>>”A girl can’t help having eyes in her head.”

Yeah. She can. Aurum thought. Or at least, she could avoid letting them stray like the cursor controlled by the broken computer mouse, or the cat-tailed clock.

And apparently, the coffee was terrible. Good thing, because Ashton wasn't giving him any.

Ashton smiled thinly at Riley. He ignored the guy he wasn't giving the terrible station coffee to. It was actually a good deed. A selfish good deed.

Riley was upset. She could tell from his body language. And he was right there with her.

"You sit tight and wait for Cervantes to get here." He said roughly. "We don't have an address to rush off to, anyways. Right? You aren't holding back on me?" He eyed her. If she'd kept him out of the loop on major things earlier, what else wasn't she telling him?

And now, scrawny-ass was insinuating Riley and him were impeding a criminal investigation. Aurum tilted his head at Ashton, darkly.

"We wouldn't do that. Riley, especially." He said.

His words had heat behind them. He wasn't just defending his honor. He was defending Riley's. Not that he had realized that, when he'd said his words.

All of this sudden distrust. Riley frowned at Ashton, a frown that very quickly dissolved into a glare when he asked again if they were holding anything back.

Thanks Aurum, very much, for stepping in and playing the gallant gentleman, but no thanks.

”There’s nothing else.” she said in short, clipped tones, arms crossed as the glare intensified.

” And if you want an address to run off to, all you have to do is ask, I've got one for you. It’s my door they kicked down.”

All the worse, she couldn’t tell him to make sure it didn’t hit him on the not-scrawny ass on his way out.

Jorge sighed as he sat in the passenger seat of the ‘Black and White’ and headed back for the MRC headquarters. Federal Agent Gage had left him back at the precinct, having done her job as the human lie detector against that thug that had attempted to kill them back at the bus stop. With her job done, she left happily with her stuff. Jorge, on the other hand, was still feeling slightly irritated at the events that had unfolded. He had been handcuffed, wiped of his memories and left in the back of a van. But that was only the beginning. The rest of the evening resulted in bruises, being sore, threatening, and etc…

It was a long night.

Now though, at least he was back in the presence of his fellow police officers and he could already see the lights of his faithful precinct that held the MRC offices, as well as his desk and hopefully some better coffee. It all sounded like heaven to him at the moment.

Cracking his neck to the side, he glance over at the beat cop that was taking him back to the precinct and gave him a nod of thanks. The ride was silent but Jorge rather enjoyed it that way. No need to explain things, no need to say what has been going on. He had learned enough for one night and he was too tired to have to explain it to anyone else. At least until he got to the safe confines of his own people.

As they pulled up the sidewalk, Jorge offered his thanks for the ride and slid out of the car. It was only when it drove out of sight that the detective stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat and headed to the building. There was going to be way too much explaining to do tonight but it needed to be done.

Once inside, he maneuvered to the receptionist desk and was immediately assaulted by the high-pitched voice of woman behind the counter.

Cynthia beamed and nearly broke his eardrums. “Cervantes! Where ya been?”

Jorge sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose to keep his migraine from coming back. “You know, tomcatting it around. Just, point me towards Detective Drake, please. He’s got to be around here somewhere.”

“Sure thing hon!” the receptionist said and pointed down the hall.

Jorge grunted his thanks and immediately sought out his fellow MRC officer. There was a lot to say and lot of clearing up that needed to be done.

Things got tense. Tenser still. Riley was mad. Okay. Not just mad. Pissed.

Aurum gritted his teeth.

"Look," he said. "Unless we have an actual lead, there isn't much I can do. So, until Cervantes gets here..." Until Cervantes gets here, what? Ashton didn't really like women mad at him. He preferred them with hearts in their eyes. He turned his back on the both of them, and sauntered off to get himself some more coffee. "Don't get in my way." His shoulders were tense. This whole situation would require a chiropactor or twenty.

He walked down the hall, in a hurried huff. He nearly ran into Cervantes. Ashton pulled to a hasty stop.

He glowered coldly. "Took you long enough. God. Those two you dealt with? Pieces of work."

Aurum didn't look at the detective as he left them alone. If he'd wanted to, he was certain he could have seen the tension crackling between everyone in the room. It was ridiculous.

This whole night was ridiculous.

What were they going to do, if Cervantes didn't show soon enough? What would they do, when he did.

Riley'd been attacked. That was bull. Her house had been damaged. Also bull. And Ashton's attitude? He had a Grade A beef with that.

"God." he muttered. "Freaking baby."

What an ass. Riley fumed silently in the police station while Ashton threw his little fit then stormed off down the hallway. What did he expect? Was she supposed to be fawning all over him and begging for forgiveness? She hoped he held his breath on that one. Her jaw clenched as Aurum called the other guy a baby and she shrugged her shoulders.

”I honestly didn’t expect any more.” she said. There was no pout in her voice, not even any remorse, just distinct evidence of her displeasure with the situation. She was stating fact, not anything more or anything less. This whole thing was b.s. though. Her house had been broken into, she’d been shot at, and all the NYPD’s finest could do was strut around and try to ice their bruised ego because she hadn’t come to them sooner.

