Chapter 11

Pearl woke the next morning, relaxed and calm. She remained in bed, wondering at the sense of well-being that she felt. She hadn't experienced that in a very long time. She was, indeed, still in Gideon's house, wondering how long she was supposed to stay before she got back into her own place. She didn't want to make any presumptions about the relationship they had slowly started to rebuild.

She got up, dressed, and headed to the kitchen to put on coffee, only to find Gideon already there, pouring two fresh cups. She stared at him and asked, "Did you get any sleep?"

He winced. "Do I look like I didn't?"

She nodded slowly. "Seems you had a bit of a rough night."

"Someone tried to attack Mason at the hospital." She stared at him in shock. "He didn't succeed. Our guy recognized that something was off and managed to thwart it. A nurse got knocked to the ground in the scuffle, but she's fine too, and we've doubled up on the guards, once again," he added, with a groan. "Not that we shouldn't have done that from the beginning, I guess, but we were minimizing our presence at the hospital. Now we'll have somebody both inside and outside."

"Sorry," she murmured. "I know you care about Mason."

"We worked together, and I respect the man. I don't want to see anybody in our group drop for something like this," he said.

"Are you going in then?"

"I am. What would you like to do today?"

She hesitated. "I'm not sure what I can do. Can I go back to my house? Go back to work?"

"I can certainly check and see. Forensics should be done with your place. I just don't know if they need time for anything else. As for you returning to work, I'm not sure about that."

She waited while he made the required phone calls. Then he turned, smiled at her, and said, "Your house is clear."

"Good."

"I need to warn you that it'll probably be a little on the rough side, with black fingerprint dust everywhere."

"Meaning that they made a mess, and I'm supposed to clean it up?"

He nodded. "Something like that."

" Wonderful ," she muttered, under her breath.

"It's a problem, something that most people don't realize or expect. Anytime a major crime occurs, a forensics team comes through, and they don't clean up after themselves. That's for you to do. Plus, the original bloodstain remains as well."

"Wow," she murmured. "I know this armed stranger was shot in my house, but imagine if you lost somebody you cared for, and you still had to come back to that."

"Specialized companies do that kind of cleanup," he shared, with a nod. "I just don't know how bad your place will be, now that forensics has been inside."

"I'll go look," she said, with a wave of her hand. "Besides, I want my wheels again."

He nodded. "How about I drop you off at the house then?"

And that's what they did. Of course he cleared the house to confirm it was safely unoccupied, then asked, "Are you okay to be here?"

"I am."

"Good. I'll call you in a little bit, okay?" Yet he stopped, hesitating for a moment, and added, "Please tell me that I don't need to be worried about you all alone here."

"I don't think so. Do we have any idea why my house was chosen in the first place?" He frowned at that and shook his head. "Go on," she said. "It's not likely anybody'll come in while I'm here. If they do, I'll let you know.… Maybe I should get a security system. But it's a rental…"

Gideon nodded, as he looked around. "Yes but it's something we should look into."

"You can look into it later or I can just request a new residence." She shrugged. "It's not as if I have a whole lot of choice right now."

"Good enough," he replied, but he still hesitated.

"Gideon, I'll be fine. It's all right."

He frowned. "I know that in theory, but—"

She smiled. "I'm glad to see that you care enough to worry, but I'm sure I'll be okay."

"But I'm not," he murmured. "I don't feel good about this at all." Then he announced, "I'll just work from here today." She looked at him in surprise, and he shrugged. "I can't explain it. All I can tell you is that I don't feel good about leaving." She frowned and opened her mouth, but he interrupted, "No. Decision made. I'm not going anywhere."

She shook her head. "I should go to the office. I don't even know if I still have a job."

"You do, but you are off on sick leave at the moment, and they already have your patients covered."

"I still want to see it for myself. See if the harsh workplace element is gone. And I don't mean just Betty being gone. I want to see if all that meanness is gone."

Gideon nodded. "I understand."

She shooed him away. "Then go to work. I promise, if I go anywhere, I'll let you know. Plus, if anything weird happens, I'll let you know."

He shook his head. "No."

