I've gone through my share of courtrooms, though I'll grant you, not as a citizen doing my duty, and I've noticed something: namely, having your fate entrusted to a bunch of schmucks who couldn't lie well enough to get out of serving on the jury sucks.

Only this time, the San Diego judicial system was dealing with my partner, Bobby Hobbes. And it wouldn't end up being only the guy on trial who found out that once the little tiger gets his teeth into something, there is no stopping him. A guy named Bob Wells summed it up pretty well when he said: "For every action there is an equal and opposite government program." And this time, the "program" was Hobbes. About as opposite as you can get in a government program, I'm thinking... All I can say, is, I wonder what would have happened at my second trial if Hobbes had been on MY jury. When he sees justice going awry, he does something about it.

Tuesday October 18^th

Robert Hobbes glowered at the mail he held as he dropped most of it on his desk. His partner, Darien Fawkes, glanced up curiously. "What up, Hobbesy?" he asked.

"I don't freaking believe this." Hobbes opened an official-looking envelope and quickly read the enclosed letter. "San Diego County Superior Court advises you to report for jury duty on Monday, October 23^rd. Report to room 1142 and sign in with the clerk of courts." He crumpled the envelope and went on. "I've been a good citizen all my life, I put in six years with the Corps and close to 20 with the government. You'd think that would be good enough. But no, they want me to serve on some cockamamie jury! Probably for some jerk they caught shoplifting or something."

"Can't the Fish have Eberts pull a few strings and get you out of it?" Darien suggested. He was trying to be sympathetic, but he thought it was funny. Bobby serving jury duty? The guy didn't stand a chance at making it all the way through the selection process. He was just too twitchy not to rub either the defense or prosecuting attorneys the wrong way.

"Good idea, stretch. I'll talk to the Chief. If anyone can get me outta this, it'll be him." Bobby hurried down the hall to Eberts’ office.

"Can I talk to the boss?" Bobby poked his head into the doorway to ask.

"I believe he'll be done with his conference call in a few minutes." Eberts looked up from his computer screen to answer. "May I ask why you need to see him so urgently?"

Hobbes narrowed his eyes at the assistant. "Not that it's any of your business, Eeeberts, but I need to see the man about this," he announced grimly, waving the summons in the air.

Darien had tagged after his partner to watch the mini drama unfold. He was still drinking his morning coffee and, as usual, eating. This morning he'd splurged on bagels with cream cheese. With his mouth full, he met Eberts' eyes over the top of Bobby's head and made faces, hoping to get the Official's businesslike assistant to crack a smile.

Eberts compressed his lips, apparently trying to squelch his amusement, and Hobbes caught the look, his temper rising. "What is so frickin' funny about jury duty, Eberts?" Bobby demanded . Behind him, Darien mimicked what he just knew had to be Bobby's expression and did it well enough that Eberts' effort to restrain a giggle failed with a squeak of helpless laughter.

The inappropriate reaction to the question tipped Hobbes off to Darien's antics, and he turned to glare at Fawkes with a look of supreme annoyance. "Everyone's a comedian," he snapped at Darien, who attempted to look innocent, failing miserably.

The situation wasn't helped at all by Eberts trying desperately to stifle his laughter. It made him look like a basset hound with a case of the hiccups, Darien thought, grinning back at his partner. "Hey, just trying to lighten the mood, man," he quipped with an insouciant shrug.

"He's off the phone now," Eberts interrupted their impending argument as the extension light on the phone on his desk went out, still trying to compose himself.

"OK, good. The boss'll straighten this out." Bobby pressed past the assistant's small and crowded desk to reach the Official's door, knocked, then entered the office with Darien on his heels. Fawkes threw Eberts a grin as he passed the younger man's desk, wiggling his eyebrows and making the poor clerk laugh all over again.

"Hey there, Chief, I have a small problem," Bobby began, ignoring the strangled sounds of mirth from behind him. "I just got notice I have to serve jury duty next week," he announced as he strode across the green-speckled linoleum towards his employer's desk. Darien leaned up against the wall near the door, content to watch, making a personal bet on the outcome of this little conversation.

"I see." The Fish studied Bobby from behind his blotter.

"I was wondering if you could talk with one of the big wigs you know and get me out of it?" Bobby asked hopefully.

"You're expected to serve if called on, Agent Hobbes," the Official smirked evilly, folding his hands over his paunch.

"You sure agents don't get some kind of waiver or something?" Bobby pleaded. "I mean, I am a civil servant, right? And a peace officer - kinda."

"Ah, but as far as the local government is concerned, you're just a man that sells textiles for a living. Therefore, to maintain your cover, you most definitely need to serve your community as ordered," The Official reminded him, the smirk going from evil to positively vicious.

"What do you mean, the local government thinks he's a salesman? I thought that was just his cover story for the general population. Not a story for the goofballs running the city..." Darien queried, feeling out of the loop.

"No, we maintain the cover on Robert's behalf," Eberts put in from the doorway, having been unable to resist the lure of the impending wrangle.

Darien was aware that it had become something of an Agency spectator sport to watch Hobbes try to get his way when the person he needed a favor from was the Official. The Fat Man could come up with more ways of frustrating the unfortunate agent than you could shake a stick at, and the whole Agency had started keeping tabs on which inventive way the Official would use this time to thwart Bobby.

"He can't be a secret agent for the government if everyone knows he's an agent," Eberts reminded Darien a bit superciliously.

"Yeah, Eberts is right," Hobbes said unhappily, shooting the assistant a dirty look. "I forgot about maintaining my cover when it comes to local matters."

"How come I don't have to have an official cover identity?" Darien asked, irrationally hurt. "I think I need one."

"They are rather expensive to maintain, what with fees for publications he subscribes to, fees for the Association of Textile Workers of America and financial records and tax payments. Then of course there are also..."

"Shut up, Eberts," the Fish, Darien and Bobby all said in unison.

"Yes, sir." Albert frowned, subsiding.

"Darien, we didn't think it would be necessary to provide you with a cover story. What with your criminal record and past history, you can be assured you won't be called to serve jury duty. You don't come in contact with the local law enforcement with any frequency, at least not in your capacity as an agent, so a cover identity just isn't cost effective," the Official told him shortly, annoyed at being interrupted in his victory over Hobbes.

"So I guess I need most of next week off," Bobby sighed, having conceded his loss in this round without any of the desperate whining and pleading he usually resorted to.

Darien was vaguely disappointed. "You could always answer the questions the lawyers throw at you during pretrial selection like you’re a real hard ass that thinks the guy on trial has to be guilty, since he's in front of a jury in the first place," he suggested. "You know, the guilty until proven innocent routine? It worked with the old farts they picked for my last trial," he added with a hint of bitterness.

"Yeah, that might work. But I'm still going to have to go down there and sit around. I hate all that courthouse crap," Hobbes complained.

"Agent Hobbes, do you mind taking this elsewhere? I have work to do," the Official interrupted him before he could really get started in his rant, and Darien took his partner by the arm, making soothing, sympathetic noises as he walked a reluctant Hobbes out of the office.

"C'mon, Bobby, let's go find out if Claire's got any of those Krispy Cremes left," he said, knowing Hobbes well enough to be able to count on distracting him from jury woes by implying his appetite needed to be satisfied. Hobbes was positively mother-hennish when it came to Darien's wellbeing, and Fawkes wasn't beyond using that to his advantage on occasion.

"Where the heck do you put all that food you eat?" Hobbes asked as he accompanied his partner, torn between annoyance and the concern Darien had counted on.

"Same place you do," Darien grinned as he patted his concave belly, heading for the elevator and the snack he wanted. The bagels hadn't quite satisfied him, and his stomach rumbled.

"Yeah. You've just got hollow legs attached to that stomach of yours," Bobby snarked, shaking his head. "Let's go feed you. Then we're gonna have to try and get some work done since I'm gonna be wasting most of next week at the county courthouse," he added, and Darien knew he'd be listening to Hobbes complain about this fate worse than death until he'd served - or gotten out of it.

Monday October 23^rd

The following Monday, bright and early, Hobbes reported as ordered to the county courthouse for his assigned stay in boredom-central. True to form, his group number was called less than an hour after he'd arrived, and together with the other three dozen or so people he'd been lumped with, he headed for courtroom 233, resigned to spending his day doing mental reviews of all the criminals he'd ever gone after, their histories, their crimes and whether or not he'd managed to win convictions when he'd assembled cases against them. It kept him from wanting to dial up Fawkes every few minutes to complain, at least.

The judge presiding over the case that Bobby had been assigned to made a little speech to the assembled jury pool as soon as they were seated in her courtroom. "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here today. I'm Judge Georgette Peña of the 10th district court of San Diego County. We will try to make your experience with us as interesting as possible. I want to warn you that I take my responsibility very seriously and any attempt to avoid service with false claims of hardship will be dealt with harshly. I will now ask if any of you have a pressing need to defer your service until another time?"

Two hands went up among the three dozen or more people Hobbes was sitting with.

"Yes, your name, please, and why do you request dismissal from service?" The judge asked.

"Your Honor, my name is Jennifer Brenton. I just gave birth to twin girls eight days ago. I believe that at this time in their life it would be best for me to be home with them," a tired-looking youngish woman introduced herself respectfully to the judge.

"Do you work outside the home, Ms. Brenton?" The judge inquired.

"I did, but I resigned to stay home with my children. My husband's business is doing well enough now that we can afford for me to."

"You may be excused, but you will be called upon again," the Judge informed her.

"Your Honor, Franklin Pike. I request to be excused due to an urgent business matter." The overweight, balding business executive-type barely allowed the Brenton woman to sit down before he was popping out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box, gesticulating and acting like mister important, to Hobbes' annoyance.

"Are you self-employed, Mr. Pike?"

"No, I work for Tillman Inc., your Honor. I'm the vice president of sales," he added with a tone that meant everyone in the jury room should be impressed by the guy's greatness or something. Bobby slid deeper down into his chair until his head was resting on the seat back. God, what frickin' waste of time! If this bozo would just shut up and let the lawyers get on with things, maybe they'd all be home in time for the five o'clock news.

"Then I believe you can assign one of the people under your supervision to handle the urgent business matter and you will remain to serve unless dismissed by either of the attorneys," she informed him. Mentally, Hobbes cheered her on.

"But Judge, as the man in charge of this deal..."

"I'm sorry, sir, but as you have stated, you are not self-employed. This urgent matter can be handled by someone else at your place of employment. Please take a seat."

Pike looked like he was about to object again at her ruling, but Judge Peña glared at him as a warning and he sat down, looking apoplectic.

"Anyone else? No? Good. The bailiff will now pass out a short questionnaire for you to fill out. Please be as accurate with your answers as possible."

Bobby looked the form over; his only hope of avoiding serving was that defense attorneys didn't like having members of law enforcement on their jury. Unfortunately, there wasn't much reason to reject a textile salesman... Unless it was a murder case in which the victim had been suffocated with a jacard-weave silk bathrobe or something. He could only hope.

While his partner was gone, Darien was being kept busy with a new series of tests that Claire had thought up to determine why he had become photosensitive to a rather extreme degree since his unwelcome walk in the desert the previous summer. What made it weirder was, he'd been fine immediately afterwards. It wasn't until he'd come back from his and Bobby's 'vacation' in northern California that he'd begun noticing that he was more prone to burning, and that his eyes bothered him a lot in intense light. And more annoying still, his achy joints seemed to be making a comeback. Not that he'd said anything yet to Hobbes. He didn't need his partner spending even more time worrying about him than he already did.

"Darien, have you noticed that you're wearing your sunglasses more often then before?" Claire had just drawn yet another blood sample from his arm and now she was writing notes down on a clipboard.

"Yeah, now that you mention it, maybe I have been. This morning was the first day in weeks I didn't need them just to drive to work, what with all the fog," he nodded.

"And your knees are bothering you again?" she asked.

"Yeah, it's mostly my knees, and if I do a lot of standing, my hips. My hands were a little achy this morning. That hasn't happened before," he informed her.

"Let me see." Claire put down her clipboard and examined his right hand. "It feels just a bit hotter over your knuckles. Is that where the pain is centered?" She reached for his left hand and checked it over as well.

"Yeah. Aunt Celia always said the rain made her joints ache." Darien sighed.

"Are they so painful that you can't use them?" Claire continued with her exam. "Wiggle your fingers a few times."

"No, just achy and stiff first thing this morning. Now they’re just a little sore." He flexed the fingers for her. "See? They work."

"Good. Perhaps it’s only the damp weather affecting you." She picked up her clipboard again. "What does the Official have planned for you today?"

"Eberts said something about working with Alex, but if you need me for more tests...," he offered.

"Alex must be working on something nasty if you're actually volunteering to stay here for tests," Claire smiled.

"The case she's working now makes that stint working with parks and rec to remove the skunks in Balboa park look like a day at the beach," Darien whined pitifully.

"Oh, do tell? What is she working on?" Claire said eagerly, wanting to know what unpleasantness her friend Alex had been assigned to this time.

"It's a case the Treasury Department requested help with. Some muckety-muck over there decided their own guys weren't up to handling it alone.

"Treasury? Haven't you worked with them before? What's the problem?" Claire was all ears.

"A large amount of forged money was found at a dump up in Escondido. They sent Alex along on the investigation. Eberts said she wasn't too happy with the assignment." Darien chuckled. "I guess she didn't really hit it off with the local yokels when she got assigned to them last year on that other counterfeiting case. Or maybe it's that she doesn't want to wade around in last week's leftovers in her Manolo Blaniks," he grinned. Claire grinned back.

Monday October 23^rd

Hobbes was sitting in the jury room waiting to for his group to be called for possible selection for the second time that day. He'd managed to avoid getting stuck on the case in front of Judge Peña to his relief, especially since the loud-mouthed sales guy had been chosen for the jury as an alternate, to the man's outrage.

A group of people came in, presumably from one of the courtrooms, apparently rejects from a selection, as he was. Hobbes reflexively glanced their way and noticed one of the women. She was talking with an older lady, who was really the one doing all the talking. She was dressed more formally than most of the other jurors, in a dress and heels. The usual casual California attitude towards dress prevailed with most of the people in the courthouse, but not with her. For some reason, she reminded him a little of Claire. Not in looks, but in bearing. She was quite pretty, with her light brown hair waving around her shoulders and the bright smile that curved her mouth. Laugh lines around her eyes confirmed it wasn't just an act.

He glanced at the people filling the rest of the jury waiting room. Most of them were clothed in variations of l style of jeans or slacks, with only a few skirts or dresses scattered like flowers The woman who'd caught his attention laughed, the sound setting off a small, warm feeling off in Bobby's middle. He was debating whether or not to cross the room and introduce himself when his group was called for another shot at the selection process.

His attention was shot after that; he hardly listened while the other members of his group were questioned about their lives and jobs. He was too busy wondering if the woman he'd seen would still be in the selection area by the time he was again dismissed. He was sure he would be dismissed again; he'd managed to pull off the red-necked conservative act once before, after all.

There was a delay in the proceedings and the jurors were allowed to take a lunch break. Bobby went out to the van and put a call in to the Agency.

"What's up, man?" Darien asked, "Did you beat the system?"

"No, I have to go back after lunch." Hobbes sighed. He was about to tell Darien about the woman he'd seen, but he hadn't even talked to her yet. If he started to obsess about her, he'd just be borrowing trouble. Not to mention leaving himself wide open for more teasing from his partner.

"So, you want to meet me for dinner after?" Darien asked, his ever present need to eat a clear motive for the question. "I've been doing a pretty good impression of a pincushion for Claire all day," he added, his voice rising in a familiar wheedle.

"Yeah, sounds good. I'll call you as soon as I get out of here. What about your assignment with Monroe?" Bobby asked.

"Lets just say I'd rather be a pin cushion than spend the day excavating at the dump for funny money," Darien laughed. He explained about the case the Treasury Department had brought them.

"Oh, man, you lucked out for once. Playing guinea pig for Claire has to be better than schlepping around the landfill with Monroe complaining about her designer duds getting all dirty." Bobby chuckled.

"Yeah, the dump might even be worse than skunk patrol." Darien snickered.

"Yeah, I'd say so, alright," Hobbes agreed. "Okay, man, dinner it is. I'll see you tonight, and we can compare notes on what a waste of time our Mondays were, right?" Bobby laughed as he said goodbye. One thing about Fawkes: he could always make Hobbes laugh. All of a sudden, the day wasn't so bad, after all. And who knew? Maybe he'd spot the pretty woman in the jury room again.

"Right." Darien agreed. "Later, buddy." Darien hung up with that farewell.

Bobby wolfed down a fast-food lunch Fawkes would have approved of, bought the afternoon paper as a way to kill time while he had to sit around anyway, then returned to the jury selection room to wait to be called back to courtroom D. There was good news waiting for him when he got back: it looked like the trial he'd been in line to serve on was being settled out of court. If he made it to the end of the day with out being picked, he was done.

"Would you mind if I shared your paper?" a female voice asked, breaking into his private celebration of his good fortune.

"No, not at all," he said, gathering several sections he'd already read together. "It's all yours, I'm done." Hobbes gave her his best smile, and looked up as he handed her the paper. It was her, the intriguing lady he noticed before lunch.

