"We're done here," Adalind announced, quickly walking over to the table and pushing the pictures into a large pile. "No more," she added quickly, sounding like she was in a rush.

"Okay, just wait a minute, we-" Nick began to object gently. He watched as many of the pictures he spent the night arranging were shuffled carelessly into the random stack. He put his arm out in front of Adalind to block her from moving so she couldn't reach the pictures on the other half of the table to disorganize them.

"No, Nick! I don't want to hear it. You're not working on this case," she said decisively. She tried to move past his arms, but Nick moved his whole body to get in her way. He put one hand on her shoulder and used the other hand to grab the stack of pictures from Adalind's hand and set them back on the table.

"I know why you feel that way," Nick began again. "But..."

Adalind stared at him with a wide-eyed, worried expression.

Nick paused, thinking through his words to find a way to put them delicately. "If someone is killing Grimms, we need to stop them before they kill more."

"They could kill you!" Adalind said anxiously. "You have to get off of this case."

"Adalind, the more I find out, the safer I am. And the safer Trubel is," he said, gesturing in Trubel's direction. Trubel cringed at the mention of her name. She didn't want to get involved in their dispute.

"I need to know more," Nick protested.

"You need to get into witness protection," Adalind said angrily.

Now, Trubel had to step in. "That wouldn't work," she announced. Nick and Adalind both turned to face her, waiting for her to continue. "If they could find Angel, they can find us," Trubel pointed out. "Angel was legally dead and living completely off the grid. He had no family, no address..."

"Trubel's right," Nick told Adalind gently. "We have to find them first."

Adalind shook her head. "You aren't listening to me, I-"

Nick stopped her. "You're worried tha-"

"Don't interrupt me!" Adalind yelled at him. "The closer you get on this case the closer you get to the killers. And if something happened to you, I wouldn't know what to do without..." Adalind trailed off sadly.

"Nothing is going to happen," Nick promised, placing both of his hands on Adalind's shoulders to comfort her. It didn't work.

"You can't know that," Adalind disagreed quickly.

"I can't just stand by while-" Nick said anxiously. How was he supposed to explain to the woman he loved, the woman who loved him, that he would be in more danger if he did nothing?

"You don't really care what I want you to do, because you aren't going to listen to me anyway," Adalind snapped.

"Of course I care-" Nick began.

Adalind interrupted him. "But it's not enough," she said bitterly, looking at Nick's unconvinced expression. "So go ahead and work on this stupid case," Adalind yelled. She moved out from under Nick's arms. She looked at the table and waved her hand to send all of the pictures flying with her Hexenbiest powers. It almost looked like a violent gust of wind had blown them off...

Nick looked at the mess that Adalind had made and when he turned around to glance back at Adalind, he saw her walk into the bedroom and slam the door behind her with excessive force.

"Ouch," Trubel winced in response to the chaos unfolding in front of her.

Nick looked hopelessly at his closed bedroom door before rubbing his brow with his hand like he always did when he was upset.

Suddenly, his phone started ringing.

"Now what?" Nick asked grumpily, pulling out his phone. He sighed angrily and asked, "Burkhardt," as he answered it.

"We've got another body," Franco said on the other end of the line. "We think it's the same guys."

"Where?" Nick asked as he exchanged a concerned look with Trubel. Franco listed the address of where Nick was supposed to meet him.

"I'll be right there," Nick promised and hung up the phone.

"This is really bad," Trubel said nervously.

"I know. I have to figure this out," Nick said, grabbing his jacket from the back of a chair and putting it on.

"I'm coming with you," Trubel insisted.

"Good idea," Nick approved. They started walking toward the elevator when Nick paused and once again looked in the direction of his closed bedroom door. Trubel noticed his fixation.

"I'll wait in the car," she offered, grabbing Nick's car keys from the key rack and disappearing into the elevator.

*************

Adalind didn't look up as Nick slowly opened the door to their bedroom. Instead, she sat on the edge of the bed, playing with the engagement ring on her finger. When she finally acknowledged Nick, she quickly wiped tears off of her face and looked up at him with a heartbroken expression.

"There's another body," Nick told her quietly, moving to sit next to her. She kept toying with her ring. "I know you're worried about me, but if I don't find these people, they might find us... They might find Kelly," he added. After all, if people were looking to kill Grimms, why wait until they are fully grown...?

Adalind still couldn't look at him. He sighed. "That being said, I want you to know that I love you, and I will stop working on this case if you really think that's best because I care about what you need."

