Disclaimer:I do not own Without A Trace, nor do I own any of the characters from Carol O'Connell's 'Mallory' series. However, I definitely recommend her work. It should be available through most major bookstores

Author's Note: This is a sequel to 'Press Conference.' If you haven't read that one, I reccomend it for background on what events lead to the following.

Memos

You rolled the dice
Now let the bet stand…
–Jeff Healey 'Confidence Man'

She will find him – he knows this. She's seen his face and heard his name, so now it will only be a matter of time. He wonders what her reaction will be, what she will make of what she finds. Not what Jack did – for though Jack has never spoken what he thinks, Mallory cannot see things as Jack does, it is simply not her nature.

And it will be personal – whatever she does – for he has drawn her personal attention. The others still can't believe he did what he did, or that he was successful in the attempt. They want to know how, all the dirty details he'll never spill. All except Jack, who doesn't want to know what happened, plausible deniability to the last. Normally that's not Jack's style, but he knows Mallory, and he knows that however Martin won, he's better off not knowing.

She will find him, for she does not like to lose, and Martin has beaten her. But he knew this before he even started. It was a risk he was willing to take; a bet he was willing to face. She will be looking to even the score. That is the rule of the street, the rules she knows better than any other. What she can't know is that he knows those rules too, that he has lived by them, for none of that is record, none of that is public. Victor Fitzgerald did a good job of that at least: calling in favours to hunt down an errant son who sometimes didn't make himself too hard to find. It was part of their war, showing the old man that the FBI couldn't even keep track of a fifteen year old, and that secure private schools weren't always secure. The harder the old man pushed, the harder back Martin shoved, until showing off wasn't good enough anymore, and escape became the only option.

No one – not Danny, not Viv, not Jack, not even Sammy – knows about those days… the closest he's come to admitting is when he mentioned a hitchhike in a container truck. He should be dead from those days, but God favours the foolish, and now he does his penance: chasing the missing, a task that too often leads to heartbreak. They must wonder what precipitated his switch from white-collar to missing persons, now that they know he's not trying to run his way up the ladder. But there's no way they could guess that this is atonement for his teenage sins, because he knows what lies out there is uglier than anything the sane human mind can imagine.

But Mallory… Mallory spent years on those streets, just a baby when she first got there, the guess is all of eight years old. No one knows for sure – maybe one or two, but they are Mallory's angels, they'll never tell – because she lied years onto her age, like street kids learn to do.

So they both know the rules, and they both know that Martin's transgression will not go unpunished. But because of this, he isn't afraid – like Sammy, Jack, Viv or even Danny would be – because it is the rules, it is simply how the game is played. He wounded her, but he did not kill her, and so now she must take her revenge or lose more credibility.

His computer beeps softly, alerting him to a new arrival. Intra-office memo, with him the only recipient, and Sammy's name attached. He glances around to make sure no one sees it, then scrubs it from the system, using every trick he's learned. He glances again at Sammy, bent over her work and tucking a stray blonde hair behind her ear. She senses his look and smiles, and he smiles back. Then Jack comes in, and it's over and back to business. Still, the memo's contents scroll across his brain. A bar name and a time – short, simple and to the point. Jack moves on, and Martin smiles again but this time it's not friendly.

(&)

Mallory slipped up the stairs, secure in the knowledge that this was New York and fifty dollars could cause blindness in anyone, especially a doorman. Definitely not a cop. A cop would have better locks then the ones she stared at, but the FBI wasn't noted for its brilliance. She broke through them in seconds, and was in, closing the door behind her.

The first thing she noted was the cold – fifty degrees at the most. She switched on the light, it would be more suspicious to search in the dark or by flashlight. The light confirmed her initial sense. Moving into the kitchen, she nodded in unconscious approval of the surroundings. This could be her own place; clearly Martin was as familiar as she was with cleaning products and neatness. The cold fit too – the chill would slow the growth of bacteria. Indeed, many operating rooms weren't this sterile. She gazed through the clear glass of the kitchen cabinets and the dishes in their neat stacks, each lined up within a fraction of an inch.

Opening the refrigerator, she caught a whiff of bleach, trapped in by the airtight seal. She was willing to guess that nothing older than a week resided there, and like the cupboards, everything aligned itself in perfect formation – even the left-over Chinese food containers stood at attention, their lids closed and betraying no hint of their contents on the outside. Curious, she opened them, one by one. Alphabetical. She closed them and returned them to their places, skewing one just slightly. It went against her principles, but she wanted him to know that she'd been here, that his space had been violated.

