Here's another chapter! I have more ready, but I'm trying not to post too quickly, so I don't get all caught up and then burn out and leave you hanging.

Chapter 8: Details

I again didn't sleep well Sunday night. Mondays are always a drag, but this one was particularly suckish. If not for the fact that I wanted to see how Franny was doing, I might have stayed in bed. I stirred some extra M&M's into my coffee and gulped it down.

I got to the station just in time for Francesca to bring me and Ray a couple of frothy cappuccinos. Ray looked surprised.

"No charge for this?" he asked her.

"Eh, you may be my brother, but even you deserve for someone to bring you coffee now and then," she said. She turned to me with another cup. "You like it sweet, right?"

I smiled and had to stop myself from saying, "Like my women." Instead I just said, "Yeah, thanks." I set the cup on my desk. "You okay?"

She blew her bangs out of her eyes, looking up at the ceiling. "Well... I guess so. Ray said you two made up, and I've had some time to calm down. So yeah, I think I'm okay. I'm still accepting hugs, though."

I opened my arms. "I got one for you any time," I said.

She hugged me tight. "It kinda hit me when I was telling Ray what happened... you really could have been killed."

"I was a little hasty. But I knew if I didn't take that chance, two things would happen. First, your brother probably would have killed me, anyway."

"Ha, probably." She moved back and brushed at her eyes. "What was the other thing?"

I hesitated. Ray was watching us, and he could definitely hear us. I told myself not to let it bother me. "I might never have seen you again. And that would have been a heck of a lot worse."

She gave me a little smile, but didn't say anything.

Welsh emerged from his office and approached Ray. "Have a plan for your investigation, detective?" he asked.

"I have a line of inquiry to follow," Ray answered.

Welsh gestured to me and Franny. "Can your team handle it, or do you want extra help on this?"

"Until we have more forensic evidence or clear motives, three people will be more than enough, sir."

"Okay, keep me posted." He stopped by my desk. "Glad you're doing all right," he told Franny. "I'd like to get a few more details from you if I can."

She nodded, looking a little nervous.

"Want me to go with you?" I whispered as Welsh started back to his office.

She shook her head. "I'll be okay. Thanks."

I sat at my desk and took a sip of my cappuccino. It was amazing.

"Hey, Ray."

I looked over at the other Ray. "Yeah?"

"You got a thing for her?"

Shoot, he was asking me directly. I looked back at Welsh's office. I could see the back of Franny's head. She was sitting in a chair in front of the lieutenant's desk. I still felt a kind of big-brother protectiveness for her, but I still found her attractive, too. "Something," I said finally.

After a tense pause, he said, "Well, just be careful. If she hurts you, I'll kill her."

I looked at him in surprise and saw that he was grinning.

"Oh... I meant to say that the other way around, didn't I?"

I snorted. "Why do I get the feeling you're gonna make me pay either way?"

"All I'm gonna say is, being my kid sister's boy friend doesn't come cheap. Make sure you're serious. And, uh... being my enemy doesn't, either."

"Got it."

I started pulling up information on the gun I had found. It was an automatic handgun—kind of fancy. Not cheap. Not something you see at your average gun or knife show. Possibly foreign. The gun itself was still with the forensics team, so I couldn't look up specifics on it, but we should get it back soon. In the meantime, it seemed like all I could do was speculate.

"Need something new to work on?" Ray asked me a little later.

"Sure. What have you got?"

He gave me a couple of printouts. "These are some of the guys I rubbed elbows with while I was undercover, and might possibly have pissed off. I can't give you details, but you can start digging for info on them. See what they're up to these days, and look for any sources that might be able to tell us whether they've mentioned me lately."

I started in on investigating the men in question. It wasn't very interesting work, but it kept me busy. At lunchtime, Fraser brought us takeout and we all ate in the lunchroom with Franny. She gave Fraser a hug before sitting down.

"Did Welsh get everything he needed from you this time?" I asked her.

"Yeah, pretty sure," she answered. She sounded tired.

"Good," said Ray, "because I can use another set of hands on a keyboard. I have some mob people I want you to read up on."

"Are they guys you were getting information on while you were undercover?"

"I'm not at liberty to say," Ray answered with practiced ease.

"That is what this is about though, right?"

"We don't know that yet," I told her. "But it's our working theory."

"Hey, man..." Ray started.

"She's not stupid," I interrupted him. "She might as well know why we're doing what we're doing."

I could tell he wasn't happy with me, but he didn't say any more.

"Francesca," said Fraser, "do you mind if I ask you something about Saturday night?"

"Okay."

"When one of the men grabbed you, he put his hand over your mouth, yes?"

"Yeah..."

"Was he wearing gloves?"

"Yeah."

"What did the material feel like?"

"Um..." She frowned. "Like work gloves, but not the heavy leather kind. Like a knit, but with those little rubber dots on the palm."

"Made for gripping tools," Fraser concluded.

"They could have got those anywhere," said Ray.

"Did you smell anything on them?"

"It just smelled like work glove," Franny answered. "And, um... kind of... another kind of rubber. Kind of a nicer smell."

"New car smell?" Fraser suggested.

"Yeah! That's it."

