Captain Banks entered Chief Roger Warren’s office at the man’s shouted invitation, to find not only the man himself, but another man as well. A man dressed in a suit whose demeanors practically screamed ‘Fed’ to him. "Excuse me, gentlemen. Chief? You wanted to see me?"

Warren looked up from the report he was reading. "Yes, Captain, I did. Your people are working the incident from Government Avenue, right?"

"The shooting? Yes." Simon noticed that there were more visitors in the office, standing in the background, valiantly trying not be noticed.

"Thought so." Warren stood up and gestured to the men standing in his office. "These gentlemen are here to take over the case." He made no attempt to hide his displeasure at that idea.

"What?"

One of the visitors, a tall swarthy looking man, stepped forward and introduced himself. "Ali El Saduhl, Captain. We were called about this incident, as it involved one of our operatives, and came as soon as we could."

Simon shook the man’s hand as he looked him square in the eyes. "One of your operatives?"

"Yes. One of our best. Assigned to guard the Director of Hallstatt Trust. I was informed that she had been brought in? For questioning?"

"Someone was, she hasn’t spoken to any of my detectives yet."

Saduhl smiled, "That is how it should be. Can you show us to your department? We’ll need to gather up everything that is pertinent to the case, including our operative."

Simon got over his shock and found anger in its place. "And just who the hell are you?!?"

The smile on Saduhl’s face faded. "We represent a number of groups, Captain. FBI, CIA, Interpol, US Secret Service, Department of Defense." He had pointed to each man, or men, that were representatives of each department named. "I myself am from NSA."

"And which one does my suspect, your operative, belong to?"

"Actually, she belongs to no one. But she is registered with the USSS and DOD as a Dignitary Protection Specialist. If what occurred is what I think it was, she was merely doing her job."

The tall black Captain seethed. The case was a messy one, sure, but his men and women were more than capable of handling the whole thing, without outside help if it had been a normal case. Apparently, it wasn’t. "Chief, I have to let you know, I don’t like this."

"You don’t have to. Just get these men down to Major Crimes and make sure that they have everything they need before leaving. Capice?"

Nodding his understanding, Simon led the large group out of the Chief of Police's office and down to Major Crimes. By the time they had reached his department, several of the visitors had broken off, going to other offices within the Precinct. Only NSA agent and one other man remained behind him. Once there, Simon stood in the doorway, taking in the activity as his people worked the case that had exploded into existence, not wanting to do what he had to do.

Blair looked up from the computer to see Simon leading a well-dressed man down the hall towards the door to the bullpen. ‘Uh-oh, Fed.’ Reaching across the desktops, he caught Jim’s attention and pointedly directed his attention towards the door. He saw the detective stiffen and the jaw muscles clench as he spotted the strange visitor for himself.

Jim came to his feet just as Simon entered the bullpen and raised his voice in announcement. "People! Your attention, please?!" His voice roared out over the din of the bullpen and silence fell. "I need you to gather up all your notes, interviews, testimonies, everything and turn them over to this gentleman. As of now, this case is no longer any of our concern."

"What!?!"

‘Of course, you would be the one to object.’ Simon thought as he turned to face the older half of his best team. "Jim, the case is closed. Get your notes together and fork them over to the agent."

Jim took a moment to glare at the men assembled behind his Captain, and recognized one. "Saduhl. A little far from home, aren’t you?"

"Ah, Captain Ellison. Wondered where you had gotten off to. And no, I’m not." Saduhl stepped forward and produced a photo ID badge which he handed over to the former Ranger. "As you can see, I’m now working for your government."

Jim looked over the ID, passing it over to Blair who had stepped up beside him, and without another word, turned back to his desk and began gathering up the notes he had compiled on the case. Once he started doing this, everyone else started moving too. Within a few minutes, seven uniformed officers had been tagged to play courier by the NSA agent. The other visitor that had appeared in the bullpen, nodded to Saduhl, then, walked over to the interrogation room and opened the door, then stepped inside for a few minutes. Jim grabbed Blair by the arm and tried to turn his attention elsewhere when the door opened back up to reveal the identity of the shooter who been held in there. Too late. His guide recognized her, his heart rate skyrocketing as he took in her appearance.

"No." That one word contained so much. Shock, disbelief, awe, and an almost prayer like askance.

"Chief, let it go."

