Goren stood in the observation room, arms folded across his chest, watching Rodney shift uncomfortably in his chair in the interrogation room. Eames joined him after talking with Ross. Without looking at her, Goren said, "He wanted to know why we brought Rodney in."

"How'd you know?"

"Lucky guess. What did you tell him?"

"He acted suspicious."

Goren nodded as he continued to watch Rodney. That was better than telling the captain they brought the man in on a hunch. In the past, he'd sometimes had a hard time selling Deakins on his hunches. Ross would never accept that as a valid excuse for bringing someone in for questioning. Eames knew that as well.

Ross came into the room and unbuttoned his jacket as he stepped up to the window beside Goren. "Ready, detectives?" he said.

Goren drew in a deep breath and looked at Eames. She gave him a small smile and said, "Let's see what Rodney has to say."

Rodney looked up when the door opened and the two detectives came into the room. "Am I under arrest?" he demanded.

"Not yet," Goren answered as he sat down across from the irate man. "When we arrest you, you'll know it."

"Do I need a lawyer?"

Goren cocked his head. "Do you think you do?"

"I haven't done anything wrong!"

"Then I guess you don't need a lawyer."

"So why am I here?"

"We want to talk about Annie Kim. People tend to tell the truth here more than they do in familiar surroundings."

"What makes you think I'm not telling the truth?"

Goren smiled the smile of a predator. "If you are, you have nothing to worry about, do you?"

"You got very irate when we mentioned Annie Kim," Eames said. "Why?"

"I have my reasons."

Goren folded his hands in front of him, giving an impression of patience. "Tell us about your reasons."

"What's to tell? I worked for the colonel for five years before she waltzed in and took over the shop. That manager's job should have been mine! But no, she comes in and smiles real pretty and...and he gives it to her! How fair is that?"

"Why do you think she got the job?" Eames asked.

Rodney sneered. "Because she's got a pretty smile and a pretty ass that she knows how to wiggle to get the right attention. She gave the man what he wanted and then she got what she wanted."

In the wake of Rodney's accusation, Goren felt an unexpected surge of anger and a sudden urge to punch Rodney in the face. His left hand curled into a fist. His voice was tight when he said, "So you think she slept her way into that job?"

"How else could she have gotten it?"

Goren flexed his hand, trying to calm himself. "You don't think her Master's degree in Business Administration from Columbia University had anything to do with it?"

Eames heard the tension in his voice and realized how very close to the edge he was. She took over the interrogation. "You automatically assume that because she's a woman, she had to sleep her way into her job? It never occurred to you that she deserved that job?"

Rodney became uncomfortable. "I had seniority. Hell, everyone in the store had seniority over her. Doesn't that count for anything?"

"Maybe not when a more qualified person comes along," Goren growled. "Maybe the colonel had reasons to hire someone from outside the shop for that position. Do you have problems with Annie?"

"I let her know when she does something I don't agree with."

As Goren wrote in his binder, Eames said, "Give us an example of what you do to let her know you're unhappy."

Rodney shrugged. "I just tell her what she did wrong."

"In your opinion."

"Yeah, so?"

Goren looked up, reading more into Rodney's tone than his words. "So...you argue with her."

"Sometimes." Rodney was becoming increasingly more uncomfortable. "What the hell is this all about? Why are the cops involved in an internal situation? It's none of your business."

Goren tapped his pen on the pad in front of him, agitated. "It's very much our business, Rodney," he said, his voice distinctly unfriendly. "It became our business when Annie Kim turned up dead in front of the United Nations Friday morning."

All the color left Rodney's face. "D-Dead?"

"Dead," Goren confirmed.

Suddenly, it dawned on Rodney why he was there. His face turned red. "And you think I...?" He leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair.

When the chair hit the floor, Goren got to his feet as well, both hands balled into fists and ready to take action. Rodney came around the end of the table, advancing on the two detectives. "You've got to be kidding me!" he shouted. "You think I killed her? How many kinds of crazy do you think I am?"

Eames got up as soon as Goren did, ready to break up an altercation that her partner suddenly seemed eager to start. She moved into his peripheral vision and saw some of his tension ease, but he was still much too eager to fight. "Move back to your seat, Mr. Wilcox. Right now."

She kept her voice calm and spoke with authority. Rodney looked from her to Goren. He seemed to be sizing up her partner, and she silently willed him not to be stupid. Regardless of how it started, a fight would definitely not go well for Goren. Physically, he would pound Rodney into the ground. And then Ross would enter the picture and that was where it would get hairy for him.

The door opened, and two uniformed officers came in, remaining by the door but ready to take action if Rodney made a wrong move, a wise precaution on Ross' part. Rodney took the time to assess the situation and finally decided that the repercussions would not be worth the satisfaction of punching Goren, not there, not then. With deliberate slowness, he walked back to his chair, righted it and sat down.

