"Here it is," Peter said, emerging from his office after only a few minutes of searching and carrying a stack of papers that looked more like a book than an article. "I knew I still had a copy of it."

He handed the stack of papers to Vivian, who anxiously flipped through it. But most of the article was math equations, and wherever there was type, someone had doodled in the margins. "It doesn't look very professional," Viv said, which wasn't entirely accurate. True, the doodles detracted from the seriousness of the article, but what little writing there was in it was eloquent and well written.

"That was my first impression, too," Peter said. "It looks like a high school kid wrote it." He raised his eyebrows. "But it doesn't read that way. Whoever wrote that is a genius."

"You don't know who wrote it?" Martin asked.

Peter shook his head. "Kate never told me. Something about confidentiality or something. She just wanted me to double-check the facts, like I said."

Martin furrowed his brow. "Then why do you still have a copy of it?"

"Because it's fascinating. I mean, the ideas proposed in this article could revolutionize the gambling industry as we know it." He exhaled slowly through pursed lips. "Unfortunately, I don't understand it. I never was very good at math, and you have to really know what you're doing to puzzle your way through those equations."

Vivian chewed on her bottom lip, thinking. What if Molly had orchestrated the entire kidnapping, not because of Kate's boyfriend, but because of the article Kate had been working on? Molly had admitted to Martin that she had money on the NCAA basketball tournament, and she was a math genius, recruited by the CIA to work as a code breaker. She would certainly be able to figure out the complex equations. Perhaps Kate had mentioned the article once, and Molly was determined to get her hands on it.

But that didn't make any sense. Because the tournament was already underway, and Molly had already placed her bets. So the equations wouldn't be of much use to her now. And why would she have to kidnap her roommate? Why not just steal the article from her?

"Did you know that Kate's roommate was a math major?" Martin asked, obviously following the same train of thought as Viv.

"She mentioned that, yes," Peter said. "And I was always surprised that Kate didn't take this to her. I can only go so far with this article, not knowing anything about math." He paused, eyeing Martin suspiciously. "Do you think that Kate's roommate might have had something to do with her disappearance?"

Martin ran his tongue along his bottom lip. "It's one of the possibilities we're considering."

Peter shook his head again. "I don't see that."

Viv cocked an eyebrow. She'd been under the impression that Peter and Molly had never met. "I didn't know you knew her."

"I don't," Peter said, "but I know Kate. The way Kate talks about her roommate, you'd never know why the two of them were friends. Personally, I'd worry about Kate doing something to her."

Molly had shut and locked her bedroom door, but all Danny wanted to do was explain. She hadn't heard the conversation; she hadn't heard the things Jack had said, the things he'd insinuated. Danny had felt obligated to defend her honor. Yeah, he'd thrown the first punch, but Jack had totally provoked him, and if he could just explain that to her, then everything would be all right.

Hopefully. Because he couldn't stand the thought of her being mad at him, especially since he hadn't done anything to deserve it.

He knocked on the door. "Molly? Can I come – "

The door opened before he could finish the question, and before he was even able to register that she'd opened the door, she'd grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him inside.

Molly's room looked nothing like he expected. Truthfully, he wasn't sure exactly what he had expected, but whatever he had expected, this wasn't it. There were Post-Its everywhere, each with scribblings on them – math equations, random quotes, some with gibberish that Danny couldn't recognize. There was a giant map of the solar system on the wall directly above her bed, right next to another map of the solar system, which on closer inspection turned out to be a map of the universe according to Star Trek.

He turned to Molly and immediately forgot why he'd wanted to talk to her in the first place. Because she had changed out of her business suit and into a pair of jeans and one of those baby doll tees that brought out the green of her eyes. His breath caught in his throat as he drank her in, standing there with her hands on her hips, looking thoroughly pissed and amazingly beautiful.

And at that moment he wanted nothing more than to grab her and kiss her.

