"Geez, Sandbag, just how stupid are you?" Max Pederson leaned across the aisle to whisper to Blair.

"Am not!" Blair protested, closing his book with a resounding thump.

"Third grade, and you can't even read!" Max taunted.

"Can so! I can read!" Blair all but shouted.

In the ensuing hush, the rest of the class turned their attention to the two quarreling boys. Blair blushed furiously.

Just as the teacher opened her mouth to speak, Blair grabbed his books and ran from the classroom, tears streaking down his cheeks.

Miss Werth cornered her pupil out in the hall. "Blair? Blair!" She grabbed him by his shoulders, turning him to look at her. "What's the matter?" Her voiced dropped to a soft, caring alto as she kneeled in front of the boy.

Wiping his nose on his sleeve, Blair looked at his teacher with wide, sad eyes. "I'm stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

"No, Blair!" Miss Werth protested. "You're one of my brightest students! Don't you let anyone tell you differently."

Shaking his head slowly, the nine-year-old denied his teacher's attempts to make him feel better. She could say whatever she wanted, believe whatever she wished. He knew the truth. . . .

Blair was startled back to the present by a knock on the door.

"Hey, Sandburg, you all right?" Jim's voice, muffled by the closed door, sounded concerned.

All he wanted was a little privacy to meditate. The request to speak at the seminar had dredged up old memories Blair would rather not have had to face again. Leave it to Jim with his sentinel senses to overhear Blair's soft mutterings. He sighed and continued lighting the half-dozen candles he had set out in a semicircle in front of himself on the floor.

"I'm fine, Jim," he answered. "I just need a little time alone. Do you mind?"

"Maybe you'd like to talk about it? I'm all ears, you know." Jim released a half-hearted chuckle at the weak joke.

"Not right now," was the quiet answer. "Please go."

Jim shook his head, confused. Sandburg not wanting to talk? That's what the man did best, talk. He could talk about the good times, or he could talk about the hurt, but the one thing he never did was keep silent.

Finding that he had suddenly lost interest in the basketball game, Jim turned off the TV. He walked out onto the balcony and stared out at the city, his city, bathed in a nighttime amber glow. Taking a deep breath, he willed himself not to listen in on the sounds his partner was making shut away in his old room.

Twenty minutes later, the Sentinel heard the click of a door opening and the soft approach of stocking-clad feet. Without turning to acknowledge his lover's presence, he spoke. "What was that all about?"

A soft sigh was the only response. Jim changed tactics. "Why would your friend ask you to speak about dyslexia? That's not your field of study. What would you know about it?"

"Try twenty-eight years of living with it," came the whispered response.

"No." The single syllable was exhaled softly. "No," a little more strongly. "You can't have dyslexia. You're a damn genius!"

"Well, then I stand in good company," Blair replied. "Dyslexics aren't mentally challenged, Jim. Some of the best minds in history have been dyslexic: Albert Einstein, for example, or Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, George Patton, Winston Churchill . . . Walt Disney, for Chrissake!

"Why didn't you ever tell me?" Jim asked, feeling hurt that Blair hadn't confided in him.

"It's not something I'm proud of, Jim," Blair answered reasonably. "Would you want the world to know you had a learning disability?"

"But, Chief . . . Blair . . . You've got your Masters degree, you're writing your doctoral dissertation, you teach, you lecture. How could you do all that if you have trouble with reading?"

"I've had special training," Blair admitted. Turning to face Jim, he added, "Why do you think I have to pull those all-nighters on the couch?"

"I dunno," Jim shrugged, not yet quite ready to believe. "I guess I just figured that with all the time you spend with me on the job, there wouldn't be enough time to finish your university work otherwise."

