Disclaimer: Fraser, Kowalski et al. are not mine. I'm not making any money from this. Yeah, I know I'm nuts.

Author's Notes: This 33,000 word opus is actually the first fic I have ever written (I just posted The Giving Tree much sooner). Many, many, many thanks to Jean for beta and to my fellow NewRideForever listlings for the feedback and corrections.

Story Notes: I wrote the first draft of this story in September and October of 2003. This story was originally posted to the NewRideForever list in January and February of 2004. I did my best to make it read and feel like a Season Three episode--a mix of crime drama and quirky humor. I would have chosen "Episode-Like" for "Category" if they'd had one. Rated PG for mild violence and a few cuss words.

The night was crisp, the set preternaturally quiet. Undeterred, the figure glided through a gate and past a night watchman snoring in his pickup truck, carefully remaining out of the glare of lights strung at intervals to keep the unwanted at bay. Two rows of trailers, now silent and empty, stretched out before him like an abandoned street in Levittown.

He was sure he had seen her here. He had all the time in the world. He would find her, and his anger would do the rest.

Sticking to the shadows between the right-hand row of trailers, he soon saw his quarry. She had been left in the dark, alone and neglected. He had to suppress a snort of derision at their folly. Blithely unaware, she fluttered ever so lightly in the night air, as if to whisper, "Aren't I the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

She was just out of reach, but that was easily remedied. Lightly, carefully, he climbed the metal stairs to the trailer doors on either side and loosened the knots in the rope suspending her until he could pull her down to eye level. His blood pounded in anticipation.

He removed his weapon from his pocket, the blade catching the starlight, and began to cut, ragged, sloppy, ugly cuts spreading from right to left. He delighted in the crudeness of it, in the red, fluttering shreds left behind, and in the pain he knew he was inflicting. He had to work to keep his breathing under control.

With a final vicious slash, she gave up all resistance and sagged into his arms. With a grim smile, he bundled her up and stuffed her under his jacket...and then he did something very strange.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crisply folded piece of paper and a straight pin. With great care, he pinned the paper to the shredded, tattered remains still hanging from the rope as gently as he'd pin a permission slip to a six year-old's pinafore.

He stepped back and smoothed the paper and pin to make sure they were perfectly parallel with the ground beneath his feet. Then he turned and melted back into the night.

***

Ray Kowalski, his jacket slung carelessly over one shoulder, hurried down the precinct hallway, mentally cursing in time with each boot heel echoing on the linoleum. He knocked open the double doors with more force than necessary and stormed across the bullpen toward his desk.

The doors squealed in protest as they swung to and fro. Lieutenant Welsh looked up from the doorway to his office, coffee in hand, and fixed the detective with an over-the-glasses glare that could have melted concrete.

"Well. Detective. How kind of you to grace us with your presence this morning...or should I say 'afternoon'?"

Christ, he wasn't that late! Kowalski tossed his jacket down on his desk chair and turned to face his supervisor, a glint of rage still in his eye. "Sir, I..." He brushed a hand through his spiky hair and let out a slow breath, calming himself. "I'm sorry, but I got tangled up in that stupid movie they're filming."

Although she was halfway across the room at her computer station, Francesca was never one to miss a juicy confrontation. If it were possible to get a PhD in Eavesdropping, she would long since have become Dr. Vecchio. "Really?" she choked, jumping up from her chair and giving the top of her monitor a whack of sheer delight. "So Ray," she called, hustling over to the detective's desk, "are you gonna be in the movie now? Oh, I would kill for a chance like that...did you see that Tony Klein? He's gorgeous! Almost as cute as--" She barely caught herself in time, but flicked her hair behind one ear and continued smoothly, "--Well, he's pretty cute, if you know what I mean."

Ray rolled his eyes and shot Francesca an exasperated look. "No, Frannie, it wasn't like that at all. I'm coming in to work like usual, I get as far as Union, and then boom, I'm in a parking lot." He glanced over to Welsh, hoping for some sign of sympathy from the lieutenant. "I can't believe they can just waltz in and take over the city anytime they want. Took me more than an hour to get around their stupid chase scene. And all the gawkers just made it worse."

Welsh's disapproving frown seemed chiseled into place. He turned, swept up this morning's Chicago Guardian from his desk, and waved the front section demonstratively in the air. "Detective, if you'd bothered to watch the news last night, or read the paper this morning," he said acidly, "you would have known--like everyone else in this city--that they were using that whole section of town today. I suggest you start visiting your local newsstand, and pronto. They're going to be here for the rest of the week." He tossed the paper onto Kowalski's desk, where it landed with a soft whap, and returned to the sanctity of his office, grumbling something under his breath about cops who lived under rocks as he shut his door.

"Mmm," Kowalski acknowledged, taking the paper and looking at the story at the bottom corner of the front page. "What kinda movie are they makin', anyway?"

"Oh, it's going to be dreamy!" Francesca cooed. "It's about this Chicago police officer, Justin Powell, who uncovers a plot by some crazy anti-government types. They're planning to smuggle guns over the Canadian border, use them to hijack a train, fill the train with explosives, run it into the Sears Tower and blow the building up, and then they want to make their getaway in this stolen Russian nuclear submarine they've got hidden under the surface of Lake Michigan...oh yeah, and there's some stolen Mob money involved in there somewhere too...and..." Her enthusiasm ebbed as she looked over to Ray and saw him nearly doubled over with laughter. "What are you laughing at?" she cried in dismay.

Ray finally managed to regain control of himself and wiped his eyes. "Frannie, that is the most ridiculous, nutty, totally whacked-out thing I've ever heard. Is that really how Hollywood thinks Chicago cops spend their time?"

Frannie blinked, looked away and back at him. "Well...well, why not? Why not make it exciting?" She crossed her arms, settled her lips into a studied pout, and dug in. "'But noooo,' Ray says, 'No, that's not realistic.' Let's make those poor people with their popcorn, and, and, and their collector's cup sodas, just make 'em sit there and watch you drink coffee and fill out paperwork for two hours. Yeah, that'll really pack 'em in. Forget it, Ray! You gotta show action...you gotta show cops wrapping heat..."

"That's 'packin' heat,' Frannie."

She waved him off, undaunted, and drew her arms out toward an unseen audience. "Our Chicago heroes, putting themselves in the eye of fire!" she finished with a flourish. "It makes me all tingly just thinking about it."

"Yeah, well, it makes me wanna puke." He took one last look at the paper, crumpled it into a ball, and slam-dunked it into the wastebasket. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some real cop work to do, nothing about submarines full of stolen Mob money..." He ignored her hurt look and turned away, still chuckling.

***

Ray hadn't been at his desk for five minutes when a familiar figure in red dashed into the bullpen, obviously agitated and...sniffling?

"Turnbull?" Oh, jeez, if it wasn't Canada's Biggest Nutjob masquerading as a Mountie. How he ever got onto the same force as Fraser was beyond Ray's understanding. Maybe he had some really stellar connections. Or parents who wanted him as far away as possible.

