Organized Crime: Unorganized

Chapter 35

Grace walked over to the bench seeing today's newspaper lying there ready, she sat down and picked up the phone that was waiting for her inside. A second later the phone rang, and she picked it up.
"I was beginning to think you weren't going to show" Came Clara's voice down the line.
"I'm sorry you couldn't be at his funeral-"
"It's not your fault Grace. We all had a role to play in this" Clara admitted.
"We did, didn't we" Came Simon's voice down the line "Hello darlings" he smiled down the line.
"Let's make this quick" Grace ordered.
"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not quick about anything" Simon smirked.
"How about our first case when I blew my cover. Before I could even reach for my gun you had already put one between his eyes from 200 yards away" Grace reminded him.
"Well, maybe that's the only thing I'm quick about" he smirked suggestively down the line.
"What are you doing to find Cormac?" Grace asked changing the subject.
"Every agency you can think of including every anagram is out looking for him" Simon told her.
"What are we doing to find him?"
"One of my contacts tracked one of his aliases, leaving France the day after Elliot was killed. He bounced around from a plane to Russia to a train heading for Germany. No one's sure where he is right now" Clara told them.
"He sent me flowers. He's coming here I know it" Grace told them.
"Why is he doing this?" Clara asked.
"Why do you think?" Simon scoffed "We put him away. And had an agent trick him" Simon reminded them. Grace's phone bleeped in her pocket, when she took it out, she saw it was a message from Sadie- Avengers Assemble... ASAP. "Got to get back? I know what you're thinking Grace, we can't let them get involved. They don't have clearance. Legally if you told them, you would have to kill them" Simon told her, reading her expressions from afar.
"They could help. They're skilled people" Grace told them.
"They're good people, with families, which is why we can't involve them" Simon reminded her.
"Clara had a family before I screwed it up" Grace told him.
"Just leave it to us, we'll find him" Clara told her.
"Trust us" Simon told her.
"I don't trust anyone anymore" Grace admitted, breaking the phone over her knee before she tossed it into a nearby trash can before she left, Simon and Clara repeating her actions before they left going off in their separate directions.

"Sorry I'm late" Grace said quickly as she entered the conference room.
"Were you getting some this morning?" Lorenzo teased.
"Why do you always have to flirt. I slept in. I was late. I apologized, now let's just move on" Grace snapped earning unsure looks from the rest of the team before James' began their meeting.
"Section chief Finnegan has ordered us to drop the case" James announced.
"What? Why?" Aneesa asked.
"We have no evidence and the evidence we do have is leading us nowhere. We're to move on to another case" James told them.
"I guess I'll be going back to counter terrorism then" Aneesa sighed.
"You could stay. Say the transfer back was a slow process" James suggested.
"I can delay the transfer" Sadie nodded. 
"I'm in" Aneesa smiled. 
"Two D.C homes torched. Two families on the same night, last night" Sadie told them switching pictures of the homes up on the screen. 
"The story isn't on the news, usually it would be headline by now" Lorenzo commented. 
"Arthur, Sarah and their son Michael Jones, were found in the master bedroom of their home, they were each shot through the head. The gun belonged to the father" James told them. 
"It sounds like a murder-suicide" Marco added.  
"Not likely. Two homes setting alight in one night is about one in a billion" Lilly added. 
"Ruth and Peter Grant were found in the master bedroom after a suspected gas leak" James told them. 
"It would've had to have been massive to have caused that kind of damage" Lilly commented, looking over the photos of the burnt out house. 
"All the victims appear to have died how the police report said they did" Diane told them.
"How does the news miss a house explosion?" Grace wondered out loud. 
"Any connection between the families?" Lilly asked. 
"Both, Ruth and Arthur are originally Russian citizens" Sadie told them. 
"Someone had to have targeted them, and if they did they had to be highly motivated and organised" Lorenzo told them. 
"He'll most likely strike again, we just need to find him before he does" James told them before he headed out of the conference room along with the others, leaving Grace, Lilly and Sadie alone. 
"What's his name?" Sadie smirked widely. 
"What?"
"Maybe he works here, or maybe he's a model or someone famous" Sadie continued. 
"Stop" Grace ordered. 
"I bet he's good looking too. Maybe he has a brother or a cousin-"
"Just stop! Okay!? We have enough to worry about already, don't we? Just focus on finding this guy" Grace ordered, instantly making the other woman's face fall. Her ringing phone cutting thorough the tense moment. Grace moved away from her, answering her phone when she was finally out of ear shot.
"It's O'Reilly. He chartered a private jet and entered the states under a fake name" Simon explained.
"He's baiting us. He only showed his face on the CCTV to get under our skin" Grace sighed angrily as she saw the others getting ready to head out to the crime scenes.
"He's definitely done that" Clara agreed sarcastically.
"Let that bastard come to us" Simon bit as Marco met Grace's eye from across the room. 
"I've got to go. Keep working on it" Grace ordered before she hung up the phone and stuffed it into her pocket. 

Marco and Grace headed into the master bedroom of the Jones residence where James had sent them to study the fire. 
"The fire didn't spread, they had hard-wired smoke alarms and a sprinkler system" Marco commented. 
"Why the need for security? Why the steal door? What did she do for a living?" Grace asked. 
"Computer networking. And the Grants were financial advisors" Marco read out from his notebook. 
"In this neighbourhood you don't need anything more than a simple deadbolt, especially not on a bedroom door. It's like a panic room" Grace commented as she looked over the lock on the door "What or who, was this guy so afraid of?" Grace wondered out loud. 
"If he actually killed his family, then he's been hiding something" Marco told her. 

"Sadie hasn't found any connection between the victims. On paper they're perfect. Everything's clean. But what happened last night was anything but" Marco chatted, Grace's phone bleeping catching his attention, as they waited for the elevator to reach their floor. Grace groaned as she looked at the screen before she shoved it back into her pocket. 
"When was the last time you took a vacation? You look like you need one. Weren't you just talking about Italy?" Marco asked her. 
"My mother has extended her trip out there, it wouldn't be much of a vacation" Grace sighed. 
"It's a big country"
"Not big enough" Marco chuckled slightly.
"Are you okay?" he asked earning another sigh "I've never seen you snap at Sadie before"
"I love her like a sister but, sometimes she just pushes too much" Grace sighed as the elevator doors finally opened. 
"Do me a favour, apologize to her and then take a long vacation and relax" he smiled at her encouragingly. 
"Sure" Grace smiled back before she headed over to her desk.