Simon got to the crime scene before Blair and Jim, so when they were finally able to get past the crowds and crime scene barricades, Simon and Taggert filled them in.

Simon started, "Happened shortly after 1 a.m. Was a free midnight screening of 'Speed' for a bunch of high school kids. Completely took out the first five rows. I don't think anyone came out of there without some sort of injury." Jim could pick up the barely controlled anger in Simon's voice. Daryl was close in age to the kids who were killed in the blast. He was taking this one personally.

Jim then asked Taggert, "What kind of bomb was it?"

As Taggert pulled out a small trigger device, he replied, "not bomb. Bombs. Nine of them, placed in a line right behind the movie screen. The blasts were so strong most of the components burned to ash. This was the only thing I could get from 'em. Apparently the whole line was set off by some sort of remote triggering device."

Jim asked to see the device, and Joel handed it over to him. He sniffed discretely at it, then returned it to Joel. Blair and Simon knew that Jim was on to something, but just didn't want to talk about it in front of the Bomb Squad captain. Simon made a mental note to make _sure_ and find out what Ellison was thinking ASAP.

The group saw the news truck pull up, and groaned in unison. Then they saw the Commissioner's car pull up right behind the van, and the four men looked at each other, mentally trying to decide who was going to go where for what. Finally, Simon took charge and broke the stalemate. "Taggert, why don't you see if your team has turned up any more fragments from the bombs. We'll brief the Commissioner on what's going on."

Blair asked, "but what about the press?"

Simon smiled, "the joys of delegation. Oh Buchanon?"

Rafe looked at the press truck, then at his captain's smiling face and groaned. [How do I always get stuck with this job?] He walked over to the waiting reporter and cameraman, looking more like a man going to his execution.

The Commissioner walked over to the three men with well- controlled rage in her eyes. Simon repeated the briefing he and Taggert had just given Jim and Blair a few moments earlier. Diane reviewed the information for a moment, then turned to Jim and confidently asked, "what else do we have?"

Jim replied, "we've only been here a couple of minutes ourselves. But, I got a chance to take a look at one of the detonators, and I smelled residue of gunpowder and plastique, plus a couple of other things I couldn't quite place."

Diane directed them, "go behind what's left of the screen and see if you can find anything else. It seems that our friend who's been calling the mayor's office had a hand in this." As she took a look at the devastation around her, the rage became harder to control, and she started to fight back tears. She looked at Jim and stated in a barely controlled whisper, "I want this guy, Jim. Do whatever it takes, but I want him."

Jim nodded, and he and Blair headed back to the blast site. The more time he spent with the Commissioner, the more he respected how much she cared for the city and its people. He focused, filtering out the normal commotion of the investigation, and turned his senses up full blast, trying to pick up a hint of anything unusual. He picked up on the scent of the bombs again, so he filtered out the smells of the gunpowder and plastique in an attempt to determine what the mysterious scents were. In the distance, he caught the smells again, but stronger.

Blair watched his partner's attention change, and he asked him, "Jim? What's up?"

Still concentrating on the mystery scents, he replied, "remember when I was telling the Commissioner about a couple of unidentifiable scents on the detonator?" Blair nodded. Jim continued, "I found them again, but in a stronger concentration. It's coming from over here." He moved closer to the smells, Blair fast on his heels. He was so focused on the smells that when he reached the bag they were coming from, he almost zoned out.

Blair gently grabbed Jim by the shoulder to help him stay fully alert, and only then did they notice what it was that Jim had in his hands. He gently laid the bag on the ground, forced Blair two steps behind him, and both men yelled full throttle, "Taggert!"

Startled, Joel ran over to the two men, asking, "What's up, guys?"

Jim replied, "We may have a live one here."

Joel cursed, and started barking orders to his team out of his fear. "All right, clear these people out of here! Now! Get my gear! And where are my tools?!" Without thinking, Taggert reflexively reached into the bag, fingering for any sign of the detonator he had been examining all night. After he had worked with Blair, Joel learned to channel his fear and direct it into activity instead of letting it paralyze him. Now, watching him work on a potentially very deadly bomb, Blair wondered if he had made a mistake.