"That's part of it," Blair conceded. "But more often than not, it's because I have to read things two, three times to really understand the text," Blair explained. "I need that extra time when it's quiet and I can concentrate. Of course, when I'm tired, it's worse. Usually I can cope fairly well. Grading papers makes me really tense, though. You ever notice how I've always required typed papers, never hand-written? The tests are a nightmare! Trying to decipher some of those kids' handwriting can give me the mother of all migraines." He shivered, and Jim wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

"It's getting cold out here. How about we go back inside?" Jim steered the younger man through the glass doors and over to the couch. Pulling the afghan off the back cushions, he wrapped it around Blair, cocooning him in woolly warmth.

He walked into the kitchen to put a kettle of water on to boil. "So, why did you agree to give this lecture? Obviously, the whole subject upsets you."

"I owe Benjamin, big time," Blair explained, snuggling deeper into the warmth of the afghan.

"Care to elaborate?" Jim asked, bringing over a hot mug of herbal tea when the water finally boiled.

Maybe starting college at sixteen wasn't such a great idea after all. He'd bluffed his way through high school, graduating two years early, with honors. It didn't hurt matters that he was creative, downright inventive in some cases. He'd always been able to think quickly on his feet. He had developed memorization into a fine art. But none of that was going to help him through the mountain of books he had to read for his freshman year. He was sinking fast, and his only solution so far had been to cop an attitude.

Blair Sandburg, boy genius. The most arrogant bastard Benjamin Jenkins had ever had the pleasure of teaching. Freshman English Lit. was not going to be a dull class this semester.

Benjamin assessed his troubled student: long hair, earrings, the height of grunge dressing, and an attitude bigger than all outdoors. He approached the boy cautiously. "Blair?"

Bracelets tinkled as the teenager spun to face his professor, hand raised, pointing a finger directly in the man's face. "Just leave me alone, man! Whatever you have to say, I don't want to hear it! Your class is like so lame! I'm heading over to drop it as we speak!"

"Blair, listen to me, please," the professor responded gently. "I can help."

"Nobody can help me, man! I'm hopeless, didn't anyone tell you that?" Blair stood on his toes to confront the taller man.

"You're not hopeless. I think I know what's wrong. Why don't you come by my office? Say about 3:00 this afternoon?"

"Yeah, man, whatever." Blair hurried away from the confrontation, grateful to make his escape.

He wouldn't cry. He wouldn't cry. He wouldn't cry. He wasn't a kid anymore. He was a college freshman. He was smart. If he told himself often enough, he might even start to believe it--not! He swiped at his damp eyes with a blue flannel sleeve.

Naomi had worked so hard to help him get into college. She had done her best to see that he got an education despite all the moving around they did. And he knew some of that was his fault, too. When the teasing got to be too much, when the bullies tossed him down on the playground and beat him up, Naomi would pack up and move. Then the humiliation would start all over in a new city, in a new school. It was a never-ending cycle. Despite all that, Blair had managed to do well enough to graduate early. Now, here he was, flunking out his very first semester in college.

Five hours later, he found himself sitting across a desk from his concerned English Lit. professor. Why he had come, he wasn't sure, but there was something about the man that rang true with the student.

"I'm really glad you came, Blair," Professor Jenkins began. "I know this can't be easy for you. A bright kid like yourself, and you're already having problems just nine weeks into the semester."

"It's not my fault. . . ." Blair began his protest, only to be interrupted.

"I know it's not your fault, and I'm going to help you do something about it." The professor reached across his desk and opened the English Lit. textbook. "Read this."

Blair stared at the page, then looked up at the man across the desk.

"Out loud," Jenkins added.

Slowly, Blair began reading. Smoothly at first, but becoming more and more frustrated as he went, skipping words or reading them incorrectly, until he couldn't take it any more and slammed the book closed.

"That's all right, Blair," Jenkins soothed, pulling the book away from the upset student. "Given enough time, I'm sure you could read this flawlessly. But you'd have to read it over several times, wouldn't you?"

"So what?" Blair spat defensively.

"So, you get behind. Your problem has a name. It's called dyslexia." The professor watched as the freshman's eyes narrowed.

"I'm not stupid!"

