Mike's cell phone buzzed and he quickly answered it. While he conversed, he bobbed his head up and down, grinning. He ended the call and jubilantly faced Reece. "You'll never guess what those beautiful techies uncovered!"

vvvv

The conversation was muffled on the voicemail but Cedric in the Tech Unit had managed to identify Sean Moore as one of the conversants. Mike and Henry sat in front of Lt. Reece's desk as they listened to a cleaned-up version of the voicemail in which Sean was speaking with a man who referred to himself as simply "B". It wasn't clear if that was an initial or a nickname but what was clear was his intentions to harm Sean and that "A" had directed him to do so. There was also the unmistakable sound of Sean grunting in pain and gasping for air; then the sound of something or someone hitting the floor hard. Most likely, they were listening to Sean's dying moments. All three of them wished to somehow reach into that recording and snatch that moment from ever happening for Jo's sake. Even Henry. But as painful as it was, they knew they had to listen to all of it to gather as many clues as possible from it in order to catch Sean's killer. The tape ended and they silently mulled over what they'd just heard.

"Not much to go on but still a lot more than we had before," Reece commented, after calming herself. She had never met Sean since she'd joined the precinct after his death. But she knew Jo, so she knew that Sean must have been a good man. And that recording was something she never wanted Jo to hear.

"Ya know, the more I listen to it, the more that other voice on the tape sounds like ... ," Mike paused, frowning while scratching the back of his head. "Like a perp named Phillips, I recently questioned. Said he wanted to cut a deal by giving us some info on the Trent case but what he told me at that time made no sense. But it's startin' to make sense now."

"Make sense how, Detective?" Reece asked.

He shared with them how Phillips had said he'd been dubbed "B" by his criminal cohorts and had been sent by "A" to kill Agent Trent. When he'd refused, "A" had sent "C" to do the job. It became clear, though, that Phillips had most likely murdered Sean.

"I'll bet Fredrickson has an alphabet tag, as well," Reece stated, ponderingly.

"Maybe he's the leader," Mike said.

"I seriously doubt that, Mike," Henry responded. "He's too much of a blunderbuss, severely lacking in leadership capabilities. No. The ringleader is someone with much more intelligence and cunning," he added. Someone more like Adam, he silently acknowledged. But he knew the leader wasn't Adam. Just someone as coldhearted as Adam.

"You want to look for someone in a position of higher authority. Someone who cloaks themselves in the law but bends it at will to suit their needs," Henry told them.

"Fredrickson's boss," Mike suggested.

"No. Not Melissa Largent," Reece quickly objected, shaking her head. She then frowned and whispered, "Melissa." With a pinched face, she told them, "We were at the police academy together. She was my maid of honor. She ... I can't see her involved in any of this." But how could she supervise a man like Fredrickson and not know ... ?

It was never easy to receive bad news or find out that a friend was somehow involved in or responsible for another's suffering. The Lieutenant's friend may or may not have been involved in any of this but Henry shared another train of thought with them.

"Perhaps someone like a judge," he proposed. "Sean Moore was assigned to the Navy's JAG Unit prior to becoming a DA," he told them. This was an opportunity, he realized, to have a warrant issued to obtain Sean's case papers and associated military court transcripts without Jo's involvement tainting the case. "It might help to subpoena the records of any cases he worked on from the Navy."

"Let me make a call," Reece replied, snatching up her desk phone's receiver. "We have to find out for sure who these scumbags are who give the alphabet a bad name."

vvvv

Mike pulled up and parked in front of Bellevue Hospital and exited his car. Henry undid his seatbelt and froze at the sight of Jo's car exiting the parking garage. They made eye contact but she quickly entered traffic and motored away. Satisfied that Mike was unaware, he got out of the car and caught up to him at the hospital's entrance. They went inside and Mike flashed his badge to obtain Marshall Phillips' room number. The receptionist informed them that he was in the large day room on the fifth floor. As they waited at the elevators, Mike eyed Henry with a worried look.

"Good. They haven't moved him to Rikers yet," Mike said and Henry nodded.