"Detective Vecchio..." Turnbull made a valiant effort to compose himself. "Please excuse the intrusion, but a crime has been committed, a horrifying crime! The Consulate wishes to file a report on behalf of the victim and ensure that no effort is spared to bring the perpetrators to justice."

This sounded like it might actually be serious. Why wasn't Fraser here? Ray fished through the chaos of his desk until he found a note pad and a pencil. "Shoot. What happened?"

Turnbull began to speak, but he was drowned out by the foghorn of Welsh's yell. "Vecchio! In my office! Now!"

Ray and Turnbull hurried to answer the summons and lined up in front of The Bellowing One's desk.

"Ah," noted Welsh, turning from the phone to see the Other Red One instead of Fraser, "Constable Turnbull. Glad you're here..." Turnbull pulled a white linen handkerchief from the leather pouch attached to his Sam Browne and blew into it, loudly. "...I think. I just spoke with a very upset Melinda Dottweiler, Unit Publicist for Justin Powell, Supercop."

Ray's face fell. "You've gotta be kidding." That damn movie just won't leave me alone!

Welsh held up a stubby finger. "I'm not done yet, Detective. It seems that she's on her way to the station at this very moment to file a report on...how did she put it...a 'murdered flag.'"

"A what? She's coming over here for a what?"

Turnbull was nodding sadly and wiping at his nose again with that wussy handkerchief. "We just heard ourselves, sir. Miss Dottweiler was horrified, and rightfully so, I might add, at the poor welcome her crew is receiving in Chicago."

"Exactly," said Welsh, getting back on track. "Even if it's just petty vandalism, it's a big black eye for the city. Any minute now, the Chicago Film Office is going to be on that line telling me how much money these films bring into the local economy, and asking me if I want to see it all disappear because I laughed this woman out of my office."

Ray grinned. Sometimes it was great to be low on the food chain. He'd never have to deal with that kind of political hot air.

"I'll say no, of course not," Welsh continued, "and tell him I'm putting one of our very finest on the case." Ray, realizing where this was going, started to protest, but Welsh silenced him with a glare that brooked no dissent. "You will take this woman's statement, and you will do it nicely, or you'll be issuing parking tickets until you have incurable writer's cramp."

Ray knew he was beaten. "Yes, sir."

"And Constable Turnbull...please...ah...pursue this from your end as well, if you would."

Turnbull snapped to attention. "But of course, sir."

"Thank you, Constable." Turnbull remained rooted to the spot. Welsh shot Ray a long-suffering look.

Ray got the message and lurched into action. "So, I guess that means you'd be needin' to get back to the Consulate to, y'know, uh, investigate and stuff, right?" he prodded.

"Why yes, my thoughts exactly," Turnbull marveled. "And may I just say what a pleasure it is working with two sharp, seasoned officers such as yourselves." He smiled and nodded to each of them, then strode out of the office, murmuring to himself, "Amazing...it's like they can read my mind..."

Kowalski hurried back to his desk, trying to make it presentable before Miss Dottweiler arrived. He couldn't help but picture a big, burly woman with dark hair, coppery eyebrows, and giant, sharp teeth, ready to tear him to shreds if he made the slightest mistake. The thought made him tidy up even more frantically. He checked that his badge was at his waist and even finger-combed his hair. In a few short moments, he reached one of the bottom layers of papers. Amazingly, the entire chaotic pile had rested on a single styrofoam coffee cup, still half-full of turgid liquid.

"Well, how 'bout that," he noted, picking up the coffee cup and turning to heave it into the wastebasket, only to come face-to-face with a petite blonde woman. She wore a crisply pressed light blue suit and had her hair in a no-nonsense pageboy, but her smile was the warmest thing he'd seen all week.

She extended a well-manicured hand. "Melinda Dottweiler, Arcadia Films Unit Publicist. I'm in town with the Supercop film crew." She had marvelously green eyes.

"Uh, yeah, I, uh...coffee, Ms. Dottweiler?" Too late, he realized the coffee had big green spots floating on top of it, like a pristine bay marred by an oil slick.

"No, thanks, but I appreciate the offer," she replied smoothly. "And everybody calls me Dot."

Greatly relieved, he dropped the cup in the garbage. "Good. Uh, no, I mean, good for you, 'cause too much coffee isn't, uh, very healthy." He finally remembered to shake the woman's proffered hand. "Good to meet you, Dot. Detective Ray Vecchio. You just go ahead and have a seat," he offered, hurriedly sweeping a stack of files off the chair next to his desk, "and I'll be very glad to take your statement."

Dot brushed a hand across her mouth to hide a smile and did as he asked. "Detective Vecchio," she began, her expression hardening, "it's all very odd. The craft truck people didn't see a thing, but then they're usually setting up before dawn anyway. The next batch of people started coming onto the set between nine and nine-thirty this morning to set up the day's shots, and they discovered this." She pulled a clear plastic bag out of her briefcase. "We had a Canadian flag hanging vertically between two trailers, and during the night, someone pulled it down. This was all that was left of it." She smoothed the plastic over the sad remnants in the bag. The edge webbing and top corner eyelets were intact, but only two or three inches of the red fabric of the flag itself were still attached, and it was ragged and shredded, as if a starving rat had chewed it off. Yep, that was a "murdered flag," all right.

Kowalski gave a low whistle. "What was the guy using, a rusty butter knife? The rest of it won't be much of a trophy in that condition."

"Trophy?"

"Yeah, kids swipe stuff like this all the time. Diehard movie fans. Last year they were shootin' a Wonder Woman movie here and someone took her whole costume, golden lasso and all."

"Did you catch the thief?"

"Well, that was over in District 18, but, uh...no. I'm sure we'll nab your guy, though." If he got any smoother, he'd have to go dunk his head in the water fountain!

"Thank you. I know you'll do your best. Would it be possible to have your forensics staff look at this?" She slid the bag over to him.

"Yeah, sure thing," he said, gifting Dot with a dazzling smile of his own. "It was smart to bag it--it'll preserve anything that might be on there. Fingerprints don't take on cloth, but maybe we can get something else useful off it." He grabbed a random piece of paper from the remaining piles on his desk, scribbled frantically on the back of it, and handed it to her. "Here. If you think of anything else, or if something else happens, give me a buzz."

She nodded, extracted one of her own cards from a slim silver case, and handed it to him with deft grace. "I will. I'd really appreciate it if you could fax over a copy of the Forensics report when it's ready. The number's on the card. Nice meeting you, Detective Vecchio." She gave him a final half-smile and picked up her briefcase.

"Yeah, the pleasure's all mine," he finally managed to mumble to his shoes, but she was already halfway across the room.

She hesitated and looked back over her shoulder at him as she walked out of the squad room, and with a sudden pang in his chest, Ray knew she'd held something back.

***

Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting in the Intrepid, the gray one he liked from the motor pool, in front of the Canadian Consulate, impatiently waiting with the passenger door open. Fraser came down the steps and out to the car, Stetson in hand and a file folder tucked under one arm. Diefenbaker lingered over an interesting patch of grass before leaping into the car and settling into the back seat. "Finally, the voice of reason," he greeted Fraser as they pulled away from the curb, "or as close as we get around here, anyway. Where were you this morning? You find out about a secret invasion plan?"

