Just dropping this off before heading into uni' finals, hope you enjoy! :)

The drive back to the grid was a quiet one, Emma supposing they didn't really have anything substantial worth talking about since their scavenging hadn't yielded much apart from the newspaper clipping, which they had decided to bring back with them for further investigation. Hands now firmly on the steering wheel and the purring engine a noise in the background, Emma was glad that Jones had decided to put a halt to his probing questions, possibly coming to realize that the small talk between them was more awkward than anything else and that it was better to keep communication to a minimum, as he sat quietly beside her, not looking to strike up a conversation. Emma really couldn't say that she wasn't grateful.

She really didn't understand how trivial chit-chat could be of any importance, especially not with near strangers she knew next to nothing about when being well aware just how much information a fellow spy could possibly get her to divulge if she were to not pay attention, and she wasn't quite sure she was ready for all that venturing into personal territory yet. While Jones was shaping out to be a little less obnoxious than she'd initially pinned him as, her ever so slight decrease of annoyance towards him by no means meant that Emma saw him as anything less than a co-worker, he was juts someone she just might be able to tolerate for however long this case dragged on for. Why entertain the mere idea of getting comfortable with him when in eight weeks time they'd never even have to see each other again anyway?

The glass doors hissed as they shut behind them, Emma shrugging off her jacket and all of a sudden incredibly appreciative of the warmth.

Heading over to her own desk, she barely had the coat hung on the back of it when she felt something poke her back, and turned to find Elsa, patiently waiting with what looked to be a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. Emma nodded her thanks as she took the offered beverage, immediately bringing it up to her lips and humming at the warmth –definitely appreciated, now if she could get her hands on something to eat too, that would be nice.

"I'll see you in the boardroom then?"

The lack of bravado is what Emma noticed in the tone, the utter difference it had compared to his usual laid-back attitude and confidence, and as she looked up to the bunch of papers and files Jones had in his arms (the ones they'd just picked up), she realized she mustn't have answered the first time around.

"Yeah, um, yeah, you can go and set things up, I'll be there shortly."

Her tone definitely lacked in conviction though, for Emma strongly doubted they'd find anything worthwhile while combing through the paperwork –this case was already like looking for a needle in a haystack, why expect any change in that now?- and she would rather set herself up for the worst than vainly hope for a clue they had very little chances of getting their hand son. Underworld had been extremely good at hiding their traces so far, she doubted any organization able to have both the CIA and MI5 in utter chaos would be so careless as to literally offer them information without a price. This snail-paced progress they were making was really making Emma begin to wonder if the whole thing was actually even legit in the first place and that Mills and Nolan weren't perhaps getting their stories mixed up. If Underworld was personally after them, wouldn't they have left more evidence for them to actually be vulnerable and give them an opening to strike again?

Well, the photos were real enough, she remembered with a shiver, not particularly wanting to lay an eye on them again anytime soon. If those were real and were the way their group had decided to show what they were concretely capable of, by all logic there was no reason to believe Underworld wasn't out there either, and that it was their way of toying with the CIA, have them run around like headless chickens trying to solve a puzzle with practically no pieces in their hands and strike again when they felt like it to throw them into even more disarray.

And if Underworld already knew they were looking into them then all chances were that they were a step ahead of them, that there was a whole heap on info that they knew about that Nolan and Mills still didn't, and any way they had of uncovering new relevant intel could possibly be a trap they would set up on them, for if they had struck at the direct heart of the spy network –meaning the spies themselves- Emma dreaded even imagining what might happen to Jones and herself were they to make a wrong move, which, while she was careful, was still entirely possible given the increasing desperation they were facing at the fact that they still had very little to go on. If recklessly going in for more without covering their tracks or keeping an eye out was to land them in a less than desirable situation, Emma knew she would rather they take their time and do things right than stupidly risk their lives and information they already had, even if it was frustrating.