Total B. S.

She'd deal with that later.

Jorge stormed, really just wanting this night to be at an end. He glanced left, he glanced right, looking for Drake somewhere, anywhere in the MRC office. So far he was having no luck. The detective had every desire to simply turn around and go home for the night. After waking up in the back of a van, handcuffed to two other people, hitchhiking back to the city, having his memory erased and then being chased by couple of thugs, it was safe to safe that Jorge was simply just plain and utterly tired. His feet were sore, his mind still ached thinking about what was going on around the city and why all this happened…it was all he could do to keep from…

Yaaaaaaaaawning! Jorge closed his eyes and yawned in a jaw cracking way as he stalked forward momentarily losing sight of what was ahead. Not that it was important…who would walk into him?

As he opened his eyes again, he had to skid to a halt, nearly tipping over in the process. There was Ashton Drake, fellow detective and looked just as cool and glowery as the man always looked. He did not know what caused that expression on his face but Jorge somehow felt it was directed at him…

>> "Took you long enough. God. Those two you dealt with? Pieces of work."[/i]

That was a “yes” and “no”. Not only was the man irritated with him but at the same time he had apparently been dealing with Kitten and his girlfriend that had picked them up with an attitude-filled taxi. While the detective understood how the combination of those two could cause some irritation, Jorge simply arched a brow because he was in no mood.

“Hey for someone who woke up in the back of a van with no memory, I think I made good time in getting here.” Jorge grumbled just as glowery and moved on with Drake. “And trust me, it’s no picnic being handcuffed to one of them while the other berates you the entire car ride back to the city.”

The water-bender groaned as he cracked his neck to the side. He had gotten some good information from both Noel and the man who had attempted to kill them during their bus ride. And it was definitely enough to make his skin crawl. “M” was the only topic on his mind now and especially the ramifications of it. Madness would break out in the city.

He nodded to Drake as he headed towards where the other two were being kept. “Have they said much? What happened to them?”

>>“And trust me, it’s no picnic being handcuffed to one of them while the other berates you the entire car ride back to the city.”

"I. Believe you." Ashton agreed.

Cervantes must have been in bad shape to only stop there. Handcuffs. Back of a car. Yeah. He'd have been pissed too. Less so that he was not, probably. Sounded like one hell of an afternoon.

Even though he didn't want to, even though the idea of it made his skin crawl, he supposed it was REQUIRED they go back to those idiots in the other room and talk. So, he led the way, grudgingly. As he went, he filled Cervantes in on all the painful little details of his night.

The two of them, man and woman, fell silent after that. With their detective gone, there wasn't much to talk about in the world. No. That was wrong. There might have been too much. All the drama, all the garbage from dealing, both with people and situations, really didn't seem like a can of topics either of them wanted to reopen. At least, not for the moment. Not until the cops came back to clean up the mess from the can's spill. Because they'd just such a wonderful job already...

Aurum's mind took a leisurely escape as he waited. An escape towards happier topics than either of them needing lawyers to defend their names, should anyone call them on their methods or what they knew. An escape from contemplations of just how bad a lawyer Lonnie could get himself. An escape from gross shirts, bitter women, and piss-poor cops. To. Coffee. Damn, he really wanted a cup.

Cops of coffee, unfortunately, got cut short by the return of Drake and Mr. Handcuffs water cop. So it turned out the water cop wasn't hiding out in a pineapple under the sea, after all...

'Took you long enough," he really wanted to say. Unfortunately, he didn't. Hey. It had probably been said before. Nope. He gave the duo the silent treatment, summing it all up in an eying look. They were in charge here. They needed to make sure they looked good for this. Otherwise, he had a nice little reporter he knew who could probably make them look like crap. A reporter he had never called back. A new topic jumped inexplicably into the forefront of his mind. 'Well, crap.'

Thankfully, Aurum fell silent after she made her bitter little comment about expectations, and Riley took the time to run through her memory of the last several hours. She’d been taking a cab, she’d picked up the hitchhikers, she’d let Aurum come into the apartment, gotten stuck in the elevator, kneed a bad guy in the crotch, climbed down the fire escape, gotten shot at, then been harshly disillusioned about Ashton and potential as a decent human being.

What a night. What. A. Freaking. Night.

It was a lot to think about, and Riley just had to shake her head at everything. It was the stupid stuff out of one of her fantastical romance novels. Things like this didn’t happen to normal people. Then again, she thought, she wasn’t exactly normal.

At least she was getting jobs again, and she knew a lawyer in case this got bad.

Ashton returned, with one of the other hitch hikers. The one she’d been rude to the whole time they’d been in the cab. The one who’d talked about her strange little talent like he knew what it was.

Riley crossed her arms and looked at him, completely ignoring the fact that Ashton even existed. As far as she was concerned. He didn’t.

” Look.” she said, deciding that being reasonable was probably the fastest way out of the police station. “It’s been a really long day, for all three of us.” Again…just to reiterate, Ashton didn’t exist. ”What can we do…” she said, gesturing to herself and Aurum, ”To speed things along.”

