Day 5 Near Dinnertime

Amelia opened her eyes to find Mountain staring at her. She jolted in surprise and shuddered in pain. A second man stared at her, with an open and yet friendly interest. She immediately pegged him as the investigator. She knew someone had to be coming soon, although something was different about him. "Great," she mumbled. "More questions?"

"Always more questions," Mountain replied cheerfully. Then he frowned and stared at her intently. "How are you feeling? Do you need more pain meds?"

"I've felt better," she muttered bitterly and shifted slowly in the bed. In spite of her best efforts, a groan escaped. She stilled and lay here, her eyelids closed for a minute to catch her breath.

"Sorry," the investigator replied in an apologetic tone. "Some things can't wait."

She gave him an easy look and nodded. "Some things can wait. Some things shouldn't have waited," she muttered.

"Meaning?"

"I don't know. It feels very much as if everything you're doing is too little, too late."

"That's how we all feel," Samson admitted. "We're hoping to stop another death, but we're also hoping to bring somebody to justice. As I'm sure you've already guessed, I'm Samson, one of two investigators here. It's nice to meet you."

"I wish I could say it was nice to meet you but, under the circumstances, not so much. For the record, I don't think it's about justice." She paused for a long moment. "It feels very much as if something else is going on here, and it's freaking scary."

"I won't argue with you on that one," Samson said, as he pulled up a spare chair.

She looked around and realized that Sydney was gone. "This must be an intense questioning session, if you kicked Sydney out," she noted, focusing her attention on Samson.

"I didn't kick her out," he corrected, with a smile. "She's gone to get you some coffee."

Her heart lightened at the idea, and a smile touched her face. "Coffee would definitely help." She turned her head to the side to have a better vantage point and to be a bit more comfortable. "It'll be really nice to get out of here at some point."

"It will be nice, but still better if we can get everybody out in one piece," Samson explained. "Otherwise I'm afraid nobody's getting out."

"Including me?"

"Including you," he confirmed.

She let her eyelids drift closed. "How are my dogs?"

"They're fine," Mountain replied, with a chuckle. "I check on them every day."

A glimmer of a smile crossed her lips. "My dad would have my head if I didn't look after those dogs."

"I would probably do the same," Samson agreed. She looked at him, and he nodded. "Yes, Mountain told me about how you dropped off your dogs with Joe first, if that's what you're wondering."

"Any particular reason why you need that information?" she asked cautiously.

"I happen to think the good guys love and respect animals. So for you to get them to safety, before you got yourself to the doc, tells me a lot about you. Plus, I let Joe know where you were, how you were, to ensure we were all on the same page," Samson shared, with that same careful tone. "Is it a problem?"

She shrugged. "No, not really. I'm not planning on sticking around here. My dogs and I will return to the village as soon as I can. So it really doesn't matter either way."

He gave her a ghost of a smile. "Even though you are not military, you are welcome here, for as long as you like or for as long as it takes you to heal. I have absolutely no problem with your heritage," he told her. "Anybody who does is an idiot."

She stared at Mountain, her gaze hard. "A lot of idiots are out there," she stated, peeling her gaze away from Mountain, then staring at Samson under a hooded gaze. "Generally they come in the form of all kinds of military."

"I come from the navy," Samson stated, "and we have our fair share of idiots too. Thankfully you won't meet too many of them here."

"I wonder," she noted, with a slight tilt of her head.

"Do you think you were shot both times because of your bloodline? You certainly don't visibly carry your heritage," Samson shared. "So unless you tell somebody…"

"I guess it depends on if you'll tell somebody."

"Me?" He looked at her, with an expression of astonishment. "Why would I do that? I'm here to sort out something completely different. I couldn't care less where you come from or who you spend your holiday time with. Honestly, I'm jealous that you had family like that to call your own."

"That's all I had though," she clarified. "My sisters and I aren't close, and they didn't have anything to do with that side of the family, and we still tend to disagree over them, even after they have all died."

"That's what family is all about though." Samson grinned. "You get to disagree with them, yet still live your own life and make your own choices."

She smiled. "Agreed. As for the matter at hand, I really don't think I can add anything else to what I've already told Mountain and Magnus."