Her stomach gave an audible growl, clearly uninterested in worrying about terrorists and murders, and as Emma wearily trudged towards their rented car, hand barely able to hold the keys up as she zapped the door open before unceremoniously plopping down inside, the thought of a lovely warm sandwich covered in divine grilled cheese became quite appealing indeed. Well, seemed like Granny's take away it was then. At the very least, maybe things would lighten up a little once they had something substantial in their stomachs.

"Well, you certainly took your time, Swa-"

The confident smile almost came easier this time around, now that Emma knew what to expect of her partner. It might not have been entirely real given that she strongly doubted that it reached up to her cheeks or anything, but she could say with certainty that it was slightly less strained than the one she'd forced that first night they'd spent together.

She guessed that perhaps it had to do with the fact that it wasn't as "new" as when Nolan had given her the apartment keys and they had both awkwardly entered the place in silence, neither one of them really knowing what to say without sounding awkward. While far was it of her to say with certainty that she'd pinned Jones down, that she could read him and actually knew him like those old iconic double acts she'd seen on many a TV show as a child, it was getting slightly easier (only slightly) to actually be a pair of agents working together.

Jones had laid off asking about her, keeping their conversations matter-of-fact and more often than not they usually came back to the whole Underworld case. Another person might not have been down with keeping on about work related matters once past the threshold of their home, but Emma didn't particularly mind. Their talk, while still centering on their daily agent routine, was more laid back and didn't have any of the upstanding code they generally adopted when working together on the grid. It was a few hours when they could just let go slightly, even make bets on how much more the shadows under Misses Nolan's eyes would grow by the end of the week. As it turned out, she'd been right when guessing they'd have grown quite a bit.

She dropped the brown paper bag in front of him next to the pile of papers they'd picked up from the safe house, hand already digging in and pulling out both their shares. The grilled cheese, she had to admit, smelt heavenly and she already felt her mouth salivate in anticipation as she brought it up for a first bite, definitely appreciating it after the laborious day's work.

"Thought we could do with something for dinner while I was out, given that we're probably going to be here for another while at least." Not one for upstanding manners, Emma didn't particularly care that her mouth was full as she talked between two bites, a hungry stomach vying for her attention definitely took priority over conversational etiquette.

Jones, for his part, certainly didn't look as appreciative as she was as he eyes the food skeptically, keeping the bread at arm's length as if waiting for it to jump up and bite him in the face at any moment, which was utterly ridiculous in Emma's books, Granny's grilled cheese sandwiches were by far the best dinners anyone would find in town, she and August weren't among her most loyal clients for no reason after all.

"What the hell is this?"

"It's food, you eat it." Emma said matter-of-factly as she took another bite not seeing where the problem was. True, it was take-away, probably not the healthiest of diets, but she and August had gotten used to it when the analyst would bring in a bag to share on those nights when they had worked together, trying to pinpoint the type of behavior those drug gang leaders from mere pictures and assessing what was the best way to catch them. While this case was much more different, namely, that they were dealing with something a lot more dangerous than a few tattooed bad boys roaming the empty streets and taking part in less than savory activities, it was still a habit that Emma had gotten into, and given that the shop was just down the road, she guessed that they might as well make the most of it, who knew if they'd even be on the grid or have time to eat something hot tomorrow?

"Anyway, you managed to get a hand on anything while I was out?"

"Not sure yet, I've been looking through a few things, but nothing really substantial seems to be popping up. The only thing I managed to get a hand on that was worth noting was that there seems to be a connection to you Americans and to some odd gas related story, but when I went to look into that, nothing." And Emma guessed Jones must have tried quite a bit, given how he was now rubbing at that sore spot between his eyes, headache probably not far away from squinting at the monitor screen too much. At least the food seemed to be a momentary welcomed distraction given that that hadn't had much of a chance to eat anything much during the day.

Although Emma could understand where the weariness in his voice and the slump in his shoulders were coming from. Her eyes were burning from exhaustion, having been reading up on files and searching for minute details too closely for too long, and the prospects of collapsing onto the bed back at the safe house was certainly shaping up to be a very tempting image. Only, she knew she and Jones likely had a lot more work to do before actually being able to leave, and Emma doubted that those hours would turn up anything valuable. She was very strongly thinking of asking Nolan (or maybe his wife, she might be easier to convince) for an extended vacation in the Bahamas once this was all over.

