The buzzing of his phone against his leg woke Clinton about 5:30am. He was a light sleeper as it was, and the car was not exactly the most comfortable place to sleep. The first wisps of dawn had just started to illuminate the eastern sky, as he sat up, pushed his coat aside, and pulled his phone from his pocket, trying to be quiet and shield the glow of the screen. In the reclined passenger seat, his partner was curled up asleep facing him, still dead to the world.

She was half-dead last night. He had not seen her that exhausted in a long time.

The buzzing of his phone was a text from Jess, short, succinct, and to the point:

Rangers found Gilman's spot in Hardwick Township.
Exact coordinates forthcoming. Local SWAT gathering.
Roll out ASAP.

From where he was parked, Clinton couldn't see the other's cars but imagined everyone was starting to rouse. 6 and a half hours of sleep is better than nothing. The team was used to long days and short nights. He only hoped it was enough to keep his partner going.

Clinton texted back an acknowledgement and slipped his phone back into his pocket, before leaning over to shake Kateri's shoulder. It took two tries before she finally opened her eyes and stared, eyes half-lidded, back at him in the darkness for a long moment. Finally, she pushed herself up on one elbow, rubbing her eyes with her other hand.

"News?"

"Jess just texted me. Rangers found Gilman's hunting spot. We need to get moving as soon as possible."

Kateri gave herself a shake, as if she were trying to dislodge mental cobwebs. "Where?" She pushed her coat aside and started fumbling around in the cup holder for her watch.

"Hardwick Township."

"New Jersey… Ugh, that's a 2-hour drive there and back."

"How soon can you be ready to leave?" Clinton asked.

"Give me 10 minutes," Kateri replied. "Just let me use the bathroom and see if the cops mind me snitching some coffee." They had all parked for the night in the parking lot of the local PD office.

Within 15 minutes, everyone had regathered at the cars, several with cups of coffee. Jess distributed the address of where they were headed, and then they were on their way.

Hardwick Township was, as Kateri had said, in New Jersey, a little town in the middle of nowhere almost all the way to Delaware. It was a long two hour drive, when everyone knew they were on the clock and every hour delay gave Gilman a longer lead, but by the time the Fugitive Task Force reached the town, the sun had risen, and the coffee was kicking in, and everyone, Clinton included, was feeling more awake.

The team stopped in the town long enough to coordinate with the local state police, those who were not sitting on the site, and get kitted up. They parked some distance from Gilman's hunting spot. Their fugitive had already proven himself to be someone they did not want to underestimate, and they did not want the noise of the cars to warn him of their coming.

Clinton was following Jess as they hiked in, Kateri a few steps behind, her steps careful and sure. He glanced occasionally back to check on her anyway. Despite what her clothing and choice of footwear might indicate, she was not the most comfortable traipsing around or tracking in the woods. A childhood mostly spent in the Bronx and a career in the cities had never given her much of an opportunity to learn. After she had joined the team, Clinton had rectified that deficiency in her training as quickly as possible in their off days between hunts. She would never be as good as he was, he judged, but there was not a decent chance anymore that she would get lost, put her foot in a hole (or a trap), touch something she shouldn't, etc.

Clinton crouched behind the shelter of a large, fallen tree, Kateri on his left, Jess and the PD leader on his right. Gilman's encampment was about 50 yards deeper into the woods. No movement was visible. No sound of someone within. There was plenty of stuff visible: chair, tent, cooler, a car (its open trunk also full of stuff), and a dog lying in the bumper's shade.

"Rangers found it two hours ago. Suspect's probably out huntin'," an officer from the local PD was saying.

Clinton scanned the encampment again, but then suddenly Kateri stiffened at his side, a look of startled realization on her face. He glanced at her quickly. What are you seeing that I am not? Her attention was on Jess, but her grip was loose on her gun. Not immediate danger, then. She was just opening her mouth to speak, when Jess himself rose and moved out from behind the protection of the tree.

"I'm callin' it," he yelled. "Gilman's not coming back. The dog is starving, chewing through its leash." He moved toward the encampment.

Clinton followed, Kateri scrambling down the hill beside him. "The dog, did you see it, too?" he asked.

"Yeaaahhh," Kateri drawled in response to her partner's question. She had always had an eye for small details. Being the little kid in school had necessitated being watchful and being able to recognize small clues for when it might be necessary to start running the other direction or go find the handful of big kids whom she could hide behind.

Now comes one of my least favorite part of this job: searching through suspects' cars. Searching cars often proved to be some combination of horrifying, disgusting, and nauseating and did not always offer any clues in return. In her years as an agent, Kateri had seen almost everything: dirty laundry, dead bodies, congealed/moldy food, abandoned children's toys, X-rated materials, etc., etc.

With a shared look of disgust, Kenny took one side of the car, and Kateri the other. At the trunk, Jess crouched down beside the dog. "Probably hasn't been fed in 3 days."

The interior of the car revealed the usual: guns, including a long rifle in the front seat; dirty laundry; canned food, dog and human; family pictures; etc. No notebooks, maps, manifestos, nothing that would indicate why Gilman did what he did or where he might be going next. No clue of why he went bananas.

