A burly guard, head shaved to hide what appeared at Emily's first glance to be premature balding, pushed open the thick door to the visitation room and led her inside without a look back at his charge. Emily adjusted the bag on her right shoulder unnecessarily and followed him in, guiding the door closed until it latched ominously behind her. She turned, easily picking out the guard's hulking figure as he arrived next to a small round table near a pillar halfway across the room. At the dozen or so other tables, desks, and couch-coffee table combinations incongruously scattered about the visitation room, there were maybe three families or loved ones talking in hushed tones with inmates and prisoners. Emily's eyes surveyed each group as she moved towards her assigned table; it was not until she was depositing her bag against the table leg nearest her chair that she appraised the inmate across from her.

Tony Stonem wore his cerulean prison jumpsuit like he'd had ordered it from any of a half dozen tailors on Savile Row; Emily was only mildly surprised to find him in high spirits, well-groomed, and in people's good graces enough that the previous Sunday's crossword lay half completed in front of him on the table, a pencil resting diagonally across the creased newsprint. He smirked as Emily sat.

"You're quicker than I expected. When they said I had a visitor, I reckoned I had plenty of time to finish," he tapped the crossword with his index finger. "But here you are, and I'm only half done. How are you, Emily?"

Emily arched an eyebrow defiantly. "It's still Detective Fitch, Mr. Stonem."

Tony waved his hand through the air between them. "Hmm, don't think so. No need to rest on ceremony here; bit past that, aren't we?"

"I was actually thinking it's quite the opposite," she returned, clasping her hands on the table in front of her. She sighed as he smirked and tugged at his sleeves, trying to pull them down just past his wrists; he was not supposed to 'win' at any part of this conversation. "But to be frank, I didn't come down here to debate protocol."

"So why did you?" There was no pause, no beat between her finishing one sentence and his beginning. "I mean, the last time I saw you was at the hearing the day they transferred me to this place and you didn't say a word to me. That was months ago, so I figure this isn't a social call. What is it you want from me, Emily?"

The detective worried her bottom lip, stalling for time. She still wasn't precisely sure how she wanted to word her concerns: give away too much information and Tony was liable to extrapolate far too many details and weaknesses that he could use to his advantage in any upcoming appeal hearings. The last thing Emily Fitch could stomach was Tony Stonem leveraging her worries about SSI and Naomi's hearings into bargaining chips for his expedited release. He had plotted, planned, and executed the operation that just this week caused her sister to have two panic attacks and nearly fractured every relationship Emily held closest to her heart. No, she needed to tread lightly at first until she was sure.

"Tony, what do you know about Osbourn Ross?"

"Haven't we already had this conversation? My past with SSI? You were very inquisitive."

"I don't recall you ever telling me about him personally. Last spring, I didn't really care much about him personally. I just wanted to figure out who'd put my sister through that nightmare and why. But he's still not returned and I think you know more about him than you've let on in the past."

So much for treading lightly, Ems. Emily tried to distract herself from Stonem's unwavering study of her expressions and visible emotions by reaching into her bag and withdrawing her trusted notepad, worn at the corners and quickly running out of empty pages, but her long-standing faith in it as an investigative talisman was reassuring when just a single appraising look from the man across the table made Emily doubt every one of her professional assumptions. Nothing with the Stonems was ever straight-forward; never had been, and Emily did not expect Tony to change his nature now.

Stonem bowed his head slightly, leaving Emily to tap her pen against the notepad awkwardly. After a moment of silence, she noticed his shoulders shaking slightly and, with a flush of embarrassment, realized he was laughing quietly. He raised his gaze back to meet Emily's eyes.

"This is about the hearings, isn't it? You want me to give you a silver bullet, don't you?"

Emily shook her head fiercely. "No, that's not why..."

"Of course it is!" Tony's laughter echoed in the meeting hall. Emily muttered a curse and extracted her mobile from her catch-all, thumbing through it as he rambled on, "...need me to illuminate whatever ill-conceived thesis you have about his current whereabouts when in fact, it was my efforts to bring his wrongdoing to light that put me in this shithole in the first place! What's this?"

"Just shut the fuck up and watch it, Stonem." Emily leaned forward and tapped the middle of the screen, starting the full four minute thirty-six second video of the attack from the previous day. Despite the efforts of various video uploading sites, which tried to delete the footage upon its original upload the previous evening, someone or some group persisted in posting it every time it was deleted. The most recent upload—Emily was certain the final one as it was now in its fourth hour as 'Trending Now' even though it lacked a soundtrack—was, like all the others, from the vantage point of the mystery filmographer up the hill in Castle Park.