"None of this has a lick of sense, it's like… It's like Underworld doesn't even exist outside of whatever intel we already have, there's barely any traces of them in the system whatsoever."

"Yeah, the file Mills gave me on Cassidy's and the whole operation Dreamshade certainly didn't yield much in terms of results either, doesn't look like we're going to get very far with these breadcrumbs of information."

"Alright, then let's take this back to the start," Jones suggested as he took a deep and calming breath, which to Emma sounded more like a yawn judging by the dark circles under his eyes, but she wasn't about to comment on it. "Your guy Humbert, he seemed to be pretty mobile, he was actually the one to meet up with the group, right?"

"Yes, but we've tried the place he was calling from before he died already-" Emma interrupted, not really getting why Jones wanted to go back to using Humbert as a basis for their search.

"No, not necessarily from where he was before he died, but given that we have his calls, maybe if Elsa can get a range of the geographic locations he was in we might get a place, right?"

Coming to think of it, it was a route they could go down. Part of Emma was a little skeptic, knowing that a mobile agent like Humbert could have been to quite a few areas before he was killed, but on the other hand, what did they have to lose by doing a search? At the very least, it would give them something a little more concrete than the few bits and pieces they had on paper so far, and it would be better than re-reading the dead man's report for the hundredth time over.

"Yeah, sure. Give me a minute and I'll put Elsa onto it. She's the one with all the computer skills."

The wink was certainly not what Killian had expected as Swan rose up and made for the corridor leading back to the main room, but it was rather nice, how casual it was.

With only a few years under his belt as a field agent, he hadn't had much of an opportunity to make long lasting partnerships with any colleagues back home, Elsa was the main person who'd taken a shine to him and when Mills had noticed that they'd handled a few operations quite well, she'd simply offered them to work in tandem –Elsa from the van, usually directing him and hacking into various computer programs like the professional she was while he was the one running around, guns blazing.

Swan, Swan was certainly different, not an easy one to figure out, but she seemed to be a practical and skilled woman despite obviously having a few truths she was reluctant to share, not that Killian didn't understand, there were a load of things he hadn't told her about himself either, things he didn't particularly think she'd want to know anyway, but it was nice to see that the lack of more personal talk didn't seem to get in the way of them progressing on the case. Although, it would be nice to get to know more about the CIA agent, and it was odd how genuinely curious he was about her.

It was strange, how his usually narrow world, the one centered around himself and Liam –because they had nobody else- was expanding at the fact of meeting someone like him, someone he could understand and someone who could probably read him just as well, which certainly wasn't something Killian had expected when signing up as an agent. How a job demanding one to put their country and values before their lives actually made him feel a connection with a fellow officer sharing the same morals was certainly an odd twist of fate.

He liked Swan –Emma, her name was Emma- , she was smart, practical, intelligent, resourceful, and it was obvious to him that she hadn't let whatever past she had define her. They hadn't talked about that much, the one time he'd brought it up, he'd understood that it still seemed to be a sore subject for her (and he understood, abandonment, especially by someone supposed to love you, was not an easy thing to deal with or to overcome, not when the child is left wondering day after ay what they did wrong to lose their parent's love) and he doubted he'd get to know any more on what exactly had made her that way, but she was surprisingly pleasant company, when one managed to get under that thick skin, and perhaps, with a little good fortune, he might help her understand that opening up a little wasn't something to be so afraid of.

"Well that's strange. Can you trace it again?"

Both Emma and Elsa joined him in the little room, the computer freak closing the door behind her before setting her trusted laptop on the table, beside the extra papers Emma had added to the growing pile.

"You two found something?"

"I'm not sure, Elsa's tracing the call again, just in case we had something wrong but-" And at the little 'bing' sound of the other woman's laptop, Emma flipped it around so the deceive faced him, a little red spot popping up on the map the two of them had running in the background. "That place, it's a local bar, called Wild Times, I remember coming across it a few times in Humbert's report, it was where quite a few of his more recent calls were pinned to. If he was closing in on Underworld, maybe that might be the place to go, at least maybe one of the employees might be able to give us more detail on who he was with if they actually saw him, or we could hack into their security camera footage."

