Hiya there! Only ten days since my last update! Wow! Such shock! It is actually possible for me not to wait three months before posting.

I would actually have posted this even sooner, but I've been up to my neck in commitments. So here you go.

This is a new favorite chapter of mine, mostly because of a certain bratty techie.

And last, but not least... This is un-beta'd, as my lovely beta is still working her ass off to finish her degree.

Enjoy!


When Ashland exited the B.A.U. she had only one thought in mind. Visit Hannibal Lecter. Ugh.

She was sure it was bound to be an unpleasant visit, after how they had left things after her last visit. But if it meant leading them closer to getting Will out of prison, then she would suck it up, put her big girl pants on and visit the man.

In the parking lot she absentmindedly toyed with the keys to Will's car. He had allowed for her to borrow it for the day until she got around to picking her own up, so she could drive to Maryland and talk to Hannibal. Maybe, if she was lucky he'd even help her look for her phone. After all, she may have dropped it in his house.

Not that it seemed likely. Hannibal kept his home immaculate; he would have noticed it if something was out of place immediately. But it was worth a try.

So she got in the car and started her drive to Maryland.


Jack walked into the tech department—a place he rarely frequented and needed Valerie's directions to find—with great anticipation. Anticipation so great, that he missed the puzzled looks on the faces of the techies as some scratched their heads and others tapped their keyboards with severely focused looks.

Walking past the tech workers, he followed Valerie to the first desk where a young woman with offensively red hair was seated, blowing obnoxiously pink bubbles with the piece of gum in her mouth. She was reclining comfortably in her office chair with her arms crossed and her brows scrunched together as she glared at the empty screen in front of her. A bubble popped loudly. She absentmindedly pulled the gum back into her mouth before chewing commenced.

"June?" Valerie spoke cautiously, laying a hand on the woman's shoulder.

"Yah?" she muttered through her chewing, refusing to move even an inch, in case the screen would suddenly light up the moment she moved.

"You called me because you'd gotten a hit, remember?" she asked softly, leaning down to see the screen.

"Yeah…"

"Where's the hit then?" Jack spoke, his impatience with this woman shining through. He looked around the room, trying to see if he could spot the location on one of the screens but found nothing. His frown deepened, when he couldn't get eye contact with one single person in the room. They all seemed to be avoiding his gaze.

One even scrambled out of the room with a weak excuse of getting a cup of coffee, while he was already grasping a full mug of steaming hot brew.

That's it, Jack thought, holding back a growl.

"What is going on?" Jack boomed. All occupants of the room winced and pretended to be preoccupied with their blank screens.

It seemed the woman with the red hair—June—was braver than her co-workers.

"We lost it… Somehow. I don't know how. Bad wifi or somthin'," she muttered sarcastically and reached out a hand to bang on the top of the screen.

"Piece of trash," she mumbled sourly and folded her arms back over her chest.

"You what?" Jack asked, menacingly. The remaining techies in the room all mumbled excuses about coffee breaks and having to go to the bathroom while they swiftly filed out of the room.

"We lost it. Geez man, are you hard of hearing or something?" June repeated, finally swirling around in the chair to glare up at him.

"So let me get this straight. You call me down here for a hit, and then you tell me you've got nothing?" Jack asked, anger radiating from his intimidating frame. His arms were planted in his sides in an agressive display of power, but June seemed completely oblivious.

"Yes," she answered casually. "Well… Not nothing, I mean, we have the city, and the general area, but it cut off before we could get a closer look at exactly where in the city," she added before turning her office chair back to face the screen.

Jack and Valerie exchanged wary glances while June tapped away on her keyboard, but remained silent.

"Move over, sweet cheeks," June spouted, lightly patting Valerie's behind to push her away, for her to roll her office chair a few feet to the left in order to reach the printer that had just begun spitting out papers.

She took the load, swirled around in the chair and thrust the papers into Jack's hands before she wheeled back to her desk.

"There you have it. Baltimore. Can't get it any more accurate than that from the hit we got," June said casually, leaning back in her chair with her arms stretched out over her head. With a contented sigh she let her arms drop back onto the armrests as Jack thumbed through the pile of papers.

