Luke had offered to put up the oak partition at the back of the main dining room, but Jessica said it made them look like they didn't want to associate with his regular customers.

"But you don't like my regular customers."

"Yeah, but they don't know that," Jessica replied, "and it goes along with me not liking anybody. Except you."

"And Trish."

"Sure. And Trish. Most of the time."

So the barrier stayed down, the large round table in the back corner visible to everyone who chose to dine at Cap's Bar and Grill on the warm Sunday evening.

"So you talked to Misty?" Trish asked a few minutes after she walked through the door and took her seat.

"I did. Talked to her, and sent her the file I sent to Dakota. She called me back fifteen minutes later, suitably impressed. She's passing it along. I told her she and Coleen could come by for dinner, but they have plans."

"Good. I'm glad it's all out in the open now. Kyle can go fuck himself if he doesn't like it."

"Doesn't like what? He did fuck all as far as this goes. We did all the work, it's up to us who we share it with," Jessica said as she picked up a handful of pretzels.

"We are in complete agreement on that, but I still think I might be looking for a job after this, one way or another. Even if he doesn't fire me I'm not sure I want to stay. He pays well, but I've never completely trusted him, and this doesn't help."

"His loss then. You can go into business for yourself," Jessica said as a familiar face entered the bar.

"Where do we know her from?" Beth asked Julia quietly as she looked at the woman talking to Jessica at the other end of the room after taking in an eyeful of the large bartender.

"She looks familiar, but I don't know," Julia said before her eyes went to the woman that still looked like a biker, the woman who she had first glimpsed in that very room.

Jessica waved them over, intercepting Aaron, who would be waiting on them during their dinner.

"This is Trish," Jessica said as she introduced her best friend to the trio, "Trish and I grew up together. This is Alice. I'll let her make her own introductions."

Julia and Caitlin exchanged a look at the name Alice, but remained silent.

"Julia you know, at least she knows you," Beth said to Jessica, "She was my CNC during the warehouse thing. This is Caitlin. She's visiting us for a few days."

"She's cool," Jessica said as she inclined her head to the side slightly to indicate Trish, "you can spill. She has her own thing she's working on."

Trish looked at Jessica and widened her eyes as much as possible.

"The Russian nut job thing," Jessica said, "not the other thing."

"The Russian nut job?" Caitlin asked.

"Maybe we should all sit down," Jessica said as Luke headed their way, "Has everyone met Luke already?"

"Don't you have a business to run?" Jessica asked Luke eventually. It had taken almost an hour for the women seated around the table to share the details of the past few days as they spoke in hushed tones about kidnapping plots and weapons of mass destruction. Hushed, at least, except for that portion of the tale that involved Beth and Jessica meeting.

"And then I see this dominatrix dressed head to toe in leather staring at me, and I'm like, what the fuck?" Jessica explained as everyone else laughed.

"Well I had just watched a biker chick shove a two-hundred pound man into a wall and leave a pretty good dent in it so, yeah, there was a lot of what the fuck going around."

"You got a lot farther inside than I did. You were already on your way out with the goods when that guy stopped me."

"It was strange," Julia said, "I would have thought that they would have that whole building covered with cameras, but nothing."

"That was me," Jessica said, "I put the guy watching those cameras to sleep. Someone should tell him to give up dairy when he wakes up."

"That was why you didn't set off an alarm," Julia said to Beth, "I knew something wasn't right!"

"Then this one disappears in a cloud of smoke before I could grab her," Jessica said as she nodded at Beth.

"You used your toxic gas on her?" Caitlin asked Beth, "and she's still alive? I hate that stuff."

"No. I used a cloudburst on her. No more toxic gas for me. Doctor's orders."

"Toxic gas?" Jessica asked.

"Don't ask," Caitlin said, "It's as bad as it sounds."

"How do you know how bad it is?" Trish asked.

"She used it on me once," Caitlin replied as she looked at her hands.

"No shit?" Jessica asked as she looked from Beth to Caitlin and back again.

"In my defense, she was flinging shards of ice at me the size of a Buick," Beth said.

"What?!"

"And right before she's about to shoot me, she says she has to take a phone call," Jessica said as she nodded at Beth.

"You were going to shoot her?" Trish asked.

"With her dart gun thingy," Luke said, "filled with what exactly? Jess was vague on the details."

"A combination of things, one to paralyze you, one to knock you out, and one to get you seriously tripping."

"Tripping?" Caitlin asked.

"That's what you were gonna shoot her with?" Luke asked.

"Can we go back to the shards of ice the size of a Buick?" Trish asked as she pointed at Caitlin.

"Wait, in the middle of a fight you took a phone call?" Caitlin asked Beth.

"That was my fault," Julia said, "I sent an SOS to Bruce."

"Kyle got a phone call from someone named Bruce right before we headed to the airport," Trish remembered.

"Just a question out of the blue, does Bruce have a shit ton of money?" Jessica asked.