"Thanks. I think it's going to be a long day," she smiled back. "I'm Terri Breckmen, by the way." She offered him her hand.

"Robert Hobbes. Nice to meet you," he introduced himself and shook her hand. "Is this your first time serving on jury duty?" Bobby asked after shaking hands with her. He squeezed her hand firmly, but not too firmly. He was pleased to note that her grip was strong and assured, not limp and passive as so many women's handshakes were.

"No, though it's the first time I've had to actually come down to the courthouse. Usually, my group number doesn't get called. I just hope if they pick me, it won't be a long trial," she confessed.

"Same here. I need to get back to work as soon as possible." Bobby nodded.

"What do you do?" Terri asked the usual question people asked when meeting for the first time.

"I'm an A... salesman for a big textile mill," he hedged the truth, shocked that he'd been about to tell her he was an agent. It might be a lousy cover, but that was the reason he was stuck here doing his civic duty. Even so, it bothered him that he had to lie to the woman - Terri - first thing. Sometimes, being a government agent sucked. "I travel a lot."

"That's interesting, I'll bet you meet all kinds of people doing that."

"It keeps me busy. What do you do? For a living I mean," he added.

"I own a small business. It's our fourth year and we seem to have found our niche. I run a doggie daycare place over in La Jolla," she told him.

"Oh yeah, that sounds like it would be challenging." Hobbes wasn't expecting her to be involved with that sort of a profession, considering her formal business attire. But if she liked animals, she must be a good person.

"It is; the owners more so than the dogs, usually," Terri admitted with an infectious grin that made Bobby smile back.

"Will jurors in group 264 please follow me," The bailiff called out to the people in the room, interrupting their budding conversation

"Oh, that's me. I'm in group 264. I'll see you later." Terri stood up and gathered up her purse and his former paper.

"I'll look for you after. Good luck. Hope neither of us get picked for anything long," Ever the gentleman, Hobbes stood as she prepared to leave the room. The Corps had trained him well in that regard.

"You too," she smiled one last time looking back at him over her shoulder as she walked towards the exit.

Hobbes watched her go regretfully. It figured that just when he'd met someone interesting enough to spend some time talking to, she'd get called into a jury selection. Odds weren't very good when it came to running into her again, he sighed to himself, admiring her delicate ankles and the slim, muscular calves as she walked away from him.

Bobby was called to a courtroom a few minutes later, and this time he was actually picked to serve, which surprised him, especially since it was a criminal case. And a contentious one, by the way the attorneys were going after the jurors. Both the defense and the prosecuting attorneys were dismissing jurors right and left, and eventually, the judge was forced to call for another group to be brought in, so that the last two seats and the two alternate positions could be filled.

To Bobby's surprise and delight, Terri was one of the new jurors to be brought in, and even better, from his perspective, anyway, she was eventually picked to serve on the case along with him. All in all, Bobby thought doing his civic duty might not be such a pain after all.

He revised that opinion fairly quickly, as soon as the opening arguments concluded and the first witness was called. Especially since Terri was seated at the opposite end of the jury box from him. He knew, since things hadn’t gotten started until mid afternoon, that the lawyers would only scratch the surface in today’s agenda. But that didn’t account for the impatience of the presiding judge when it came to the prosecution’s first witness.

The hapless ADA was interrupted at every turn during his questioning, a phenomenon Hobbes had never experienced before. And considering the number of times he’d been in court to testify, that was saying something. Judge Dorothy Hernandez seemed to have a real problem with the young Assistant District Attorney who was in charge of the prosecution’s case. Bobby had been on the receiving end of that kind of witch hunt himself, so he found himself cringing every time the judge slapped the DA down with some nitpicky bit of jurisprudence. ost on Bobby. Something was up.

When the defense attorney, an oily and really unpleasant sort by the name of Abernathy, came up to bat, though, his greasy persona must have lubed the judge the right way, because she was quiet during his cross examination of the first witness, a sales clerk who had witnessed the entire assault by the young two-bit hood sitting at the defendants’ table.

John "Jackie" Chan was maybe 21, according to the sob story his lawyer had told during his hour-and-a-half opening statement about the terror of his birth in post-fall Saigon to a Chinese hooker. Birth records having disappeared, the kid's exact age was un-provable. Not that it mattered. With his candy-apple red streaky highlights, it looked like Chan went to the same hairdresser Fawkes did. Only someone under the age of 25 - or with Darien's severe case of arrested development - would frequent a place like Mona's.

But the similarity ended with the hairstyle choice. Fawkes was a stand-up guy. Hobbes would give his life for his partner without thinking twice. Heck, without thinking once. And for the first time in his professional career, he knew the feeling was reciprocated. Fawkes could - and had - risked his life on Bobby's behalf. He'd risked his new standing as an agent, he'd taken chances that even risked his friendship with Hobbes, to save Bobby's life. His reputation. Darien Fawkes was by far the best partner he'd ever had.

Charlie - make that John - "Jackie"... Chan was nothing but a punk who wouldn't know a good deed if it bit him on his skinny little ass. Hobbes disliked him on principle.

Which he knew was against the judge's longwinded orders as they'd begun this whole thing: keep your personal judgements out of this. Think only about the evidence. The problem was, Hobbes had spent so much of his professional life investigating criminal behavior on every scale from the petty to the grandiose that it was nearly impossible for him not to draw on his considerable experience and the instincts that he'd developed as a result. Chan was bad news.

The jurors were dismissed after the first witness's testimony, at around a quarter to five in the evening. Hobbes headed out of the courthouse with his head down, focused entirely on what he'd heard, trying to justify, somehow, the judge's obvious antipathy towards the ADA.

He had his key in Golda's lock when he became aware of someone nearby. He looked up and around, and spotted Terri a few parking spaces down. He nodded at her with a bashful smile, and to his surprise, she paused and approached him.

"Robert, right?" she began.

Bobby couldn't suppress the rush of pleasure that she'd remembered his name. "Bobby, to my friends," he corrected.

"Bobby. I know... I shouldn't be talking to you, but I... I just don't know what to think after today." Terri twisted her key ring between her fingers in obvious anxiety. "I've never been in a courtroom before, so I really don't know how things are supposed to work, but... did it strike you as strange that the judge was so hard on the Assistant District Attorney?"

Hobbes felt his mouth drop open in shock. He was so accustomed to being ridiculed and called an alarmist for his wary instincts that hearing them echoed by someone he didn't know came as a shock.

"I thought I was just being paranoid!" he admitted, and the rush of relief on Terri's face warmed him to the soles of his feet.

"Well, if you are, then so am I," Terri assured him. "It totally shocked me how hostile Judge Hernandez was! My God! I thought she was going to throw the case out before it even got started. And did you see the look on Detective Schnyder's face? I can only imagine what it would be like to pour your heart and soul into investigating an assault like this and then have the Judge tear holes in everything!"

Hobbes could only nod dumbly, amazed that someone he'd known for less than six hours could so accurately echo his own point of view.

"I only wish I knew what to do," Terri continued.

"Me, too," Bobby agreed, shaking his head. "I guess the only thing we can do is keep our ears open. But I'm tellin' you, I'm not likin' this. Not even a little." He smiled at Terri, trying to comfort her a bit. Being a professional investigator, it was hard to keep quiet about all the things that worried him in this case when the person he was talking to was a fellow juror, and someone that the judge on the case had told him not to discuss the situation with.

There were times that following orders sucked. And this was one of those times. Besides, he hadn't started it. Terri was the one who had echoed his own concerns. Who was he to argue?

He knew he needed another point of view. He also had a dinner date with his partner. Sounded like a perfect end to a confusing day. Of all the people he knew, Darien could always be counted on to set him straight.

Monday October 23^rd

Bobby met Darien at Fawkes' place after stopping by to pick up an order at their favorite Chinese place. His partner's appetite was amazing. Bobby had picked up enough food for a family of five, and he doubted there would be any leftovers to speak of.

"Yo, Fawkes, help a guy out here; this bag is loaded," Bobby called as he banged on Darien's apartment door with his elbow.

"Finally! I didn't think you were ever going to get here." Darien swung open the door and reached into the bag to take the two top cartons out. "I have the coffee table set up. You want a beer now or after you eat?" Darien inquired.

"Later. I want to taste the full flavor of this Szechuan chicken, spices and all." Bobby turned towards the living room half of the studio apartment. He set the bag down and started to unload the assorted boxes. "Maybe it'll help clear my head, if you know what I mean. Man, a day spent in a courtroom ranks right up there on my list of favorite activities - right there alongside root canals," he groused.

"I still can't believe you actually got picked for a trial," Darien said with a certain amount of amazement, putting plates on the table.

"Yeah, I got picked. Why? You think Bobby Hobbes isn't jury material, huh, partner?" Hobbes retorted testily as he opened the box with his favorite five-spice chicken and began to spoon it on to his plate.

"No, that's not what I meant," Darien backpedaled. "I'm just surprised, is all. You're the first person I've known who's gotten selected, OK, Mr. Touchy?" He took a bite of his egg roll and chewed. "So, what kind of trial is it?" he asked with his mouth full.

"I'm not supposed to talk about it," Hobbes said shortly as he snapped apart the wooden chopsticks and deftly popped a crispy-spicy bite of chicken into his mouth.

"Oh, right. Play hard to get, why don't you?" Darien teased as he helped himself to some rice from one of the cartons. "I'm not asking for the details, Hobbesy, just the general gist of things. You know, like civil or criminal?"

"Criminal," Hobbes replied when he'd swallowed his bite of food.

"OK, so, felony or misdemeanor?" Darien persisted as he poured a few pai gow shrimp over his rice and picked up his fork.

"Felony. That oughta ring a few bells with you, Mr. Sticky Fingers ex-thief."

Darien winced. "Man, you really are in a rotten mood, aren't you?" he observed ruefully. "Remind me not to invite you over for dinner the next time you get stuck doing jury duty, OK?"

Hobbes eyed his partner apologetically. "Sorry, Fawkes. It's been a long day, and even though we were only barely into the preliminaries, today, it looks like it's gonna be about the most whacked case I've ever seen in court. Something about it's got my hinky-meter pegged right off the scale, you know?

Darien sat back, a look of intense interest on his face. "OK, now you're just bein' mean," he smiled slightly. "What kind of case would have my partner, the absolute KING of hinkiness, saying he's never seen anything this hinky?"

Hobbes shoved another bite of chicken into his mouth instead of answering, knowing that the judge's injunction not to speak about the case to anyone had already been disregarded once that day when he and a suspicious Terri had compared notes outside in the parking lot at the end of the day's session. When he'd finished chewing, he stabbed a shrimp from Darien’s plate with his chopstick and waved it about to emphasize his words.

"It's not the case. That looks like it should be a slam-dunk for the prosecution, if their evidence is half as good as it sounds. The guy is a two-bit hood. A gang banger who made it into the big leagues. Nah, it's not that that's the weird part..." he trailed off, leaving Fawkes staring at him in frustrated silence.

"So what part is it, exactly? So far, I'm not seeing what's got you so worked up," Darien prompted after a moment.

"It's the judge," Hobbes admitted after a minute, stuffing his shrimp into his mouth and chewing it viciously.

"The judge?" Fawkes asked, eyebrows levitating towards his luxuriant hairline in surprise. "That's a new one," he added.

"Yeah. Which is why it's got the hair on the back of my neck standing up. Something is...."

"Hinky," Darien finished, trying hard to look serious.

"Smartass," Hobbes scolded, but couldn't help the grin. "And it's not just me who thinks something's up, so there, wiseguy," he added.

"Ooooo! There's someone else on that jury with as well-developed a sense of paranoia as my partner's?" Fawkes grinned. "Who? Come on, spill it, my friend."

"Fawkes, cool it, will you? There was this woman there today...." He trailed off and took a bite of his egg roll. "She and I talked for a minute after we got out tonight. She was the one who mentioned it first. I thought it was just me until she opened her mouth."

"Oh, a chick, huh? Thinking about getting a little action?" Darien bounced his eyebrows at his partner.

"What? No, she was nice.... there was just this feeling...." Again, Bobby didn't finish his sentence, flustered.

"Yeah, I know that feeling. We all do. So work some of your magic on her and talk to her." Darien took a huge bite of his food and chewed, deliberately leading the conversation away from the supposed hinkiness of the trial Hobbes was stuck on and towards a much more sensitive subject; Bobby's love life.

Hobbes wasn't any too happy with providing his partner yet another opportunity to tease him, but at least he wasn't under orders not to talk about Terri. "I was going to, but then we got called into the courtroom and after we both got chosen, it just didn't seem like the thing to do." Bobby began to toy with his plate of food.

"Whoa - you're both on the jury, right? So this is perfect, Hobbesy. You've got the whole trial to wow her with your suave secret agent persona. She'll be eating out of your hand by the time you get to the deliberations," Darien grinned and shoveled another enormous bite of his dinner into his mouth.

"Yeah, well there's one little problem with your seduction scenario, pal, and that's my cover identity as a textile guy. What woman is gonna wanna date some schmuck who travels the country with a briefcase full of fabric swatches?" Hobbes snarked, feeling unaccountably depressed, suddenly.

"You won't know if there could be something there if you don't at least ask her out for lunch or coffee or something," Darien suggested kindly, and Hobbes shot him a look to make sure he wasn't being set up for one of his partner's famous one-two ego punches. But there was no sign of anything except genuine interest in Fawkes' brown eyes.

"Maybe. I'll see her again tomorrow at the trial, so I have a chance to ask her out, I guess." Hobbes sighed again.

"You been taking your meds, buddy?" Darien asked after a long and rather uncomfortable pause, obviously trying not to sound more than conversational.

Hobbes glared at him. "That's always your first question, isn't it, Ace?" he demanded grimly.

"Hey, my friend, don't kill the messenger. That question means I worry about you, too. You're not the only one in this partnership who has rights in the worry department, you know," Darien defended himself, and Hobbes immediately regretted his knee-jerk reaction.

"I know, Fawkes, I know," Bobby nodded slowly, patting his chest pocket. "Yeah, I've been taking my meds like a good little psycho. Someone's gotta be firing on all cylinders on this team, you know."

"Good. Glad to hear it. So stop telling yourself you're not good enough for this chick, whoever she is. She sounds like she has the same instincts you do, so why not see what else you have in common, right? And I know you like her, because if this was just some casual flirtation, you'd be all over it, my friend. You know you would. You only get all shy and goofy when you really like a woman... Like with Claire, when you two think no one is watching."

Bobby felt himself blushing furiously at the mention of Claire's name, the years of infatuation, the schoolboy crush he'd had since he first met the gorgeous Englishwoman a favorite topic for Fawkes' relentless teasing. "Yeah, well, this lady and I, I think... we're at least on the same plain, you know? I look at Claire and all I see is all the things I ain't. Terri... well, she's a real woman. You know?" he looked at Fawkes hopefully.

"Yeah, Bobby, I know. And so's Claire, believe it or not." They looked at each other for a moment over the piled take out cartons before Darien cleared his throat. "So. Want any more shrimp?" he asked with a flash of the infamous puppy dog eyes.

Hobbes couldn't help the laugh. "Finish 'em up, partner. I have dibs on the five-spice chicken though, so keep your greedy mitts offa that carton, or I'll stick you with my chopstick."

Tuesday October 24^th

"Fawkes, I want a word with you," Alex's no-nonsense voice called out to Darien, 10 seconds after he walked into the Agency the next morning.

Eberts had just stepped out of his tiny office, and when Alex appeared from the other end of the hallway, intent on corralling Fawkes, he wisely ducked back inside and softly closed his door.

"Alex, nice to see you. Did you have a good trip to Escondido?" Darien knew he was really pushing his luck with that question, and even more so with the grin he aimed at her. It was a good thing he could Quicksilver and make his escape if she got really mad at him.

"Yes, as a matter of fact I did," Monroe replied with an expression that reminded Darien of a cat who'd raided the goldfish bowl, somewhat to his surprise. "It was a smelly job, but it ended up producing some good leads on the case. A case, as a matter of fact, that could use your special talents." She motioned to him to follow her to her office.

"Whatever you say, Ms. Monroe." Darien turned in his tracks and followed her.

She waved him into the black leather couch that occupied one side of her office, and poured a couple of glasses of fancy sparkling water from Italy, bringing them to the little seating area. "Did you manage to avoid Eberts' briefing yesterday, or did you actually do your homework and read up on this case?" she asked.

"Uh, well, I was in the lab with Claire for most of the day," he hedged.

Alex snorted. "Why am I not surprised? You have an absolute genius for getting out of anything that could actually be called work," she snarked at him.

"Hey there, Suzy, I work!" he whined. "And a day with Claire and her tests isn't exactly a day at the beach, you know. Besides, I don't remember seeing you around when Bobby and I were up in San Francisco chasing after Javier last month!"

"Yeah, because I was on assignment with Homeland Security, and you know it!" she retorted warmly.

"And speaking of that, how come you didn't give us a heads-up about that EMP-proof com system and the tests they were running?" he wanted to know, perfectly willing to change the subject if it meant he'd be off the hook for a visit to the Escondido dump.

