Thinking about the NSA causes a simultaneous reaction of longing and distaste for Mouse. Longing, for the equipment, programs, and access that is available to them when it comes to hacking and monitoring, and general technology envy. Distaste, over the moral and ethical dilemma of the invasion of privacy. But then, he's one to talk.
So it's a bit strange for him, that now, for the first time, the NSA is not quite the shadowy distant giant that it has always been. It has solidified, coalescing in the form of a tip, direct from an ordinary man to Antonio and Jay. And when the tip leads them not to a major drug running operation, but to a body, he can't decide if he feels smug, or disappointed.
It's also the first time that Voight brings Mouse into the field – usually Mouse gets them set up with all the tech they need and stays behind at his desk while they head out. At the end of the briefing when Antonio and Jay step aside after presenting the info to everyone, Voight steps forward, as usual to bark out the game plan.
"Right, we're gonna take this like a run of the mill police stop for the takeaway. Jay, Erin, get in uniform, you're our squad car. Antonio, you're our first street walker. Al, find an in for you and Ruzek, you'll be street walkers to take over from Antonio. Atwater, in the surveillance truck waiting to switch out as a walker with Al. Get Burgess and Roman, they're our backup squad. Mouse, you're in the van. Let's go." Voight tosses out the last command like there's nothing unusual about it and stalks off. Mouse stays frozen in something akin to shock for a moment before it sinks in and he can't help the small grin that blooms across his face. He gets to go into the field. In the surveillance van only, but still. Not only is it exciting simply because for the first time he's not being left behind a desk while the team moves out as a coordinated unit, but it means that something has changed in the way that Voight sees him. It means that Voight trusts him - at least, as much as Voight trusts anybody.
He stands, sweeping the tech room keys up off his desk and swinging them around his finger. As he looks up, he catches Jay's eye across the room. Jay's face is tense, but Mouse can read pride in between the taut lines of apprehension. Mouse's eyes flicker over to Erin, who wears a similar expression of satisfaction and anxiety. He quirks a smile at them both and turns to jog lightly down the stairs.
He inventories the surveillance van, long fingers running over equipment, pulling out drawers and cupboards, hooking around wires, to make sure that he has everything he needs. Once he's sure it's fully stocked, he nods at Atwater. Now is the time where he would usually wave them off and return to his desk. This time, he swings into the passenger seat and watches the city flash by the window.
They pull into position, and the waiting game begins. Mouse slides to the back where he pulls up the traffic cams in the area, pulls up the phone on GPS tracking, taps into the audio on the phone, and slides the headphones up to his ear.
They don't have to wait long before Antonio identifies the target. The street walkers shuffle, Antonio swapping out for Al. Al calls in that the subject is getting into a car. Just not the right car. Atwater pushes up, hunched over in the van, passing the radio to Mouse as he hops out of the van to take over for Al.
"Yeah, looks like they're gonna do a car switch," Mouse tosses out over the radio. The driver doesn't go far before pulling into an alley for the switch. As car switches go, it's pretty crude, and inelegant, but if someone had been watching this guy without the information that Intelligence has, it might have been enough to shake off a tail or escape from some bugs. Maybe.
Mouse's part is mostly over for now. It's up to Jay and Erin, and he leans back and waits knowing they'll be pulling him over any second. He's working on finding them on the traffic cams again when – bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Mouse can't help the violent flinch at the muffled echo of gunshots that reaches him in the van. Heart pounding, he fumbles at the keyboard, racing through the traffic cams now until he finds one that shows the scene, and… yes, there's Jay and Erin, both standing, uninjured over the prone body of the subject. Mouse huffs out a breath of relief, relaxing his tense shoulders and waiting for his pulse to slow.
Mouse has calmed himself down enough in the few minutes after that he doesn't flinch when the van door is pulled open and Atwater swings inside.
"Hey," Atwater nods in greeting. Mouse nods back and starts packing up the tech, slotting things back into their protective cases and drawers that keep them safe during the drive.
"Hey Boss," the radio crackles to life with Jay's voice. "There's no heroin. We got a body – gunshot wounds, and it's got a hand chopped off."
Mouse and Atwater are the first ones back to the precinct. Atwater takes off up the stairs from the garage to update Platt while Mouse unpacks the surveillance van. He gets up to his desk about the same time as the rest of the team, who splinter to gather what information they can on their body.
