Danny didn't think he was capable of anything except gawking, which he was sure was not attractive. "What do you mean?"

Molly scrubbed her face with both hands. "Did I not express myself monosyllabically enough?" Though she still maintained her playful tone, he could tell that she was frustrated, exhausted, and worried. She spoke again, over-enunciating each word. "That is my – "

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. "You lied to me," he said, trying and failing to keep the hurt out of his voice.

She glanced up at him briefly, but returned her gaze to the table. She didn't seem to be able to look him in the eye. "A lie of omission isn't exactly a lie." She traced the edge of the table with one finger. "Though Picard would argue otherwise."

Danny stood up so abruptly that he knocked his chair over. He braced his hands on the table and leaned forward until his face was only inches from hers, and even though he was furious with her, he couldn't but notice how green her eyes were. They were dark and smoky, the color of an evergreen tree. He shook his head to clear it and said, "So, what, because I didn't point blank ask you if you worked for the CIA, you didn't see fit to tell me?"

She leaned back in the chair and folded her arms across her chest. "Why do I get the feeling that you don't believe me?"

Danny's head was spinning. He dropped his head into his hands and tried to wrap his mind around everything. "Do you realize how unbelievable this all sounds?"

"You were willing to believe Steve but you won't believe me?" she asked, her eyes twinkling. "I'm insulted."

He choked back a groan and cocked an eyebrow. "Can you prove it?"

Her eyes hardened, and the twinkle was gone as she dug her wallet out of her back pocket and tossed it on the table. Danny opened it and perused the contents. He pulled out her driver's license, debit card, Blockbuster card, pictures of her parents, and behind her insurance card was her CIA identification.

He couldn't bring himself to look at her. "You're the undercover agent?"

Molly shook her head. "I'm not undercover. It's just not supposed to be public knowledge. My superiors seem to think that my life would be in danger."

Danny walked over to the mirror and leaned against it. He tried to only concentrate on his reflection, but his eyes kept flicking to Molly's. She was staring back at him, and he would barely let their eyes meet before returning his gaze to his own image. Why had he been so willing to accept that Steve was an operative, but he didn't want to believe that Molly was? Maybe it was because he didn't want to think that Molly would lie to him, even though they barely knew each other. But he'd felt more at home with her than he had with a long time. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd had a decent date. Technically, he and Molly hadn't been on a date, but it felt like they had.

"What department do you work in?" he asked, more because he couldn't stand the silence than he actually wanted to know. But if her bosses though that she would be endangered if others knew she was an agent, she must have been in an important one.

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. "I'm a cryptographer."

He whirled around to face her. "A code breaker?" She nodded, and suddenly everything clicked – her favorite movie, her favorite book, the fact that she'd kept her old college math textbooks. It all made sense.

No, that wasn't entirely true. He was still confused as all hell, about a lot of things, and he didn't think she would be able to explain away all his questions, even if they sat in the interrogation room for two solid days.

Molly reached for her badge, but he grabbed her wrist just as her fingers closed around it. He tried to ignore the jolt in his stomach and the way her breathing accelerated, but it was damn near impossible, and he was only free of the spell when she wrenched her arm out of his grasp.

He took a deep breath to regain his composure. "How did Steve get your badge?"

She ran her fingers through her hair. "I hollowed out my old calculus textbook, and I keep it in there. It's something I knew no one would ever look in." She picked a loose hair off her shirt and let it drop. "My best guess is that it fell out when Kate was trashing the apartment, and I'd assumed that whoever took her grabbed my badge as well."

Danny raised his eyebrows. "So you think that Steve took Kate?"

She shook her head. "No. I don't think he had anything to do with it."

"But Jack and Marty went to his apartment, and it was cleared out."

She furrowed her brow, obviously confused. "Well, that doesn't make any sense. What did he say when you found him?"

Danny had to look at the table because he couldn't look at her. "He told us that he was investigating you. Said that you were involved with the mafia and that your bosses had found out he was an agent, so he was leaving town."