"I'm not so sure about that. So we'll keep moving forward and see what comes up."

"Ask away then," she muttered, as she settled into her bed. "Honestly, I can't remember anything else to tell you."

He looked down at his notes. "I understand you saw whoever it was shooting at you each time."

"No," she corrected. "I saw several people out there several times."

"Was the shooter with others, or was the shooter alone?"

"The one guy I thought was stalking me, which may or may not have been for fun," she replied, as an afterthought, "was alone."

Samson looked at Mountain, who mouthed, Eric. Then Samson checked his notes again. "No dogs were with the shooter?"

She shook her head. "No dogs. He was on skis, and honestly, he was moving at a hell of a clip. So it was somebody used to these Arctic conditions or who has spent a long time working in these conditions. In other words, it wasn't a hardship for him to be out there, unlike many other people on base."

"Got it." Samson nodded, as he wrote down more notes. "You couldn't tell his age or anything? You couldn't tell more by his posture, the way he moved, anything?"

"No, I couldn't tell any of that. I'm not sure anybody could, honestly, in that white camo winter gear." She frowned, as she thought about what she had seen and how he'd moved. "He seemed relaxed. He wasn't awkward out there. His movements were natural, and he seemed happy being out there."

"But you only ever saw the one person."

"No," she clarified, forcing her point again. "I saw lots of people. You have a lot of training going on." She took a moment to add, "Depending on the time of day, day of the week, and weather conditions, I saw quite a few people, but nobody who I felt comfortable enough with to bring any of your missing people back to the base."

"What about Teegan Rode?" Samson asked.

"When I first found Teegan, he was in a rough shape, and I didn't want him traveling, not until I could get him a little more stable," she explained, "and then I got shot the first time. I did move him and me to another ice cave, where I had more supplies—food, water, blankets—where we and the dogs could lay low for a few days. However, after the second shooting, I couldn't do any more for Teegan. I needed help for him and for me."

"You did what you could, and we thank you for looking after Teegan and Yegorahn," Samson stated in a firm tone. "Nobody blames you for that."

"Just me," she muttered bitterly. "At least Teegan's okay, although you guys are apparently keeping him away from me. In case there is any confusion on the matter, I very much want to see him."

"He's asked several times to see you," Mountain admitted. "I just… I didn't want you upset."

"Why would seeing him upset me?" she asked, astonished.

He gave a ghost of a smile. "I don't know for sure. I was just following my instincts."

"Don't follow that one anymore," she quipped. "It's totally fine, and I would very much like to see him, particularly if he's up and walking and doing better. I just have to see it with my own two eyes."

"I can assure you he is up and around, doing much better."

"In that case, I definitely want to see him. You've got questions, well, so do I," she stated, with a headshake. "The only time he was really coherent, I asked him what happened to him. However, everything he said was a jumble, telling me it wasn't safe here on base, and I didn't dare bring him back. He kept blabbing about how he would be killed. Honestly, seeing him like that?… I didn't know what to do. I thought about it for a while. I finally decided that I would get him healthy enough, so either we could come back here together or he could carry on and make that decision on his own. I really didn't want to make that call for him."

"We certainly appreciate your keeping him alive," Samson repeated, with that same smile. "Do you have specific memories of the things he said while he was in your care?"

She winced. "Everything he mentioned was pretty crazy," she murmured. "It's not as if anything made any sense."

"By anything, you mean?"

"Anything, everything. He was talking about not being safe. He was talking about how a killer was on the base. He mentioned talk of betrayal and all kinds of stuff. Honestly, it had the makings of a great thriller story, but I was missing the punch line. I was missing the plot, and I sure as hell didn't know who the boogeyman was, and that was the most bothersome point of all."

Samson remained passive and didn't say anything, his face masked.

Amelia continued. "Without knowing who the bad guy was, how could I dare bring Teegan back in? I couldn't hope for the best with some na?ve, optimistic attitude. That wouldn't work for me. Knowing what I know now, I probably didn't make the right decision in keeping him out there. However, at the time, with the limited information I had, it was the only choice I felt good about. I knew that, as long as I could keep him warm and could let his body begin to heal, then maybe I would have a chance of figuring out what was wrong here. I, for sure, didn't want to turn over Teegan to the guys who had tried to kill him in the first place," she muttered. "In the end, that didn't work out so well for either of us, and I ran out of options."