Alicia looked up from the tabletop that she’d been studying for the past four hours or so, expecting to see the detective who had arrested her, not the man that walked in the door. Snapping to her feet in reflex, she stood at ‘parade rest’, out of respect for the man’s rank ? even though he wasn’t in uniform. "Sir!"

"Relax, Captain. Sorry I didn’t get here sooner. You ready to leave?"

"Yes, sir."

He watched as she came around the table, spotting the bandage on her upper left bicep. He held out a hand to stop her. "You were injured?"

She looked down at the bandage, then back up at the older gentlemen. "Flesh wound. Nothing serious, General." Her white dress shirt had been butchered by the ER staff that had treated her, leaving her with only one intact long sleeve and a bloodstained shirt. Stains that would’ve ruined it on their own, but now ? well it might as well be a rag.

"If you’re sure, then let’s get you out of here." The general led her out of the room, only to have her halt as she looked into the bullpen. He grasped her elbow, gaining her attention and pulled her away from the window. Looking over his shoulder, he spotted the detective who had protested the groups action, and his partner watching them. He made a mental note to ask her about them, later. Just as they approached the elevators, one opened up to reveal a man in the uniform of Hallstatt Security.

Alicia nailed the man with a glare. "The Director?"

"Wilhelm…"

She cut him off, piling him into the wall, her hand on his chest. "The Director?"

The man blinked, then nodded. "Fine. Shoulder wound. Not serious."

"Good. Now, Wilhelm?"

"Dead. Ten rounds to the chest."

"Damn." Alicia felt her legs turn rubbery, and was grateful for the general’s support. She looked back up at the man who had delivered the news. "Davis, I’m sorry. I know that Will was your friend." Her voice had gone from its earlier growl to a soft, soothing whisper. "Tell me, Roberto?"

Davis nodded his head, accepting the apology. "Rob’s going to be okay. Took a single round in the shoulder, as well as a few cuts from flying glass."

Sensing that they were drawing a crowd, General Hammond cleared his throat and indicated the still open elevator. "Andreson? We need to go. Now."

With a curt nod of her head, Alicia stepped into the elevator, followed rapidly by the General and Davis. The door closed but not before she spotted Jim Ellison, staring at her from down the hallway. ‘Well, you didn’t really want to get involved, did you Al?’ Her mind supplied as her heart started to break, denying the idea.

Blair and Jim returned home to the loft, after what had proved a very frustrating day, to find that their door had been kicked in and a warrant pinned to it. Pulling the paper from the door, Blair read it over and handed it to Jim as he stepped into the apartment. The place had been tossed; nothing left unturned, and was a mess. Going over to the table, he noticed that the files that Jim and he had gathered on Alicia were gone, and his laptop had been messed with. Hands shaking, he pulled the computer over to him and turned it on. "Damn!"

"Chief?"

He spun around to face his friend. "It’s all gone! All my notes, my files, everything! They reformatted the hard drive!"

Looking at the search warrant that had been pinned to the door, Jim felt a rush of anger. His privacy had been invaded, violated, all because of one Alicia Andreson. His voice was a low growl as he asked, "Your sentinel notes?"

Blair felt a surge of fear and ran towards his room, sliding to a halt and dropping to his knees, reaching under the bed and pulled out a couple of large boxes. Opening the lids, he found that his handwritten notebooks hadn’t been disturbed. He sighed in relief. "They’re safe, Jim."

Jim didn’t have a chance to voice his relief, as the phone rang. Reaching out he grabbed up the receiver in the kitchen. "Ellison."

"Ellison, let me speak with Sandburg." The voice of Deborah Crawford came through the line. Seeing a relieved partner stepping out of his room, Jim motioned the younger man to the phone and handed it off to him.

Wondering who could be calling, Blair answered. "This is Sandburg."

"Sandburg, I just finished talking with Judge Pitts and Phelps’ attorney. I’m sorry, I’ve been ordered to drop the murder charge."

"What?! Why? We’re getting the evidence we need! Deborah, we just need more time!" Blair noticed that Jim’s head shot up, then tilted a bit to the side as he focused in on the conversation.

"Pitts feels that you’re just wasting the City’s time and Taxpayers money chasing an impossible lead. In return for my office dropping the murder charge, Phelps pleads guilty to several counts of armed robbery." Deborah sighed. "The Judge has already signed off on the deal. He gets a two-year sentence, suspended, Supervised Probation for five, then unsupervised probation for another three. I’m sorry."

