"It's strange isn't it," Jordan remarked into the quiet of the waiting room. Woody looked over at her, unsure who she was addressing. His blue eyes, already small and pouched from lack of sleep, creased in slight bewilderment. But she simply stared into her lap, refusing to meet his eyes with her golden ones, and twisting her fingers. "He's always the strong one. Always the one who's in control. The adult. But now…" Her voice trailed off, she had to stop before her voice could break. Thinking of that sweet crotchety old balding man plugged into who knew how many machines, so broken by the crash, and again by his daughter, and Oliver… It was too much for her.

Bug had been listening too, with a sympathetic expression he looked up from his fourth Boston Herald. "But now we have to be the strong ones." Though his expression sought to be sympathetic and reassuring, his voice was only grim and tired.

Jordan swallowed convulsively, and then hardened herself against the tears that were dangerously close. This was not the time, nor was it the place to break down. Inviting as Woody's arms looked. Woody saw the swallow, and moved slightly and prepared to hold her. Wanting to hold her again, he remembered the smell of her hair, and the slight weight of her body that seemed to grow heavier, but never less welcome, by the hour. The way she had settled against him while she slept, the way she fit against his chest. But he saw her tighten her jaw and straighten and resigned himself to yet another day in which they barely touched. The worry, Garret, Abby, the case, there was never enough time to be just them.

Nigel made a triumphant noise from over beside Kate. Woody wondered irrationally how Nigel and Kate were having time to get so close.

Jordan gave the dark haired Brit a look. "What is it now?" Her voice held no trace of the emotional turmoil it had been in earlier. She raised an eyebrow, and the gaze from her eyes was steady.

Nigel was looking more upbeat than he had in a while, and his mouth was stretched into a grin that he would have sworn he didn't remember how to make it had come so rarely in the past few weeks.

"It looks like he's going to be fine!" He paused for a moment and part of the enthusiasm faded. He narrowed his eyes and chewed on his lip. "For now." He typed a bit on his computer. They waited, the room silent except for the rapid taping of the keys. "Oh, ho!"

Kate glared at him, unimpressed by the dramatics. "What?"

He smiled to himself again, reacquainting himself with the feeling. He typed furiously for a moment. "That's very interesting." He stressed the last word, and glanced around surreptitiously, observing their reactions. Garret was out of the woods, and Nigel was never above having a bit of fun at the expense of his colleagues.

"What is?" Jordan's command was a breath above a growl, and her firm gaze brooked no funny business this time.

Still smiling faintly to himself, he continued to type.

"Nigel!" Jordan stood up threateningly, while Woody looked on, slightly amused.

"All right. All right." Nigel looked up at them all. "Oliver Titleman as we know him, ceased to exist six months ago."

Jordan wasn't amused. "Explain quickly, Nigel."

He sighed dramatically, but gave in. "His bank account closed. His driver's license wasn't renewed when it should have been. His passport has been expired for four years, and… and the lease on his last known place of residence expired a year ago. Oh, and his fingerprints are mysteriously not on file anymore. It looks like he erased himself."

"You got all this from a computer?" Kate drawled sardonically.

Nigel grinned at her. "I have my methods."

Woody looked alarmed, Lily dumbfounded, Bug was silently cursing, but Jordan was… Jordan was smiling, in a chilling bloodthirsty way.

It was Nigel's turn to be confused. "What?"

One side of Jordan's mouth twitched upwards into a smile, but he eyes were hard and expressionless. "Our little Oliver made one mistake. We still have his fingerprints on file at the morgue. From his little display on the glass cabinet."

Nigel grinned savagely back at her.

Xxxxx

They had all gone back to the morgue, leaving Jordan just a little bit more time with Garret. The nursing staff had barred her from the ward after she had been caught sneaking in to see him for the third time, but little things like that had never stopped Jordan, and so it was that she was sitting beside Garret as he came to once again.

From her seat beside his bed she watched him stir slightly, wrinkling the sheets she had smoothed when she came in, and then, even before he opened his eyes, turn his head towards her. His expression when he opened his eyes, despite his obvious exhaustion, was amused.

"Didn't I see you get taken out by security…the last time you were here?" His voice, with its characteristic gravelly tone was still weak, and Jordan leaned over to hear him better.

She raised an eyebrow and smiled slightly in assent, but chose not to verbally answer the question.

He groaned, but before she could do more than give him a worried look, he gave her a look that told her clearer than words that he was not groaning in pain or discomfort, but rather at her. Which was, when he came to think about it, more or less what he usually groaned about.

"Remind me why I hired you?"

She only smiled. It had been so long since he had seen anything to laugh about.

His face darkened, the memories that had left him on waking returned full force.

"Abby."

Xxxx

The morgue files on Oliver were conspicuously missing, and Nigel was furious. His reflex, after a bit of public cursing, was to dust the (already dusty) storage room for prints. Bug and Kate had stood silently during his display of fluent and imaginative swearing, but it had become abundantly apparent that he wanted to be alone and take his anger out in forensics. The tenseness of his back, the stiff angry way he strode between the files, and the irritable way he flicked the brush as he dusted for prints all had been enough to convince Bug and Kate to go back to running trace on whatever they could find, and leave him to his theatrics.

He worked his way from shelf to shelf, kneeling beside them, and then springing up with a snap to move onto the next shelf. His knees would regret this in the morning, but he intended to process the whole room if necessary, and that was where Jordan found him, kneeling in the midst of fifty years worth of files, surrounded by the hum of the generators and puffs of dust that swirled up whenever he moved, and lodged in his hair and clothing.

Despite the dirt the shelves in the morgue storage room were well lit, and Jordan saw Nigel the moment she walked in. He was too engrossed in his work to notice the soft slapping of her footsteps on the floor, or the click as the door closed behind her and so she had made it almost to his side when he noticed her.

"Sweet Nancy!" He breathed with a start, and dropped the brush he was holding. "Don't do that to me, love. I can't handle it right now." Unthinkingly he wiped his palm on his white shirt, leaving streaks of dirt all down his already soiled front.

She knelt beside him, looking worn. "Word on the street is that the file's gone."

He nodded, already dusting for prints again furiously, refusing to look at her and see what he was already feeling reflected in her liquid eyes. This was hopeless. Abby was probably dead, and when they found her body it would be all they could do to keep Garret from following. A part of him wanted to slow the case, delay the almost certain discovery of her corpse, and keep Garret with them as long as possible.

"So where is it?" She asked trying to be upbeat, but her voice caught wearily on the last syllable.

"Not here. Not misfiled. Not anywhere. Gone." He sounded out of breath as if he'd been running, and a hint of a wail was breaking in. Each word was clipped and short, as if by making them shorter he could lessen their meaning. It had the opposite effect and the words hit her like bullets.

"I don't understand. Only employees have access to the files." She scanned the shelves around her.

"Yep."

"So it has to be here." This was spoken with the deliberate logic of a person who hasn't slept in two days.

"Nope." If the word could have been cut any shorter, Nigel would have.

Jordan eyed him for a few moments. It was clear that she wasn't going to get much more out of him. Patting him gently on the shoulder, she attempted to convey a world of comfort in the slight pressure of her small hand. She stood up and brushed herself off cautiously to avoid leaving tracks of dirt to match his on her clothes. Gripped his unresponsive shoulder one last time and left as unnoticed as she had come.