Thirty-five minutes later, Jane was striding through the front entrance of the Fairmont-Copley for the second time in twelve hours. She wasn't dressed nearly as fancy as she had been the night before—she wasn't in the company of one of the city's best known doctors and philanthropists either—but she still felt herself holding her head higher than usual.

Her years working Homicide had taken her all over. Jane had gotten used to just about everywhere the job could bring her, but she still felt a little self-conscious in upscale places. It certainly didn't help that no matter where she went, if wealthy people gathered there, Jane was guaranteed to find some hotel concierge or country club manager taking their job as gatekeeper to the rich a little too seriously. Each and every one looked down their nose at her, then worked overtime to get in her way, desperate to bury whatever unsavory thing she was there to investigate. For her part, Jane loved to remind the upper crust that their little world was not untouched by murder or corruption, relished in pointing out that the people that inhabited it were just as capable of depraved and disgusting acts. She did as loudly as possible, too. Her working class background had always been something she found impossible to hide, so she didn't bother. Jane leaned into it instead. She turned her insecurities into brashness, weaponized her unwelcome presence to pressure the foot soldiers of the elite into compliance, forced them to give her whatever she wanted if she would just, for the love of god, quiet down.

Lately, however, it was starting to feel a little different for Jane. All of this finery was still a world away from the one she was raised in but being with Maura, like really with her, had started to give her the confidence to hold her own without resorting to class warfare. Contrary to popular belief, she'd caught plenty of flies with vinegar, but these days she wasn't above giving honey a try.

A quick glance around for the first employee she could find followed by one polite conversation and Jane was soon being swiftly escorted to the security control room of the hotel, flying quickly through the lobby before passing through a door marked Employees Only. Even if she hadn't just gotten an extended history lesson on the building from Maura the night before, Jane would have been able to tell the hotel was built a long time ago rather than just designed to look like it. While the staff-only area was significantly plainer than the rest of the hotel, it still had those decorative touches that spoke to a belief in the inherent worth of good craftsmanship, something which Jane noticed was always absent from newer builds.

When they reached the security office, the hotel employee opened the door to reveal that Front had beaten Jane there, which was fine. Next to Frost, Gabriel Dean was also waiting for Jane, which was a little more annoying. The men were packed into the small room with two others: a highly strung man in a nice suit, presumably the hotel manager, as well as a young security guard who was failing badly at not looking awed by the presence of the FBI.

"Jane." Frost acknowledged her with a single nod.

"Detective Rizzoli," said Agent Dean.

She returned Frost's nod and gave Dean a long look, trying to gauge whether there was any insincerity at the formality she'd been demanding from him. It seemed genuine, so she returned it as such.

"Agent Dean."

The security room was stuffy even before Jane's presence ran its population to five. She shrugged out of her jacket, folding it carefully and dropping it over the back of the empty chair beside the seated security guard. The men had clearly all left it vacant for her arrival, some kind of weird vestige of chivalry that Jane absolutely loathed. She folded her hands over her belt buckle and joined the rest of them in standing.

"Sorry it took me so long," Jane said. "Had to drop Maura off at the precinct first."

The corner of Dean's mouth twitched and Jane privately enjoyed how the casual reminder of her relationship still seemed to get to him.

"We only beat you by a few minutes anyway," Frost said. He nodded up at the wall of computer monitors displaying what appeared to be every inch of the hotel. "They're just pulling up the security footage now."

Jane hummed a wordless sound, stepping closer to the monitors as the relevant video started playing. They showed a long hallway leading from the service entrance and Jane was soon frowning as she watched a man, plain and unremarkable, the sort that gets unhelpfully described as being of average height and average build, as he lead a clearly incapacitated Hope Martin towards the door.

The camera had captured them from behind but the man kept looking over his shoulder to check if anyone was behind them, offering them a slightly better view. Jane leaned forward.

"Is this really your highest resolution?" Frost asked the hotel manager, who cleared his throat nervously at the question.

"Yes," he said. "We've been meaning to upgrade the system but, erm, we haven't really had cause to."

"Always smart to wait to improve security until after you have a good reason," Jane muttered, then stepped even closer to squint at the screen. "God, that looks like just about any white guy in New England."

"We already have the guest list," Dean said, flapping a few sheets of paper in his hands. "Six hundred people RSVPed, so we've probably got about three hundred or so men to go through. We'll find him."