Adalind nodded and said, "I know." She looked up at Nick and said, "I'm sorry I said the things I did, and I know that you're the only person capable of stopping these monsters, but I'm just..." She paused, trying to find the words. "I'm worried. I'm more than worried. Things have been going so well recently, and I feel like something's going to just... tear it all apart."

Adalind leaned against Nick, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "I know the feeling," he told her. "But I promise I will do my best to come home safe, and Trubel's going to help me with this one."

Adalind smiled at Nick and hugged him tightly. After a moment of silence, Adalind said, "Well, I guess you have some killers to catch."

"You're sure that you're okay with this?" Nick clarified. He rose to his feet and Adalind did the same.

"These people need to be stopped," she assured Nick.

Nick smiled and said, "I love you so much," before leaning down to kiss her. She kissed him back and said, "I love you, too."

They pulled away from each other and Nick began walking away. He entered the elevator and told Adalind, "See you tonight" with a smile on his face before closing the elevator door and descending down to the garage.

*************

Officers walked busily around the small cluster of cop cars that gathered around the narrow alley's opening. Behind barriers of wood and yellow crime scene tape stood the public, wondering how a body could have been left without notice right in the middle of downtown Portland.

Hank and Wu conversed with Franco as Nick's car pulled up to the scene. He and Trubel got out and joined their small grouping around the squad car parked closest to the body. Franco looked up as they approached, staring at the two Grimms with curiosity.

"You've met Theresa, right?" Nick clarified as he reached Franco and the others. He had been racking his brain for any memory of Trubel meeting Franco officially, and couldn't remember that ever happening.

Franco shook his head. "I guess I've seen her around, but nothing really beyond that," he admitted. "I'm Franco," he said as he stretched his hand out to shake Trubel's. Trubel shook his hand reluctantly, not much of a shaking-hands kind of person, and said, "Nice to meet you."

"What brings you here?" Franco asked curiously.

"She's a criminology student," Wu said, grinning at Nick.

"Yep," Trubel agreed uncomfortably.

"You said on the phone that this murder was like the others..." Nick suggested quickly to change the subject.

"Yes and no," Franco explained. "The body has one of those morgue tags on it, but the M.O. is completely different."

"Let's take a look," Hank suggested.

Franco led the team to the body. Unlike the others that had been located in more distant and natural areas, this body was concealed in an alley not too far from the precinct. When they arrived, a few cops lifted a tarp that had been covering it.

This time, the victim was a Caucasian female that was an inch or two shorter than Trubel. She had blonde hair and sky blue eyes that were still open and somehow conveying a pained expression despite also being lifeless. There was dried blood that had been dripping from her broken nose at one point. She had deep, jagged wounds all over her body that created furrows on her otherwise smooth, pale skin and had more dried blood covering the rest of her thin yet muscular body. The areas that weren't bloody were discolored from bruises that decorated her eyes and jaw and wrists and legs. It was clear that she was brutally beaten, and everyone suspected that was her cause of death. She was wearing a tank top and jeans which differed from the hospital-gown-type clothing the second victim had been wearing and the absence of clothes on the first victim. Sure enough, as the eyes of the group panned downward toward the feet, there was a tag hanging off the toe of the victim like the victims before her. It looked like it might say something, but none of them had gotten a chance to read it before Trubel exclaimed, "Oh, my God!"

Everyone turned their gazes to her. For the sake of her oblivious, human audience she said, "Um... Poor girl." Her voice was as uncomfortable as the expression she was giving Nick.

"Yeah, it's pretty awful," Franco agreed, unaware that there was more to the situation than what he was seeing.

"I think I need a minute," Trubel said, continuing to staredown Nick. She turned to walk toward Nick's car, and everyone watched her leave.

"I better go make sure she's alright," Nick said quickly before following after her. Hank and Wu both looked at him with confused expressions before examining the body further. Wu had a fingerprint scanner to run the ID of the victim while Hank walked around to see what evidence he could find.

"Hey!" Nick yelled after Trubel when they were out of the earshot of the other police officers. "What's going on?"

"I know her," Trubel said gravely.

"Is she a Grimm?" Nick asked.

Trubel nodded. "Yeah. She's the person that was supposed to meet me this morning at HW."

Nick rubbed his eyebrows with his hand, signaling his stress.

"She's the real deal, Nick," Trubel said worriedly. "And so was Angel. Whoever's doing this is bad news."