Which reminded him of the conversation with Jack, which was the reason he had come to her room in the first place – not to do that thing he was thinking of, no matter how much he wanted to. No matter how long it had been since the last time. And it had been a long time.

"Look, about what happened," he said, wincing as his voice cracked like he was a teenager, "I just wanted to – "

She cut him off with a wave of her hand, obviously still pissed, but she seemed slightly amused at the squeak in his voice. "Forget it. I need to go somewhere. Can you take me?"

Hell, he'd take her anywhere. She wanted to go down the street, he'd walk her down the street. She wanted to go to Philadelphia, he'd drive her to Philadelphia. She wanted to go to Atlantis, he'd charter a boat and some scuba gear and find the damn lost city, just so that he could take her there.

Unfortunately, she wasn't supposed to leave the apartment, not until Jack had questioned her.

"Jack says we have to stay here," he said, and he really, really hated Jack right then.

Molly rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well, Agent Malone is an asshole, and the only reason he wants me to stay is because he still thinks I'm involved somehow." Danny didn't bother to argue the point, and Molly continued. "But I really need to go somewhere, and I need to go now, and if I don't go, it could seriously be detrimental to my sanity."

Well, how could he argue with that? "One problem," Danny said, jerking his thumb at the closed door. "Your apartment is crawling with cops at the moment, and it'll be fairly obvious that we're leaving."

Molly shrugged. "No problem. We'll use the fire escape."

Fire escape?

She crossed to her window and opened it. He followed, looking down, and sure enough, there was the fire escape.

How had he and the others missed that? Sam and Martin had been trying to figure out how Kate and her abductor could have gotten out of the building, and none of them had stopped to consider the fire escape. Boy, they were really off their game on this case. At least Danny had an excuse – his brain had been addled by lust, because whenever Molly was near, he just didn't seem to be able to think straight. But the others, really, they had no excuse.

Molly sat down on the window ledge and swung her legs around, then ducked her head underneath the open window and slid out onto the fire escape.

Danny stuck his head out the window and looked up into Molly's eyes. He wasn't sure how much longer he would have the strength to resist her, but he knew that he had to. Running off with a suspect in an ongoing investigation would not look good on his record. Couple that with punching out his supervisor, and he was probably looking at suspension – minimal.

"I'm going to get in trouble for this," he said.

Molly smiled, and Danny felt his knees go weak and was suddenly glad that he was leaning against the window ledge for support. "Then say that I kidnapped you. Agent Malone will like that."

Without a second thought, Danny crawled out the window.

28 Hours Missing

Jack answered his phone on the second ring. "Malone."

"Jack, it's Martin."

Jack gritted his teeth and choked down the bile threatening to rise in his throat. He had to remind himself to be professional, that Martin had every right to want to pursue a relationship with Sam, and that it wasn't Martin's fault that he and Sam had ended on such bad terms. However, the only thing keeping him from reaching through the phone and strangling Martin was that it was physically impossible.

"What've you got?" was all Jack said.

"We better bring Molly back in for questioning," Martin said. "Viv and I think she may be behind this after all."

Jack's eyes automatically went to Molly's bedroom door, which had been closed ever since she had pulled Danny inside. He didn't know what they were doing in there – and he didn't really want to know – but he'd told himself that if they didn't come out in half an hour, he was going in after them. They had five minutes left.

"What makes you think that?"

"Apparently Kate was working on an article that details how to predict the outcome of basketball games."

Jack snapped to attention. "And Molly likes to put money on basketball games."

"Exactly. Viv and I think that she orchestrated this whole thing to get at that article."

"Got it," Jack said, already moving towards Molly's bedroom. "Meet me back at the office as soon as possible."

If Martin responded, Jack didn't hear, as he'd already hung up. He wasted no time in kicking Molly's door open, only to find that her room was deserted, and the window was wide open.

Sam had finally managed to get a hold of one of Kate and Molly's sorority sisters, a woman by the name of Emma Dawson, who lived in Chinatown. Sam arranged to meet Emma at a coffee shop down the street from her apartment, but when she walked into the shop, the only patrons were three twenty-something women grouped in a booth near the back.

