A/N: I didn't realize until recently that my formatting for chapter 19 was all messed up. I had used the app to make a correction, but I guess an error occurred while uploading and it had deleted words and sentences. I re-upload and hopefully it's okay now.

Anyway, thanks again!

Chapter 21:

Catherine closed off the area around both vehicles, the SUV and the deputy car. Everything needed to be processed as evidence. The entire mountain needed to be checked. There had to be a getaway vehicle, another way in and out, and evidence of a struggle. Something. Anything. Another SUV pulled up to the scene and she watched as the Night Supervisor Harlyn Reno and CSI Jeremiah Haas got out and shut the doors.

"What's Gold Shift doing here?" she asked.

"All hands on deck," Harlyn told her. "Sheriff made the call. There're LVPD rookies on the way to search the mountainside. Captain Brass called; they tracked Agent Collins' cell phone up near Amargosa Valley."

"There's nothing out there except for solar farms and crop circles."

"That's why any minute now, Quantico cadets will be parachuting out of the sky to search the crop circles. Where do you need us?"

Catherine gestured around and said, "Everywhere."

Headlights of a car rounded the corner of the mountain. It parked and Detective Nowlins got out from the driver's side, saying, "Flight N788AL landed at Billings—Logan airport two hours ago. It had a stop in California first, LAX, then proceeded to Montana. I've contacted LAX for them to check security cameras to see if Starling departed in Los Angeles—"

"She's not in California," Nick said as he ran the crime scene tape around the box truck again. "Starling has a family connection to Montana. That's where she's going. Did you ever find out what that MAD flight destination was," he asked Nowlins.

Without missing a beat, Harlyn said, "Madrid, Spain," as she pulled out her flashlight and clicked it on. "Haas, start canvassing up the road."

Nick nodded to Haas as the CSI passed him before asking Harlyn, "How'd you know?"

Harlyn shrugged as she answered, "I was Navy. Had a tour in Rota. Been in and out of Madrid plenty of times."

"Where were you two hours ago?" Catherine asked. When Harlyn went to answer that, she cut her off saying, "Don't answer that. I swear, sometimes you're like Grissom 2.0."

"I will take that as a compliment," she said as she started searching the road alongside Deputy Grant's car for anything. "How did Lecter pass you guys anyway? Weren't you and Detective Curtis enroute to the airfield when Sara was taken?"

Nowlins also had a questioning look in his eyes. Nick didn't say anything as he turned and headed back over to the box truck to start processing it, again.

"No," Catherine said before clarifying the events of the evening. "We were canvassing the mountainside, looking for a shelter or another vehicle, anything that could be a lead. We passed several different turn-offs, going out to who knows where, so we kept on the same road that cut through the mountain back towards Pahrump, heading southeast. It wasn't until we cleared the mountain that we went left, heading northwest, towards the airfield. Had we taken a turnoff going north to begin with, we would have intersected them enroute to the airfield or wound up there at the same time, but we had no idea it even existed. It's not on any of our maps."

Harlyn went back to searching alongside Deputy Grant's car as she said, "It's a new construction; only been in operation a year. Before, SWD was flying out of McCarran with all the other cargo—Hey, I think I found one of our radios." Kneeling down to get a better look, she shined her light under the car. "It's behind the wheel."

Catherine knelt down and saw the radio. "It must be Sara's," she said as she raised her camera and took a picture. "Nowlins, could you hand me an evidence bag out of my kit?" Nowlins grabbed the evidence bag and as he handed it to her, she asked him, "Any word from Montana police?"

"It's a big state," Nowlins said, "but they put out an APB and BOLO."

"The only good news is we already have two CSI's in Montana."

"You do?" Nowlins asked in surprise. "Who?"

It had been a four-hour flight from Hell. They would have been there sooner if not for a connecting flight in Oklahoma. Why they had to go east to Oklahoma before heading up north he had no idea, but it was time consuming. He was tired, hungry, and worst of all Greg had been non-stop talking the entire time.

Warrick was used to Greg's motormouth at crime scenes and in the lab, but it was something else entirely when he had wanted to get some shut eye on the flight. Then they had to rent a car and find the damn county clerk's office in the middle of the night, which wasn't open. Getting a hotel room was easy enough since there was one right around the corner in the downtown business center.

Then he was on the phone, for a long time, trying to get someone to let them into the building. He didn't want to wait until the morning.