"Yes, go." When he glared at her, she laughed. "We can't both be stuck here. I promise I won't do anything stupid, and I will let you know if things turn ugly."

"But they turn ugly very quickly."

"Put a guard in here then," she suggested, raising her hands in mock surrender. "Get somebody you trust to stand guard, but you have to go. You need to deal with all these other issues."

He made a couple phone calls. "Okay, I've got somebody coming to stay with you, a friend of mine."

"Great, and what friend is this?"

"Tristan. He's one of the guys we were considering bringing onto the new investigative team."

She laughed. "Does anybody else know about this new investigative team?"

He grinned at her. "There have been problems with the old one for a very long time," he noted. "So we are just moving them out and bringing in an entire new team. So, you can bet we have vetted these people and have worked with them before."

It wasn't long before a knock came on the front door, and Gideon opened it with a smile. "There you are."

"It didn't take me long to get here," Tristan muttered. "I just had to wake up a minute first."

Hearing that, Pearl came up behind Gideon and smiled at the newcomer, "Hey, I'm sorry, but he's being extra paranoid."

"Given the circumstances, that's probably a good thing," the new guy said, as he stepped into the house. "My name is Tristan, by the way." He shook her hand and added, "And this old fart here has been a friend of mine for a very long time."

"We've been friends a long time too," she said. "Funny how I've never met you though."

He smiled at her. "Oh, but I've heard about you."

Instantly she frowned. "In that case, maybe you aren't here so willingly."

He burst out laughing. "Whatever is between the two of you is between the two of you. Although maybe I'll just coerce you away from him."

She rolled her eyes at that. "Nothing to coerce me away from. What we had was a long time ago." Ignoring the look Gideon sent her, she added, "Besides, I have to check out my workplace today. I can't just sit here and do nothing for the rest of my life."

"Understood." Tristan smiled. "So now the question is whether you want me to come with you to your office or sit outside and stand on watch."

She groaned. "Seriously, you don't need to do that either."

"Hey, you mentioned a guard, and I made that happen," Gideon pointed out, "so no arguing. If he says jump, you jump. If he says you lie down, you lie down."

She stared at him and asked, "Seriously?"

"Yes,… seriously. I trust Tristan with my life," he explained, eyeing her intently, "and, in this case, I trust him with your life too." Gideon turned to glare at Tristan, who was grinning as bright as the sunshine. "And regardless of what she says, definitely something is between us, and I'm doing everything I can to get us back on a normal footing," he muttered, as he walked out the door. Then he stopped, turned around, and walked back to her. After he gave her a hard and long kiss, he muttered, "And don't you forget it." With that, he was gone.

Tristan burst out laughing at the look on her face. "Don't tell me that you didn't know," he said, breaking the silence. He sniffed the air and then noted, as if nothing had happened, "Coffee. I could use coffee." As she led the way to the kitchen, he continued. "Seriously, you can't still be confused about Gideon."

"We haven't talked about it," she said, uncomfortable with the conversation. "I wasn't sure he was at all interested in going back to what we had."

"Oh, I don't think he is. I don't think he's interested in that at all," Tristan clarified. "But I don't think that's the same thing as figuring out if you have something better to move forward to."

She stared at him for a long moment, and then smiled brilliantly at him. "I like the sound of that. It sounds a whole lot better than what we had."

"Somewhere along the line he might need a little more explanation of why you walked."

"I don't have one," she admitted, with a sour expression, "and that's probably something that'll hold him back."

"No, it won't," Tristan argued, with a smile, "so don't go putting thoughts and words in his mouth. He's very capable of making his own decisions and very capable of sorting out what he needs to sort out. So just give him some time and space, and he'll get there. Like he said, as far as he's concerned, you already have something between you. Now, do you have any food here?"

She watched in amazement as Tristan rummaged around in the fridge, pulling out eggs, then checking the freezer, pulled out some sausage, and asked, "Did you eat?"

She nodded. "I had toast."

He winced. "Toast? How is anybody expected to do all this work on toast?" He asked, "So if I make sausage and eggs, will you have some?"