"Because, genius, that wasn't the project I was assigned to. Intel has been coming in on increasing activity in possible terror-cells in the US and Great Britain, especially, and one of them is based in the San Diego area. Up until now, there hasn't been any more to go on than rumors, but about a week ago, Homeland Security got wind of possible activity up in Escondido."

"Yeah, so?" Darien muttered, slouching deep into the couch.

"So, they think there's a connection between a gang in the area and group of men who entered the country on limited work visas last January. But we haven't been able to determine how they’re making money to fund whatever it is they're gearing up for. Turns out that making it may be exactly what they are doing." Alex informed him as she took a plastic evidence baggie off the coffee table and tossed it at Darien.

Fawkes caught it out of the air out of pure reflex and held it up to examine it. It held a sample of the counterfeit money Monroe had been sent out to locate. It was bagged and tagged and only a little eau de dump lingered. "Looks like these guys didn't do such a great job laundering their dough, if it all smells like this," Fawkes grinned at her.

"Fawkes, this is Special Agent Harrison, and his partner Special Agent Nichols. Gentlemen, this is Darien Fawkes, my B&E expert," Alex made the introductions. Obediently the three men shook hands all around, then turned their attention to Monroe, who, true to form, had assumed command of this part of the operation.

"You’ve briefed him, right?" Nichols queried, casting a wary eye on Darien, who had dressed that morning in his usual thrift store fashions, complete with a threadbare ACLU t-shirt. If he’d known he was going to be doing a little invisible B&E into the stronghold of a local gang on behalf of the government, he’d have picked a different shirt. Maybe the AFL-CIO one. Or the red cowboy shirt with the black embroidery...

"Yeah, he’s up to speed. He’ll do the initial recon and see what he can scare up. Your team has kept an eye on the place, right?" Alex asked efficiently. "No one’s been in or out of there since I called you?"

"Nope. It’s been dead all morning," Harrison assured her. "All we need is an idea of what they’re up to, and we’ll be able to generate probable cause so we can get a warrant."

"Uh ‘generate’ probable cause?" Darien spoke up, suddenly aware exactly how inopportune his choice of t-shirts was. "I thought I was just going in to see if I can figure out what they’re doing to fund their supposed terrorist activities," he protested.

"That’s exactly what you’re doing, Fawkes. Get in, take a look around, get out. Don’t touch anything, don’t take anything, don’t do anything except get us something to go on. If they have a printing set-up in there, I want to know that. If they’re Xeroxing monopoly money, I want to know that, too. Got it?" Alex snapped, smacking him in the chest with the tiny digital camera she’d taken off her wrist. The strap lashed him on the jaw painfully. "If the Official hadn’t insisted he wanted you on this, I would have gone in myself. And Fat Man or no Fat Man, I still can, if you’re going all Civil Libertarian on me." She glowered at him as though she would like to tear him limb from limb on the spot.

Darien was uncomfortably reminded that he’d come to law enforcement from the other side of the fence, entirely. "You’re the boss," he shrugged, none too happy about that fact. It was one thing to sneak him and Hobbes into the movies or the water park, and another to essentially violate someone’s rights because the government didn’t like the color of their underwear, or the shape of their ears or the color of their hair, or whatever it was that had brought these unlucky bastards up on the radar.

"That’s more like it," Monroe said with brisk approval, and fetched a headset out of the bag she wore over one shoulder, handing it to him, then fishing out a second, donning it and setting the mike in place in front of her pouty lips. "Ready?" she asked as he put his own headset on. He supposed it was a good thing it resembled a cell phone earpiece, because otherwise, if the feds were wrong and someone was watching him, he’d be tipping them off and who knew if the Treasury guys would ever pick up their trail again.

"As I’ll ever be," he said, tossing off a sloppy salute at Alex and the two Treasury agents and sauntering off down the block and around the corner towards the one warehouse they’d had under surveillance in this whole seedy complex.

Behind him, he could just make out Nichols’ worried: "He’s an agent?"

Darien grinned widely, pushing his dark glasses up his nose and ambling towards the alley between his target warehouse and the one next door. As soon as he was out of sight from the street, he willed the Quicksilver into place and stepped back out onto the street, heading for the door of the office at the end of the building. He tested the door: locked. OK, clearly, these guys, whoever they were, weren’t the trusting sorts. He considered freezing the three heavy-duty bolts that fastened the door shut, but that would have left obvious signs that they’d had a break in.

So. What other way could he find into the building? He scoped it out, circling it, casing the place for any point of entrance that might not be so well protected. Fortunately, there were no cameras that he could see, so there was a limit to how high-tech the security was likely to get. Which meant all he had to do was get into the building and he should be fine.

He headed down the line of loading bays at the back of the warehouse, testing each roll-up door as he went on the off chance something obvious had been overlooked. And at the last bay, he got lucky. He heaved the unlocked door up just high enough that he could roll under it, then let it fall behind him and allowed the Quicksilver to flake off.

It took a minute for him to realize the near-blackness of the bay was in part due to the dark glasses Claire had insisted he start wearing when it was sunny out, and he took them off, folded them, then hooked one earpiece into the collar of his t-shirt. While it was still dim, he could see well enough, at least, to spot the red alarm box on the wall above the door that led from the bay to the interior of the warehouse. Belatedly, he checked for any video surveillance, and was relieved to find none.

Pulling on his gloves and breaking out his Leatherman multi-tool, he headed for that familiar small hurdle, and set about deactivating it.

"Fawkes, what’s your sit rep?" Monroe’s voice crackled in his ear, nearly spoiling his neat slice of the live green wire.

He exhaled through his nose and took a deep breath before answering, keeping his voice to a low whisper. "Would you cut that out? You’re as bad as Hobbes!" Darien snapped as he quickly disabled the alarm. "I'm going inside now," he radioed back to Monroe.

"It’s about time," she replied archly. "Remember ? don’t touch anything. Just take pictures."

Darien silently mimicked her words with a nasty expression on his face and carefully turned the doorknob, letting himself into the warehouse. Across the big interior space, he could see three glass-enclosed offices flanking each side of the corridor that led to the main entrance that had been so efficiently locked. He made his way through the stacked boxes piled everywhere, pausing here and there to examine the contents. It looked like there was enough retail merchandise to open a mall ? everything from designer duds to shoes, expensive leather goods, jewelry, fancy Swiss watches... it was like stumbling into Aladdin’s cave.

Dutifully, he took multitudes of pictures with the small digital camera Alex had given him, focusing on the labels. He was no expert, but it looked to him like the sort of cheesy knock-offs some guy on a street corner in an oversized raincoat would flash at unsuspecting tourists. Heck, his email was constantly bombarded with annoying spam for fake Rolexes. This looked like it could be the same kind of cheap crap made in slave labor factories in Indonesia or China somewhere and funneled into the US by the container ship-full. He didn’t know enough about designer clothes to make a judgment call on the labels of all the fancy garments piled around, but he was willing to be Alex would. He snapped off a dozen more photos, then headed for the nearest of the offices.

The first two were empty, but the third one was filled with the usual office paraphernalia common to any import/export type of business. Darien moved to the table with a computer and stacks of papers, sorting through them quickly, looking for anything out of the ordinary. A few invoices caught his eye, as did some bills of lading that looked as if they’d been dummied up on the computer beside him by someone who didn’t know their way around even the most rudimentary version of ‘spell-check’. On a hunch, he started taking pictures of these as well, shifting the papers quickly.

Then he plugged the jury-rigged iPod Shuffle mini hard drive Eberts had given him into the USB port on the computer and let it do its thing, copying most of the information from the hard drive onto the little jump drive.

"Fawkes, you nearly done in there?" Alex radioed to him.

"Just a few more minutes," Darien responded. He collected his computer equipment and prepared to sneak back out of the building, taking a quick look around to make sure he hadn't disarranged anything too badly. A quick tidy-up of the assorted papers on the desk and he was ready to go out the way he'd come.

He heard the rattle of the front door a mere 10 feet away at precisely the same moment Alex's frantic voice burst against his eardrum in warning. He turned off the headset without thinking. The adrenaline surge covered him in Quicksilver faster than a heartbeat, and he flattened himself against the glass and plywood wall of the office, moving as fast as he could towards the loading docks in the back of the warehouse - all while desperately trying to keep from making a sound. All his years as a thief gave him reflexes that kicked in under extreme stress, and he was halfway across the main warehouse space before the front door opened, spilling light into the gloom as three men, two black and one with a medium-dark complexion and far more aquiline features, came in, arguing vocally about something or other.

Darien didn't linger long enough to listen in, though he did aim the little camera in his hand at the trio and took a couple of shots in the hopes that he had the lens right way round. It was impossible to tell, while he was covered in Quicksilver.

And then he ran for it, ducking back out onto the loading bay without bothering to take time to reconnect the alarm. It would be way riskier than it was worth, in his opinion. He heaved up the rolling door again, squirmed out under it, and let it fall softly shut, then pelted down the back access street until he'd put two warehouses between himself and the one he'd just escaped from.

He dropped the Quicksilver when he turned the corner into the nearest connecting alley, panting, and jogged the rest of the way to the main street. Pausing at the opening of the alley, he took a quick look back towards the warehouse, spotting a big black SUV parked in front, near the door. On a whim, he took a picture of the plates, maxing out the little camera's zoom function. Fortunately, there wasn't a soul in sight, and he forced himself to stroll out into the open, across the street. He walked casually down the street to a point where he could see Monroe and Harrison. Even from here, he could tell they were as rattled as he was.

They met him halfway, Alex fussing over him, handing him one of his green super-shakes. He chugged half the bottle without stopping, only then realizing how exhausted he was as the adrenaline ebbed. His knees started to wobble, and his hands were shaking. He held them out in front of him and stared at them, appalled.

"Fawkes! Darien, snap out of it!" Alex said, voice pitched high with worry as she gave him a gentle shake. "You're OK, right?"

Darien pulled himself together and nodded. "Yeah. Let's get the hell outta here," he added, and with Monroe's arm around his waist, he and his two flustered escorts headed back towards where the cars were parked.

"What the hell happened? I thought you had men on the lookout for those people!" Alex fixed Harrison with her gimlet-eyed glare, peering around Darien's chest at the Treasury agent.

"You could have warned me they were coming," Darien added with a wounded look at Harrison.

"I didn't know," the agent protested. "I've got four guys out there. One of them should have seen them before they showed up on their own doorstep," he snarled, activating his radio and signaling one of his lookouts. "Thomas, what the hell happened out there?"

"Nothing. What are you talking about?" the staticky response was still intelligible.

"The suspects just came roaring back and nearly caught my guy inside! Didn't they pass you on their way in?" Alex challenged, seizing the walkie-talkie from Harrison.

"No, they must have driven to another warehouse in the complex. No one has gone past us in 10 minutes," Thomas responded.

"You said the coast was clear. Didn't you follow them when they left?" Monroe demanded.

"No, we watched them load up the SUV with a buncha boxes and then drive towards the exit. We didn't follow them all the way to the main road," Thomas radioed back.

Disgusted, Alex smacked the walkie-talkie into Harrison's chest. "We need to talk," she said coldly to the Treasury agent as she led Darien towards her Corvette and opened the door for him.

"Where did these guys learn how to case a target?" Darien complained.

"It must have been Disneyland, because this isn't how it should be done," Alex responded, waiting to close the door until he’d pulled his long legs into the vehicle.

"I'll be glad when Bobby gets back." Darien sighed.

Tuesday October 24^th

Bobby rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands, forcing himself to stay awake when the drone of the detective’s testimony was threatening to put him out like a light. He clenched his jaw against the yawn that was trying to force its way out, and stole a glance down the line of his fellow jurors, hoping that he’d catch Terri’s eye.

He’d met up with her a block from the courthouse at a local diner and they’d eaten their lunch together. They’d even managed to avoid talking too much about the case, in spite of the judge’s ongoing effort to demoralize the DA. Hobbes did tell her he’d never seen anything like it, though, which had resulted in her asking how many juries he’d served on. Which kind of ended with him confessing that he’d sort of, well, lied about what he did for a living...

Terri had been silent through most of the rest of the meal, and Hobbes chewed his way through a suddenly tasteless meatloaf special, mentally kicking himself. It totally figured that he’d found a way to blow this before he’d even gotten to know the woman. And he really liked her, which was the worst part of it.

So here he was, back in the jury box, hoping to get her attention like some high school kid trying to flirt with the prettiest girl in class. It wasn’t working, unfortunately.

He was, however, getting the attention of the matronly juror in seat number 10, who was batting her heavily mascara-ed eyes at him playfully. He blinked in surprise and felt a blush creep up his face. Great. Just great. So instead of the prettiest girl in the class, he’d managed to flirt accidentally with the dowager teacher. He sighed and turned his attention back to Detective Schnyder, who was reading through his police report concerning the events that had resulted in Chan’s arrest for extortion and assault.

"The suspect was identified by Mr. Qwok the next day, in the hospital," the salt-and-pepper-haired detective said in a self-conscious monotone.

"And how did the victim make the identification?" the ADA prompted.

"A, uh, photo line-up. It’s standard procedure when you have, uh, a victim in the hospital, or somewhere they can’t get to a real line-up," Schnyder added. It was the first time any hint of animation had crept into his delivery.

The ADA turned to the judge and continued. "The City of San Diego wishes to submit the following item into evidence as exhibit three, your Honor," he said as he held up a bagged and numbered paper that had about six pictures on it. The photo line up, Bobby assumed.

This was confirmed as the judge took it from him and examined it closely. The photos weren’t all that easy to see clearly through the plastic bag, but to Hobbes, it looked like a pretty standard printout. "Mr. Shujjat, perhaps you can answer a question for me," the judge fixed the ADA with a chilly look.

Bobby could almost see the flush of frustration rise up the back of the DA’s neck from where he sat in chair number seven. Even the poor guy’s dusky skin didn’t entirely conceal his annoyance. "Certainly, your Honor."

"In a standard line up, some effort is made to present a victim with photos that at least bear some resemblance to the suspect, correct?"

The ADA frowned, nodding, and Detective Schnyder opened his mouth to protest, only to snap it shut when the judge turned her glare on him, after his strangled: "But your Honor!"

"Why, then, is the picture of Mr. Chan the only Asian suspect on this sheet?" she asked, directing the question at both the ADA and the detective in the witness stand as she shook the page slightly at them.

"Your Honor, I can explain," Schnyder started, nearly stuttering in his haste to clarify the situation.

"By all means," Judge Hernandez waved at him to continue. "Do so, Detective Schnyder."

"See, Mr. Qwok described him as having a really distinctive hairstyle ? the red streaks," Schnyder said, gesturing at the defendant’s table where Chan sat in all his dyed glory. "So when we assembled our lineup, that was the main thing we concentrated on. We made sure we stayed with the same basic coloring, but he never specifically said his attacker was Oriental, your Honor. Just that he had dark eyes, and hair, with those red dyed streaks in it. All the suspects on that lineup match that description."

Hernandez shook her head and picked up her reading glasses to examine the page once more. Finally, she handed the bagged page back to the DA. "I’m sorry, Mr. Shujjat, but we will not be admitting such biased and unreliable exhibits into evidence. I suggest you try and eliminate any hint of racial profiling in your submissions henceforth. Do I make myself clear?" she said sternly. The ADA opened his mouth to say something, then struggled to compose himself, shutting it again with a snap. Hobbes could feel the anger radiating from the guy from where he sat.

"Detective Schnyder, you are dismissed. You will be recalled as needed," the judge informed the detective, who gaped a bit like a landed fish, and then vacated the witness box.

The smirk on Chan’s attorney’s face wasn’t helping, and Hobbes shook his head, sharing the DA’s fury. This was the second piece of critical evidence the Judge had refused to admit into evidence. And what sort of case did the ADA have, if his victim’s identification of the suspect was going to be tossed out?

Hobbes was finding it increasingly difficult to keep his mouth shut and just sit there and listen to what was rapidly becoming a farce. Not admitting a standard photo lineup? What next? Striking the victim’s testimony from the record - or not letting him testify at all? Bobby vowed that he’d try and talk Fawkes into sitting in on the next day’s session. At least part of it, anyway. If something really was hinky here, then as long as Hobbes was stuck in a jury box, Darien was the only one who had a chance to find out what it was.

He turned his attention back to the DA, who had returned to his table and was flipping through his briefcase, clearly in search of something. And wasn’t finding it, by the looks of things. The ADA leaned over to consult with his assistant, who proceeded to root around in his own briefcase, also unsuccessfully. The slump in ADA Shujjat’s shoulders told Hobbes that whatever it was that had gone missing was bad news.

That guess was confirmed when Shujjat asked to approach the bench. The ADA and the defense attorney stepped up as the judge beckoned, and after some muttered conversation, and another scolding from the judge, they went back to their respective tables. Hobbes could see Chan’s lawyer pat his client on the back cheerfully, bending to whisper something into the young punk’s ear as the judge banged her gavel on her desk.

"Since Mr. Shujjat is unprepared at this time to continue with his presentation, court is dismissed for the day," Hernandez announced, and gathered up her notes as she rose to her feet and departed for her chambers.