"Actually it worked out better than you can imagine," Samson stated, giving her a calm and steadying smile. "Believe me, we are very grateful for all the help you provided to Teegan and now sharing this information with us. From what I understand, Teegan would never have survived without you."

"Maybe so, but it doesn't seem that I was any help at all," she muttered in frustration. "As a matter of fact, all of this feels terribly wrong."

"Because?"

"I feel as if I should have gotten more information from him, as if I should have had something to go by, and instead… it feels as if it was such a betrayal to bring him back," she admitted, the words flowing out, as she realized just how much it had all bothered her. "Here is this guy depending on me to keep him alive, and then I got shot, the second time. Nothing I could do but turn him over to the very people who had likely tried to kill us both in the first place," she cried out.

Seeing her getting so upset, Mountain jumped up, walked over, and wrapped his massive arms around her.

She hated that the shaking had already begun, but it had, and, by the time she calmed down, after releasing that load of guilt, Mountain's expression was stern. "Look. You did the best you could. You did everything you could, which was far more than most people would or could have done," he declared, stressing his point. "Please stop beating yourself up over it."

She gave him a ghost of a smile. "Tough love, huh?"

"If I thought tough love would work, I would be all for it. But, in this case, you've got to stop blaming yourself. You saved Teegan. I know you saved him because I was out there looking for him… the whole time."

"So why didn't I trust you enough to give him to you then?" she asked in confusion, wondering why she couldn't trust anyone with Teegan. "I certainly saw you enough. You and Chef. I saw him out there with several other people. All kinds of people were out there." She sighed and dropped her head to the side. "With dogs, without dogs, lots of people were outside traveling around, including you. I saw you,… but I didn't trust you enough to bring in Teegan."

He nodded, then looked over at Samson, who studied her intently.

Samson asked, "When you say you saw Chef Elijah out there, do you know him?"

"I had met him several times, when survival ops were going on here, while I was gathering data. For this training period, having found Teegan early on, I'd watched Chef for a while, learning his habits. Then I waited until after dark, after the dinner rush, when I was pretty sure he would be alone in the kitchen here on base. In fact, he liked to feed leftovers to the dogs at night, so I approached him outside, told him that I was in trouble and needed supplies."

Both Samson and Mountain were on the edge of their seats, as if she were about to open the door to Valhalla.

"He literally opened up the back door and told me to take what I needed, and, for that,… believe me, I'm very grateful. I didn't do it often, but, once I had Teegan to look after," she admitted, taking a deep breath, "it got a bit harder. I also managed to get a few medical supplies and other things, which made a huge difference. I know Chef wasn't supposed to be helping me, but honestly he's a good guy, and I can't believe he has done what you guys are saying he's done."

"Not sure he has either," Samson agreed.

"Then maybe that's part of the problem. There's that sense… of frenzy, a sense of… finality."

"An ending, you mean?" Samson asked, with a questioning gaze.

"I guess that's what I mean." She shrugged. "I don't know. Something my father used to tell me all the time was to listen to the words in my head, yet not so much the words themselves but the feelings attached to them. He would tell me that so many of the answers we need in this world, we already know, but we don't listen closely enough to what our hearts and our minds are telling us."

Samson studied her, then slowly nodded. "I would agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment. Sounds to me as if you were blessed in many ways to have such a good man in your life."

She nodded. "I absolutely was. You don't realize how much you need your family, want them, rely on all the information they give you, until they're gone." She shook her head, saddened by the memory of her loss. "Losing my great-grandfather was hard, but losing my father was… devastating," she murmured, and then, as if shaken out of a stupor, she held her head high. "Yet they both died in their sleep, happy with their lives, satisfied that they had lived to the best of their ability in peace with the world around them. I could only hope for half as much when I go," she whispered, "but I sure as hell don't want to go because some asshole put a bullet in me."

At that, Samson laughed. "And we don't want that to happen either, which is why you're still under guard, why your presence here is still being kept quiet, all while we track down every detail we can. I don't suppose you remember anybody else you saw out there."

