Backstage, Jim took another sip of ice water, and swallowed hard. He thought he couldn't be more nervous than he was before Sharon started her set, but then he heard "Someone to Watch Over Me" bring the house down. [Oh, she warmed up the crowd all right,] he thought, [and now I'm going to hit them like a bucket of ice cold bleach.] His heart started to race in his ears, his palms started to sweat...

And the next thing he noticed was Sharon shaking him out of a zone-out. Sharon took one look at his and rolled her eyes. "It's a good thing Blair's going to be with you backstage at the competition," she declared, "'cause I'd hate having to do this all the time. You got so overwhelmed by your nervousness that you zoned on it. I'm surprised your senses haven't gone haywire." She then directed Jim, "Don't worry - the owner's an ex-stand-up comic. He's stalling for us until you're ready to go. Listen to me - FORGET ABOUT THE CROWD. When you get out on stage, focus on Blair, and take a couple of deep breaths to relax. He's sitting in the back of the room, so when you're on stage, if you feel yourself starting to get nervous, focus back on him. If you sing in his direction, everyone will be able to hear you just fine. After you relax, nod to the owner behind the bar, and he'll start the music. Focus on that as much as you can without zoning, and try to visualize yourself being back at the loft yesterday during rehearsal. When the song's done, I'll come back out, we can take the bow together, I'll sing a couple more songs, and that will be that. Think you can handle it?" Jim nodded. She then kissed Jim on the cheek, lightly enough so that he wouldn't get her lipstick on his cheek, and whispered in his ear, "then break a leg, kid!"

She turned him around to look toward the stage, and he had to blink a couple of times. She was right, his senses were going haywire. It took a couple of seconds to be able to adjust his focus for the lights on the stage, and adjust his hearing to hear the guy at the microphone. Everything kicked in again just in time to hear Jack, the bar's owner, announce to the crowd, "ladies and gentlemen, Jim Ellison!" As Jim nervously stepped onto the stage, Jack backed away from the mike and went over to shake Jim's hand. Jack then leaned in and told him, "my wife's behind the bar. Tape's cued and ready for you. Break a leg!" Jack then made his way offstage, and Jim turned to face the crowd. He scanned the room for the face of his guide, and, finding him in the back of the room, he instinctively relaxed. He was then able to look briefly at the other faces in the room, when he noticed Deborah Reeves sitting next to his partner. Jim sat on the stool near the mike and smiled. This was going to be easier than he thought. He nodded to the older woman behind the bar, who started the music. He then started snapping his fingers to the well-known Motown music, and the crowd eagerly followed. His timing was perfect as he sang "My Girl" with the ease of a pro, working the crowd as much as he needed to, but not taking his eyes off Deborah otherwise. Deborah, in turn, smiled broadly, her eyes lighting up the rest of her face. Jim was milking the encouragement for all it was worth - some of the more inebriated members of the audience felt comfortable enough to even start singing with him on the chorus, and by the final round of the chorus, he was encouraging the entire audience to join him. Sharon, who had made it to the back to sit next to Blair, smiled broadly. Their plan to cure Jim of any perceived 'Stage Fright' worked like a charm. [Kiss that excuse goodbye, Ellison!] thought Sharon.

Jim finished the song, and received a chorus of loud, raucous, enthusiastic applause in response. Jim nodded his head in a simple bow, then turned to hurry off the stage. However, the crowd had other ideas, and they screamed loudly for an encore. Jim looked over at his 'support table', and found that they were the loudest of the bunch. He sat back down on the stool, and shrugged in happily resigned defeat. [Looks like I'm not getting off this stage for a while,] he thought.

He nodded over to Mike and his wife behind the bar, who laughed and pressed play again on the recorder. He ran through his other three 'Festival' songs, including "Layla", before the crowd finally let him get off the stage. As the atmosphere in the club returned to lightly played jazz music and quiet conversation, he made his way back to the table where Blair, Sharon and Deborah were now sitting, and sat next to Deborah. They had already ordered him a beer, and each of them offered him their congratulations on a great show. Sharon added, "I don't think you're going to have any problems when we compete on Monday. If you sing then like you sang up there tonight, you're going to do great."

Confused, Deborah asked Jim, "Wait a minute, did she say compete?"

Blair replied, "Yeah. Jim's signed up for Cascade of Stars next week. Gonna be the first cop ever to win the male vocalist category." He smiled and clinked beer bottles with Jim in a toast.

Jim then added modestly, "Please. I'll be lucky if I get past the first round." He then turned to Deborah and added with great affection, "it's good to see you again, Deborah. When did you get back in town?"

"Earlier this week."