To Hobbes’ profound relief, the Bailiff began clearing the court, and the jurors all got up, stretching and collecting their belongings in preparation for leaving. Hobbes caught Terri’s eye, this time by accident, the little worry frown back between her eyebrows. He got out of the way as juror 10, his accidental flirtation of earlier, made her way out of the jury box with a bright smile in his direction. He nodded at her, and glanced back at Terri.

She hadn’t looked away, miracle of miracles, and he jerked his head towards the main doors of the courtroom very slightly, and raised his eyebrows at her in a silent question.

He got back an equally slight nod, and he nodded back as she made her way past him without a word. Getting caught talking to anyone while at the courthouse would get Hobbes tossed off the jury faster than he could say 'contempt of court.' He knew better than to violate that restriction, but the simple fact was, if this case was being thrown by the judge, the only way to get a handle on the facts was to compare notes with a fellow juror. At least until he could talk Darien into sitting in on the day’s testimony. And much as he disliked jury duty, by now, he was committed to finding out what the hell was going on with this trial.

He made a point of staying away from Terri on the way out of the building, not looking at her or communicating in any way, until they were well clear from the courthouse and back in the parking lot a couple of blocks away.

"It's not just me, is it? You think the judge is deliberately making things difficult for the ADA, don't you?" Terri asked without preamble as he joined her at her car.

"Yeah, I do. That's why I’m going to ask my partner to sit in on the testimony tomorrow. See if he thinks there's something weird enough going on that it's worth investigating," Bobby admitted to her. Since he'd already blown his cover as a textile mogul, there wasn't much point in trying to pretend any longer. And who knew? Maybe she'd be able to bring a fresh perspective to things.

Terri nodded. "I'm glad. I think it may turn out to be a good thing that your background is in law enforcement, Mr. Hobbes -"

"Bobby," he corrected out of force of habit.

"Bobby, then," her face lit up in a smile. "Because if we're right, then your experience may be able to prevent that criminal from walking away scott free."

"That's what I'm hoping. Chan is just way too smug about this whole trial. Like he knows something the rest of us don't. I've never seen a defendant as cocky as he is, And I've been in more courtrooms as a witness or an arresting officer than I wanna count," Bobby agreed. "Look, Terri... I'm really sorry I lied about my job, you know? But I really can't talk about what I do... I know that sounds like a copout, but it's not. National security really is involved."

To Hobbes relief, Terri smiled at him warmly. "Don't worry, I understand. It was just kind of a shock to find out that you were more than you let on. But it's also kind of exciting, in a weird way. I mean, my life is pretty ordinary. Dealing with dog owners who need obedience training way more than their pets do is about as dangerous as my job gets."

Hobbes grinned at that image, and nodded. "Well, let me tell ya, there are days that the biggest threat I face is a paper cut from filing all the paperwork on the cases I work," he commiserated. "It's kinda like being a cop, or a soldier. Hours of boredom, spiced up with a few minutes of total terror."

"Well, it's reassuring to hear you don't spend all your time in gun battles or pursuing dangerous felons in war zones, or something like that," Terri said with a glint of amusement in her green eyes. "You'll let me know what you and your partner find out, won't you?" she changed the subject.

Hobbes made a wry face. "As much as I can," he told her. "But if this turns out to be a problem, then for your own protection, I don't want to tell you too much. We don't know how high this goes, and the last thing I want to do is put you in danger."

She sobered, the humor fading from her expression as the reality of the situation began to sink in. "Do you really think it's that serious?"

Hobbes shook his head reluctantly. "There's no way of knowing until I get my partner to poke around in things a little. But my gut tells me something is hinky."

Terri gazed back at him seriously, then nodded. "Well, I'll have to trust your instincts. And right now, frankly, I'm finding that a lot easier to do than trusting the judge, or that creepy defense attorney," she commented with a slight shudder.

"I appreciate the vote of confidence, Terri," Bobby smiled, a little shyly. "I'm sorry we kinda got off on the wrong foot today at lunch. When this is over, could I maybe take you out for dinner or something?" he ventured hopefully. "To say thanks?"

To his delight, Terri lit up like a Christmas tree.

"You're on, Bobby. It's a date."

"Then think about where you want to go. Sky's the limit," he assured her grandly, with a wave of his hand, then thought better of that statement and added: "just remember I'm only an agent, not a senator. There's a little bit of a budget limit..."

Terri laughed. "Don't worry, I promise not to break the bank, Bobby. Believe me, after running my own business for the past four years, eating out isn't something I do a lot of. It's not in my budget either... In fact, why don't I invite you out to the nicest -- and most exclusive - little Italian restaurant in San Diego, when this is all over?" she suggested, coyly.

"Yeah?" Bobby asked, interested. He loved Italian food. "Where?"

"It's a cute little place called Chez Breckmen," she grinned. "I guarantee, you've never had fusili con fungi until you've had my grandmother Buonomo's recipe. I promise, we'll have the place all to ourselves."

Bobby smiled hugely. "Chez Breckmen it is, then. I'll bring the wine."

"Mmmmm. I'm getting hungry already, just thinking about it," Terri said as she smiled wickedly, and suddenly, Bobby felt more attractive than he had since Vivian had left him. Flirting with pretty women was one thing. But when they flirted back? Well, it was an ego boost he hadn't expected.

"Me, too," he agreed, and boldly reached over to kiss her on the cheek. "I'll see you tomorrow. Lunch again, maybe?" he asked cheerfully.

"Lunch again, definitely," was her answer.

Wednesday October 25^th

"So tell me again how he got into the building?" Harrison probed the following morning as he advanced through the last of the pictures Fawkes had taken in the warehouse the day before.

"That’s need to know," Alex answered flatly. "I did mention he’s my B&E expert, right?" she reminded the Treasury agent dryly.

"You sure he’s not moonlighting as a photo journalist?" Harrison countered, as he looked her way, taking his eyes off the computer monitor for just a moment. "What’s with these artsy-fartsy shots?" he criticized the series of four black and white pictures he’d just flipped past.

"Wait, back up one," Alex interrupted, spotting the shot Harrison had skipped without acknowledging the snippy question. So far, she and Fawkes had done a heck of a lot more in the way of successful work on this case than Treasury had. As far as she was concerned, they had nothing to apologize for.

Harrison clicked the back button, and a silvery black and white image filled the screen. The objects in the frame were haloed with streams of faint light around their edges, a bit like the way sunlight appeared when it was partially occluded by a cloud. It reminded her of some of the more sappy bible studies illustrations she’d seen as a kid at Sunday school. However, the faces of the three men standing in the hallway near the offices were discernable. Even clear. The fourth one had his back to the camera, but three out of four was not bad at all. Way to go, Fawkes, she praised him silently. Quicksilver vision photos.

"Looks to me like he was using the ALS function to get a beauty shot of our suspects," she sniped back.

"ALS?"

"Alternate Light Source," she clarified. "It allows you to take low-light pictures with a chance of actually getting something useful." She reached past Harrison and hit the key command for the printer. "I’d suggest you get copies of this over to the PD to see if they can cough up an identification on the three stooges, there," she said as the printer spat out a hard copy of the image.

"You might want to coordinate with them on the cheap knockoffs that place was stuffed with, too. At a guess? It may be that they’re using the goods to launder their counterfeits. It would explain why none of the fakes are in denominations over 20. Do you have the distribution pattern pegged on the way those fake bills have been showing up in the area?" She eyed him expectantly.

"Yeah, that’s what tipped us off in the first place," Harrison replied. "The phonies have been turning up all over town, but it looks like they’re originating at venues like the local beach flea markets. From there, they enter the currency mainstream, until they get deposited at a bank by some merchant who took them as payment for something, second or third hand down the chain. It took us months just to get that far in tracking it."

"I guess that explains what they’re doing with a warehouse full of bogus designer crap," Alex observed ironically. "Bring the phony goods and the phony money, and use the cheapskates of San Diego to spread both types of product around. You set up your folding table, you get paid in real cash at full retail for fake duds, and make change with fake bills. Pretty slick."

"Yeah, and damned hard to track. And the bills are pretty good fakes, too. Looks like some better-than-average amateur is working on them."

"So how do you figure there are terrorists involved?" Alex asked, so far not seeing any connection.

"Suspected terrorists," Harrison corrected.

"‘Suspected,’ huh?" Alex arched an eyebrow. "Are you telling me this is a wild goose chase?"

"You’ll have to take that up with Homeland Security. I just follow my orders. And my orders are to make sure the lowlifes passing this funny money aren’t planning on doing anything more lethal with their illegal immigrant pals than trying to destabilize local economies," Harrison said huffily.

Alex snickered. "Based on what I’ve seen so far, somehow I doubt that this operation is big enough to destabilize the local five and dime. But I’ll play along with this until we know for sure that no Al Qaeda operatives are lurking in the Escondido Waste Disposal Site." Her sarcasm was wasted on Harrison, a government drone if ever she’d met one. "Have you gotten an forensic accountant to look over the data Fawkes pulled from their hard drive?"

"It’s in the works," Harrison replied coldly. "I’ll let you know when we have something useful to work with, Agent Monroe. In the meantime, my guys are keeping an eye on the suspects."

"Glad to hear it. Hopefully they’ll actually get off their lazy asses and FOLLOW them, this time," she said with equal chill. "I assume you’ll let me know when you need me and my partner again?" At his nod, she continued. "Good. Then I’ll take an electronic copy of these pictures over to the police department and see if I can get somewhere with an ID on these guys."

"You do that, Agent Monroe, you do that."

Alex left Harrison’s office knowing that there was no love lost between them, but not really caring as long as this case got resolved without any more foolishness like that that had nearly gotten Fawkes trapped in enemy territory the day before.

Wednesday October 25^th

Day three of this farcical excuse for a trial found Hobbes fidgeting, bouncing one foot against the rail of the chair in front of him like a dog having its belly scratched, a hyper reflex he had a hard time controlling when he was forced to sit still for hours at the time - well, not counting when he was on a stakeout. At least then, he has something to distract himself with. The juror in the seat glared at him over her shoulder and he forced himself to stop with an apologetic smile.

The day's testimony was concluding with secondary testimony from the arresting detective they’d seen the day before, a paunchy older guy named Schnyder, reading the statement from the victim in this case, a Vietnamese retailer by the name of Phui Qwok, who had refused to purchase merchandise from the defendant.

Chan had first threatened the victim, then beaten him badly enough to put him in the hospital for over a week. Not to mention trashing the guy's tourist boutique near that Gaslamp District tourist mecca, the San Diego Convention Center.

Hassan Shujjat, the harassed young Assistant District Attorney, proceeded to question Schnyder about what he had seen at the scene of the assault, and what surmises he could make about the nature of the perpetrator.

Schnyder had a delivery that made Hobbbes want to leap the fence separating him from the witness stand and drag the words out of the detective by force. It was as excruciating to watch, or rather, listen to the second time as it had been the first, the day before.

"At what point did you allow the crime scene analysts onto the scene, Detective?" Shujjat asked as Hobbes’ attention snapped back to the proceedings.

"Uhm, as soon as, uhm, the paramedics had loaded up, uhm, Mr. Qwok and, uhm, taken him off to the, uhm, hospital," Schnyder meandered his way through his answer.

"And this was before or after you’d examined the premises?" the ADA went on.

"After," Schnyder answered with merciful brevity.

"Had the victim described the perpetrator at that point?"

"Uh, yeah," the detective responded lethargically. "I’ve had run-ins with Jackie before, so I recognized the description..." he went trailed off.

"So you’ve encountered Mr. Chan before, Detective?"

"Objection your Honor, leading the witness," the defense attorney popped out of his seat to complain.

"Let me rephrase," Shujatt went on before Hernandez could uphold the objection. "How many times has Mr. Chan been arrested for extortion and vandalism?" he asked bluntly, with a sidelong glare at the defense.

"He’s been busted, uh, four times in the past six years, all in the, uhm, same neighborhood, more or less," Schnyder replied, glancing at the defense attorney warily.

"Objection, your Honor," the defense attorney raised a hand in protest. "My client is barely 21. His prior arrests are not the subject under discussion, here today," the well-fed lawyer stated. "Since his last conviction occurred prior to his 18^th birthday, that is considered as falling under the juvenile court’s purview, and as such, those records were sealed when my client attained adulthood."

Shujatt gaped at his adversary in disbelief then turned to the Judge indignantly. "Your Honor, Mr. Chan was tried as an adult his last trip through this courthouse. His last conviction - at the age of seventeen and a half ? was as an adult! Therefore, those records are valid evidence of an extant behavior trend on Mr. Chan’s part -"

"We are not trying Mr. Chan for his past behavior, but for his present actions, Mr. Shujatt," Judge Hernandez interrupted him mid-complaint. "Since his prior convictions all occurred under the age of 18, I must agree to Mr. Abernathy’s request that that testimony be struck from the record." She turned her attention to the jurors. "Since Mr. Chan’s prior arrests have no bearing on this case, I must ask that all of you treat that information as irrelevant. You are not to base your decision regarding the guilt or innocence of the defendant on his past convictions. Is that clear?" she asked sharply, glaring at the jury.

Hobbes stared back, barely able to manage a nod along with his fellow jurors, unable to believe that a prior conviction for what sounded like nearly the same sort of crime was not going to be allowed into the record. And if the punk had been convicted as an adult, there wasn’t any solid reason not to allow that testimony. If this was going to be a trend, then the ADA would be lucky to get so much as a slap on the wrist for Chan. At this rate, it was starting to look like the Judge had made it her mission to get the young hoodlum off entirely.

Hobbes glanced over at the defendant’s table to examine Chan once more. The ever-present smirk was still there, and more so, now, in the face of the obvious favoritism Hernandez was showing. Every instinct he had said that this was shaping up to be one textbook example of a miscarriage of justice. He discretely scanned his fellow jurors to gage their reactions, and not to his surprise, he saw the frown furrowing Terri’s brow. She wasn’t the only one who looked as though she’d like to have argued with the judge, but she was definitely the most upset-looking of his 13 companions in the jury box. He decided he needed to speak with her again, regardless of the judge's orders to the contrary.

Hobbes had tried to keep an eye on Terri Breckmen as they left the courthouse, but he'd ended up losing track of her in the throngs of other citizens exiting the building at the end of a long day of doing their civic duty.

He found Golda where he'd left her, in the back-most corner of the municipal lot two blocks down from the courthouse, and climbed in, starting her up and easing his way into the line of cars making its way out of the lot.

Eventually, he made it to the street and headed towards the freeway. He came up short though, less than a block from the courthouse at the bus stop, where Terri was waiting with about a dozen others for the evening commuter bus.

He pulled the van over to the curb, and rolled down the window to call out to her. "Hey, stranger, want a ride?"

Terri looked up and caught his eye, bursting into a grin. "Going my way?" she asked as she pushed her way to the front of the crowd to approach the curb.

"La Jolla, right?" Bobby recalled, smiling at her nod. "Climb in," he offered. "I'll take you home."

"Try work," she corrected as she circled around the front of the beat-up van and climbed in. "I need to go by my office. My manager has the station wagon today. It's Ocean Beach day today. She was out with all the clients' dogs, running off some of the weekend people food." Terri buckled herself in.

"You got it, schweetheart," Bobby said, donning a Bogart accent for effect, and pulled back into traffic.

"So... Whaddid you think about that whole 'don't even think about considering Chan's record in your deliberations' thing?" he asked candidly as they pulled onto the I-5 heading north.

"I don't know what to think, honestly," Terri answered after a moment. "I mean, I know each crime is supposed to be judged on its own... merits. But if Chan is making a career out of beating up people who won't buy his cheap knock-off junk, then shouldn't that be a consideration in deciding whether or not he's the likely suspect in this case?" She sighed and went on, not expecting him to answer. "I know, you don't know any more about this than I do, but still... It just feels wrong!"

Hobbes couldn't have agreed more. If a woman who'd never been in a courtroom before in her life had this reaction, then it wasn’t just his imagination. He promised himself a long and heartfelt conversation with his partner; Fawkes was the bell weather in his life these days. He trusted Darien to be honest, even if he knew he could expect some snarking and some teasing. But ultimately, his partner would hear him out and give him a reaction from the gut.

Twenty minutes of light conversation later, they arrived at Terri's storefront operation, and Bobby let her out. He waited to make sure she got into her place OK, then waved and drove off, intent on getting dinner and talking to his partner.

Wednesday October 25^th

Darien was sprawled on his sofa watching a playoff game that evening when Hobbes called. "Fawkes Investigations; you need a wayward husband shadowed, I'm the man for the job," Darien answered his phone.

"Fawkes, are you busy?" Bobby asked.

"No, just watching the game. What's up?" Darien straightened, the tone of Bobby’s voice immediately warning him that something was wrong.

"I need you to do me a favor."

"That's what I'm here for, partner. Fill me in." He put his feet on the floor and shifted the phone receiver to his other ear so he could use his right hand to hit the mute button on the remote.

"Not on the phone. I'll be right over. You want veggie or triple cheese?" Hobbes asked, simply assuming his partner would need dinner.

"Both." Darien smiled into the phone.