"Sure," she said, surprised and yet amused to see him completely at ease as he took over her kitchen. "I guess you don't worry about being at other people's places, do you?"

"No, I sure don't." He gave her a big grin. "You can spend an awful lot of time worrying about crap like that. Whenever you can, get into the groove of what life currently gives you and just enjoy it."

And next followed one of the strangest lunches that she'd ever experienced, and yet it was fun. It was filled with laughter, and somehow the time went by so quickly that she was flummoxed when she looked down at her watch and realized what time it was. "I don't know if that was done on purpose on your part," she noted, "but you've been here for hours already."

"Hey, what do you mean, on my part ? It's easy to spend time with me. I work hard at being a nice guy. Plus, I'm supposed to be here, by your side."

She laughed. "I didn't mean it that way. I just meant that somehow the time disappeared so quickly, and I wasn't expecting it."

"That's because you're spending way too much time worrying and fussing, when you should be just relaxing."

"Maybe I'm still adjusting. After the big fiasco we had at my place, I ended up staying at Gideon's. Then we had somebody break in there," she told him. "I ended up climbing out the second-floor window and up a damn tree to get away from the intruder in my PJs. Afterward, I had to somehow make it back inside again, all while not on the ground. So, getting some sleep there last night was hard to manage, but I finally did it."

"Oh, it all sounds exciting," Tristan replied, his face lighting up with interest. "Tell me more."

She rolled her eyes. "Are you for real?"

"Of course I'm for real," he declared, with mock innocence. "You just don't know what you're missing."

"You could be right." She sighed. "With somebody like you, I would never be sure who and what you are."

"I'm just a guy, somebody you can trust, somebody you don't have to worry about, no pressure. I'm just here. And"—he let the word hang there for a moment—"I won't make you do something you don't want to do."

"Does that mean I can go to my office, all on my own?"

"Ah, no, no way," he stated, with a big grin. "I plan to stick to you like a second skin."

She rolled her eyes at that. "I would much rather have Gideon."

He burst out laughing. "Now that is something you could have mentioned earlier. I was starting to wonder if you even cared about the guy."

She gave a shy smile. "I've never cared about anybody the way I care about him.… Don't ever think otherwise."

"As long as you understand the reasons why you did what you did that broke the man's heart," Tristan replied, "I'll let it be."

"No, I don't understand," she said, "but I'm trying to."

"Just don't ever do it again," he added, a hint of a warning there. "Most of us will allow a mistake once, but a second time, we're put on that same nightmare path of pain, we can't do it. Once is more than enough."

"I didn't intend to hurt him. I was just running from everything."

"You succeeded, but, in succeeding, you also caused him a lot of pain."

"I know," she murmured. "I don't want to do that again."

As it was, when she got to work, everybody was excited to see her. She was surprised at the greetings but heart-warmed by the seemingly enthusiastic and honest responses when they all realized things were changing and that Pearl would still stay with them, at least for a while. After a few minutes, everybody slowly meandered back to work, and things started to settle in. Her boss walked over and asked, "How are you doing?"

"I'm okay. It's been a rough couple days."

"I'll say," Maria muttered. "It's been a little crazy here too, what with all the investigators and whatnot."

"I'm sorry you had to go through all that."

"Did Betty deliver something to your door?" When Pearl nodded and told her what it was, Maria paled. "My God, she's lost it, hasn't she?"

"I think that's the assumption right now. I don't know what'll happen next."

"Right." Maria stared in the direction where the main offices were. "I'm not sure what'll happen either, but it's not your fault, so don't you worry."

Pearl chuckled. "It would be nice to think that whatever happens next didn't require any involvement from us, but I'm not so sure we'll be that lucky."

"You're being awfully forgiving, considering what Betty put you through."

"She's not here now, and she won't be back," Pearl noted. "So I'm just glad the problem has resolved itself." And, with that, she headed to her desk to have a look at her schedule and to gather her things.

When Diane walked in a few minutes later, she hugged Pearl. "I've taken over some of your patients for the last couple days. Do you know when you're coming back full-time?"

"I would like to say tomorrow, but that may be a little early yet."