"Agent Spade?" one of the women asked. She had shoulder length black hair and blue eyes, and she waved Sam over.

"Emma Dawson?" Sam asked, casting a curious glance at the other two women seated with her.

"That's me," Emma said. She nodded at the others. "These are a couple other sisters." She gestured to the brunette with a ponytail. "That's Heather Mills. And that," she said, pointing to the woman with cropped blonde hair, "is Melina Rivers."

Sam said hello and sat down on the bench next to Melina. She looked at Emma. "I was under the impression that I was only going to be meeting you."

Emma smiled apologetically. "Yeah, sorry about that. But when you told me why you were calling, I called Heather and Melina. You see, we were in the same pledge class as Kate and Molly. We know the two of them better than anyone alive, and if anyone can help you figure out what's going on, it's us."

Sam nodded, taking note of the way they were all wringing their hands nervously. They were obviously worried. But worried about whom? "I really just had a couple of questions. About Molly's senior thesis."

Emma nodded her head at Melina. "Then you'll want to talk to Melina. She roomed with Molly senior year."

Sam turned to Melina. "What was her thesis about?"

Melina looked surprised, but answered the question with little hesitation. "She had found a way to predict the outcome of basketball games. Mathematically."

It was Sam's turn to be surprised. She'd known that Molly was a math genius, but to be able to predict a basketball game? That was a whole new kind of math that Sam didn't even think she would be able to comprehend. Molly was like a female Good Will Hunting. "Really?"

"Yeah," Melina said, tucking her hair behind her ear. "It's some kind of algorithm – I never really understood it, I was a Biology major – but it's got something to do with some kind of physics…" Melina trailed off, gesturing futilely with her hands. "I'm really not helping, am I?"

"Actually," Sam said, scribbling furiously on her notepad, "you are. See, we think whoever took Kate was trying to get whatever's in Molly's thesis."

The three girls wore identical looks of confusion, and it was Heather who spoke. "But, that would have to mean that it's someone we know. There aren't that many people who know about Molly's thesis."

Sam furrowed her brow. "She didn't publish her results?"

Emma shook her head furiously. "No. She didn't want people to know how to do it. She didn't think it would be fair."

Sam was even more baffled than she had been before. What was it about this case? Nothing seemed to add up. It was almost as if someone had planned it to be as perplexing as possible. They still had no suspects. They weren't even sure if they had motive. "But she uses it, right?" Sam asked. "She told us that she has money on the NCAA tournament."

"Oh, she uses it," Heather said, "but she doesn't keep any of the money that she wins."

Sam's confusion must have been evident, because the other three laughed. "Anything she wins," said Emma, "she donates to charity. Usually she gives to that fund for families of people who died on 9/11, but she's trying to save up to establish a scholarship for kids with…" Emma paused, biting her bottom lip, "…less than admirable backgrounds."

Sam sat back against the booth. She was beginning to realize just how much she'd misjudged Molly. "She didn't mention anything about that."

Emma shrugged. "She doesn't broadcast it. What's that she always says? That it's not really giving if everyone knows you're giving…or something like that. It's probably a Bible verse. Molly's a very religious person."

"She's a saint," Heather said, with only a mild hint of bitterness in her voice. "She's a hard person to live up to. No wonder Kate hates her so much."

A/N: Look for the next section to contain a third person's account of Kate and Molly's odd relationship and more about Molly's "less than admirable" past. I got a great idea the other day which can't come in to play until later in the story, and I'm absolutely dying to get there, so let me know if I'm rushing this too much, in my attempt to get to the good stuff.

The idea for the basketball algorithm thing is from an episode of Crossing Jordan ("You Really Got Me"), which I really liked and absolutely had to use.

Thanks for the continued reviews! I absolutely love you guys. It's a lot more rewarding to write knowing that people not only read my stuff but like it, too!