The two of them sat silently through the duration of the video; Tony slid the phone back across the table once it faded to black. "So, getting yourself into trouble again, Emily?"

"I think's it's pretty clear I didn't get myself into anything this time."

"Do you? Because I think it's quite the opposite. You set all this in motion when you ignored Ross's warnings about looking into SSI and pressed harder and harder...now the chickens have come home to roost."

"Don't you dare sit there and lecture me; you're the one who pressured me into getting involved in this Ocelot business! So save your condescension for someone else. It won't hold with me."

Tony Stonem smirked. "Now that's the Emily that I remember. Not this...groveller that walked in here and demanded I start spilling state secrets. Though, I'm not sure I really 'pressured' you into that investigation—you were well on your way. I just nudged you onto the right heading to steer."

"Fine. If you're going to talk in metaphors, I will too." The detective leaned forward, tapping the table emphatically and gesturing sharply as she addressed Stonem with an edge to her voice, "We've come dangerously close to running aground and I was hoping you could help navigate me towards safer waters. I don't like this, Mr. Stonem, any more than you. But I think that gunman worked for Ross and I can't protect Naomi, my sister, or myself without knowing what I'm up against. I think you know better than anyone what motivates Ross; what could make him so desperate that he'd try to kill people multiple times; what could spur him to pay someone to slander my girlfriend on national television even though he hardly holds a grudge any longer. Why not just come back and face us?"

"Was that one question or several?"

Huffing exasperatedly, Emily grabbed her notepad, shouldered her bag, and violently shoved the chair back from the table. She only made it a step towards the door before a monotone gave her pause.

"I left SSI because of him, you know." Tony swallowed, brow furrowing as he stared at the vacated plastic chair across from his seat. "Knew if I didn't, I'd be in too deep and he'd own me. Nobody owns me."

Detective Fitch squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as her hands wrung the rope strap of the bag over her shoulder. Incrementally, she turned back towards the table.

"It's Ross's baby, the program your girlfriend is so keen on destroying—and she's right to do so. What they do is despicable, really."

"You did it too. You all but told me as much last spring."

Stonem looked up, baffled. "That's different."

Emily tried—and failed desperately—to keep the disbelief from her face. "How? How is it possibly different if you were both selling weapons and God knows what else to despots and dictators from Chechnya to Cameroon?"

"I think our footprint was quite a lot larger geographically than that, actually—"

"Tony!"

The interruption was met with a wry smile and an unapologetic, "Right, yeah. Not the point. Point is, Emily, that what I choose to do as one individual and what one man orchestrates in manipulating a legitimate business to achieve personal gain are vastly different and at cross-purposes."

"So you struck out on your own, determined to undermine him at every turn and compete for the same scum-of-the-earth clientele? You're not exactly painting a sympathetic picture, nor are you telling me why Ross won't just come back and face us."

Stonem gave Fitch a half-smirk. "Course I am! One, I wasn't trying to earn a sympathy vote. Two, I am telling you why. He's got too much at stake in keeping Ocelot functioning in some form or another. If he can move about with impunity elsewhere and do damage control with anyone who follows British politics (which, unlike a century ago, isn't as many people as your girlfriend's peers want to believe), then he's not going to come and play a match on Campbell's home turf where he could lose everything. No, safer to remain hidden away and draw the game out; play by his rules. And his rules, the ones I helped him write, say don't leave your own fingerprints on the gun if there's someone else who can fire it closer to the target and with less recoil. Now have I answered your question?"

"What you're saying is, you'd be doing the same thing in his shoes?"

Emily frowned as the prisoner across from her laughed uproariously at what she was positive was far from a laughing matter. He leaned forward, both elbows resting on the table and shackled hands supporting his forehead. After a moment, Tony sat up and looked her in the eye.

"What I'm saying is, he's following contingencies we both thought might be necessary at one point. But I would never have been in his position; I was too good."

"And yet here you are," the detective retorted. Her reward was a shrug of assent.

"You came seeking me out, Detective; if you don't like the answers you get, that's not my problem."

"But it wasn't you that sent this Baze maniac after my sister, fiancée, and I, right? It was definitely Ross."

"And we're back to the spoon-feeding again." Stonem flattened his arms against the table with a sigh, picking at invisible imperfections in the smooth surface. "Do you really need me to come out and say it, or is confirming that one Benton Baze, wanted for various crimes and alleged terrorist activities in countries with no real way of enforcing those laws, has long been in the employ of Osbourn Ross. He's the pitbull and Ross holds the other end of a very long, difficult-to-trace leash. Satisfied?"