The clean-cut, ramrod-straight Mountie looked over at Ray and tilted his head ever so slightly to the right, and if Ray had had a microscope to hand, he might have seen a tiny wrinkle of puzzlement form between the Constable's eyes before vanishing an instant later. "Well, no, not actually. Canada hasn't been invaded since the War of 1812, although technically speaking, that was before Confederation occurred in 1867, so that instance might have to be excluded from consideration..." He was about to continue, but then Ray's posture and expression registered, and Fraser realized this educational exposition on Canadian history might best be postponed to a time when his audience of one might be more appreciative. "That is, uh, no, Ray. Bad morning?"

Ray absently massaged the space between his eyes with two fingers and sighed. "Yeah. No. I don't know. I overslept..." (he left out that he'd been up 'til three in the morning thinking about Stella, about how much he still ached for her) "...and then I got stuck in traffic because of that stupid film crew. Weird morning. Must be a full moon or something."

"Ah, yes. The film crew. I understand Turnbull paid you a visit. He was very disturbed to hear that someone had vandalized a Canadian flag."

Ray shot him an irritated glance. "Yeah, disturbed is right. Why was there a Canadian flag hanging there, anyway?"

"Most of the cast and crew are Canadian, and after one of the American actors hoisted an American flag outside his trailer, they responded as a sort of joke." Fraser read through the file as he spoke. "The American flag was untouched, and nothing else was stolen or vandalized."

"So we've got someone who hates Canadians?" It sounded so...unnatural. The words seemed terribly wrong coming out of his mouth. No, that couldn't be it. "It coulda been just a prank. Maybe some gang liked the design and took it for their colors."

Fraser looked up from the file. "I don't think so, Ray. I wasn't there this morning because I was helping prepare some tapes for analysis. The Canadian Consulate has received credible threats on the life of Tony Klein, the actor portraying the character of Justin Powell."

"Oh, you gotta be kiddin' me. Credible threats? From who, someone else who sat in their car staring out the windshield for an extra hour this morning? Now that I can understand." But even as he spoke, Ray felt his stomach start to knot. His gut feeling had been right. "It kinda fits, though," he conceded after a long moment. "You see the flag?"

"No. After a brief telephone interview, we advised her to go straight to the local authorities."

"Fraser, it looked real weird, like something was chewin' on it. I didn't want her to worry, so I told her some crazy fan stole it as a souvenir. I knew it was a lie the second I opened my mouth."

"And Ms. Dottweiler? Did she know?"

Ray thought back over their conversation. "Eh, hard to tell. A real cutie, but slick. You can't trust those media types. She didn't tell me everything, that's for sure." He let out a long sigh. "So what about the calls? When do you think you can ID the guy? It was a guy, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was definitely a male voice. The first call was too short to trace, and the sound quality on the second call led me to believe that it was placed from a cellular phone, which will take some time to follow back--"

"And probably turn out to be stolen anyway," Ray finished.

"Yes, precisely. The tapes are already being analyzed, but it may be some time before the person or persons behind the threats are apprehended."

Ray frowned. "So what can we do about it?"

"Turn here. We can ask a few questions on the set, keep an eye on filming, and implement any necessary security measures for Mr. Klein. Now, turn left here, and we can park over there."

A rotund, bored-looking rent-a-cop ambled toward the car, one ear glued to a cell phone. Fraser pulled a fax out of the folder and showed it to the watchman with a polite smile. Without pausing in his conversation, the watchman nodded and languidly waved them through.

"We'll need to update Ms. Dottweiler on the new developments and perform a security review," Fraser said as they got out of the car and headed through a makeshift gate marked 'Badges Required Beyond This Point.'

"OK, I'll update, you review," Ray volunteered, perhaps a touch too eagerly, but Fraser just nodded absently.

The movie set looked like an anthill and sounded like Bangkok at rush hour. There were trucks and trailers spread around and piles of cables as thick as Ray's arm snaking through the set. One gaggle of people stood talking, smoking, sipping coffee, and munching snacks near the back end of an enormous tractor-trailer, while another group congregated around a wardrobe trailer. Other small circles of people in wildly incongruent outfits were chatting and laughing between shots, and a number of wild-eyed interns darted madly through the throngs bearing props, messages, revised script pages, ringing cell phones, snacks, bottles of water, and various other items. The air thrummed with the sound of generators, calls of "Look out! Comin' through!" as equipment carts were wheeled around, and the low buzz of conversation and general frenzied activity. Ray and Fraser stopped and looked around, unsure where to begin.

Diefenbaker was completely unfazed by the hubbub. He air-scented for a moment, realized an intern in the distance was swinging a bag of raspberry jelly-filled doughnuts in one hand, his all-time favorite food, and tore off after him, licking his lips in anticipation of the "kill."

Fraser snapped out of his paralysis and gave chase, the wolf's white flanks flashing a few paces ahead. "Dief, no!" he yelled, forgetting that it would do no good.

Diefenbaker raced around a corner, sprinted toward the side door of a run-down brick building, and leapt into the air to collect his prize, but he was a second too late. The intern, chattering nonstop into his headset, opened the sturdy metal door just enough to slip inside before Dief could reach him, and the wolf managed only to bounce resoundingly off the door and make an awkward three-point landing on the asphalt.

Fraser skidded up a moment later, torn between anger, embarrassment, and a grim satisfaction that the wolf had gotten what he deserved. Dief immediately plopped down in front of the door, panting in exhaustion and frustration that his prey had escaped him, and looked meekly skyward at his master.

Fraser shook his head in disgust, taking off his hat and bending over to talk to Dief directly face-to-muzzle. "Diefenbaker, you're just embarrassing yourself."

The wolf gave him a mid-pitch reply that was part protest and part "Who, me?"

"I thought we had agreed you wouldn't do this anymore. If that intern had noticed you pursuing him like that, he would have had quite a fright! There's only one word to describe your actions."

Dief made a rising sound that sounded like a guess.

"Oh, hardly," Fraser said severely. "Try 'disgraceful.'"

Dief whined softly, mournfully, and graced Fraser's neck with a quick lick of apology. Then the door flew open as suddenly as it had slammed shut. Dief managed to squirm out of the way just in time, but Fraser was not as fortunate and was smacked roundly on the forehead as he leapt to his feet. "Oh, I...I'm terribly sorry," he offered uncertainly, trying to resist the temptation to massage the sore spot.

A tall, spindly, pinched-looking woman stood there, her salt-and-pepper hair trying desperately to escape its tight bun, no fewer than three clipboards stacked in one arm. At first she seemed to look right through him, but then her dark eyes lit in astonishment. "Justin! I've been looking all over the set for you! What the hell are you doing in that outlandish outfit? Were you all screwing around in the wardrobe truck again? Never mind, Stillwell's steaming, the whole shot is waiting for you, we've got to hur-ry!" Without further ado, the woman grabbed him by the arm, her fingers closing around his bicep like strands of barbed wire, and marched him around the back side of the building toward an intersection that was obviously closed off for filming purposes.

