OKEY DOKEY, ready for more?

"Why not Cal? They are looking into you, why shouldn't be looking into them?" The familiar and painful feeling of being out of the loop came over once more, confusing her soul and hurting her brain. "If we do it they will try to shut us down, he can do it without looking suspicious."

But Cal was shaking his head with slow and wide movement, showing all his disappointment and perhaps some worry for the move she had pulled.

"That's the problem, love. He absolutely will."

It was Gillian's turn to pull away from him, surprised by the disappointment all over his face and by the mask of nervousness suddenly covering everything else. She was shaking her head too now, utterly confused by his reaction and by the fact that it was probably the strongest one he'd had to anything since it had all started.

"What- Cal, what do you mean?"

"Nothing love, listen…call him back, ok? Tell him you don't need him to do anything and we figured it out."

"We haven't Cal, and we never will at this rate." She dragged the chair closer to him and grabbed his shoulders. "Why don't you want him involved? Is he-" She gasped for a second, fear coming to her face as she squeezed him harder. "You mean he's behind this? I-"

"What? Bloody hell Gill, not at all." He was convincing enough, but as he kept crashing on the desperate look on her face Cal realised that time was up, so he sighed and shook his head once before speaking. "Remember the Yamasuda case, about a month ago?" She nodded, not daring to say anything as if that could change his mind. "We did the line up at the precinct, to find out which eye witness had been lying about the description of the subject." Gillian nodded again, she hadn't been there but she knew everything about the case. "I took care of that, we found our guy and closed the case. The room for the line up was right next to the interrogation rooms, and while I was in the hallway talking to a detective someone came out of one of those rooms. The door was open for about 30 seconds, the person coming out stopped to ask those inside if they wanted a coffee or something and while they spoke I saw him, Huertas, inside the room."

Gillian wanted to ask the stupid question, what was so strange about that, but decided against it. Clearly things were not as straightforward as she would think, or Cal wouldn't have had such a hard time telling his story.

"I only caught a brief glimpse of him and he looked worried, more like someone on the answering end of an interrogation. I thought it was weird, so I found some reasons to hang around and see what I could catch about it." He caught her hands, caressing them gently to sooth her as best as he could. "I heard some rumours, well more than that actually, that he was in on it with some drug dealers, getting a take on their sales in the area around the docks in exchange for protection and silence, and I thought maybe I should look into it."

"You took a case from him without telling me?"

Cal knew that would have been bad enough, and the upset in her voice justified, but things were actually worse.

"No," he sighed and bit at his bottom lip. "I didn't take the case, there is no case. He doesn't know I've been doing this, not that I'm aware of."

"What-Cal, why would you do this, without telling me?" She attacked him immediately. "I could have helped. He's my friend, our friend. You- Oh my God!" Gillian suddenly took her hands away from him and stood on her feet, recoiling away from him. "You can't be serious, Cal. Once again you go out of your way to look into someone close to me and make sure to find something that would push me away from them? Burns was one thing, but this is-"

"Now hold on a minute love," Cal stood up to, clearly matching her energy. "What are you saying?"

"One friend Cal, I have one male friend and here you are, jumping on the first chance you get to cut him out." She hissed at him, shaking her head with damning disappointment on her face. "I thought you were better than this. You call your ex-wife to get you out of trouble and I-"

"Alright now love, stop that. No, no." Somehow he managed to grab hold of her, desperate to get her to look at him. "You wanna be angry at me for not talking to you fine, you have every right. But digging dirt on someone close to you is not what I was doing. And I only called Zoe because I knew no other lawyer would have wanted to be associated with me…and because she can't really tell Emily she had a chance to keep her father out of prison for the rest of his life and didn't do anything about it." Gillian was still fuming, but she seemed to be calm enough to actually listen to him. "I wasn't looking into him, I was looking into the accusation against him. I asked Wallowski - I know," he apologised for bringing her up - speaking of being past that kind of things "But she owes me big time and it was the safest option when it came down to finding out about a possible Internal Affairs investigation. And it's precisely because he's your friend that I didn't tell you anything."