"This is all?" he asked, skeptically.

"Yes, that is all," June responded with an overly chipper attitude. Jack's frown deepened.

"I thought you said you had a hit?"

"We did. We lost it," June replied calmly. "That is it," June added, pointing towards the papers in Jack's hands.

"How did you lose it?" he demanded, throwing the papers onto the abandoned desk behind him.

"Beats me. Probably removed the SIM-card or something. Makes it a whole lot more difficult to find it," June answered, popping another large chunk of gum into her mouth. She chewed enthusiastically while gazing towards the ceiling thoughtfully.

"Difficult? As in, you can find it?" Valerie asked eagerly. Maybe they still had a chance.

June raised an eyebrow and popped a large, pink bubble.

"If you buy me a Stingray, I might," she replied, with just a little more sass than Jack was readily able to handle.

Taking a deep breath, Jack clenched and unclenched his fists before turning to Valerie, who would hopefully be helpful in interpreting what this nutcase was going on about.

"What is she talking about?" Jack muttered to Valerie, observing the red-haired woman who was sitting in the chair in front of him, blowing pastel pink bubbles.

"I have a feeling she isn't talking about the fish," Valerie muttered back, much to the amusement of June.

"Shark. The stingray is related to the shark, but no. I'm not. I need an IMSI-catcher. Well, you need an IMSI-catcher, but I need you to get me one of those babies," June quipped, looking every bit as chipper as the cat who got the cream.

Jack sighed and relented.

"You'll need to fill out a form for standard equipme-" Jack started but was cut off by a horrified June, who almost dropped the gum out of her mouth from how vehemently she was protesting to the standard procedure.

"Nooooooo no no no no no! No! You and I both know that will take weeks. Weeks, Crawford! I need it now!" she insisted in a shrill tone of voice, that gave Jack a horrid headache.

Feeling like he had sighed more in the past ten minutes than he had done in the past year, he let out yet another sigh and turned to Valerie.

"File a personal request for me. I need it within three days, tops," he spoke quietly, but it seemed June heard him as she started celebrating by pumping her fist in the air with a quiet 'yass'.

"I'll get it to you in two."


Hannibal plugged the small, rectangular metal-dish back into the phone, now without the SIM-card in it. He had been lucky Jack had called him when he had. Although Ashland had visited him before her phone went missing, thereby making it plausible for her to have dropped it somewhere within the near vicinity of his home, there was no sense in trying to draw anymore attention to himself than was strictly necessary. At least not until he had figured out what he wanted to do with the phone.

And for once, he wasn't entirely sure. He needed Will out of prison; the lack of his presence was becoming an itch, one Hannibal desperately needed to scratch.

Now, he only had to figure out how.


As Valerie closed the door behind them on the way out, she pulled out her cell phone. The order for the IMSI-catcher needed to be placed as soon as possible, and there was no better time than the present. Or so she thought.

A large hand closed over her own as she was about to dial the familiar number. She looked up in confusion at Jack, who inclined his head towards the hallway leadning down to his office, before he turned and walked away from her with hurried steps. With a frown etched onto her features, she looked both ways down the hallway before jogging to catch up with Jack.

They reached his office within minutes. Jack entered silently and held the door open for her. When she had walked past him, he closed and locked the door before seating himself behind his desk.

"Please," he asked, gesturing for her to take a seat on the other side of the desk.

"What's wrong?" Valerie asked, sitting down on the edge of the chair.

Jack hesitated, leaning forward to brace his weight against his forearms that were resting on the table. He let his eyes roam the room, looking for places to hide a camera or a microphone. There were plenty of places a small object could be hidden; tiny nooks and crannies. It would take forever to search the place.

"…I think we're being watched," he murmured, trying to keep his voice as low as possible. He should probably have had this conversation with Valerie in the hallway where there was more noise and less chance of it being rigged with microphones, but he didn't want any other FBI-agents to know about his suspicions. If he was right, all of their current operations could be at stake. If he were wrong, well, he almost hoped he wasn't… Dealing with phone-tapping was less of a hassle than a straight out mole-hunt.