Intrigued by the tone in Jim's voice, Sharon asked, low enough for only the Sentinel to hear, "so, it this the lady friend-?" Jim subtly nodded his head and smiled as he listened to Deborah continue, "good thing, too." Deborah took a gulp of her beer and commented to the group, "the night I got back I got called in for an explosion at a movie theater. Some nutcase planted ten bombs behind the screen. Can you believe that? And then he sent out twenty mailbombs the next day. It's been unreal."

The other three members of the table shifted nervously in their seats. Deborah knew the looks on their faces, and asked them, "don't tell me-you guys are investigating this one?"

Jim replied, "Yeah, actually. That's why I'm competing at the Festival. We think that's where the bomber's going to strike next."

Concerned, she turned to Jim and asked him, "are you sure about that?"

Grimly, Jim nodded. "We," motioning to the other three around the table, "have to go in and stop him before he does anything worse."

Calmly, Deborah then asked the group, "room on this team for one more?"

Jim was about to voice his objections when Deborah cut him off. "I know what you're going to say, Ellison, and you can forget it. You can't expect me to see what he did to those kids and not want to do something about it. Now you _know_ I can hold my own in an investigation. Is there some reason why I can't act as, say, Sharon's manager?"

Jim knew full well when Deborah was in 'pit bull' mode, and he knew there was no way to stop her. "All right, we'll talk to Simon in the morning."

"Or you _could_ talk to me now," replied a deep, familiar voice. The four people at the table turned to look behind Jim and saw Simon standing arm-in-arm in a rather cozy pose with Commissioner McPherson. He continued, "we just wanted to come over and congratulate you two on a great show tonight."

Deborah greeted the pair standing next to her, "Captain, Commissioner. It's good to see you again."

Simon replied, "it's good to see you too. And you _are_ welcome to work with us on this case. I'll contact your captain tomorrow. We need all the help we can get."

"Thank you, captain."

"Please, when we're off duty, call me Simon." Diane then addressed the group, "well, that settles that. Goodnight, folks. The _captain_ and I need to get home." The emphasis on _captain_ was as flirtatious as any of them had ever seen the Commissioner get, and it was very hard to keep a straight face.

Simon apologized, quickly adding, "she's blasted out of her skull, so I'm driving her home. Good night, all. Again, congratulations you guys." He then turned to his boss, who was now his inebriated charge. "Come on, Diane-let's get you out of here."

The last words they heard the Commissioner speak were, "your place or mine, handsome?"

Jim heard Simon's audible sigh as the couple walked out the door.

It was only then that the group at the table allowed themselves to burst out laughing.

Sharon couldn't sleep - not like she had expected to. A great performance always did that to her. And there had been two tonight. It had taken years of martial arts training for her to have the strength to face her fears and overcome her stage fright, and yet Jim was able to get past it in a week. She couldn't have been prouder of Jim. She smiled at how well Blair's plan worked in putting his partner at ease on stage. [The whole Sentinel-Guide relationship was probably a big factor in that too,] she thought, [I wonder how the whole thing really works. I'll have to ask Blair about it sometime.] But, now was not the time to be distracted by thoughts of academia.

[Now's the time to catch the jerk who tried to blow up my apartment.]

Everyone on Simon's end of the task force had spent the day conducting interviews with anyone and everyone who had had a connection to the victims. The second their reports were finished, they were taken from their desks and put in a sealed case in the captain's office, and Simon personally delivered the case to the loft just before they left for the club. Now, with the world sleeping peacefully below her, she opened the case and began to read through the files.

Four hours later, she put down the fortieth witness statement and rubbed her temples. Throughout the reports, six names kept coming up. One name matched the warehouse club list, and one the list of rejected contestants for the festival. She wished she had more to go on.

[He's going to kill me for calling this late, but...] She looked out the window at the glorious sunrise, and started to daydream about her morning workouts, and, consequently, her loft windows. Then she remembered her call. [Correction, he's going to kill me for calling this early...] She dialed a number she knew as well as her own.

After five rings, a very sleepy voice answered in return, "if this isn't a beautiful woman, I'm hanging up."

She decided to play with him a little. "Good! Then I guess you'll be willing to do whatever I ask?"

"Share. Only you would call me at," she heard him fumble for his alarm clock, "6 a.m. on a Saturday. What do you want?"

"I need you to check on a couple of names for me."

"And this is too hard for Cascade PD?"

"No, but Jay -"

"I know, I know, I can get you more than they ever could." Now fully awake, she heard him lay down the receiver and pull some thing up to his bed, which she could only assume was his laptop. Calmly, he asked her, "okay, now what are their names?" She gave him the list and the phone number to the loft, which he dutifully typed into the computer, replying, "I'll run the check and get back to you," when he was finished.

She smiled. "Thanks, Jay-"

"I know, I know. Just catch this guy, okay? God, if I ever cashed in on the number of times you said you owed me one..."*click*

Sharon smiled as she hung up the phone, and returned to the stack of statements.

