Sam listlessly poked at her microwave dinner—chicken, rice and vegetables. She wasn't actually hungry, but the evening hours had stretched endlessly and nothing seemed to hold her attention. She had tried to watch TV, had tried to read from the stack of books piling up on her nightstand, she had even tried to catch up on some housework, but she hadn't been able to stick to anything. Eventually she had given up. Going to the gym had helped for a while. The treadmill had given her body a workout, even though it did nothing for her restless mind. Physically worn out, she had returned home in time for a late meal.

Sam was the first to admit that she wasn't the domestic type; cooking wasn't her strong suit. She ate out more often than not and on the nights she didn't, she usually stayed late at the office, grabbing a snack from one of the vending machines at the FBI building.

With a sigh, Sam got up, took the half-filled plate and tossed the contents into the trash. She couldn't possibly eat and the worst thing was that she had brought this all on herself. There was no one to blame but herself. All the rationalisations aside, she had made the decision to wait in the car that day. Clyde had been her husband, but they hadn't had the kind of relationship that had engendered blind loyalty. The only thing that had been good with Clyde was the sex…and the fact that he was different from just about everyone in Kenosha. Clyde had come from a small town in the middle of nowhere just like she. When she had first met him, she had been impressed by how easy going he was. Everyone else she knew was struggling to get by, living with a tense look on their faces as they were working long hours on meagre pay. Clyde didn't have a lot of money either, but he was always in a good mood, was full of jokes. But he'd had a fierce temper and not a high opinion of monogamy.

In retrospect, Sam wasn't sure what to think of Clyde at all. It was clear that their relationship could never have lasted. She had been new in the city and had latched onto the first man she had been able to find. She had been eighteen years old and had known nothing about what life was really like. Still, she should have seen that there was more going on with Clyde and his friends. There had been subtle clues, not just that morning of the robbery. Sam had told Jack everything she knew about the robbery, but there were signs that Clyde might have been planning a crime. She had worked in law enforcement long enough to know that robbers didn't do just one job. There had to be other crimes. Maybe Clyde had started with jewellery or cars before he had graduated to banks, but it was unlikely that robbing a bank was the first time he had broken the law.

Sam thought about calling Jack. He'd probably already thought about checking the database for similar robberies, but she felt the need to talk to him.

Sam knew that she should probably tell Martin as well. What had happened after they had left the bar wasn't something she could just ignore. She couldn't tell herself that she hadn't wanted to invite Martin home. The bottle of champagne in the fridge had come in handy. The attraction was there; Sam couldn't deny it. It had been good, very good, that night.

Martin was too clean cut, too perfect, too protected to share this part of her past with him. Besides, she didn't want to put him into a position where he had to decide between protecting her and protecting his career. She wasn't sure that Martin, or his father, could handle it. She didn't know Martin that well, but she knew that he was well under the thumb of his father.

Sam had just switched on the news when the doorbell rang.

oOo

Francis Viralli opened the back door of his small store, dragging the trash back out after him. It was a slow night; business wasn't going well these days. Nobody had any money more anymore.

He opened the dumpster and tossed the trash bag inside. He was just about to go back inside when he spotted a bare leg sticking out from behind the dumpster. Probably another one of these homeless drunks driving away honest customers.

"Hey, you! Get up! Find another place to sleep!" Francis stepped around the dumpster. The woman slumped between scattered trash was in her underwear, the blood in her hair looking black in the dim light.

oOo

By the time Danny and Martin returned to the office, it was already past eight. Martin had insisted they swing by a hot dog stand on the way back to grab a bite to eat. Danny had agreed; the fifteen minutes wouldn't matter. It had taken them almost four hours to work their way down the street, knocking on doors left and right. They didn't have much to show for their efforts. The elderly couple had been the most helpful witnesses. What the couple had seen only confirmed their suspicions. Clyde Buckner's disappearance and now the disappearance of his wife Linda and their daughter was linked to the bank robbery and his former accomplices, the Dane bothers.

Vivian was sitting at her computer, intending to finish up for the day, when they walked into the office.

"I was about to report you missing as well. Where were you all day?" Vivian fixated them. She sounded unusually frustrated.

"Out in America's suburbs. Linda Buckner and her daughter are gone. Everything looks like they left in hurry, probably not voluntarily. CSU found some blood in the living room and a fresh slug in the wall. Fern put a rush on it." Danny walked over to his desk, looking around for a report from the crime lab. The manila folder was on next to the keyboard. He flipped it open.

"It looks like we were right about this from the start. Neighbours saw a man with red hair with Buckner recently. The couple is coming in tomorrow to identify the man they saw, but I bet it was one of the Dane bothers. How many redheads does Buckner know? Not that many, I guess. We gave out an APB for Linda's car, but so far no hits." Martin sighed. "They could be in Canada by now. It's not exactly the border to Libya."