Inexplicably, Joel relaxed. Blair's eyes nearly popped out of his head, and he swallowed hard, wondering if the bomb was going to go off any second. Joel then yelled, "It's clear!" and Blair almost collapsed on the ground in relief. Intrigued, he walked back over to Taggert to hear how Joel could know the bomb was definitely _not_ going to go off. Jim, Simon and Diane followed closely behind. Joel then pulled the explosive device out of the bag and explained, "When the signal from the remote control detonated the other nine bags, a fuse in this one's triggering device short-circuited. That's why the bomb didn't go off. This one's a dud."

Simon looked at the bag, then looked around the room and ordered, "All right gentlemen, I want _every_ piece of dust in this area swept up and tagged as evidence."

Diane knelt down near the bag and asked the group surrounding her, "so how much closer does this get us to catching this guy?"

A female voice answered her, "I'd say you're as close as you're going to get."

All four men turned around, surprised, to find Sharon standing next to the charred remains of the first row of seats. Blair was the first to be able to stammer out, "what are you doing here?"

Nonchalantly, Sharon produced a leather wallet, and replied, "my 'day job'." Blair took the wallet from her, and absent-mindedly traced the letters "FBI" on one side of the walled. He looked up into Sharon's eyes and she seemed almost oddly apologetic. He had a million questions he wanted to ask, but before he could get up the courage, Diane's single-minded focus won out, as she asked, "what do you mean, 'as close as we're going to get' ?"

Sharon walked up to where the group was standing and reported her observations. "This guy's creative, and he's trying very hard to make sure we can't stop him before he does damage - that's why he used so many explosive devices. If we get one, he can still set off any one of the others and BOOM! we're history. He's also very smart - - I have a feeling he's warming up to something much bigger. That device you found was a lucky break - I think he was testing them to see how much damage they could do. Now that he knows, he'll probably get more creative, maybe change his MO a couple of times, but I guarantee you'll always find one or more of those," pointing to the detonator, "at each crime scene. By the time he gets to his 'big finish', whatever it happens to be, he's going to be very hard to catch. But, once it happens, he'll drop out of sight. We'll never get him after that. He may want to be famous, but he doesn't want to be found."

Diane sarcastically commented, "Oh gee, that's encouraging."

Confused, Jim asked, "just how do _you_ know all this?"

Still shocked, still holding the wallet, Blair was just barely able to stammer out, "she's FBI."

Sharon winced at the betrayed tone in Blair's voice, while Jim and Simon just gawked at her in shock.

All business, Diane asked, "can you get a full profile on my desk by morning?"

Not taking her eyes off of Blair, Sharon nodded. She then suggested, "oh, and make sure forensics gets good pictures of the crowd outside. I don't know if he's still here, but it's likely that he's going to be following the investigation closely."

Diane turned to Simon and suggested, "You'll probably want to do what she says."

Simon knew that the Commissioner's 'suggestions' were tantamount to orders, and he barked out directions to the first poor forensics photographer that happened to get in his way.

Diane concluded, "all right, I'll see all five of you in my office bright and early tomorrow, say, 8 a.m.?" Blair, Jim, Joel, Simon and Sharon all nodded. Diane continued, "all right, then. Let me go take the press monkey off poor Buchanon's back. Why _do_ you always stick him with that job anyway?"

Jim, Simon and Blair chuckled a little as the Commissioner left. They then turned their attention to Sharon. Defensively, she backed away from the three men a little, declaring, "look guys, I really am here as a favor to Diane, all right? I'm not looking to step on anybody's toes or declare Federal jurisdiction over this case or anything. I just want to see this guy hang, same as you do. I only came in on this side of the case when Diane called me tonight. If I find out that they want to make a federal case out of it - so to speak - then I'll probably ask for the case so that we don't have to deal with anyone other than the people we've already got. Is that a problem, gentlemen?"

Jim asked, "why didn't you tell us this before?"