"Five minutes, miss," called the bald guard from just over Emily's shoulder. She turned and nodded before returning to look at Tony Stonem gravely.

"If I find that so much as a single fucking syllable you just told me is a lie, Mr. Stonem—"

"No need to threaten, Emily. You'll have a devil of a time confirming any of it, but that's because I cover my tracks well. It's why I know this is only temporary while they sift through the mountains of paperwork upon which my lawyers have insisted the government process. They'll spend months going blind on paperwork and I'll walk out the front door so I can start making a difference again. You're right; I did goad you into putting the pieces together that landed me in this predicament in the first place, but you were doing your job. Bloody well, if I'm honest, so there are no hard feelings."

"Sh...sure," stammered Emily, once more caught off-balance as Stonem picked up his pencil and renewed his battle with the crossword. She slid her worn notepad (page still blank) back into the catch-all. She was standing one last time when Stonem added a post-script:

"Emily if you ever find yourself in need of...non-traditional assistance to fix a problem, resources the police can't provide, don't hesitate to acquire it."

Emily turned slowly, expecting him to be eyeing her solemnly, head held high. To her surprise, he was still engrossed in the paper, scribbling letters vertically. The guard stepped over and waved her away. She couldn't quite contain the urge to keep peeking over her shoulder at Stonem as she retreated out of the visitation room, but each time his eyes were still cast downwards at his crossword puzzle.

Naomi dropped her bag on the hardwood of the foyer and slid her keys down the buffet before yelling sharply, "Emily?"

Quietly, she could hear the tick-tock of the mantle clock in the living room, but no voices or sounds of people moving returned in response to her question. Lips tugging towards a frown, the brunette began the slow ascent to check their bedroom, the office and guest room. She was crossing the upstairs landing from master to guest bedroom when the door went and Naomi abruptly peeled away and thundered down the stairs. She was breathless as she twisted the bolt and swung the door inward.

"Ems, thank fu—Katie?"

The elder Fitch twin's eyebrows arched and she returned her keys to her purse from where they'd been awkwardly extended towards the door. "Take a deep breath and keep your knickers on, yeah? Christ, it sounded like a pack of dobermans coming to the door. Now, may I come in or are you going to turn me away on account of, like, a 2% genome difference, or something?"

Naomi retreated back into the flat as Katie followed her after shutting the door. "You're giving yourself far too much credit there," Naomi tossed over her shoulder, disappearing into the kitchen. "It's definitely closer to 15%, but I'm not a scientist. You looking for Emily, too?"

"Yeah, thought she'd be here; she's not answering her mobile." Katie pulled out a chair and seated herself at the table, index finger idly swiping across the touchscreen of her own phone.

"I got her voicemail straight away," confirmed Naomi before pulling two beers from the refrigerator. "This fine with you?"

Katie nodded and extended a hand to receive the can. "I need something a bit stronger than tea; thanks."

Naomi collapsed into the chair opposite the twin and gave her an appraising glance. At first pass, she didn't seem to be affected at all by her ordeal the day prior—Naomi was unsurprised by the immaculate makeup, dark green-and-graphite dress, but the slight tremble of her hand as Katie brought her beer up for the first sip did catch Naomi's eye. Naomi knew her text the previous evening imploring Katie not to go into work at the home office today was blatantly ignored; after her meeting with Vic and Lewis Adams, she'd found a frustrated Erik in the reception area of her office, arguing with the older Fitch on the phone. But now Katie was coming here after work instead of going home? Naomi cocked her head to one side, trying to sort through Katie's thought process.

"Where'd you stay last night, Katie?"

Naomi's guest nodded towards the hall. "In the guest room. We dropped Cook at the safe house and I asked her if I could stay the night. She didn't want to spend a night by herself, either. You know that, right?"

"I know," Naomi whispered as she studied the imperfections in the tabletop. "But we decided it was safer if we were separate, in case Baze tried to attack one of us again."

"Not how I heard it."

"What?" Naomi's eyes snapped up into a glare at Katie.

"You offered to stay away from her and my sister, sick of fighting with you about stupid shit when our lives are in danger, didn't bother to disagree with you and waste the energy."

Shaking her head slowly, Campbell desperately recalled the terse phone call in that suffocating conference room the previous afternoon. To the best of her knowledge, Emily agreed with her that they were safer off for one night apart while Baze's whereabouts were established and the logic behind the decision seemed incontrovertible to Naomi. But now that she was back in Bristol and Baze's location was still unknown, yesterday's hesitancy seemed more and more like an excuse to not see Emily until Naomi was ready and not like a sage protection measure. Moreover, Katie was already well ahead of her in riddling out her decision-making process and had Naomi on the defensive.

