When Becker arrived at work on Tuesday morning, Jess was already at her station. She looked rather happy as she sat there chatting to Abby. Abby, Becker had already decided, wasn't the friend he'd always thought she was. Next time she vanished through an anomaly he wasn't going to spend a year worrying about her and making himself miserable about it. In fact, he might open a bottle of wine to celebrate. Although Connor was trying very hard in his way to be supportive through all this, and he would probably miss Abby, so perhaps Becker wouldn't go quite that far. He wasn't going to search very hard for her though.

Becker had always rather liked having his work station next to Jess. It meant that he could listen to her chatter, and watch her work, and generally spend quite a lot of time with her without actually being seen to be spending a lot of time with her. Lester had offered him an office once. It had been a very small office, barely a step up from a broom cupboard really, but Becker had refused it on the grounds that he preferred to be based in the hub so that he could be on instant alert as soon as an anomaly appeared. Also so that he could secretly admire Jess's legs whenever she wore a short skirt, which was pretty much every day, but he didn't think Lester needed to know that.

He was starting to rethink his decision as the morning progressed. Everyone kept stopping to chat to Jess and ask about her weekend away. It didn't help that she'd brought back a box of biscuits for the office, which were making people even more interested in her weekend. The broom cupboard office was starting to look quite attractive.

The chatter went on for most of the morning. He got an hour's break from it at lunchtime when Jess skipped off to the canteen with Abby and Emily. He took the opportunity to grab the last few biscuits and hide them in a drawer in the hope that would slow the visits that afternoon. Then he got hungry, waiting for the canteen to clear, and ate them. When Jess returned, she picked up the box and started to fold it for recycling.

"Did you like the biscuits?" she asked him.

"I told you I didn't want any."

"There are crumbs on your desk."

Becker looked down and realised he was rumbled. "Oh, yeah I was hungry, I had one."

"Thank you?"

"You're welcome."

Jess rolled her eyes at him. "You aren't funny. And I had a lovely weekend, thank you for asking."

"Has he paid you back yet?"

"It was my treat, I told you. And anyway, none of your business."

"So that's a no. He's had a nice free weekend. He's using you."

"Don't start this again, Becker."

"Has he even got a job?"

"Yes!"

"What does he do? Used car sales?"

"Security," Jess snapped back at him. "Go on, find fault with that."

It did take Becker a moment or two to do so, but he managed it. "A store security guard or something? Because some of them just put a uniform on and think they're some sort of military expert."

"No. Proper security."

"Where?"

"Again none of your business. Stop prying."

"It's my job to make sure staff members aren't compromising our security. You're going out with someone nobody knows anything about."

"Abby's met him. She likes him. So stop worrying."

Abby might even get pushed through the next anomaly.

"Who else has met him? Connor?"

If Connor had met him, and still been pretending to be supporting Becker, the little geek was in big trouble.

"Just Abby. And Emily."

So Connor could live another day. Those two bossy women, on the other hand...

"And when's he going to pay you back in some way for the free holiday?"

Jess sighed. "If you must know, we had such a wonderful time that he's taking me to Paris next weekend and he's going to pay for that. So it's not one-sided. Is that okay with you?"

Becker stared at her miserably. It wasn't okay with him at all. He was starting to curse his own stupidity in keeping her at arm's length for so long. Now, instead of her smiling adoringly at him whenever he came near her, they seemed to always be arguing, and her affection was totally directed at this other man. And Paris... city of romance. The only person she should be going there with was him. Somehow shooting holidays had lost their appeal.

Her mobile went off. As had happened the previous week, she seemed to need to confirm some sort of booking with her credit card. Becker narrowed his eyes suspiciously, then confronted her when she rang off.

"That was you paying for Paris as well. He is using you! I knew it!"

"Becker..."

The anomaly detector sounded before either of them could argue further. The hub was suddenly alive with activity and Becker soon found himself on his way to Milton Keynes to deal with a baby mammoth that had already damaged the town's famous cows.

By the time they'd rounded it up, sent it back through the anomaly and had got back to the ARC, Jess had already gone home. Abby had helped deal with the anomaly, but had refused to answer any of his questions about Jess's boyfriend, and had just repeated her mantra from Sunday night when she'd told him that he should have made a move on Jess whilst she was still available. This had actually occurred to Becker by that stage, and he didn't take kindly to her mentioning it in front of Matt, as he'd had to spend the rest of the journey back listening to the Irish/Future/whatever man telling him that Abby was right, so she was.

It was hardly helpful.

Jess had left less than ten minutes before they arrived, so he presumed she would still be at home ahead of whatever luxurious treat her useless boyfriend planned on making her pay for that night. Leaving the reports until morning, Becker drove straight over to her flat, intending to continue their interrupted discussion of earlier.

Now that Abby and Connor had moved out, he rarely had an excuse to visit Jess at home. In fact it had been months since he'd been there.