"I saw lots of people," she replied in frustration, then pointed to Mountain. "I already told him most of it. Sometimes people were alone and drifting, groups too. Sometimes groups of threes, and sometimes with these long rifles. I'd never seen them before, but I don't know much about the military equipment you guys have here anyway."

"Go on then. Any description helps."

"Okay,… sometimes that white camouflage gear blends in so damn perfectly that it's hard to see people and becomes more about looking past that and understanding the movement." Then she frowned. "One time… he almost saw me that day."

"What do you mean? Who? When?"

"I was outside one day, before I ever got shot," she said a bit forcefully. "I was in one of my ice caves,… checking my data readings because I wasn't sure what was happening. Some of the data appeared to be wrong, and I wasn't happy that the meters might not be working properly." She took a moment to collect her thoughts. "You would think that the meters are conditioned for that level of cold, but they're really not," she explained, with an apologetic shrug. "Anyway, I was hunched down around the ice cave, when I heard a sound and froze—because one of the first things you're taught is not to move, right? It's the movement that catches the eye, and this guy was moving quickly. He didn't appear to see me, and he was heading north at a fast pace. However, I was close by. I would say only five meters away from him. I froze and didn't do anything, not until he was gone."

"You didn't say hi? You didn't reach out to him in any way?"

She winced. "God no. Absolutely nothing inside me made me think for even a second that I should reach out and talk to this guy. He was clearly on a mission, and he was heading after something—or someone. Honestly I thought it was one of your war games again because somebody was ahead of him, and it looked as if he was prepping for a shot. One of my dogs made a sound at that point, and he shifted, he turned. I have no idea what happened, so maybe he saw me. Maybe he didn't. I don't know. He didn't like something anyway, and he took off." She shrugged. "I figured maybe it was lucky for the guy he was chasing."

"Any idea who the guy was?"

"Elijah," she stated, "at least I figured it was Elijah. Not too many people are his size either." She looked over at Mountain intently. "It definitely wasn't you, and I'm thinking now that maybe this was before you ever got here. You're bigger than he is,… but still, Chef's built like a bazooka."

"Elijah is big," Mountain agreed.

"And you're saying he was out there ready to shoot someone?" Samson asked.

"No, no, no," she denied urgently. "Elijah was the one out there about to get shot." Both men exchanged a look and then turned back at her. "I figured it was part of your war games, the training missions or survival ops or whatever. Are you saying it wasn't?" she asked, bewildered.

"Elijah does ski for the fun of it, but he doesn't participate in our war games," Mountain muttered. "I don't think he ever went out on any of the training missions."

"And yet he could," Samson noted. "He's still military, and he's still required to get in some survival training. He's part of the team, particularly if he chose to be here. So, if it was before we got here, maybe he was out there, taking part in a war game. Not to mention the fact that he could have requested it," Samson added.

"That's another question to go ask him then," Mountain noted, looking at Samson. "And, if he was the one out there, and he wasn't there for any war games, why would somebody want to kill him?"

"That is a very good question."

*

Leaving an exhaustedAmelia in Sydney's capable hands, Mountain and Samson immediately headed down to talk to their incarcerated chef. Elijah looked up, settled deeper into his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, and remained silent.

Mountain sat across from him, holding up a hand to him. "Elijah,… nobody here believes anything that's been rumored about you," he began carefully, "or whatever's been implied. Those of us tasked with the job to try and prove it, are trying to prove you had nothing to do with it." He caught the surprise in the older man's gaze and nodded.

"You're very well liked here, and people don't want to believe that you had anything to do with any of this," he muttered. "Trouble is,… it doesn't seem you're terribly interested in clearing your name or pointing the finger at whoever is responsible for this shit." Chef's lips curled at that, and Mountain nodded. "By that look,… I understand. I do. We all make friends here. We all have favorites. For all I know, you spawned a daughter, who nobody knows about, and somebody here raped her, and you decided on some payback. Of course this is a very convoluted way to go about that, and I don't see it, but, hey, we have to consider everything."

At that, Elijah snorted at him. "You guys really are grasping at straws, aren't you?"