"It seemed the right call yesterday," offered Naomi weakly in her own defense, but the skeptical look she received did nothing to assuage her of the need for Katie's forgiveness. Attempting to regain control of the conversation as she played idly with the beer can on the table, Naomi asked her guest, "Do you really think she's been visiting Moore this whole time? Seems like an awful long visit."

"She was going to see Tony Stonem at the prison this afternoon," replied Katie slowly, like she was speaking to a child that had forgotten what it was taught five minutes earlier. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Wait, so...Emily's with Tony Stonem?"

Katie rolled her eyes. "I'm only assuming. We were talking yesterday about how he might be behind these attacks on us, not Ross, and Cook suggested she go talk to him to rule him out. What did you mean by 'visiting Moore?' As in, Sophia's brother, Moore?"

"Devlin Franks called me this morning to say he was on his way to meet her and they were going to find out why he's come forward to fuck everything up again. You didn't know?"

"Shit! Bitch! My sister can be so fucking secretive. Tells you one half of the story; tells me the other half and let's us assume we have the—what the fuck!" Katie snatched the beer off the table and finished it in a single long swig. "I'm going to kill her."

Naomi winced. "Probably not the best choice of words, Katie?"

"Shit yeah, right. But I so fucking am." She picked up her mobile and tried to dial her twin one more time; she received the voicemail recording and promptly disconnected the call. "Why does she do this?"

"She's your twin."

"Oh, that's well encouraging. Aren't you supposed to be marrying her 'fore too long? Christ, it's like you don't talk to one another at all."

"We used to," Naomi said softly, frowning as she stood and shuffled aimlessly to the counter and slowly turned to lean against it. "Katie, I have to tell you something, and Emily can't know about it til it happens, alright? She'll never understand or let me go."

Katie gave her host a worried look. "Naomi, babes, you're scaring me. What is it?"

"I'm leaving the country this weekend. Tomorrow, actually—"

"Like fuck you are! We were just almost shot, Cook's hurt, and this guy is still out there, and you want to go on a fucking vacation?!" The petite woman was on her feet in an instant and taking a threatening step towards Naomi.

Naomi extended a placating hand as she responded with far more control than she'd expected to maintain under the latest volley in the older Fitch sister's barrage. "Katie, I'm going because Vic and I think we know where Osbourn Ross is. If we can find him and bring him back with us, then we can end all of this before it gets even worse. This is how we get ahead of him and this Benton creep. We may not have a chance like this again."

"And Emily has no idea."

"How can I tell her, Katie? All this week has been is one punch after another and we're hardly speaking to one another. But if Ross is there, I can make it right again."

Katie crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow. "You know she won't see it that way. She'll see it as running away."

"No, she...she knows I'd never do that again. I'm just trying to protect her—protect all of us. That's the only thing I've ever tried to do! And I won't be going alone; Vic's going with me."

"So you want me to not tell my sister her fiancée is leaving the country for fuck-knows what country—"

"Montenegro," interrupted Naomi impulsively, as if that would justify it; Katie's bewildered reaction to the name was far from reassuring.

"Wherever the fuck that is, and you're doing this two days after she and I were shot at!"

"We'll be back before the hearings resume on Monday. Please, Katie, just do this for me this once."

"Then I quit."

"What?" Naomi blinked at the apparent non-sequitur. How could Katie tie this to her job; they had nothing in common.

"If I do this for you, Naoms, then I'm done with whatever it is you're paying me to do. Look, I can understand a bit that you want to catch Ross to make Emily feel safer. Lord knows I do, too, but if you're doing it for political reasons and to advance these hearings instead, and that's what it sounds like, then I'm done being a part of your staff, effective immediately."

Katie pivoted, picked up the empty beer can, and threw it across the room where it landed on top of the lidded trash. Slinging her bag over her shoulder she stormed out of the kitchen leaving Naomi momentarily stunned, mouth agape, before she recovered her motor skills and gave chase.

"Katie, wait; it's not like that! I promise!"

"Tell Emily not to bother calling me tonight. I'll be getting properly fucked up somewhere instead of ruining both your lives." Katie opened the door and slammed it behind her without looking at Naomi, leaving the brunette standing awkwardly in her own foyer for the second time in an hour. She threw her head back and studied the moulded wood inlays of the ceiling as she listened to Katie's car start and peel away from the curb outside the flat.

"I am so fucked." Naomi brought her gaze down and turned to look at herself in the mirror over the buffet; not even her reflection could dignify her with a response. She turned away and walked back toward the kitchen.