Hobbes arrived 45 minutes later with a half-and-half pizza. Darien relived him of the box and set it on the coffee table, turning off the TV so he could concentrate on whatever Bobby needed to tell him so urgently. Hobbes went for paper towels and plates, nabbing a pair of long-necked beer bottles from the Zippy Cola fridge on the way back.

"So, what’s going on?" Darien asked as he helped himself to a slice, and balanced his plate on one thigh.

"OK. You know how I said yesterday that something weird is going on in that courtroom?" Hobbes reminded him. "Well, Terri and me, we both think there’s some kinda fix in with the judge. I’m pretty sure the defense attorney has some deal with him. It’s the only way to explain what happened today." Hobbes went on to recount the judge’s refusal to allow the defendant’s prior criminal record into evidence.

"Wait a minute. You’re telling me that all of a sudden his record is off the table? Damn! I wish I’d had that guy’s attorney when I went up for molesting that old geezer," Darien shook his head, amazed at the dumb luck some people had. Oh, he had his share, it’s just that most of it was bad.

"Fawkes," Hobbes chastised him. "You’re missing the point. That conviction shouldn’t have been struck from the record. The judge spent 45 minutes today telling us not to take into account things she’d refused to allow in ? even though we’d all heard it. That’s bogus, Fawkes!"

"It’s also the law, Hobbes," Darien pointed out. "So why’d she exclude the conviction?"

"Because the kid was under 18 at the time. Hernandez said it had to be excluded since all juvenile convictions are off the record. The problem is, the punk, Chan, was tried as adult! It’s all there in black and white!" Hobbes protested, gesturing wildly with his own slice of pizza.

Darien frowned. While he was no expert on the law, he’d spent some time while incarcerated reading law texts with an eye to better understanding the system so that he could make it work for him. However, this did sound a bit on the unorthodox side. Normally, when a juvenile was tried as adult, their record was permanently marked with the outcome of that trial, whether guilty or innocent. If guilty, then that conviction would be used in determining future sentences if they were charged with subsequent criminal activity. Here, it sounded like Chan was being handed a huge advantage for no particularly good reason. Still, Darien was the first to admit he was no lawyer. "So what do you want me to do about it?" he asked.

"I want you to sit in on the trial. It's not a closed court, so you don't have to go see-through, or anything," Bobby pleaded. "Just listen in. Let me know if the defense attorney is really that good, or if Chan is getting cut every break in the book, and then some!"

Darien considered a moment before answering. "And you think I’d have a clue?" he asked, a bit amused that his partner would request his opinion when it came to legal conduct unbecoming an officer of the courts.

"Yeah, you have a clue, Fawkes! Hell, you’ve been in front of a judge yourself!" Hobbes insisted.

"OK," he agreed. "The case I’m working on with Alex is dead in the water, at least until she finishes shaking up the local Treasury office. I can spare a few hours on this," he said. "I was ‘on standby’ all day today."

"Why’s Alex gotta bust chops over at Treasury?" Bobby wanted to know, diverted from his own worries by the prospect of Monroe and her occasionally evil temper suddenly turned on another Agency for a change.

Darien told him an abbreviated version of the events the previous day. By the end of the story, Hobbes was ready to join Alex in the chop-busting. "The only reason I’m not going with her to watch her back and take a coupla pounds outta this Harrison guy’s fat ass is because I’ve gotta be in court tomorrow. But you tell Alex that if they give her any trouble to come find me. I’ll help her pound ‘em into the ground." Hobbes finished his fourth slice of pizza and wiped his mouth. "And you, you watch yourself, Fawkes. I don’t want you getting damaged without me there to keep an eye on you. Capiche?"

"Capiche," Darien grinned at his partner.

Thursday October 26^th

Thursday, Darien met up with his partner at the diner a couple of blocks from the courthouse at the lunch break so they could discuss the morning’s testimony. Bobby’s promises of a Quicksilver-free snooping exercise had turned out to be overly optimistic.

Darien had had to slip out of the courtroom, find a reasonably private spot, then sneak back in under cover of invisibility when ADA Shujjat had requested a consult with the judge in her chambers. It turned out that a key piece of evidence had gone missing. Fingerprints that placed Chan at the scene of the assault had mysteriously vanished from the police evidence room, and had not yet been recovered. Back in the courtroom, Shujjat had asked first for a continuance, and when that wasn’t granted, at least an early recess to give him time to locate the missing evidence. Naturally, the Defense attorney had protested. Not so naturally, however, the judge had agreed with that objection, and had refused to postpone testimony on the subject, for even so much as a few hours.

Surely, in the interests of getting a known criminal with a history of violence, not to mention extortion, off the streets, Hernandez could have given the ADA a few hours to find his evidence again? Darien didn’t know if this was simply a severe case of Murphy’s Law for the prosecution, or if the judge really did have some sort of hidden agenda, which included getting Chan off. But either way, it felt wrong.

Maybe it was the years of hanging out with Hobbes, but he found his own paranoid instincts acting up as he related all of this to his partner, who looked positively grim by the time he was finished.

"So, I take it I’m not the only one around here who thinks something fishy is going on, huh?" Bobby said as he took a sip from his lunchtime mug of coffee.

Darien shrugged and poked at his mashed potatoes with his fork listlessly. "Like I told you last night, I’m not a lawyer, Hobbes. "

"No kidding," Bobby sniped.

"But yeah, I think something’s up. I don’t know if Shujjat’s filed a complaint with the judicial review board, but it’s a place to start. Maybe she’s done this before... Maybe there’s some kind of pattern we can spot," Darien said, pulling his ringing cell phone out of is pocket and answering it. "Yeah?"

"Fawkes, where the hell are you?" Alex Monroe’s voice shrilled in his ear.

"Eating lunch," Darien replied calmly.

"Did it slip your mind that we’re working on a case? I’ve been searching the damned building for you for the last hour and a half," she informed him sarcastically.

"Alex, you said you were going to check out what went wrong Tuesday and let me know when you needed me again," Darien defended himself.

"No, I don't think I said anything remotely like that. It looks like we have a new lead, thanks to your snooping the other day," Alex informed him coldly. "Get back here ASAP, will you? I have a bunch of those green smoothies Claire makes for you if you’re still hungry."

"Bleech," Darien made a face. "Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Monroe, I'm on my way." He hung up on her and shot Bobby a look. "Sorry, Hobbes, it looks like you’re on your own for the rest of the afternoon. Alex wants me front and center on her forgery case. I’ll get Ebes to check into the review board when I get back to the office, see if he can’t dig up something on Hernandez. I’ll let you know if he finds anything."

"Good enough, my friend," Bobby assured him. "Just remember to keep that troll head of yours down, OK? I don’t want Alex getting you killed while I’m stuck downtown," Hobbes said as he reached up to disarrange Darien’s carefully styled mop of spiky brown hair.

"Hey, cut that out," Darien laughed as he got up from the diner bench. "You’re messing up the look."

"Really? Can’t say as I could tell the difference," Bobby grinned and went back to his coffee.

Darien hurried into the McKinley building and went straight to Eberts’ office to consult with the Agency bean counter and resident hacker about the possibility of finding anything out about Judge Hernandez.

"Yes, I can, Darien," Eberts said after a steady five minutes of keyboard work that got them into the secure website for the judicial review board. "But it's going to take a little more digging for me to get past the encryption. I should have something for you by tomorrow," he promised.

"You da man, Ebes," Darien grinned at the accountant and patted him on the shoulder fondly. Albert blushed, even the tips of his ears turning red.

"Fawkes, how long have you been here?" Alex came bursting into the small office in full battle mode.

"I just got here a second ago." Darien sighed. "What’s got you so riled up, Alex? Someone steal your rolodex?"

"Hah, Fawkes. Very amusing. Not. We have a gang of possible terrorists in Escondido and you are busy playing hooky like some overgrown juvenile delinquent. Oh, wait," she cocked her head. "You ARE an overgrown juvenile delinquent. Silly me."

Darien smirked at her, knowing that ignoring her foul temper was the fastest way to get her really pissed off - and then over it. "Hmm. Mike must be out of town again," he teased her. "You’re only in this bad a mood when you’re not gettin’ any."

Albert’s blush intensified at the risqué comment, and he ducked his head.

Monroe, on the other hand, glared up at Darien, her mouth hanging open, then began to laugh. "OK, wiseguy, that's enough about my sex life, thanks very much," she grinned, shaking her head. "So, where were you this morning? I had a hard time convincing Harrison that you hadn't bailed on our investigation when you didn't show up for the morning briefing." Her mercurial mood had swung back to the sarcastic, vaguely bitchy but generally pleasant persona that he knew and liked.

"Sorry, Alex. My bad. I just misunderstood you. Bobby came over last night after he got out of court... he's got kind of a situation. Looks like there may be something weird going on downtown. So he asked me to sit in on this morning's session."

Monroe's expression sharpened. "And? What did you think?" she asked.

Darien was pleased that she hadn't immediately assumed that Hobbes was simply being his normal paranoid self, and dismissed his concerns out of hand. "I think he may be onto something. I've got Eberts checking out the Judge to see if there's anything on her record."

"OK, good," she said as she turned her attention to Eberts, whose color had returned to a more normal shade of pink. "Make sure you keep me in the loop, too, right Eberts?" she said, catching Darien's elbow and led him out of the small office.

"No snide comments about Bobby's meds?" Darien asked as he let her haul him down the hall towards the elevator. "Where are we going?"

"The Keep," Alex said as she shoved him into the elevator and hit the basement button.

"And my next question would be: why?" Darien asked with the same sarcasm she usually used.

"Because Claire said she wanted to see you before I could take you out to play," Alex replied, pushing him out into the basement corridor.

"Ah. All becomes clear," Darien snarked as he stumbled on ahead of her, half-resisting her gentle shoves to the middle of his back. "Sort of," he added as the steel door whooshed open in front of him.

"Sort of what?" Claire asked as she turned to greet them. "Thanks for bringing him down, Alex," she added.

"You're welcome," Alex smiled at her cheerfully. "Just make sure you don't bruise him too badly. I need him in one piece so we can track down these creeps and figure out what's really going on in Escondido."

"I'll do my best to keep the assault and battery to a minimum," Clare grinned back at her brightly. Darien wondered if it was his imagination, but the humor didn't seem to reach his Keeper's eyes.

"See that you do, or you'll answer to Hobbes," Alex chuckled, heading back out the door.

"Hey!" Darien protested. "What about you?"

"Oh, she'll answer to me, too, Fawkes," Alex laughed as the Keep doors closed behind her.

"That wasn't what I meant," Darien muttered, turning to face Claire. "So." He sighed. "What pound of flesh do you want today?" he asked resignedly.

Claire poked him in the side with a finger. "I think I'll take the prime rib," she replied. "Take off your shirt, please, Darien."

He did as she asked, shivering in the slight chill of the basement.

Thursday October 26^th

"So, how are you doing?" Alex asked four hours later as they stared blearily at the rundown house they'd been staking out all afternoon.

"Huh?" Darien grunted, startled by her uncharacteristic breaking of the silence. Her rules, not his. He and Hobbes could spend the hours on a stakeout talking about everything under the sun. Monroe preferred the quiet. Frankly, it was on the verge of giving him cabin fever.

"How articulate," Alex smirked at him a little, teasing him.

"Yeah, well, I need to warm up a little before my material really takes off," he retorted.

"Ah. So that's your story," she grinned and refocused her binoculars.

"And I'm sticking to it," Darien replied. There was a pause. "Whaddid you mean, 'how'm I doing?'"

Alex shrugged, never taking her eyes off the house down the block and across the street. "Just wondering if Claire's making any progress on the whole weirdness with your health thing."

"There's nothing wrong with my health," Darien protested.

"Save it for Hobbes, Darien. I saw how hammered you were coming out of that warehouse Tuesday," Alex said gravely as she glanced his way. "You're not OK, are you?"

"I'm fine," Darien snapped, wondering how the hell she'd known his symptoms were coming back. She was out of town more than in, these days, and she'd only been back a week.

"I could ask Bobby," she threatened.

"Don't you dare," Darien sat up straight, adrenaline rushing through him. "There's nothing wrong, and Hobbes can't help you, Suzy," he snapped.

"Hmm. I'm hearing the gentleman protesting too much, methinks," Alex answered, adjusting the focus knob of her binoculars. "Look, Fawkes, Bobby’s going to figure it out all by himself, and then he’s going to read you the riot act about not communicating with him when it comes to important stuff that could get both of you hurt ? or killed. You’re not doing him or yourself any favors by not telling him what’s up with you," she pointed out.

"I appreciate the concern, but Bobby is driving me nuts with the mother hen routine, so the last thing I want to do is set him off again, OK? Now can we please change the subject?"

"Suit yourself, Fawkes. But I’m telling the Official he needs to think about putting you on restricted duty until Claire figures out what’s up."

"Now wait a minute, Alex, that’s no fair! No one got hurt Tuesday. Hell, no one except me was even in danger!"

"My point, exactly. Next time, it could be Hobbes who goes in, expecting you to back him up. And if you can’t do the job, well, you may be minus one slightly crazy partner." She lowered the binoculars to meet his eyes. "Believe it or not, Fawkes, it’s not all about you."

Chastened, Darien lowered his eyes. "OK, OK, I’ll talk to him. When he’s done with jury duty."

"Thank you. I told Claire to fill him in, too. So don’t think you’re getting out of it by waiting, either," she announced, going back to her surveillance. "If I had any idea where I was going to be from one week to the next, I’d tell him myself."

Darien was left feeling as if he’d suddenly acquired a bossy older sister, though he doubted Monroe was actually any older than he was. He contemplated several retorts, but none of them were scathing enough, and ultimately, she was right. Hobbes needed to know, even if it meant all his protective instincts would be going into overdrive. "You two ganging up on me?"

"You’d better believe it," Alex responded dryly. "In case it slipped your mind, you’re the raison d’etre for this Agency. Anything happens to you, and we’re all unemployed," she grinned at him. "It’s in our best interests to make sure you stay in one piece."

"I’ll try and keep that in mind," Darien conceded. "So... you’ve been talking to Claire, huh?"

Alex smiled and nodded, the binoculars not wavering more than a millimeter. "Girls do that, you know," she reminded him.

"Yeah. Well, I wish she’d tell me what the hell is going on. I keep getting the feeling there’s more to this than she’s letting on. I mean, how many blood tests can she possibly need to run?" he whined.

"I’m sure she’d tell you if she had anything solid to go on. But there isn’t much point in going over all the possibilities because that’s just going to freak you out. Wouldn’t you rather just wait to hear it when she figures it out?" Alex suggested.

"I don’t know. I guess it depends on what kind of worst case scenarios she’s dreaming up," Darien shrugged a bit gloomily.

"Ever the optimist, aren’t you?" Monroe teased. "Don’t worry, she’ll figure it out. I mean, she figured out the cure, didn’t she?"

"No, she didn’t. Arnaud did. She just made sure it would work."

Alex waved a hand to poo-poo the distinction. "Whatever. Don’t underestimate her, Darien. She’s got more brains in one strand of that blonde hair of hers than both of us put together. Just give her time to work out the angles. She’ll make it right."

"I guess. At least all I need now is food. And I can get that almost anywhere." Darien pulled a candy bar out of his coat pocket and took a big bite. He could always rely on chocolate to soothe all manner of ills.

"Hey, there's our suspects," Alex motioned towards the building as a handful of young men garbed in the usual low-slung baggy jeans typical of gang members strolled up the sidewalk to the ramshackle single story home. They watched the small group enter the building, and Alex put down her binoculars in favor of the parabolic mike, settling the headphones over her ears, then fiddling with the controls. "Dammit, I’m not getting anything. Just static," she complained.

"Is the equipment working?" Daren asked as she smacked the edge of the parabolic dish impatiently.

"It was yesterday," she retorted sharply. "Remind me never to take one of Eberts’ eBay finds out on a stakeout, will you?" She thumped the edge of the dish again impatiently. "I knew I should have brought my own equipment," she muttered as a surge of feedback squealed out of the receiver speakers.

"I could follow them, see what I can overhear," he suggested. He was getting mighty tired of sitting in an anonymous Agency surveillance car with his legs trapped in the ungenerous foot well. At least in Golda, he had room to stretch a little.

She adjusted the mike again. "They may be using something to jam the transmission. I'm not picking up anything at all."

"So, does this mean I can go do a little Quicksilver eavesdropping?" he grinned at her with a waggle of eyebrows.

"As long as you wear a wire," Alex agreed reluctantly. "And you have to drink one of those green shakes of Claire’s before I let you set foot outside this car," she insisted.

"But I just ate a candy bar," he complained.

"That’s the deal, Fawkes. Take it or leave it."

Alex obviously wasn’t going to budge on this, so Darien shook up one of the premixed bottles of green sludge she had brought along and chugged it without stopping. "There. Satisfied, mom?" he asked sarcastically.

"Yes, just be careful." Alex nodded reluctantly. "I have a bad feeling about this," she added. "Pull up your shirt so I can tape the transmitter on."

Darien did as she’d ordered, and in less than two minutes, he was wired for sound. Monroe tested the little one-way transmitter, found it to be in working order, and helped him tug his t-shirt back into place.

