A/N: Again, I apologize for the short nature of this chapter. But many of you are anxiously awaiting updates! I wanted to give you something before Christmas came around :-) My ultimate goal is to finish this before the January premiere, but we'll see how everything goes. Happy holidays!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Cody!" Toby hollered, nearly clearing the front door from its hinges as he burst into the house. "Get your ass out here!"

Holmes and Hanna were hot on his heels, panting as they followed suit through the front entrance. Hanna was now barefoot, her pumps buried and forgotten in her purse, retired for the night due to blistering.

"I don't think he's here, man," Holmes quipped. "To be honest, I don't think he'd be stupid enough to come back tonight, anyway."

Toby did not appear to hear him. "Cody!" he continued yelling, beginning to throw open every door on the first floor in a desperate search.

"She turned her goddamn phone off," Hanna muttered. "She's ignoring me on purpose."

"What the hell is going on?"

Holmes and Hanna turned abruptly to see Lancaster looking down on them from the second-floor landing.

"Dude, where is Cody?" Holmes demanded as he painfully watched Toby continue ransacking various rooms, as though he would find Cody cowering in a closet or beneath a couch cushion.

Lancaster heaved an exhausted sigh. "I'm going to tell you the same thing I told him: I'm not getting involved."

"Well you picked a great fucking time to play Switzerland, didn't you?" Holmes shouted. "You've had that asshole's back for years – whether he was right or wrong – and now, when you know damn well he's treading dangerous ground, you're going to play dumb?"

Toby emerged from the den, looking particularly harried in his investigation. "He's not down here."

Lancaster was studying them carefully, appearing to be enduring some distant internal struggle.

"C'mon, man," Holmes continued, striving as best he could to reign in his anger. "He's always been a dick to you, too. Now's the time to show him you can't be pushed around."

Lancaster sighed once more, beginning a slow descent on the staircase. "Did you try the Mack Shack yet?"

"The what?" Toby demanded incredulously.

"His parents' restaurant," Lancaster replied. "He calls it the Mack Shack. Whenever he's supposed to be in charge, he closes down early to bring girls in."

"Man whore," Hanna muttered under her breath, unintended for anyone else's ears. Holmes pretended not to hear.

"I didn't even know his parents had a restaurant in town," he admitted.

"I'm going to kill him," Toby vowed through gritted teeth, subconsciously massaging his knuckles in preparation. "Where is it?"

"Hold your horses, Cowboy," Hanna urged sarcastically, though the support was apparent. She lightly touched his shoulder. "You need to calm down."

Toby wrenched away from her affectionate gesture, none-too-lightly. "I'm past the point of staying calm," he insisted. "He's gone too far. And I'm going to tear him limb from limb."

Holmes was taken aback. He had never seen Toby so irrationally furious. There was a dangerous glint in his eye that was suggestive of a potential to make a very big, very critical, homicide-related mistake.

"You're not going anywhere," he decided definitively, grabbing Hanna's arm and heading towards the door. "We will take care of it. You need to stay here and figure out a way to pull it together."

"What?" Toby demanded, looking scandalized. "You're seriously not letting me come with you?"

"I'm seriously not," Holmes confirmed. "Lancaster – text me the name of the restaurant."

"I'm coming," Toby said firmly. "You can't stop me."

"Listen to me," Holmes commanded, stepping forward to get very close to Toby's face, hoping to come off as at least mildly intimidating to the taller man. "You are a loose canon right now. And I will not watch you throw everything away over this dick head. When I told you I had your back, I meant it. And I will take care of this for you. Do you hear me?"

Toby was glaring at him now, grinding his teeth in frustration. "I can't believe you don't trust me."

"I trust you with my life, bro," Holmes declared. And he meant it. "I just don't trust you with his."

Toby seemed taken aback by this as he tremulously fell back into a sitting position on the couch. He did not appear to have a rational response.

"We'll make sure she's safe," Holmes promised, grabbing a very flustered Hanna once more to lead her out the door with him. "Lancaster – make sure he stays put."

Before Toby could pull his thoughts back to the surface, they were already gone. He chanced a glance at Lancaster, who was following through on his agreement to text the location to Holmes. He looked tired and downtrodden, as though this precarious ethical dilemma had worn him out.

"Do you really think he's there?" Toby asked quietly, trying as hard as possible to control the venom in his voice.

"Hard to say," Lancaster confessed, collapsing into a heap on the couch beside Toby. "He may be a douche, but he's not an idiot. He knows I was pissed at him earlier…and he probably knows I'd give him away. So I don't honestly know what his next move will be."

Toby considered this. In all reality, Lancaster was probably right. Cody was calculative: he knew how to get what he wanted, and how to do it under the cover of clever reasoning.

He distinctly recalled the time that Cody's ex-girlfriend was suspicious of him cheating – which he was. She would follow him every time he left the house, hoping to catch him in the act. But instead, he figured out a way to sneak around her detective work.

"You just gotta do the last thing they'd expect," he had laughed, after explaining his "brilliant" technique of squeezing in clandestine affairs. "You do it right in front of their nose, where they never bother to look."

"Shit," Toby mumbled, feeling the proverbial light bulb illuminating in his brain.

"What?"

Toby froze. Lancaster had been ordered not to let him leave the house. Not that he could do much to stop him…but Toby was well aware that this would present a barrier.

"Nothing," he said slowly. "Just…really worried."

"I know, dude," Lancaster said sympathetically. "I'm sorry Cody's gotta be such an ass."

"Yeah," Toby agreed distractedly. He was going over potential plans of action in his head, trying to figure out which would work best. He could tie Lancaster down…he could drug him…he could talk him into letting him go…

None of those things were very plausible, though.

"She seems like a nice girl," Lancaster continued. "I hate to think that he's trying to take advantage of her."

Not the right thing to say. Toby's blood simmered heavily at this statement. Over his dead body.

"I don't think she'll let him do anything," Lancaster added quickly, taking note of the expression on Toby's face. "She's pretty smart. She won't fall for his tricks."

Toby distantly willed Lancaster to continue talking. It was keeping him distracted as Toby pieced together his plan. He was silently appraising his potential escape routes, knowing that time was of the essence. And if Lancaster kept talking, he may not notice the wheels turning in Toby's head…

"It's a wonder he's even still around, you know," Lancaster muttered. "He's violated the code of army brotherhood so many times, you'd think he'd be out on his ass by now."

"Yeah," Toby agreed obscurely, glancing over his shoulder towards the back door. Yeah…that would be the only way.

"He'd deserve it, too," Lancaster said. "For all the times I put my ass on the line for him…"

"I think I'm going to go take a shower," Toby interrupted. "I need to clear my head."

Lancaster nodded noncommittally as he turned on the television and began channel surfing. Toby calmly excused himself from the couch and headed toward the back bathroom, carefully watching Lancaster as he went. He seemed thoroughly distracted by the episode of South Park that he had found, and was chuckling to himself at one of Cartman's many outbursts.

Toby flipped on the shower head to beginning the running of the water. He peeked around the corner of the bathroom, seeing that Lancaster was still occupied. He stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door, hurriedly tiptoeing his way to the garage door.

Lancaster would never be the wiser.