Mike actually had caught a glimpse of a startled and guilty-looking Jo at the same time Henry had. But because he feared that she was interfering in the case after what he'd carelessly shared with her when he'd thought Phillips' information was not helpful, he didn't dare let on. But Henry felt just as guilty as Mike did, for working on the case with Jo behind their backs. And both of them elected to keep silent in their fierce determination to protect her.

"You guys ain't as pretty as my last visitor," Phillips said dryly as they joined him at the small, round table where he sat. Wearing regular pajamas, robe, and slippers, he told them, "Kinda boring here, though, so it'd be nice if you stay longer than she did." His thinning, gray hair made him appear older than his 38 years.

"She, who?" Mike asked. "One of your cronies?"

"Nah, nah, not that one," Phillips replied, waving a hand at him. "She didn't tell me her name. Had to be a cop, though. And a real pretty one. Brown hair ... or was it black?" He sighed and said, "I dunno. This medication they keep me on ... " He pointed at Mike. "I remember you. You didn't believe what I told you. What? You're back with more questions because you believe me now?"

"Just ... tell my friend here what you told me. And don't leave anything out," Mike dryly replied.

"Who you?" Phillips asked Henry.

"I'm Dr. Henry Morgan," he replied.

"Yeah? Well, I got a pain right here near my elbow that won't quit."

"I'm a Medical Examiner," Henry clarified.

"Oh. Well, don't be offended if I don't wanna be one of your patients anytime soon," Phillips quipped.

"Start talkin', Phillips," Mike instructed him.

Phillips chuckled and for the next hour, gave them incriminating information about Fredrickson and a handful of others involved in a scheme to steal weapons from evidence lockers and sell them to anti-terrorist groups.

"And your fearless leader determines which anti-terrorist group is worthy?" Henry asked with condemnation.

"Word just comes down, okay?" Phillips replied. "Guess we're just the grunts even though Fredrickson swags around like he's in charge. We just carry out our individual assignments."

"Assignments. Killing good, upstanding people like Sean Moore and Janeisha Trent were just assignments to you?" Henry demanded. Murder was thrilling, according to Adam. Murder was merely an assignment, according to this low life and his cohorts. Why couldn't they see coldblooded murder for the great moral sin that it was?

"They were gonna gum up the works," he replied. "But like I said, that lawyer guy, Moore, just clutched his chest all of a sudden and dropped to the floor like he couldn't breathe, you know. Like he was in a lotta pain. I didn't get a chance to kill him." He looked around with raised eyebrows and said, "Maybe he shouldn't have been on that treadmill. Bad ticker."

"Anyways, ... I thought we were on some kinda glorious mission at first," he said, raising both arms up and letting them flop down. "That is, until ... until they killed my brother, Edgar," he said with sadness.

"Edgar. Edgar Phillips," Mike said, his eyes roaming back and forth. "Yeah. He was a badge. NYPD. Died in the line of duty a few years ago." He eyed Phillips in stunned disbelief. "You're sayin' that - "

"Lotsa dirt under those floorboards, Detective, once ya start pullin' 'em up," Phillips quietly warned him. "Lotsa dirt."

Henry cleared his throat as Mike sat uneasily digesting Phillips' words. An autopsy would prove one way or the other if Phillips' account of Sean's death was true or not. But for the moment, he had another question for him. "You didn't mention Fredrickson's boss," Henry said.

Phillips sighed and replied, "Look. Not every casualty of this operation is a fatality. She's one of those with a knife to her throat that could cut deeper any second if she takes a wrong step to the left or right. Know what I mean?"

vvvv

Jo found herself in front of her house. She just couldn't go back to the precinct. Not yet. She couldn't understand why she was trembling so much. It wasn't that cold outside although you couldn't tell by scarf-wearing Henry, she chuckled. He'd wear a scarf to a barbeque in July, she laughingly told herself. But he'd seen her leaving Bellevue. Somewhere she had no business being and had narrowly escaped being seen by Mike. At least, she hoped she had.