"I didn't say you were. Dyslexics are unique, very special people. They have a gift that allows them to be very creative problem solvers. They have the ability to 'think outside the box', so to speak. You have the potential to be at the top of your class, if only you'd let someone help you past the obstacles."

It was obvious he had his student's undivided attention at this point. He handed Blair a business card. "I've already sent my recommendation to the school. They'll teach you how to control your dyslexia, so that you'll be able to keep up with all the reading college requires."

Blair took the proffered card and stood. "Thanks, Professor Jenkins."

"Call me Benjamin, Blair. Good luck!" He smiled as his student exited the office.

"That class saved my butt," Blair said softly. "If only I'd known about it years earlier. I could have saved myself a lot of grief."

"Don't beat yourself up over it, Chief," Jim comforted. "Why don't you get to bed? You're exhausted."

"Yeah, I think you're right, man. I had no idea this was going to take so much out of me. 'Night, Jim." Blair rose from the couch, still wrapped in the afghan.

A sharp snap brought the ex-military man to full wakefulness. Glancing at the alarm clock next to the bed, Jim noted the time: 2:23 am. Muffled noises from downstairs told him Blair had gone down to his office. From the sound of things, his lover was getting more than a little frustrated. Grabbing his robe, he padded down the stairs and walked over to the door of Blair's old room.

The grad student sat at his desk, broken pencil still clutched in his white-knuckled hand. He didn't even look up as Jim invited himself in.

"What's going on here, Babe? You're supposed to be sleeping." Jim gently pried the destroyed writing instrument from unresisting fingers.

"Sorry, Jim. I didn't mean to wake you." Blair sat back heavily in his chair, looking up at the Sentinel.

"I wasn't sleeping too well, anyway," the older man lied. Picking up the paper in front of Blair, he scanned the contents. "What's this chicken-scratch supposed to be?"

Blair snatched the paper from Jim's hand with an irritated growl. "That 'chicken-scratch' is the beginning of my dyslexia lecture, if you must know."

"I think you ought to come to bed and get some sleep, Sandburg. That paper's illegible. You can start it again after a good night's rest."

"A good night's rest isn't going to help." Blair sighed expressively.

"Of course it will. You'll see. Everything will look better in the morning," Jim cajoled.

"No, Jim. You don't understand. It's all a part of the larger problem. That 'chicken-scratch', as you so colorfully put it, is how I write. It might look some better in the morning, but not significantly. You see, dysgraphia is one of the many symptoms of the syndrome known as dyslexia."

"You're losing me here, Chief." Jim sank onto the futon, bewilderment shining in his eyes.

"'Dysgraphia', Jim . . . it means I have trouble with writing legibly. I can do reasonably well when I'm rested . . . that training course I took really helped . . . but when I'm tired or tense," he waved the paper in Jim's face, "this is what happens."

Jim looked thoughtful. When he finally spoke, it was to ask a question. "If it's such a chore for you to write, how come you don't seem to have any problems filling out my arrest reports?"

"Oh, that's an easy one." Blair smiled. "Those forms are so standardized, I had them memorized the first day. As for filling in the blanks, I use your computer. Typing is a heck of a lot easier than trying to write things out long-hand."

"You sure had me fooled," Jim commented.

"That was the idea." Blair picked up the broken pencil and idly toyed with it. "Put up a good smoke screen. That's one of the first lessons a dyslexic learns. Don't give yourself away."

"Sorry I blew your cover." Jim sounded contrite.

"Don't be," Blair sighed. "It's all my fault for letting this get to me. You would have found out sooner or later. I don't suppose later would have made it any easier."

Jim stood and motioned toward the door. "Let's go."

Blair looked up at his friend as though Jim was down to his last marble.

Jim put on his best military no-nonsense face. "I mean it, Sandburg. Now. Come on. You're exhausted, and this whole lecture thing is eating away at you. You're coming to bed. That's that order. Things will look better in the morning, guaranteed."

"Sir! Yes, sir!" Blair grumbled, giving a mock salute and following the Sentinel back upstairs to their bedroom.

