"...so, what I'd really like you three to do is make your unique skills sets available to the Bureau as deputized outside contractors. If the Rain hadn't cut into our available manpower so badly, I'd add 'for exclusive use in situations requiring those skills', but the fact is I might have to call you in to handle more mundane cases and emergencies."

Jesse kept up her exaggerated cartoon expressions; this time drawing down the corners of her lips until they hung past her cheeks. "I wanted to be a superhero."

"Ms. Rachelson, there are no superheroes, but there are heroes, and right now I'm asking you to step up and be one."

Before Drew could cut into the byplay, her phone rang. She glanced at it and answered. "Hey Charlie, what's up?"

"You're still with the Fed, aren't you?" Charlie's chatter told her more about his mental state than anything he might say. Before the Rain, she'd have known the cause, but now she had to ask.

"Yeah. Did you need me to drop something off or pick something up?" With Charlie in this kind of state, any specific references might throw him into a spiral. She didn't have time to go dig him out of his panic room right now.

"Bring him along. We'll need one. Someone left me another gift." Drew caught herself before she sighed in relief. It might mess with Charlie, and she really shouldn't be grateful someone had dumped a body at Charlie's Junkyard. Again. Of course she had another problem as well.

"Um, I'm not sure he does that kind of thing."

"Yeah, well. I'm sure he has friends. Besides that, you heard what happened to FBI headquarters; he's probably the only one in North Jersey at the moment."

Charlie's ability to ferret out real confidential information always shocked Drew. It also kept her from caring about identity theft; if a thief wanted her identity, he would get her identity whether she tried to stop him or not. She wouldn't live like Charlie on the off chance someone would try to defraud her. He had a point about the FBI's manpower problems, though.

"Just a second."

She pushed the phone into her chest to muffle the noise, still stunned by how much chest she had to push into.

"Agent Johnson, as it happens, we have a situation requiring an FBI Agent. Can you make yourself available for the afternoon?

He turned from his conversation with Jesse and Jack, obviously frustrated by her interruption.

"I have several places to be. What's the nature of the problem?"

"Murder. Suspects likely brought the body across state lines. We like to bring the FBI in early, because frankly we don't have the forensic facilities to do a proper job of it ourselves."

JJ frowned, glanced down at his smart phone, and started flipping through the pages of something. The more he looked, the deeper his scowl. When he looked up, before he could speak, Jack interrupted him.

"Good faith, Jamil."

JJ bared his teeth, but in no way could the expression be called a smile. A moment later, his face went blank, the barest tinges of a self-deprecating grin etching its way across his lips.

"I wanted this, didn't I?"

"I think you did, yeah." Drew pulled his attention back to her.

"I don't have time to work the case, but you have my full support and confidence."

"Mind coming with us to check out the scene? We can talk more about this contracting thing you want these two on when we get there."

He nodded. "I can do that. I don't want to interfere with your normal police work... Unless I can get you into the Bureau?"

She grinned at him, held up one finger, and lifted her phone back to her ear. "Yeah. He's not the normal guy, but Nick's still MIA in NYC. I'll have to do the grunt work, but JJ can sign his name on the dotted lines."

Charlie said, "JJ?" just as Agent Johnson protested, "I think I still remember how to investigate a murder, Detective Williams."

She ignored JJ and replied to Charlie. "Yeah. Just keep everyone away from the scene until we get there."

He said, "will do," and hung up.

"Okay, Agent Johnson, can we continue this conversation over at Charlie's?"

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JJ frowned but nodded. "I'd prefer to keep Mr. Morgan as an emergency contact rather than a primary resource. Not out of any distrust, you understand, but..."

She smiled at him, and he relaxed visibly. "It's okay, Agent. Charlie can go overboard with things at times, but he's trustworthy."

"I know that, Detective."

"Really?"

JJ began walking through the layers of concealing plastic, the others following in his wake. "You don't think Nick just ignored how many bodies show up in Mr. Morgan's junk yard, do you? He reported it as suspicious because it was. We looked into it, realized Mr. Morgan loses money every time one of those bodies is dumped, and doesn't recoup it in any fashion. That's not the operating mode of a collaborator."

"Wait, he loses money?"

He reached his car before he answered. "He shuts down whole sections of his yard when he calls one of these in. He'd probably be rich enough to retire by now if he didn't. You didn't know?"

She shrugged. "I knew, but I didn't think it cost him that much money."

"Interesting." JJ opened his door and turned to Jack, "Did you want a ride? I think my shocks can handle it."

"No thanks, Jamil. I'll stick with the Detective, if you don't mind."

"Suit yourself."