If Nick and Trubel weren't worried before, they definitely were now. Other healthy Grimms that had known how to defend themselves were dropping like flies and somehow ending up in Portland. Trubel and Nick were both starting to wonder what the future had in store for them, and if they'd really be able to win against whatever was coming next.

Nick and Trubel glanced in the direction of the body. They could see Hank kneeling down next to it, and then looking up at them and waving his hand to call them over.

"Then we really have to figure out who's behind this," Nick said. "Let's see what Hank found."

Trubel and Nick walked back over to the body. Nick exchanged a concerned look with Hank before kneeling down where he had been, and Franco asked Trubel if she was okay.

"Yeah," she said. "I guess homicide really does take a strong stomach."

"Oh, yeah," Franco agreed, understanding the struggle. The weird cases that Portland had constantly been providing even got to him sometimes.

Trubel turned her attention to Nick who was now looking at the toe tag that Hank had been reading when he called them over.

"What does it say?" Trubel asked.

Nick looked up at her, his face looking pale and his eyes large with horror. He read the writing on the tag aloud. "On one side it has the number five, and on the other, it says, 'This situation is too Grimm for a normal cop.'"

"It's strange. Grimm with two 'm's?" Franco commented. "Anyone know what that means?"

"Nope," Hank said dismissively. "Guess we'll need to do some digging."

Wu walked up to the group with a laptop in his hands. "Got an ID on our vic. Her name was Charlotte Richter. Her last known address was in Germany. She's been arrested in America twice for assault and once for the unlawful possession of a firearm."

"So our last three victims were from Canada, Portugal, and Germany?" Hank clarified. "How did they all end up in Portland?"

"No idea," Trubel said. Since she knew two of the victims, she had more insight as to why they would be in Portland. She didn't have an answer for the cops surrounding her. The situation was very bizarre...

"We can at least try to figure out how she specifically got here," Nick suggested. 'We'll need to pull surveillance from nearby businesses to see if they caught anything."

"We're on it," Wu said, gesturing to himself and Franco. They left the scene.

"Take a look at this," Hank said, pointing to the body. "No blood around the body. This victim was killed somewhere else and dumped here like the first one."

"And it's in another public place," Nick added. "They want us to know they're here."

Everyone was unsettled by that fact. Someone was out there killing Grimms, and they weren't just successful, they were confident. They wanted to attract the attention of the police and maybe even a specific officer: Detective Nick Burkhardt. At least, that was what the message on that tag implied when it mentioned the separation between being a Grimm and a cop.

"Are we going to talk about how that message seems like it's targeting you?" Hank asked Nick while pointing to the tag on the victim's toe.

"Maybe Adalind was right about you not working this case," Trubel said nervously.

Nick looked at Trubel with disbelief and said, "We're in this together. I'm not going to let you try to stop these Grimm killers by yourself."

"Grimm killers?" Hank asked. Now that Franco had left, Nick and Trubel were free to talk about what they knew so far.

"We know at least two of the three victims were Grimms," Nick explained.

"I knew her," Trubel added while pointing at the body. "And I knew the second victim, Angel."

"That's not good," Hank said uneasily while his eyes traced over the dead, horrifically beaten Grimm in front of him. He wondered to himself how someone would be capable of abusing a Grimm like that... Suddenly, his phone started ringing. He checked the caller ID, answered it, and put it on speaker. "Detective Griffin," he greeted.

"I got the toxicology results back on victim number two," Harper announced. "Interested?"

"What have you got?" Hank asked.

"Something very confusing. Guerra's blood was loaded with a number of toxins and enzyme inhibitors, many of which don't match with any known toxins in the books," Harper explained. "I have no idea how this guy got these undocumented substances into his blood in such high amounts, but I do know that they're what killed him."

"Did the toxins have any close matches?" Nick asked. After his years of experience, he knew the right questions to ask in order to get the answers he needed.

"They did," Harper said approvingly. "Out of all the toxins that couldn't be identified, some resembled scorpion venom, a batrachotoxin found in exotic frog and bird species, and a neurotoxin that closely matched with that of a Golden Lancehead Viper. Do with that what you will. I'll get a copy of the report to the precinct for you. "

"Did the victim have any bite marks?" Nick asked.