Tristan looked over at the physical therapist and shook his head. "Pearl won't be back for another couple days at least, and even that is just my best guess." Pearl stared at him, and he nodded. "We have more shit to get fixed first," he stated, without any reservation.

Pearl winced and nodded. "There you go," she told Diane.

"Okay, in that case, do you have a few minutes to go over some of your cases?"

"Sure."

And, for the next hour, she went over several of her patients, going over some of the treatments she had programmed and set up, all ready to go. When they were done, and Diane disappeared, Pearl looked over at Tristan and just exhaled. "Seriously? It'll be that long?"

"Yes, seriously. Remember how a gunman broke into your house?"

She stared at him. "I was trying to forget that, until you brought it up again."

His grin flashed. "So, isn't it a good thing that I brought it up then? All kidding aside, it's not something we can afford to forget."

"Maybe not forget, but I was hoping there might be a solution that would allow me to get my life back to normal. It's pretty hard to even figure out how these two events are connected."

"Oh, I agree with you there," Tristan confirmed, with a flat look in her direction. "I'm new to Mason's investigation and to your mess, but I've been working in the background. If you want my preliminary take? Some of this isn't making a whole lot of sense."

"Exactly. So why my house?" she asked. "And why Gideon's?"

"His house because he's an investigator, and obviously somebody tagged him, saw him, and considered him to be an issue. I would say it's Mason-related. And your house, I initially suspected… was because of Gideon. Now apparently it wasn't so much about you and him and more about that location."

She shook her head. "Yet we've only just reconnected."

"Yes, but that doesn't mean your history isn't on the internet."

She paled at that, and then she nodded. "There's probably quite a bit of us out there in the world wide web because that's life these days, isn't it?" she said bitterly. "Once anything is on the net, it seems to stay there."

"Even if it doesn't stay there, people who have any decent computer skills can still find it," Tristan pointed out. "So, when you first saw Gideon again, was anybody around?"

"Sure. We were in the hospital—no, actually in a stairwell," she clarified, with a nod. "We didn't hug or anything, just acted like old friends, catching up. Then we went different ways. I went downstairs, and he continued on. So, even in the stairwell, people could have seen our interaction, but I don't know that anybody else was there or was paying attention. Honestly, I was so shocked at seeing him, I wasn't aware of anyone who may have been around."

"Which is probably the same for him."

"Ask Jasper then," she muttered, with a wry look, "because he was there at our initial meeting too."

"Interesting. Maybe I'll do that. At least see if he recalls anybody seeing you together."

"I may have called a friend from my office and told her that I saw Gideon. Maybe someone overheard that conversation."

"Okay, then who did you call when you discovered somebody was in your house?"

"Him," she said, without thinking about it.

"Did anyone see that happen?"

She stared at him and frowned. "I don't know. Gideon arrived pretty quickly. I had such a bad feeling that I didn't even go inside. Then, while waiting in my car, I saw Betty drop something off. I was already rattled, but nothing prepared me to see someone open my door and grab the package off the porch. Knowing Gideon was in town, I didn't even think twice about who I should call," she explained.

Tristan seemed to be completely okay with it and just brushed aside her explanations. "That's not the main issue. The main issue is whether anybody saw Gideon, whether with you initially, in the stairwell, or when he showed up at your house."

"Oh, right," she said. "Some stranger was on foot in the neighborhood. When I didn't see any parked car on the street, I got nervous about that too."

Tristan nodded. "The team is scouring the street cams and any doorbell cams to see if we can ID him. But then you moved to Gideon's house, right?"

"Yes, that's correct."

"And the bad guys brought in somebody well known for getting into houses," Tristan shared, "so he was obviously somebody they had at the ready."

"But why kill him, if he was so skilled then? I assumed it was because he failed."

"And that could be, but I'm not sure that it was just because he failed, as much as they didn't want him around to talk about his involvement."

"But they might need him again," she protested. "Why would they get rid of skilled labor?"

He smiled. "We're not sure that these particular Mason-related bad guys killed him. It could have been an attempted car-jacking or something unrelated, but who knows? Maybe the lockpick said something. We don't know what happened, but he was killed very soon after leaving Gideon's house."