Eames tugged the sleeve of her partner's jacket and nodded her head toward the door. Goren hesitated, but he didn't want her to look bad in front of Rodney. Even more, he refused to challenge her authority as senior partner in front of Ross, who was watching through the one-way glass.

Silently, he grabbed his binder and walked to the door, stopping only to tell the two uniforms to stay in the room. Eames didn't dispute his decision and she let the men stay. Goren left the room as she turned her attention to Rodney. He joined Ross in the observation room. It was more important for him to watch his partner in the interrogation than it was for him to avoid the discomfort he felt when he was around Ross.

The captain looked at him as he stepped up to the glass beside him. "What was that, detective?"

Goren shook his head. "I...I'm sorry, captain. I lost my temper. That doesn't usually happen in an interrogation."

"So what makes today different?"

Goren reached out and turned up the volume on the speaker so he could hear what Eames was saying. Then he answered, "I got caught up in my emotions. Annie Kim..." He shook his head. "She got her position on merit. She didn't get it any other way. He is angry and bitter...and I...I lost my patience with his...baseless accusations."

"So that anger...it's not your norm?"

"No, captain. It's not."

Goren wasn't going to go into detail about Sutter and his relationship to him, nor was he going to explain that it was Sutter he was defending. The anger had come on him suddenly and it was overwhelming. He needed to work through it, and he would, but he had barely been able to handle it in the face of dealing with Rodney and his rage at Annie Kim. He needed time, and he needed Eames.

With his arms folded around his binder, he watched Eames and listened to the interrogation, trying to ignore Ross and concentrate on his partner and Rodney.

Rodney slapped his hand on the table. "No, I didn't approve of Annie as store manager. I felt that I was much more experienced and I deserved the promotion."

"Why did you think that?"

"Because I'd been there for five years! How would you feel if you worked yourself into the ground for five years and then some pretty ass wiggled by and stole your promotion right out from under you?" He paused as he looked her over. "Never mind, detective. You'd probably be the pretty ass wiggling by the boss."

Goren bristled at that, but he was careful to hide his reaction from Ross. He knew the captain was watching him and he did his best to be impassive, but the truth of the matter was he wanted to beat Rodney to a pulp. He chewed on his lower lip as he listened to Eames' reply.

"She had an advanced degree from a prestigious university and a lot of experience with Asian imports and native artisans, which we found out more than tripled the store's already good profits. You don't think that had anything to do with her being made store manager?"

"I'm not an idiot. I know how it works."

"In your mind, maybe, which probably compounded your lack of credentials when the colonel was considering who to make his manager."

When Rodney jumped to his feet again, hissing with rage, the uniformed officers took two steps forward and he sat back down. In the observation room, Ross tensed and Goren struggled to remain where he was. If he went charging in there like a white knight to her rescue, well, he would be the one needing to be rescued. So he stayed put. He held his binder in a white-knuckled grip and his breathing rate increased as his anger flared again. Ross noticed the tension in his jaw, but he didn't comment.

Eames shook her head as she gathered her papers together and slipped them into their folder. "You aren't making things easy for yourself, Mr. Wilcox." She leaned back in her chair and gave him a look of disdain. "What is your opinion of Morris Franklin? Did he sleep his way to the top, too?"

"I don't know who he did to get where he was. Maybe the boss swings both ways, but he didn't deserve it any more than she did."

"Do the others feel the same way you do?"

He shrugged, but his hands were trembling with rage. "Who cares? I know the truth."

"The truth," she mused. "Tell me this truth: Where were you Thursday night?"

Caught off-guard by the question, Rodney stumbled over his answer, finally snapping, "That's none of your business, cop."

Eames nodded and wrote on a paper in the folder in front of her. "I suppose it's also none of our business where you were yesterday afternoon and evening?"

"That's right."

"Well, I'll tell you what we can do. Your behavior and your lack of an alibi give us reasonable cause to suspect you of murder. So we can hold you for twenty-four hours. That gives us until this time tomorrow to charge you, and by then, we'll know."

Rodney's face lost its color, but he kept up his bravado. "You can't do that!"

"Yes, we can, and we will."

"I want my lawyer."

"You'll have a chance to make that call."

She nodded at the two officers and they came forward to take Rodney into custody. He began swearing as they cuffed him, calling every cop in the city every name under the sun as they led him away. Eames followed them out the door and turned in the opposite direction from the way they went.

As soon as she entered the observation room, she could feel the tension. Goren turned from the one-way glass and looked at her, his expression guarded. She knew part of the reason he was uptight was that Ross was right there. She wondered if they'd had another clash and that made her uneasy. She preferred to be there when the two men butted heads. She was the cool head that made them retain their control, but most of all, she was the voice of reason when Goren's temper began to slip. She was just about the only one to whom he listened when he was beginning to lose his control.

She looked back and forth between the two men. "Is everything okay in here?"