The communal door was on the latch again. Evidently this so-called security man wasn't very good at his job if he hadn't drummed into her the dangers of this. The first time he'd found that he could just push the door and let himself in he'd printed off a pile of guidance on all the risks involved and helpfully posted it in each of Jess's neighbours letterboxes. He'd also put up several useful signs to remind people to lock the door, and a couple of posters in the hallway for good measure. Jess had been so mortified when her neighbours realised her flat was the source of all the nuisance mail that she hadn't spoken to him for a week. But it was for her own good, even if the main culprit had eventually turned out to be Connor.

On this one occasion it was probably a good thing, he realised, climbing the stairs two at a time. It meant Jess wouldn't be able to refuse to buzz him in, and any argument wouldn't be very public. Plus he would probably get to meet the creep who was using Jess and could warn him off.

He had a long speech prepared on the dangers of con-men, and trusting women, and spending too much time with someone you barely knew (even though Jess claimed she did know him). This all faded from his mind when she opened the door and he saw her standing there at the bottom of the stairs in a pink silk kimono looking slightly flushed and very dishevelled.

"Becker! What on earth are you doing here?"

He was fairly certain that she wasn't wearing anything at all under that kimono.

"I..." He was having trouble remembering what he was doing there. "I was going to warn you..."

It was a very sheer silk and clung to every curve. He tried to keep looking at her face instead.

"You're too trusting, and you're going to end up conned out of all your money."

It was very, very short. And he wasn't looking at it. Particularly not looking at the way the material accentuated her very hard nipples. He forced himself to look at her face.

Jess groaned. "Oh no, please not this again. Go away, Becker, I'll see you at work tomorrow." She tried to close the door, but he blocked it with his foot. The movement took him closer to her. He could see over her shoulder that the dress she'd worn to work was lying in a discarded heap on the floor halfway up the stairs.

"Is he here now?"

Jess looked at him pityingly, as if he'd said something particularly stupid. "Yes. Please go."

For some reason she was still wearing her shoes. Not comfy slippers, or dainty little fluffy mules, or anything suitable for the house. Bright red stilettos that had possibly the highest heels he'd ever seen her in. She'd worn them to work a few weeks ago. He'd barely left his desk all day except when he'd followed her to the canteen and back at lunchtime - purely because they had taken a break at the same time. Also she might have fallen over in those shoes or something and needed helping up.

Now this bloke was turning out to be some sort of shoe fetishist along with all his other faults. Becker was tempted to push past Jess, find the kinky git and punch him out.

"Jess! Just pay the guy and get back here!"

A man's voice, coming from somewhere along the corridor. Much as he tried to think otherwise, it was hard to imagine that it was coming from anywhere other than Jess's bedroom, because he'd been in her weird upside down flat a few times, and he knew the living room was upstairs.

"Shush, it's not the pizza boy, it's one of my workmates!" Jess called back.

There was no reply, but Becker thought he could hear movement. To his annoyance he then heard a door shut. The coward had probably locked himself in the bedroom.

"Impressive," Becker muttered.

"Please go," Jess hissed at him again. "You're wrong about him. Why can't you trust my judgement on this?"

The pizza delivery boy chose that moment to arrive, needing to be buzzed in as Becker had locked the door behind him. He looked at Becker curiously, but took the money from Jess and handed over a delicious-smelling box.

"I see the fancy restaurants have stopped now he's got what he wanted."

He could have kicked himself for saying it. Jess did kick him, with one of her spiky red shoes, making him jump back and giving her the opportunity to slam the door in his face. Knowing that there was no way it was going to re-open, he'd little choice but to follow the pizza boy out.

The man's voice did sound vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it. He realised it might well be one of his own men, which would explain why they didn't want to be seen by him. Unable to wait until morning, he headed back to the ARC to check the rotas and see who had taken a long weekend.

He searched for over an hour, eventually going through every member of staff in the ARC. There were about twenty matches, most of which were women but of the five men only one worked in security and Becker could see him working out in the gym and the access records showed that he'd been in the ARC ever since coming back from Milton Keynes. Three of the others were also still in the ARC, and the one remaining possible suspect had such a strong Scottish accent that there was no way he was the man Becker had just heard calling from Jess's bedroom.

Unless it was an ex-staff member, and there were not many of those still breathing, it wasn't an ARC employee. But the voice had sounded familiar, he just couldn't place it.

"Finished the report yet?" Matt startled him, which of course amused his team leader no end. "Ah, not very alert there, Becker. Need to work on that!"

"I was checking something."

"Uh-huh," Matt looked over his shoulder to see what was on the screen. It didn't take him long to see the pattern. "Aw, you're not trying to work out who it was that took Jess away? Becker, let it go, the girl's happy with this guy. And next time you like someone, make a move faster."

"He's using her."

"Abby says not, and Abby's her best mate. Good enough for me." He reached over and shut down the laptop. "Come on, pub time."

Becker sighed, and followed Matt out. He had little hope that beer was going to make him feel better.