The private jet touched down at the Keystone airport and taxied to the hangar. Bruce and Alfred already had their luggage collected and ready before the plane came to a stop. When the side door behind the cockpit opened and the stairs folded down, Bruce was first off the plane, followed quickly by Alfred.

A four door car of polished black was waiting for them. The rear door popped open, and a teenage girl with shoulder length black hair and startling blue eyes stepped out to greet them. The woman who exited from the driver's seat was an older version, but otherwise an exact copy, of the teenager. Both wore matching suits of dark black with white, button down dress shirts. Their apparel only reinforced their similarities.

"Zatanna, Sindella," Bruce said in greeting to the girl and her mother. He hadn't seen either of them since he'd left for Japan a little over two years ago. "It's good to see you both again, but I wish it had been under different circumstances."

"Don't we all?" Zatanna agreed, giving Bruce a quick hug.

"I'm sorry we had to call you back from your training," Sindella apologized.

"It's alright," Bruce dismissed. "What can you tell me about Giovanni's disappearance?"

"Get in, we'll tell you on the way," Zatanna instructed.

Alfred had already put his bags in the trunk, and he took Bruce's as well, adding them to the pile before closing the rear storage compartment on the vehicle.

Zatanna got in the back seat with Bruce, and when Alfred automatically took over the duties of the driver, Sindella took the only remaining seat, the front passenger. As all doors were shut and seatbelts buckled, Alfred pulled away from the parked jet and headed for the nearest street.

"Giovanni went to the store for a few items," Sindella explained, turning partly around in her seat to look at Bruce while she spoke. "He never came back."

"What about the police?" Bruce asked. "What do they have to say about it?"

"The police didn't think we had a case when this letter turned up the next day," Zatanna said, handing Bruce a folded piece of paper.

Bruce took the offered letter and unfolded it to read the hand written document. After reading it twice, he set it down in his lap, absently tapping an index finger on the car door beside him as his mind worked furiously to find a reasonable explanation for the bizarre communication.

"Is it his handwriting?" Bruce asked.

"Yes," Sindella confirmed. "We've checked it for hidden messages or code phrases; we even examined it magically, but we couldn't find anything in the way of a covert message explaining his real reasoning for sending this to us. You can see why the police don't think we have anything worth investigating."

"I can hear the wheels in your mind turning," Zatanna told Bruce. "Share with us your line of thinking."

"It's a very odd letter," Bruce began. "To begin with, a man who's intending to leave his family doesn't normally abandon them and then send a letter explaining it at a later date. He leaves the letter behind when he walks out the door."

"Exactly," Zatanna eagerly agreed.

"Also, the manner of the letter seems strange," Bruce mentioned.

"What do you mean?" Sindella asked.

"Most letters these days aren't sent by paper," Bruce explained. "Email and text messages are far more common. It's odd a man would just walk out, wait a day with no communication, then send a hand written letter telling his goodbyes."

"Am I missing something?" Zatanna asked. "What's the big deal about how the letter was sent?"

"Emails and text messages can be faked," Bruce clarified. "Phone conversations leave records with the phone company about the two numbers involved, the caller and receiver, but unless they're recorded, there's no proof of content. A hand written letter makes absolutely certain who the author was and leaves documented proof of the message's content."

"You're saying someone wanted to prove Dad hadn't been abducted," Zatanna concluded.

"Right," Bruce agreed. "If Giovanni just disappeared, an investigation would've been started, but if there is undeniable proof he left on his own, case closed. No investigation and no cops poking around."

"You believe he's been kidnapped?" Sindella asked, a tremor of worry in her voice.

"I do," Bruce admitted. "The good news is whoever took him wants him alive, at least for the time being."

"What makes you say that?" Zatanna insisted.

"They had to capture him alive in order for him to write the letter," Bruce told her. "Additionally, the letter is more than proof of life. It tells us they don't want the police investigating a missing person, and there won't be a ransom demand."

"If they're not demanding a ransom, they have what they want," Alfred commented somberly as he stopped the car at a traffic light.