She moved on, into the living-room, and found herself disappointed. She'd expected more than the giant screen television and the surround-sound speakers. Riker would love this. Though if Riker lived here, the Chinese food cartons would dominate the heavy polished hardwood coffee table and the soft, leather and chrome sofa would be worn out from his shoes and smothered in beer and whiskey. Under Martin's care, the chrome gleamed, and the wood shined a natural red. The leather felt smooth and well cared for under her hands; the room was Riker's taste mixed with Mallory's housekeeping.

And a bit of Charles for good measure. Her eye fell to the book case and she moved closer, to examine it. Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Joseph Conrad and Dostoyevsky. Not her style at all, Mallory preferred a computer manual or a case file. But not a cop's style either or even the FBI's. An intellectual, she realised – he'd be anathema to his fellow agents, too. They'd never back him, despite his parentage. She'd done her homework – they had similar pasts. While Markowitz was alive, she never worked the streets, he kept her holed up and safe in the Computer Crimes division. It was his death that brought her into Special Crimes, his death and her finding the one responsible.

Yet different too. Victor Fitzgerald was still alive and deputy-directing, and her sources informed her that he was no Louis Markowitz. Louis had been respected and loved – not everyone loved Victor. She looked around again, then moved on. Maybe in the bedroom…

(&)

He waits, but she does not come. Slightly disappointing… he'd been looking forward to drinks with a beautiful blonde, and now he's drinking alone. He wonders how much time he should give her, and decides that two hours should be enough.

(&)

She searched the bedroom, growing impatient. It wasn't here, either, just a neatly made bed and a closet and dresser like her own. Expensive clothing – not necessarily trendy, but quality. Suits pressed with perfect creases, hung still in bags, the hangers precisely one inch apart. Not a hint of dust, not even in the back of the closet where even most fanatics miss. Nor was there any under the bed, in fact it looked like he moved the bed every time he vacuumed. She clenched her fist, punched the carpet. It had to be here… there was no way he used one of the Bureau machines, they weren't much better than the ones in Special Crimes. Getting into her system required something far more sophisticated than that. Besides, he was an electronic paper-trail expert, he'd never settle for less than the best. No, someone like Special Agent Martin Fitzgerald would want something better than the best. 'The Machine' they sometimes called him, the same name used for her. 'Martian' more common though… an alien thinker, someone who didn't belong. The FBI liked machines, but it did not tolerate alien behaviour.

And he might as well be an alien for the level of documentation on him in this world that documented everything. And what was available told her nothing except that officially, Martin Fitzgerald was one step away from being the perfect citizen. No rookie mistakes recorded in his personnel file, not a surprise in light of his heritage – he might make them, but no one would know. One reprimand, but a law enforcer with no reprimands wasn't a law enforcer at all. No speeding or parking tickets – though that wasn't hard for a member of law enforcement to manage – and only one record with the insurance company: a single vehicle accident in a snowstorm, hardly an indicator that he was a person at all. He filed his income tax before deadline every year – he probably declared every cent – and paid off his credit cards every month, avoiding the punitive interest. He had no email other than the one supplied to him by the bureau, one cell phone and one pager – also Bureau supplied – and almost no loyalty cards whatsoever. Basic cable with a sports package and Internet… but for what? So far, she'd found no sign of computer or even spare software. So where the hell are you keeping it?

(&)

He should get going… nursing a couple of drinks alone for this long makes bartenders suspicious. He pays his bill and adds a carefully calculated tip – one thing about the white-collar crime detail: you learn how to do percentages without even thinking. It's just enough to keep him invisible – too little, they remember you as cheap, too much, and they definitely remember you, in case you come back. But gauge it just right (not perfect down to the cent, because they remember that too) and even your quirks can be forgotten. Memory goes with money, especially among people who make a living off their gratuities. He'd rather not be remembered; he's not trying to create an alibi. She's had enough time – there's no sense in playing the chump. He picks up the large black bag at his feet and catches a cab back to his apartment.