One hour later, the phone rang. Sharon had the phone close to her, and picked it up on the first ring, not wanting to awaken the other two men, who seemed to still be trying to sleep in. It could only be one person, anyway. "Okay, Jay, whad'ya got?"

"How did you know it was me?"

"I'm psychic, now spill!"

"Okay, Okay! God, you _are_ testy when you don't get sleep! Anyway, your instincts were right, as usual. This is _big_. Once I traced back the names, I found out that they were all aliases for the same guy."

She had to suppress a yell for joy that would have easily woken up her two 'roommates'. There was little need, though, as she watched a boxers-and-t-shirt-clad Jim descended the stairs. [Must've heard the phone ring,] thought Sharon. "Well, don't keep me in suspense, Jay. Who is he?"

"Name's Alexander Josef Grenofsky-goes by the stage name of A.J. Green usually. His ancestry goes back to Russian nobility; his family was one of the few to escape the communist revolution with _all_ their assets intact, if you know what I mean. Taught in the best schools, knows six languages, traveled Europe as a kid, housed in the best sanitariums-"

"Excuse me?"

"Yep, A.J. here's nuttier than fruitcake. Housed involuntarily by his parents until the age of 18, when the parents died without a will, and he became sole heir to the family fortune. He checked himself out of that place soon after that."

"What was the diagnosis?"

"Psychotic episodes, combined with hallucinations and delusions of grandeur. Real whacko, but apparently he was smart enough to convince the doctors that he was all right. Anyway, reports of his whereabouts are sketchy for years after the hospital, but he often popped up under any of the names you gave me."

"Do you have a location for him in Cascade?"

"Nope. Unfortunately none of the aliases checked out in that department. I even checked the address used for the warehouse club. It's a Boston Market restaurant. If this is your guy, I haven't a clue where he is."

She sighed deeply, then decided she better let her friend get some rest. There were people who needed to know this information. "E-mail me the profile to the same address as before as soon as you can, then get some rest, okay?"

Jay yawned, then reluctantly agreed, "Yeah, I could probably use a couple of hours zzz's. What about you?"

"Oh, I'll just grab the back room at the dojo for a while and work off my stress after this is all over. This is our best chance to get this guy, and I'll be damned if I'm the one who drops the ball this time. Thanks again for your help."

Jay yawned again. "Anytime, Share. Later." *click*

As she hung up the phone with Jay, she turned to see Blair come out of hibernation, looking to get some coffee and start the day. Jim took one look at her and asked, "Didn't you get _any_ sleep last night?"

"Nope. Spent the night looking over statements. Listen, can you guys get your e-mail from here, or do we need to go over to the station?"

Blair replied, "We can get it from here, off my laptop. Why?"

Sharon calmly announced, "I think I found us a prime suspect. Jay's sending me the information on him now."

Once the three of them got a chance to read over the information from Jay, Jim immediately called Simon and asked him to get a task force meeting together. Simon then called Diane, who called Julia, and together they were able to assemble the task force in record time. They briefed the team (which now was forced (courtesy of Sharon's ASAC) to include three dozen plainclothes FBI agents) handed out Jay's computer-enhanced photo of A.J. Green, and each person went off to their respective assignments for the day.

Now, as she watched the outdoor concert that marked the beginning of the Festival, she wondered idly why they called her co-workers 'undercover' FBI agents. Twelve men in dark wool suits in the middle of a 'casual' outdoor concert were hardly inconspicuous. But, if one of them happened to spot their Mr. Green, they could be wearing Mardi Gras outfits for all she cared, their presence would still be worthwhile.

This being the headline event for the day, the primary investigative team (Jim, Blair, Deborah, and herself, along with one of the eight backup squads), were stationed in various places around the concert site. All were in agreement that if Green were going to strike anywhere, this would be probably be it. In the command truck, Simon opened up the radio frequency and asked the team to do a mike check. As sixteen voices answered him in response, he asked, "Okay guys, anything yet?"

He heard fifteen "no"s come back in response. It was the one person who didn't say no that worried him. "Jim? Jim?"

Just as Jim was about to tell Simon that he saw no sign of Green, something in the corner of his eye caught his attention: a tall man, pale, unusually thin, with dark slicked-back hair and dark sunglasses. Jim focused on him for a bit as he removed his glasses, and noticed that the man had green eyes and was holding what looked to be a small cellular phone, except for the fact that the antenna was a couple of inches too long. In his dark suit, the concertgoers might have mistaken him for one of the FBI agents, except for the fact that he was walking a black pitbull with white paws.

The Sentinel, however, knew exactly who it was.

"Green," he muttered under his breath. He then took off to catch him, just barely giving Blair enough time to yell into the mike, "Simon, I think Jim's just found Green. He's heading south toward Mariner's stadium!" and take off after his partner.