"That's better." Jim smiled with satisfaction. He tucked the blanket under Blair's chin, then climbed in beside him, snuggling close. "Sweet dreams."

"Thanks, Jim." The muffled words vibrated against Jim's chest.

"Any time, Kid," Jim whispered into the mass of chestnut curls.

The internet is a wonderful tool, Jim mused silently as he sat at his desk, munching the roast beef sandwich he had brought for lunch. Usually, he liked to escape the four walls of the Major Crime bullpen at noon, but today he wanted to stay in and do a little research.

Unusually good memory, check. More curious than average, check. Highly intuitive and insightful . . . yeah, that was Sandburg, too. Vivid imagination . . . oh yeah, definitely! Disorganized . . . had these people been following Sandburg around? Had they seen that garbage pile he calls an office? Works when the muse strikes? Well, Blair HAD mentioned that once, although the young man seemed in perpetual motion, working on something all the time. Poor sense of direction . . . oh, yeah! Do NOT hand the man a map and hope to get to your destination! Jim let out a small harrumph over the thought of Blair navigating.

Now here's an interesting slant. . . . Dyslexia might be connected in some way to vision. Special vision-correcting lenses can help in some cases. Huh. And I always thought Blair was farsighted, that he needed the glasses for reading . . . oh. Epiphany time. Jim leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen, shaking his head. This web site had Sandburg pegged to a tee.

"What's up, Jim? Why are you still here?" Simon Banks walked over to Jim's desk and peered over his shoulder.

Jim quickly closed out the screen and brought up a recent arrest report. "Nothing much," he said, trying to sound casual. "I think I might be coming down with a cold and thought it might be a good idea to stay in today."

"If you're not feeling well, maybe you should take the afternoon off," Simon said, suddenly solicitous.

"Nah, I'm okay." Jim sniffled for effect. "I'm expecting Sandburg in this afternoon anyway. We're going out to track down some leads in the Grissom case."

"All right, but you take it easy." Simon turned and strode back toward his office.

Jim continued to muse on the information he'd found at the web site on dyslexia and related learning disorders. The more he thought back on the subtle clues the young man had left behind, the more surprised he was that he hadn't guessed Sandburg had a problem. Some detective he was!

He was startled out of his reverie by a cheerful "Hey, Jim!" as Blair breezed through the door and over to his desk.

"Hey, yourself. Ready to hit the road, see if we can find any witnesses in Grissom versus the State of Washington?" Jim stood, giving Blair a friendly slap on the shoulder.

"Could we swing by that new deli on Mason and Fifth? I'm starved."

"On one condition, Sandburg." Blair looked over at the Sentinel speculatively. "You bring me back one of those monster dill pickles."

"You got it!" Blair returned the shoulder slap, and the two men walked out of Major Crime with their arms companionably resting on each other's shoulders.

It had been a long day, and they were no closer to closing the extortion case against Grissom and his goons than they had been at noon.

Jim sank onto the couch, beer in hand, and turned on the TV. Blair settled on the adjacent love seat, firing up his laptop as he settled his glasses on the tip of his nose.

The quiet tapping of keys finally got to Jim, who hadn't found anything of interest on the television anyway. "I did some surfing around the internet today," he began, abruptly breaking the silence between the two men.

"Mmmm," Sandburg murmured, typing at a slow-but-steady pace. "What about?" Only half his attention was on the man on the opposite couch.

"I looked up dyslexia on the web. I wanted to understand more about what you've gone through all your life."

"Mmmm, yeah? And what did you find?" Blair continued to type as he glanced up briefly at Jim.

"All kinds of stuff. Made me wonder why I never added up all the clues before."

Blair stopped typing and removed his glasses, taking a good, long look at the detective. "Most people wouldn't tie all the clues together unless they knew about the underlying problem. Don't sweat it. I didn't tell you, because I didn't want you to know."

"Why, Chief? Why wouldn't you want me to know?" Jim was genuinely puzzled.

Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Blair sighed. "It's really complicated, Jim. I'm not even sure I could give you a reason. My self-esteem has always been a problem because of the dyslexia. I cover it up with a lot of bravado, so most people don't notice. I guess I didn't want you to think less of me than you already did."

A sigh escaped Jim's throat as he rubbed a hand down over his face. "I admit I didn't hold you in very high regard when we first met, but since then I've come to respect everything about you. I wouldn't have thought any less of you." He got up to move over next to Blair. "Since this morning's research, I admire you all the more. I can't imagine what being dyslexic must be like."

"Would you be willing to do a little testing?" Blair jumped at the opening.

"Sensory tests?" Jim groaned inwardly at the thought.

His partner chuckled. "No. Not sensory tests. More like simulations . . . dyslexic simulations."

"Well . . ." Jim hesitated. He hated Blair's sadistic and creative ways of testing the limits of his senses. What would these simulations be like?

"C'mon, Jim," Blair wheedled. "It'll give you a better understanding, and I'll have more material for my lecture on Saturday."

"On one condition, Einstein." Jim shook a finger in the younger man's face. "I get to test you when you're done with me."

Blair pretended to think about the proposition for a few moments. "Okay," he conceded. "Just what did you have in mind?"

"I think I'll let you stew a bit. At least until I find out exactly what it is you have in mind for me." Jim grinned wickedly.

Blair shrugged, taking the pronouncement in stride. "All right with me, man." He dug through a stack of papers piled on the couch next to him, finally pulling out a single sheet. On the paper was a five-pointed star with a second star drawn inside the first, the parallel lines approximately a quarter inch apart. Blair handed the paper and a pencil to his test subject.

"This is an easy one, Jim." The smirk quirking the corners of his mouth told the Sentinel otherwise. He'd seen that look before. "All you have to do is draw another star between the lines of the first two," Blair explained.

"That doesn't sound so hard," Jim said, grabbing a book to use as a writing surface.

"Using a mirror," Blair added, pulling a small shaving mirror from the recesses of his pack. He held the mirror up, facing Jim. "You have to do it looking in the mirror, no peeking at the paper or your hand."

Jim began a shaky tracing, his vision and touch warring with each other as conflicting sensory information flooded his synapses.

"Stay between the lines, Jim! Nope. No . . . C'mon, you can do this." Blair kept up a running monologue as Jim struggled with what had appeared on the surface to be an easy task.

Finally finished, Jim dropped the pencil from tension-strained fingers. The squiggly lines of his star were all over the paper, inside and outside the lines. Not at all the neat pentagram he had expected to be able to draw. He looked up to see Blair smiling at him.

"That's how I felt last night when I was trying to write out my lecture notes. How would you like to feel like that all the time?"

"And you do? Feel like that all the time, I mean?" Jim wondered.

Blair took the paper and pencil and set them aside. "Not all the time. Like I told you, I've had some training. It's made a big difference toward making my life more normal . . . but sometimes, yeah."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know. I had no idea."

"Most people don't. Don't sweat it." Blair pulled another sheet of paper from the stack. "Here, read this to me." He handed the typewritten page to the Sentinel.

"This looks like one of those damn word search puzzles," Jim muttered.

"Yeah, in a way it is," Blair said. "Start in the lower left-hand corner and read the words up the first column of letters, then move one column to the right and read down the column. Alternate reading up and down across the page."

Jim read the paper easily enough, but slower and more thoughtfully then his usual pell-mell pace. "That wasn't too bad," he said, placing the sheet on the coffee table. "Not what I'd want to do all the time, though."

"That was an easy one," Blair told him. "Try this."

The paper he handed Jim next had a few paragraphs from familiar old fairy tales. The catch was that the lines were wavy, sometimes touching, making it difficult to track across the page. In addition, similar letters were mirrored: b's for d's, p's for q's and vice versa throughout the page. Jim read out loud again, this time with more difficulty. When he finally finished, he put the sheet down.