(&)

She moved into the bathroom, anticipating nothing more here than what met the eye. Chrome and tile and glass sparkled in a testament to sterility – no sign of soap scum or mildew here. She checked the toilet tank on reflex, finding exactly the nothing she expected. The same precision of spacing was reflected in the position of the soap, shampoo and conditioner bottles in the wire rack in the shower – and in the single bottle of soap that also rested on the back of the sink. Once again, she nodded in unconscious approval. Bottles, not bars – bottles could be kept clean and neat. They neither melted nor kept remnants of a previous use attached. A quick search of the medicine cabinet revealed nothing save a razor and shaving cream, each directly opposite each other on the middle shelf. It had to be here somewhere, but she knew her time was running out and that Riker and Coffey would never forgive her if she were caught on a break and enter; they'd never let up on her if they found it was an FBI agent's apartment and that she didn't even find what she was looking for. She took a deep breath to calm down, and froze.

The scent was strong in here, stronger than in any other part of the house. A lemon scented cleaner – for cleaning metal surfaces. She leaned close to the medicine cabinet and sniffed again. He'd definitely just cleaned those shelves, something else had sat there until recently. She swore, this time punching the cold tile wall. He knew… he knew she was coming and cleaned something out of here, something he obviously didn't want her to see. There wasn't enough room for it to be a computer, but it had to be something damning, something she could use. "Damnit." Mallory didn't believe in psychics, so the only explanation was that Martin Fitzgerald was playing games. What she didn't know was what game he was playing. If he knew… if he knew she'd pick tonight, why had he taken so long to come home? Why hadn't he called the police? There'd be plenty of street cops who would get endless amusement from arresting her and embarrassing Special Crimes – if only to place bets on how she'd get out of it. A Martian well and truly, then – his thought processes were more than certainly from another planet.

So, if he took something out of here, what was to stop him from taking the computer? His car was missing from its assigned parking spot – it would be quite simple to pack even a heavily modified desktop into the trunk. Would he take that risk, however? Would he take the chance of someone breaking in? This was New York, after all, where there were people with undergraduate degrees in break and enter, and post-doctorates in theft and item disposal.

And while the car might be insured, there was no way he could insure the data on his hard-drive – some of what he used was custom work, and it didn't appear that he had backup copies available. So where, oh where are you keeping it? He didn't strike her as someone who missed details or took unnecessary risks. Even his invasion of her private world had been part of a calculated gamble – a way to get her attention. The more she thought about it, the more it didn't make sense for him to have taken it. It's here, it has to be. She'd run out of time, though… he'd be back at any moment. Unless he did have something going with the blonde, and had gone there for the duration.

She couldn't count on that though, she had to get out of here. She left the way she came in, failing to notice – for the second time – the tiny red light glowing on the digital video camera that rested on top of the television.

(&)

He breezes into the lobby, bag over his shoulder. He nods at Hank Lewis, the doorman, and smiles. "Did she get up okay?"

Hank smiles in return. "Yup. Went straight on through."

"And now?"

"About five minutes ago. She didn't look happy."

Martin keeps smiling and like magic, the bills pass between them. This is New York, and fifty dollars can cause alertness in anyone, especially a doorman. He wonders how much Mallory paid for a service already assured. He doesn't ask though. Hank deserves some secrets, even those from the IRS. It's a cold, dirty world, and everybody deserves a bit of comfort, deserves to think they win sometimes. If there are any more perfect saints left, they don't live in this city – everyone cheats on something. Crooks lie to cops, cops lie to crooks, and everybody lies to the tax-man. That's just the way of this city, of this state, maybe even of this world. He might be a rookie in Bureau time served, but he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, as much as any Shadow. Most of the time, it's nothing – just ambition, or the desire to simply get by.

He takes the elevator – it's been a long day and he has no desire to climb, not with the extra weight he carries. When he reaches his door, he studies the lock. He's impressed, not many people can do that neat of a job, nor would they bother locking up when they left. Mallory is a pro – thank God she tends to work for the law, he'd hate to think of the havoc she could wreak if she moved into larceny full time. He appreciates it on another level too – she's been kind enough to spare him the expense of calling a locksmith.

He smells it as soon as he walks in, just the hint of perfume in the air – expensive, elegant, so perfectly Mallory. Mallory wears nothing that isn't quality – it's an obsession for her as much as it is for him, and for many of the same reasons. The same with the neatness, though he's heard she can't leave it behind, even on the job. One advantage the Martian has over the Machine: he is organic and can fake the messiness of living beings. Not here, in his sanctuary of course, but in the sacred, paranoid world of the job. Only two job people have seen this place: Jack from necessity, and he's still not fully recovered from the discovery, and Sammy, for whom he warmed it a bit, rumpling it for her comfort. He can deal with chaos even in here when necessary, if it means sparing the sanity of the innocent. But Mallory's not innocent, so he did no such favours for her – though for her this perfection was probably the greater comfort.