"Here's another weird part," Harper began. "Despite the animal-like poisons, there weren't any marks similar to bites or stings. New ones, that is. This guy had dozens of scars and cuts all over his body, but they all look like they've been healed for years. The only new mark I could find was a puncture wound on the victim's right forearm like he had been hooked up to an IV."

"Thanks, Harper," Hank said. "There's been a third victim. Let us know what you find out."

"Will do," Harper said.

Hank hung up the phone and looked around at Nick and Trubel. "We're thinking that he was poisoned by Wesen, right?"

"Yeah," Nick agreed.

"But why would whoever is doing this hook Angel up to an IV when they could just sting or bite him directly?" Trubel asked.

"I don't know," Nick answered. "But if all of those toxins came from different Wesen, we could be working with a group of killers instead of just one."

"Makes sense," Hank said. "I don't think one guy could take out three Grimms all by himself."

"If it's a group of people, maybe HW knows about it," Trubel suggested. "We should go talk to them."

"Good idea," Nick approved. "I'll come with you."

"I'll stay back and comb through security footage with Wu to see if we can find something," Hank suggested.

"We'll meet you back at the precinct," Nick said. He and Trubel started heading to his car while Hank made his way to the Charger.

*************

Nick pulled his car into the garage at the HW compound. As usual, it was dark and no one seemed to be around. Despite that, Nick and Trubel both knew they were being watched as they got out and made their way to the elevator. They ascended to the usual floor and walked out, greeting the armed guards that opened the gates leading to the main part of the compound.

"You know where Ian and Alexander are?" Trubel asked one of her coworkers that she passed in the hallway.

"Alexander's left town for Council business," the woman answered. "But Ian's in."

"Where?" Trubel asked.

"Conference room," the woman answered.

"Thanks," Trubel said, gesturing for Nick to follow her as she walked toward the conference room. Nick nodded in greeting to Trubel's friend before heading in the same direction that Trubel had walked toward.

Trubel knocked on a large, metal door and opened it immediately instead of waiting for a response. Ian Harmon was sitting at the head of a large, rectangular metal table, listening intently to what another man seated at the table was telling him. Ian looked up with surprise and then stared at Trubel with a sort of sour expression.

"We need to talk," Trubel announced.

"I'm in the middle of something," he began to reprimand Trubel.

"This is important," Trubel said, sounding unsettled. Her tone was enough to convince Ian. He stood up and held up a hand to signal for the man who had been talking to halt his speech.

"Excuse me," Ian said. Trubel backed out of the doorway to make room for Ian to enter the hallway. He shut the door to the conference room before turning around to face Trubel and Nick who he had not noticed earlier.

"Burkhardt?" Ian asked. "Are you here to fill in for Charlotte?"

"Charlotte's dead," Trubel blurted out. 

Ian turned his glance back to her, staring at her with disbelief. "Dead?" Trubel nodded. "I just talked to her three days ago," Ian said as if it were evidence of Charlotte being alive. "How did it happen?" he asked.

"We found her in an alley downtown," Nick said. "We're still waiting for the M.E. to get back to us, but it looked like she was beaten to death."

Ian looked anxiously between Nick and Trubel.

"Like really beaten," Trubel emphasized. "Whoever did that to her wasn't messing around."

Ian looked like he was deep in thought with the way his brow creased, and his eyes scanned the empty space in front of him. "Not everyone likes government agents or Grimms..." Ian mused. "Is it possible that she ran into the wrong people on the street, and was killed by someone she didn't know?"

"We don't know enough to rule that out yet," Nick admitted. "But I would say it's unlikely."

"What makes you say that?" Ian asked.

"Charlotte wasn't the only victim," Nick explained.

After working for a number of government agencies and resistance groups over the years, Ian Harmon was normally composed with an unreadable expression. Now, however, he looked nervous. "Let's talk about this somewhere else," he said. He led Nick and Trubel to the research room that was full of computers, TVs, and other technological equipment used to collect and analyze valuable data. He asked everyone in there to clear out, and everyone obeyed with one exception. One man, about Trubel's age, was sitting at a computer and was about to get up when Trubel stopped him.

"Not you," she said. "I need your help."

"With what?" the man asked.

"I need you to look up a name for me. Charles Stott," Trubel requested.

The man looked up from his computer. He examined the cut on Trubel's forehead before turning his gaze back toward his computer screen. As he typed he said, "On it... By the way, how's the head?"

Nick looked curiously at the man speaking to Trubel.

"Nick, this is Miles. He's my top student," Trubel said as she pointed to the cut on her head.