Valerie looked at him with wide eyes.

"What?" she asked in disbelief, keeping her voice to a whisper.

"I used my phone before we lost the hit, and I think the killer may have been listening in on my conversation with Hannibal," Jack spoke, finally settling his eyes onto his very confused protégée.

"Is that even possible?" Valerie whispered, knowing the FBI had ways to secure their phones and computers in ways most normal people didn't.

"What else are the possibilities? It cut off minutes if not seconds after the call ended," Jack answered with a low rumble.

"This is a serious matter, Jack. You need to tell June about this," Valerie stated, her whispered voice raising minutely. Jack shushed her.

"And go back in there? She'll lure the entire state-budget out of me," he stated dryly, but pushed himself out of his chair.

"I'll talk to her tomorrow. I've had enough of gum-chewing yuppies to last me the rest of the day. Or year, for that matter," he stated in a normal tone of voice, not deeming this piece of information useful for any potential

He walked to the door and opened it in gesture for her to leave. Valerie raised herself from the chair, and joined Jack by the door, but before walking out, she hesitated.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Valerie," he prompted, waiting for her to leave.

"What about Will Graham?" she asked, and Jack almost groaned out loud. She just had to mention Will Graham.

"We know he's not in Baltimore, and we have no reason to suspect he's working together with someone. Unless we're counting the man with the european accent, which we weren't when we arrested him," she continued. They couldn't keep him without probable cause.

"Release him, but tell him to come back tomorrow for a psych eval-," Jack responded tiredly before he cut himself off.

"European accent," he murmured, suddenly alert.

"No," Jack muttered, staring wide-eyed out into the air. "He couldn't have."

"What?" Valerie asked, worried by the sudden revelation Jack seemed to be having.

"Hannibal," he stated before stepping towards his coat stand, swiftly grabbing his coat and speeding out of the office and down the hallway.

Blinking in confusion at his abrupt exit, Valerie was left standing just inside his office with a dumbstruck look on her face. 'Hannibal? As in Hannibal Lecter?' she thought to herself.

Raising a brow at this absolutely ridiculous game of cat and mouse she set off to get Will Graham released. And then maybe she would pay the lovely June a visit.


The trip to Baltimore felt like an entire lifetime rather than the actual hour it took. And the entire way her mind had been working overtime, trying to come up with what questions she could possibly ask Hannibal.

'Did you coincidentally see my phone lying around in your grand, immaculate palace of a house but decided not to alert me?'. Hmm, no. Too conspicuous. But really, what wasn't?

The entire situation was conspicuous, and no matter how politely Hannibal would doubtlessly answer her probing questions, she was still the one showing up and acting like the FBI.

This had 'terrible idea' written all over it. And she had agreed to it. Ugh. Stupid. Necessary, but stupid.

There were already two cars parked in Hannibal's driveway as she pulled up to the curb. It seemed she would also be disturbing him. Lovely.

Pocketing the keys after parking the car she walked to the front door with hurried steps, pushing herself not to dawdle. The faster she got her answers, the faster she could go home. But her knocks on the polished door went unanswered. For five minutes she stood outside the door, waiting for an answer.

With one last knock and a push on the doorbell for good measure, she stepped back and contemplated her options. She could go home and come back another day when he wasn't so obviously busy, or she could grab the bull by its horns and be proactive about her life.

With one last hesitant sigh she decided on doing things the difficult way and grabbed the handle. The door was unlocked. She almost wanted to close the door, go back to Will's car and drive all the way back to Virginia.

But she pushed the door open and let herself in. After all, Will's car had horrible gas mileage. It would be a terrible thing to waste that amount of gas. That was what she told herself, anyway, before she dried off her shoes and turned to survey her options.

She wasn't entirely familiar with the layout of the house but knew the way to his home office, where she would hopefully find him. It was a small trip through the dining room, up the stairs and down a hallway before she stood planted outside his office.

It was with a hesitant knock on the door, that she pushed it open, and the image before her had her rendered completely speechless. Her mouth hung open in utter disbelief, as she tried—and failed—to process what was happening right in front of her.

Hannibal turned towards her.

"Hello, Ashland."