The next morning, Colby looked a little warily at Hannah. He had got up a little later than usual, because he didn't have to be in the office bright and early. That meant he was actually there when Hannah woke up, for a change. She was now just about done getting ready. It was obvious she was not a morning person.
"Coffee?" He'd made some of her favorite kona coffee.
"Mmmm, yeah," she said on a sigh. "That's the only way I can get going in the mornings."
"I don't remember everything from last night," Colby decided to face it early on.
Laughing at his expression, Hannah said, "Well, you told me about Cindra Ashford."
"I do remember that much," Colby said wryly. "Did I say anything else after the shower?"
She smiled gently, "Just a little about Afghanistan. Are you still on restricted duty?"
Colby heaved a sigh, "Yes. I think I'm to focus on the fraud case until the restriction's lifted. So I'll be working with Rilla and Robin for the rest of the week. Still, it means there's a better possibility that I'll be home at a reasonable time."
-----
Hannah couldn't help smiling when she found herself thinking of the events from the night before. Colby had been a funny drunk. And that wet dream he'd had, well, it'd just been hysterically funny to her. She'd only heard two words clearly when she saw him tossing while in the throes of the dream, just enough to tell her that it'd been about someone named Cindra, and that they were going to homecoming. Still, he'd been open with her about Cindra. She didn't think it had been because of the alcohol.
She sobered up a little when her thoughts moved on to some of the other things he'd told her after he'd showered. He'd been all snuggled up against her, his head on her bosom, drowsy and still under the influence of the alcohol. He might not have told her about the soldiers who'd been killed by friendly fire otherwise.
All in all, he was probably handling it very well. It saddened her to think of the price soldiers had to pay in the service of their country. Especially since they were probably never thanked for it. After all, she couldn't remember ever saying thanks to any of them.
-----
"Rilla, one of the audios discusses something called back-billing. Do you know what that is?" Colby was back in the command center, listening to the audios that they'd confiscated from the safe deposit box.
"Sure. Back-billing is used to correct previous billing errors for treatments rendered. Why?"
"It's apparently some kind of seminar these guys offer. They're charging thousands of dollars to teach physicians how to increase their collections, by using extra billing codes to charge insurance companies for past treatments."
Robin looked appalled. "Someone's making money showing people how to bilk the government of money?"
Rilla sighed, "I'll have Charlie work on another algorithm to find large amounts paid due to back-billing. We'll be able to come up with a list of physicians that we can then audit more closely."
Colby nodded. "There's also something else about setting up separate medical equipment companies to supply their dialysis clinics. Something about $500 more per patient in billing."
Rilla regarded him thoughtfully, "That doesn't sound like something you can get directly from claims data. Maybe, we can focus on matching patients who have bills for both dialysis and durable medical equipment. We might be able to find out which physician pairings occur most frequently. I'll give Charlie that information too."
"I think I'm going to take another look at those off-shore accounts. See where the money flows," Colby said. "Sounds like they're moving large amounts of money, they have to move it somewhere."
"Okay, I'll see if Charlie can stop by and I'll see if he has a better idea of how to get this data together."
Then she said gently, "How are you holding up, Colby?"
He looked up to see gentle concern on her face. He smiled at her, "Thanks, Rilla, but I'm fine."
When it became obvious to her that he wasn't going to say anymore, she said, "Just don't drive me crazy with your fidgeting while you're on restricted duty."
Robin cracked up at Rilla's expression when Colby retorted, "Well, you wouldn't have far to go, would you?"
-----
"Lunch, Robin?"
Robin turned in surprise at the sound of Don's voice. He'd been crazy busy wrapping up the paperwork on the shooting rampage, and she'd hardly seen him.
His face was creased in that attractive grin she found irresistable, and she smiled in response to it.
"I have lunch plans with Hannah," she said softly.
"I'm buying," he coaxed. Then he grinned, "I'll order Colby to buy Hannah lunch."
She laughed, "I have a feeling you won't have to twist his arm much."
He smiled, happy to see her laughing, "Why are you having lunch with Hannah?"
"Giving me the third degree, Agent Eppes?" She teased.
He grinned but looked expectantly at her.
"I wanted some jewelry for the US Attorney's Ball next month," she relented. The hesitantly, she asked, "Would you have time to..."
"I'd love to take you, Robin," he said gently. "I assume it's black tie?"
Robin nodded, speechless that he'd offered to take her.
-----
Colby was amused when Don told him he had to take Hannah to lunch, but he was curious enough to give in without questioning.
Hannah raised her eyebrows when she saw him, but he shrugged and nodded towards Don and Robin, who had walked into the restaurant first.
"Don," she greeted him, smiling affectionately, "this is a surprise!"
"Yes, well, this is your lucky day. I'm buying lunch for everyone."
She laughed, "Well, I never turn down free food, but what's the occasion?"
Don smiled as he watched Colby lean in to give Hannah a kiss. "Just want to make sure that this beautiful woman has the best jewelry you can offer when she graces my arm at the US Attorney's Ball."
"And are you footing that bill too?" Hannah was laughing now, as Robin rolled her eyes.
"I most certainly am."
"Well, alright then, I'll make sure Robin gets the best and the most expensive," Hannah was still grinning. She was happy to see that the relationship was back on an even keel. "I'll have to ask a few questions. Are you sure you guys are up to girl talk?" She giggled when she saw Colby's pained expression.
Don tried to be magnanimous, "Talk away." He hoped it wouldn't be too painful. Well, he could always talk to Colby about sports or something.
"What are you wearing to the ball, Robin?"
He was amused to see Colby shake his head and shudder at that question, but before long, the two men had tuned out the women's conversation.
-----
When they got back to the office after lunch, Colby had to choke back some laughter at the bemused expression on Rilla's face. She was listening to Charlie, and he knew very well what she was feeling at that moment. Charlie was pontificating again, and this time it looked like he was doing it in tandem with Amita.
"Um, whatever patterns and correlations you two can find will be great, Charlie. You just have to take the guidelines I gave you into consideration."
"You understand that we can't wait to find out what the audios contain? There's several terabytes of data, we can't process and re-process these algorithms. It takes days of processing time each time we make a change or an addition to the algorithm."
Rilla nodded, "I understand that, Charlie. I'm just trying to help you limit errors by telling you some of the rules and relationships between these fields of data."
Charlie nodded, but she could tell he was no longer listening. It looked like his mind had already drifted off into algorithm-land. She sighed, well, he was the brilliant mathematician, she would trust him on this one. She watched him talk to Amita, and wondered if that's what they talked about in their free time as well.
"He's not freaking you out, is he?" Don touched her gently on her elbow.
She smiled up at him, "No, not freaking me out. But, well..."
He grinned, "I understand."
Rilla had to laugh, "Yes, I expect you do."
"Don, we've also discovered what was on the encrypted CDs!" Charlie interrupted them. "It was very simple really. They just changed the extension on the filename, and used a proprietary codec to encode the video."
It was Don's turn to look bemused. Charlie sighed. "Never mind. I re-encoded the video to a standard codec. You should be able to watch these videos on any of your computers."
"Okay, I'll get Colby on it. We'll see what we can get from the videos."
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