"You think we should give the place a look?"

"I don't know," To be honest, Emma didn't particularly want to have to go scouting a less than savoury establishment, where less than savoury people hung out to participate in less than savoury activities, especially knowing what kind of repugnant atmosphere the local bars were said to have, but if it got them that much closer to finding a clue, it wasn't exactly her place to go passing up on it. "I'd rather we check blueprints and inside footage first, just to get a feel for what exactly we're getting ourselves into, then pass by Nolan and Mills, get their input on this-"

"But she and Nolan requested nobody interrupt them, they're dealing with an unexpected American financial vulture in one of the biggest estate agencies in London right now, Number Ten deemed it urgent." Elsa countered, obviously uneasy with the extra weight on their shoulders at having to handle the case by themselves for a foreseeable while.

Damn it, just our luck! Emma thought sourly. "Well we'll leave them be for now, try and make do with what we have and hopefully have something new and more concrete for them by the time they manage to settle down that crisis (which will hopefully be soon). I know we really don't have much yet, but if we could just find another substantial lead, maybe they'll be able to help."

"Well what about going for the picture attached to the file?" Killian suggested, not particularly ecstatic at having to have a look at the agent's brutalize corpse again, but it was the best they had given that they had probably milked the call for all it was worth.

"Humbert's body?" Emma shivered, not really wanting to open that up again nor really getting why the Brit wanted to anyway, "What could we possibly need that for?"

"Have we looked at what was on it? If we can lighten it up or sharpen the quality, maybe we might be lucky, find a detail we missed, and given that Elsa's an expert in all of that, I don't really see the harm in giving it a shot?"

"Well, I'll see what I can come up with, give me a few minutes and I'll get back to you."

And just like that, she swerved back on her chair, Emma going back to the open file on the desk beside her and picking up the top sheet of paper there, eyes skimming over it in hopes of finding some kind of detail.

"How are you so sure we'll even find something anyway?" She asked the Brit off-handedly as he sat on the corner of the table, a set of a dozen recoded phone conversations between Queen and Humbert in his hands.

"I don't, you just look like the type who doesn't give up, so I don't see why I should either."

And Killian shrugged at that, as if it was normal that he just understand and go along with her way of thinking. And Emma wasn't too sure how she felt about that, knowing someone was willing to trust her judgment and input on things like this when they barely knew each other, how a mere work colleague could have that much faith in the fact that she would pull this off.

On the one hand, it was terrifying, someone having this much expectations of her, but on the other hand, it was… It made her chest swell, at just how sincere his words felt (and Emma would like to think that she could have noticed it, had he lied, she was good at that), that Killian was being honest with all of this.

And if, to him, she could pull off that, have Jones utterly confident in the fact that they would succeed, then Emma guessed that a little more probing and searching might just do the trick.

Still, it was a lot of faith he was putting on her shoulders, Emma just hoped that she could be up to par and deliver.

"All right then," And with a deep breath, she pulled the file back to her, "So what we do know for certain so far is that Humbert was set to infiltrate this rather unsavory group linked to Underworld, that he mentioned someone obviously high placed codenamed Hearts and called Nolan before he was shot. Nolan then received the photo and the message about Underworld being onto Humbert all along. So, if we go by this logically and Underworld is comprised of mainly scummy individuals, where would you pick a place to hide if you were them?"

"Somewhere crowded obviously," Was the first aspect of a lair Killian could think of, "Somewhere with little chances of being overheard when dealing with the killers themselves, noisy perhaps? So anybody listening in would not have much of an opportunity to fully get what we're talking about, somewhere where nasty business wouldn't stick out, where it would be normal. Are there any drugstores or casinos around? They usually deal with money."