"Of course we are," he replied in a desperate tone. "You know that too because a group of us is trying to prove you're innocent, and another group of us is trying to prove you're guilty." He took a moment to gauge Chef's reaction, then added, "Nobody wants to believe you're guilty, but we need answers one way or another. We need answers, Elijah."

"It doesn't matter what the answers are," he said, his tone gloomy. "I'm guilty."

Mountain pounced on his words. "Okay, but guilty of what?"

Elijah looked down, as if angry at himself for giving Mountain anything to go on.

"Whatever it is,… it appears it could be a completely different thing. We understand you helped Amelia."

He nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'm definitely guilty of that, and I would do it again too. It's not as if she was hurting anyone, and clearly she needed a hand. I didn't know that she was trying to keep Teegan alive at the time, but I'm certainly not sorry I helped her,… even if it wasn't for Teegan."

"It was for Teegan and for the other man, Yegorahn," Mountain confirmed in a sad tone. "I'm sorry she couldn't keep the other one alive, but I'm grateful that you helped her. For Teegan's sake, I'm grateful."

Elijah nodded.

Mountain studied him carefully. "So, no matter what anybody here says about that aspect of it, you'll always have my thanks."

At that, Chef didn't say anything right away, but he seemed to relax a bit. "So, the rumors have to do with a whole lot more?" Chef asked.

"Murder, death, payback, God only knows," Mountain shared. "Too many factors are involved that we can't quite sort it all out. Amelia is doing much better by the way, and, with any luck, she'll pull through, if we can keep whatever asshole here who's after her from making a third attempt."

"A third?" Chef asked, startled.

Mountain looked at him and nodded slowly. "Yes, a third. She was shot the first time in the shoulder, but managed to deal with it herself, even while caring for Teegan and living off the land by that time. She was doing all right and was managing with Teegan, but then, when she was shot later, more recently, twice this time, she knew she was in trouble and couldn't look after him and herself. Somehow she managed to get Teegan here, believing she had to take the risk or he would surely die anyway. So, she saved him by delivering him to us, then went back to the tundra and tried to survive on her own. In the end, she couldn't control her bleeding, and it's nothing short of a miracle that she managed to get herself back here, or she wouldn't have survived. Frankly, while she is doing better, she's definitely not out of the woods because she's lost so much blood."

"Jesus," Chef muttered, "some people are made of steel."

"That is quite true, and she's definitely one of them," Mountain agreed, with a smile. "Thankfully Teegan was the beneficiary of her strength and cunning. She also told us about something she saw some time back. She was able to identify you as one of the parties involved, since she knows who you are because you helped her."

Elijah shrugged and didn't say anything, as if expecting Mountain to continue.

"She didn't realize it at the time, but she had inadvertently interrupted somebody lining up a shot to kill you," Mountain shared and then watched him closely.

At that moment, Elijah turned, startled, and then slowly shook his head.

Mountain nodded. "Yes, it's true." Then he provided the circumstances and the location. "I immediately told her that she had the wrong person, that you mostly stayed indoors and haven't participated in the war games and the survival training here that I knew of, but she is adamant it was you because she had already seen you multiple times outside, and her surety is merit enough. She has also pointed out what we already know, which is how we come to identify people by their size, posture, and movement, since we're typically all dressed the same out there. She is certain it was you, and I believe her."

He winced and nodded. "That's correct. She saw me several times, skiing, feeding the dogs treats outside.… Once I realized she needed help, I would regularly take out some foodstuffs for her." He dropped his head, and they couldn't see his face. "We had a system, a specific date and time. I would leave some leftovers, some canned goods. If for any reason she couldn't make it soon enough, everything would freeze, and the cans would explode anyway. However, that didn't happen very often," he noted, with half a smile.

"She didn't even tell us about that part," Mountain shared, with a glimmer of a smile. "Even now she's trying to protect you."

"There is no protecting me," he stated with finality, and yet a note of sadness filled his tone that made both Mountain and Samson stop and look at him in surprise.

"I don't understand," Mountain said. "Something is here. You know something—something that would make a lot of sense if you would explain it, but, for whatever reason, you're determined not to."

"Yeah, I am determined not to. No benefit to be had in my telling anybody anything, so you can forget that idea."