Fraser, momentarily dazed by his encounter with the door and this stranger who was making no sense whatsoever, attempted a tentative, "Ma'am? I don't think--"

"No, sometimes you don't," she snapped.

"No, ma'am, there's been a mistake. You see, I--"

"Am holding up the entire cast and crew because I had to wander off and sneak a cigarette even though my contract says I won't smoke for the duration of shooting!" she roared back.

The woman's outburst stopped Fraser cold. He was now in the middle of an intersection filled with fake police cars, some of which were wrecked. Several people sat in chairs on the opposite sidewalk, grouped around a camera and monitor, and many others were standing around in police uniforms and business clothing. A few wore masks and carried guns that Fraser's trained eye immediately identified as props. He couldn't help but notice that every single person on the set was openly staring at him. He shifted uncomfortably and realized he was turning as red as his tunic. The woman finally released her death grip on his arm and walked the rest of the way over to the knot of people in chairs.

A wiry, compact man, the light flashing off his silvery beard, rose from his chair and murmured a few words to her before turning to address the group. "OK, everyone, this is Scene 82, where Justin leaps out of his car just before it collides with the gasoline truck, and then he confronts the robbers. Hostages, we need you on your marks, officers at initial positions, walkers on the sidewalks in the same groupings and positions as yesterday, and robbers, you will be firing in this scene, so we'll work on the timing of the shots during these rehearsals and get the firing sequence worked out before we roll for picture, OK?"

Like a well-trained army, the mass of people moved quickly into position as the bearded man headed straight for Fraser with a man and a different woman right behind him. Fraser eyed her nervously, hoping he wouldn't be subjected to any more strange outbursts.

"I don't know how he ended up in that," the man sighed, flipping through a pile of heavily marked script pages. "The only guy we have in red in this picture is the hotel doorman. The boots are gorgeous, though." He brought a walkie-talkie to his lips and barked, "Maya, quick, come bring me a standard short-sleeve Justin Powell police shirt--yes, with insignia!--the blue summer-weight pants, and the standard black uniform shoes."

"Tony," the bearded man greeted Fraser amiably, "I know it's on the chilly side this morning, but why are you wearing the doorman's coat?"

Fraser opened his mouth to reply, relieved that he would at last be able to put an end to this gross misunderstanding, and promptly choked as the woman, an attractive brunette in her early 30's, nonchalantly reached up and proceeded to fluff his hair.

"Oh, dear, excuse me," Fraser managed to splutter in his shock, unconsciously backing away and raising an arm to his face to deter the woman from continuing. He was certainly no stranger to subtle and not-so-subtle advances from the fairer sex, but hair fluffing? That was a new one. Heavens, just how far would these Chicago women go?

"Tony?" the woman said in puzzlement, looking more closely at Fraser's face. Her gaze lingered on his features for a moment, and then she hooted with laughter. "Good God! Genevieve, this isn't Tony Klein at all! You look just like him, though...it's incredible! Absolutely amazing!" She shook her head in wonder.

The bearded man stepped forward. "I'm Don Stillwell, the director of this picture. And who might you be?"

At last. This was a question he knew how to handle. He cleared his throat and extended a hand to Mr. Stillwell. "Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father, and for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I remained, attached as liaison officer at the Canadian Consulate." He put his Stetson back on and leveled the brim with a deft flick of his hand, beginning to feel a little more in control of the situation.

Stillwell burst into laughter. "That's marvelous! What a great back-story you've thought up! You're very talented, you know that?" He clapped Fraser appreciatively on the arm, but his laughter died as Fraser stood silently and maintained eye contact with Stillwell, a hint of bewildered exasperation creeping into the Mountie's expression.

"No, it's true," Fraser continued, trying to regain his composure, "although admittedly, it does not explain my presence here today. My superior officer, Inspector Margaret Thatcher of the Canadian Consulate, sent me here to investigate a possible act of vandalism, as well as the death threats lodged earlier today against one Tony Klein, actor. I'm afraid the file was assembled rather hastily, and I wasn't provided with a photograph. You say there's a...resemblance...between us?"

The man who had complimented his boots and the brunette woman looked at each other with raised eyebrows and nodded vigorously. "You're a dead ringer for Tony Klein," the man said, his practiced eye looking Fraser up and down. "I'd say you're within half an inch on height and maybe five pounds on weight, and you've got the same build. Hell, I bet you've got the same neck and inseam measurements."

The brunette stared at him with equal intensity. "The face is maybe a touch more angular, and the hair is a little shorter...the eyes might be a shade lighter, if it isn't just the effect of all that red, but the other features are remarkably similar, and he definitely has the same skin type. Amazing. I've never seen anything like it."

A young woman holding some clothing ran up and stopped in her tracks. Fraser was beginning to feel suspiciously like a horse at auction. Hopefully they wouldn't open his mouth and start going on about how similar his teeth were! "That may be so," he said, with a quick tug on one ear, "but this means that Mr. Klein's whereabouts are still unknown. In light of the recent threats against him, this is cause for concern."

"Yo, Fraser!" Kowalski called, popping into view with Dief at his heels. "The gang's all here, or they will be in a minute, anyway. I found Dot outside the fancy-schmanzy interview room. Klein's just finishing up something or other with some TV crew. Dot said she'd bring him over."

"Thank you, Ray. Your timing is impeccable. This is Don Stillwell, the director of this film, and--"

Ray's face lit up as he shook Stillwell's hand. "Don Stillwell! Wow, this is an honor. I loved Desert Commandos and Knockout Punch. The stunts were incredible! And Street Racer...I've worn out my tape, I watched it like a hundred times. Hey, um, if you wouldn't mind...could I get an autograph?" He went through his pockets, frantically trying to find something for Stillwell to sign. An old Life Saver, a crumpled gum wrapper, a Chapstick, three pennies...

"Ray, we're on duty," Fraser reminded him. "Maybe later. Mr. Stillwell, this is Detective Ray Vecchio of the Chicago Police Department."

"It's always a pleasure to meet a fan, Detective, but you give me too much credit. It's the crew that really determines how a picture turns out. We're fortunate to have some terrific people with us this time out." Stillwell gestured to the man and woman standing nearby. "Such as Greg Pritchard, my AD, and Sheila Davenport, Assistant Makeup."

Greg and Sheila seemed genuinely pleased by the director's praise as they exchanged handshakes and "Pleased to meet yous" with Fraser and Ray.

"Don, we're here!" a female voice rang out. The group turned to see Dot waving and a dark-haired man who looked familiar. Oddly familiar. Eerily familiar...

"Du Doppelgaenger, du bleicher Geselle," Fraser murmured in astonishment. The man approaching him could have been his twin brother! This could only be Tony Klein, and now he understood why Greg and Sheila had made such a fuss. The resemblance was positively unsettling. He did note, however, that Tony's carriage was much more relaxed, and his gait more rolling than his own. Tony was grinning and gesturing, apparently telling the woman a story with great gusto, and then they both dissolved in laughter. He seemed very much at ease and brimming with energy.