"Sir, I don't think we've fully…" one of the cops broke in.

Kateri rolled her eyes. Sometimes having to work with local cops was exasperating.

"Gilman staged this to pin us down here, waiting for him," Jess replied, shooting the cop down.

Our resident family annihilator has already proven that we cannot underestimate him.

"Maybe he got injured hunting." The cop apparently didn't know when to quit.

This time it was Kenny who rolled his eyes, as he dusted off his hands and stepped back from the car.

He's a smart criminal with no limits on how far he's willing to go, and that makes him very deadly and very dangerous. He hasn't done anything without a plan.

And really, moron, did you even look around the scene? His rifle is here.

"He went hunting without his rifle?" Clinton asked, his tone thick with sarcasm, as he pulled the rifle from the car, his words echoing his partner's thoughts.

"There are caves nearby. Maybe he's hiding there."

Do you know nothing about this case or this suspect?

Even Jess seemed to be losing patience, judging by his tone of voice. "Go search those caves. That's exactly what Gilman wants: us wasting our resources. He's long gone. He's looking for another mode of transport," he paused, looking upward at the screech of a passing raptor flying overhead. "Or maybe he'll grow wings."

Jess turned back toward the hills, starting to hike back up toward where the cars were waiting, "Well played, Tommy."

Kateri and the others followed.

Slowed down by heavy traffic, it was early afternoon by the time the team made it back to New York City. They chased leads the rest of the afternoon and well, well into the evening. For a few minutes, they got to think about something besides work and actually eat some decent food that did not come out of a vending machine or a gas station.

Sitting at the counter next to her partner and Barnes and sipping another cup of coffee, Kateri was simply glad to not feel as half-dead as she had the previous evening. How many cups have you had today? She had lost count.

The TV set on the wall was tuned to a local news station and was playing a report on Gilman and the manhunt for him. It was past 10pm.

Jess reappeared from where he had been off staring at a wall, cogitating for most of dinner. Kateri swiveled around, as the others did the same.

"Hot water, boss," Kenny said, looking up from his half-finished plate of food and pushing the to-go cup in Jess' direction.

"Thank you."

"Mm-hmm."

"While I was staring at the wall back there, …" Jess began, grabbing the honey container and beginning to squeeze copious amounts into his cup of tea. Kateri watched with wide eyes as he kept squeezing … and squeezing … and squeezing. She had seen him perform the same ritual over and over, multiple times per hunt for the last several years, but it still never ceased to amaze her how sweet he liked his tea.

My teeth hurt. I can almost feel them developing cavities just watching. I like sweets, but …. ugh.

"… I was thinking about Gilman. He needs to put miles on the odometer. He knows we've got everything covered. He would have anticipated having to change his appearance and use a fake ID. Being a deportation office arresting undocumented immigrants, he would have had his pick of all the fake IDs they had. Right?"

"Mm-hmm," agreed Kenny, his eyes fixed on the honey container. Kateri barely repressed a snicker at the look on his face.

"Are we going back to Port Chester then?" Kateri asked.

Jess nodded. "You, Clinton, Crosby, and Hana. Sheryll and me, we're going to a massage parlor."

It feels like I've spent most of yesterday and today in the car. Hana thought to herself, as the team left the diner and started dispersing to their cars. Thank goodness for coffee.

Half-way to their car, Kat broke off from her partner and headed toward Hana and Kenny, who were making for 'his' jeep.

The older woman had her hands wrapped around her own cup of coffee and looked much more with it than she had at their last diner-dinner. "Mind if I ride with you this time, Hana?"

That's new. Hana had nothing against Kat when she was not in one of her moods, which was thankfully only on rare occasions, but they were vastly different people, personality-wise and interest-wise. On hunts, Kat, also, was rarely to be parted from her own partner's side, occasionally claiming that she was jinxed otherwise, and Hana, if not in the bus, spent most of her time with Kenny.

Whatever bee was in her bonnet yesterday seems to have left. Hana glanced at Kenny, who gave an "I don't care" shrug. "Sure," Hana replied. "Have at it."

Knowing Hana's predilections toward fast driving, Kenny tossed over his keys with an admonition not to break his baby and sauntered off to join their sniper.

"What brought this change of scenery on?" Hana asked, when they were on the road north again.

"Apologies," Kat replied, her tone sheepish, "We've all been hither and thither since this thing started, and I never got the chance to apologize for being a bitch yesterday. I know you were trying to help..."

Kenny and the boss have the fiercest temper when roused, but her tongue is worse than her bite.

"You were just having a bad day?" Hana added, glancing over at her teammate for a split-second.

Kat winced. "Yeaahh. Not that's an excuse. I'm sorry. Your call woke me up, and I'd just collapsed into bed an hour earlier. I'd been out of town for work and pulled an all-nighter."

By 'work,' you mean your mysterious side-jobs for your old bosses, which you can't talk about.

"I understand. Lack of sleep does not make for the most pleasant of individuals, especially after your assorted odd-jobs. You've had to deal with me on low sleep and no coffee before, anyway. So apology accepted."