"I still feel bad about that by the way," Miles said guiltily.

Ian had already shut the door to make sure their conversation wouldn't be overheard. He interrupted the three Grimms' digression with a question.

"Who was the other victim?" he asked Nick and Trubel.

Trubel's head immediately snapped up to look at him. "There were two others. One of them was... was Angel," she said with pain in her voice.

"Guerra?" Ian asked, recognizing the name. "Another Grimm?"

"Yeah," Trubel said. "They think he was poisoned."

"We wanted to know if you were aware of any groups that might do this sort of thing," Nick added.

Ian shook his head. "Poisoning and beating Grimms to death? I don't know of many groups that would even be capable of that. Of course, Black Claw wanted to eradicate anything Grimm related, but we wiped them out."

"What if we didn't?" Trubel asked ominously.

"They wouldn't just target Grimms," Ian disagreed. He paused briefly before he asked, "Where was Angel's body found?"

"Here in Portland," Nick answered.

"Hmm," Ian mused curiously. "As far as I know, Angel wasn't supposed to be near Portland or even on this side of the world. I wonder if the bodies were dumped here on purpose to get both of your attentions. They might be targeting you two next," Ian pointed out.

"That's what we're thinking," Trubel agreed.

Ian turned to Nick. "Send me the case files. I'll have a team take a look and see what they can find out. We want to help catch these people if we can."

"I found Charles Stott," Miles announced suddenly. Everyone turned to look at a large TV that hung in the middle of the back wall. The screen displayed an image of the first victim from when he was still alive. Next to the picture was his name and a few other details such as his height, weight, and last known address. At the bottom of the information was the word, "Unknown," which meant that there was no record of whether he was a Grimm, Wesen, or Kehrseite in Hadrian's Wall's database.

"I guess we'll never know if our first victim was a Grimm," Nick commented while MIles continued typing.

"Wait a minute. Take a look at this," Miles said. The TV screen changed to show a large, official-looking document from a mental facility in Toronto. It was handwritten and dated 2 February 1983. "It says here that Charles was receiving treatment for hallucinations where he 'saw everyday people transform into disturbing, animal-like humanoids that threatened to kill him.'"

"How did HW get a hold of his mental health records?" Nick asked, looking confused.

"We have our ways," was all Ian was willing to comment. Nick looked at Trubel with a disapproving expression, and she shrugged.

"Well, that answers our question," Nick announced.

*************

Hank and Wu sat in front of separate computers at a desk in the precinct. They ignored the busy officers bustling around them as they carefully examined security footage from buildings surrounding the third crime scene.

Hank leaned back in his desk chair and looked at Wu who had his face positioned a few inches away from his laptop's screen.

"Seeing anything?" Hank asked.

"I'm seeing a lot," Wu said without taking his eyes away from the screen. "But nothing we're interested in."

Hank sighed and clicked the play button on the security tape he had paused. He grabbed his cup of the precinct's tolerable coffee that he had acquired earlier and was about to take a sip when he noticed something. He set the coffee down quickly and started clicking his mouse rapidly until he had arranged the screen's contents.

"Look at this," he said, turning his screen to face Wu. He pointed to a black paneled van that was sitting at a red light in front of a bank and clicked play. The van drove through the light when it turned green like many cars that night had done before it. Hank then pulled up another piece of footage on the computer screen and played it for Wu. It was that same van a few blocks down the street from the bank in which it had first been spotted. It casually rolled down the street and disappeared out of the second camera's frame of view.

"What?" Wu asked.

"Look at the times," Hank said.

Wu looked at the timestamps of both videos, noticing that the first had been recorded at 2:07 am and the second had been recorded at 2:18 am.

"It took them eleven minutes to drive two blocks," Hank explained. "They must have made a stop between the two cameras which is where our crime scene is."

Wu nudged Hank's keyboard toward himself and stroked a few keys until he had a close-up image of the van's license plate. It was blurry but discernable.

"Let's see who it belongs to," Wu said, writing down the plate number and returning the keyboard to Hank.

"I'll keep going through the footage," Hank offered. "But this could be our guy."

After combing through the rest of the footage at many times its normal speed until he reached the time the body was discovered, Hank found that the black van was the only suspicious vehicle that had been caught on camera. Wu also hadn't found anything suspicious when he watched the remainder of the footage he had to go through. Instead, he uncovered interesting information on the van. 

"We should call Nick," Wu suggested quickly.