Sharon smiled a little, and replied, "think about it, how do you guys usually think of FBI agents?" All three men guiltily shuffled their feet and looked around. Sharon continued, "Exactly. Bomb threats, for the time being, are a local matter. It only hits Federal jurisdiction when the bomb goes off or if the threats are to a government building. I wanted my hands in this case as little as possible. Hell, I even took vacation time yesterday. How I'm going to explain my presence here to my ASAC now, I'll never know."

Simon relaxed a little. It did seem to be that, for once, the FBI was on their side. And right now, they had a job to do. "I'm sure Diane will help with that in the morning. In the meantime, I believe we all have work to do?" Confident that the revelations between them were going to be dealt with later, the group split up, eager to finish the investigation and get some rest before their meeting with the Commissioner.

Socks watched his master skulk around the house in frustration. He had never seen the man so angry! The man was yelling at himself in anger and frustration, "I can't believe the last one didn't work! And that cop found it! I assumed they'd just think it was a sandbag or something and throw it away during the cleanup! How the hell did he figure out it was a bomb? Well, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again! Isn't that right, precious?" The man started to make kissing noises at his dog, and the dog wrinkled up his already heavily wrinkled face. He hated when his master did that.

The man took the last nineteen packages out of the bag and started ripping them open, dumping coffee grounds and potpourri onto the concrete floor. This time, he was going to have to be creative. Maybe Ted really did have something going there...

[Well, that went well,] thought Sharon. Once they had gotten out of the meeting with the Commissioner, Sharon gave Jim and Blair the morning off, so that she could go meet with her ASAC about the case. Luckily, he had already caught the news reports that morning, and was just about to assign someone to the case when she called. It didn't take much convincing to talk him into assigning her to the case, once she made it clear how many connections she had with the Cascade PD. Plus, the fact that she was already entered in the competition gave her the perfect cover. All she had to do was turn in a field report once a week (as always), and the case was hers. She breathed a sigh of relief when he told her she could work alone on this one. She hated working with a partner, especially since she hadn't had a real partner since Adrianna had left the Bureau to raise a family. [Better not think about that too much,] she signed, [especially since, for some odd unknown reason, you can't even seem to get a date. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you're lucky if you get sleep, let alone free time?] The only condition her ASAC gave her was that if they don't catch the guy before the end of the Festival, then the Bureau takes over the task force and he takes over the case. In her eyes, that wasn't a problem at all. They had to catch this guy before the Festival was over. If they didn't, they might as well have the whole Bureau looking for him, because they won't find him.

Since selling her ASAC on the case took a lot less time than she had planned, Sharon decided to take advantage of the opportunity and hit Rainier library to do some research. She had heard about a new research computer the school just got with some rich guy's money, and she was dying to try it out. Maybe she would be able to find some new book about neuro-sensory connectivity hidden deep within the annals of the library that she hadn't discovered yet, just because the book didn't have 'senses' in the title.

After a half-hour wait (which was short, mostly because most of the undergrads in the school must have been in Florida that week), Sharon was finally able to get on the machine. She typed in 'senses', and waited. And waited. And waited.

After what seemed like forever, the computer came up with a list of over 1,000 books. Sharon's jaw dropped; she had thought there were only a few dozen books on the subject in the library. She printed out the rather long list and took it over to a study cubicle, hoping to maybe narrow things down slightly before she had to meet Blair and Jim at one.

She was encouraged to see that each time a book was referenced, the computer included a four-line excerpt from the book that included the key search word. This would be a great help in trying to narrow the search. She started scanning each page of titles, and came across an interesting excerpt. She read aloud, "...genetic predisposition toward enhanced senses...", and read the full excerpt to herself. [Fascinating,] she thought, [maybe I should check this out. Someone like this would make a great control subject.]