Gillian was processing, silent and immobile, her eyes locked on his and focused there almost as much as on his words. As frustrating as it was to admit it, it made some kind of sense. Not Huertas being a dirty cop, she couldn't believe that, but the rest… If Cal had started looking into that, such a delicate and hush hush thing, chances were that he had stumbled on something. Was it a coincidence that it was drugs the thing Cal was being framed for? Maybe, but she believed in coincidences as much as she believed that Teller and Ford were outstanding police officers. No question about Zoe, she would have never turned down the request to help and as for Wallowski he was not wrong: she owed her career and a number of collars to him, and she certainly knew how to get her hands a little dirty if she had to.

Still, she needed more explanations and Cal seemed to know it, because he kept holding her both to reassure and try to make sure that she would hear him out.

"I don't know the guy as much as you do but he doesn't seem to type to me, never seen anything in him that would suggest something like that, especially with the scale I heard about. I started looking into it to be able to prove he is innocent, and I didn't tell you because I know what it's like to find out that people close to you are not who you think they are." Gillian frowned, catching the sadness on his face. "It happened to me with Jeffrey, I kept digging and I lost one of my closest friends. Terry…he's always been trouble, I knew that much, but he nearly got me killed and I know that he would get me in trouble again if he had the chance no matter what. Helen, Rader…people I trusted, people I considered friends… I went in there to help them, sure that I knew them only to find out they were not who I knew anymore. Even when I did it with Burns, it nearly cost me your friendship. And that is the problem love, the fact that when I was right in doubting them I lost and when I was wrong I lost anyway because that bridge had been burned." Cal stopped and sighed, cupping her face with his hands and stroking her cheeks with his thumbs. "I know what it feels like, to lose people close to you like that, and I didn't want you to go through that because it's a horrible feeling."

Gillian melted away in his arms, disarmed by the first moment of absolute and pure truth coming from him in the past few days. No lies, no deception, no talking his way around the real issues: just the truth, as ugly as powerful and unflattering as it might be. She stepped forward and hugged him, waiting for him to do it back in the awkward way the handcuffs allowed, burying her face in his chest and breathing deeply to fight back tears. That was too much, way too much: she had come there with the resolution to fight him, to shake him out of it and impose her moves, a new-found will not to let him push her away, then things had been throwing back at her making her feel weak and harmless once more. And now that, the truth and the meaning behind it, with memories of the people and situations Cal had mentioned. She remembered how difficult it had been for him with Jeffrey, to lose such a precious friend despite him having done nothing wrong: she would never forget the way he had spoken about Terry, with sorrowful fondness and affection just after having kicked him out of his life; she would never forget the deep guilt and regret on his face about digging into Burns' life, and how he had walked on eggshells around her for weeks after he had left, afraid that one bad move would remind her that she had lost her boyfriend because of his meddling.

Then she imagined feeling all those things towards Huertas, someone she considered a good friend but nowhere near as close as those people had been to Cal, and she felt such a sense of loss that nearly moved her to tears. Sensing that, knowing he couldn't deal with her crying on top of everything else, Cal pulled away and forced a gentle kiss hoping to take away all the negative emotions running through her. Gillian responded with abandon and transport, needing that like the air she breathed, and when they broke apart she gave him a small nod.

Cal sighed, relieved, then guided them back to the table where they sat down.

"What did you find?" Gillian asked. "On Patrick? Is he-"

"Clean as a whistle, not a single thing." He was quick to respond, smirking at her frown that seemed to ask why then all that ruckus. "I am pretty sure the IA investigation is coming to the same conclusions, but obviously we work in different ways. Me, I was done with it about a week ago."

"Then why all of this? What else were you looking for that would blow up like this?"

"While I was doing my investigation I found out that someone was indeed abusing police powers to get a cut of the local drug market, but it wasn't Huertas."

"Ford and Teller," Gillian mumbled, and Cal nodded.