He wonders if she found it – after all, she could only be looking for one thing, but did she recognise it when she saw it, or did she trap herself into thinking that it had to be the standard form?

First, though, he heads for the bathroom, carrying his bag with him. Razor and shaving cream are removed from the cupboard, and all the little bottles go back to their places. Amitriptyline, imipramine, nortriptyline, fluoxetine – an anti-depressant poem. Paroxetine and sertraline; phenelzine and tranylcypromine. They're all there, and he hasn't tried any of them. It's his lie, his fraud. Look, Daddy, when bad things happen, I get help, just like the Bureau says I'm supposed to. Coupled with that friendly smile and little boy face, it's the perfect con.

"You make me really, really happy." Sam said that to him, but he doesn't know what that means. How does a person define happy? For that matter, how do they define sad? Who decides what's normal, and what is in need of treatment? Broken bone is easy – look on an X-ray, put it back together. Except some small fractures heal on their own. Where's the mind X-ray that says if the break is big or small? After all, look at Christmas. Is Jack broken, or Maria? Who is more damaged, the person who explodes, or the person who lays on the pressure until explosion is the only result? He hopes the two can work something out – those girls need their father. Jack's not perfect, but neither is their mother. He lines up the bottles in perfect rows, twisting them so the labels face forward, easy to read.

Maria. Mary, Mary, quite contrary. She is a lawyer after all. But Jack still believes in justice, thinks that people will play fair. Jack may be the older, but when it comes to true politics – the interpersonal stuff – Martin is the wiser. He's lived with power brokering and plays all his life, Dad didn't get where he did on hard work and goodwill alone. So how do you solve a problem like Maria? He doesn't know, he doesn't have enough details. But it's something to consider, for the future. Because Jack is a good supervisor, and a good person. So was, and is, Vivian. He feels bad about that, and is glad it wasn't his call to make.

But back to the immediate problem. He closes the door of the medicine cabinet, and carefully folds the bag, putting it away in its assigned spot in the top of the hall closet. Then he goes to the living room and turns off the video camera. He retrieves the keyboard and remotes from his bookcase and sits down on the couch, before turning on the television. A blue screen greets him, and will not budge until he enters his password, confirming that he is indeed Martin Fitzgerald, or someone well informed enough to be. He never uses the easy ones: his memory isn't gone yet. He changes it weekly, just like the ones at work. The tech guys hate him for that. They like being able to go in and change things, they like it when people keep the same passwords and they're easy to guess. Jack once asked him if his password meant anything, and he just smiled. The work ones, yes – it's a way of thumbing his nose at them, because they have no idea of the full extent of his abilities. No one's caught it yet, not even the guys that should. DOS commands, but no one uses DOS anymore in this land of point and click. He varies it sometimes: for one week it was 01001101 1000110, his initials in binary. But it's an inside joke, and no one ever gets it, which only makes it that much more fun.

Here, the entry changes each time it's used – it's the algorithm to create it that he alters every week. So it's not random, even if to the watcher it seems to be. But underneath there is a framework, underneath there is a logic. You'd have to be good at math to figure it out, though, and contrary to stereotype, many modern hackers aren't. Not stats math, anyway. That's what computers are for, to crunch those numbers for you.

The password leads to black blankness as the system awaits his next command. He types it in, and the signal flies from his keyboard and into the bookcase, where circuits connect and nudge others, turning the wave signal into electrical, and sending it further down the line to his television, or his speakers, depending on what it's been instructed to do. Right now, he just wants playback. He wants to see what the camera caught.

He smiles as he watches – she looked straight at it, but didn't see. People – even people as savvy as Mallory – get trapped into patterns. Computers are nothing more than circuits in a housing, even the monitor and speakers are optional. He knows people who have built them in breadboxes or old lunch-kits, and in garbage cans. He likes the one he heard of that used the gas-tank of a scrapped Harley Davidson – well cleaned out, of course, no sense having a computer that could burst into flames. He built his as a challenge, to see if he could do it. And it is an efficient use of space, a premium thing for the modern New Yorker. The air-conditioner keeps the circuits cool – the setup doesn't allow for fans, and heat can build quickly.