"This is what you see when you read?" His voice held puzzlement and awe.

"Try that trick with something unfamiliar," Blair suggested, "like an Anthropology textbook, college level."

"You didn't answer my question. Is that what it's like when you read?" Jim pressed his question.

"I read a lot better now," Blair explained, "but yeah, it's like that. Letters reverse, sometimes whole words are mirrored. They can be upside down, backward, almost literally inside-out. Imagine trying to read and having the words appear to move around? To seemingly crawl right off the page. . . ."

Jim shook his head. "I never imagined it could be like that. That's almost . . . creepy."

"'Creepy' barely begins to cover it," Blair sighed, gathering up his things and putting them away.

"One of the things I read about on the internet was the use of colored films to put over the pages. Would that help?"

"Colored backgrounds help stabilize the words and letters on a page . . . for some dyslexics. It never worked particularly well for me," Blair explained. "Dyslexia is a syndrome of related learning disorders. Everyone's different. What works for some won't do well for others. There are some things we all have in common, but there are varying degrees. Compared to some, I'm only mildly effected. The training classes I took eliminated most of the problems. I still have to work at it, though, and when I'm tired or tense it gets worse."

"Are you too tired now to try a little test of mine?"

Blair looked askance at the older man. "Weeeelll . . . I suppose not. I did promise," he conceded. "What did you have in mind?"

"I'd like to see just how good your memory is," Jim told him. "If I read something aloud to you, can you repeat it back to me?"

"If it's short enough," Blair answered cautiously. "If it's longer, I may require more than one reading, or a little prompting."

"How short is 'short enough'?" Jim asked.

"Oh, say maybe a couple of average paragraphs."

"What's 'longer'?"

"The whole page?" Blair answered. "Hey, I don't know! I've never tried a memory test quite like this."

"Let's try it, then." Jim smiled and picked up the book he had earlier used as a writing surface and began to read.

Mrs. Cavanaugh looked out at her class of first graders, seeing a sea of eager faces. "All right, class," she began, "let's get out our reading books. I'm going to start at the front of the room and work back. I want each of you to read a paragraph aloud to the class. Kathleen, we'll start with you. Then, Billy, you read the next paragraph. . . ."

Near the back of the room, Blair Sandburg fidgeted nervously. He hated oral reading more than just about anything. He couldn't let Mrs. Cavanaugh know how hard it was for him to read, and he certainly didn't want the taunting laughs from the rest of his classmates. Counting heads, then counting paragraphs, he found the one he would be reading when it was his turn. As the other students dutifully read their passages, Blair studied his own. Over and over again he read the words, not wholly comprehending, but memorizing carefully.

"Blair? Blair!" Mrs. Cavanaugh slapped her ruler against the top of her desk. Blair jumped, startled at the sound. "Would you care to read for us, please?"

Blushing, Blair stared sightlessly at his book, pretending to read as he recited the words he'd memorized. His performance seemed to appease his teacher, who nodded and moved on to the next student.

Blair sighed with relief. He had no idea what he or the class had just read, but he'd passed another in a long line of tests. . . .

Blair finished repeating back what Jim had just read. "That's pretty amazing," Jim said, awed by his partner's performance. "You just memorized over two pages of text."

"I didn't get it all perfectly," Blair pointed out. "You had to prompt me a couple of times."

"That's still pretty damned amazing!" Jim sat back against the cushions, admiration shining in his eyes.

"I've been practicing that little trick most of my life," Blair admitted. "It comes in very handy during my lectures, or when I have to take oral exams."

Jim reached out to tousle chestnut curls. "You're just no end of surprises, are you?"

Blair winked at him teasingly. "If you knew all my secrets, there wouldn't be any mystery left. Then where would we be?" He closed his laptop and stood up, hurrying to his office, leaving Jim to ponder the enigmatic question.

"Hey, H, Rafe!" Blair greeted the detectives as he entered the bullpen. "Where's Jim?"