"Yes," Beth and Julia said together.

"Fucking figures. Rich assholes running everything from behind the scenes as per fucking usual."

"Bruce spends enough time at the front of the scene too," Julia said, "he's not your usual rich asshole."

"Julia has a thing for him," Beth said with a smile.

"I do not have a...what's the fucking point," Julia said with a shake of her head as she picked up her glass of IPA.

It was just as Jessica was reminding Luke that he had a business to run that Aaron stopped at their table.

"There's a detective here to see Jessica," he said quietly.

All eyes turned to the dark haired woman standing next to the bar.

"Fucking Misty," Jessica said.

It took a short time for the people sitting around the table to convince Rita to speak openly. Part of the reason for her reluctance was that she had not failed to recognize the woman who had remained silent through their entire interview of Annelie Bodin at 1PP, and Rita was forced to admit that their preconceived notions of that woman had been so far off the mark.

"It's not airtight, but it's pretty close," Trish said, "she had five people killed, and that number's gonna go up if someone doesn't stop her."

"It's close enough to airtight to send it to the grand jury," Rita said as she looked at the man and women seated around the table, "though I don't know what they'll do with it. So it was all of you who grabbed the men at the airport."

"No, that was me," Trish said.

"You," Rita asked, her estimate of the woman changing by the second, "what was their part in this?"

"They didn't have one, they were working on something else."

"Something else?"

Trish looked at Jessica and Beth, both of whom either nodded or shrugged to give their consent.

"Kyle's already given them everything."

"Except our names," Beth said.

"If you weren't involved in the murders, and you haven't done anything illegal, I can keep your names out of it," Rita said.

"Does breaking and entering count?" Jessica asked after a moment of silence.

Rita's eyebrows went up. "Breaking and entering where?"

"There was a thing at a warehouse," Beth said.

"A thing," Rita said before stopping.

Son of a fucking bitch.

"We worked almost two days straight," Caitlin said, "we gave Kyle our findings, and that was it. We were done. The rest was on Kyle, but we forced his hand a little."

"They gave me the results of the first two canisters, and I sent them to the NYPD," Julia said, "he sent them the rest today."

"That was you that warned us what was in the first two canisters."

"Yes. Kyle must have thought that there was no reason to keep the third one secret at that point."

"What was in the third canister?" Rita asked, "I haven't heard anything."

"A weaponized Influenza, crossed with a coronavirus," Caitlin said, "it's pretty bad stuff."

Jesus fucking Christ, Rita thought, that could kill half the city.

"And the NYPD knows this? You're sure?" Rita asked.

"Yes. Why? You look a little funny." Julia asked as Rita wrote in her pad quickly.

"Because they're building a second one someplace in San Diego, and we don't know where yet," Rita said.

"Fuck me," Jessica said as Trish was placing her phone to her ear.

"Hank, we have a situation."

"He's on it, and he's got help. If anyone can find it, they can," Trish said.

"Who?" Rita asked.

Trish took a breath in before answering.

"His name is Hank McCoy. He's a pretty gifted scientist, among other things."

"The SDPD are getting the tracking info from Dan Rasmussen's rental. They'll narrow down the search area and look for likely candidates: warehouses near the water and a power plant," Rita said, "they can handle it."

"He knows how to stay out of the way, and out of sight. Trust me."

"Who the fuck is doing this, and why?" Jessica asked.

"Why did Kyle Richmond send you there?" Rita asked, "he didn't know who it was behind it?"

"He thought Religio Criminis, was behind it," Jess answered.

Beth's face became a blank mask as she heard the familiar organizations name.

"We thought Intergang was behind it," Julia said.

Rita had long since stopped writing in her pad. There was just too much, and she had too little time. She still had to get ready for the raid that was only two hours away.

"We should reconvene tomorrow," Rita said, "I have a prior engagement later tonight, but I need to follow up with all of you."

"I'm not giving an official statement," Trish said, "I'm probably getting fired as it is. I'll lawyer up first."

"Same goes for us," Beth said as she indicated Julia and Caitlin, "no names. We've helped enough. We'll come back and talk more, but not on the record."

"I'll keep everyone's name out of it, but I still need to re-interview everyone here. I'll keep it between us, but I need to fill in all the blanks to send it to the grand jury."

"We're closed on Mondays, so we can all meet here again tomorrow," Luke said.

"I'm flying back to St. Louis tomorrow," Caitlin said, "Unless you really need me to stay."

"Give me your contact info in case I need to talk to you," Rita said as she passed Caitlin her business card, "since you weren't at the warehouse, or at the airport, I can talk to you by phone if I need to. And thank you for your work identifying those canisters. Thank you everyone at this table."

It was at that point that Luke noticed Aaron standing nearby.

"Anyone need anything?" Aaron asked.

Rita could not figure out why everyone sitting at that table thought his question was so funny.