"Look. Somebody already tried to kill you once that we know of. Now that we've got you locked up in here, like a duck on a pond, for all we know, we've given you a death sentence, and we didn't even mean to."

"Doesn't matter whether you did or not," Chef muttered. "In many ways that will probably be better."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Mountain said, "that's not making any sense."

"None of this makes sense," Samson agreed. "The only thing that makes sense is that you're protecting somebody."

Instantly Elijah stiffened and glared at them.

Mountain nodded slowly. "Amelia suggested that you were probably protecting somebody, but we couldn't for the life of us figure out who or why."

"It's not supposed to make any sense," he snapped. "That's just life. Sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes it just is what it is, and sometimes it's a whole lot more."

Mountain stared at Chef in surprise. "So, for whatever reason, you don't want anybody to find out who you're protecting or why, and you're willing to take a death sentence for it?"

Elijah shrugged. "She's wrong anyway. I don't remember any time that I would have been in a position to be shot like that. She's mistaking me for someone else."

"No,… she's not," Mountain argued adamantly. "You were in the crosshairs, and, if it hadn't been for a noise made by one of her dogs, causing the shooter to take off, you would have been another mysterious casualty of this military base."

"Whatever." Elijah gave a wave of his hands. "You're grasping at straws, throwing out a bunch of possibilities and seeing if you can get something to stick. I know how you guys work." He sent a hard look in their direction. "Besides, the life we live up here puts us in touch with some very strange bedfellows."

"Now that is very true, Elijah," Mountain admitted. "And I'm wondering which one of them would be upset enough with you to want to do that."

Again Elijah shrugged, but an odd look was in his gaze.

"I'm afraid it's the person you're trying to protect," Samson suggested, "as if whatever deal you've made is about to become no deal for some reason, or he needs some insurance or something." Samson had a specific ring in his tone and with his choice of words.

Mountain looked over at Samson, who studied Chef's face intently.

"Definitely you're concerned about something," Samson stated, "and we'll be more than happy to try and keep you alive, if you're afraid of repercussions. Obviously though you'll have to start talking to us—and soon."

Elijah gave him a genial smile. "You boys go off now. You've got better things to do than sit here and talk to me."

"Better things like what?" Mountain asked.

He looked at him and shrugged, his posture relaxed. "A lot of people are still here, and a lot of people could come to harm," he pointed out. "You don't want that."

"No, I don't want that to happen to you or to anyone else," Mountain said. "I especially don't want anything to happen to Amelia, not after everything she did to help my brother," he added. "And, if you know anything about that, I would appreciate some answers. It might help us save Amelia, Teegan, and you, as well."

"Don't know nothing about nothing," Elijah muttered, taking on a bored tone.

That hit Mountain hard. Starting to feel the fury building within him, he stood up and looked over at Samson. "I'll step out for a few minutes," Mountain stated, his words harsh and his expression ominous.

"Maybe go get some coffee," Samson suggested.

Mountain nodded curtly and walked out without saying a word, as it was all getting to be a bit much. With coffee on his mind, he went to the kitchen. Several women worked away, and, while he was sorry that everything had become such a shit show, he appreciated the fact that they had stepped up. One of the women looked up at him, shoved a cinnamon bun in one of his hands and a cup of coffee in the other, then shooed him away.

He looked down in surprise and then smiled, as she continued to carry on, as if that were an everyday occurrence. Maybe it was. Maybe that was the world they lived in now.

As he stepped outside for a moment of much-needed fresh air, he realized how much of an advantage Chef had, the entire time that he was here. He had vantage points, both inside and out, that allowed him to watch things going on all the time. He could keep an eye on people, if he chose, including the kid who had worked for him. The thought of Scott stepping outside stirred up something inside Mountain, and he didn't like it one bit. He frowned, wondering if Elijah would have had anything to do with Scott's death.

With his cinnamon bun eaten, but his coffee in hand, he walked back to where Samson still spoke with Elijah. Mountain stepped in and looked at Chef, getting right in his face. "Did you kill Scott, that young kid who worked with you?"

A sorrowful look crossed Chef's face that he schooled right away, then immediately shook his head. "No, Scott was a hell of a good kid," he replied in a hard tone. "I would never have done that."