Then Tony's eyes met Fraser's, and all expression drained from his face in mid-guffaw. The two men stared at each other in stunned disbelief for several seconds, but it was Tony who recovered first, an impish smile once again lighting his features. "Well, either I had too much tequila last night, or the production company secretly cloned me so they could fire my sorry ass. Which is it?"

Fraser cleared his throat, still rooted to the ground. "Neither one, Mr. Klein. This is...just an extraordinary coincidence, I assure you. My name is Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I'm here at the behest of Inspector Margaret Thatcher of the Canadian Consulate here in Chicago."

Ray leaned in toward Fraser. "Are you sure you don't have any brothers?" He was still wide-eyed in disbelief.

"Quite sure."

"Maybe I had too much tequila last night...no, wait, I don't drink tequila. Maybe I'm just having a really weird dream."

"I don't think so, Ray." Fraser turned back to his mirror image. "Mr. Klein, this is my partner, Detective Ray Vecchio of the Chicago Police Department."

Tony gave Ray a good, vigorous handshake, his expression serious, but the mischievous glint still lingering in his eyes. "Good morning, Detective. What can I do for you? This isn't about the practical joke we played on Patrick, is it? That was just a little on-the-set prank, honest!"

Greg and Sheila burst out laughing, and Tony grinned back at them. "If you want my professional opinion," Sheila giggled, "I think he looks great with green hair."

"Uh, no, no, of course not," said Ray. He and Fraser exchanged a split-second look that said, Not here, not now. And Dot nodded, a movement so slight he would have missed it if he hadn't been looking for it. He had given Dot a hurried run-down outside the interview room, and she had agreed to keep the news to herself and watch Tony like a hawk. "You're not in any trouble or anything, it's just...is there somewhere a little more private where we could talk? Just a few minutes...if that'd be OK with you." There. He'd said it...awkwardly, but he'd gotten it out. Judging by the eyebrows already going up, he had still revealed too much.

"Sure, but we're already behind schedule, and we really need to finish this sequence. How about lunch? It'd be great to get off the set and get some real Chicago grub..." Tony trailed off hopefully.

"Sure."

"Great. We'll break for lunch around three."

"Three in the afternoon? That's when actors eat lunch?"

"It's usually more like five," noted Tony with a shrug. "When you shoot until two in the morning, a five o'clock lunch is perfect."

"Yikes. And I thought we humped a rotten job..."

***

"Mr. Klein, I'm sorry to interrupt your lunch, but could I have your autograph for my mother? I didn't want to ask you before, during the interview, but it would mean the world to her..." A burly blue-eyed man stood next to Tony, nervously fingering the cord securing his "Channel 6 Crew" badge.

It took a moment, but then Tony's eyes lit in recognition. "Oh, right, you were with that last crew!" He smiled. "Sure, I'd be glad to." Fraser handed him a pen and a piece of paper, and Tony wrote a few words to an 'Edith' and signed his name as the man's eyes flicked back and forth between Tony's face and the paper.

"Thanks," he said, taking the piece of paper and folding it neatly in half, "I really appreciate this!" He turned and left, still holding the paper reverently in two hands.

Ray watched the man leave with a faint head-shake of bemusement, then turned back to Tony. "...And stuff like that is exactly what I'm talking about. You got to keep a low profile until we get this guy in custody."

Tony stared down into his coffee with a frown, stirring it with much clanking of the tinny diner spoon. Dot sat next to him, her legal pad already scrawled full of notes, listening intently. "So because someone steals a flag, and then some half-wit calls up the Consulate and says he's going to kill me, I have to tiptoe around and be afraid of my own shadow?" Tony fixed the Mountie and the cop across the table with a hard, angry stare and tossed the spoon down onto the stained Formica tabletop with a clang. "Bullshit. These may be two completely unrelated things, for all we know. Don't make a big deal out of this, especially the crank caller. People like that are only looking for one thing: attention. Ignore him, and you'll never hear another peep." Tony's fingers wandered to a pocket, extracted a cigarette, and lit it almost reflexively.

"Mr. Klein," Fraser interjected, "doesn't your contract prohibit you from--"

"Unenforceable." Dot spoke up, her tone matter-of-fact. "Clauses like that have been struck down in court. Genevieve's just a sore loser."

"Genevieve, is she the one that looks like the Wicked Witch of the West?" Ray asked.

Dot made an unbecoming face. "Looks like her? She is her. I told her this morning that Tony would be doing an interview, and she still made a big stink about not being able to find him. Everyone hates her."

"So why can't someone fire her?"

"Because she's the director's sister." Dot's tight-lipped smile was anything but.

Ray understood immediately. "Ah, politics."

Dot nodded again and took a deep breath. "Yes...but forget about her. What are we going to do about this problem? I want this guy caught, and I want it done discreetly. The press will have a field day with this if it gets out."

Now was the time to test her. "What if he's right and we're making a big deal over nothing? Maybe it's two separate things: one petty thief, one guy desperate for attention." Ray tried to sound nonchalant and slightly bored.

She leaned in, taking the bait. "Detective, with all due respect, if you believe that, you need to find another line of work."

"Oh? Why's that?" Now he would get it out of her--whatever it was she wouldn't tell him at the station. She looked away, then down at the floor, and let out a breath. Ray leaned back and waited her out. Silence was the best way to keep the other guy talking.

"I wasn't completely honest with you this morning. I...withheld something from you. And you," she added, with a glance at Tony.

I knew it! Ray thought triumphantly. He indicated the four of them at the table. "It's just us here now." C'mon, trust me. Spill your guts.

Dot pressed her lips together, then nodded and pulled a plastic bag out of her briefcase. "This was attached to the remains of the flag. With a straight pin, no less." Again, she smoothed the plastic to give him a better look at the contents. Ray, Fraser, and Tony all leaned in to see.

It was a note. Written in an angular, neat script, it read simply, "This is only the beginning. You are thieves. Give back what you have stolen or face the consequences."

Ray peered closely at the paper. Fingerprints didn't usually take on cloth, but paper held them nicely. "How many people touched this before you bagged it?"

"Just me and two or three crew members who helped me get the flag down."

Fraser frowned as he noted the words on the paper. "What do you think you could have 'stolen'?"

Dot pondered for a moment. "We've had a few complaints about traffic and noise problems. Maybe we've 'robbed' some crabby old lady of her peace and quiet."

"In downtown Chicago?" Ray's tone suggested that there wasn't much peace and quiet to be had in that neighborhood under the best of circumstances.

Dot shrugged. "Or maybe..."

"What?"

"We had to fire a sound tech about two weeks ago, in Toronto. Jim something. He was drunk on the job, and more than once. You don't suppose he could have followed us down here?"

"Maybe, but would he slash up a Canadian flag?" Ray moved the bag to his corner of the table. "We'll get this in to Forensics right away, and you'll need to send down the guys who handled this so we can print 'em."

Fraser noted that Tony and Dot still held themselves with a certain tension and decided to fish just a bit more. "Has anything else happened during this shoot that we should be aware of?"

Dot and Tony exchanged a look. "Now that you mention it, yes," Tony admitted. "We had some weird problems in Toronto."

"What sort of problems?"