She found the book she was looking for in the fourth sub- basement, way in the back of the archives. After she finished sneezing from the dust, [Has anyone been back here since Kennedy was shot?], she found the book she was looking for, then groaned. It finally hit her that the book was talking about pre-civilized cultures, and was probably pretty useless to her work. What are the chances of finding someone from a pre-civilized culture in modern- day Cascade, anyway? It sounded like fascinating reading, though, and she grabbed the book to take home with her anyway. She looked at her watch, and sprinted toward the elevator, realizing that she was going to need to hurry if she was going to make it home in time to let in Blair and Jim for Jim's lessons. As she stopped to catch her breath in the elevator, she examined the book and realized it didn't have as much dust on it as the other volumes in the archives had had. The older volumes still had a sign-out card in the back, so she turned to it, wondering who else in the University had an interest in sensory research, since she knew she was the only Music major doing anything on it.

When she discovered that the last person to have checked out the book was a graduate anthropology student by the name of Blair Sandburg, she almost missed her floor.

Sharon was waiting for them when Blair and Jim came up the elevator to the loft. She set up Jim with the spectrographs, a microphone and a set of headphones, so that he could use the special tape she had made for him to rehearse his songs for the show.

[Now comes the hard part,] thought Sharon. She walked over to Blair and sat next to him at the kitchen table, where he had encamped himself under a mountain of exams. She stretched her arms over head and stated, "Jim seems to be doing really well with the songs we picked out yesterday."

Never taking his eyes off of the exam he was grading, Blair agreed. "Yeah. Maybe I don't give enough credit to the amount of time he spends singing in the shower every morning."

Much as she loved to get into a conversation about the acoustics of a nice hot shower, Sharon tried to keep her focus on the true topic at hand. [Or at least,] she thought, [the topic I'm trying to ease my way into.] She confessed, "I have a few ideas about how to help him overcome his stage fright, but I'm not sure if any of them are going to work. Any suggestions?"

Blair shook his head. "Not really. Why do you ask?"

Sharon shrugged, took a sip of ice water from the glass sitting on the table, and tried to keep her voice level as she simply commented, "I don't know. I guess I just thought that was what guides did for their Sentinels."

A vampire couldn't have drained the color from Blair's face as fast as that statement had. His grading pen dropped to the floor, forgotten, and he was sure he had stopped breathing for a minute. Noticing the extreme response of his partner, Jim turned the volume of the headphones down a bit and focused his hearing on their conversation to find out what was going on.

Still in shock, all Blair could ask was, "How did you-?"

Before he could even finish the sentence, Sharon asked him, "this book look familiar, Blair?"

He saw the old volume on the table, and weakly nodded, closing his eyes and absentmindedly rubbing the bridge of his nose where his glasses once sat. The book was one of the first that he had read when he first started his Sentinel research. He knew that most of the book dealt with the hierarchies of pre-civilized cultures, which didn't seem to fit in that well with her research. However, the one chapter that _was_ on Sentinels was enough to get him interested in doing Sentinel research for his original dissertation, so he asked her, "How much of it have you read?"

"Not much. Only enough to put two and two together when I saw your name on the sign-out list on the back. How many enhanced senses does he have?"

Absentmindedly, he replied, "At least the five physical ones. I've seen hints of an enhanced sixth sense, but since the existence of a sixth sense is debatable, I can't quite confirm or deny its plausibility." His defenses back up, he then asked, "Look, what do you want from us?"

Anticipating that reaction, she reassured him, "Nothing. I was at the library this morning, and I stumbled across the book in the process of gaining material for my own research. I suspected that Jim might be a Sentinel from what I remembered of watching the two of you work at the crime scene last night, but I knew I wouldn't be able to confirm it without talking to you first. Right now, I'm only thinking of this in terms of how to help the three of us catch that creep who blew up all those kids last night." She talked like there was no one else on the task force, which for some reason was almost instinctively reassuring to Blair. Curious, Sharon asked, "I'm not the first person to put two and two together, am I?"

Grimacing a little at the unpleasant memory, Blair replied, "No. There was an ex-CIA agent by the name of Lee Brackett-"

Sharon cut him off again. "Brackett knows about you two? Yeesh, say no more. I can see why you'd be so defensive of your secret." She shuddered involuntarily.