It wasn’t like the thing needed to be all that well concealed, anyway, since he was going in under cover of invisibility again. But at least having it taped to his chest gave him the use of both hands. And this time, there would be no way for Alex to scare the crap out of him at inopportune moments, since he wasn’t wearing a headset.

Still, for a sneak-and-peek, it seemed unlikely that he’d need back up. And if something really went south, well, Monroe’s eager little ears would be listening to every word he transmitted. And it sure beat sitting in the car for another three hours.

Darien triggered the flow of Quicksilver when he was out of sight of both Monroe’s car and the target house. He approached it cautiously, but it wasn’t until he reached the building itself that he realized its state of disrepair might make getting in via the front door impossible, given the number of loose boards on the front porch. So he circled the house, letting himself into the side yard through the chain link gate. He only hoped whoever the ‘brothas’ were, they weren’t doing a sideline in dog fighting. He didn’t need to be running into a dozen pit bulls all looking for something to use as a chew toy.

For a change, luck was with him, and he crept noiselessly around to the back yard, thankfully devoid of dogs of any sort. There were however, three dilapidated sheds and mounds of trash and rusting auto body parts. And that was as far as luck was going to cooperate. Unfortunately, the back stairs looked about as well maintained as the front porch had, so he wasn’t going to risk the wooden stairs. However, there was a set of concrete ones leading down to a basement entrance, and gleefully, he pulled out his lock picks and made his way to the basement door, first making sure the coast was clear by peering in through the dusty and cracked window pane.

The interior was dark, and he couldn’t even make out what sort of room he was entering until he had the door open. A garden-variety basement met his Quicksilver gaze. Literally. He let the Quicksilver go, flaking off like a bad case of dandruff, and looked around curiously. There were towers of old flowerpots in the corners and bags of fertilizer, soil, and what looked like lawn seed. In addition, there were power tools of every description from a miter saw to a drill press, and racks of lumber, as well as piping in all diameters and a fair number of other plumbing supplies.

The incongruity of finding the contents of a small Home Depot in a the basement of a home that looked like the only way to remodel it would be to tear it down made him decide to poke around a little. He wanted to see if he could figure out what the owners had planned for all the equipment, since he found it hard to believe that anyone who'd let this house and yard deteriorate to their current condition would be inclined towards weekend do-it-yourself remodeling projects. Clearly, he’d been working with Bobby Hobbes for way too long.

Strike that, he thought, as he came across a battered cardboard box piled with precut and pre-threaded 18-inch lengths of three-inch pipe, all of which had been capped at one end. Uh-oh. His inner Bobby Hobbes began gibbering and jumping about madly in alarm.

OK, so he admitted he watched way too much Court TV and Discovery Channel, but these looked like the beginnings of a batch of pipe bombs. A rather large batch, actually. He wished he’d thought to bring the digital camera with him. This definitely called for an expert opinion.

Suddenly feeling less sanguine about his exploration, he continued to work his way through the basement, glad that there was enough light coming in through the cobwebby windows to see by so he didn’t have to rely on QS vision to see what he was doing. There was nothing else to be seen that screamed out ‘terrorist,’ or even anything like a box of old watch parts that could have been used as timers to confirm his guess. But he couldn’t think of any other obvious use for two dozen short lengths of pipe.

He reQuicksilvered as he came to a door, pulling it open carefully a crack so he could peer inside the next room. It opened into a small utility area with a rusting washing machine against one wall and differently colored dryer against the opposite wall. Stacked atop the dryer were at least 10 economy-sized bottles of bleach, the giant 2 gallon size ones he'd seen at the big warehouse type stores. Considering neither appliance looked functional, the incongruity of the laundry supplies was glaring.

A set of rickety stairs anchored between them led upward to what he assumed was the interior of the house, and he eased his way up the stairs, testing each tread before putting his weight on it to make sure it wasn’t going to give him away with a shriek of protesting old wood.

Still invisible, he eased open the upper door to see a dilapidated kitchen, apparently empty. He could hear voices, though not what they were saying, from some other nearby part of the house, and he opened the door wide enough to slip through, then shut it behind himself.

He was unprepared for the sudden eruption of noise from wherever the voices were coming from, and practically dropped the Quicksilver in sheer surprise. He knew he’d flickered at least partially back into sight, but he reasserted his control and went to investigate.

He made his way down the stained and threadbare hall carpet to the dining room, which was clearly the hub of whatever activity was going on, and peered around the corner of the arched entrance to see what was up.

A small but professional-looking offset press took up the majority of the space in the room; its squat bulk crouched troll-like on the old hardwood. Five men, two of whom he recognized from the warehouse, were milling about purposefully, inking the platen, and making sure the press was operating as intended. The machinery was the first thing Darien had seen on the premises that was well maintained. Hell, it gleamed. It looked like he'd found Monroe's counterfeit operation, anyway.

He pressed himself into the corner nearest him, still cursing his forgetfulness in not bringing the camera, and watched, knowing Alex could hear every clack of the press as the printing plates transferred their ink load to the paper being fed into it.

It looked like today's press run was ten dollar bills. From the stacked paper on the floor next to the press, Darien could only estimate the approximate value of what could be produced, but it stunned him. At the current layout of six bills per plate, he was looking at something in the neighborhood of a million plus in finished forged currency.

If the Treasury Department really thought these guys were laundering that kind of volume through the local flea markets, then they were sadly mistaken. Wherever the bulk of this money was going, it wasn't to the flea markets. Darien would bet his life on that much.

Darien focused his attention on the five men who shared the room with him, particularly the ones he didn't recognize. All three were middle-eastern in appearance, dark skinned and dark-haired, with beaky noses that hinted at desert heritage, though that ended any similarities between them. One of them was monitoring the press output, and when he waved a hand peremptorily at the black kid operating the equipment, the press rattled to a stop.

"We have too much ink on the plates," the quality control guy scolded in a heavily accented voice. Darien's guess was confirmed; the accent matched the features, and pinned the speaker's origins as somewhere in the Persian gulf region.

"Hey, man, I'm not exactly into the whole arts'n crafts bullsh-" the gangly pressman retorted with all the angry, fluid body language of a ghetto 'gangstah.'

"Jamal!" the reprimand from the other black guy who stood to one side, arms crossed over his muscular chest in a clearly supervisory capacity, cut off the attitude-laden complaint mid-word. The arms came down and the full intensity of the man's gaze fell on his companion, who looked rebellious but snapped his mouth closed on whatever he had been about to say. The guy turned to the quality control man and the intensity went up a notch.

Darien knew instantly that he was watching a power struggle play out in front of him, and he eased towards the door slightly, hoping that he wouldn't need to make a run for it if things heated up and weapons came into play.

"Watch yourself, Massoud, my man. We invited you into our game. Make nice, or we'll show you how rough we can play. You ain't nowhere near bein' in the same league as them whack jobs from 9/11. Don't get all bad-ass on me, now. We got biz-ness to do, here." The words were punctuated with a slight shrug as the arms came back up to crossed position again, deliberately casual.

The quality control guy - Massoud - scowled back at the head honcho darkly, but lowered his head in a slight nod of acquiescence. Instead of replying, he circled the press and elbowed Jamal the pressman out of the way, grabbing a palate knife and scraping about half the ink off the platen. He then rollered the remainder back over the entire surface, making sure it was evenly distributed. "You see?" he waved a hand at the platen, eyeing a sullen Jamal to make sure the example had been understood.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm gettin' it, dawg," Jamal snapped, the surly attitude getting a tightening of Massoud's jaw.

Impatiently, a tall, slender Arab who'd silently looked on at the macho display of dominance, reached into the output tray, snatched a sheet of printed paper and thrust it at Jamal, who took it, startled out of his attitude for the merest second.

"Too much ink means the print is blurry and will fool no one," Skinny-bones snarled and rounded on the head guy. "Do your people follow orders? Or do they just snivel and whine like street dogs squabbling over a bitch in heat?" came the grim question. "Because if they can't be persuaded to do so, then our business may be very brief indeed, Mr. Andrews." There was a short but deliberately ironic pause. "Excuse me. 'Malcolm'."

Malcolm's arms came down again, and Darien could see the big hands flex into fists before relaxing again. He sidled nearer the door.

The big black man forced himself to stay calm, but the air in the room crackled with the challenge between the two men. "Look, Hajiri, back in your own sandbox, you may be the big dog. But you're in my territory, now. You're runnin' in my pack."

"Then discipline your people, Andrews. Or you'll only be wasting both our time." This whip-crack criticism was punctuated by Hajiri snatching back the print from Jamal, crumpling it viciously, and hurling across the room towards where Darien lurked. "And I don't have time to waste."

Darien had to flinch to one side to avoid the thrown paper, but it landed at his feet, and he bent and allowed the Quicksilver to cover it before he retrieved it.

"Neither do we, my man," Malcolm growled back. "You want our help or don't you?"

"The question, I think, is, do you want ours?" Hajiri countered with icy calm.

Across the room, the third Arab spoke up finally, the words in a clipped harsh language Darien couldn't understand, or even positively identify, but again, it confirmed his guess that the three new men were foreign. And his guess of middle-eastern origins was sounding more and more probable.

Darien felt the hair on his forearms prickle with alarm at the vitriol in the man's voice. He found himself randomly wishing he'd paid more attention in high school Spanish, on those few days he'd bothered to attend... but then, somehow, he doubted Spanish would be helping him very much right now.

Things went from tense to positively flammable when Malcolm responded to this unintelligible conversation by whipping a wicked looking serrated hunting knife out of his boot-top and hurling it at Hajiri. The blade thwacked deep into the plastered wall next to the Arab's head, and the slender man whirled to focus his attention back on Malcolm with poisonous intensity.

"In this country, you speak American," Malcolm informed him grimly. "As long as you have something to say in front of me or my home boys, you use our rap. Next A-rab word comes outta you or your goons mouths gets you a taste of old fashioned American ingenuity. And believe me, we got ingenuity. In-gen-uity, man. Like a 101 ways to hang you up by your privates and let the alley rats in this neighborhood eat you alive the next time I don't like what I'm hearin' Got it? Good." With that, Malcolm stalked past Hajiri and yanked his knife back out of the wall, fingering the blade as he eyed the two foreigners over its gleaming, dangerous edge. "Because the rats 'round here? Man, we're talkin' the size of one'a them yappy little mutts the old ladies like. It wouldn't take 'em long to find you. Or eat you. Rats can always find their own."

Darien could feel the waves of alpha male testosterone poring off the combatants, and he held his breath, pressing himself back against the spotted and moldy plaster to make himself as flat as possible, even though he knew these people couldn't see him.

He could see the anger in Hajiri's eyes as the grim-faced man glared back at the leader of the operation. But finally, the foreigner lowered his eyes fractionally, and his head dipped in a barely perceptible nod. "Understood, Andrews."

Darien relaxed a tiny bit in his fly-on-the-wall place across the room.

"But then you and your 'home boys' need to understand that getting the money printed is our concern. And if our plans are going to work, your people need to do this right. You are not doing surgery, here -" he waved at the press which purred quietly in neutral. "But it is also not quite as simple as selling dime bags to school children."

The criticism was sharp, but Malcolm nodded easily, a narrow smile on his face as he sheathed the blade and turned to his pressman. "Hear that, J-bird? You got the I.Q. for this job? Because our buddy Hajiri, here, says it's maybe not so easy."

Jamal shrugged spastically, looking even more uncoordinated than he had earlier. "You do it, then, Mal. I'm just the guy who inks your crew. I don' know nothin'. I'm a moron." The words were self-deprecating, but the tone was coldly bitter with irony. Darien revised his opinion upwards on Jamal's brain power. At least he knew enough to know when he was being insulted.

Malcolm's smile widened into a flash of white teeth in milk chocolate skin, the tattoos that circled one of his massive biceps flexing deliberately. The big man turned his head to cock it at Hajiri, pointing at the intricate decorative work on his skin. "Satisfied? Tell your harem girl there to show J-bird how this thing works, and he'll make you the purtiest pictures you ever did see."

When Hajiri nodded sharply at Massoud, Darien decided it was time to get the heck out of Dodge. As the press clattered back to life, he stuffed the wadded up paper in his pocket and faded silently back the way he'd come.

Outside, Monroe was nearly apoplectic by the time he returned to the old surveillance car. She was sitting behind the wheel, jaw working, but happily, she refrained from saying a word until she'd handed him another bottle of Claire's potion and made him drink it down.

"Just what the hell did you think you were doing in there, Fawkes?" she demanded finally as he wiped the green algae mustache off his upper lip.

"Uh... listening in on the bad guys?" Darien managed as he put the empty bottle down and tucked his hands into his armpits as if to warm them. In reality, he didn't want Alex to see the tremor in them.

"You were supposed to go in. Take a look around. Get out. NOT, and I repeat, NOT, take it into your head to pull some stupid stunt like waltzing into their base of operations and stand there waiting for someone to trip over you!" she snarled.

"I didn't! I just kinda hung out in the corner by the door and watched!" he protested. "Oh, and I brought you a souvenir," he added, pulling the paper out of his pocket to hand to her.

Alex took it and carefully held it by the corners to pull it open, casting a sour look in his direction. "You were in there for over 45 minutes, Fawkes. I know what happens to you when you overuse Quicksilver..." her voice trailed off as the now-smeared sheet of six near-perfect 10 dollar bills met her eyes. "Whoa."

"Yeah. See why I stayed?" Darien said smugly. "Did you understand anything those two guys were saying? It sounded like Arabic or something," he inquired.

"It was Farsi, I think, though the dialect wasn't one I recognize. We need to get the tapes from your walk on the wild side to the Treasury guys for a translation. Not to mention a little digital clean up. Quicksilver makes the recording sound like there was wax in your transmitter's ear." Alex reached into her purse and pulled out a small paper bag, dumping its contents on the bench seat of the car; two each of an assortment of candy bars, including his current favorite, Peanut M&Ms. "Eat," she commanded as she tucked the sheet of counterfeits into the bag and picked up her cell phone.

"Aww, Alex, I didn't know you cared," he teased as he helped himself to a bag of M&Ms.

"Don't let it go to your head," she retorted. "Claire told me to keep an eye on you or she'd sic Eberts on me with the new budget."

Darien laughed around his mouthful of candy. "Uh-oh, the Keeper strikes again. Bobby isn't here for her to browbeat so she comes after you." He crunched the peanut and chewed happily. "It's nice to see that some things scare even the indomitable Alex Monroe," he added as she dialed Harrison's number. "Even if they're blonde..."

Twenty minutes later, Alex dropped the sound recording she'd made of Darien's expedition into the suspects’ house onto Harrison's blotter and settled gracefully into one of the two chairs that faced the imposing desk. Darien flopped bonelessly into the other one.

"I think you'd better listen to this," she informed him. "And you might want your lab guys to clean it up while you're at it."

The Treasury agent picked up the little mini CD, turning it suspiciously between his fingers, then eyed them both with equal wariness. "Just what is it I'm supposed to be hearing?" he asked as he reached over and inserted it into his computer's drive, adjusting it to accommodate the small disk.

"If you scan forward to about the midpoint, you'll get an earful," she said flatly. "Fawkes went in for a little up close and personal snooping."

"Hmm," Harrison muttered noncommittally, and did as she'd suggested, scanning rapidly forward. When the garbled small sounds of Darien's exploration gave way to the burst of noise from the press, he stopped and listened intently. The argument between Malcolm and Hajiri made him straighten, the flash of concern quickly transforming to grim worry as the unmistakable patter of a foreign tongue filled his office. He shot a look at Alex. "Arabic?"

She nodded slightly. "I think so. Farsi. One of the northern dialects, I think. But I’m no linguist. And no, I can't translate it for you. And that's not all," she said as she pulled the brown bag out of her purse and shook the wrinkled sheet of counterfeits onto the desktop. "Here's the cherry on the sundae," she concluded.

Harrison took a handkerchief out of his pant's pocket and used it to pick up the paper by one corner. "Looks like the same work we've been tracking," he agreed.

"Uh, and there's something else, too," Darien spoke up at last.

Both Monroe and Harrison turned to stare at him.

"Fawkes?" Alex snapped, annoyed.

"It may be nothing...." Darien hedged.

"Nothing? So is that why I'm only now hearing about it?" Alex narrowed her eyes at him. "Spit it out."

"I think they might be making pipe bombs," Darien answered quietly. "At least, it looked like it. It's not exactly my field, you know?" he defended himself a little petulantly. "But what else would you be doing with a bunch of pipes yay big, capped at one end -" he held up his hands about a foot and a half apart to indicate size "- and a bunch of 20 pound bags of fertilizer?" he shrugged slightly.

Harrison pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand and then rubbed his eyes. "Christ."

"You can say that again," Alex seconded that dismayed comment. "Did you get close enough that you can ID the people on the recording?" she wanted to know, glaring at Darien as if it was his fault that their case had just gotten possible confirmation of terrorist activities.

"Yeah," Fawkes nodded. "And some of them were in the warehouse Tuesday, too, so we've got pictures of two of them already."

Alex turned back to Harrison. "I'm assuming you have your people working on IDing the suspects he photographed for you?"