"Okay," I said, putting my hands up to ensure the others would let me talk out my line of thought. "So, the guy who grabbed Franny was originally driving. The new car smell on his gloves was from the steering wheel. But then things don't go quite how they planned, so the gunman ends up running around to the driver's side of the car. Maybe he was gonna ditch his partner..."

"Or maybe," Fraser picked up where I left off, "he knew that it would be more awkward for his partner to negotiate with you and get away cleanly if he had to go around to the far side, so he was giving him another option."

"But... does it matter?" Franny asked.

"Probably not much," I said, "but it tells us there were only two of them. Otherwise, they could have relied on the third guy to rev the engine while they were dealing with us."

"A wheel man," she said, sounding proud of herself.

"Right," said Ray.

"So, how do you find a kidnapper team for hire?"

"That's tricky. You gotta know people who know people who know people."

"You must know some of the same people that the client knows," I said.

"Yeah, but... it's a thick web, and none of them are gonna want to talk to me."

"They don't know me. I could go undercover, go to Vegas, use what you know about connections there to—"

"Stop right there," said Franny. "I just got one Ray back from undercover work; I don't need the other running off to the same place to deal with the same sleazeballs and risking his neck for a crime that didn't even go off right."

"She has a point," said Fraser. "Since the kidnapping wasn't completed, we won't have FBI support on this. Without FBI support, your going to Las Vegas on a long shot like that would be an unnecessary risk, to say the least." He looked up at me. "By the way, did either of the men say anything to you?"

I shook my head. "I don't think either one spoke."

"The one holding me made some noise when I bit him," said Franny. "Sounded like he had a pretty deep voice, but that's all I could tell."

"You didn't taste anything on his glove, did you?" Fraser asked.

"No... just the same stuff I smelled, I guess." She grimaced.

He looked at me. "You were in close contact with the gunman as well," he said. "In your struggle, did you smell anything..."

"I'm not like you, Fraser," I cut in. "I don't go smelling people's breath to see where they've been."

"Aw, just humor him," said Ray.

I thought back. "Uh... gunpowder. He'd just fired the gun. And, um..." I closed my eyes, trying to feel how I had during the struggle. "Something kind of minty? Only... with a weird edge to it."

"Toothpaste?" asked Fraser.

"No."

"Aftershave?" suggested Franny.

"No."

"Gum?" said Ray.

I squinted harder. "Gum. Maybe... no, nicotine gum!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. My buddy from high school... he was hooked on cigarettes so bad by the time he got to college, he even chewed nicotine gum at school because he couldn't smoke. Always used to have a wad in his mouth. The teachers would make him spit it out, and he'd replace it by the next class. It's been a while, but I remember how it smelled. It wasn't OTC then, so he had to get a prescription for it."

"But a prescription is no longer required?" asked Fraser.

"Nope."

"That's too bad. It could have helped us track him down through a doctor or pharmacist."

"Hm... well, maybe he's been chewing it a long time. Maybe he got a prescription for it years ago."

"It's way too thin a lead," said Ray.

"Yeah, you're right."

"Still, we're putting together a profile," said Fraser. "The more we know about them, the more likely we are to find them."

"Or we could just wait for them to try again," said Franny.

We all looked at her.

"What? They're gonna try again, right? If they were hired to do this, they can't quit until the job's done—isn't that how it works?"

"We're not using you as bait," I said.

"Absolutely not," Ray agreed.

"There is another option," said Fraser. "We could get a police look-alike to pose as Francesca."

"Still kind of dangerous," said Ray. "I doubt Welsh would go for it. And I don't know any police ladies who owe me that kind of favor."

"Or you could train me," said Franny. "You know, teach me kickboxing, and to use a gun..."

"You and a gun are not mixing. Ever."

She took an angry bite of her sandwich, chewed and swallowed it. Then she said, "Well, either way, I'm kind of waiting around for them to try again. I might as well have some kind of plan."

"That much is true," said Fraser. "We could take the 'Dog chases cat chases mouse' approach."

"Is this gonna be an Eskimo story?" asked Ray.

Fraser shook his head. "No."

Ray waved a hand at him. "Proceed."

"If a dog is chasing a cat which is chasing a mouse, the dog can get to the cat faster if he starts chasing the mouse."

"'Cause the cat would always be one step ahead, but the dog can keep up by running after the mouse. Gotcha."

"So, we need to chase Franny?" I asked.

"No," said Fraser, "but rather than searching this proverbial haystack for the needle that is the kidnappers, we should start thinking like the kidnappers. They must be observing Francesca's movements. They saw Ray park a little distance from the Vecchio house to pick her up, so they decided to lie in wait and make their move if he did the same when dropping her off. Since that plan was thwarted, what will they do next?"

"They'll look for another time when she's likely to be alone," said Ray. "They'll have to be watching her all the time... She doesn't have her own car; before I started driving her, she was taking a bus in the morning."

"So, it's unlikely that they were following her before your return to Chicago. It would have been easy enough to waylay her on her way to the bus stop."

"Right."

We had the ball rolling now. We finished eating and headed back to our workstations to keep brainstorming. It felt like we would have results soon.

Thanks for reading! I'd like to read something you wrote... in the reviews. ~Ray K.