She grimaced. Both intruders died. Hers at her own place. She was saddened at the thought that somebody had broken into Gideon's house and then had died so quickly afterward, just because he'd done the job he was hired for. "So, you're saying, someone saw me with Gideon, and that set off these two intruders and whatever else?"

"You certainly could have been tracked, and they would have noted Gideon right from the beginning when he came to your house. They would have had his name and background immediately. Once that was done, it would have been a case of checking to see what you did afterward. Of course Gideon was also responsible for their man's death at your place."

"Right," she whispered, "and that was a little upsetting too."

"Sure it was, but Gideon was defending himself, and nobody'll argue with that."

"No, I don't imagine so." She took a deep breath. "Still, it doesn't explain, Why me ? Why my house ?"

"I don't think it was about you, as much as your place."

"Yeah, everybody keeps saying that," she replied in frustration, "but we don't have any explanations as to who and why."

"No, but the property across from you is an interesting one."

She frowned. "It is? Interesting in what way?"

"Your place is the only one with a view of that home across the street."

She nodded slowly. "That's true. I hadn't considered that."

"So, if anybody wanted to keep an eye on anything going on across the road, then your place would make a whole lot of sense."

"Okay, so they invaded my place so they could spy on whatever was going on across the road. But do we know who lives there and what is happening over there?"

He hesitated, then nodded and relented with a huff. "I've already been there and done that research. It was occupied by somebody in the military, and he committed suicide."

She stared at him. "So, why watch a dead man's house?" she asked.

"I guess maybe they wanted to know if anyone showed up there."

"Or," she guessed, staring at him intently, "maybe he didn't commit suicide at all?"

*

At the navy's Investigation Department, Gideon took over an empty office. He was busily catching up on recent reports, reading the six possible revenge cases, figuring out his schedule, and determining where to go next. He was distracted by all these thoughts when his phone rang. ID'd as Tristan, Gideon answered, only half focused on the call. "Everything okay?"

"Yes, everything is all right here. However, your girlfriend has an interesting suggestion."

Now fully at attention, he frowned and asked, "What did she say?" Then he listened as Tristan explained about the suicide across the road.

"We didn't consider that, did we?"

"No, we read the material presented to us and accepted the suicide finding at face value," Tristan replied. "I give her credit that she's not quite so gullible as some might assume."

"No, she isn't," Gideon agreed, a smile in his tone. "Jasper and I have commented many times these last couple days on the different ways her mind works. This is another great example."

"I like it," Tristan said, with a laugh. "I'm not sure what we're doing next. At the moment, she's going over treatment plans and exchanging notes with another therapist, and then we're leaving. I've told her that she's not likely coming back to work for a few more days. I think we need to check into that suicide."

"You're right. I'll switch to that immediately," Gideon replied. "I've had my fill of reading reports. On my way home I'll take a look at the dead guy's place across the way from Pearl's."

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Tristan asked.

Gideon frowned. "Any reason not to?"

Tristan hesitated. "Obviously you've already been identified in this. So butting your nose in again might just trigger something."

"Good," he snapped. "I sure as hell hope it does."

"What about her though?" Tristan asked. "You're putting her right in the center of it."

"Damn it," he muttered.

"How about you come straight to her place, and then I'll take a run past the dead guy's house."

" Great ," he muttered. "That's the problem with most of us right now. We're spread a little too thin, and we can't take any chances."

"No, we can't take any chances, and you wouldn't want to. The stakes are too high, and we have too much chance for things to get ugly in a permanent way."

"Yeah." Gideon sighed. "I'll do some related research and share any information I uncover. Then, if you want to check it out afterward, that would be great."

"Sounds like a plan. Sorry to interrupt your report reading. Just giving you that heads-up. I think it's a good idea on her part."

"Agreed, and not exactly something I considered, which pisses me off because we don't often walk away from a suicide without really checking that it was a suicide. However, somebody may still be looking for our suicide guy, since he was under investigation."

"For what?" Tristan asked.

