Tony arrived at the office a good hour earlier than he usually did. He was still walking on air thinking about his date with Michelle the night before. It had been a long time since he'd let himself feel this way about anyone, and if he were honest with himself, he'd admit that it was scaring the hell out of him. She'd already invaded his thoughts so completely that he could barely concentrate on anything else, and they'd only gone out once.

"Come on, Almeida, focus," he thought to himself as he started reading the brief on his desk for about the 6th time. "This is important. Try to get at least something done before she gets here and makes it totally impossible."

The brief concerned a routine murder investigation that at first glance, didn't even seem like it was something CTU should be involved in. There were some red flag items, though, so Tony wanted to put together a list of things for his team to examine before they decided it was really a matter for LAPD or the FBI. He was finally starting to make some headway when he glanced up and saw her coming in the door.

He grinned to himself, thinking he'd wait a good 10 minutes before picking up the phone and dialing her extension. "No need to apear over-anxious," he thought, although that's exactly what he was. At about 90 seconds, he decided he couldn't stand it any longer and he called.

Michelle smiled to herself when she saw who was calling. She picked up the phone and tried not to sound as excited as she felt. "Dessler..."

"Hey," he said, his heart rate quickening at the sound of her voice.

"Couldn't even wait for me to get my system turned on, could you?"

"No," he laughed, "I couldn't. But just so you don't think I'm stalking you, I do have some actual work-related things to discuss with you. Do you think you could come up here when you get a chance?"

"Yeah - I just need to start the morning report cycle, so...15 minutes?"

"That'll work. Thanks."

Tony returned to the stack of paper on his desk and began analyzing the data he'd received so far, trying to determine where the gaps in the information were. Exactly 15 minutes later, Michelle was at his door.

"Hey," she said, "what's going on?"

"Not sure yet. I have this report that came over from LAPD. It looks like a double murder, but there are some things that look suspiciously like they could be connected to some possible terrorist activity. The victims were a married couple in their mid 40s - both shot in the back of the head execution-style while they slept."

"Doesn't sound like anything we should be involved in so far," Michelle said, "what else?"

"Well, LAPD confiscated their computerand found a whole set of encrypted files. Both victims worked in low-level office jobs - cubicle dwellers. There doesn't seem to be any job-related reason for them to have to encrypt their personal files. LAPD sent it to their lab and found it too sophisticated an encryption for them to be able to take apart. So...they sent it up here to have us cross reference it with our database and see if we can come up with anything."

"Seems like kind of a long-shot, doesn't it?" Michelle asked. "I mean...there's not much there to specifically suggest any terror related activity."

"Not on the surface, no," Tony replied. "But the complexity of the encryption is what concerns us. No one would be using something this advanced for their personal files. It may even be beyond what is usually used for corporate or industrial purposes."

Michelle perused the brief and nodded.

"So, I need you to log onto the Delta server and run these files through it," he said, handing her the disk. "See if you can decrypt them and put together any kind of connection between them and anything in the database."

"No problem," she said, purposely letting her fingertips graze his as she took the disk from him.

"I'm going to run the couple through the database and see if I can come up with anything. Let's touch base at about...lunchtime?" he said, grinning at her.

"Right," she laughed, "decryption by lunchtime. No problem. It doesn't seem like dating the boss is going to get me any breaks, huh?"

"Well, maybe not professionally, but you never know...there may be some other hidden perks..."

"Hmm...that sounds promising," she smiled, "I'll see what I can do."

Michelle left his office determined to keep her mind on the task at hand instead of the man she had just left. "This is already getting difficult," she thought. She'd barely been able to concentrate on the information he was giving her. "Focus, Dessler," she told herself, "this is important. You can have your little 'Tony' fantasy later."