As always, thanks for the reviews, I don't own the Voyage characters but Nelson does own me, and huge, huge thanks to N.!

Lee grabbed the shorter man by the shirt and slammed him up against the wall of his hotel room shortly after he'd walked through the door, knocking the framed photograph of the San Francisco Bay Bridge slightly askew. "You knew! You son of a bitch! You knew!"

"I didn't know! I swear I didn't!" The agent's protests fell on deaf ears.

"You knew the admiral might be in danger, that he was driving into a trap and you didn't do anything about it!"

SAC Monty Jacobs spoke through gritted teeth as Crane's forearm pressed against his neck. "I swear I didn't know!"

"Why were you trying to get in touch with him then? Why was it so urgent?"

"I wasn't sure. I wanted to warn him just in case." Jacobs put his hands on Crane's wrists and wrenched himself free.

Lee suddenly felt very foolish for his actions. "Warn him of what?"

Rubbing his throat, Jacobs said, "Not what, who. Or is it whom? Anyway, I wanted to warn him about Dr. Lydia Parrish."

"Lydia Parrish, why is that name familiar?"

"She and Nelson have history."

"History?"

"She's a physicist. Nelson picked her to help with the construction of Deep Center. Apparently, rumors were rampant about the two of them."

"A woman scorned?"

Jacobs shook his head. "They were just rumors. Remember that incident in Weymouth, Virginia three years ago?"

"Do I ever! I spent a tense couple of days trapped in Deep Center with the President and an unstable nuclear reactor because of a beam that was coming out of Weymouth."

"Nelson tracked the root of the problem to a transmitter at the college and who did he run into?"

The light bulb went on in Lee's head. "Lydia Parrish."

"She's a woman scorned but not for the usual reasons. She and General Hobson were arrested and charged but the President wanted Hobson to go down for this so she was offered a plea deal if she gave evidence against him. And there was more than enough evidence to convict Hobson of treason, strip him of his uniform, and set him up in a cozy 6x8 cell for the rest of his days."

"Hobson was delusional. He tried to convince us we were under attack by our enemies and wanted to fire nuclear missiles at half the world."

"Yes, but thankfully, Nelson stopped him. Unfortunately, Hobson had an excellent defense attorney who recognized those delusions as mental illness and played that up as his defense. So he was shipped off to Bellevue and Parrish went to a minimum security prison in Virginia. They underestimated Parrish though. Everyone thought Hobson was the mastermind but he was just a puppet. She was the real brains behind it."

"And she was sitting in a minimum security prison."

"Was being the operative word here."

"What do you mean was? She escaped?"

"Yup, right out the front gates. And do you know who drove her?"

Crane shook his head.

"Reed Michaels."

"Ex-General Reed Michaels?" Lee was incredulous. "He was at Deep Center! Pulled a gun on me. He was in on it with Hobson!"

"Seems Hobson had a lot of minions, many of them either still on active duty or working in law enforcement. Michaels was under military arrest awaiting court martial and, he just," Jacobs waved his hand in the air, "disappeared into the wind. That is, until he popped up on the prison security cameras."

"How long ago was that?"

"Eight months ago."

"And no one alerted the Admiral?"

"Lee, Deep Center, everything that happened there and in Weymouth, is highly classified. Only a handful of people know about it and until a couple of days ago, I wasn't one of them. Most of the people who did know wouldn't have put two and two together. I mean, you knew but you couldn't place her name so would you have known he was in danger?"

"Probably not."

"Honestly, I didn't think he was either. I read Parrish's dossier, saw Nelson's name mentioned, and well, I just thought he should know. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to tell him. Found out he'd left Thursday morning. How did you find out?"

"I got the call from the CHP. Said they found a car hired by Angie Moreira, the admiral's administrative assistant, on the shoulder just south of Gray Whale Cove State Beach. You know the rest."

"Well, I know a few more details about the crash. We towed the car into the Bureau's crime lab and our guys went over it." Jacobs pulled a small, rectangular box from his pocket. "Do you know what this is?" He tossed it to Lee.

"Looks like a detonator of some sort." Lee tossed it back to Jacobs.

"Very good. It is a detonator. Found it on the floorboard under the front passenger seat. It was used to blow the left front tire. IAFIS matched the prints to a guy named Bill Hayes. Know him?" Before Lee could answer, Jacobs continued. "Of course you do."

"N.I.M.R. security. He accompanied the admiral to San Francisco." Running his hand through his hair, Lee was stunned. "He's been with the Institute for years. I know him; I know his wife and his kids."