"Our interns are running the photos through the central Homeland Security image database right now. So far we haven't had any hits."

"You might want to check local criminal records, while you're at it. I'm thinking the homeboys I saw are from around here, not part of some international 'watch list' or something. So maybe we need to be concentrating a little closer to home?" Darien suggested, unsuccessfully attempting to stifle his ironic tone.

"We've sent copies to the local PD to check against their files. We're waiting to hear back," Harrison defended his team's efforts.

"Yeah, well, maybe you can light a fire under them by telling them it's looking like these guys mean business. Is there any way to tell what sort of target they might be looking to hit?" Darien asked.

"It could be anything," the Treasury agent sighed. "This is starting to diverge from my agency's charter. The FBI-"

"I wouldn't put too much faith in the locals," Darien scoffed. "The run-ins we've had with some of their agents doesn't exactly do much for my piece of mind when it comes to actually doing any detecting. On the other hand, if you want them muddying the waters in your counterfeiting case when we haven't even decided for sure the guys I scoped out today are planning anything more than a big ol' donation to the local 'urban gardeners' society or something, well, that's your call." He shrugged his lack of concern, hoping the unspecific warning about his experiences with Agent Jones and his compatriots would spark some territoriality in Harrison. The last thing he wanted after his and Bobby's annoying encounter with Jones in San Francisco during the summer was having to deal with the smarmy agent again so soon.

Harrison scowled, and Alex nodded. "He's right. We have nothing more than suspicions to go on right now, and even those are based solely on Fawkes' amateur attempt at crime scene evidence collection work," she snarked.

Darien refused to let her bait him and stretched languidly, hearing his spine pop and crunch a bit as he did.

"I suggest we check with local chemical and farm supply warehouses to see if there've been any large single purchases in the past two months or so," she went on.

"That we can do," Harrison nodded firmly. "Might as well be sure we have a problem before we call in the FBI," he concurred.

"Makes sense," Darien said. "Or it would, normally. But for whatever it's worth, the bags looked like they could have come from a bunch of different sources. That's why I'm saying it may just be they're planning on growing pot in the sheds out back. Or it could be they've been stocking up on ammonium nitrate at every mom and pop ag supply place in southern California."

"Great. Just great." Monroe tapped a pump-clad foot on the floor restlessly. "So that means until we can ID some or all of the guys Fawkes was spying on today, we don't have a name to track, and if we don't have a large enough quantity of fertilizer to raise a red flag with a reseller or manufacturer, then Fawkes is right. We've got bupkis. Which means calling in the FBI makes no sense. I say we stick with trying to track the money, and see if we can't bust these yahoos on those charges. Once these guys are off the street, we can take our time tracking down where the possible bomb supplies come into the picture."

"Sounds like a plan," Harrison nodded his approval with this scenario. "I'll see what we can do about getting a warrant for wiretaps and a search of the house so we can get something to bust these guys on."

"Uh, not to rain on your parade or anything, but aren't we going to need probable cause?" Darien asked as the specter of his ACLU leanings raised its head.

"Whaddya call this?" Harrison asked sarcastically as he poked at the sheet of counterfeit 10s with the end of his pen.

"Uhm, I call that illegally obtained evidence. If we show any self-respecting judge this and try to explain where it came from, we're going to end up as candidates for a civil suit," Darien pointed out.

Monroe held up a hand to forestall Harrison's snippy comeback. "The simple solution is that Fawkes goes back in and sees if he can find something incriminating in their next trash day pick up, which in that neighborhood, should be tomorrow." She smirked in Fawkes' direction. "As long as it's on the sidewalk, we can legally access anything they put out there."

"Gee, thanks, Monroe," Darien sulked, knowing this was her way of paying him back for missing out on the trek through the Escondido dump earlier. Playing invisible trash collector sounded like it was going to be as much fun as his day in Claire's lab had been.

"Happy to help, Fawkes," she grinned back at him.

Friday October 27^th

"Your Honor, may I have a word?" Judge Hernandez's assistant requested as he entered her office first thing the next morning.

The judge looked up from her desk impatiently, closing a manila folder with a ‘thump.’ "What is it, Jeffrey?"

"I'm not sure, ma’am, but someone seems to be looking into your records via the county’s court servers. They’ve also filed an inquiry with the Board of Judicial Review."

"Regarding what? Do you know who’s snooping around?" she inquired, interest piqued.

"I haven’t been able to determine that yet, but it's someone with a very high-level security clearance," the tall young man informed her. Unkempt short, dark hair and a worried expression on his face did nothing to improve his weary look. At a guess, it seemed her assistant had been up since the wee hours of the morning chasing ghosts in the judicial machinery.

"They won’t find anything," the judge assured him. "But just in case, see if you can find out who’s poking around."

"I'll do my best, ma’am," he said and turned and hurried out of her office, brushing past her first scheduled visitor of the morning, a tall, well-groomed man with a self-confident bearing. "Sorry, Mr. Schwartz," her clerk apologized as he closed the door behind himself.

"Richard. Have a seat," Hernandez waved a hand at the leather wingback facing her desk. "Can I interest you in a cup of coffee? A bagel? I haven’t eaten yet, myself," she invited, rising to reach the space-aged coffeemaker on her credenza. She poured a mug for herself, then glanced back over her shoulder, catching his affirmative nod.

"Thanks, Doro," he said, taking the steaming mug she handed him. "So. How’s the Chan case proceeding?" he asked after taking a cautious sip of the scalding brew.

"The prosecution is making it almost too easy," she shook her head contemptuously. "Last night it was misplaced fingerprint evidence," she smirked a little at him over the rim of her mug.

Schwartz stifled a grin, making tsk-tsk noises. "They really need to make sure that SDPD has their evidence accessible before they attempt to introduce it," he agreed with heavy irony.

"I take it I can thank your people for that little 'assist?'" Hernandez guessed, eyes twinkling. "What did they do with it?"

"Now, now, Dorothy, you know you really don’t need to know. It keeps the picture clearer when your inquiries stay inside the specified lines," her visitor remarked dryly.

"It would be nice if you’d tell that to whomever it is Jeff caught rummaging around in my court records last night," Hernandez snapped a little, annoyed at being scolded.

Schwartz put down his mug on her desk abruptly, straightening. "Excuse me?"

Hernandez nodded. "You heard me," she said sharply. "According to my clerk, someone with more security clearance than God was snooping around the county's court computers. Not to mention filing a request for information on my past decisions from the Judicial Review Board."

Schwartz's eyebrows rose. "That's rather disquieting."

"Tell me about it," the judge replied. "What do you plan to do about it, Richard?"

"I really think you'd rather not know, my dear. However, I can promise I'll be looking into this personally." He retrieved his mug and sipped from it again calmly, his momentary betrayal of concern now masked by the habitual aplomb Hernandez seldom saw him without.

"Glad to hear it," she said sarcastically. "Because you know what happens if the wrong people start putting things together."

"Yes, Dorothy, I think it's safe to say I know exactly what happens," Schwartz answered her subtle threat with one of his own, and Hernandez squelched a shiver of apprehension.

Friday October 27^th

Alex smoothed a hand over her skirt, imaginary wrinkles falling away under the touch, and glanced over at a grimy and rumpled Fawkes who slouched against the wall with his usual casual grace. "Ready?" she asked.

"If I knew what for, maybe I'd say 'yeah'," Darien grouched, clearly still not awake.

Alex pored a mug of coffee from the carafe on her sideboard and handed it to him. "I know you're not a morning person, Fawkes, but make the effort, would you? We're trying to get the State Attorney's office to take this seriously."

"Hey, I've been up since 5:30 a.m., rooting around in the bad guy's trash," he whined, and sipped at the strong brew, reaching for the artificial sweetener, which Alex snatched from him and replaced with a packet of raw sugar.

"Calories are NOT a problem for you, Fawkes. You need as many as you can get. So use the real stuff. It's better for your liver." She pulled a carton of cream out of the little bar fridge and handed it to him. "Here. Use some of this, while you're at it. And being up doesn't mean you're awake," she added.

"How'd you know I like cream?" he asked, ignoring her mild insult as he poured a generous dollop into the mug.

She grinned. "Give me a break, Mr. 'King-of-the-Venti' latte boy. The number of Starbucks cups in your trash gave you away."

Fawkes snorted, but stirred the additions into his mug and swallowed a good-sized mouthful, making a face as the heat scalded his mouth. "So... when'd Horace Norita make into your rolodex?" he asked casually.

Alex glared at him as she looked up from the folder on her desk. "You and Hobbes are snoops, you know?" she complained.

"Hey, Suzy, we worry about you, you know?" Darien cast a wounded look in her direction.

It annoyed Alex that the admission touched her. She had done her best to keep the agents of the Agency at a distance, but she'd really come to like the lot of them. It went against her grain. But she knew Darien well enough by now that the admission of worry didn't simply get chalked up to competitive meddling. "Don't."

"Sorry, sister, too late," Darien snapped back. "You're our friend. How many times do we have to prove it to you?" he shook his head and set the mug down on her desk. "You are such a hard-ass," he complained. "Me'n Bobby know you're still looking for James. We also know you're seeing Mike. Hello, sweet thing, we aren't as stupid as you think we are. So, why not... move on? You've got a great guy in love with you. What's the downside?"

Alex swallowed hard as he hit on the crux of the issues in her life in one astute observation. "It's not that simple, Darien," she said after a long moment. "I have to find my son," she went on. "He's going to be four on his next birthday..." she looked up into Darien's serious brown eyes, willing him to understand what she was dealing with.

Fawkes nodded slightly. "And the longer Stark and his psycho wife have him, the harder it's gonna be to undo whatever Chrysalis crap they're stuffing his little brain with. I get it, Alex. But... how long can you keep putting off everything else in your life on the off chance you'll be able to snatch him back -- and then deal with the mess Stark's made in his head?"

Alex found herself wanting to cry, and ground her teeth together instead. "Fawkes. Really, I appreciate your input, but I have to handle this my way. Like you and the Official. Right? My way. Even if you don't get why."

Darien nodded slowly, his expression rueful. "Oh, I get it, Alex. Really. But I just wanted to remind you, you don't have to do it alone. You've got me'n Bobby, not to mention Claire and Mike, and all of us want to help, OK? Just sayin', here."

Just sayin'... Alex repeated the words in her head, more moved than she would have thought by his simple vote of confidence and willingness to help. "Fawkes, believe me, if I can get close enough for it to matter, I'll be asking for your help to try and get James back. I promise."

Darien picked up his mug again with a nod. "Good." He sipped then smiled at her over the rim. "So, let's go pay a morning visit to the State Attorney, so I can go home and get a shower."

"Sounds like a plan," she smiled back, and snatched up her Prada bag, leading the way out of her office.

Horace Norita, Assistant State Attorney in the San Diego office, welcomed them with a smile, and a kiss to Alex's cheek. "Alexandra, it's been a while. How are you?" he asked, settling back behind his desk.

Monroe smiled at him. "I've been busy, as usual," she replied, shrugging slightly.

"Of course," Norita laughed slightly. "Or you wouldn't be here. I only ever get visits from you these days when you're on a case and need my office's help."

Alex could feel her cheeks color a bit at the gentle reprimand. Norita and she had once upon a time been more than colleagues. The tall, handsome lawyer had been one of the first to help her when James had been kidnapped from the birth hospital. He'd seen her through some of the hardest days of her life. But time and circumstances had conspired to part their paths. "I know, Horace," she admitted, letting him see her embarrassment.

His smile warmed considerably. "So what can I do for you today?" he asked kindly, glancing at Darien, with one eyebrow quirked in unspoken question.

"Horace, this is my partner, Darien Fawkes," she took the cue and introduced the men. "Darien, Horace Norita." As they shook hands, Alex opened her handbag and removed three evidence baggies, laying them on the blonde ash-wood desk. "It appears we may have a counterfeiting ring in the area," she said to Horace. "Some 'plain sight' snooping turned up these, and based on some... less plain sight recon, we have reason to believe there may be a terrorist connection to these men," she went on, again reaching into her bag to remove the stills Darien had taken in the warehouse at the beginning of the week. "Thomas 'Malcolm' Andrews and Leon Jamal Williams."

Norita took the two photos and eyed them quickly, sharp, dark eyes missing little, including the oddness of the images, smeared in Quicksilver light. "Interesting photographic technique," he observed casually, laying them on his blotter.

"Low light technology," Alex shrugged. "At any rate, these two are part of a street gang up in Escondido that calls themselves the 'X-ers'. The PD says it's a nation-wide gang, with members in pretty much all 50 states. According to what we've been able to find out, they've modeled themselves on some of the more radical tenants of Malcolm X, during his Nation of Islam days."

Norita shook his head slightly. "Why is it these wannabe radicals always pick the wrong place in the timeline to base their philosophy on?" he mused. "Malcom X was one hell of a man," he spoke up, this time to them. "It's a shame street thugs like these two and their friends insist on bastardizing what he stood for as a way to justify their 'angry young hood' behavior."

Alex could see Darien blink in surprise out of the corner of her eye, and picked up the thread of the story again before he could launch into some philosophical discussion with the State Attorney. "Yeah, well, these 'young hoods' have a printing and distribution facility in place that the Treasury department and I have been tracking for a while now. The problem is, this may be a lot bigger, and more dangerous, than just printing monopoly money in bulk. We... stumbled across a link with what may be a group of radical terrorists in the vein of Al Qaeda looking to establish themselves as the next big thing for Homeland Security to worry about."

Norita glanced at her then back to the two pictures. "And you think this group may be responsible for the counterfeiting?"

"We know it is," Darien spoke up at last. "What we don't know is, why it looks like these guys are gearing up for some kind of fireworks. We've got some fairly solid indications that they're stockpiling what could be the ingredients for home-made explosives."

This made the Assistant State Attorney rear back in wary surprise. "And 'we' know this how?" he asked, alert to the careful wording Darien had chosen.

"By means we're not at liberty to discuss, Horace," Alex interjected. "Trust me, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. But the short story is, we need your awareness and support to find out what the hell is going on in Escondido, and what sort of threat these people pose."

Norita steepled his fingers and peered at Monroe over them. "Alex, you know you always have my support," he began. "But something like this has to be handled very, very carefully. Since you can't say where your information came from, it's impossible for me to make a call on the legality of how it was obtained. So from a procedural point of view, I can't offer you any more than some sage advice, which is to make sure you don't rush the evidence. Obtaining warrants in a case like this needs to be done with the utmost in care, or you risk blowing the case when it reaches trial."

Alex nodded impatiently. "Yes, I know all that, Horace. The ethical dilemma we find ourselves with, however, is, whether stopping a possible terrorist incident is more important than making sure we can prosecute successfully once it's occurred."

Norita blew out a long breath. "I'm suddenly remembering why life with you around is never dull," he told her finally.

Friday October 27^th

Hobbes shifted in his seat restlessly, his back bothering him after a week in the juror’s box spent sitting around. He considered himself a man of action, so the enforced inactivity grated on him. The fact that this case looked to be going to hell for the prosecution didn’t help matters, either.

A long career in the espionage and intelligence fields had him second-guessing everything he’d heard and seen in this courtroom so far, and more importantly, the judge’s actions in suppressing or excluding certain evidence. And now it looked like the prosecution was being hung out to dry by the victim of the crime himself.

Bobby didn’t really see how things could get any more fubared.

Phui Qwok, a tiny, balding and bespectacled older man, sat in the witness stand, barely able to see out over the top edge of the box, he was so short. Coke bottle glasses were perched on his nose, and at about 30 second intervals, he would push the sliding frames back up to their correct position from where gravity had dragged them.

Hobbes could see the little guy’s hands shaking from where he sat, the tremor was so strong. And whatever the shopkeeper’s health issues might be, unless Bobby was very much mistaken, it was abject terror that rattled the old man’s bones like that. The looks Qwok kept throwing in Chan’s direction were fraught with fear so strong it filled the air of the courtroom like a fog.

At the defendant’s table, Abernathy and his client sat smirking smugly as ADA Shujjat attempted his second rephrasing of the question causing the current ruckus. "Mr. Qwok... on the date in question, you were at your shop on 6^th avenue, correct?"

The old man nodded fractionally, and Hobbes caught the ADA closing his eyes in exasperation before correcting his witness. "Please answer yes or no, for the record, Mr. Qwok," he coached for the umpteenth time.

"Yes," Qwok said and nodded even more vigorously, as if that would somehow make it onto the court reporter’s machine. His voice was raspy and burdened with a thick Asian accent. Hobbes wondered if the old guy spoke much.

"During business hours, correct?"

Qwok nodded again, then caught himself. "Yes," he added before the ADA had to prompt him yet again.

"According to your statement, at approximately 3:15 p.m., the defendant, Mr. Chan," the ADA waved a hand at the kid, "entered your business with the intent of coercing you into buying his merchandise, correct?"

This time the headshake was negative.

"Mr. Qwok," the ADA sighed.

"No, no!" Qwok spoke up, agitated, pointing across to Chan. "He not the one! He not the Chan I talk to!"

A speculative murmur buzzed around the courtroom, and Judge Hernandez banged her gavel loudly on her desk. "Order, please!"