Coffee slopped over the rim of Dot's cup as she put it down. "Nothing big, just all kinds of little things...the A/C at the soundstage quit working the week it was so hot, the cars had weird mechanical problems, lights and mikes were conking out at odd times, and we somehow managed to lose a reel of film and had to re-shoot four scenes. Management was furious. I thought it would stop once we fired the sound tech, but it didn't."

Ray pounced. "Sabotage."

She tilted her head to the right, considering, not confirming, not denying. "Possibly."

Fraser's eyebrows lifted a full quarter-inch. "Ma'am, wouldn't you say that the previous incidents in Toronto increase the likelihood that these occurrences are in fact all related and of a piece?"

"I suppose so."

"Then I would respectfully suggest two things: that we begin drawing up a list of suspects, and that we take all necessary measures to protect Mr. Klein. If the caller was serious--and I am inclined to believe that he was--he has only this evening, Thursday, and Friday to act."

The group quickly left the restaurant, deep in conversation about how they would proceed. They never noticed that the autograph seeker was staring a hole through the group, his expression unreadable.

***

Mark Caldwell lifted the cold, frothy beer to his lips and drained half the mug at once.

"Hey, take it easy there," the bartender said, "you got all night to get soused."

"If I wanna hear crap like that, Earl, I can go home and hear it from my mom."

Earl just chuckled and dried off another glass. "How is she, anyway?"

"Just the same." Mark ran his thumb up and down the side of his mug, pushing condensation around like a miniature windshield wiper. "She still thinks I'm some hotshot movie guy who came back 'cause Dad died, not 'cause LA shit all over me. Dutiful son, my ass."

"Maybe you should come clean, tell her the truth. You owe her that much."

"And maybe you should shut your yap."

Earl wisely decided to back off for a minute, pretending to take an interest in the horse races blaring from the television as he served another customer at the other end of the bar. When he came back to collect the four empty mugs at Mark's right elbow, he switched to a more neutral topic. "I haven't seen you around much lately. You working again?"

"Yeah. I'm pointin' a camera for Channel 6. Just 'til Friday, but it's the best gig I've had in a while."

"Oh, yeah?" Earl's eyebrows, two enormous woolybears, rose at the news. "You play your cards right, maybe this could be your ticket back."

Mark drained his mug and thunked it down on the bar. "I doubt it. All those blowhards in LA care about is who you know." He pulled a crumpled ten-dollar bill from the pocket of his T-shirt, dislodging a small piece of white paper onto the bar in the process. "Here, I gotta go." He tossed the bill in Earl's general direction and slid off the stool.

"Hey, don't go dumpin' your trash on my bar. This is yours." Earl picked up the piece of paper and opened it. "Another autograph for your mom?" His pendulous lips curled into a smirk as he handed the paper back to Mark. "I see your technique is improving."

"Shut up, man. This one's the real thing."

"The few, the proud..."

Mark flipped Earl the bird over his shoulder as he walked out of the bar.

He was careful to take off his "Channel 6 Crew" badge and stuff it in a back pocket before he unlocked the door to his mother's apartment. He tried to ignore the specks of paint that fell from the frame like sodden confetti as he forced the ill-fitting door open. His nose was immediately assailed by the smells of boiled cabbage and sausage, which did not sit at all well with his alcohol-addled stomach.

A woman's head popped into view from the doorway to the kitchen. "Mark!" The neat gray curls on her head bounced along with the rest of her considerable heft as she came to take his jacket. "Hello, sweetie pie." She drew him in for a hug. "How was work?"

Mark accepted his mother's embrace with a weak smile, his stomach flip-flopping uncomfortably as his mother squeezed. "Great, Ma, just great. Hey, I've got a little surprise for you."

She released him and looked up at him eagerly.

Mark pulled a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and laid it in his mother's calloused palm.

Her jaw fell open as she read the sweeping handwriting. "Oh! Oh! Oh! You finally cornered Tony Klein!" She twirled around in her excitement, reading the message again at arm's length to be sure she'd seen correctly. "Oh, honey, thank you!"

She was beaming with pleasure as she moved to the wall next to the solid but shopworn dining set and removed a large framed collage hanging there. A mosaic of pictures of her son with various movie stars, many of them anything but household names, and notes addressed to Edith on everything from craft service napkins to Post-It(r) notes jockeyed for space within the frame. She removed the backing from the collage and made a big fuss over putting Tony Klein's autograph in a prominent position before returning the frame to its place of honor.

She stepped back to have a look at the new and improved collage. "Just wait until Mrs. Polter sees this!" She impetuously grabbed her son's face and planted a kiss on his cheek. "Honey, I can't thank you enough for this. I'm so proud of you, working day in and day out with the big stars, and you don't let it go to your head, either. That's the mark of a true professional."

"Aww, Ma," he protested, "shooting movies is like any other job, except the hours are longer."

She was still smiling as she returned from the kitchen with two bowls of stew and a beer that she set reverently at her son's place at the table. "Here. Sit down and have your supper and tell me all the interesting things that happened today."

Mark's mind whirled as he struggled to come up with something. He kept his mouth full of stew and beer to give himself a minute to think. Maybe something with...no, that would never fly. He sorted through three or four alternatives before he settled on one. "Well, we were doing this scene where Tony had to drop down to one knee, with his other leg out behind him, and fire his gun over the hood of a car. Only when he had to, you know, squat down real quick, there was this big chhht! sound. His pants tore open right down the middle of his rear end!"

His mother laughed in delight. He had chosen well.

"And then," he continued, relishing the moment, "three guys held a big tarp around him so he could take them off without, you know, showing off his underwear. They handed his pants to the wardrobe mistress and she sewed them right then and there and handed them back inside the tarp. The whole thing was fixed inside of five minutes."

"Oh, Mark, how funny! If you put all these stories together, you could write a book! Wouldn't that be something, to see my little boy's name on the cover of a book?"

"Oh, I could write a book, all right." He put the beer to his lips, but a sudden surge of nausea choked him.

His eyes went wide. "'Scuse me." He jumped up from the table.

It was a good thing the apartment was so small, or he never would have made it in time. He slammed the bathroom door and heaved into the toilet again and again until he had nothing left.

His mother knocked on the door. "Mark? Mark! Are you OK in there?"

Mark cleared his throat. "Yeah, I'm fine. Listen, I'm just going to take a quick shower, and then I have to get back to the set. There's a night shoot going on tonight and I have to be there." He was, in fact, not on again until tomorrow morning, but she didn't need to know that. One more lie on the steaming shit pile of deceit.

There was a pause. "Well...all right, sweetie. I'll pack you up some food, OK?"

"Thanks, Ma." He felt like the lowest worm on Earth.

"I love you!"

Mark flushed the toilet so he wouldn't have to answer. He watched in disgusted fascination as the vomit swirled around and around before going down the toilet. Just like his life.

***

Later that evening, in a hotel bathroom only a few miles north, and yet worlds away, Dot carefully removed the day's makeup, making a face at her reflection when she saw the size and hue of the bags under her eyes. No amount of makeup could completely cover those up. She was dead tired, as usual. Most of the crew, as well as Vecchio and Fraser, were still out at the set, but one of the perks of being a PR person was that you went home earlier than everyone else. Of course, in this business, "early" was anything before midnight.