She snorted with laughter, which made him raise his head to stare incredulously about her. She covered her mouth, as though embarrassed about laughing, until she calmed down. Then she said, "I made a joke about being in the mob a few weeks ago. That's probably where he got the idea."

He sat back down. "Do you think that Kate's disappearance is connected to the mob in any way?"

"No," she said. "I've never dealt with the mob. That's not my department."

Danny screwed up his face in concentration. "Then why would he say that?"

Molly grinned. "My money's on 'because he's an idiot.'" When Danny glared at her, she shrugged. "You had him cornered. He had to say something."

Danny sighed and dropped his head to the table. Every time he thought that they were getting somewhere, it blew up in their faces. He couldn't ever remember a case being such a mystery. They had no leads, no clues, and no suspects. At this rate, they were never going to find out what happened to Kate.

23 Hours Missing

After keeping Molly in the interrogation room for nearly six hours, Jack finally decided that she didn't have anything to do with her roommate's disappearance, and he'd agreed to let her out. In her place went this Steve character, who was shaking uncontrollably and so pale that he looked like a walking corpse.

Sam scrutinized Steve as Jack led him into the interrogation room. He still hadn't learned that they all knew he was lying about being a federal agent, but that apparently didn't stop him from being nervous as all hell. His eyes darted around the room, as though searching for a means of escape, and he was still shaking when Jack walked over to meet Sam at the window.

She raised an eyebrow. Jack had asked her to question Steve, which she didn't completely understand. She thought that Jack should do it, but when she told him that, Jack just shook his head.

"You sure you want me do this?" she asked, turning back to look at Steve.

Jack nodded. "Yeah. We need someone with a cool head to talk to him, otherwise he might clam up."

Sam smiled. "And you don't qualify as having a cool head?"

Jack gave her a look. "I'd ask Viv to do it but I've got her and Martin tracing all the calls that were made from Miss Sheehan's apartment. Maybe she wasn't the only roommate hiding something."

"What about Danny?"

"Because Danny would probably kill him," Jack said. He started walking down the hallway. "And we need this guy alive. We're running out of options."

Sam sighed and walked into the interrogation room. "Hi," she said, walking directly to the chair and then dropping into it. "My name's Sam. I need to ask you a few questions, if that's all right."

Steve nodded but said nothing. He probably didn't trust himself to speak.

"Why did you lie about being a federal agent?"

He stared at her, moving his mouth with no sounds coming out, for several minutes before he could finally speak. "I panicked," he said. "I went over to the apartment to see Kate, right, and the place was a mess…"

Steve could hear a scuffle inside the apartment and, thinking that Kate or Molly was in trouble, burst inside. What he saw was Kate hurling various objects across the room. She grabbed some of Molly's books and threw them against the wall, then kicked at them where they landed on the floor. She chucked knickknacks and picture frames in every direction – some of them she just tossed over her shoulder, but some she heaved with all her might. When there was nothing left to throw, she collapsed against the wall, sobbing.

He cleared his throat to let her know that he was there. When she saw him, she leveled an icy glare in his direction and grabbed the DVD remote and threw it at him. He ducked, and the remote smashed against the wall in the hallway.

"You bastard!" Kate said, getting to her feet and charging him. He grabbed her wrists to keep her at bay. "You son of a bitch! How dare you cheat on me! And with my own roommate!"

"Whoa, hold on," Steve said, avoiding a well-aimed kick at his groin. "I'm not cheating with Molly!"

After he said that he realized that he'd basically admitted to cheating, and so had to endure Kate pummeling him for a good five minutes. Luckily, she wasn't that strong, and so it didn't hurt. Much.

"You always liked her better," Kate said. She went to smack him, but he dodged her hand. "Just admit it! You've always wanted her!"

Steve didn't say anything, because if he said that it wasn't true, she would just call him a liar, and if he owned up to him, she'd get something heavier to throw at him. So he stayed silent, which didn't help matters any either.

"I hate you!" said Kate. "Get out of here! Go! I never want to see you again!"

Steve walked out of the apartment and was barely through the doorframe when Kate slammed the door behind him.

"When I got down to the lobby, I felt bad for the way I'd left things, so I went back up to see if I could talk to her. But when I got back up there, she was gone."

