Authors Note: A big thank you to DianeM for beta reading this. My punctuation really was awful and she very patiently fixed it. Thanks to Mariel for her review. Here's another instalment. Enjoy!

Dunbrook Media

9am - 12 Hours Missing

"Arvin, sorry to call at such a bad time." Robert Dunbrook sat back in his executive office chair. He was a media giant, owned newspapers, TV stations, Internet sites; you name it, if it was in media, he had an interest there. He was also a founding member of the Alliance of Twelve; he had a seat at the table because of the money and the connections he had.

"Not at all," Sloane said calmly while mentally trying to reason out why Dunbrook would be calling. Due to them both being based in New York, they'd had some contact over the years. Dunbrook generally tended to keep out of the day-to-day running of the Alliance, which is what he was responsible for, preferring to keep in the background, taking intelligence and bankrolling operations. For him to call now probably meant he wanted something.

"I need a couple of your people to take care of something for me," Dunbrook requested. "A flash drive has fallen into the hands of the police that contains certain damaging information. I need it to be retrieved before it can be analysed."

"I see." Sloane thought about whom he could send. A mission this close to home was always potentially disastrous. However, given the current delicate situation he found himself in, having some leverage over a seated member could only help him. He'd send Sydney and Dixon, as they were his best team.

"There is one other thing," Dunbrook said.

"Okay, first where is the flash drive now?"

New York Crime Lab

12 noon - 15 Hours Missing

Sheldon Hawkes was not having a good day. Last night someone he'd once called friend had tried to emotionally blackmail him into tampering with evidence. When that had failed to work, he'd hired three thugs to jump him outside of his apartment to presumably intimidate him into doing what he wanted. So when he found Anne Steele's flash drive inside Trevor Jones' 'girlfriend' with the CSI equivalent of a smoking gun, fingerprints and blood trace, he couldn't help but feel like things were looking up. He quickly processed the trace before heading to the AV lab to get a look at this flash drive.

Meanwhile, outside the building Dixon was hacking into the CCTV camera feed. Marshall's lighter RF scrambler wasn't 100% effective in such a large building, so he had attached a remote modem to the junction box and was hacking in; within moments the CCTV was down.

"Okay, Syd, you're clear," he told her over comms. Sydney swiftly entered the building and flashed a fake ID badge and a brilliant smile at the security guard. Her skirt was deliberately a little shorter than office standard and, as predicted, the guard looked more at her legs than her badge. Inside the elevator she pulled out a lab coat from her handbag and hit the button for the 35th floor.

The doors pinged open and Sydney walked with purpose into the lab. This was the most dangerous part of the operation. They didn't know exactly where the flash drive was and looking for it would potentially endanger her cover. She was safe only if nobody questioned her right to be there. Looking unsure of where she was going coupled with the fact that obviously no one would recognise her would get questions. However, she was in luck. She hadn't been there more than thirty seconds when a guy in a lab coat, who looked like he'd lost a bout with Mike Tyson, walked out of one room and into a room with computers and was holding what looked like the flash drive. Sydney followed him into the room, looked left and right to check no one was looking at her. She pulled out a pen from her pocket that was actually an injector that contained a substance that would knock any man out cold for at least half an hour. Sydney quietly moved up behind him and stabbed him in the neck with the pen. She caught him as he collapsed, looked around to see if anyone had noticed anything, grabbed the flash drive and left. She'd got only a few steps down the corridor when Mac Taylor entered the AV lab. He saw Hawkes collapsed on the floor, looked to the other door and saw Sydney swiftly walking away.

"Hey, stop," Mac shouted, running after her. Sydney bolted for the stairs.

"Dixon, I've been spotted," Sydney told her partner over comms. Running down the stairs, she could hear more than one pursuer behind her; clearly the first guy had been joined by friends.

"Okay, hang tight, Syd, I'll meet you in the parking garage." Dixon put the van into reverse and accelerated hard, doing a fishtail turn out of his parking spot. All around him cars braked, swerved and hammered their horns. He didn't like this at all. Sure a lot of his missions for SD-6 were to steal one thing or another, but always before it was from other countries or criminals. This was the NYPD. They were supposed to be on the same side. When Sloane had given them the mission, he'd given a vague explanation of corruption but something still didn't seem right.

Dixon crashed through the barrier into the parking garage; he turned the van around so that he was on the same side as the door. A moment later the door opened with a crash and Sydney ran through and towards the van. Behind her two men burst out of the door. With great reluctance, Dixon lifted his gun and fired a few shots well over their heads. It was enough to get them to dive to the ground and gave Sydney time to get around to the other side of the van and jump in. He shot a few more rounds off to keep the men hugging the ground before, with squealing tires; he quickly accelerated out of the parking lot.

That had not gone well; they were supposed to get in and out with nobody any the wiser. Sydney had been in disguise like always. Her wig this time was a short natural red, and he'd pulled on a ski mask before driving into the garage. He'd taken the CCTV out, so there should be nothing to personally identify either of them. The gun would have to be destroyed and the van the same or made over with new plates, wheels and paint job. The situation was easily solved but it was hardly the easy deniable operation that Sloane had wanted.

Back at the crime lab, "Are you ok?" Mac asked as he stood up and brushed off the grit that was clinging to his shirt and pants.

"Thirty five flights of stairs, Mac," Danny Messer replied wryly. From behind them, guns drawn, Don Flack and Stella Bonasera arrived on the scene.

"What the hell happened?" Flack demanded, scanning the area quickly for threats before holstering his gun.

"Lab security comprised for the second time in as many days," Mac answered angrily before taking a deep breath and accessing the scene. "Danny go and get Lindsay and your kits, we need to process down here." Danny nodded and disappeared off to the elevator. "Stella, go see what security has on CCTV and Don…."