Damn! She'd managed to chip a nail sometime during the day. Well, that would never do. She extracted a file from her leather toiletries bag and smoothed the ragged edge down. She held the offending nail up to the light and eyed it critically. Marginal, but passable.

She finished her beauty routine with a moisturizer and turned her attention to extricating herself from her clothing. She wriggled out of her suit like a snake shedding its skin and carefully hung the items up in the closet to keep them from wrinkling.

She strolled back into the bedroom area and put on her peach silk pajamas before flopping into bed with the TV remote, a wine glass, and an almost-full bottle of Chardonnay she'd stashed in the mini-fridge. She put two pillows between her back and the headboard, wriggled around until she was comfortably upright, and grabbed the bottle.

She poured the wine, watching the light play off the golden liquid as it tumbled into her glass, and flipped absent-mindedly through the channels as she sipped. A pleasant, warm feeling soon bloomed in her chest. She tried to relax, but she was in her usual state of being too exhausted to fall asleep.

God, what a day. The three TV interviews had been the easiest part of it by far. It was the other stuff that had her mind spinning: the ripped-up flag, the death threats, the weird lunch with the cop and the Mountie who looked so much like Tony it made her--

Wait a minute, what was on that last channel? She flipped back and peered more intently at the screen.

Tony, or rather his character, was talking earnestly to his "wife," reassuring her that even if the big asteroid did wipe out the Earth, he'd always love her and only her.

Dot practically choked as she laughed through the Chardonnay. Well, if it wasn't New Moon Rising! She had done the PR work for that movie, too. She raised her glass in mocking tribute, offered the screen a rousing raspberry, then downed the rest of her wine in one gulp and refilled the glass.

The clichd action-movie dialogue soon made her push the "Mute" button, leaving her free to contemplate the shadows playing out across Tony's face. The words spilling from his mouth might have been hackneyed and silly, but the subtle changes in his expression through a look or a twitch of his lips were perfect, neither overblown nor wooden. He took his "wife" into his arms and gave her a long, passionate kiss.

Dot sighed and rolled the rim of the glass back and forth across her lips, savoring its coolness as she thought back to the New Moon Rising wrap party where she had ended up locking lips with him herself--strictly off-camera, of course. Tony Klein was known in the industry as a work-hard, play-hard kind of guy, and wrap parties tended to get a little wild in any case. Mixing Tony Klein with an oceanside wrap party had resulted in a legendary blowout on a beautiful California summer night, with the moon (in the first quarter and waxing, not new) reflecting off the surf, and a huge bonfire crackling invitingly.

The booze had flowed even more freely than usual, and after some drunken singing around the campfire, more drinking games, and then a beach volleyball tournament, everyone had loosened up quite a bit. Maybe a little too much, in fact. Dot could hold her liquor--it was a requirement in her line of work--but she, like every other female there, had really tied one on that night and started flirting rather audaciously with Tony. That kind of behavior was professional suicide, but she hadn't been able to resist.

She and Tony went up at the same time for the volleyball as it came over the net and whacked heads. They fell to the sand, alternately groaning and laughing, and removed themselves from the makeshift court to get some ice for the lumps already forming. One thing led to another: lumps were gently checked, ice was playfully shoved down certain items of clothing, faces were stroked, and then Dot had been only mildly surprised to find herself initiating a brief, rather clumsy, alcohol-powered make-out session with a married man who would never be more than a colleague.

She could feel her face heating just thinking about it, and rolled the glass over onto her cheek. Even now, two years later, she wasn't sure exactly how she felt: embarrassed, foolish, and, inexplicably, angry at Tony for not stopping her, as juvenile as the thought was.

And worst of all, she felt wistful. She wished they could have had something a little nicer than a sixty-second drunken interlude on the beach. She'd had a giddy schoolgirl crush on the man for most of the shoot, and for months afterwards, she'd had matching idiotic fantasies about rescuing him from some life-threatening situation, consoling him after his wife left him for another man, or getting him such great press coverage that he became the next Tom Cruise and ran off with her out of sheer gratitude. She shook her head in disgust at her own stupidity and drained her glass once more, feeling even more restless than before.

There was no way she'd be able to fall asleep now. Maybe a walk would clear her head. She could use a little fresh air.

She quickly changed and re-did her makeup before grabbing a jacket. It gave her a perverse sense of satisfaction to point the remote at Tony's exquisite face and jab the Off button, zapping him into blackness.

***

"That was the most boring day of my life," Ray grumbled, wishing he could get off his aching feet for a minute. "Fifty takes of the exact same thing, the same lines over and over again, like one of those dolls where you pull a little string in their back." He mimed pulling a string out of his own back. "'Step out of the car and put your hands above your head!' 'Step out of the car and put your hands above your head!' No wonder so many actors do drugs."

"Actually, movie crews are very interesting sociological constructs," Fraser enthused, walking alongside him in the semi-darkness of the set, now quiet after a long day of filming. "They're excellent models of interdependence: highly hierarchical, yet placing great value on each individual and his contribution toward a single goal. They have many points of commonality with Inuit clan structures."

"Yeah, fascinating," said Ray, in a tone that suggested the exact opposite. "The only good thing about shooting until 2 a.m. is, it's only going to be dark for another four, maybe five hours." He glanced at Tony's trailer as they passed it, stifling a yawn. Dief lay on the landing outside the far door, snoring robustly. "At least one of us gets to sleep tonight."

"No one is going to get past us to disturb Mr. Klein, and with the extra guards around the perimeter of the set and at the crew hotel, we should be all right." Fraser waved to the two watchmen on the north side of their loop. "Good morning, Chester, David."

They returned the wave politely, if a bit sluggishly. "Twenty-five," they called out.

"Twenty-five what?" puzzled Ray.

"Laps," said Fraser. "We've passed their post twenty-five times. I asked them to call out 'twenty-five,' 'fifty,' 'one hundred,' and so on as we pass by them."

"Why?"

"It's more for them than us. It keeps them alert for movement and gives them something to do."

"Oh." That seemed smart. He needed something to keep him alert, too. His eyes felt like they'd had a whole beach dumped into them. "So who do you figure is doin' this?"

Fraser rubbed his eyebrow absently as he pondered. "The perpetrator is obviously very angry, and motivated by something very personal."

Ray nodded. "And very Canadian."

"Yes. However, I'd also speculate that this person has few, if any, prior offenses on his record."

"How do you figure?"

"Assuming he's responsible for everything thus far, the attacks in Toronto were very low-key. He targeted property, not people, and he did it in ways that could be attributed to chance rather than a concerted effort to disrupt filming. That implies he has at least some conscience."

"Or that he's just a big chicken afraid of gettin' caught. Do you really think this guy is serious about offing Actor Boy in there?" Ray jerked his head back toward Tony's trailer, Dief's snoring still faintly audible in the distance.

"I don't think we can afford to assume otherwise." Fraser was beginning to feel the day weighing down on his shoulders and thought longingly of his cot back at the Consulate, but quickly pushed the image from his mind. "And, of course, he's mechanically handy, and he works in film or television."