"Why don't we get some sleep?" Greg asked him as he sat on the hotel bed, eating ramen that he'd picked up from the 24-hour convenience store around the corner.

He was hungry too, but he wasn't ramen hungry. "I'm not waiting, man. It took us four hours to get here, and we need answers now. The sooner we find it, the sooner we can leave—"

He was cut off when someone came back on the line. "This is Sheriff Douglas Warner."

"Sheriff, I'm Warrick Brown with Las Vegas Crime Lab—"

"Yes, Mr. Brown, I talked to your Captain Brass earlier today. He said you'd be out here. Brought the FBI with you—"

"Actually, the FBI stayed back in Vegas. It's just me and my colleague, Greg Sanders. We were hoping to get inside the county clerk's office tonight. Given the amount of time that's passed and the fact that what we're looking for could be boxed up in the archives, we need all the time we can get."

"I understand that it's a pressing issue, but—"

"This case involves the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and fugitive FBI agent Clarice Starling. And right before we came out here, another FBI agent went missing. This is of the utmost importance, Sheriff. All we need is for someone to open the door."

Sheriff Warner let out a deep breath of air, acting like this was an inconvenience, before saying, "I'll meet you there in ten minutes."

Warrick hung up the phone and eyed Greg who was shoving Raman into his mouth. "Ten minutes. Don't bother unpacking. I'll sleep on the floor in the clerk's office if I have to."

Greg eyed the queen bed he was sitting on and said, "You're serious?"

"Hell yeah, I'm serious. Do you really want to be here any longer than absolutely necessary?"

"All I want to do is sleep in a bed. We booked the room; let's take turns. I'll get a good night's rest while you go to the clerk's office. In the morning, we'll switch. Then we'll meet for lunch—"

"I'm not meeting you for lunch, but if that's what you want—"

"We've been up for twenty-four hours!"

Warrick knew Greg had a point, but he was nowhere near tired. He grabbed his jacket as he stood. "Be there at eight sharp," he told him before he left the room.

He didn't have to drive the rental to the clerk's office seeing how it was literally right down the street and around the corner. Had he gone the other way, he'd be staring at railroad tracks, factories and processing plants. Getting to the front door to the clerk's office building, he checked his watch before leaning against the wall to wait for the Sheriff.

More than ten minutes later, Sheriff Warner finally made an appearance. The Sam Elliott looking asshole actually seemed just as annoyed in person as he sounded over the phone.

"I would have thought you'd appreciate the help," Warrick said once he got through the front door.

Sheriff Warner regarded him as he unlocked a door that led into the back rooms of the office building. "I think it's a waste of time."

"Could be, but you never know. This is the job, isn't it? Investigating leads, even when they seem irrelevant."

"Exactly," Warner said, "it's irrelevant. So, why are you here again?"

"Because my supervisor taught me that nothing is irrelevant until it is. And he's the best investigator I know." Warrick walked by the Sheriff as he said, "Do I need a keycard for access or a passcode or anything?"

"Where the hell do you think you are, son? The CIA? Just use the key to unlock the door," Warner said as he tossed him the keys he'd been using. "Lock up when you're done. Archives are down the staircase, last door."

He watched as the Sheriff turned around and left him alone in the hallway. Letting out a breath, he headed down the hall to the stairwell and hoped like hell he wouldn't get arrested for trespassing by some local Barney Fife.

He'd been at it for hours. There was no organization of the old archives in the basement. Everything per 1996 seemed to be down there in filing cabinets and boxes. It reminded him of the evidence storage facility in Las Vegas. Nothing but shelves of boxes stacked on top of one another, moved around by those working the cases and never put back in the right spot. Or a box would be missing completely.

Then his cell phone rang, it was Catherine. "Hey, boss lady. What's up?"

Catherine's voice was strained as she told him, "Sara's missing. We believe Hannibal Lecter took her."

"You've got to be kidding?" he said as all the air rushed out of his lungs. "Me and Greg can be on the first flight—"

"We need you in Montana—"

"Catherine—"

"Warrick," she said, cutting him off. "Starling is headed to Montana. She got access to a SunWest Delivery flight, destination Billings—Logan airport. She might have Agent Collins with her, we don't know."

"How can you not know if—"

"He could have been in the cargo hold." As he tried to figure that one out, she said, "Stay on Starling. If she's coming there, it's for a reason. Maybe you can head her off. We've already contacted the local police—"

"Sheriff Warner?"