"I'm afraid so, Alfred," Bruce agreed. "Giovanni was the target. Does he have any enemies?"

"None that I know about," Sindella answered.

Bruce held up the letter to read it again. During the time he'd known Giovanni, Bruce had been convinced of the man being incredibly smart. Although Sindella and Zatanna had already examined the letter for hidden clues, he didn't think it likely for Giovanni to write it without leaving something for his family to follow. He smiled when he barely noticed something on the page.

"You sly dog," Bruce muttered in admiration.

"What is it?" Zatanna asked insistently. "What did you find?"

"Giovanni did send us a clue," Bruce said. He slapped the letter flat against the window, and the light coming through the tinted glass was enough to illuminate the watermark on the paper. "Burnehold Industries. Giovanni wrote the letter on their company stationary. We'll start our investigation with them."

Zatanna laughed with hope filled excitement, hugging Bruce around the neck enthusiastically. They had a direction where to look, and the chase of Giovanni's abductors could begin.

Bruce stayed quiet, not wanting to quell the flicker of hope he'd given the family. The thought giving him pause was related to how Giovanni was captured. If a magician with the abilities of Giovanni could be kidnapped, Bruce wondered how well he would fare in a rescue without any powers of his own.

                                                                                           ***

"What are we doing here?" Zatanna asked when they entered the hotel room Bruce had booked from the car before they'd arrived. "We should be tearing through Burnehold Industries until we find Dad."

"We're not the Marines or Navy Seals," Bruce reminded. "We can't just kick down the doors and storm the place. Besides, the company is large with multiple holdings and thousands of employees. If we hit the wrong target, it could alert the real culprits, and they'd slip through our fingers before we could catch them and get your father back. We have a direction, but we must move carefully so as to not let them know we're on to them."

"It's good advice," Sindella told her daughter as she and Alfred joined the two teenagers in the room.

"I know," Zatanna admitted, plopping down on the sofa in the living room. "I just hate waiting."

"I hate it too," Bruce told her. "I promise you, when the time is right, we will move against them."

Bruce opened a suitcase and pulled out a laptop computer, setting it up on a table by the double doors leading out onto the balcony. He pulled up a comfortable chair of deep blue fabric and sat down while waiting for the computer to boot.

"I'll check the information online and see if we can get a picture of the structure of Burnehold Industries," Bruce explained so as to answer the unspoken questions Zatanna and her mother would certainly have. "The stationary of the letter doesn't mean the company was directly involved. It could be one of their employees or someone using an abandoned site with left over paper. We need to find out which it might be before we go looking directly."

                                                                                         ***

It took Bruce a considerable amount of time to gather all the data he needed. He checked his information in several ways to be certain he wasn't formulating incorrect conclusions.

"I think I know where we should start," Bruce said, leaning back from the computer and arching his spine to relieve the ache starting to bother him there.

"Finally," Zatanna said, shoving herself off the sofa and coming over to where Bruce had been working. "I can't make heads or tails out of this."

"Because my family owns Wayne Enterprises, I was instructed in a lot of business stuff, so let me explain," Bruce replied. He pointed to the documents currently displayed on screen. "These are public records of Burnehold Industries and the properties they own, and these are their financials I managed to get a look at from a court litigation they were involved in. According to these files, there are several properties now in disuse where someone could be held captive unnoticed. I tapped into a WayneTech satellite and checked them all."

Bruce typed a few keys and brought up a real time image of an abandoned factory. The parking lot for the employees was cracked, and numerous patches of grass were overgrowing the old paving material. However, one thing was immediately obvious to everyone.

"I must say, there are a lot of cars for an unused factory," Alfred observed.

"Either it means there are numerous people involved, or they have a significant security force on site," Bruce suggested. "We'll keep them under close observation until tonight."

"What happens tonight?" Sindella asked.

"Alfred, we're going to need a few things," Bruce said. "As soon as it gets dark, we're going to pay an unannounced visit to their little factory."