Adam Brennan wasn't quite sure what to think when he saw Detective Beckett sitting at his cubicle in the Civilian Liaison Bureau. She looked so out of place there, like a bullfighter at the Preakness. His father had loved horse-racing the way some people loved the theatre, and he'd passed it on to his only child; Adam always made horse analogies when he felt particularly stressed.

'Adam,' she said with a lightly friendly smile. 'Can I call you Adam?'

'Sure, or C-L Brennan, if you like.'

'Is there some place private we can talk?'

Adam looked around, saw a small boardroom free. It was the only one that didn't have a glass-window wall that looked into the corporate-pool atmosphere of the Civilian Liaison Bureau's offices and would serve their purposes. He made a 'come-along' gesture and flipped on the lights in the boardroom, closed the door.

'You want coffee? Nothing like the premium ex-presso you have with your alien craft coffee machine upstairs in Homicide.'

'Adam, you ever notice that for a New Yorker, you are exceptionally naive to Starbucks-type drinks? Java Loft and Jumping Bean too?'

'That's because plain, black coffee is all any cop ever needed for two hundred-plus years before Starbucks and Java Loft and Jumping Bean came along.'

'You like when I make lattes,' Beckett pointed out dryly.

'Yes, because you're being nice to me. And they taste good when I am sick of the straight-black motor oil I get down here.'

'That they do.'

Adam nodded, knowing the small talk about coffee was her way of easing rather ham-fistedly into a hard subject. He took out a picket-sized notebook and Li'l Shorty pocket-pen to take the notes down he would put into his files at home. 'What have you got for me?'

'We've gotten the go-ahead from Judge Michelle Fuqua to go into Mike Doran and John Raglan's financial records, a deep-level search. I also need you to dig up anything you can find on Roman Moore.'

'He a suspect?'

'He's a person of interest in the Jarrad case.'

Beckett watched Adam's face, felt her heart break for him. He still had the look, the cool-eyed, thinking look of a cop and he'd been stripped of all symbols. They hadn't taken his brain, that was for damn sure. Drawing in a quiet breath, she went on, 'In the three months before my mother's death, two people worked with and a court clerk were murdered, also by Dick Coonan, and we've come to the conclusion it had to be over a case they were working on. We think it was Roman Moore's case.'

'How does he fit in?'

She laid it out for him, what they'd deduced in the hours before his arrival, and for the first time since bringing Adam in on the case Beckett saw his eyes go frosty.

'From now on,' he said with muted control, 'you tag me for whatever hours your are working. Just because I'm technically no longer a cop doesn't mean that you have the prerogative to treat me like a child. I'm in this just as much as you.'

'Adam, I can't ask you to do that.'

'No, you can't, and you're not. I'm asking it of you. My father may not have been murdered by Dick Coonan but there's a possibility...' Adam trailed off as sickness came into his belly like a slithering animal. 'There's a possibility that his suicide is actually staged and that he was murdered because of what he knew about your mother's case. That means I have a parent I need to let rest easy, too.'

'Okay. From now on you're with us. How will you swing that with your supervisor here?'

'I'll talk to Montgomery about it, call a meeting with my commanding...my supervisor.'

'Never goes away, does it?'

'No.' Adam shook his head. 'It never does.'

'What about your friend Cruz?'

'I haven't talked to Maggie in a while, not after it came out about her with IAB.'

Beckett had a flash to being massively pregnant with Jojo and thoroughly pissed off when the sneering Blake Holmes had sat smugly in Montgomery's office, telling her that Cruz wasn't her problem. 'What about her and IAB?'

'Turns out I was on IAB's radar around the same time you were thinking I was a multiple murderer,' Adam replied, allowing the hint of a quirky smile around his mouth. 'They had her passing the goods on me to that rat bastard over those same murderers you were looking into that ended up with me getting booted from the force.'

'You're still here.'

'Wow, heavy metaphor this early in the morning? You must desperately want me to get this crap done.'

'Is it safe to work here?' she asked, looking around the boardroom. 'Or would you feel less stressed working in Homicide.'

'I'll come with you.'

They tidied up the files and not a moment too soon, as a bullish man with thinning steel-grey hair resembling a Brillo-pad came into the conference room.

'Brennan, I need you out of here. I have a meet with the Deputy of Detectives South Manhattan so you playing detective for this concerned citizen needs to find another home.'

Beckett gave Brennan a subtle shake of the head, then rose as the young ex-cop gathered their paper work. 'May I have your name?'

'Ma'am, I'm Thomas Gibson, you know like that actor? I hope Adam isn't wasting too much of your time with his half-assed theories. Fancies he's still a cop.'

'On the contrary, I have found his skills and insights most helpful to my investigation.' Beckett tried not to let it show how much she was relishing the draining of blood from this bureaucrat's face when she held up her badge. 'And it's Detective Beckett.'

'Beckett. From Homicide. Nikki Heat.'

'Exactly. Adam is assisting me on a case and I required a word with him in private. As it happens, he is coming with me now to continue said investigation.'

'Of course, Adam, give the l- the detective whatever she needs. I'll make sure your duties are covered.'

Gibson scuttled off and Adam grinned. 'Can we go again, Mom? Please? Or should I call you Mumum?'

'Can it, Brennan.' But there was humour in Beckett's eyes; it stayed with her until they got back to the Homicide floor and saw the Ry-Sposito monster in the conference room. She walked in, heard their trademark bickering over the sorting system of various sheets.

'Dude, I just had page sixteen, where is it?'

'It should be in the middle pile.'

'Kevin, you have four middle piles.'

'Boys, do you need a time-out,' Beckett asked in the same tone she would use for her own children as she sat down. 'Adam's with us from here on in.'

'Great, maybe you can knock some sense into my partner's head on how his organizing system is ridiculous,' Esposito said without looking up from the piles of phone records.

'No, no, suck it up, you whiny little toad,' Ryan retaliated, 'Adam is getting us even more paperwork to sort through.'

That they weren't pitying or asking him any kind of intrusive question made Adam feel even more like he was a cop again. Instead, he went to the computer station in the window-corner of the conference room and logged in, got the information he needed so he could destroy a small forest with this amount of phone transcripts.

When he brought them back, plunked them unceremoniously into the middle of the table, the groans of the detectives was music to his ears.

'Come on, you know you love me.'

Beckett listened to him joke with her men and shook her head, scanned through the first couple of phone-calls, saw they weren't anything terribly interesting. The usual 'hang in there, buddy' 'bring me some fresh books' 'you need some smokes' chatter one had with someone in prison.

She turned it over, picked up the next one. A quick scan of the first few lines and her relaxed reading position was gone; Beckett was sitting ramrod straight in her chair.

'Guys, I might have something here,' she said, and Ryan and Esposito both dropped their files while Adam wheeled over in his computer chair. They gathered around to look at the transcript.

John, we gotta talk

Bout what

Cowlan was by to see Christine. She started asking me questions about Angie and Timo and the bank accounts

What did you tell her

Nothing, I swear

Something will have to be done about her

John no, please leave me Christine. I already lost Angie because of this, leave Christine out of it. Angie got what was coming to her, no question, but Christine was just in the cross hairs

Okay You transfer me a good-faith payment I'll make sure she stays safe