"Alright, Zac, where do we go from here?" I sighed, leaning back in the office chair I had pulled up to his little cubicle. Zac was twirling a pen in his hand, deep in thought. I could tell even past his dark long hair and the thick glasses that his brown eyes were knitted in concentration.

"Maybe... we try and contact AISE again. Ask them if they have any leads on his whereabouts."

"That's shit and you know it. They'll lie, they not into cooperating with us."

"Yeah, I know. Sorry, I can do better than that," He sighed and turned to his computer, wiggling the mouse. "I'll pull up surveillance footage from around town and run his face through a recognition program. Maybe he's been spotted somewhere."

As his screen lit up, I saw his background photo of a girl with banging blue hair, wearing nothing but lacy black underwear. She was bouncing up and down on a bed, the photo being snapped while she was hovering mid-air. "Who's she?"

"My girlfriend. Hot, right?" Zac grinned as he pulled up a black box and started hacking his way through to what we wanted.

"Yeah," I agreed. Blue hair wasn't my taste, but she was cute alright. Skinny, happy, and somehow emo if we judged by her dark makeup, but that grin did something to counterbalance it. I found it hard to see how Zac with his baggy clothes, long greasy hair, beanie and glasses landed a girl like her. Not that appearance mattered, it was just my experience that people usually fell for the handsome one first. Zac was... well maybe if he did something about the hair and exchanged the baggy T-shirt that said 'Come to the nerds side, we have Pi!' with a plain white one, he wouldn't look half bad.

Giving a makeover to your tech guy. Yeah, that's really your priorities right now.

I sighed at myself and rubbed my face. The snippy voice in my head was annoying, but right. Who cared what he wore anyway? If he was happy and content, he could wear a batman suit to work for all I cared.

"I might have something," Zac said and frowned, tapping a few keys on his keyboard. He zoomed in on a photo. "That could be him right there, taking a trip to the pharmacy. Recognition program estimates 86% alikeness to the headshot we got of him."

He brought a somewhat blurry surveillance still-pic up from a pharmacy downtown where you could just make out the shape of his face. He was paying the pharmacist in cash, paying for something I couldn't make out. "Do you think you can clear up the imagine to maybe get a read on what he's buying?"

"I can give it a try, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it," He said, tapping away a little more. "These are low grade surveillance cameras, their pixelations are absolute shit. It would be easier to head down to the pharmacy with a photo of him and ask a few questions."

"Right, I might just do that." I said. "Not like I have better things to do. Thanks Zac, I'll catch you later. Call me if you find anything new."

"Hey, uh... Rya?" He called as I turned to leave. I looked back and saw him fiddling with his pen again. "You should know that... there could be a mole inside the CIA."

I stared for a moment, then walked back and crossed my arms. "What?"

He stopped twirling the pen and instead clenched it in his hand. "I noticed some funny business on one of the servers the other day. Someone were tampering with some files. I'm not saying whoever did it was on the bad team, I'm just saying it wasn't cleared or coming as an order from upstairs. The files were being altered."

"What files?"

"Vince's. Small snips of information about him were being cut. Nothing big, but I think that's how they want to start out. You know, slow, discrete. It's likely they were trying to make it easier for him to slip out of the country."

I thought hard for a moment, then pressed my lips tightly together. A mole... "And you couldn't trace whoever made those altercations?"

"No, I tried, but I couldn't. Whoever it was was thorough."

"Could it be—"

"I checked Monroe, it wasn't him. He's a dick, but not the dick we are looking for. He's clean," Zac said with a serious look. "However, Monroe has filed a motion for your arrest if you fail to catch Vince, on the grounds that you deliberately obstructed the course of the investigation because of recent, uh... compromising."

I shouldn't have been surprised by that at all, yet I was. This was a new low, even for Monroe. "Thanks for the heads-up, but you should be careful, Zac," I warned him, "If they found out you've been digging into these files—"

"They'll never catch me," He grinned proudly, twirling his pen again. "I'm the best there is at covering my tracks."

Couldn't argue with him there. "Alright then, I'll talk to you later. I gotta go catch me some Italian meat."

But haven't you already? 'Repeatedly?'

Now that snippy voice was just plain sassy.

~~~

The fact that Zac had looked out for me by going to the lengths of hacking his own bosses was quite disturbing, yet really useful. It had alarmed me truly of the graveness of this situation and of the lengths that Monroe would go to to have me fired. He reeeeally wanted my office. Obviously I wasn't going to let him have it.

The pharmacist had confirmed that it was indeed Vince who had been there yesterday and bought what turned out to be a bottle of plain cherry flavored cough syrup. Either he was catching a cold, had a sore throat or had trouble sleeping. In any case, it didn't give us many clues as to where he was staying. I was beginning to admit that maybe I wasn't equipped to catch him. I was 'compromised' as Monroe put it. Even if I hated to admit it.

Sighing, I begun walking down the street again, thinking of where he'd go. I was running out of clues; He'd tried the cartels, but we had blown that bridge up for him. They wouldn't deal with him now, knowing how hot on his trail we were. He also couldn't fly out of the country himself, his face was too wanted. And activating the USB that tracked your location every time you plugged it in was perhaps the only thing we could hope he'd do, but unfortunately, he wasn't that dumb. So what was there left?

He mentioned that friend he had left the USB with. He could've gone to him or her. Actually that would be the best option. If I was lucky, the mole wouldn't have erased his old acquaintances and the people he had connections to. Maybe from that we could track his friend and eventually track Vince himself. It was slim, but it was all we had.

As if on cue, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I saw it was Zac calling, so I quickly pressed answer. "Hey Zac, I have an idea as to wher—"

"Rya, where are you? Head back to the pharmacy, now!"

I stopped walking and immediately spun around on my foot, running back to the pharmacy. He sounded alarmed. "What's going on, Zac?"

"I looked over the footage again. We were too occupied with looking at what he was buying to notice what he was doing with his other hand. He slipped something under the edge of the counter and left it there."

"Left what?"

"I can't tell. The camera angle doesn't cover it. You have to head back there, he might have left it for you."

I ended the call and began bolting back, rounding the corner I came from. Not a second later I stopped up and quickly jumped behind a payphone. Four large men with Russian faces and dialects came out of the pharmacy, holding an envelope. I would bet my job on that envelope being what Vince had left behind. The Russians must've found him on the surveillance as well and gotten here before me, obviously not missing his subtle action.

I cursed silently. By now I should've known that Vince was too good to get caught. That meant that he'd let himself get caught on camera on purpose, so that I (hopefully me) would find that envelope, containing... something.

I watched from behind the payphone as the Russians tore the envelope apart and pulled out... a card? I had to know what it said, but it was too small for me to read.

Thank God I spoke Russian. They started gnashing and cursing over what the card said, arguing back and forth about what it could mean.

But I had caught what it said when they spoke it out loud, and I knew for certain now that that card had been for me. Because from what the Russians were saying, the card only contained one word with three letters;

BOB

• • •

Some of you were so damn smart on that. Nice deduction work.