Judy awoke a full half-hour before her alarm went off, and found herself staring at the ceiling trying to figure out what had disturbed her. Her first thought was that someone must be trying to get into the room, so she remained perfectly still and strained her ears until she was satisfied that wasn't the case. Just the sound of water in pipes, the harsh buzz of the room's AC, and the faint sounds of hotel staff getting ready for the day. All strange and unfamiliar sounds.
She sighed and rubbed her face, then got up and checked the preparations she and Nick had made anyway. Door was still bolted with the chair braced under the handle. Pencils still jammed into the widow tracks. A simple dowel cut to size laid in the sliding door to the hotel's courtyard and pool ensured the door wouldn't open even if it was left unlocked, and a wedge at the top prevented it from being lifted out of the tracks. Everything remained, thankfully, in place.
Just skittishness then. Judy hated feeling skittish. With a sigh she pulled the curtains closed once more and sat on her bed, then grabbed her phone.
To her surprise she found herself back on Lifeline. She'd just navigated her way there automatically, like it was second nature. Her ears folded back as she considered that, wondering if maybe it meant she was using the community as a crutch instead of dealing with her uncertainties herself, then shook off the silly notion and took a deep breath before she checked the topic she'd started.
The response her questions about Nick's ability to sneak up on her had gotten was much stronger than she'd ever anticipated. It'd only been up for a couple of days, but there were already well over a hundred replies. She stared at the number, her tail flicking lightly behind her as she felt momentarily overwhelmed, then got to reading.
Apparently her situation wasn't at all unique, which was a relief. Many posters that identified themselves as prey mentioned having similar worries initially, while the preds admitted that some of their partners had brought up similar concerns. In every case the responses assured her that what she was feeling was caused by lack of familiarity, and would fade with time.
The question of if she should talk it over with Nick was…decidedly more mixed. A few replies were concerned that raising her worries so early on might signal that she was having second thoughts about the relationship, while others applauded her desire to get the relationship off on the right foot by building it on a solid foundation of communication. The majority, however, were more cautious and believed that talking was a good idea in principle, but depended on who she would be talking with and how she chose to broach the topic.
She was able to glean a few tips. The most important was that she obviously shouldn't suggest that it was something wrong with him, or anything that needed to be fixed. And of course she should pick the time carefully, not trying to force the conversation or interrupting anything else. A time when they could both focus, and safely end the talk if either of them started to feel uncomfortable.
As she reached the end of the thread she found all the advice that had been thrown her way mostly just left her with new questions, however she felt a little better about everything just the same. She made a quick post to thank everyone who had given advice, then bit her lip as she checked the time.
5:45AM. Even Nick would be awake by now. Still, she hesitated a moment before dialing him up.
Only two rings before he answered. "Hello, Judy? Is something wrong?"
"No, just getting used to spending the night in a strange place," she admitted, lightly bouncing the heel of her left foot against the bed. "Been awake for a little while and wanted to hear a friendly voice. Hope I'm not being a bother."
"Well, I've got a few minutes before I need to get ready for the day," Nick said. "What's on your mind Carrots?"
Things I'm not sure how to say, she thought and shook her head. "Do you think we can do something this weekend?"
"Of course. What did you have in mind?"
Judy nearly suggested that they have a movie night before she remembered that he didn't have a TV anymore. Her voice caught in her throat as her mind searched for something they could enjoy together.
"Um…maybe we could grab a pizza and head back to your place?"
Because Wednesday's operation would functionally be a repeat of Monday, Nick had dared to hope that Lieutenant Uncia would be content to use the same plan as they had yesterday. Second verse, same as the first. Everything had worked out just fine last time, after all. No need to reinvent the wheel.
The feline seemed determined to find work for everyone, however. That morning they'd been forced to sit through a debriefing where everyone shared what they did over the course of the op and suggested ways it could be improved tomorrow—and because everyone found themselves on the spot unexpectedly they all were practically forced to mention desired changes just to keep up appearances. A bunch of little changes shuffling a perfectly good plan around in ways that, in Nick's opinion, made no difference. About half way through he suddenly realize the horrible truth.
This was what his job had become. Against all odds the lieutenant's meetings seemed to be multiplying. Nobody could dare make any changes on the fly anymore; all the briefings and meetings and debriefings would have beaten it into their heads that this operation was too important to let any single mammal make a decision on their own. Before long they'd probably start to hold meetings over the radio while still in the field.
Actually, that is a little too far even for Uncia, Nick thought, then pursed his lips. Probably.