"Theft from the base. And the investigation file?… It's a little on the skimpy side."

"And yet if it was an investigation…" Tristan began, leaving a hint hanging there.

"Exactly, the file should be complete."

"After the navy's own investigative team abandoned Nicholas, their own team member, we now have one more thing to talk to the rest of the original investigation team about." Tristan gave a hard laugh. "I'm starting to see why you might need to replace everybody." And, with that, Tristan ended the call.

Gideon got up and walked into the main room, where Jasper was talking to Morgan.

Morgan looked up, then frowned in exasperation. "Now what? It seems like every time you guys come in here, you find more shit."

"Yeah, sure seems like it," Gideon agreed. "What's the deal with this Drew Honeycutt?"

"Drew Honeycutt?" Morgan frowned.

"Yeah, apparently he committed suicide. Yet he was being investigated for theft on the base."

Morgan nodded. "Right, now I remember. He killed himself just after we brought him in for questioning. We felt shitty there for a while because… honestly, we put a little pressure on him, and it appeared he went home and blew his brains out."

"Blew out his brains or blew up his face?"

"Same thing. What does that matter?" Morgan asked, with a shrug.

At Morgan's comment, Jasper looked over at Gideon. "What are you thinking?"

"I took a look into that case, and the file is pretty empty."

"That's because it's closed," Morgan noted. "You have to go into the different areas in the database." He quickly showed him where the closed files were. Then he looked at the two men and added, "I'll head home for the evening, if you guys have nothing else to go on for now."

"No, we don't," Jasper said.

They exchanged goodbyes, then Jasper walked over and asked Gideon, "What's going on?"

"Are we alone?" he whispered.

"We are, why?"

He quickly told him Pearl's theory as relayed by Tristan. Jasper stared at Gideon for a long moment. "So, does she want a job in our department?"

Gideon laughed. "It wasn't something that came to me immediately when we were looking at this, and I should have considered that."

"Why though? Why would any of us consider it? We trusted the navy's investigation file, as is, which, under normal circumstances, is trustworthy," Jasper noted in frustration. "And that's part of the problem. The Mason case and these related ones have had us flummoxed from the start."

"Not so much that we're flummoxed as we're affected. Me because of Pearl and her sudden arrival into my world, but also because it's Mason," he declared. "We're all off a bit because it has to do with him. We want to solve this, and fast, but instead, I feel like we're missing potential avenues of investigation."

"Seems like it. Apparently it's a good thing we have Pearl around," Jasper shared, with a half laugh, "because she keeps coming up with shit I hadn't considered or just accepted at face value, and you're right. It's pissing me off."

"Right," Gideon agreed, with a wry look. "She's right, and we don't know for sure whether Honeycutt was a suicide or not. But did you hear Morgan's response to the question about him blowing off his head?"

"To him, it didn't matter because one is the other, isn't it?"

"So, let's make a phone call to the morgue and see if they have anything on that."

It took a bit to get through to the doctor in question, and he was cranky when he answered the phone. But when he realized what the question was about, he immediately became quite interested. "It was a facial headshot, but he had an ID on him. Plus, he was under investigation, so it's quite possible his identity was falsified. I hate to even say that right now because it'll just piss me right off. Still, I had an ID from someone else. So I'll have to go into the office right now and check this out."

"Do you have any idea what happened to the body?"

"Yeah, it was cremated."

"Shit."

"Yeah, but wait. As is my personal habit because we're hoping to create better databases in the future, I did take a DNA sample."

"Well, now that is damn lucky."

"No luck about it," the coroner declared, still rattled that he may have missed something. "Remember how that's my own personal habit, and I cultivated it. So luck doesn't begin to enter into it. On the other hand, if I had realized something was not quite right about the case, I probably would have done other things differently too, and that's just pissing me off too."

"We don't know for sure that we have a case of mistaken identity or that we have somebody who didn't commit suicide. No point in speculating yet. But when you say you took a DNA sample, did you find anything else?"

"I took multiple samples from him. He had a history of a certain cancer in the family. So I wanted to do reports on it, and I needed blood for testing. However, this is now old blood, and I kept it for just in case ," he explained. "Do you know if any family exists, someone we could test it against?"