Now curious himself, Blair asked, "You know him?"

"Not personally, I just know enough _of_ him to know that the guy's a complete loony, and unbelievably dangerous. I can't believe they didn't find a reason to lock him up years ago."

"Actually, he's dead. He was killed while trying to come after us a while back."

Sharon sighed in relief. "Good riddance to bad rubbish, as they say. That leaves one less psycho for the world to worry about."

Blair's tone darkened for just a split second as he commented, "Great. That just leaves us with the psycho at hand."

At that point, Sharon noticed the unusual silence in the room. She glanced over to Jim, who had stopped rehearsing and seemed to be listening intently to the music. Blair, however, noticed the clenched jaw and glazed-over look in his eyes, and recognized immediately that the Sentinel was completely zoned out. [He was probably eavesdropping on our conversation when I nearly had a heart attack and must have zoned on something when he found out we were talking about him. I'll have to ask him what he remembers. And then give him a hard time for sticking his nose in other people's business. That is, when he snaps out of it.] He took Jim by the shoulders and gave him a gentle shake, bringing him back to reality. Jim looked over at his Guide, then remembered the last bits and pieces of the conversation he had zoned out on. Since Blair hadn't been tied up and gagged, she definitely wasn't psychotic, and since Blair didn't seem to be too angry or in any sort of self-sacrificing overprotective guide mode, he figured that Sharon could be trusted. One thing Jim had been learning from Blair was how to read people, a talent that the young anthropologist had in spades. The first person he had learned to read, consequently, was his guide, and he had learned to implicitly trust the younger man's judgment, especially when it came to anything related to his Sentinel abilities. If Blair thought Sharon could be trusted, she could be trusted. He looked directly into the eyes of his young guide and asked, "so what'd I miss, chief?"

Blair tried his very best to act solemn, like he was delivering news about the end of the world. "She knows, Jim."

Jim looked at Blair like he knew that the younger man was trying to drive him up a wall. "I know that, Sandburg. That much I figured out. So did the two of you come up with anything productive out of your little conversation?"

Blair shook his head.

By this point, Sharon was totally confused. She didn't understand much about this Sentinel stuff yet, and everything she had just witnessed had thrown her for a bit of a loop. She nudged Blair's shoulder to get his attention and asked, "Blair? What just happened here?"

Blair realized that what little reading Sharon had done probably didn't prepare her to see a zone-out in action. He had barely understood the concept himself until he had to save a zoned-out Jim from a speeding garbage truck. Blair looked up at Sharon and explained, "Jim sometimes gets so focused on using one of his 'senses' that his concentration goes on overdrive, and he almost loses touch with reality, to a degree. We call it a 'zone-out'."

Blair could see the light start to dance behind Sharon's blue eyes, and somehow he knew that she was up to something. She sat down and asked Jim, "Can you focus on one of your senses without 'zoning-out'?"

Jim replied, "Sure. The best way for me to avoid 'zoning- out' is actually to focus on more than one sense at the same time."

"So you can use, say, both your enhanced sight and your enhanced hearing at the same time?" Jim nodded, not quite sure where this was going. Sharon continued, "And if you can focus your senses in a heightened way, can you do the opposite? Can you desensitize them as well if you needed to?" Jim nodded again. Sharon looked at Blair, then at Jim, then excitedly declared, "I think I know how we can overcome your stage fright!"

Blair looked at Sharon for a moment with a quizzical statement on his face. Then, it hit him, and they started trading off phrases like they were finishing each other's thoughts:

"If we can work on distracting you so that your mind is focused on something else..."

"Like finding the bomber..."

"And make sure that you can still sing at the same time..."

"Then your mind will be so focused on trying to do three things at once..."

"You won't have time to get nervous."

Jim stopped them both. "Whoa, whoa guys! Slow down! How exactly do you propose to do this?"

Blair and Sharon looked at each other and shrugged. They hadn't quite figured that part out yet.

Jim laughed. Seeing this exchange between his vocal coach and his partner, it seemed that focusing on several things at once was probably Sharon's specialty.