"I had information where the money drops for the cops happened, they were smart enough to organise it in a way that would not put them in the same time and place as drug dealers. I figured if I could catch that, maybe snap a couple of pictures, I would kill two birds with one stone, stop them and clear Huertas at the same time."

"And Wednesdays were when this usually happened?"

"Yes and no. Keep in mind, it's not like I could ask around all that much and Wallowski could only take me so far." Cal explained, secretly excited that she was getting on board. "I found out that Wednesday nights Ford and Teller always seemed to be on the night shift together, I figured that would make the perfect time to do whatever it was that they were doing together. They couldn't do it alone because beat cops are always in pairs-"

"And they couldn't do it with another officer who wasn't in on the take." Cal nodded again, feeling the excitement in her voice. "Why did you use Reynolds as a cover?"

At his, Cal bit his lip and smirked, showing her his trademark grin.

"That was mostly for you. I needed a good excuse to step out on you one night a week, I thought you'd like the idea of me going out with a good friend."

"Touche," Gillian sighed, feeling that she couldn't fault him for knowing her so well. "If you already knew that Patrick was not involved why didn't you say something?"

"I was sure he's clean, but I didn't have strong enough proof. Besides, not sure DC police would have liked the idea of a civilian out-investigating them on one of their own." Gillian thought he was not wrong, she had the feeling that even after years some people within the force didn't like to be shown-up by them on cases in general. "Either things, not something I could go to someone with and talk about easily. And I still don't have proof of what Teller and Ford have been doing."
"We could question them," she suggested. "Not about your case of course, but in general. Even if they don't say anything we'd be able to see if they are hiding something."

"I know that love, but do you really think they would let you anywhere near them?" No, she didn't, she kept forgetting about that frustrating detail. "I couldn't accuse them of anything, it wasn't going to help my case to point the fingers at the officers who arrested me. I figured if I'd waited long enough IA would clear Huertas in the meantime, and hopefully find the breadcrumbs leading them to Teller and Ford."

"Since when are you so optimistic?" She said in a painful chuckle, absently caressing his face.

"I'm not love, I clearly underestimated the situation," he confessed with a smirk. "I thought by letting Huertas know I would only compromise him more, or that if I had an alibi they would have pinned the murder on him instead. The fact that he was under investigation by IA was not exactly a secret, and they could have probably got me with the drugs only. But I guess at this point a little change of strategy wouldn't be such a bad idea."

Thank God for that! Gillian celebrated silently, but graciously tried to stay composed in her gloating.

"What do you have? On them and on Patrick?"

They spent the following minutes going through what Cal gathered, a lot of interesting information but nothing that would pass as concrete enough to stop the pair and exonerate Huertas by police standard. Cal told her to go in his safe in the office and get what he had gathered, perhaps Huertas and Zoe could work together to provide the right insights. He didn't say out right, but with that Cal was pretty much recognising that she had been right earlier: there were people there to help him and it was time for him to let them.

They were still going through some detail when the guard outside the door shouted that they had ten more minutes, and they spent half of it cuddling in silence and trying to enjoy the moment.

"Em came to visit," Cal then said out of the blue, and Gillian gave him a look that clearly saw how that might not have been such a pleasant visit, to which he smirked as a confirmation. "Zoe got the short straw on that, figured she had to tell her when she got on board."

"How did it go?"

"Complicated, not sure it was good for her to see me like this."

"It's not," Gillian confirmed, sharing her own personal experience. "But she gets to see you, and you get to see her."

Cal nodded in agreement, after all he was already convinced that spending time with his daughter had contributed to the power nap he had taken.

Then the guard opened the door and told him it was time to go, and Cal stood up knowing that playing nice had its advantages in his current situation. But he did stop for a second, just to give her a quick kiss on her cheek and beg her to try and get some sleep. At that moment, watching him go away with his orange jumpsuit, Gillian thought that it was a sweet but useless recommendation; however, hours later when she laid down in their bed at home after a generous dinner and a shower, sleep came and found her with ease.