Numb3r 10

Chemical Revenge: Suspect #6

Back at the FBI, a certain Mr. Grumpy Pants was having a terrible day, and the exuberance of the people around him was only making it worse. No, Owen was not happy at all. He glowered at his computer screen showing the profiles of the three victims. Emerson Holloway, CEO of Atomic Chemicals. Lily Stanton, reporter. And of course Susan Sumner, a pro-chemical lobbyist. A cursory search of Miss Stanton's most recent articles made it easy to connect the three of them. The question was who was behind the attacks? Their suspect list could stretch for miles.

"Do you think Sang will let me take her shopping?" Owen heard Gabriel ask.

"Maybe rephrase it when you ask her," Victor replied dryly. " 'Take her shopping' makes her sound like a child."

"But would she say yes?"

"I don't know, Gabriel. She probably doesn't want to go shopping with someone she just met."

"Hey, I've gone to a couple of her classes. Didn't understand a thing, of course, but she's interesting to watch."

"Creeper alert," North mumbled.

Owen stiffened at his desk. The FBI office was not a social club. They were in the middle of a homicide investigation! Was his whole team lollygagging around?

He made sure his steel mask was in place before turning around. Sure enough, everyone except for Kota and Nathan, who were getting Sang, was standing in a loose circle gossiping over cups of coffee. They'd moved on to talking about other classes of hers they'd attended over the past few weeks. Hurt flashed through Owen. Was he the only one who hadn't gone to one? He hadn't known the others were seeing her so often.

After this case, he would make a visit to CIMS, he resolved. But before he could, he had to fix the problem standing before him.

He stood slowly and approached the circle. "I'm glad we've caught the killer," he said calmly.

Six pairs of perplexed eyes looked at him. "We haven't caught them. We don't even have a good suspect," Luke said.

Like magic, awareness struck his team. They mumbled out various apologies and shuffled off to do whatever they were supposed to be doing before. Owen sighed. Sometimes, it still felt like his team was made of twelve year olds. Twelve year olds who were attending advanced math lectures, apparently.

Owen needed to brush up on his calculus.

***

As Kota sped toward the FBI offices (read: going one mile over the speed limit), Nathan was planning on catching Sang up on the case. Right after he put his investigative skills to use figuring out if anything was going on between her and Corey. He would have sworn that Corey had a thing going with Raven, but what if he was wrong?

"So you get breakfast with Corey every Tuesday, Sang?" he asked casually. He leaned forward in the back seat so he could look more closely at Sang sitting in the front.

"Yes, every Tuesday morning," she confirmed. She resisted the urge to smirk. Stupid was never a word that had been used to describe her, and she knew exactly what Nathan was after. From the way Kota allowed his eyes to momentarily stray from the road (something he normally didn't tolerate), she knew he was curious, too.

"Do you see him any other time during the week?"

"Sometimes, yes."

Just a hint of frustration tinged Nathan's next question. "What do you talk about?"

"Why do you want to know?" she countered. Not her most creative response, but it worked. Kota returned his full attention to the road and Nathan sat back in his seat.