It was a pause, and Bryan excused himself to Sara and walked out. Diana and Neal followed, but their man only slipped into the gents. Neal followed, but as far as he could tell, Bryan did nothing but what he was expected to. Neal left first and waited outside for Diana officially.

Neal's phone buzzed.

"Hey, Jones."

"Caffrey. We got the rest of the tape back. You got eyes on Bryan and Sara?"

"Sara's in her seat, and we followed Bryan to the bathroom," Neal updated him. "What's up?"

"There's another person on this tape," Jones said.

"Who?"

"I don't know, but he's in room 207, and she clearly hands him the violin. All we can see on the tape is someone's hands from inside the room, taking it."

This was not good. Diana returned from the ladies'.

"All right, I'll call you back," he said to Jones, hung up, and turned to Diana. "Annie may not be his target." He hurried back to the gents. He could hear the room was empty, before he saw the second door. Why had he not noticed it? Because it looked like a cleaning closet. "Damn it! There's a second exit." He looked around and saw the man from the desk. "Excuse me. Where's room 207?"

"Mr. Sumner…?"

"Room 207," Diana joined. "Where is it?"

"It's Maurie's room backstage, but..."

There was no time for buts. They both ran. The corridor was utterly silent. Neal recognized the corridor from the footage. And there it was, room 207.

He swung the door up without knocking and stared at the nice gentleman who guided them to their seat lying on the floor with an open violin case close by.

A slice in his west shone read of blood.

Neal knelled and felt for the man's pulse. He moved his finger, desperately searching. There was none. Nor did the man's chest move. He looked at Diana. The man was dead.

"How did this happen?" Peter sighed as he heard the news from Jones.

"Well, we think Bryan slipped out of the bathroom to confront Maurie. But security's in mid-update, so we don't have video, and Sara said Bryan wasn't gone for more than five minutes."

"Is her cover blown?"

"No, it's intact," Jones assured him. "We made a show of searching everyone,

including her and Bryan. If he had a weapon, he ditched it." Of course he did, Peter thought. "We also searched Diana and Neal, just in case their cover is needed in the future too."

"And the Stradivarius?"

"E.R.T.'s inspecting it as we speak."

"Sounds like you have everything handled." In this case, he was glad. He was in the middle of a birthday gift crisis. But he sure would not mind to leave all this mess behind and do what he was good at.

"Yeah, well, you said to call if someone died. So I'm calling."

"Thanks, Jones. Keep me posted."

"When we got back from Beijing, our manager left the Strad in his office," Annie Chaite, the woman they had seen on the tape, told Diana in the hearing room.

"You saw your chance to play it," Diana said, still in her fantastic blue dress. Neal watched from the one-way mirror on the other side of the wall.

"I'm second violin. It was the only time I'd get to play such a special instrument," Annie said, looking afraid and close to tears. "But I, uh... I damaged it."

"So you gave it to Maurie to fix."

"I panicked. He said he could fix it and put it back before anyone would notice."

"Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill him?"

"No," she shook her head. "He was such a nice man."

Jones joined him by the glass.

"Annie had nothing to do with this," Neal said, certain of it.

"You think we can get this figured out before Peter decides to come in?" Jones seemed to see a challenge. Neal felt bad because Maurie had been killed on his watch.

"Well, let's take a look at that violin, and we'll find out."

Jones nodded. An hour later, they all gathered in the conference room: he, Jones, Diana, and Sara.

"E.R.T. says it's clean," Jones said, placing the violin in its evidence bag on the table. "No secrets, no hidden compartments. Nothing but a Stradivarius."

"Okay," Diana started. "So, I'm Bryan."

"Really?" Neal asked. "'Cause I have more in common with him."

"I'm Bryan." She rose. "I'm going out of my way to search for a pricy violin

when I find out Maurie has it."

"You approach Maurie, you ask for it," Sara said, "and for whatever reason,

Maurie resists."

"So I kill him."

"And leave the Strad behind?" Neal asked. "It doesn't make sense." He looked closer at the violin. "A tuning peg's been ripped off."

"Well, Annie said she broke a string," Diana said.

"Yeah, but when you break a string, it breaks… It doesn't snap the violin…" Maybe it was not about the violin at all. "Sara, what work was Bryan doing in Beijing?"

"He was at the Peking Sci-Tech Convention to research expanding—"

"Sterling Bosch's tech division," Neal finished. "Jones, can you check and see if anything was stolen from that convention?"

"No, I-I already did," Sara said. "Local authorities said nothing suspicious went down."

Jones made his own check, though.

"You're right. Nothing at the convention. One of the vendors reported

a carbon polymer was stolen from their lab. According to this, its low mass and structural integrity make it one of the strongest materials in the world."

Diana read over his shoulder.

"Capable of enhancing medical development, imaging technologies, body armor, and even building an elevator to space."

The pieces fell into place for Neal.

"Bryan does dream big," he mumbled.

"Guess what it looks like, " Jones said, turning his laptop towards them, but Neal had already figured it out.

"A violin string… When Maurie went to fix it, he must have realized

something was wrong, become an obstacle —"

"So Bryan stole this to launch Sterling Bosch into the tech world." Sara sounded baffled. "He knew anyone who was at that convention would be flagged

trying to leave the country. He couldn't get through customs."

"Yeah, so he hid the string on the violin to pass inspection," Neal continued,

"then he went through separately. Smart."

"So we know where it came from," Jones said. "And we know how it got here."

Sara nodded.

"The only question left is, where's the string now?" They were silent, pondering this. "I think Maurie hid it," Sara said. They looked at her. "Bryan was so angry after the concert. I thought, you know if he had killed someone... but maybe he didn't find what he was looking for."