***

Jack dozed in the trailer, just aware enough of his surroundings to notice when they transitioned from paved road to gravel, then from gravel to a dirt lot. The tires crunched to a stop, and he shifted without thinking. Doors opened, closed, and the girls walked around to the back of the trailer. When the detective let the gate down, he swung himself out of the trailer onto the ground.

He'd never been to Morgan's Recycling before, but the appearance of the place didn't surprise him. The junk lying about in huge stacks matched what he remembered from junk yards; the organization of the place didn't. To their left lurked a pile of neatly stacked wrecked cars, forming one outer wall of the yard. To their right a huge stack of old entertainment centers slowly rotted into uselessness. A quick glance confirmed none of them had glass or metal; some damage showed where Charlie had removed the hardware.

"After you, ladies."

Detective Drew grinned at him, and he wished he knew one less way to hide a gun and one more way to adjust himself without drawing notice. Sooner or later, he'd have to do something about having a young man's drives again, but today wasn't that day.

"I see how you survived all those firefights. You tossed the women in as bullet catchers."

Anyone else would have felt the sharp side of his tongue, but he couldn't work up a good mad-on for the detective. Instead, he tried to treat her like one of his old squad buddies. "Yeah, well. They're easier to lead, so there are fewer stray rounds to tag me."

She laughed, and he found himself hoping she'd help him out with the drive thing.

No. Bad idea. Remember, squad buddy, not pillow buddy.

"Oh, man, you and me have got to go drinking someday. We can swap dumb bad guy stories."

Shaking his head in self-denial, Jack followed the ladies into the twisting, intricate, yet tidy maze of the junkyard. When they passed by a wall of bathroom pieces, his eye lit on something.

"Ladies, could you wait a second?"

They stopped and Jesse said, "No problem. We're about to where Charlie's system gets confusing, we ought to wait for the Agent anyhow."

He nodded, walked over to the wall, and took a few moments to confirm what he'd seen. With one hand he lifted the rest of the stack, with the other he tugged a single large item from the bottom. When he returned to the ladies, Johnson had just joined them.

"Mr. Maliss, is there a reason you're carrying a bath insert?"

"Yep. Cracked the one in my room at the hospital. This is the same make, same model even. I'm guessing Charlie pulled it for some reason, but if it's not too damaged I might be able to use it to fix what I broke."

That made the agent pause for a moment. "Jack, you've changed a lot."

"What do you mean, Jamil?"

Johnson glanced surreptitiously at the two women, but Jack told him with a quick, tiny shrug that the two of them could hear anything he had to say. He'd always trusted good cops, and the little Asian girl had too much hero in her to be anything but trustworthy.

"You were the guy who taught us collateral damage happens, to ignore it and move on."

Jack stopped, staring at the piles of junk without seeing them while he thought about his answer. The other three waited on him, the only sign of impatience Detective Drew's fiddling with a rear-view mirror dangling from a wrecked car. He'd found another of his old mistakes, and just like any of his early, poorly poured foundations, he had to make sure he made this right before he moved on. Karma.

"Sometimes, when you live long enough, you realize something you believed all the way down to the bone... was wrong. I never lied to you, but I've seen a lot since then. Learned a lot. Collateral does happen, and you can't let it stop you when something needs to be done, but you can't ignore it. You've got to go back and make it right."

Johnson quirked a smile at him. "I remember asking you about that back then. You damn near tore my head off."

"Yeah, well. I never lied to you guys. I was wrong. You're alive now 'cause of what I taught you, I'll bet."

"Not all of us."

Jack waved the two ladies into motion, and fell in next to Johnson as they walked, his purloined bath shell balanced firmly on one shoulder.

"What happened to her, Jamil?"

A thin baring of teeth which would never pass as a smile split Johnson's midnight face with an arc of white. "That's the hell of it. We don't know. She was deep undercover and then... she just stopped reporting back. We eventually got someone else close enough to confirm she hadn't turned on us, but that guy got sent to us in pieces a week later."

"Damn." Almost under his breath he whispered, "You let me know if you find the bastards for sure."

Jamil glanced at him. "I thought you didn't do that kind of work anymore."

"Karma, Jamil. I worry about it. A lot. But... sometimes you get to be the one bringing it down on someone's head. Other times... you're the collateral when something really needs to be done."

"Okay, gentlemen, please be careful around the next corner. By the flappity flapping I hear, we're near the spot, so if you see anything out of place, call it out to me without moving it. Mostly, though, stay behind me. Jesse?"

"In your footsteps, Drew. Hands in my pockets."

They rounded the next corner like that, and immediately piled up behind the detective, who stopped cold at the edge of a clearing in the junk. Johnson's comment summed up everything Jack felt and seemed to speak for the ladies too.

"Well. There's something I did not expect."