"Hey, yourself, Hairboy," Henri Brown chuckled. "He and Simon are over in the break room. Should be back any minute." The large detective turned back to puzzle over the paper Rafe held between them.

"Whatcha got there?" Blair sauntered over to the pair.

"You heard about the kidnapping of Professor Thomason's daughter?" Rafe asked.

Surprise suffused Blair's face. "You've got to be kidding! Rumors are flying all over campus! You guys have the case?"

"Yeah, but there's a snag," Brown sighed. "The professor wasn't happy with how we were handling the case and hired in a private detective."

"Unfortunately," Rafe continued, "the imbecile shot the suspect before we could find the girl!"

Brown snapped the paper from Rafe's fingers and shoved it at Blair. "All we've got is this. Nobody we've shown it to can break the code."

Blair looked at the paper with astonishment. "Have you shown this to Professor Thomason?"

"No," Rafe answered. "Why?"

"Pretty simple, really. He's Dean of Linguistics. This is right up his alley." Blair smiled.

Brown grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, slapping Rafe on the shoulder as he did so. "Let's move, Partner!"

"That's not necessary," Blair said as Rafe was slipping on his coat. "It says she's being held in the old Baxter Building on the south end of town. She's in a janitor's closet on the third floor."

The pair of detectives skidded to a halt. "You could read that?" Rafe asked, amazed.

"It's a simple phonetic alphabet," Blair explained. "I learned it in one of Professor Thomason's linguistic classes when I was studying for my Masters degree."

"Well, I'll be damned!" Brown exclaimed, smiling broadly. "Thanks, kid!"

"Any time." Blair waved as the pair beat a hasty exit.

"Pretty impressive, Sherlock," Jim commented around a mouthful of a Snickers candy bar as he walked back into the bullpen.

"Not really," Blair dismissed the compliment. "I did encounter that alphabet during my linguistics class, but I became fluent in it during that dyslexia correction course I took. They try all sorts of funky stuff to help you read." He smiled.

"Well, it's still pretty impressive," Jim pressed his point. "Where you learned it, or why you learned it isn't important. What's important is, you may have just saved that little girl's life."

The warm praise brought a bloom of color to the younger man's face. Waving off his embarrassment, Blair changed the subject. "Are we going out on the Grissom case this afternoon?"

Jim's smile turned grim. "The judge wouldn't issue the search warrant based on the circumstantial evidence we found. Looks like we'll have to do some 'unofficial' nosing around. You up for a little reconnaissance?"

Blair hugged up against Jim's back as the Sentinel threaded his way through the dark office building. When Jim stopped suddenly, Blair plowed into him.

"What is it?" Blair hissed, so softly that his voice carried only to the sensitive ears in front of him.

Jim held up a hand for silence, tilting his head to listen. "Someone else is in the building. We're going to have to hurry." He moved forward, Sandburg close on his heels.

The pair ducked into Grissom's office near the end of the hall. Using his enhanced senses, Jim broke the combination on the small safe sitting in the corner of the room. Rifling through its contents, he discovered an account book filled with names and numbers. Grissom's extortion racket lay in the palm of his hand, but without the warrant, Jim couldn't seize the book as evidence.

"Damn!" the Sentinel hissed. "It's all right here. If only. . . . Sandburg? How good are you at memorizing numbers?"

"Whatcha got?" Blair peered around Jim's shoulder in the darkness.

"Names, dates, amounts . . ."

"Read 'em," Blair encouraged.

Jim began reading the list as Blair listened intently, silently committing the page to memory.

"Damn!" the Sentinel repeated himself minutes later. "Out of time! We've gotta get out of here, now!" He shoved Blair through the office door and into the stairwell. As they made their way down the stairs to freedom, Jim heard Grissom enter his office.

Across the parking lot, Blair climbed into the truck, wiping beads of sweat from his brow. "That was close, man!"

"Too close," Jim agreed. "But just maybe we have enough evidence now to get that warrant."

