'Sit down!' Fillmore growled, shoving Augie into a chair by his desk. The commotion the two were making was drawing the attention of more than one person in the office. Tehama was whispering something behind her hand to Anza, who then nodded and looked grimly in Fillmore's direction.

For the most part, Fillmore completely ignored them. He was more concerned with the binders full of photos of people who'd been booked by the safety patrol. Pulling down the one labeled with the current year, he marched back over to his desk and slammed it down in front of Augie.

'I don't care if you don't know the names of the guys who did that to your eye – the guys who took Ingrid,' he said in a dangerously quiet voice. 'We're going to go through every single one of these binders until you ID every last guy who's in with Stingray.'

Augie was leaning back precariously in his seat, pushing the chair up on the two back legs. Fillmore was glaring at him from behind his glasses in a way that was just downright unsettling. What had gotten into this guy, all of a sudden? He'd never seen the officer so worked up before in his life. And he certainly didn't want to be on the receiving end of all this animosity for much longer.

'I don't owe you anything!' Augie protested out of nowhere, trying to stand up. He was sick of being pushed around. Just because he was short didn't mean people could just order him about.

Fillmore thrust him right back down into the chair. 'Third is your friend! You owe it to her! Man, I used to think you were just another punk that didn't deserve a second glance. The fact that a girl like Ingrid chose you, out of all the people at this school, to open up to – she almost changed my mind about you.'

'Hey, Fillmore,' Anza put a hand on the enraged officer's arm, trying to pull him away from Augie. 'Calm down, man.'

Fillmore wrenched his arm right back. 'So what's it gonna be, Augie? You just another punk? Or are you her friend?'

Augie stubbornly crossed his arms and looked away. 'I never asked to be her friend.'

Fillmore threw up his arms in frustration and turned around, taking a deep breath. He was about ready to set into Augie again when Vallejo barged out of his office. 'What's with all the racket out here?' He paused, taking in the scene at Fillmore's desk. 'What is he doing here!? Fillmore!'

'Yes, Junior Commissioner Vallejo?'

Vallejo looked ready to burst at Fillmore's tone alone. There was nothing he hated more than officers with attitudes. 'I thought I made it clear last time that he was not to be arrested again with out reason!'

'Ingrid Third has gone missing, and Augie has seen the guys that took her. Now, out of the kindness of his heart, he's going to ID them for us,' Fillmore sent a pointed glare in Augie's direction. Anza shifted feet nervously in the background.

Augie held Fillmore's gaze for a moment, then looked away with a 'pft'. Vallejo raised an eyebrow.

'Forgive me Augie, you're right. You have no heart,' Fillmore spat out cruelly. 'But there is one thing you understand: a balanced checkbook. See, since she got here, Third's been doing you quite a few favors. Way I see it, you're in debt man. This one little thing could clear all of that...'

Augie glanced back at Fillmore. If entreaties about friendship wouldn't work, that sure would. At least it wouldn't seem like he cared about her. Anyways, Fillmore wasn't gonna let up until he'd had his way. That... and he did care.

He gave a barely perceptible nod, but the officer picked up on it readily enough. Just then, another person emerged from Vallejo's office. 'What's going on out here?'

'Neil?'

The boy standing in the doorway to the commissioner's office smiled and waved. 'Hey. Just got out of the hospital a few days ago. Came in to go over any recent developments in the Stingray case. I won't be a part of it anymore, though. Been discharged. They'll be out looking for my replacement soon enough,' he paused when he noticed the grim looks on everyone's faces. 'Maybe I should return to my first question. What's going on?'

'A friend of mine is MIA – our dependable source here tells us that Stingray's guys are behind it.'

A surprised look flitted across Neil's face. 'A safety patrol officer?'

Fillmore shook his head. 'No, civilian.'

'Name, hair, eyes?'

'Ingrid Third. Black shoulder length hair, green eyes. Dresses in dark colours and combat boots.'

At that Neil's eyebrows shot off his head. 'THE Ingrid Third? As in the girl that caused all that trouble with the graffiti job earlier this year?'

'One and only.'

'You sure keep strange company, Fillmore. We had a file passed onto our department regarding her when she first came to this school. Bad egg – high IQ though.'

'It's the IQ that's gotten her into trouble. Seems she caught onto Stingray's game, and he was forced to take some action.'

'Well,' Neil said, moving over to Fillmore's desk, 'if what happened to me is any indication, we better find her, and fast.' He glanced down at Augie, 'Nice eye.'

Augie just 'hmph'ed and looked at Fillmore. 'So are we gonna do this or what? I got better things to be doin' with my time, ya know.'

Neil flipped open the binder, skipping the first few pages. 'Some of these guys look familiar to me. Judging by the date, they were brought in around or after the time my cover was blown. Might be a good bet to start here.' He slid the binder across the desk to Augie, who began to turn the pages, briefly looking at each of the photos on the page.

'There,' he pointed, suddenly. 'That's one of 'em, for sure. He was the big guy who cornered me in the washroom.'

Neil leaned over to have a look, his brow furrowed. 'I don't recognize him.'

Augie shot him a glare. 'Well you weren't there when I was getting my face pounded in, were ya? Don't think just because you spent a little while hangin' around some of Stingray's guys that you know every one of 'em.'

