are beginning to pack."

That was a surprise to me. "No, I must have been asleep when Belikov decided to visit me." It was a lie, technically we did have our own rooms, but one of them was usually unoccupied.

"Well how about we go to the Guardian Building and I will show you." Nikolai says, standing up and holding his hand out to help me up.

"I'm fine." I wave his hand away and jump up by myself. A strong decision on my part, because as soon as I stood up, I heard a voice I liked hearing. A smooth Russian accent.

"Guardian Hathaway," Dimitri says, face set into an almost placid expression.

"Hey, Belikov." I say, turning around. "Sokolov and I were just about to head down to see what is going on. Want to join us?"

His face lights up. To me at least. I had the trained eye. To Nikolai, he probably appeared the same. There was just a slight glimmer in his eyes that showed more than normal. "Definitely. Then would you two like to come and train with me?"

The idea of physically fighting someone appealed to me, let alone the idea of something physical with Dimitri so I agreed. Inside, Nikolai lead us over a table, its surface strewn with papers. Some were pictures—stills from the footage, some were printed information with meticulously written notes annotating it, and some were just scrawled notes in many different forms of handwriting, and even languages. One immediately caught my attention, and I reach out to pick it up.

So did Nikolai. He pulled back his hand back to let me take it, and we take it back to a table. Dimitri covertly slips his hand behind my back as we all lean over the paper.

Tracking Details: Queen Vasilisa Dragomir taken by a moroi owned vehicle with licence plate 1295-JBH (Pennsylvania). This licence plate has been successfully tracked to a passenger and car cargo ship headed for Brisbane, Australia.

"Australia?" I exclaim, eyes widening in shock. "Do any moroi even live in that desert?"

Dimitri gives a small laugh behind me. "Australia isn't just desert Rose."

I shake my head in disbelief. Amusement flickers in his eyes. "Since when did you know the geography of every country in the world?"

"I don't." He scoffs.

I roll my eyes. Seriously, does this man know everything? I hope in time I would be like that. But perhaps on second thought, maybe not. The person who knows everything has so much more to lose. More at stake. More credit for the person who finally got to them. I take a deep breath and try to steer my deep thoughts away with a patented Rose Hathaway quip. "That's not the impression I got," I say, with a very slight break in my voice. Mr Smartass notices and shoots me a pointed look.

"Hey, let's leave the fighting to the gym." Nikolai interrupts, laughing.

"Sure." I agree with a smile to Nikolai, and Dimitri nods. I open my mouth to speak, but this time it was directed towards Dimitri. "So, genius, when do we leave?" I really wanted to head off and get Lissa as soon as I could, and if that meant now, I was all for it.

"Once we get a solid plan. And also, who says it will be we?"

"I do. I am Lissa's guardian and I am going to get her."

Word Count: 1609