"Yeah, well, now you know his widow. Police found him in a dumpster behind a McDonald's in Half Moon Bay. Body is with the medical examiner but the cop on the scene said it looked like a self-inflicted GSW to the head. We'll know more when we get the autopsy report from the M.E. My guess is Hayes was in on it, had a van or a panel truck following and a pre-arranged location for it all to go down. Hayes kills the driver, turns over Nelson, heads off with the crew, feels remorse for his actions and eats his gun. Why a McDonald's dumpster?" Jacobs shrugged then answered his own question. "Maybe he had a sentimental attachment to the Golden Arches."

Lee frowned at the callousness of Jacobs' exposition but had to agree it sounded plausible. Another detail quickly came to mind. "The admiral's assistant, Angie, was most likely in the car with him." He hesitated before asking a question he didn't want the answer to. "Did you find her body?"

"No sign of her so it's possible she's with him but," Jacobs looked away before bringing his gaze back to Crane's, "if they think she has no value to them, they'll dispose of her." He took a deep breath and let it out before he spoke again. "Just because we didn't find her body at the scene doesn't mean she's still alive. There's a good chance she's already dead." Jacobs didn't mean to sound so heartless but it was a heartless business. Those were the cold, hard facts.

"So where do we go now? How do we find them?" Although they had been missing for nearly 72 hours now, Lee refused to believe either one of them were dead. Not yet anyways. Not before whoever had them got what they wanted. He just hoped the admiral – and Angie – could continue to hold out. He knew the admiral would give it everything he had but Angie, she was his concern. He liked to think their enemies played by the rules, that torturing an innocent woman was off the table, but apart from the occasional double agent, their enemies were rarely women. Who knew what they were capable of?

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, don't go falling down rabbit holes. We have one name of a person of interest and not much else. Intel is working off that information and they may have a couple of leads. I know it's not something you want to hear but you just need to sit tight."

Lee ran a hand through his hair as he started to pace. "I don't want to sit tight! God only knows what they're doing to him! Or to her, for that matter. We have to find them!"

Jacobs huffed loudly. "And where would you suggest we look?"

Lee stopped his pacing long enough to give the other man a withering glare. Maybe he'd been around the admiral too long but he hated doing nothing.

"Sorry, that stare might work on your men but it doesn't work on me." The agent hadn't been completely honest with Lee but he wasn't about to tell Crane that. Intel had followed the money and found a very good lead in a goon for hire named Roger Masgard, but Jacobs knew if he told Crane that, the captain would go off on a fool's errand and then he'd be looking for three missing people. Instead, he said evenly, "Sit down."

Crane looked at Jacobs as if he hadn't heard him properly.

"I said, sit down. Your pacing is driving me crazy."

"I don't want to sit down or sit tight or sit on it. I want to do something!"

Again Jacobs huffed. "Look, I could bring you up on charges for assaulting a federal agent. Just take a seat and calm down."

Lee finally acquiesced, taking a seat in the chair across from Jacobs. "Happy?"

"Yes." Jacobs pulled up a chair and took a seat across from Lee and leaned forward, hands resting on his knees. "So there's more. Nelson was at the conference with Dr. Quentin Lamont."

"Tell me something I don't know." Lee sat back in the chair, his hands on the arms, fingers tapping out his impatience.

"Well, Nelson and Lamont arranged a meeting with one of our agents and another man, an expert in deep hypnosis."

"So? How is that relevant to the admiral and Angie's disappearance?"

"Remember what I said about me not knowing?"

Lee breathed out an exacerbated, "Yes."

"All I can tell you is speculation at this point but I think Nelson suspected he'd be a target so he set up some sort of countermeasure."

"The admiral is always a target. Every time he leaves the safety of Seaview or the Institute, he's at risk. And even within those confines people have still managed to get to him."

"Okay so my speculation is fact then. But we both know how important Invictus is to the defense of this country and if it were to fall into the wrong hands, then we'd be up shit creek. Only two people, the architects who designed it, know anything about Invictus and those two people are…"

"Nelson and Lamont."

"And they were both together in one place. Now, to add to the mix Nelson has his secretary flown up Monday afternoon to take over for the conference planner." Tapping his chin, Jacobs leaned back in the chair. "Not sure yet how she figures into all this."

Feeling the start of a headache, Lee dragged his fingers along his right eyebrow. "Angie. Her name is Angie. And she volunteered to go."

"Did she? Or was she put into a position where she couldn't say no? She just thinks it was her idea."

"Semantics. Does it matter?"

"It could."

Lee rolled his eyes. "Where's Lamont now? Can we talk to him, find out what he knows?"

"We?" Jacobs pointed a finger at his own chest. "I'm the investigator here. This is way out of your depths." Smiling at his choice of words, he backed off a little. "Look, I know sitting back and waiting isn't your thing. If roles were reversed and we were looking for you, I'd have to physically restrain Harry to keep him off my back. And believe me, I know this from experience. But you have to let me handle things, okay? When the time comes, I promise, you'll be right there with me."