Neil held up his hands in a motion of surrender. Fillmore stalked over to his desk and looked over Augie's shoulder. 'Which one, did you say?'

'That one,' Augie pointed at the photo in the top right-hand corner. Fillmore started at the face. That guy was...

'Hey! Tehama!' he rushed over to her desk. She glanced up from her typing.

'What's up, Fillmore?'

'You remember that big guy you brought in that day after Neil's cover was blown? The one who's finger prints had been found on boxes in the storage room?'

'Yeah. Had to let him go, remember? It didn't come to anything,' she turned back to her typing. 'Oh, but those boxes we found his fingerprints on? They're still in the evidence room. Towards the back. Huge masses of cardboard. Can't miss them.'

'Thanks.'

They were right where she said they would be: in the back of the room, at the end of a long line of shelves packed with everything from yogurt to models of a Taj Mahal. There wasn't anything special about them that could be seen at a glance. They were, after all, just a couple of cardboard boxes. Fillmore opened one up and peeked inside. Empty. Not that he had expected to find anything, but still, there had been some sort of hope there that he would find somethingthat would lead him to Ingrid.

That's when he saw it. The small circles imprinted into the bottom, as if bottles had been stacked in the box previously. Bottles.

There was no way, was there? Neil had said that he suspected the vending machines were at the centre of all of this. Disco, it was all coming together now! The vending machine that Peabody had been arguing over with the Tape Measure Guy, it had somehow appeared on the budget without Peabody knowing. What if Stingray had put it there? Ingrid must have made that connection after he had told her the story for a laugh. But a vending machine was nothing without something to put in it, right? So after she figured that much out, she would have gone looking for the bottles.

He knew where the water bottles were, and he had a hunch that if he wanted to find Ingrid, he should start there.

'Hey, has anyone seen Fillmore?' Neil asked, walking over to Tehama's desk, where she and Danny seemed to be arguing over something.

'Uh, didn't he go running out of here a few minutes ago?' Danny said.

'After I sent him into the evidence room to look at few boxes.'

Neil's face, though confused, set itself with a grim look.

Ingrid listened in a somewhat careless manner as the door opened and close with a barely audible 'click'. Putting the bottle she was inspecting back in the box, she crossed her arms and turned to find Fillmore crouched in front of the door. He saw her and stood.

She raised an eyebrow at him. It was like he was playing 'spy' or something, and it was rather amusing. 'Can I help you?' she asked, her voice full of dry humour.

'Help me?' he said incredulously. 'I think the one who needs saving here is you, baby.'

Ingrid rolled her eyes and went back to her box of water bottles. Did he really think she was going to pay him any attention to him whatsoever if he insisted on using his preachy officer's voice with her?

'Still can't admit it, can you Third? Ever since you set foot in this school you've needed saving, and even now that the facts are staring you in the face you still refuse to see it.'

She thought of rounding on him and biting his head off with a cold, snide remark. A witty one, of course, that would show off her brilliance while demeaning him at the same time. But she couldn't let him get the better of her. No, she had something that he was obviously lacking: self-control. Holding a bottle over her shoulder, she asked, 'Do you know what this is?'

He stopped suddenly, thrown off by her question. He had been suspecting some kind of retaliation, but after a moment's reflection he realized that in the case of Third, that would've been too predictable and rash. Not that running off alone into the middle of Stingray's operation wasn't rash.

He walked over and took the bottle in his hands, turning it over. She spun around to observe him. 'It looks like water,' he said, but he was suspicious of the true nature of the contents.

Ingrid spun the cap off. 'Take a smell.'

Fillmore raised the bottle up to his nose and took a careful whiff. 'Uh! That's strong! It smells like... Alcohol?'

'It's ethanol. Mixed with a few other chemicals as well. Notice anything else odd about this bottle?' She held it up, level in front of his face.

'It's only two-thirds full.'

Ingrid nodded again. 'Care to take a wild guess at what all of this adds up to?'

'Uh...'

'It's a Molotov Cocktail, Fillmore. It's a makeshift bomb.'

'Langley?'

'It makes sense. That's what he was roped into this operation for: they had him smuggle chemicals out of the storeroom and mix these up for him. And it gets worse from there. Fillmore, they're going to put these in the new vending machines. These are going to be sold to students at X who, my guess is, aren't going to be doing anything good with them.'

A grim look came onto Fillmore's face. This was serious; this was more than catching Stingray. If everything that Ingrid described went ahead, the population of X Middle School would be in severe danger. They had to stop this.

Fillmore pulled out his walkie-talkie, which he thankfully had on him. 'Anza, you there?'

'Fillmore, where are you? Everyone's looking for ya.'

'Anza, I need some backup.'

About 10 minutes later Tehama's voice was heard in the hallway. 'May I see your hall passes?'

There was some grumbling, probably from the two guards who were still outside the door.

'Look,' Anza's voice said, 'if you haven't got the passes, then you're going back to class. That, or you're gonna join us at HQ. Which is it?'

More grumbling and then the shuffling of feet indicated the departure of their captors. Anza went with them for good measure, just to make sure that they didn't try to sneak back. Once they were out of sight, Tehama opened the door.

'You guys alright?'

'We have to talk to Vallejo.'

Final Chapter: Ingrid and Fillmore work together (finally!) to bring down Stingray's operation. But when all is said and done, where does their relationship stand?