Ross nodded and replied, "Everything is fine. Do you think you can tie your loose ends together in time to bring charges against Mr. Wilcox?"

"If he's guilty," Goren answered. "We'll know by this time tomorrow."

Ross gave him a long, appraising look. "See that you do, detective," he answered.

He walked out of the room, leaving the two detectives alone. Eames motioned to him. "Let's go for a walk. We haven't had lunch yet."

He hesitated for a moment, then followed her out of the room. He dropped his binder on his desk as they walked to the elevators, glancing toward Logan's desk, which was vacant. He sighed as he stopped beside her but he didn't look at her. She could feel his tension, but she wasn't comfortable talking until they were out of the building.

As they walked away from 1 PP, Eames asked, "What happened back there?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you don't lose it in interrogation. Rodney pushed your buttons in a major way, and you let him. Why?"

Goren felt his anger return, and he struggled with it for a minute. "I let him get to me. That's all I've got."

"And sometimes that works to our advantage, but not today. Bobby, I thought you were going to lay him out."

"I wanted to. I really did."

"Why? Was it what he said about Annie...or was it what he said about Colonel Sutter?"

She looked at him as she asked her question, and his reaction gave her the answer she wanted before he said a word. He rubbed the back of his neck and his respiration rate went up. "I just...I don't think the colonel is that kind of man."

"Because you don't want to believe he would cheat on your mother?"

"Because I don't want to believe he's like my father. I think...I want to believe...he's a good man. I want to believe that he hired them on merit."

"Looking at their qualifications, I can believe he did. We should talk to some of the other employees, see if Rodney is the only one with an ax to grind."

"We should...we need to...talk to the colonel again, too."

"Unless he happens to be in the city, that means another trip out to Montauk. We have to get Rodney squared away first. We only have 24 hours, and we can't waste any of it. We have to have enough to charge him by morning or he's going to vanish down the rabbit hole."

"I know."

Of course he knew. She reached out and lightly stroked the back of his hand. He felt a shiver course up his spine and he closed his eyes for a second before turning his hand over. He lightly caressed the palm of her hand with his fingertips. She made a sound that was almost lost in the noise of the street, but he heard it and it traveled right to the center of his belly where it began to simmer.

He withdrew his hand, not sure where he would end up if she continued to respond that way. Although it was understated and covert, her reaction had a powerful effect on him and they still had a long day ahead of them.

"Are you going to be okay this afternoon?" she asked, still unsure about just what was going on in his head.

"I'll be fine. We, uh, we'll be out, and I won't have Ross hovering over my shoulder all afternoon."

She was quiet as they turned another corner. "Bobby, what if we find out that Colonel Sutter is, well, what if he isn't what you think he is? Suppose he did have something to do with Annie and Morris, and he's not squeaky clean?"

He looked at her sharply. "Do you believe that?"

"Not right this moment, but we have to go where the evidence takes us. I'm trying to keep an open mind. Can you do the same?"

He frowned and focused on the sidewalk in front of him. He rubbed the back of his head and neck. "I, uh, I don't know. I'm still trying to find a place for everything, Eames. It's not...It's not easy."

"I know it's not, and I wish I could make it easier for you, but you have to prepare yourself for the worst, Bobby. I don't want you blind-sided and taken down if this takes a bad turn for the colonel. I'm not saying it will, but you have to be prepared, just in case. If Ross finds out exactly who the colonel is to you, he's going to question your judgment."

"He questions my judgment now."

"It'll only get worse for you."

She knew he was more agitated now than he was before, but she'd said what had to be said. She could feel the energy humming through him so when he stopped suddenly, she was surprised. He looked around as he led her to a doorway away from the pulsing flow of pedestrian traffic. "What if...What if I lose my way?" he asked, his voice urgent, driven by a legitimate concern.

Concerned by the worry she saw in his eyes, she reached out and touched his cheek. "I'll be there," she replied earnestly. "I won't let you get lost; I'll show you the way."

Trust me, whispered her voice in his head. She'd never let him down, and when he did place his trust in her, she hadn't disappointed him. Impulsively, he leaned in and gave her a brief but meaningful kiss, surprising her. He was normally very guarded when they were anywhere near 1PP, careful to keep his emotions in check as best he could. But she understood how overwhelmed he was and the kiss somehow settled his nerves. She gave him a brief smile and, without meaning to, a look that set fire to his soul. He stepped back while he still could and she stepped out of the shelter of the doorway.

Giving him another smile meant to offer encouragement and support, she said, "Let's go back and I'll run up and get the files. We'll head back over to Chinatown. I don't think it will do you any good at all to have to handle Ross all afternoon. Just wait for me at the car."

He nodded as they changed direction and walked back toward 1 PP. Distracted by the case and by Goren's unsettled emotions, neither of them saw the man who had followed them from the headquarters building. He hadn't been close enough to hear them, but he'd seen everything. He successfully hid himself when they walked back in his direction and he followed them back to headquarters.