On the screen, the suspect turned such that Jane could better see the front of him. His face wasn't anymore distinct than it was before, but something else caught Jane's attention and her eyes went wide.

"That's not a guest," Jane announced. "Rewind that." She whirled around to face them, pointing at the security guard. "You, what's your name?"

"Steve," he gulped.

"Steve, go back 10 seconds and when I say stop, freeze it."

Security Guard Steve did as requested, stopping the video at Jane's command. The screen was frozen on a frame of the suspect facing the camera just after he shifted Hope Martin so that she was beside him, hanging off his shoulder with her arm slung around his neck. Jane looked back at everyone and pointed emphatically at the screen.

"See?"

"See…what?" Frost asked, leaning forward and narrowed his eyes at the screen.

Jane stared at the four men in the room with her, deflating slightly that her grand reveal was slightly less than that. Looking at their faces in turn, Jane could tell that the hotel manager was the only one who had clued in to what she was showing them, his slightly constipated look dissolving into an expression of realization.

"He's wearing a tuxedo," Jane supplied. Frost's expression shifted slightly and Agent Dean's not at all. Jane continued, a touch exasperated, pointing at the copy of the fundraiser invite she could see on top of the guest list Dean had in his hands. "The dress code for the event was cocktail attire. None of the guests wore tuxes, only the waitstaff did. Maura even said something about how she always finds it so strange when the caterers are dressed fancier than the guests."

"You can't wear a tuxedo to a cocktail party?" Dean asked as he looked down at the invitation, his tone very much indicating that he had perhaps done so in the past, quite possibly on more than one occasion.

Jane sighed, a long-ago memory of Maura delivering an overly detailed explanation of the different levels of dress code playing in the back of her mind. "I mean, you can, but you'll look out of place because that's technically black tie—listen, this doesn't matter. What matters is that our guy is hired help, which narrows things down significantly. We need to—"

Jane stopped cold. She turned sharply back to the screens.

"Jane?"

She heard Frost, but it was like he was a mile away. She didn't answer him, eyes darting from screen to screen to find the one she needed.

"That one," Jane said, pointing at one of several video feeds of the ballroom. "Show me that one at 8:40pm last night. Actually, bring that up on all the screens."

Steve worked away at his computer for a few seconds before all the feeds switched from the live shot to the previous evening. Maura, Jane and Hope Martin stood on the right of one of the screens. Hope held a champagne flute.

"Two minutes earlier," Jane said.

Steve clicked on the progress bar and typed in a new timestamp. Hope still had the champagne.

"Two more minutes."

Another few clicks and clacks. This time, Hope was empty handed. Jane set her jaw.

"Perfect. Play it from here."

"J—Detective Rizzoli," Dean said. "Can you clue us in to what we're looking for?"

"Shh," Jane hissed, watching the screens carefully. "There." She pointed to a screen in the far left corner, their suspect standing empty-handed and waiting at the bar. Jane observed as he collected a tray of champagne flutes from one of the bartenders and set out into the room. He had six glasses to start, which went quickly, and the entire time he had his eyes resolutely focused on another part of the room. The configurations of the screen were such that it was difficult to track where he was looking, but Jane knew anyway. She felt a pit growing in her stomach, gnawing at her insides.

It took only a moment or two for five of the six champagne flutes to be claimed by guests. When there was just one drink left on the tray, Jane watched as the man on the screen dipped his hand into his pocket before bringing it up to the remaining glass as if to steady it, his fingertips against the rim of the glass.

"That's when he drugged it," Dean said.

It was such a stupid, obvious thing to say. Jane had to bite her tongue to keep from pointing that out. She watched as the suspect continued to monitor some corner of the room with absolute laser focus, clenching her fists as she followed his quick progress across three screens. A few guests spied the lone drink on his tray but he artfully dodged anyone who might have wanted that last glass of champagne before finally arriving on the same screen as Maura, Jane, and Hope. Her blood boiled at the realization that she had indeed been an arm's length from their serial murderer.

It was rare that Jane wished she was wrong about something, but it was happening now. She wanted badly for her memory to be playing tricks on her, but things were playing out exactly as she remembered them. She watched their suspect pointedly offer the tray to Maura, ignoring Jane and Hope entirely. Her heart was in her throat as he waited a beat after Maura shook her head, clearly hoping she'd reconsider, before begrudgingly shifting the tray towards Hope.

