The next morning brought all the guys from the team, plus a couple specialists, to the warehouse the janitor had suspected was responsible for his condition. Their visit, fully decked out in PPE to avoid contamination, immediately confirmed it. Thankfully, the spray pattern on the floor appeared to be only practice, not actually contaminated, but the irony that the actual contaminants had apparently been stored according to proper federal regulations was not lost on the team.

At the same time, Tara and Sue took a trip to numerous marinas and yacht clubs until one of them finally panned out and sent them to the house of a man who had recently sold his boat. Unfortunately, he wasn't home, so Tara left her business card both on the man's door and with his neighbor, just in case.

Once everybody was back in the bullpen, Tara headed over to Bobby's desk on pretense of handing him a file. As she did, she said, "Oh, hey, and, um, about that conversation we were having last night—"

"Oh, we don't, uh, we don't need to—" he started to say, glancing nervously at the full room.

She cut him off, having planned and rehearsed exactly what to say that would have meaning to him but mean nothing to anyone else. "I was thinking about it, and I think next time you play a game against the Hamsters," she said, with a slight smirk just for him, "you're right that it's not fair for your opponent to only have the rebound and no direct shot, but it's also not fair for you to have the rebound either. You both should probably be a little more patient, find just the right moment, and when it's all net and no rebound, maybe it'll result in a more successful game for both of you."

Seated, with her standing beside him, gave him the rare opportunity of looking up at her instead of down, and as she was speaking, he was considering how beautiful she was, and how brilliant, and how . . . confusing. He'd never played a game against any team called Hamst—oh! Wait, rebound? Was she saying what he thought she was saying? "Well, uh, you know those Hamsters," he responded, to make sure they were on the same page. "When they play . . . they're all heart."

She smiled. "Always have been. But sometimes the win isn't in how hard you fight, it's in how wisely you choose." She contemplated for just a moment, finding the way to continue the metaphor. "When you stop clinging to the bench that feels safe, it not only gets you properly in the game, but frees you up to make the . . . the score you really deserve. And . . . just like you got off your safe spot on the bench, last night, um, so did I."

He nodded slowly. "I see. Uh, we'll, um, we'll have to talk . . . basketball . . . more later."

They both glanced around to ensure nobody figured out that they were speaking in a coded metaphor, but as far as they could tell, nobody had heard them at all, because Myles, behind them, was teasing Jack and Sue again, which had been holding most of the team's attention. As they heard the teasing, they turned to join in.

What Bobby and Tara had missed, invested as they were in their own conversation, was Jack approaching Sue's desk with a hairdryer. "I believe this is yours," he had said. "Somehow, it ended up in my suitcase when they packed up the house."

"I wondered where it went," said Sue, who had had to borrow Lucy's that morning.

"Young lovebirds sharing a hairdryer," Myles teased. "How absolutely domestic of you."

He walked off smiling at his own joke, while Sue, who hadn't been able to see Myles's lips through most of that, looked to Jack and asked, "What?"

"He says it's nice that we get along and that we share," Jack loosely interpreted.

Sue had a strong suspicion that wasn't all of it, but she would try to find out later.

"Come to think of it," Bobby said, turning from his conversation with Tara, who also turned and sat against the edge of Bobby's desk, "you never did brief us on the whole living together as a married couple thing."

Tara nodded. "They say the characteristics that originally attract you to a person are the same ones that will eventually drive you nuts. Either of you like to . . . confirm or disavow that rumor?"

"I can honestly say, in this case," Sue said, "nothing could be farther from the truth."

"Thank you," Jack both said and signed, glad to be absolved of at least some of the harassment from their coworkers.

"With Jack, it's a whole new set of things that drive you crazy," she teased.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) D interrupted the conversation just then, coming in with the lab results from the items they'd collected from the warehouse that morning. It resulted in needing a list of places that might have dioxin contamination that could have gotten into the mud that was in the tire tracks at the warehouse.

Tara was about to head back to her desk to start on that, when Lucy said, "Tara, call for you. A Mr. Brad Lemmons said you wanted to talk to him?"

Rather than take the time getting to her own desk, she spun around and grabbed Bobby's phone to take the call, and confirmed that Mr. Lemmons would still be there if a couple of agents paid him a visit shortly. However, Tara really had to get on that list, so Jack and Sue found themselves headed out together again.

On the drive out the Mr. Lemmons, after an awkward moment in which neither of them were sure what to say, Jack asked, "So, uh, you think they'll ever get tired of teasing us?"

"No, but they'll eventually find a different topic."

"Not that you help," he added, and she noted that though his face was teasing, he was masking a bit of hurt behind it. "Playing into their hands by piling on the barbs."

"I do no such thing!"

"A whole new list of things to drive you crazy?"

She smirked, glad she could ease his mind on that at least. "I only meant for them to miss the double entendre, I didn't think you would."

"What?"

Glancing away shyly, she murmured, "I didn't specify what kind of 'drive you crazy' I meant."

Now the hurt was fully gone and he was smirking in a self-satisfied way. "Huh. I suppose you didn't. Are you saying you meant a different kind of . . . driving you crazy than what they meant?"

"I may have."

"Uh-huh. And, uh . . . which are these qualities of mine that drive you crazy in whichever way that might be?"

She hesitated, then said, "The new list, or—?"

"Either."

"Um . . . I think . . . we should save this conversation for after this case is done."

He sighed, face falling a bit. "Because it'll take you that long to think of one?" he asked, repeating her words from the afternoon they were preparing for the barbecue.

"No," she said slowly. He was driving one-handed, and she tentatively reached out and took his hand. "Because I think it will lead to a much bigger conversation that we need to have . . . especially after, um . . . yesterday morning . . . and the night before. And I think it's probably better that we focus on succeeding in taking these guys down so nobody gets hurt before we have that conversation."

He relaxed a little and said, "Yeah, I guess you're right." But his fingers closed around hers and neither of them made any move to change that.

After another moment, he said, "At least they didn't comment on us dressing the same today. Both in button-down blue shirts again."

"It's not the same," Sue said with a wink. "Mine has stripes."

He smiled. "I stand corrected. Or . . . sit corrected, anyway."