"Already on it, Mac," Flack said as he pulled out his cell phone. "I'll get uniforms to lock this place down,"

"Right," Mac said and stalked off towards the elevator. First, he had to check on Hawkes and then he had a Chief of Police's ear to bend about dodgy security, although given what he'd said yesterday when he'd complained after someone had broken into the morgue, perhaps he'd be better off complaining to the mayor directly. One of his people had been attacked, evidence had been stolen from his lab, and someone was going to answer for this.

FBI Headquarters

12 noon - 15 Hours Missing

"Okay, what do we have?" Jack Malone rubbed his eyes tiredly. The call out to Emily Sloane's abduction had come after he'd already gone home last night. Maria had not been pleased, so rather than travel all the way back home; he'd stayed in his office. The couch was just as uncomfortable now as it had been ten months ago.

"A window smashed with a rock at the rear of the property, evidence suggests it wasn't used to enter or exit," Martin Fitzgerald began. Was it wrong to profit from someone else's misfortune? When Jack had traded his life for Samantha he'd thought that was it, it was all over, there was no way he could compete with that. He'd had a crush on Samantha since he'd joined the unit, but he'd realised pretty quickly that he was competing with his married boss and as Samantha had told him herself, she liked her relationships nice and complicated, so he counted himself out of the game. Now that Jack was failing to capitalise on recent events, actually gone in completely the opposite direction, he was thinking of dealing himself back in. He hesitated slightly, though, because Jack really did look awful.

"A Mr. Will Tippin was knocked unconscious with a candlestick present at the scene. He doesn't remember anything. One minute he was talking to his host, the next he was waking up on the floor with a lump on his head. He's a reporter for a metro newspaper and was the invited friend of another guest," Danny Taylor reported, his eyes going from one colleague to another. 'Oh, this wasn't awkward at all,' a snarky corner of his brain commented.

"There were three other people in the house at the time: Arvin Sloane, the husband; Jack Bristow, an old family friend who has just joined Credit Dauphine, the bank run by Mr. Sloane; and his daughter Sydney, who also works at Credit Dauphine and is the one who invited Will Tippin," Samantha said, looking at Jack and yet trying not to look at him. He looked awful. There were big black smudges under his eyes and his shirt was crumpled like he'd slept in it; his clean office shirt must already have been used this week. She felt sorry for him; she would always care that he was suffering, although a small part of her whispered somewhat bitterly that it served him right. He'd made his choice, now he had to live with it.

"I've started running full backgrounds on everyone present. Mr. Tippin seems clean, nothing of interest so far. Sydney Bristow lost her fiancé last year; he was brutally murdered, apparently during a robbery at his home, and no one's been caught yet. Jack Bristow's wife Laura died in an accident twenty years ago, her car went into the river, no body was ever recovered," Vivian offered, Jack raised his eyebrows.

"A possible pattern," he suggested. It certainly seemed like a big coincidence that of the people present, all but one had lost their partners.

"Maybe, there's also an FBI file on Jack Bristow. It's with the counter-intelligence unit, but I haven't been able to get anything more than the file reference yet, so no idea what it's about."

"The counter-intelligence unit?" Danny whistled. "Is he a spy?"

"He works for a bank, and before that he sold airplane parts. Doesn't exactly say James Bond to me," Samantha interjected. She wanted normality, or something close to it. Back to what they'd had before Farrell had come and stirred up dirt, before the bookstore. She wanted the easy humour and banter. If it was a little forced at the beginning, from her at least, then so be it.

"Okay. Vivian, keep trying to get that file. Martin, look into Credit Dauphine. Samantha, dig deep into the husband's background, something's not right with him. Danny, you and I are going to go see the husband," Jack ordered. The team stood, gathered the file folders and went to their assigned tasks.

New York Crime Lab

1pm - 16 Hours Missing

"All right, Sheldon, take your time," Mac said soothingly. He'd just spent half an hour chewing out a bunch of important people for their failures, which had led to this, so he was feeling a little better now than he had an hour earlier.

"I'm okay, Mac, really. I don't know what they hit me with but as fast as it acts, it wears off," Hawkes said. In truth, he was feeling a little woozy, but he thought that came more from the beating he'd got last night than the knockout drug. "I'd processed the trace on the flash drive and I took it into AV to get a look at the contents, see what was worth killing for and to see if there was an additional link to Trevor Jones."

"Additional link?" Mac queried.

"Oh, right," Hawkes said, backing up a bit. "I found blood and a fingerprint on the flash drive. The blood matches Anne Steele's and it's beneath the fingerprint that is Trevor Jones'. I also found the flash drive inside his doll."

"Adam," Mac looked towards his skittish lab tech, who was lingering nervously at the doorway to the break room.

"Yeah, boss."

"Go find Detective Flack-- he should still be downstairs--and tell him to get Trevor Jones in the interrogation room ASAP," Mac ordered. Adam nodded and disappeared. Mac nodded at Hawkes to continue.

"I'd barely got the directory up on the screen when I was knocked out," Hawkes told him.

"Can you remember anything at all? Names, numbers?" Mac pressed.

"Just the top few names: Enrique Alverez, Achmed Asanti, Bill Carter and Robert Dunbrook."

Mac nodded, it wasn't much to go on. After all, there had been a lot of names on that disk; it was a long shot that the person responsible was one of the top four names. However, it was all they had to go on right now, unless Trevor Jones gave them something more.

"Mac." Flack was at the door looking grim. "Trevor Jones was just found in the holding cell; he's been stabbed to death."