Or maybe the trap was her own ego, not expecting him to have the practical understanding to do such a thing. So few people do, relatively, that she might not have picked him as one of that particular minority. After all, there's little about him that suggests the hardware interest – software, maybe, but that's because he needed to know some to get by in white-collar. But hardware is different. A lot of people don't know that, they think that a computer geek can fix either.

Done with the video for now, he checks his email – the only official one he has is through the bureau, the only address that bears the name 'Martin Fitzgerald.' He is a million other people online, in cyberspace anyone can be anybody. And he hides his tracks well – he knows most of the tricks used by the US government, and a few that he uses on his own. It's his own personal stand in defence of privacy – he keeps the documentation on his life as low as possible.

There's nothing much, and as he reads, he considers what to do next. 'My parents never had to worry about me being exposed to these predators on the Internet.' A conversation with Danny pops back into his head. That's because when he was Eric Miller's age, he was one of the predators – though of a different type. 'I was too busy playing football in my neighbour's yard.' That and too busy figuring out how the system really worked to worry about chatting with a potential kidnapper, had there even been chat-rooms to play in. But Danny doesn't need to know about that side of things. Not that he doesn't trust Danny, but Martin doesn't like to take chances like that. After all, if people knew, they might make him work with computers all the time. He can't do that, he still likes it to be fun. If it becomes a job, then all those associations with work will attach themselves to play. So instead, he plays at work: he doesn't let them know how good he is, and as a result can get away with more. It's a form of protection for the others, too. They can plausibly deny that they knew, on the off chance that he is caught.

He smiles. The perfect parry and counterthrust. Though he doubts Mallory will appreciate it.

(&)

The world ran on paperwork, and Mallory knew better than to trust it to Riker. He was Louis' partner, and her childhood babysitter – Louis and Helen knew better than to entrust her to civilians. Riker, at least, knew she was a thief, he wasn't fooled by the tiny hands and angel's face. He was her partner now, but not a man for the intricacies of reports, and certainly not a man to trust with a computer. Better to do it herself, there was no need to borrow gainless trouble. A memo appeared, dropped on her desk with little interest. No wonder, since it was standard issue Federal Bureau release, claiming to have information about a criminal class that they deigned to share with the locals. NYPD regularly ignored these, there was nothing that the Bureau knew that the cops didn't know better.

Except… she stared at the 'To' line. This was addressed to Mallory herself, an odd choice to receive such information. She scanned down, and her hand curled into a fist. At first glance, it was as it claimed: information about a criminal class. But rarely did the Bureau waste their time on such petty things as break-and-enter. And there was a signature, too. Nearly illegible, except for the distinctive 'M' and 'F' to start the words. The bastard had signed it, he knew what she had done, and was taunting her. It didn't occur to her that she had done the same with the food cartons. Charles might have said so, but Charles wasn't here, and didn't know anything about it. But this… he was telling her he knew, and that he didn't care. You mean nothing to me, said the lines not printed on the paper. I find you amusing, the invisible words claimed. There could be no other message, and either Martin Fitzgerald was a fool, or he was indeed the alien people claimed. For no sane, intelligent human being would taunt Mallory. It mattered which, however. Helen taught her never to pick on the mentally-deficient, but she said nothing about extra-terrestrials. Helen's rules were the only ones that Mallory respected. She folded the memo and placed it in her pocket, then picked up another form.

(&)

He drops the fax into the shredder and watches as the cross-cutters send it to a paper oblivion. He then gives the debris a stir and grabs out a couple of handfuls for good measure. Not that he expects anyone to go digging into the office wastebasket, but he knows how good some of the reconstruction geeks are. But it's hard to reconstruct when random pieces are missing. He knows what he's done, but you don't play this game by backing down. 'Where you been lately? There's a new kid in town…' Mallory's spent too much time picking on a Bureau that didn't have the skills to fight back. And he wouldn't care, but she picked on Jack and made it personal. NYPD worked in partners, here it's teams. But it's the same thing, when you get down to it. Family. She humiliated Jack, and that could not be tolerated. And she did invade his privacy, another transgression that requires retribution. Thus this invitation to spar, because that's what it is. He knows she won't ignore it, anymore than he ignored her in his apartment. But he won't fold when he still has stakes he's willing to use. He's evened the score, the match is tied. The next move is hers. He will wait. En garde.