Now that a child was involved, the case was more than a dispute among criminals gotten out of control. They were all under more pressure to find the girl and her mother. The FBI had come late in the game, ten years late.

"I'm not so sure they are trying to leave the country. Fern put in a good word for us at the lab and we got the results. The blood was female, no match in the database." Danny turned the page. "The slug from the wall is where it gets interesting. It's not a match with the bullet that killed Eric Dane or the gun used in the 1994 robbery. But the baby is no stranger to our database. It's a .45 calibre ACP. It matches a robbery from New Years Eve 1999."

"You couldn't legally buy a MAC-10 after '94. Were the detectives able to trace were the gun came from?" Vivian asked.

"I'll pull the file and see what happened to the gun." Martin's energies seemed to have been refuelled by the stop at the hot dog stand. His suit bore the evidence of a long day, but Martin was still bouncing with enthusiasm. "I'll head down to the archives." Martin hadn't even sat down yet.

Danny sat down at his desk, glad to be able to finally get off his feet. He wasn't used to working the streets anymore. He longed for a shower and a real, hot meal. If he'd taken the bar exam that day...

"Jack called, he's landed at Sea-Tac twenty minutes ago. He is going to drive out to Hayden tomorrow," Vivian said, interrupting his thoughts.

"I wouldn't be surprised if no one has seen Richard Dane for two days. We practically know for certain that he and his brother did rob that bank ten years ago." Danny leaned back in his chair.

"We should have the DNA results by tomorrow," Vivian said.

Danny shot her a curious look. She seemed oddly silent, not having said a word about what results her day had yielded. There was something going on underneath the surface. Danny wasn't one to pry into the private lives of his colleagues. It wasn't his business and he didn't want to know.

"What did they say at the power company? Still the old story?" he asked, keeping his question strictly on the case.

"Doyle, the manager, came up with a name he apparently didn't know ten years ago: a software engineer responsible for the systems in '94. According to Doyle, there were quite a few glitches during the spring of that year, so he didn't think anything of it back then."

Danny snorted in disbelief. "He is still running the company?"

"He didn't seem overly invested in his business. The software engineer's name is Ryan Kensington. Doyle fired him in August '94 for bad performance. I talked to his fiancé from that time. It turns out that Mr. Kensington disappeared less than a month later. I haven't had a chance to verify yet what the woman told me, but according to her, he took a job with an American company in Singapore, but nobody ever heard from him again. I called the regional office to see if he ever worked there," Vivian said.

"He might just have skipped out on the fine lady," Danny considered with a grin. "But then again, he might never have boarded his plane. He could virtually be anywhere, and I'm not just talking about the whole country." Danny sighed.

"Who could be anywhere? What did I miss?" Martin had heard the last part of what Danny had said when he walked back into the office, the file from the Bodega robbery in hand.

"You took your time! Did you grab a coffee on the way?" Danny teased as he spun around on his chair. "You did miss probably the best and worst news of the day. We probably knew who else was in on the robbery—at least one of them. Ryan Kensington. Vivian got his name from Manhattan Power. The bad news is that he could be anywhere in the world. The last thing we know is that he was supposed to take a job in Singapore."

"I guess that's not in the travel budget," Martin said.

"Your food is hardly in the travel budget. I don't think that Van Doran will let is vacation down there on government time. You better contact the state department tomorrow and find out if Kensington was ever awarded a work permit. I'll hit the airlines." Danny smiled tiredly.

Vivian got up from her chair. "You guys carry on. I need to get home early one evening this week," she said slightly inwardly and went to get her coat.

Danny and Martin looked after her.

"What's wrong with Vivian?" Martin asked. He'd picked up on her abrupt demeanour as well. He recalled Jack's secrecy about the informant who had gotten the case rolling in the first place and knew that there was more to this case than he was aware of. He'd only been with the unit a little over a year, so he didn't expect to be in on all the history, but if the case had connected to someone or something bigger, he needed to be in the loop. Martin glanced over at Danny, who was reading through a file from Vivian's desk. Danny didn't seem any different than usual, but with him Martin could never quite tell what was going on behind the curtain. If he hadn't left things with Sam at the proverbial morning after, he'd call it a day and spend the rest of the evening with her. Maybe see a movie. The prospect sounded pretty good to him. But Sam hadn't exactly been in a talkative mood when they had gotten called out to their latest case and Martin hadn't been to one to start an awkward conversation. They had both been rather drunk and some things were best not talked about. Martin turned to the file he had pulled from the FBI archives and settled in for a late night.

TBC