"Do you think a judge is going to take my word for what was in that book?" Blair wondered.

Jim slapped his shoulder encouragingly. "I'll back you up. Besides," he added, "some of that can be corroborated by known victims. This guy is going down, thanks to you!"

"That didn't take long," Blair commented a few hours later as he watched Grissom and two other men being escorted, handcuffed, to the interview rooms.

Jim smiled, genuinely satisfied. "If you hadn't been able to recite those names and dates as if you had that book in front of you, it could have taken days, weeks maybe, to close this case. You did good work, Chief."

"Ah, come on, Jim! If you hadn't worked your butt off to get the evidence you did, my little memory trick wouldn't have been worth diddly-squat." Blair waved off the praise.

"Look, Blair," Jim scolded, eyeing the young man sternly, "I'm getting just a little tired of you dissing your own accomplishments. Because you could read that blasted coded note, Professor Thomason's daughter was returned safely to her family. And," he continued, "because you memorized that accounts book, Grissom is going away for a long, long time. You did that . . . YOU." He emphasized his point by poking a finger in Blair's chest.

Blair's jaw had dropped immediately at Jim's rare use of his name. He snapped his mouth closed and just listened, stunned by the unusual adamant praise.

Jim continued softly. "I've been watching you this past week. This lecture you're supposed to give tomorrow . . . it's been bothering you." The young man nodded. "I know it's been dredging up some bad memories for you, but you need to start looking at the positive things that have come out of this."

"Jim," Blair sighed, placing the palm of his hand over Jim's heart. "I know you mean well . . ."

"You're not listening," Jim interrupted. He placed his own hand over Blair's heart. "You have to believe it . . . here." He let his hand drop. "You've developed skills over the years, skills that helped you cope with the dyslexia. Skills that helped solve crimes here today." He turned and started to walk slowly down the hall, Blair following close behind.

"I don't think I ever really appreciated your contributions to my job before," the detective mused. "You're always just sort of there, offering advice which is usually ignored and is frequently right on the money. I owe you one this time."

"You don't owe me anything," Blair insisted, following Jim onto the elevator. They rode down to the basement garage in silence.

Once they were in the truck and headed for home, Jim turned to glance at his partner. "Need help with the lecture notes?"

"Huh?" Blair shook himself out of his meditation.

"You could dictate, and I could write them out for you."

"Thanks, Jim." Blair breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah, that would really help."

"If there aren't any more questions, that's it. Thank you all for listening. I'll hang around for a bit if anyone wants to talk with me privately." Blair stepped down from the podium to a smattering of applause.

"Congratulations, Blair. I guess this makes us even." Benjamin Jenkins approached the young man, thumping him on the back. "I always knew you had it in you to go far. You didn't disappoint me."

"Thank you for believing in me, for not giving up on a bratty kid," Blair returned sincerely.

"Something tells me I'm not the only one who believed in you." Benjamin grinned, eyeing Jim as he approached.

"Benjamin, meet Jim Ellison. He's a detective in the Major Crimes Division of the Cascade PD," Blair introduced the two men. "I've got observer status to ride along with Jim as part of my doctoral thesis study. Jim, this is Benjamin." Blair stood back as the two men studied each other.

"Nice to finally meet the infamous Professor Benjamin," Jim greeted, sticking out his hand.

Benjamin shook the offered hand warmly. "I'm glad Blair's found someone else to stick up for him," the professor said. "The boy always did have a problem with self-esteem."

"Which you're not helping by talking about me like I'm not here," Blair complained good-naturedly.

Jim wrapped an arm around Benjamin's shoulders. "Have I got some stories to tell you!" He grinned conspiratorially.

"By all means," the professor agreed. "How about a cup of coffee? I've got a lot of catching up to do."

"Guys?!" Blair exclaimed, arms held wide in a questioning pose as the two older men walked off. "Hey, guys?" The two continued down the hall, chattering like old friends. Picking up his backpack, Blair trotted after them.