What was she thinking, she asked herself, as she got out of her car and walked up the stairs to her front door. Just messing all around behind her boss' and colleagues' backs risking contaminating any evidence that might be uncovered. So she'd made it only as far as meeting Marshall Phillips and quickly telling him that she'd made a mistake and then beating a hasty retreat. She let herself in and closed the door, locking it.

"Stop snooping around Sean's case, Martinez," she told herself out loud to what she thought was an empty house. "You're just asking for trouble."

She took off her jacket and hung it up, placing her gun and holster on the end table next to the sofa and walked into the dining room, headed for the kitchen. The next thing she heard was the sound of a gun cocking behind her and a soft footfall. Swallowing, she instantly regretted having relieved herself of her weapon.

"Too bad you didn't follow your own advice, Jo," Fredrickson told her. "If you'd only minded your own business and not snooped around, in this case, we wouldn't be where we are right now."

"Where are we, exactly?" she asked him, stalling for time but wishing she had told someone she'd be at home instead of at the office. But Henry had seen her and she clung to the hope that his concern for her meddling in the case, even more, would prompt him to pay her a visit. Now would be a good time, Henry, she silently pleaded.

"We're where I never wanted us to be, Jo!" Fredrickson virtually shouted at her. "I've got orders to silence you. Permanently. Don't!" he yelled at her when she began to slowly turn around.

"If I'm gonna die, then I want to face the coward responsible," she bravely told him.

He was pointing his gun at her but she could see regret in his eyes.

"You really don't want to do this," she quietly told him. "There is no way that my death will not be traced back to you."

"Jo ... you don't understand," he told her. "You don't understand these people! When they say someone has to be taken out, they mean it. I got no choice," he told her.

Jo could see that he really didn't want to kill her but she didn't want to spook him by trying to rush him and overpower him. She had to keep him talking long enough to get herself out of this situation. Somehow. Her heart was pounding but she was relying on her police training to govern her next moves.

"Did you kill Sean?" she asked, her voice cracking.

"No!" he replied. "No. Wasn't me, I, I didn't even know it was going down until it was too late. Too late to stop it," he told her.

"But you know who did, right?"

He hesitated before replying then nodded mutely. "The guy you went to see at Bellevue. Marshall Phillips." When her eyes widened with painful realization, he said, "Yeah. I know you were there." He sighed and continued.

"You have to believe me, Jo. If there had been a way for me to prevent Sean's death, I would have. But there were others that I knew about and I didn't lift a finger to save them, either. Don't you see, Jo? I reached the point of no return a long time ago."

Even though encouraged that Henry and Mike would probably be able to get the information they needed out of Phillips, especially about Sean's death, her focus remained on Fredrickson.

"No, you haven't," she told him. "You can stop now. You can help to stop the people behind all this madness and salvage what's left of your life and your dignity."

He cursed and shook his head. "I'm sorry. Truly sorry, Jo. But the people I answer to will make sure that your death will not be traced back to me. They know how to do things like that," he added, shrugging. "But ... this is hard. Hard to kill you." He cursed again. "You. I let you get to me. What does that say about me?"

"That you're not such a bad guy," she told him, stretching out her hand for his gun.

"If I don't do this ... what happens next?" he asked.

His eyes dropped to her outstretched hand and for just a moment, it looked like he was reconsidering his decision; that he might relinquish his weapon to her. But in the next moment, the front window shattered and Fredrickson stiffened, his chest jutting out and his arms flinging back and down as something impacted his body from behind. A look of surprise spread over his face right before his legs gave way and he crumpled backward onto the floor. Jo quickly dropped to the floor and pocketed his dropped weapon, her cell phone to her ear.

"This is Det. Jo Martinez NYPD. Shots fired into my residence. Officer down! Repeat: Officer down!"

vvvv

Almost as soon as the call had come in, Reece, Mike, Henry, and Lucas, along with a squad of police cars raced over to Jo's house. Officer Down. Those were ominous words to hear on a 9-1-1 call. Dreading what they would find, they dared not voice their thoughts. They finally reached her house and they raced up the stairs and inside. Henry's heart caught in his throat as he came to a stop when he saw the large pool of blood on the hardwood floor near the dining room. He stumbled forward toward it then picked up his pace when he saw Jo in the kitchen beyond, sitting at one the tall stools at the kitchen island being attended to by a paramedic. They all rushed over to her calling out her name.