Opening up a new tab and typing in the requested address, Emma enlarged the CIA computer map, waiting a moment for the search to yield results, and sure enough, there were the little red dots popping up. Bingo! Indeed there were a few similar places around, three as a matter of fact, and when searching for the official sites it turned out that one of the places was currently being renovated, which now narrowed their results down to two.

"Arendelle and Wild Times seem to be the big candidates. They both look like inviting enough places to an unsuspecting public, easy to blend in and make quick transactions or relay messages without looking suspicious."

"Any record of either of them having caused trouble for the CIA before? It might make the choice easier and save us some precious time."

"Not a bad idea-" However, Emma should have expected things to get tougher now that they'd landed a result. Neither one of the bars looked particularly suspicious when firth lancing at them, and when investigating deeper into CIA files of old cases yielded next to nothing bar perhaps a few minor incidents (but nothing particularly relevant to the case at hand), she couldn't help but feel a little deflated at their so-far fruitful research seemingly coming to a brutal and unexpected halt for the time being. Underworld really were doing everything they could to leave as few traces as possible or erase the ones already there, making it next to impossible for them to get a grasp on them at all. It was a wonder they had even gotten this far at all with the little they had, when Emma took a moment to think about it. Catching them was going to be a whole other story entirely. How the hell were they going to manage to narrow it down? There were quite a number of nasty places she would dare not set a foot into unless absolutely necessary that she could qualify as a good hideout for terrorist groups, it didn't mean any of them were currently being used by their target.

And in addiction to the sheer scale they had to work with, knowing that Mills and Nolan had no other agents they could spare for this was even worse. Their tem was small, tiny, just herself, Killian, Elsa, Pan and August when he could spare them a moment, that was it, and given that herself and Jones were the only agents qualified to actually go out and scout locations, Emma could already guess that they were going to make progress at a snail pace.

"Well, Wild Times certainly seems to be harboring lots of charming violent brutes." Killian said cynically from beside her, and Emma could already guess the Brit was hoping they'd avoid any confrontation were they to go there. Coming back to the grid with a broken wrist or an injured knee was definitely a setting-back they couldn't afford. But with the year-old newspaper article about a brawl escalating into cold-blooded murder, he was pretty sure that keeping a hand on the gun strapped to his waist at all times would be a safe move.

"At least it lives up to the name, right?" Emma offered half-heartedly. "Think we still ought to give it a try?"

"If we can get our hands on something, I guess it's worth the risk." He conceded, shrugging. At least Emma knew she wasn't going to be going alone, which was a mild reassurance. "At the worst, we can always grab a beer, so we won't be going down there for nothing."

Emma sighed, well at least if he saw something in the whole affair that made it worthwhile… "Sure, just don't come to me when Mills learns that her agents are taking advantage of location scouting to get drunk and not do their job, I'm certainly not covering your arse for that." She winked, and in the heat of the moment, she could almost swear that she was actually enjoying the levity he was trying to offer (That's certainly new).

"Well, I'll go and give Mills and Nolan a heads up." She said, leaning out of the chair, stiff legs cracking audibly, making Emma wince. "You don't move, if you do, I'm picking somebody else to tag along!" She called as she past the door.

Emma thought she heard something along the lines of You better not, Swan! But chalked it up to her overtired brain imagining noises that weren't really there.

Well, at the very least, the trek up to Nolan's office wasn't as dreaded as she'd feared it might. They did have some information to offer him on the case's progress (mainly speculation, but perhaps the man could give a little of his own insight into things, open up a few other routes they could potentially go down). If, and only if, he agreed to this Emma was going to make sure to keep an eye on Jones, because God only knew what nonsense he was going to come up with if he were to make light of the situation, and Emma really didn't want to run into any trouble while down there, not when calling in a team to help them would take too long to make their way down and would reflect very poorly on the pair of them. However, it wasn't necessarily Jones' talk and banter she minded anymore, just his slight lack of 'being down-to-earth', which at times, could be quite frustrating. Other than that, things certainly seemed to have been slowly improving somehow.

Not that Emma would ever think of telling him that in person, of course.

Because he certainly wasn't growing on her. No, not at all.