"I can't imagine that you did any of it. Even asking if you did or didn't seems wrong in the first place," Mountain stated, as the tightly wound coil around his chest eased somewhat, "but I'm glad to hear that."

"So, it really was an accident?" Samson asked carefully.

An odd look came over Elijah's face, as he shrugged. "As far as I know, yes."

"But you're not sure, are you?" Samson asked, sensing the hesitancy, pressing home the advantage of seeing that sudden change in his expression. "You're afraid that you weren't there and that somebody locked the door or deliberately stopped Scott from being able to open it."

Chef looked at him, then away instantly. "Don't know anything about it."

"Right, so we have another murder to add to somebody's damn checklist," Mountain muttered. "Amelia saw several people out there."

Elijah winced. "I wouldn't be passing around that information," he suggested, shaking his head.

"Meaning that the wrong person might hear about it? If that is so, you're right, and we're doing our best to keep her safe. She's also very vulnerable right now, medically fragile. Fending off yet another attack is not something we want her to deal with, not after all she's done and the injuries she's already sustained."

Elijah seemed to get a little agitated at that. But, as they waited, he calmed down, as if realizing they were biding their time and waiting for him to say something. He had no intention of doing that, but definitely something was there to tell.

Mountain stood up in frustration and looked over at Samson. "This is going nowhere. I'll come back later." Mountain stepped out, trying to figure out what to do next. Soon a text came through from one of the researchers, supplying them with information.

Elijah Williamson aka Chef had a son who was killed quite a few years ago. Military corps, a rescue gone wrong. Your colonel there tried to save Chef's son. The colonel tried to get Chef's son out of the way and apparently did everything he could to keep him alive and out of the danger zone. Unfortunately Elijah's son was killed anyway.

With that information in his hand, he stepped back in, interrupting once again. Samson took one look at him and waited. Elijah glared at him cautiously, as if watching out for a viper. "The colonel tried to save your son, didn't he?"

He nodded slowly. "He did, yes, but it wasn't to be. He had him sent to a safer area, but then he was killed anyway," Chef confirmed.

"Okay, so that's partly why you have such a strong bond of loyalty with the colonel."

He nodded. "He's been there for me the entire time. He's a good man."

Mountain didn't say anything for a few moments. "Might be a good man but he's on his way out of the military, if the brass have any say in it." But Mountain was privy to a bit of information that not everybody knew. He looked over at Samson, who frowned at his notebook. "And I guess you've followed the colonel or requested to be on a lot of his posts too, haven't you?"

"Yeah, I have," Elijah admitted, with a mock smile. "Is that something that I'll be charged for too?" He was suddenly wary of the whole thing.

"No, not at all," Mountain said. "Has he come in to see you lately?"

"No, not a second time. Just once, when I was first brought here."

"I'm sorry. Sometimes things like this set people off."

He gave him a ghost of a smile. "And so they should. I wouldn't think any less of him because of that." And, with that, he shifted and spoke in a harsh tone. "Now, if you guys don't mind, I'm getting a little tired. and I'm done answering your questions."

Samson stood up. "That's fine. I'll come back and talk to you tomorrow."

He walked out with Mountain, who stood for a long moment, looking at Chef, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, why he wouldn't talk, what was holding him back. When Samson cleared his throat, Mountain nodded in agreement. "I'll talk to you later," he told Elijah, then quickly walked out.

In the hallway, he looked at Samson and asked in a whisper, "Did you get anything out of that?"

"I did get something out of that," Samson noted, "but I need to check a few details first."

"Can I get that information you just wrote up?"

"Yeah, I'll forward it to you," Samson said. "It should be in your email, but this text will get it to you a little faster." He looked up at the ding. "There it is."

Mountain watched him carefully, asking, "Have you talked to Ted at all?"

"I talk to him all the time," Samson replied, turning back to look at him. "Why?"

"Wondering how he's holding up."

"He's holding, not great, especially after what happened to Jerry, but I think this case is taking a toll on him."

"It's taking a toll on everybody," Mountain replied, his voice harsh. "And that won't change."

"No, it won't. Not until we solve it," Samson noted. "I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel very much as if we're on the cusp of that."

And, with that surprising announcement, Samson turned and walked away, leaving Mountain staring at him.