"It was Maura," Jane stated darkly, trying not to choke on the words. "He wanted Maura."

She heard Frost suck a breath in through his nose. Dean, meanwhile, made a skeptical sound. Jane whirled around to glare at him and the agent blanched immediately.

"I mean, they're both doctors," Dean said, tone a little defensive. "He wanted to make sure he got one and was probably happy to get either of them."

"You're the one holding the guest list, Agent. How many of those names start with 'Doctor'?" Jane asked.

Dean glanced down at the papers in his hands, his shoulder slumping a little in concession.

"There was no shortage of possible targets if he just wanted any M.D.," Jane continued. "Watch it again. The suspect had his eyes on them from the moment he picked up that tray. He went right to Maura. Hope Martin was a consolation prize."

Steve, clearly experiencing the thrill of his life playing a dynamic role in a kidnapping investigation, jumped back the recording to the moment their suspect picked up his tray. The room watched in silence as it played.

"You're right," Dean sighed afterwards. "Doctor Isles was his target." His expression darkened as he flipped through one of the folders he was holding. "Has she always been? Are all the victims connected to her somehow? Was he building up to this?"

"She'd met one of them at an event once, that's about the only connection she mentioned," Frost supplied.

Jane nodded. "We've put so much legwork into trying to find a link between the first four victims, I'm pretty sure if there had been any ties to Maura, we would have noticed it."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Jane realized that while it was true there was no connection between Maura and the first four victims, there certainly was one between her and Hope Martin. The shock of the whole thing had really put Maura's parentage on the back burner but Jane was suddenly reminded that she was sitting on a major piece of intel. Jane kept her expression neutral, fixing her eyes on the screen.

"There's something that connects them," Dean said, his brow furrowing. "He didn't zero in on her like that for no reason. There's a pattern here."

"Well, that's your forte isn't it?" Jane drawled, not entirely able to keep the edge out of her voice. She'd gotten used to the FBI's presence on this investigation, but she still didn't love it, and now Maura had this fucking secret and Jane had to figure out if it mattered to the case. "Don't you have a profiler working on this? Isn't that the whole point of you being here?"

"I do," Dean said evenly. "And it is. There wasn't a lot to go on before today, but now we have a little bit more. Some of his methods, the drugging, the fact that at the very least, he showed up last night knowing who he wanted, and the fact that he was willing to settle for someone else, too."

"The champagne glass." Jane looked up at the screens. "Can we track it? Figure out what drug he used?" She turned her attention to the hotel manager, whose shoulders slumped with regret.

"I'm afraid not," he said with a sigh. "We always bring in an overnight cleaning crew after these large events. By the time we received word that a crime might have been committed, every glass used last night had long since gone through the sanitizer in our kitchen. The whole ballroom has been cleaned thoroughly, too."

Jane clicked her tongue in disappointment. She'd expected as much but it was hard not to get frustrated with the fact that they couldn't seem to catch a break.

A cold chill trickled down Jane's back as she realized that wasn't true. She had caught a break. A huge one. If Maura hadn't passed on that glass of champagne… Jane shuddered to think. She wanted to believe she would have noticed the signs, but with Maura so distraught anyway, perhaps she wouldn't have. Jane swallowed hard as she remembered how Maura went to the ladies room while Jane called the town car service, how Jane had taken a moment to check the scores of that night's baseball games. Jane hadn't even noticed that Maura was gone longer than a bathroom break would warrant until she returned, sighing about running into one of her old classmates.

Maura had been gone for seven minutes at most. That was all it would have taken.

And this sick fuck could still be after her.

"I gotta get back," Jane said abruptly, turning back to face Frost and Dean. A hot shock flashed through the center of each of her palms. She clenched her fists tight, battling down her reaction to the phantom pain. "To the precinct. We have to put a security detail on Maura."

"Go," Frost said. Jane could tell by the tone of his voice that she hadn't been entirely successful at masking her discomfort. "I can handle everything here, then I'll be right behind you."

"I can assist Detective Frost here before I head back to brief my agents," Dean said. "I, uh, agree that Doctor Isles' security is a priority."

The awkward hesitation by Dean had Jane feeling exposed. She hated the possibility that she'd betrayed her vulnerability to the agent, but not enough to stop her from underscoring it by rushing out. "Yeah. I—yeah." She grabbed her jacket from where it was draped over the back of the chair, already heading for the door as she spoke. " I'll check in with you both at the precinct."