Several minutes later, Burgess slips up the stairs and quietly comes over, sliding the evidence bag with the driver's phone onto Mouse's desk. He glances up to meet Burgess' smile.
"Thanks."
She nods and turns away back down the stairs while Mouse pulls the phone out of the evidence bag. He gives it a cursory examination before turning to his computers to access the information on the phone… except when he connects, there is none. Nothing. No call history, no contacts, GPS history, nothing. The 'phone' is now nothing more than a hunk of unless piece of plastic and metal. He throws every trick he's got at it, but you can't hack something that isn't there. He leans away from his desk in disgust, just as Jay starts talking.
He listens as the team goes through what they know so far, jotting down notes and pulling up pictures and files on his laptop to keep up.
"Mouse," he glances up Jay calling his name. "You get anything off that phone yet?"
The strong feeling of scorn and irritation returns. He scoops up the phone off his desk and stands.
"This thing? No see, this thing is, is not a phone," he scoffs, frustration making his voice sharper than he would usually speak to any of the team, especially with Voight in the room. But if they aren't going to listen to the things that he tells them, he can't do his job properly. He tosses the phone back onto his desk carelessly, where it lands with a loud thunk. "It's a paperweight. Look, how many times do I have to tell you guys," he continues, gaining volume. The back of his mind registers the surprise on the faces of the team, which then transitions into discomfort. Their eyes flicker around the room at each other, landing back on Mouse. "When you bring in an offender, you turn off their phones. Somebody was monitoring that thing, alright, they tracked it, back to the district, and then they wiped it, remotely, so." He cuts himself off turning away and crossing his arms before he lets his frustration run away with him anymore.
"I can get the phone data, no warrant," Antonio says, which does nothing to help Mouse's irritation.
"Great, from your source, who, by the way, have you heard from?" Jay cuts in, and Mouse looks over at him from Antonio, skipping over Erin and Voight. But then his gazers flickers back to Voight, who's still watching Mouse. As always, Voight is hard to read and Mouse's eyes skitter away from his stare, inscrutable and calculating, but Mouse thinks he sees a glimmer of… what? Not pride. Respect, maybe?
He glances back, but Voight's gaze has shifted, and whatever Mouse thought he had seen is gone.
The next morning is even weirder for Mouse, when a walking, talking, breathing NSA employee walks into the Intelligence floor. And he just looks… well, like an ordinary man. Tall, a bit scruffy, a bit pale, and completely ordinary. Not that Mouse was expecting anything else, except maybe his subconscious which was holding onto childish ideas of angular men in sharp expensive suits. And then Dominic Rillo opens his mouth.
"So I couldn't sleep last night so I ran a Memex search on the flagged phone." And the tech geek in him leaps to attention, jumping in to explain what Memex is. He unconsciously edges right up to Rillo, reaching out automatically to poke at the diagram on the screen, itching to examine and test out the program.
"Yeah, well, here it is," Rillo says, turning his body slightly away from Mouse. Mouse pulls his arm back, backing away as Rillo goes on, and Mouse adds standoffish to the list of adjectives describing Rillo.
"We need eyes and ears in that house," Voight barks. "Let's go, Mouse you're going in with Al and Ruzek." And once again Voight strides away, Mouse following him with his eyes. He's not just going to be in the van this time; this time he's going to be breaking into a murder suspect's house to plant cameras and listening devices. If anything goes wrong, he's going to be in the open, in the line of fire. This time, there is a real, if minimal, risk.
Mouse grins.
They wait, sardined into the surveillance van. They have five cameras to place inside the house, and no idea how long they'll actually have to plant them once Nora Harrington leaves the house. Which she does just then, locking the door behind her and walking briskly down the street.
"You're up." Erin turns to look at him, and he can read very real concern in her eyes.
"Listen, I jammed the cell signal on her alarm, but she's got a backup in the pantry." He's watching Nora Harrington walk out of sight of the camera, and then he looks up to meet Jay's eyes. Jay is tense, worried, and Mouse remembers what Jay said back when he was still on desk duty after Keyes. It scares me sometimes, knowing I brought you back into this. He holds Jay's gaze for a moment, then looks over at Erin, whose brow is crinkled up and her shoulders held tightly as though part of her wants to reach out and stop him from leaving the van. But she doesn't. She just searches his face silently, while he stares back steadily before looking back at Jay as he speaks.