"Hi, guys, I'm fine," she told them, smiling weakly as they all heaved a collective sigh of relief.

"The call came in Officer Down," Mike breathlessly told her.

"That was Fredrickson," she told them, nodding to the EMT as he gathered up his equipment and left. "Someone shot him in the back right after I think he'd decided not to shoot me. He was still conscious and they ran him over to the hospital. Probably in surgery as we speak."

"Not the FBI?" Reece asked.

"No," Jo replied, "our guys."

"Good. Because he went after one of our own, so the jurisdiction on this case just changed again," Reece stated.

"You weren't injured, then?" Henry asked, still breathless with anxiety and concern.

"No, Henry, just ... rattled," she admitted. "And Fredrickson's got a story to tell."

"It'd better be a long one," Mike replied, at which Jo and Henry exchanged a look.

"You know, that's really cute the way you guys sometimes do what you just did," Lucas said, grinning. "With the eyes, you know. A-and I'm glad you're all right so that you can keep on, uh, you know, doing that, that thing." Lucas' voice trailed off as he plastered a smile of embarrassment on his face.

Henry and Jo exchanged another look of amusement and instead of chastising him as they often did, they both quietly thanked him.

vvvv

The warrant for Sean Moore's JAG papers was executed and within two days several cardboard boxes of material arrived at the 11th Precinct. Besides Mike, Reece, and Henry, the team of investigators now included agents from the FBI, Customs, DEA, the US Marshals Service, and even Interpol. They spent weeks poring over those and any other records deemed helpful in identifying all the players and bringing them to justice. Along with the information that Phillips and Fredrickson had provided, a flurry of arrest warrants eventually began to be issued and a dictionary-sized list of indictments handed down.

Although a sense of satisfaction was felt throughout the investigative group as each bad player was identified and accounted for, Jo found it difficult to once again deal with the deep sense of loss over Sean's death. It was gratifying to know that Henry would be allowed to do another autopsy on Sean and have access to the autopsy records on Janeisha Trent. Henry shared his findings in a group meeting in the precinct's conference room.

"Although her family had her cremated," Henry began, "the autopsy report shows that she died of an overdose of Thallium nitrate, one of the ingredients in rat and ant poison."

"Rat poison," Mike repeated, disgusted.

"Low doses over time, cause hair loss, among other troubling symptoms. However, the autopsy photos show her with a full, healthy head of hair, which means that she was given a high dose t once. Thallium nitrate kills before symptoms such as hair loss can take effect."

"I heard of rat poison being added to bombs because it's an anti-coagulant causing victims to bleed out more, but how did she get it in her system?" Reece asked.

"Toxicology revealed that it must have been placed in the water bottle she carried the last time she jogged," Henry replied. "Thallium was once an effective murder weapon before its effects became understood and an antidote, Prussian blue, was discovered," he continued. "It had been called the "poisoner's poison" since it's colorless, odorless and tasteless."

"As for how Sean Moore died ... " Henry hesitantly began, then pursed his lips and slowly lifted his eyes to look at Jo.

"Jo, if you wish to excuse yourself - " Reece began before being interrupted by Jo.

"I'm fine," she told them, her gaze never leaving Henry's. "Fredrickson told me that it was Marshall Phillips who killed Sean."

Mike and Lucas took in and released an uneasy breath and Reece braced herself while Henry cleared his throat. "According to Phillips, he never got the chance to ... to do the deed. Sean appeared to have suffered a fatal heart attack. Just as his autopsy and toxicology reports confirm, along with his cardiologist's report. He'd been seeing a cardiologist in Washington, D.C., for the past two years of his life," he explained to her.

Jo's eyebrows flew up and her mouth opened slightly. "Car-cardiologist? Sean was healthy. He never showed any signs of having heart problems!"