"And others. They said they'll be cooperative. There are FBI agents from Vegas on the way as well. They're meeting at the FBI field office in Billings in the morning. Agent Greenfeld will be your contact when he lands. I'll text you his number."

He let out a breath as he told her, "We'll do our best."

"I know you will."

Hanging up the phone, he shook his head as his anger rose up right before he kicked the filing cabinet. "Son-of-a-bitch!"

His relationship with Sara had started off as tense because she hadn't trusted him after what happened. The only reason Sara had come to Vegas was to do an internal investigation of him. Sure, she was arrogant at times, and pushy, and closed off, but damn it if she hadn't become like a sister he never had. Like Nick, Catherine, and Grissom, she was family. They had to find her.

Pulling out his cell, he woke Greg's ass up. "Hey, time to get to work. Lecter took Sara and Starling could be headed this way with Kevin."

"What?!" Greg said half-asleep and startled. "I'll be right there."

Nearly thirty minutes later Greg was finally walking through the door. Lifting his head out of a box he was digging through, he asked, "What the hell took you so long? I was starting to get worried."

"Sorry. I brought breakfast," Greg said while setting some bags of takeout boxes on a table between rows of shelves. As he pulled a box off a shelf, he asked while getting a lungful of dust, "Find anything?"

"Yeah. Cobwebs, dust, and a whole lot of nothing."

Greg, still holding the box, sneezed as he dropped it onto a table. "When was the last time anyone was down here?"

"From the looks of it, my guess would be 1996."

They were running out of time. Lecter had Sara. It all gave him a headache. And a backache, and his eyes hurt, and he was so tired that he almost fell asleep standing up while searching through another filing cabinet.

"There's a microfilm room back here! The door's locked. What if it's on microfilm?!"

"Why would it be on microfilm?"

"I don't know. There could be old newspaper articles-"

"Greg," he said cutting him off. They stared at each other across the room as he felt the stress building up inside. Greg was just as desperate as he was to find anything that could help. "You know, what?" He pulled out the keys and told him, "Knock yourself out," as he threw them over to him.

Greg caught the keys and headed towards the locked door at the back of the room. That was the last he saw of Greg for over two hours. As the sun was starting to peek through the windows, the door opened up as someone enter the room.

"CSI Brown, Sanders?"

"Yeah," he called out as he shut the cabinet drawer and straightened up as he glanced over his shoulder.

A tall, over six feet, man stood in the doorway, and said, "I'm Agent Greenfeld from Las Vegas."

"We were told you're our point of contact."

Greenfeld glanced around the big open room and asked, "Where haven't you looked yet?"

Warrick was about to point to the very end of the row of shelves when Greg called out, "Hey, Warrick, I found it!"

He couldn't believe it. "They put it on microfilm."

Greg nearly slid out of the door as he heard the printer start printing. "I had to figure out how to scan the microfilm for it to print, but I got it to work."

As they waited for all the pages to print, they finally sat down at the table and started eating. Though the food and coffee were cold, it was better than nothing. Greenfeld stepped out of the room and made a few calls. By the time he walked back in, the pages were ready.

Warrick tossed the pile of pages down next to the empty takeout boxes and Styrofoam cups. Flipping it open, he sorted the pages out. There was a lot of information in Clarice Starling's file. Old police reports and statements, medical reports and evaluation forms, intake and discharge records from the orphanage along with all her government documents including copies of her birth certificate. He handed a stack to Greg, another to Greenfeld, and the rest of it remained in his hands as he sat down in the chair to read it over.

"Starling's middle name is Marianne." Warrick held the orphanage intake forms in his hands, scanning the document, as he said, "She was brought into the orphanage in the middle of the night. 3 A.M. with a lamb."

"A lamb?" Greg asked in surprise.

"Yeah. She had been staying at a sheep ranch."

Greenfeld, who had the police reports, said, "It says that she was trying to save it from being slaughtered. Ran away with it. Sheriff's car picked her up."

"Who was the Sheriff?"

"Uh, Arbuckle. Deputy on scene was…Doug Warner."

Warrick shouldn't have been too surprised by that, but he was. Warner had been with the Montana Sheriff's department a long ass time. "So, Sheriff Warner worked on this, and he didn't mention it?"

Greg looked up at him from the pages he was reading and said, "Maybe he forgot."

Greenfeld spoke up again, saying, "Says here that Warner drove Starling back to the ranch and then transported her to the orphanage."