"We see anything, you get the hell out of there Mouse. I mean right away." Jay's voice is quiet and controlled, but it doesn't hide the worry. Mouse quirks his lips up in a grin, keeping his eyes on Jay a beat longer before reaching down to grab his bag.
"Let's do this," Ruzek says, pulling open the van door, and he, Mouse, and Al hop out. Let's do this.
It's been a long time since he's done any breaking and entering, but he still remembers the tricks. Move confidently and no one will question you. Confidence keeps your hands steady. Rushing causes mistakes. Don't linger. Know your emergency exit. And then there's the rule that he can toss out the window – never trust the crew. Because he does trust Al and Ruzek.
They're almost done when Jay's voice interrupts from the radio.
"Target's coming back guys, you gotta move. Go, go, go." Mouse feels the pulse of adrenaline as he jogs down the stairs, but he keeps his movements controlled, taking the drill from Ruzek, dropping it with the old fire alarm into his bag and wrapping it up. He follows Al around the back to their exit, slipping out the door just as the front slams shut. In the cover of the alley, he and Ruzek trade congratulatory fist bumps.
"That's what I'm talking about," Ruzek says, grinning. Mouse grins in return and hears a chuckle from Al as they make their way back to the van. They clamber back in, Erin turned around to watch them, and Mouse can see the obvious relief in her face before he reaches over Jay to start the camera feeds.
Mouse is down in the tech room watching the feeds when they see a new face on the camera feed. He grabs a snapshot, running a quick enhancement program over the picture, and tosses out facial recognition searches in all the databases he's got. He watches the man in the video feed, noting the expensive suit, nice shoes, he's well groomed, and the familiarity of the two of them together…
He's on the phone with Gnomic Systems a split second later. It takes only a small amount of convincing to get access to their corporate database, and only a few minutes to find his guy. He picks up Voight and Antonio from the main floor on his way up to Intelligence.
As he comes up the stairs, he's greeted by the sight of Rillo, not only sitting at his desk, but on his laptop.
"Hey, what are doing on my equipment?" he demands. He'd have thought that a fellow tech guy would understand the whole 'don't mess with other people's equipment' thing, if not the whole common courtesy thing. He has a rather nasty thought to himself about Rillo and the NSA.
"I'm running a criminal facial recognition program," he says, not looking up from Mouse's laptop, oblivious to the sharpness of Mouse's voice.
"Okay, on who?"
"Uh I didn't find any-" Rillo finally looks up, and pauses at the sight of Voight and Antonio standing there too, "-body."
He doesn't care if it's petty, Mouse smirks.
"What, on this guy?"
Rillo is taken aback, Mouse can tell, as though he never expected a police tech guy to actually be good at his job. Rillo glances back at Voight and Antonio, and Mouse can see he's discomfited.
"Ye-yeah, what are you running on that?" Rillo asks leaning forward.
"Yeah, it's the corporate database. See, I called Gnomic Systems and they gave me access cause I work for the police, cause sometimes, you just gotta ask." He hands the tablet to Antonio, gratified to see that Voight also looks a little smug. "Gentlemen, meet Aaron Franceour."
While the rest of the team is watching Nora Harrington and dealing with Aaron Francoeur, Mouse updates his notes on the case and does some more in depth checking into Aaron Francoeur to look for anything that might help the case. He also studiously ignores Dominic Rillo, who dragged over a chair and plopped himself down at the end of Mouse's desk.
The phone rings, and out of the corner of his eye, Mouse sees Rillo jump. Mouse hooks the phone in two fingers, putting it to his ear, and directing an arched eyebrow at Rillo.
"Intelligence."
"Yeah, Mouse, listen," Ruzek says loudly over alarms in the background. "Nora Harrington gave us the slip, called in the fire department for a gas leak."
"I'll get on it."
"Thanks."
Mouse hangs up and pulls up Nora Harrington's phone tracking and credit cards and starts inputting an investigative alert.
"What was that about," Rillo interrupts, leaning in towards Mouse.
"Nora Harrington's on the loose. If you've got any secret tricks to find her, now's the time."