"Apparently, he was very good at keeping that information from you," Henry quietly informed her. "The pills he took regularly that you thought were vitamins were actually something called Meldonium. It's a drug used in places like Russia and Latvia to treat coronary artery disease but is not approved in the United States. It's believed that it opens up a patient's blocked arteries allowing for increased blood flow. Apparently, the medication failed to improve his condition."

"I don't ... I ... I don't know what to think now," Jo said, frowning.

"If you wish, I can still perform a second autopsy on Sean to verify his listed cause of death," Henry gently offered.

Painfully aware that all eyes were on her, she realized that her decision had to be made from more than a personal need. He had been targeted, after all, and the hitman had shown up to kill him. What if Phillips had lied to save his own skin? What if Sean had been poisoned as Trent had been? If the victim had been anyone else and not her beloved Sean, the decision would have been simple. She swallowed, gathering her emotions, and replied, "Of course, a second autopsy should be done. Thank you, Henry. Everyone."

The meeting ended with the focus of getting a court order for Sean's exhumation.

Later on that same evening on the rooftop terrace above the shop, Abe sipped an after-dinner glass of wine and studied his father, who was deep in thought. "Funny how things work out," he said. "Sean hiding his condition from Jo, the woman he loved."

"Abe. His condition and mine can hardly be compared to each other," Henry replied, swirling the wine in his glass and taking a sip.

"Not talking about the conditions, Pops," Abe replied. "Talking about him and you hiding something very important from Jo. Would you have hidden a heart condition from her?"

"I don't pretend to understand his reasons but I won't question them. I'm sure that he thought his reasons were valid," Henry concluded.

vvvv

Eight months later the investigation came to a close with nearly 100 defendants charged, including some from the NY and NJ police departments, the FBI, and several other federal government agencies. The second autopsy that Henry had conducted on Sean Moore confirmed that he'd succumbed to a heart condition he'd hidden from Jo. According to his D.C. cardiologist, he hadn't wanted Jo to have any second thoughts about them starting a family.

It was a bittersweet revelation but so much like Sean, Jo told herself. Always putting her happiness above his own. But any relationship with Henry seemed to be on hold and she realized that she did want to move on. For that reason, she had decided to pack up all of Sean's papers and give them to his sister. She recalled the look of both surprise and delight on Janie's face when she'd brought the boxes of material over to her house.

"These can have a better home with you and your family," Jo had told her.

The lovely, young widow smiled at the remembrance of Janie telling her that it was just what her daughter needed for her eighth-grade genealogy project and pointing out something else to her.

"Honey, you are and always will be family. Don't ever forget that. And you make it clear to Henry that that goes for him, too!" Janie had raised her eyebrows, laughing, when Jo had blushed. "Like I didn't know," she'd told her. "Like anyone can't see that you two should be together." She'd hugged Jo and added, "On behalf of my brother and the entire Moore family, Be Happy."

So here she was with Henry at a Dickens Fair enjoying an oldfashioned carriage ride through Penn-Eben Park in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania. If someone had told her this time last year that she would be doing this with him or anyone, for that matter, she would have laughed at them. But it was wonderful snuggling close to him against the nip of the wintery air as the carriage approached the end point of their ride.

"This must bring back a lot of memories for you," she told him. She loved how his eyes had sparkled and his lop-sided grin had widened into a full-fledged, happy grin as he'd looked around at the passing surroundings. The community had worked hard to duplicate the look, smell, and feel of a Dickensian England with decorations, costumes, wares, and music.

"It does," he replied. His cheeks and nose were pink from the frosty air which rustled his brown curls when it blew every now and then. "I rather enjoy these smalltown versions of a Dickens Fair more than the big city ones," he said.

"Maybe one day you can visit London again," she said.

"We can visit London," he told her, suddenly twisting his head down to look her in the eyes and hug her closer. "I'd like nothing more, darling, than to show you my homeland." He leaned closer and whispered in her ear, "After we get lost in Paris."

Their arms encircled each other and their lips met in a lingering, loving kiss. To the appreciative crowd of onlookers waiting for a turn to ride, there was no mystery concerning the couple in the carriage. They were in love and they wanted the world to know.