"Thank you, your honor," Shujjat acknowledged before turning back to his witness. "Is the person you spoke with currently in the courtroom?" he asked, voice strained.

Hobbes would have hated to be in Shujjat's shoes right then.

"No, no. Not here." Qwok hunched in on himself, pointedly avoiding looking at the defendant. "He not here."

"Mr. Qwok. Would you please explain to the court why your original statement places the defendant, John Chan, at your place of business on that day and time?"

Qwok cringed visibly, shot a rapid-fire look at Shujjat, his eyes flitting from place to place in the courtroom without settling once on Chan, and cleared his throat. Twice. "Not him. I mistake him for my Chan."

"And why would you make a statement to the effect that the defendant was, in fact, the one who entered your establishment and tried to force you to purchase, and I quote, 'cheap-ass knock-offs' of name-brand designer clothes and accessories?'" the ADA inquired calmly.

Bobby could hear how forced it was. He glanced at Terri, who was focused intently on the proceedings. Maybe it was the power of suggestion, or of mutual suspicion, but she turned her head and met his gaze for a fraction of a second, brows furrowed in consternation. Hobbes swore to himself. Hinky didn't even come close to describing this situation.

The bailiff shifted his weight from one foot to the other, attention split between the judge and the jurors. The arrangement he had with Hernandez was simple: keep an eye on the jurors in the hope of spotting any of them in violation of the standard injunction against discussing the case amongst themselves prior to the end of the trial. Not that that was any stretch as far as his usual job description was concerned. But when she'd told him that her clerk had come across something suspicious concerning this case, he'd volunteered to keep his eyes open.

He liked Hernandez. She had a solid reputation, and unlike some of the other bleeding hearts out there whose courtrooms he'd stood in as bailiff in the past, she was pretty good about convicting the scum buckets who routinely appeared in front of her.

While this particular case didn't strike him as especially noteworthy, it had surprised him that she hadn't made it a bit easier on the ADA. Though he had to admit, he found it unsettling in the extreme to have a Muslim in the District Attorney's office. Especially one who actually appeared in court. These days, you couldn't be too careful. So if Judge Hernandez disliked Shujjat, then he wasn't going to argue with her assessment. And it seemed her information was solid, if the clandestine glances he kept seeing between a couple of the jurors were any indication.

The short, balding guy in chair seven was trouble, or he'd pass up his next raise. And the pretty little thing in chair 13 who kept looking his way wasn't exactly adhering to the 'no discussion' rule, either. By the time the Judge called a recess for lunch, he was pretty sure they were the troublemakers she had warned him about.

Friday October 27^th

That evening after court, Terri stepped into her shop, scanning it to make sure that all the clean-up had been done for the day. All the kennels needed to be disinfected each night to make sure that any bugs didn't infect the next day's clients.

On weekdays, she usually closed by seven, except for holidays. But on a Friday, things were ship-shape and wrapped up for the weekend. She was pleased to see that her manager, Karen, had handled every detail all by herself. The kennels had been cleaned, leashes and harnesses hung on their pegs, toys put away, and every last client dog picked up. The place was good for the night. All that remained was to pick up her own dog, an Australian Blue Heeler mix, and head for home. Karen had left a note telling her how the day had gone, and how her treasured pet had behaved. In her employee's words: like a champ. She grinned as she headed for her office

Jax greeted her at the door of her office with a soft woof and a nudge to her knee with his nose, the unplumed tail transferring its wriggle of joy through his pelvis.

"Hey, boy, did you miss me?" she patted him on the shoulder, then walked into the room to look over the rest of the notes her manager had left for her about the day. Jax trotted patiently over to his dog bed and lay down. He knew when she was sitting at her desk he had to be quiet and wait.

Terri looked over the notes, checked her messages, and then headed out the back door with Jax to retrieve her Subaru station wagon from the employee parking area for the short drive to her condo. She'd found the perfect place after searching for months. It was across the street from a local park so she had the advantages of a yard without the work.

Jax could run off leash in the early morning and evening when no one was looking, and he had several dog friends on the block. Terri had even entered him in the fly disc competition for the last three years since she'd moved here.

Terri took Jax for his evening walk in the park, thinking about Bobby Hobbes. He was such a nice guy. He'd picked up the tab for their lunch today without a word, and had waved off her offer of cash to cover her share with a sweet little smile.

She admitted she had a thing for dimples, and his were wonderful, bracketing an expressive mouth and deepening when he smiled. Which she did her best to make him do often.

But today, he'd seemed distracted, bypassing her small flirtations with probing questions about whether she'd noticed this or that bit of Qwok's testimony, or the judge's reaction to one of several different points of testimony. She couldn't help wondering if he wasn't more interested in her reactions to the Judge's apparent antipathy towards the ADA prosecuting Jackie Chan than in her. She did her best to distract herself from what she was beginning to think was inevitable disappointment by playing with the one male she knew she could always count on in her life: her dog.

She failed to notice the pair of lovers strolling along the park-front walk, though Jax bounded over to them with the irrepressible happiness of a working dog finally on the loose. While she didn't note their lackluster reaction to the joyous canine greeting, Jax made no such mistake.

Friday October 27^th

Hobbes sat in his van in the parking lot for nearly an hour after court recessed for the weekend, still mulling over the total change of testimony by the victim in the case. He and Terri had risked meeting up at lunch to compare notes, and it was apparent to both of them that some kind of leverage from somewhere was being applied to get Chan acquitted.

Jackie Chan might not be the worst crook Hobbes had ever encountered, but he wasn't exactly a boy scout, either. Extorting frightened old guys like Qwok into buying cheap rip-offs of more expensive goods wasn't really up there on his personal scale of rottenness, but when that kind of extortion was replaced by buying off -- or threatening -- the victim, well, his opinion of Chan went down several more notches.

Once again, he toyed with inviting himself over to Darien's for an impromptu dinner so he could discuss the situation with his partner, but decided that maybe his time would be better spent coercing Eberts into doing some of his electronic B&E to see if he could get hold of something useful on Chan or Qwok. And he had yet to hear what the Official's pet bean counter had found out about Judge Hernandez. With his familiarity with government databases, Eberts would get further than Hobbes would, and in less time. Bobby had pretty much decided to spend his weekend looking into Judge Hernandez' dealings, and maybe seeing what Hobbesnet could come up with on Chan. It'd help, though, if he had some place to start. Which was what he hoped the Agency's resident techno-geek could provide.

Glancing at his Rolex, he was startled to see it was nearly 5:30. If he was going to catch Eberts before the little pencil pusher went home for the night, he'd better get a move on. Just in case, he flipped open his phone and dialed the Agency, getting the receptionist to connect him directly with Eberts' office.

"Hey, Eberts. Hobbes, here. I was wondering if you had a couple of minutes before you head home to fill me in on anything you found out about Judge Hernandez," he inquired with forced cheerfulness. While he had overcome the worst of his antipathy for the Official's assistant with time, he was still uncomfortable when it came to asking for favors from the accountant.

"Ah, Robert. Yes, I'd be happy to stay for a moment. I think I have something you might find interesting," was the reply.

"Good work, Eberts," he grinned as he pulled into evening traffic and headed for the Agency's offices.

He was so caught up in wondering what Eberts might have dug up that his paranoid instincts failed him for once, and he missed seeing the silver Cooper Mini that pulled out of the parking lot after him, rushing the yellow light he'd barely made it through himself as it pulled into the street behind him.

Hobbes leaned over Eberts' shoulder, intrigued by the ease with which the accountant was able to navigate the judicial records of one Dorothy Hernandez. "So it looks like she's been on the bench a while, huh?" he prompted, the long chronological list of her decisions rolling down the page.

"You're right, she has, Robert," Eberts said, not bothering to hide the excitement in his voice. "Which is the reason I was able to spot the deviation from her previous pattern."

He stopped scrolling down and pointed to a case dating from 2001. "This is where I first began noticing that certain types of cases began appearing before her, and her usual conservative approach started to alter to a degree. See? A case involving a member of an Hispanic gang, the Los Cazadores, in which something similar to your current trial seemed to be going on. I compared this to the timing of the complaints filed against her with the judicial board and got this," he said, and opened another window, revealing the website for the Board of Judicial Review. "The ADA at the time, Leslie Wannamaker, registered her disagreement with the way that trial was handled. It might be worth speaking with her. She's now in private practice in Long Beach, I believe, with Graham, Callahan and Respiggi." He glanced back at Hobbes expectantly, like a beagle waiting to be praised.

"You said you found a pattern?" Hobbes prompted. "Which means there's got to be more than just one other time this has happened..."

"Of course," Eberts agreed, bringing up the first window again. "I found several. But the one of greatest interest is this one. Here," he pointed at the case and docket line of the index, "is a case nearly opposite in nature. A member of a black street gang was convicted of four counts of extortion, assault, weapons' possession, and theft. Only this time, the complaint against the judge was filed by the Public Defender's office."

"And this fits the pattern how?" Hobbes asked doing his best to stifle his usual sarcasm.

"The Public Defender, Alfred Moonves, filed his complaint against the judge based on the suppression of evidence that would have exonerated his client. Indeed, it even went so far as to be reviewed by Barry Sheck's Innocence Project, though nothing ever came of it."

"So we have a judge who picks and chooses who she's gonna throw the book at, is that it?" Hobbes mused speculatively.

"It does appear that way," Eberts confirmed.

"Hunh," Bobby grunted, wondering just what was going on in Dorothy Hernandez's courtroom. If she really was all over the map in her convictions, then his gut instincts might very well be wrong. And he found that very hard to believe.

"Robert, this isn't the only case of its kind. She has apparently manipulated evidence against a defendant on both sides of the conviction/acquittal scale several times. While it is much more common for her to apparently favor the acquittal of certain sorts of defendants, she has manipulated testimony in at least three cases I could find against members of a black gang, which resulted in convictions in each case."

"Huh. So she has a record of racism? That what you're telling me, Ebes?"

"That was my first reaction, too, Robert," Albert nodded.

"But?"

"But I found many other cases in which black defendants were acquitted in her courtroom."

"Well, then what exactly is it we're seeing here?" Hobbes asked, totally confused, by now.

"I wish I knew," Eberts sighed.

Saturday October 28^th

Hobbes' plans for a weekend spent trolling for information on Hernandez via his contacts in Hobbesnet were abruptly changed when he got a call from his partner before 7 a.m. on Saturday morning.

"Fawkes! What the hell are you doing up this early? On a Saturday?" he demanded, for one horrible second fearing that something was amiss.

Darien's snort of laughter instantly reassured him all was well. Relatively, anyway. "Hobbesy, I just wanted to see if you wanted to get back out in the field after a week of slummin’ it in court," he asked.

"Hell, yeah," Hobbes grinned. "So what's been going on with that counterfeiting case that you need your old partner? I figured I'd lost out to Monroe permanently," he teased.

"Ri-i-i-i-i-i-ght," Darien snarked. "Miss 'if it's Tuesday it must be a new agency' isn't gonna be taking over as my watchdog anytime soon," he retorted. "Besides, she can't tell jokes as well as you can."

"Oh, I get it. I'm just your personal comedian, now, huh?" Hobbes snarked back, pleased to be bantering with Fawkes after a week of enforced boredom. His partner's quick wits kept his own well exercised, and besides; Fawkes made him laugh. "So what's up?" he asked again, getting the conversation back on track.

"Well, that case we were working got a little more complicated than plain old counterfeiting," Darien informed him.

"Complicated how?" Hobbes asked. Now this was more like it. A puzzle that required more of him than mental work. One that looked to be taking him back out into the field - with his partner, no less - and might involve a little physical action. Just the thing to help relegate his own problem to a mental back burner where it could simmer away undisturbed and hopefully come up with some answers without his conscious 'input'. Besides it sound like a lot more fun than a day spent tracking down his various contacts around San Diego. Smitty was notoriously elusive, especially when he found out Hobbes was looking for him.

"Complicated as in bombs. Maybe, anyway. Complicated as in an alleged terrorist connection turning out to be right. That 'complicated' enough for you?" Darien replied.

Hobbes grunted in surprise. "Tell me, Fawkes; why does everything go to hell as soon as I let you out of my sight?" he wanted to know, only half joking.

"Hey, consider it an attention-getting device, pal."

"Nah, more like you're a born trouble-magnet," Bobby responded.

"That, too," Darien admitted with a laugh. "So. You up for it, partner?"

"Where and when?" Hobbes asked firmly. No way in hell was he letting Fawkes get into something this potentially dangerous without being there personally to watch his partner's back. After all, he never bailed on a partner.

An hour later, he was at the Treasury office downtown, sitting across from the head honcho, some guy by the name of Harrison, who was droning on and on about the need for additional information.

Hobbes had to keep biting his tongue, knowing he'd get all the information he needed in due time, but it was frustrating to come in in the middle of something, for sure. A bit like the way he'd started watching that TV show, 24, with that Keifer Sutherland dude. He hadn't fully figured out what was going on until the show had been rerun all at once at the end of the season.

Only this was the real world, here, and he couldn't afford to catch up later. He made a mental list of questions, crossing them off as the morning briefing progressed, as they were answered one by one. By the time Harrison wound down, there were still several questions left unanswered. Not the least of which was who the mystery guests were. They had first names for some, but that was it and so far, there'd been no hits in any of the terrorist databases. The only positive IDs were of Malcolm Andrews and his partner Jamal Williams.

Darien spoke up, eliminating one of the questions on Hobbes' list handily. "Did you translate what our friends were saying?"

Beside him, Alex nodded slightly, apparently wondering that for herself.

"Yes, and it's little more than the usual rhetoric. The only useful information was that this Hajiri and Sekkim are using Andrews and his crew to further their own goals, which was obvious. Why is trickier, but is probably no more than to have a convenient fall guy when we come calling." Harrison waved vaguely at the folder on the table before him. He hadn't bothered to make copies and distribute them.

"Are you certain the translation is accurate?" Alex asked with saccharine sweetness, but Hobbes could see her eyes were icy cold. Hobbes had only been in the presence of the Treasury mooks a short time, but already fully understood why she thought they were incompetent boobs.

A gentleman across and three seats down from Alex responded. "Quite certain." He had a decided Middle Eastern cast to his features, but with bright blue eyes that were uncommon for that region of the world. He was also comparably young, maybe his middle twenties at most. Probably joined Treasury right out of college.

"And you would be?" Alex prompted, one eyebrow rising towards her hairline.

"Amad Nietsson. On loan from Homeland Security." He glanced over at Harrison. "Treasury doesn't have much call to staff translators, I'm afraid." The look on his face was priceless, making it clear he was just as fond of Harrison and Co. as Alex.

"So what do we do now? Stake out the place and hope like hell they do something incriminating?" Darien snarked. "These guys are too smart for that."

Hobbes violently shook his head. "Bad idea. If they are planning to blow up something we gotta stop 'em before it happens."

"We don't know that they're going to do anything of the sort. We only have Fawkes' word that he saw the makings for pipe bombs." Nichols reminded everyone needlessly. "Having some pipes and fertilizer in your home isn't illegal."

"What about the money? Can't we use the sheet as probable cause?" Even as Darien said the words, the answer crawled across his features. "Never mind. Illegally obtained. Crap." He sank deeper into the chair looking decidedly unhappy.

Hobbes, however, felt oddly proud. The rules and routine were finally sinking into that fur covered brain. The kid might know how to work the system from the angle of a thief almost instinctively, but as the cop, it still took some effort. What could be advantages as a prosecutee weren't for the prosecutor. The Chan case a prime example of the system working for the bad guy.

"We can't just sit around and hope they aren't making pipe bombs. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer not having dozens of dead bodies on my conscience." Darien crossed his arms over his chest, a stubborn look planted firmly on his face.

"We don't have to," Alex stated, lips beginning to curve upwards in satisfaction.

"And why is that?" Harrison grumbled.

Alex played her trump card, and boy it was a doozy. "Because, unlike you, the State Attorney's office would much rather prevent a terrorist attack than worry about prosecuting the progenitors." She tried to restrain the smug smile, but Hobbes could see it under the poker face she was sporting.

Agent Nietsson cleared his throat. "Prevention is the preferred resolution. We don’t want another 9/11... ever."

Harrison winced ever so slightly, the reference hitting home. "All right, your man is going back in to check the place out. We need to be certain, before we can make another move."

"Back in," Hobbes deadpanned. "That's kinda risky don't you think?" Fawkes might be able to go see-through, but that didn't prevent him from getting cornered or caught. And if he stayed invisible for too long... bad things tended to happen when Fawkes was out of sight for too long, even now.

"But necessary," Alex said, frowning. Looked like she didn't enjoy Harrison being right.

"You'll go in with full audio and video. I want it all on the record. We might not be able to use the info for a warrant, but at least we'd know instead of guessing." Harrison was amazingly making sense for a change. "Agent Nietsson will accompany you on the off chance there is any translation needed. If he hears something of importance we'll be able to make a tactical decision sooner rather than later. I want something from you ASAP. Dismissed."

Alex nodded, Darien grumbled, not too keen on having the fifth wheel along, and Hobbes sighed. This was going to be interesting.