>> "I. Believe you."[/i]

Well it must be like lucky damn day, Jorge thought to himself as he let his fellow detective lead the way to the pair of misfits that had found their way to him.

Judging by the way the man walked, Jorge could only assume that he was just as irritated with the two he was being led to. The detective could not blame him in the least. Having spent time with them he was surprised Ashton hadn’t had thrown them in lock-up just for aggravating his nerves. That’s all Jorge wanted to do the entire cab ride back to the city.

But, despite his personal feelings, he knew that was not the most important thing that needed to be handled. Right now, there were bigger fish to fry, bigger problems that needed to be handled than just the irritating natures of a pair of lawyer and a model.

As they finally arrived, Jorge nodded his thanks to Ashton and immediately spied that his presence was not a warm kumbaya moment as he thought it would be. Surprisingly enough the scene he walked into was dead silent. He figured, if anything, the pair of them would either be screaming and killing each other or they would be making out. Either way, they needed to do one or the other before the world paid for the consequences.

Standing before them, catching the evil eye that Kitten was giving him, Jorge was about to talk when–

>> ” Look…It’s been a really long day, for all three of us…What can we do…To speed things along.”

Of course she would be the first to talk. Seemed like eons ago he was trapped in that cab with them. Or maybe being trapped in the cab with them felt like eons? Whatever the case, Jorge sighed as he removed his hands from his coat pockets.

“Listen, no one wants to go home more than me, trust me,” he said as he pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to hold back a migraine. “But I need to know exactly what you know, no attitudes, no lying, I just need to know what you two have gotten into. Especially…if you’ve heard of something called ‘M’.”

Ashton didn't even notice anyone not acting like he was there. He may have been doing the exact same thing to nearly half the room. Just who was Cervantes even talking to, honestly?

What was M? Ashton wondered at what Cervantes had found out. Whatever it was, it'd help in their investigation. It could move. That was good.

Perhaps, they could let the two non-police curmudgeons leave now, just to ease things up for him and Cervantes? Once they got any information Cervantes wanted out of them. He had a feeling if they kept around long enough, he could arrest the annoying one for interfering in a criminal investigation. Did he want to save himself from grinning while making an arrest, or save the annoying one from such a fate? Who knew. It was a complicated subject.

Why would he lie? That was interfering in a criminal investigation. Aurum wanted the truth as much as these guys.

Drugs? That triggered something. Hadn't they been investigating... Aurum glanced to Riley. "Wasn't there something with Lonnie?" God. Note to self: Never get your memory erased. He felt like an idiot when he kept failing to recall important things.

They'd been investigating Lonnie. Lonnie had been up to something. "Wasn't Ozment running drugs?" And who with? What had they done? Hadn't Riley been a... a magician's assistant! That was right. The image of her in a slinky sequined costume slapped him in the face like a flash.

Ozment. Hart. Magic. Drug trafficking. And then...

Aurum's mind rolled on over, back to some case he'd done before involving her. She'd been on trial for murder. Man. That had been shoddy charges they'd held her under. She hadn't even had a motive. How the hell had that gotten to trial?! But, wait. Uh. Hadn't there been some stupid thing he'd found in Lonnie's office that had been somewhat important, and not a completely innocuous red herring to refer to at a later date?

Hadn't he spotted some dumb flyer for a magic show with a magic sword box circled or something? In an envelope from the victim Hart had supposedly murdered? Or was not guilty of murdering, according to court records?

Was all this connecting the dots shoddily done? Would there be better dot connecting in the future on cases in which he was involved? He sure hoped he wouldn't be involved in any more than this one, if so.

One of Ami's sayings fit the type of situation this whole mental revelation seemed to be fitting. Derp. Yup. Derp Derpity derp. How could he have been so stupid. It was almost worthy of a palm to the face.

"Andrea Hart probably murdered her magician mentor because he got too close, and wanted to stop touring, to stop the flow..." 'Of drugs', he finished in his head. The whole thought had slipped out unintentionally, one lamely delivered revelation.

Aurum blinked. Then, he stared at Riley. "This is awkward. I suddenly remember everything." And all it had taken was her in a slinky sequined dress.

Riley didn’t feel much like talking, or being helpful right now. Her olive branch of information and cooperation had been thrown into her face. They could just figure out all their nonsense themselves, she didn’t need any of it. They’d just stand there in silence for as long as it took, because she wasn’t going to explain anything. The other detective had joined the ranks of non-existence.

Aurum was thinking, and Riley found herself kind of waiting for smoke to pour out of his ears. The guy was totally focused internally, and for a few moments, she simply watched.

Then he spoke. Oh good, it looked like some of the pieces she’d laid out for him in the elevator were finally starting to come together. Secretly, Riley was relieved. Externally, she crossed her arms and watched Aurum as he drew conclusions. All this meant was that she didn’t have to draw pictures for the cops so they could understand the point she and Aurum were trying to make.

She nodded curtly in the direction of the people who didn’t exist to underscore Aurum’s point about Andrea Hart.

Aurum blinked at her, and Riley stared back, ”Why are you looking at me like that?” she said, mild curiosity and maybe just a tiny bit of a smile in her voice. What had he remembered?