Warrick nodded as he came across the same information printed on the intake form. "She was abandoned by her own family. That's rough."

Greg scanned over Starling's medical records as he said, "That could be why she has a vendetta against Agent Collins. Her cousin tossed her out but took Agent Collins in; gave him the life and family that she could've had but didn't."

"That's a pretty good theory." And it was. He was impressed.

Holding up one of the pages, Greg said with a beaming smile, "It's in her psych eval. Not about Agent Collins, of course, but her feelings about getting the boot."

"Anything else in there we should know about?" he asked.

Shrugging, he said, "The lamb she saved and brought with her to the orphanage was named Hannah."

Warrick had his cell phone out and placed a call to Catherine as he told Greg, "Good job, you found the missing piece."

Greenfeld looked confused as he asked, "He did? What is it?"

"Wood chips," Hodges said as he handed him a data results sheet.

Gil's twenty-four-hour suspension had been revoked as he was ordered back on the case by Sheriff Atwater. The moment he arrived at the crime lab, he checked on all of the evidence brought in so far from the processing of the box truck. Catherine was in the conference room. He heard that Harlyn and her team were still out in Pahrump along with Nick.

"Specifically, embossed wood along with doeskin, but this was made from lamb, not a doe…the female deer."

"Embossed wood?" he asked as his mind worked to make a connection to all the other evidence they had.

Hodges gave a nod. "Interesting, isn't it?"

"Not really. It's an old carpenter's trick to repair indents in wood surfaces by swelling the wood back up using moisture and heat, and embossing powder. Any idea of the source?" he asked.

Hodges smiled as he said, "You know I'm always thorough. The only thing I found that's made of embossed wood with doeskin, or, in this case lambskin, are caskets."

As he heard those words, Sara's voice entered his head as he remembered their conversation in his office. She handed over the folder she had in her hand while sitting down in the chair, and told him, "Several things were missing. Two oxygen tanks, an ETT, which is an endotracheal tube and airway mask, and Isoflurane. It's a general anesthetic used to maintain anesthesia. It can cause airway irritation, so they normally don't use it to start it, and it's inhaled."

He left the trace lab without another word as he thought about Kevin, or Sara, being trapped alive inside a casket. Entering the conference room, he added the wood chips to the growing list of evidence.

Catherine regarded him with the most apologetic eyes as she told him, "I'm sorry, Gil–"

"Don't blame yourself for this, Catherine." He turned to her and asked, "Any word from Warrick?"

"Hannah is the name of a lamb that Starling saved from the ranch. She ran away with it. It was supposed to have been killed—"

Hodges's words entered his head, "The only thing I found that's made of embossed wood with doeskin, or, in this case lambskin, are caskets." A lamb casket…

"Grissom?"

"The uh, wood chips you found in the box truck had traces of lambskin. Hodges thinks it's from a casket."

Catherine didn't know what to say to that before continuing telling him, "She was sent away to the orphanage that same night."

He winced as he thought about Kevin's grandfather. The man had been highly unreasonable, closed-minded, and lacked compassion and understanding. His wife had always been the compassionate one, but she'd left him soon after. His treatment of Clarice was probably the reason for the divorce.

Sheriff Atwater and Ecklie chose that moment to enter the room. Ecklie came in with his hands up in mock surrender as he looked right at him and said, "I'm not here to fight, Gil. Sidle's missing, we're all doing our best to track down Lecter."

Atwater glanced over the evidence as he said, "You were partly right, Gil, he did leave the state…but not until after he took one of your CSI's. Why take both of them? It makes sense for him to take Agent Collins, seeing how he is your son, but Sidle—"

"This is what he does," Gil told the Sheriff. "He creates chaos and confusion, leading the police on a wild goose chase while he slips away. Starling went off in one direction, while he went in another. He's dividing our resources—"

"Do you know why he chose Sara and not Catherine?" Ecklie asked. "You were out there all night with Deputy Grant," he said as he eyed Catherine. "Yet, he waited specially for Sara. Why? Were you not his taste?"

Gil wanted to reach out and smack the hell out of the AD, but resisted the urge as he heard Atwater warn, "Conrad."

Catherine glared hard at Ecklie and told him, "I'm glad I'm not on a serial killer's radar, you on the other hand—"

"Catherine," Atwater warned her with a sharp tone.

Ecklie leaned on the conference table as he looked at Catherine. "Okay. Then, why was she out there alone—"

"This isn't her fault," Gil interrupted Ecklie to defend Catherine.