Still, it was beginning to wear on Nick so badly that it had actually driven him to make the decision to work through his lunch just so he could put his mind to something different for an hour. Besides, he was still trying to prove to Bogo that he could be a good boy, and putting in a little extra work to close another case couldn't possibly hurt.
The carrier had finally gotten back to him about who had purchased that burner phone. Or, more accurately, they confirmed what he already knew: that it had been purchased with cash. They were also able to give him two other useful pieces of information, however. First, that it had been bought from a Super Wallaby-Mart. By itself that was unremarkable, however the second tidbit was much more useful.
Whoever had bought the phone had bought nine others in the same transaction. Sloppy. It was much safer to buy burner phones one at a time, and from different stores. No normal mammal walked into a place to buy ten phones. It was the type of weird detail that made a mammal stick out.
Either someone had been in a tremendous hurry, or he'd gotten overconfident. Either way, it didn't matter. He had a location, and from the transaction he had a time. And Wallaby-Marts were heavily trafficked enough to warrant a number of camera's watching them. The dozen cameras still made for a lot of footage to go through, but as usual Judy was more than happy to help. More importantly, she was giving him advice on how to use the cumbersome system.
"You don't have to use the seek to fast-forward to the time you want," she told him, then moved her mouse over to one of her video feeds. "You can just click on the feed you are interested in and then enter the command 'goto' and a time to make it jump there."
Nick tried it and blinked as he immediately ended up where he wanted. "Is there a way to do that for all the cameras I'm watching?"
"Um…" Judy paused for a moment then typed on her computer. "Ah. Yeah, looks like if you just use the goto command without selecting a feed then it jumps all the ones you're currently watching to that time."
"This would be easy if we had Wallaby-Mart's security tapes," Nick said as he jumped the footage forward to when the phones had been bought. "You know they've got cameras watching the registers."
"Did you ask them for it? They'll probably be happy to help," Judy suggested.
"Already did. They said it'll take them a day or two to pull the footage."
"Well, if we don't find anything we can always look again after they provide it," Judy said brightly. "A day or two isn't that long to wait."
As usual, Nick found Judy's optimism contagious. A smile touched his muzzle even as he slowly shook his head in disbelief. Of course she was right. In the grand scheme of things a few more days wasn't likely to make much of a difference. Watching a half dozen security recordings each was still tedious work, but the dose of brightness did a lot to make it seem less insipid.
At first Nick simply watched for anyone walking out with a bag full of phone boxes, but after running the footage ahead a full hour nothing stuck out. Frustrating, but perhaps he should have guessed that the still-unknown perp would be bright enough to take some precautions. He had gone to the trouble of getting burner phones in the first place, after all.
So he reviewed the footage again, this time simply keeping an eye out for anyone that seemed suspicious. Out of place. He was well aware how much of a reach that could be; plenty of mammals could seem suspicious just because they felt nervous for completely innocent, unrelated reasons. Upcoming health tests. About to propose. Baby on the way. It wasn't the sort of thing he liked to put too much stock in, however in this instance he happened to notice a fox walking out of the supermarket section with a cart full of groceries.
That in itself wasn't particularly remarkable except for one detail: it was Flip, and cooking was the sort of mundane activity that Flip simply hated. He liked to style himself as a crime boss in his own right, not the sort of poor schlub that had to prepare his own meals.
Nick watched as the footage rolled on and Flip approached a station wagon being driven by a familiar wolf. Sensing a chance, he enlarged the area around Flip until the image began to blur, and watched carefully as they loaded the vehicle. A toothy grin broke out on his mouth.
"We got him," he announced, almost unable to believe that it would prove to be something so mundane that tripped up the other fox.
"You found something?" Judy asked and leaned over to peek at his screen. "Is that Flip?"
"It's him," Nick said confidently. "I'm sure that Wallaby-Mart's footage will confirm it."
"This is great," Judy said, her ears perked up. "If it was really him then he's involved in Nighthowlers somehow. The lieutenant will have to let us arrest him."
Nick blinked, his ears slowly standing up, then jumped out of his chair and started feeling his pockets. "Oh, this is perfect. I've been waiting for this moment to come ever since I enrolled in the academy."
Judy gave him a quizzical look. "You were hoping you'd get the chance to bust him?"
"No, this is way more important," Nick assured her, finally finding his sunglasses in his breast pocket.
"Nick what are you—" Judy started, then cut off the moment she saw his aviators. "No. Absolutely not."
He pointedly ignored her. "You know, we really should have realized it was him," he said as he flicked the sunglasses open dramatically.
"Nick, no—"
But Judy was already too late; at last his moment had come. He slipped the aviators on and grinned at her.
"After all, it was a flip phone."