"See what you can find out from her

An important part of being a good boss is having the ability to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of employees and designates tasks accordingly. The short time I've spent with Gwen Cooper has taught me that if there is one thing she can do it's ask questions. My candidate for prisoner interrogation was pretty obvious.

"See what you can find out from her." This will be good, give her a chance to prove herself on her own.

"But aren't you going to help me? I don't know what I'm doing." Admitting that is generally not a good strategy.

"Usually better if you don't say that in front of the prisoner." There are exceptions of course. Sometimes letting yourself appearance weak, then going for the jugular throws the captive off balance enough to get what you want from them. Takes me back to the interrogations I used to conduct. All that blood. All that screaming. No point in thinking about it. Gwen's chat won't get anywhere near that messy. I've changed. I have limits.

"Jack, why is Freckles down in the vaults with the prisoner all by herself?" Ok this has got to stop.

"She's conducting the interrogation. I need you to start analyzing the data from the cell as soon as it starts coming in. Toshiko I want you to stay on the gas. I want to know what it is, where it's from, and how to kill it."

"Jack-"

"Owen, she used to be a policewoman, she can handle this. Comparatively she's done decently so far. She hasn't, for example come in an hour and a half after she was paged piss drunk and vomited all over her coworker and her coworker's computer." After three years I still don't think the smell is gone. At least Owen looks adequately chastised. Good. At this point questioning Gwen is tantamount to questioning my judgment. With everything that's ahead of us I can't afford for my team not to trust me. "If you're worried, pull up the vault camera and watch from here." Let Owen spy on her. It never hurts to be cautious and saves me from doing it and sending a mixed message to Tosh and Owen. Trust, Jack. Think trust.

When Owen interrupted a few minutes later, I could tell from his tone he was happy about something. That in it of itself was enough to worry me. When I came over to the screen I completely understood his attitude. Like I said before, all the right curves in all the right places. If this is what police interrogation is like these days, I have got to get myself arrested. Soon. Within the next five minutes.

"She said she had a boyfriend." Clearly Gwen had a more enlightened and flexible approach to sex than her generational peers.

"You people and your quaint little categories." Flexible. One had to wonder how flexible. Would she be up for, hypothetically speaking, a few after hour games with me and Ianto? Naked twister. Naked limbo. Naked- wait had Tosh just said something? Get her out of there? Why would I want to-Oh right dangerous alien threat, I remember now.

By the time we reached the vault Gwen was back out the cell and on her cell phone. If not for her blouse that was more open than it had been when I'd last seen her, there was no proof she's been in the cell at all. So maybe she had been trying to work information out of the creature. If that's the case, you got to admire the dedication. More importantly if this is Gwen's information gathering technique and she decides she wants to learn my secrets, life at Torchwood was going to get pretty interesting. In a good way. Now what was that noise? Owen and Gwen at it again. Hard to tell if Owen behavior is because he resents Gwen for replacing Susie or because he's trying to recreate the same combative relationship. I guess everyone grieves in their own way. It looks like Gwen has a bit of a temper. If Owen doesn't watch himself he might end up with his ass kicked. That might be fun to watch, but, as the boss, I can't really allow that kind of thing.

"You know, strictly speaking, throttling the staff is my job." Shame I don't get to do it that often. At least Owen got a little of what was coming to him, judging by the marks on his neck. Gwen was surprisingly strong. Good thing to remember.