"Suspended sentence? He doesn’t do any time?"

"No."

"That sucks!" Blair didn’t even say goodbye, just hung up the phone. Turning around to clue his partner in on the Phelps case, he realized that he was alone. The door to the loft left wide open. "Jim?"

His partner didn’t answer him, but Blair could hear someone running down the stairs. "Don’t do this, man!" Knowing that his roommate had heard everything, piled on top of a very frustrating day, he wondered what his friend was thinking. Running out the door, he could hear someone banging on a door on the floor below. Sprinting to catch up with his partner, he caught up to him just as the door to apartment 207 was opened.

Alicia had just stepped out of the shower when the knocking, no make that banging, rattled through her home. She pulled on her robe, then padded down the short hallway to her room, intent on ignoring the persistent pounding. Besides, she had a friend visiting, who could answer the door if she wanted to.

Agent Frances Locke, United States Secret Service, carefully opened the door, gun at ready, knowing it was too early for their ride to be here. She found herself facing a very upset, tall, man. Keeping her gun at ready, she went over in her head where she had seen this man before. Then it occurred to her, she'd seen his photo in the apartment upstairs that she had helped search. Her voice was cool as she addressed the man. "Detective Ellison, need I remind you that you’re off this case?"

Jim glared at the woman standing before him. "I need to speak to Andreson. Privately." He knew that this woman had to be a federal agent, and therefore armed, but he didn’t care.

"Frances? It’s okay, let him in."

Jim pushed past the agent, and approached Alicia who was standing in her bathrobe in the middle of the living room. "We need to talk."

She nodded, looked behind him to grab Frances’ attention and spotted Blair standing in the doorway. "Yes. We do. Frances? How much time?"

The agent glanced at her watch. "Two hours."

"That enough time for you, Ellison?" She stepped back as his ice blue eyes flared in anger. Walking around him to approach the agent and Blair, she felt her heart skip a beat as she picked up on the absolute disgust in the younger man’s eyes. Anger she could, and would handle, disgust… "Frances, leave."

"Al, I’m not supposed to do that."

"I don’t give a shit! Leave. What Ellison, Sandburg and I have to talk about is not for your ears!" She instantly regretted snapping at the agent like that, but she could apologize later.

Waiting until the door had shut behind the Agent, Jim launched into his ‘talk’ with Alicia. "Just who the hell are you?! How is it that you can kill two people in cold blood, in full view of several witnesses ? including a cop ? and get the case yanked out of our hands?! Not to mention walking out of a holding cell without ever answering a single damn question!"

"That it? Or do you have more?" She couldn’t help but notice that Blair had taken up a stance behind Jim, as if watching his partner’s back.

Her calm voice infuriated him further. "Damn it! The damn Secret Service tosses my place, destroys my partner’s laptop, and a whole group of alphabet department agents waltz in, confiscate everything we had gathered on that shooting and we’re not told why?! So tell me, Andreson, who the hell are you!?"

She had watched as he paced her living room, carefully avoiding stepping on Saint Gee who had darted into the room and took up a seat on the back of the couch and was now glaring at the detective. "I’m still Alicia, but there is more to me than meets the eye."

"No shit! So tell me, so that I can make some sort of sense of everything that has happened. Because I can tell you, I’m not liking what I’m thinking right now."

"I can’t tell you everything. But shall I take a guess as to what you’re thinking?" She took his snort of disgust as an answer. "I’m not an assassin."

He stalked up to her, towering over her. "Right. Then the two men you shot in cold blood were an ‘accident’?"

"No. I did that." She refused to back up, not in her own home and not to this man. To any man, ever again. "Are you going to tell me that you haven’t done worse?"

"I’ve never killed in cold blood!"

"Somalia."

Jim blinked, then stepped back from the petite woman. "What? How in the hell? That was a mission!"

"You’re out of it, be grateful! Some of us never have that luxury! I did as I was trained to do. Doing my damn job! I don’t like it, I never have! But I will not stand here and let you, of all people, judge me!" She had him up against the wall and reached out and opened the door. "Get out!" She managed to include Blair when she was pushing Jim, and gladly tossed them both out of her place.

Jim found himself standing the hallway as the door slammed in his face, once again. He looked up to see Agent Locke returning and walked away, his partner by his side, he heard the agent open Alicia’s door behind him and caught a sound that ripped him apart.