Page 102 of Fire and Ice

The DEA district office in Baltimore was crawling with agents following the drug bust at Addison Music Hall the previous night. The Rave-IX and cash recovered amounted to more than 10 million dollars.

Jack and Derek arrived with a few AGS Guardians to receive new directives following the loss of the two leads from both agencies. A silver-haired, stocky man greeted the group and introduced himself as Joe Kennedy—Rick Grayson's supervisor. He led them into a conference room occupied by around eight other people who appeared to be talking or arguing at the same time.

"Jesus," Jack muttered to Derek. "Cut off two heads and you've got chaos."

"We're almost all here, we are just waiting for ..." Joe Kennedy started to say.

"I'm here," a familiar voice spoke from the doorway.

A tall, European-looking man with very light blond hair stepped into the room. His glacier blue eyes glanced briefly over Jack before settling on Derek.

"Derek." He nodded to the other AGS agents.

"Viktor," Derek replied in greeting. Before he could introduce Jack, Viktor moved further into the room and took the seat beside Joe Kennedy.

"He's not one for chit-chat," Derekmurmured to Jack.

"I don't think he's very pleased with me at the moment," Jack replied. He observed the other man in Maia's life, the seemingly constant force in her existence. For him to show up personally in this meeting only underlined the gravity of his concern of the current situation.

"So far we have no leads on the whereabouts of Agent Grayson and Miss Pierce," Joe Kennedy said. "Forensics have gone over every strand of hair and fiber in the warehouse and have confirmed a DNA match that Richard Grayson had been in the area."

"Are you sure you have extracted everything you can from Peter Coltrane?" Viktor asked in an authoritative voice.

"Of course we have," Joe Kennedy replied, not appreciating being questioned by his AGS counterpart. "What I do question is how one of your agents got nabbed?"

"Might I remind you how my agent was instrumental in the bust last night, not to mention the capture of Colt?" Viktor's eyes flashed with anger.

"Can we just focus on how to find them?" Jack interrupted impatiently. This blame game was not helping.

"That's just the problem, McCord, we are at a dead end. The warehouse was it," Joe replied.

"Bullshit," Jack said. "The warehouse was what Colt gave up. Have you gone through the list of properties that Peter Coltrane owns? Or maybe they're under his wife's name?"

"Someone is going through that right now. We've only had Colt for less than 24 hours. It will take time to coordinate raids."

"So it's not a dead end," Jack said with a degree of satisfaction. The problem with Federal agencies was the red tape. And the higher the position, the more likely it was to embrace the bureaucracy and slow things down.

"Has anyone checked the container at Baltimore Harbor?" a DEA agent spoke up.

"Yes, Colt gave up the container number but it was empty. There were some traces of the drug so we know it was the right container," Joe said.

"Do we really know how much was floating around?"

"No. Right now Forensics is going through Colt's laptop to figure out who his clients were. If they are outside our jurisdiction, we will send it to the appropriate DEA district office. According to Agent Grayson, he was allotted 100,000 pieces at fifteen bucks each."

"I want a crack at interrogating Colt," Viktor spoke up.

"Absolutely not!" Joe said emphatically. "He is in our custody, I'm not sure your methods are ... what we call ... legal."

Jack was losing patience. This meeting was going nowhere.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door.

"Come in!"

A woman burst through the door, her face brimming with excitement. Everyone in the room tensed.

"There was a report of an explosion in a subdivision just outside of Baltimore. We were able to get the address from the 911 dispatcher. The house belongs to the parents of the wife of Peter Coltrane. We're trying to get more information from the first responders."

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