"We shouldn't even have to," Gideon said. "His DNA should already be in the military database. It's not as if he was anonymous or something. Honeycutt was a captain, after all."

"That's quite true. Okay, I'm heading into the office. I'll let you know what I find."

He ended the call, then turned and looked at Jasper. "What do you think?"

"If Honeycutt was stealing from the base, and these guys are keeping an eye on the house, what it's all for?"

"Maybe by committing suicide, Honeycutt was getting out of something he may have owed them for, or maybe he had something planned."

"It's the something planned that gets me," Jasper muttered, with a hint of exasperation. "It's been too long since the sniper shot Mason, and we are still getting nowhere in the investigation."

Gideon nodded. "Because we're still looking for a ghost, someone responsible for Mason's sniper shot. What did this Honeycutt guy do?"

As they looked it up, they both whistled and nodded.

"Now that ," Gideon noted, with a wolfish grin, "makes it even more interesting. Honeycutt was a sniper on active duty. Plus, uh-oh , look at that.… Look at his history. A little bit more is here, although not a whole lot. Looks like some suspicions were raised about his smuggling weapons."

"What the hell do you mean, suspicions ?"

"Nobody did an investigation."

"Nobody did anything?" Jasper asked.

"Because he killed himself and left a note, it looks to be all tidied up quite nicely." Gideon looked over at Jasper and asked, "Is it just me, or does this department seem to tidy up things a little too nicely?"

"Yeah, but, before you start digging into even more of the original investigation team's files, we've got to focus on those that deal with Mason's case first."

Gideon nodded. "When we have wrapped up Mason's case, we'll take a long deep dive into how this department operates—or doesn't."

Jasper sighed. "I've had a couple talks with the brass upstairs, and, of course, they want me to come in, but I'm not sure I'm quite ready for such a fight."

"It won't be a fight at all. You'll come in, clean house, and walk out, and everybody will be wondering what the hell just happened."

Jasper laughed. "I won't argue with that." He smiled. "Yet we've got to deal with this first. By the way, Masters is out there somewhere. We need to connect and see what he's found, if anything."

"Of course," Gideon agreed. "I haven't seen any sign of him since I've been back."

"No, but that's because I've got him off looking into all kinds of stuff. He's been running his way through everything that's happened recently in Mason's life, heading up that part of our investigation. He's also dealing with Tesla as much as he can, to see if there's anything active we can investigate."

Just then the door opened, and Masters walked in, glaring at them and grumbling at Jasper, as he reached out to shake Gideon's hand. "What shit job did you give me now?"

Jasper grinned at him. "This shit job you'll absolutely love."

Masters brightened. "Yes, please, give me something else. So far, Tesla won't let me get anywhere close to any of the cases that she's singled out. She says she won't ruin anybody else's life until she's damn sure."

"I have another name for her to look at," Jasper shared, holding up Drew Honeycutt's file.

"What's this?"

"Some navy captain who supposedly committed suicide after finding out he was being investigated for theft on the base, possibly involved in arms smuggling," Jasper shared, as Masters's eyebrows shot up. "Won't matter if we drag his name through the mud, even if something is there. As things currently stand, he shot himself in the face. However, we just talked to the medical examiner, who didn't question the ID found on the body or the in-person identification also provided to him. The coroner ruled it a suicide, and that was that. The body was cremated. But the coroner kept a DNA sample. He's running it against the database."

"So then what? Now you're thinking the suicide guy had something to do with this?"

"We don't know for sure," Gideon admitted, "but the place where he lived is directly across from Pearl's, which is where we had the first break-in, with a gunman who pretty-much acknowledged his illegal presence in her home had nothing to do with her, but it was all about the location of the house."

"Right." Masters frowned, as he asked them, "Did this supposed dead guy have any decent field experience?"

"Yep. Not only that, he was a sniper," Jasper shared, with a hard grin.

At that, Masters gave Jasper a high five. "Bingo," Masters said softly. "Now we're finally getting somewhere."