"The hell it isn't," Ecklie said as he shot him a glare. "She was acting supervisor—"

"If she had been there, Lecter would have killed her too, and Sofia. If anyone's to blame, it's me."

Catherine asked in disbelief, "What'd you do?"

"Besides sending her out there so he could ambush her?" He shook his head as he felt all the anger at himself start to boil to the surface. Now wasn't the time to get angry. He had to think, to figure this out. Sara was depending on him to find her. "Lecter did exactly what he wanted to do, which was take Sara, and make a fool of me. He wanted to prove to me how much smarter he was. It worked."

"You couldn't possibly have known—"

"But I did know," he almost snapped in anger at himself. "I knew it, Catherine. When I returned from South Carolina, I knew what he would have to do, and that was to get one of us alone. Kevin's abduction was a way to make it personal, get me angry and kicked off the case. I did everything he wanted me to do, his plan worked, because he knows me."

Catherine let out a breath and shook her head, saying, "Lecter doesn't know you, Gil. Your own friends don't even know you. If anything, he knew you. He knew you as Will Graham, not as Gil Grissom. And from everything I know of you, you're not the same man you were back then."

"Tell that to Ecklie. I shoved him into a wall."

Ecklie uttered under his breath, "And I'm still waiting for an apology."

He glanced over at the AD, ignoring him, as he told Catherine, "People don't really change. Fundamentally, I'm still the same man I have always been."

"Then so is Lecter. So is Starling. Who are they?" she asked him as she pushed up out of the chair and went to leave the room. Walking towards the door, passing Ecklie, she told him, "I'm ordering takeout. I'll get your usual, that is unless I don't know you anymore?"

As he watched her leave, he knew she was right. Lecter was the same as he's always been.

"He's left a lot behind, Will, or else you wouldn't know him. You do." Crawford's words from his memory earlier came to mind. He knew Lecter too. That was how he knew that he'd taken Sara when he'd woken up from his dream.

It was there, he thought again as he turned to look at all the evidence. It was all right there. In the details would be Lecter's design. He just had put it all together.

Ecklie raised his eyes at him and said, "Now, what's the real reason Lecter took Sara, Gil."

Everything he knew about Lecter's and Starling's dynamic slammed into head as he reached up to rub it. He was getting a migraine—

A dog barked. Outside of the conference room, in the hallway, he saw him. It was Winston. The first dog he saved on a dark deserted Virginia road. It'd been after he'd moved to Virginia from Minnesota. After figuring out that Garrett Jacob Hobbs was the Minnesota Shrike. He'd killed a man was what he'd been thinking as he drove along that dark road in the middle of the night. Did that make him a murderer? He'd done something he'd thought he'd never be able to do, and it tortured his soul until he thought he didn't have one left.

His eyes left the road, glanced in the side mirror at the passing trees disappearing behind him into the dark. When he put his eyes back on the road, he saw something, a dog. He swerved the truck to the right, barely missing the dog, as he pulled over to the side of the road and put on his hazard lights.

Getting out, he turned and saw a German Shepard. It was all by itself, scared and alone. He had nothing in his truck to offer the dog, no food or water. It whined and started pacing. He paced right along with it. Once he got close enough, he reached a hand towards the dog. The dog sniffed at his hand as it was trying to figure out if it could trust him or not.

He wondered if the dog could smell what he was, and what he had done. Did the dog know he was a killer? Would it trust him?

Winston barked again, breaking him from his memory, as his tail wagged as he stared through the glass. CSIs walked by Winston completely oblivious to the fact that he was there. The dog was there, wasn't he? But he couldn't have been. Winston died years ago, but that didn't stop the dog's eyes from staring into his own.

He wanted so badly to reach out to grab hold of him and pull him into his arms like he'd done all those years ago. He wanted to take him home. Feed him, take care of him, and prove to the dog that what he had smelt on him was wrong. It was a lie.

He wanted to save people, not kill them. He saved dogs. He'd saved Winston. Starling had saved a lamb. A lamb she had named Hannah.

"She had to save it. She couldn't save her father. Or her mother. But she could save the lamb. Hannah is her reminder of who she really is on the inside. A savior, not a killer." The answers were forming in his head faster than he could keep up with, so he just started talking as he kept his eyes on the dog in the hallway. "Lecter wanted her to be his legacy, his heir. His sister. But she'll never be what he wants her to be. He can't repress who she is, no matter how hard he tries—"

Atwater cut him off, asking, "Didn't she go willingly with him?"