Sam shook her head, confused. "So you took Molly's badge?"

Steve groaned and buried his face in his hands. "I told you, I panicked. I saw the badge, and I thought Molly would blame me when she came home and found the place a wreck."

Sam cocked an eyebrow. "And your apartment?"

"I took a job in Philadelphia a few months ago," Steve said. "I wasn't going to tell Kate until everything went through, but she started getting suspicious, thinking I was cheating on her."

"You're moving?" Sam asked.

Steve nodded. "Yeah. Of all the rotten luck, huh? And when those guys found me, I just told them that the mob had found out I was an agent so that I had an excuse. It's a little weird, isn't it, that the day I happen to move out of my apartment, my girlfriend disappears?" Steve shook his head in disbelief. "I mean, who would know something like that?"

24 Hours Missing

Martin was waiting for Sam when she walked out of the interrogation room. He'd been watching her question Steve for the last twenty minutes, after he and Vivian had finished pouring over Molly and Kate's phone record, and he smiled when he saw that she managed to extract key evidence from Steve. Unfortunately, none of it helped them figure out who really was behind Kate's disappearance, but at least they now knew who wasn't – and that was just as important.

Sam walked towards him, acknowledging him with a half-smile but making no move to stop, so he grabbed her elbow as she passed.

"So, he's not guilty of anything?" he asked, even though he knew that Steve wasn't, because he'd been observing his interrogation. He just needed to say something to her.

"Besides being a lying coward?" she said, the corners of her lips tugging upwards in the trace hint of a smile. "No. But now we're back to square one. We have no idea who took Kate. We don't even have a clue."

Martin tugged lightly on Sam's elbow, drawing her closer to him. "After this is over, you want to go out for dinner?"

Sam gently freed herself from Martin's grip and stepped away from him – not very far, but enough to put a noticeable distance between the two of them. He swallowed a sigh; he knew that she wasn't yet ready to inform everyone that they were seeing each other, but he was getting tired of hiding their relationship. Usually, when someone wanted to keep a relationship a secret, it meant that he or she was ashamed of the other person. And if that was how Sam felt, then he didn't want to stay in a relationship that was going nowhere.

"Come on, Sam," Martin said. "Everyone already knows.Danny knows, Jack knows– "

"You know I'm not ready to tell everyone," she said. "You know what people will think." Her voice was soft, but firm, and Martin knew he shouldn't push. But damnit, how much longer did she intend to deny there was anything going on between them?

"Who cares what people think? I don't."

"Martin," said Sam, and there was just a hint of warning in her tone, "I don't want to be seen as the office tramp."

"I know," Martin said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. They'd already been down this road once, with disastrous results, and he wasn't anxious to make a repeat visit, but something had to change. He didn't like sneaking around, as if he was doing something wrong. "But think of how this makes me feel, okay? You don't want anyone to know that we're together, and I was ready to announce it two weeks after it happened. You know what that makes me think? It makes me think that this means more to me than it does to you." He choked on the words, but he had to get this off his chest. He'd wanted to say something like this for months. "And if that's the case, Sam, then maybe we should just end this now. I don't want to be your consolation prize. I don't want to be the person you settle for."

He didn't wait for her to respond, but turned on his heel and stalked off. She called after him, but he ignored her. It seemed as though he'd been doing that a lot lately.

A/N: Couldn't resist having a little Martin/Sam interaction, since there isn't enough of them on the show for my taste. Did anyone else read the TV Guide article in like January and watch every week waiting for the whole Martin/Sam/Jack thing to happen, only it never did, and you got so mad? Yeah, that was me. Anyway, I just thought I'd throw something in there. I didn't intend for it to detract from the story, so I'm sorry if it did, and don't worry, I've still got plenty of ideas.

Just read The Da Vinci Code, in case you all were wondering. And if you haven't yet read it, I highly recommend it. I couldn't put it down, I read it in two days.

"Oh, you told the truth...up to a point. But a lie of omission is still a lie." - Jean-Luc Picard (ST:TNG/"The First Duty") Thanks to The Quotable Star Trek for that.