Rillo opens his mouth as though to say something, but then closes it and the only sound is the clacking of keys. Mouse thinks it might finally have trickled into Rillo's consciousness that Mouse isn't his biggest fan. Either way, they work efficiently through all their tracking methods, turning up nothing after nothing.
Mouse doesn't like reporting no results back to Voight, but at least with this kind of nothing it also tells them something else – that she's still around, still within their grasp.
Rillo stands, but when he says "She could be anywhere," an amorphous thought tickles at the back of Mouse's mind, just out of reach. He tunes out the rest of Rillo's tantrum, trying to coax the thought into focus. It's true that she could be anywhere… but would she be? Or would she more likely be somewhere familiar….
"Guys. Guys, guys!" The others fall silent. "Memex. Memex search, all phones related to Nora Harrington, but you geotag 'em going back six months."
He thinks that the nuances of how this will work might go over Voight and Antonio's heads a bit, but they get the gist. They look to Rillo for confirmation. It dawns slowly on Rillo's face, as though he's reluctant, but Mouse can see he's impressed.
"That's actually… pretty smart. She knows we're looking for her now, but she doesn't know I can track her going back six months."
Once they get the location, the team blows out of the station, leaving Mouse to do the recon and fill them in on the fly. And they get them. Which is so satisfying, since it was Mouse's idea that got them there.
He's cleaning up and organizing his files for the case when the lawyer walks in. He wouldn't have paid her any mind, except Erin had told him about Jay's quips earlier. So he looks up, and sure enough…
"Ooooh, little late, your boy really wanted to talk. Couldn't shut him up."
Mouse chuckles, expecting to turn back to his computer after she walks past to the interview room. Only she doesn't. Instead, she walks up to Jay's desk and pulls out a pen. He leans back in his chair, trying to see around her to what she's doing. He can't tell, but he can see Jay's face, which is just as bewildered as his own and Erin's. She scribbles something, then turns and walks away. Mouse watches Jay pick up the piece of paper and look at it. Jay's eyebrows twitch and he pulls up a mask of impassivity, but a smile tugs at the corners of his lips, laughing and bashful.
Erin pushes up out of her chair and wanders to Jay's desk.
"What is that?"
"Nothing," Jay says, trying to muffle obvious laughter. Erin looks down at the paper.
"Phone number." Mouse chuckles. "I'll kill her," Erin says, with fake venom. She turns, meeting Mouse's eyes across the room. Mouse grins widely, and she winks. Jay 'hmms,' Erin turning back to look at him, and Jay tugs the piece of paper off the pad, tearing it up. Erin makes a noise of approval and struts back to her own desk, grinning.
"You didn't see anything," Jay says, signalling to Mouse, who picks up a folder and uses it as a wall, grinning and shaking his head at their antics.
Mouse finishes his organization just as Erin stands again, pulling her jacket off the back of her chair.
"You guys coming?" She asks, sliding one arm into a sleeve. Mouse stands, slipping his laptop into his bag and looking at Jay.
"I've gotta run an errand, but I'll meet you guys there," Jay says, grabbing his own coat. Mouse raises an eyebrow, but Jay doesn't look at him. Erin does, with a silent question; Mouse shrugs.
"Okay," Erin says. Mouse nods and starts down the stairs. Erin comes pounding down after him a moment later. They part ways at the parking lot, towards their own cars, Erin tossing "Race you" over her shoulder with a laugh. Mouse smiles, shaking his head. She always beats him to Jay's when they drive separately. He worries she might feel uncomfortable and guilty for joking about it if he tells her that he drives slowly and extra carefully because he can't forget the IEDs and the death toll associated with them, and the convoy. He worries she might stop joking about it, worries she might start tiptoe-ing around him, even though she never has before. But he worries, so he doesn't tell her, and he lets her shove a little light under the door of his anxieties.
As usual, when he pulls into the parking lot of Jay's apartment building after weaving his way carefully through the busy Chicago streets, Erin's car is already there. He thumbs the elevator button, waiting for it to arrive and the doors to open. He used to not like taking elevators alone – he was never claustrophobic about them per se, but the possibility of getting stuck in one wasn't a comfortable companion on the clunking ride – but that's one thing he's gotten past. Even the creaking, rattling one in his apartment building is bearable now, though he does still take the stairs frequently because it's only three stories. Jay's apartment, on the other hand, is on the 7th floor, and he doesn't want to be bothered with the stairs. The elevator dings.