"Maybe, maybe not…All I know is that she's been with him this whole time, by his side, and this will be the first time that she's completely on her own. Kevin is the final test—"

"Gil—"

"Her fingerprints weren't on the package delivered to the crime lab despite the fact that she was the one in the truck, yes?" he asked as he finally blinked. Winston vanished. Moving his eyes over to the Sheriff, he waited for him to answer.

Atwater nodded, saying, "She wore gloves. What's that got to do—"

"We weren't supposed to know that she was here in Vegas. She let Lincoln Fischer live. Lecter would have killed him. Fischer ID'd her as being the one in the truck. She wanted us to know—"

"That could mean that she wants the attention," Ecklie interrupted as he grew impatient.

He gave a nod, saying, "She does want the attention, but not the one you think. She left her prints for us to find behind the painting, a painting she knew we'd find because Lecter left the Lord Byron poem for me. It was a cry out for help."

Atwater sighed, giving that some thought before asking, "How can you be so sure?"

The only evidence he had that really solidified his theory was the paper left for him by Kevin. "Because she found the printer paper that Kevin left in the truck. She could have taken it but didn't. She's doing everything she can to undermine Lecter's plan."

"Then why keep going along with him? Better yet, why would Lecter keep her alive?"

Would he be able to kill Sara, even if she betrayed him? "He can't kill her. He loves her. He needs someone else to do it."

Lecter made Starling be the one to kill Crawford. He had her take Kevin. And he's been trying to get him to doubt himself, doubt Sara by associating her with Starling. Lecter wanted him to feel that betrayal and anger. He didn't want him to trust Sara, because he could no longer trust Starling.

A lamb casket. Was it for the sacrificial lamb that was Kevin? Or was it for Clarice?

"Gil?" Atwater's voice cut through his thoughts.

His mind, like always, bounced around from thought to thought, landing on something irrelevant that became relevant in order to help him understand. "Warrick asked me once if I ever thought about killing. Everybody thinks about killing, whether by their own hand or the hand of God. He didn't know it at the time, but I've killed two people in my life, not because I thought they had wronged me, but because I felt them inside. I knew their hate, and knew their pain, and I wanted them dead for having to feel something so bad that they had to kill people to make themselves feel so good. Hannibal's inside of me now, and I feel him. He knew I would." Atwater and Ecklie shared a concerned look before he reassured them both, "I don't want to be God-like. I don't want to kill anyone."

"I don't understand where this is going," Atwater told him.

"l do. It's easy to kill a stranger, or an enemy. Killing someone you know, someone you love…Lecter can't do it. He sees Starling as his sister, and he could never kill Mischa. She could do anything to him, even betray him. Starling got inside, so deep inside him that she could eat his heart. He'd gladly feed it to her. How does he kill something that's a part of him? That would be asking someone to cut off a limb; he can't do it. Limbs don't grow back. Even if he could, he'll still feel her. He needs someone else to do it for him."

"Like…a surrogate? Who?"

"Me," he said as he glanced between the two of them. It grew quiet in the room as he continued to think about it. That seemed right.

The moment was broken by Atwater's cell phone ringing. "It's Captain Brass." Answering it, he asked, "What'd you find?...That's what we thought. Good work, now get back here."

As the Sheriff hung up, Gil asked, "Wild goose chase?"

Atwater nodded. "Another dead end."

"They're in Montana."

"Then that's why you need to be on the next flight out there—"

"I can't be anywhere near Starling," he said as he shook his head. "I'll stay here. Finding Sara and Lecter is the priority."

Ecklie exchanged a look with Atwater before telling him, "Every resource is being utilized—"

"Were they not being utilized before, Conrad?"

Before Ecklie could say anything back, Atwater asked, "Can you find him, Gil?"

"Yes," he said with confidence. "I believe I can."

Atwater gave a nod then started to leave, saying, "That's good enough for me. Keep me updated."

Ecklie looked annoyed as ever, but pushed off the table as he went to leave the room. "Don't let me keep you. You said you can find him, so find him."

Watching them both leave, he felt its presence next him. He'd been ignoring it this whole time, but it was there. Turning his head, he stared into the glass eyes of the Dragon Slayer and saw his own reflection. "Let's find this son-of-a-bitch."

TBC…