Lee didn't like it one bit but hesitantly agreed. He just hoped whatever channels Jacobs was working would bring some information quickly. For the admiral and Angie's sake. The more time that passed, God only knew what was happening to them. Or what had already happened. Lee's greatest fear was finding them too late.

"So getting back to your question, Lamont left the conference not long after Nelson. Hightailed it back to his place in Idaho. Guy lives in some kind of fortress surrounded by a moat! But it just adds fuel to my theory that Nelson was suspicious of some sort of pending danger."

"Or maybe he just understood the increased risk of having the two men responsible for Invictus together in one place. They were both sitting ducks." Rubbing his hand along his jaw, Lee felt the prickly scratch of his beard and realized he probably looked like hell. He hadn't slept since he got the call from the highway patrol and couldn't recall when he'd last showered and shaved. "What about the two men with them? If one was an agent, he should be able to tell us something."

"The agent is currently out in the field, working another case. He's not attached to me so I've contacted the SAC in San Francisco and he's arranged a meeting in," Jacobs checked his watch, "three hours. Still trying to track down The Amazing Kreskin."

"Kreskin is a mentalist. James Braid coined the term, hypnosis."

Jacobs shook his head and frowned. "I bet you're a blast at parties."

Ignoring Jacobs, Lee stood up then quickly glanced at the agent. "I need to pace."

Jacobs acquiesced with a wave of his hand.

Pinching his bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger while he tried to absorb everything Jacobs had told him, he still had a few questions. "So the admiral was concerned enough to arrange for a meeting with an expert in deep hypnosis and then return to Santa Barbara earlier than planned while Lamont was worried enough to go off the grid. One thing I don't understand though. Why was the car found on the PCH? If the admiral was so concerned about safety, I would think he would have taken a flight back to Santa Barbara."

"Maybe that was his plan. I did some digging and there was a chartered flight standing by at the airfield in Half Moon Bay. Maybe he thought it would attract less attention if he flew out of a small airport."

A thought occurred to Lee. "Or maybe the flight wasn't for him. Maybe it was just a decoy."

"Might have worked too if Hayes hadn't betrayed him." Getting to his feet, Jacobs hitched his thumbs in his trouser pockets. "Sorry, Lee. I know it's not what you want to hear but that's all I got at the moment." Taking his hands from his pockets, he clasped them together in front of him. "Look, I got eyes all over this area. If Nelson is being held around here, we'll find him." Holding out his right hand to Lee, he smiled when the captain gave it a firm shake, and then headed for the door. Stopping just short of opening it, he turned back around. "I know you're worried. I am too. I've known Harry Nelson for close to four years and just know that I want to find him as badly as you do. Get some dinner and some sleep and I'll call you the minute I have news." Opening the door, he exited the room then poked his head back inside. "Oh, and glad we could end our conversation a hell of a lot better than how we began."

Lee watched the door close, flinching at the noise it made, then stood alone in the middle of the hotel room. Although the picture had gotten a little clearer, it only intensified his feelings of helplessness and restlessness. Despite what Jacobs said, he had to do something, anything. Taking a seat in the chair next to the desk, he reached for the phone and quickly dialed Chip Morton's home number, silently counting off the rings until Chip finally picked up.

"Hello?"

"Chip, it's Lee. I think it's time we get our men up here."

-xxx-

"How's our guest?"

Roger Masgard shut the door and sat in the closest chair. "When he's not heaving his guts or passed out, he's muttering to himself."

"Oh?"

"Mostly just nonsense but he mentioned the girl's name."

"Really?" Parrish's interest was definitely piqued.

"He was talking in his sleep. No context, just said her name a couple of times."

Pursing her lips, she considered what he said. "Hose him down and take him to room two."

"Put him on the table?"

"No," she picked up a scalpel and admired the blade. "I want the girl on the table. Tie him up and make sure he has an unobstructed view. I want him to see and hear everything."

Shaking his head, Masgard was about to protest when she cut him off.

"Don't worry about your scruples."

"The girl won't be able to take it like he did."

"No, she won't. She'll most likely die. But if I know our chivalrous admiral, he won't let it get that far."

"And if he doesn't talk what then?"

"Well," she said, tapping the point of the scalpel against her chin, "then I suppose the time will come for us to cut our losses and disappear."

"What about them?"

"Oh, I think by the time I'm done with our little secretary neither she nor Nelson will leave here alive."

"I'll tell the men to be ready to go."

"What, you doubt me?"

"I have every faith that you will do whatever you can to break Nelson." Or kill him in the process. He knew without a doubt that she never had any intention of letting Nelson go and not for the first time he wondered if she ever really cared about Invictus or if it were just a means to an end for her. "I just believe in being prepared."

"You do think of everything, don't you?"

The tone of her voice sent a shiver up his spine and not for the first time, the image of a barracuda flashed through his mind.