Upstairs, he slides his key in the lock and slips in the door, clicking it shut and locking it once more. It occurs to him that Erin got into the apartment without him or Jay which must mean… but then he spots Jay's familiar key ring sprawled on the little table in the hallway. Idiot. Just give her a key already.
He's distracted by a twang of guitar strings from the living room. He shrugs off his backpack, dropping it to sit against the wall, and wanders forward to the living room. Erin is facing away from him, gingerly plucking at the strings of Jay's guitar, resting in its stand. He leans against the corner of the wall for a moment, watching her tentative fingers as they strum and pluck just hard enough to elicit a soft echoing tone.
"You play?"
Erin jumps, swinging around to look at him, one hand leaping up to her heart.
"Jesus Mouse, how do you do that?!"
He chuckles, pushing off the wall and walking further into the room.
"Once a ghost, always a ghost," he shrugs. "So, you play?"
She scrutinises him for a beat before shaking her head.
"I wish, but I never learned. Never had the opportunity, and besides, I probably wouldn't have had the patience for it. You?"
He tugs the guitar out of its stand gently.
"A bit. Not nearly as well as Jay, but he taught me the basics." He sits, pulling the guitar into his lap and plucking a few notes of "You are My Sunshine." "It's not that hard, with practice. Though I had a bit of an advantage from piano."
Erin perches on the couch beside him.
"You play piano?"
"Mm, my mom put me in lessons when I was little. She'd always been jealous of people who could play instruments and didn't want me to miss out. I'd come home at the end of every lesson and try and teach her everything I'd learned on our keyboard." For a moment he vividly remembers the warmth of her hands under his small ones as he sat on her lap and pressed her fingers into the keys with his own. The way she laughed when she hit a wrong key and the sour note rang out. The duets they practiced and practiced to perform for his dad.
"I know how she felt," Erin says, tugging Mouse back to the present. He glances over to see the longing on her face.
"Here," he says, handing the guitar to her. She leans back, alarmed, hesitating before wrapping a hand around its neck and sliding it into her lap. "Like this." He adjusts the guitar in her arms. "This," he says, gently moving her fingers into place on the frets, "is G. And this," he slides her hand along the neck, "is A. B…C… D… E…" She lets his hand guide hers, fingers fumbling to try and fit into the unfamiliar positions, strumming at each note to listen. "Good, you remember that?" She slides her hand along the neck back to first note, trying to recreate the positioning without Mouse's guiding fingers.
Mouse glances up at Jay, leaning against the wall as Mouse had done when he walked in. Mouse noticed him slip in as he was showing Erin C, but Erin hadn't heard. Mouse smiles at the soft affection lighting up Jay's face, turning back to correct Erin's finger position.
"Learning much?"
"Jesus - !" Erin jumps, gasping and jerking her head up to find Jay chuckling at the entrance to the living room. "Both of you! Twice, in one day!" She huffs, throwing her hands up. "Honestly. You guys should wear bells."
Mouse snickers, and she rounds on him.
"You didn't jump," she says, eyeing him suspiciously. He raises an eyebrow, smirking.
"That's because I knew he was there." She narrows her eyes at him.
"How?"
Mouse shrugs.
"Just did. Always do."
Jay wanders into the room, shrugging out of his jacket and dropping into an armchair.
"I have something for you," Jay says casually, nodding at Erin. Surprise and excitement flash on Erin's face.
"Is that so?" She passes the guitar back over to Mouse, leaning slightly towards Jay. Jay smiles, nodding, and pulls from his jacket pocket a small flat squarish box. He leans over and passes it to Erin. She takes it, glancing up at Jay with an inquisitive grin before sliding the top of the box off. The key gleams dully in the light. Finally.
Erin plucks the key from the cotton batting, a brilliant smile spreading slowly across her lips and lighting up her eyes.
"Yeah?"
Jay smiles.
"Yeah."
AN: It's been way too long, I know! I'm going to try to get back into posting a bit more often, so we'll see how it goes, what with university. Anyways, at least this is a reasonably long one. As always, reviews are the best!