"You think it's one of the crew?"

"It's possible, although everyone we talked to today spoke kindly of Mr. Klein. He's well-liked."

Ray shrugged. "Of course they're going to kiss up in public, he's the star. And for every one person we did talk to, there were three others we missed. Dot said there are over 400 people involved with this week's shoot."

"That's more than the population of Rat River," Fraser noted, impressed. "Good morning, Paul, Jack," he called to the watchmen at the south end of their loop.

"Twenty-five," they groaned as he passed by.

"Speaking of Dot," Ray forged on, "how do we know this whole thing isn't just a PR stunt to grab some publicity for her film? This smells like Orsini all over again."

"She specifically said she didn't want this to get out to the press, and she seemed sincere."

"Yeah, but think, Fraser. Has anyone been hurt? No. And how expensive was the stuff that got busted up in Toronto? A mike here, a lightbulb there...she does a couple hundred bucks' damage and gets all kinds of publicity for it."

"You don't trust her, do you?"

"Not any farther than I can throw her, no. She's media. She's a snake-oil seller. And didn't someone say once, 'There's no such thing as bad publicity'?"

"Yes, an Irish writer by the name of Brendan Behan," Fraser couldn't help supplying. "Although the full quote was 'There's no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.'"

"Yeah, whatever. Stay with me here. When I was a kid, I used to come home from school and watch Scooby-Doo every day."

Fraser gave him a totally blank look.

"On TV," Ray added.

Fraser still looked befuddled.

"Right, I guess you watched dog sled races after school. It was about these kids and a dog runnin' around solving mysteries, and you know what?"

Fraser just shook his head.

"Every time there was some spooky ghost or monster or whatever, it always turned out that the bad guy was just dressing up as the monster, or using spooky lighting or something, so everyone would stay away, and he could keep the gold or diamonds or bank robbery money all for himself!" Ray finished triumphantly.

Fraser absently scratched his throat, trying and failing to see the connection. "I'm sorry, but I don't quite see--"

"The no such thing as bad publicity! She's making up the spooky guy who's gonna kill Tony to get tons of free publicity!"

"Oh," said Fraser. "Oh, yes, now I see. Well, that's certainly a possibility, Ray."

They walked in silence for a while, each man lost in his own thoughts and growing fatigue. Much to his chagrin, Ray's mental jukebox decided to put the Scooby-Doo theme song on permanent repeat. They trudged circle after circle after circle around the set. The night seemed endless.

Some time after Chester and David (or was it Paul and Jack?) croaked out, "Hundred n' twenty-five," a deep "Woof! woof!" from Dief shattered the peaceful night air. Both men instantly snapped to full alertness and took off at a dead run for Tony's trailer. A few seconds later, the barking stopped just as suddenly as it had begun, and Fraser felt his heart leap into his throat. If someone dared lay a finger on his four-footed friend...

They arrived to find a little old lady patting Dief and cooing blissful nothings to him in heavily accented English. Dief sat there, tongue lolling, a goofy canine grin on his face, clearly enjoying the woman's ministrations.

"Why, hello there," she looked over to them with a big smile that revealed a shiny gold incisor on one side, "is this your dog? He's a very pretty piesek, aren't you, boy?" She made silly kissing noises at Dief, who seemed to enjoy every lip-read one of them.

Ray, still breathing hard, advanced on her, but Fraser held out an arm to stop him. "Why, yes, ma'am, he is my dog," he replied smoothly. "I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but you must have come a bit too close to the door there for his comfort."

"Not intentional? Young man," she squinted over at Fraser in the shadows, "you tell me now, what time is it?"

Fraser angled his wrist up to catch the light of the full moon, now low in the September sky. "It is four fifty-eight a.m., ma'am."

"Then my intention is most certainly to be here," she concluded stubbornly, and banged repeatedly on the door with a gnarled hand. "Tony! Makeup! Don't tell me you forget!" A muffled groan came from within. "To makeup! You are there in five minutes, young man!"

"Be right there," Tony called sleepily from within. "It's OK, guys, she's one of us."

Ray finally realized he was still tense, ready for a fight, and shook himself loose. "Come on, Fraser," he said, "the craft truck won't be open for another hour. Let's catch a few z's in the car and then get some coffee."

Dief barked.

"OK, OK. And some donuts."

Dief led the way toward the Intrepid, grinning from ear to ear.

***

"Tony? Tooooh-niiiih..."

"Urrrgh..." Tony blinked his eyes open. He'd dozed off in the makeup chair again. Five a.m. makeup calls were quite possibly the worst thing on Earth. Well, maybe right after four a.m. makeup calls. There'd been no point in going back to the hotel for the scant three hours between the end of last night's filming and this horrifically early start. The first two weeks of a film shoot were always great fun, the middle weeks were a pleasant routine, and the last two weeks always made him swear he'd never do another film. Thank God they were wrapping tomorrow!

"Don't you sleep on me now, kochany," Dagmara's thick accent broke through the fog. "You mess up this pretty gash I spend half my life making, and I give you a real one," she threatened affectionately, staring down pointedly over her glasses at him. She dabbed a bit of color onto the back of a hand half-covered in age spots, angled it into the light to scrutinize, and muttered something in Polish before bending over his cheek once more.

Tony half-smiled and took a deep breath to rouse himself. Daga, as she was known, loved to bemoan her subjects' inability to sit still, stay awake, and keep their fingers from wandering to touch the special cuts, gashes, bruises, lacerations, and gunshot wounds she conjured up. The cast smilingly referred to her as "The Boo-Boo Queen," a title she delighted in.

***

Ray was trudging past an endless row of trailers, trying to reach the end and get to the set before he missed his cue. His line was, "You are under arrest for the murder of Tony Klein." He repeated it to himself, over and over, afraid he would forget it under pressure and make a fool of himself. He began to walk faster and faster, then broke into a run. The watchmen were eyeing him from between the sets of trailers, waving and calling, "Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven..." No matter how fast he ran, they were always there, and he couldn't seem to make any headway. Now they were dancing to the Scooby-Doo song, singing, "You're gonna have yourself a Scooby snack, that's a fact..." Yeah, I'm hungry, a snack would be nice, Ray thought, I bet they'll have something on the set. If he could just get there. He was now sprinting, and surprised he wasn't out of breath, but the set was still somewhere past these rows of trailers. Suddenly, a piercing riiiiiing! shattered the air. All of the watchmen grabbed their cell phones and started talking into them, but there was another, louder, riiiiiing! ...

...and Ray sat up so fast he whacked his head on the ceiling of the car. Fraser was also instantly awake in the passenger seat, and Dief made some grumbly stretchy noises in the back. God, what a dream!

"Vecchio," he mumbled into his phone.

"Detective, have you seen this morning's paper?" It was Dot, and she was not a happy camper by the sound of it.

"Umm, no. Why? What's up?" He rubbed at his eyes.

"I think it would be best if we could discuss this in person. I am on my way over to the set now. I'll be there in fifteen minutes...after I leave a message for your supervisor. Good-bye, Detective."

She was at least kind enough to wait for his fatigued, "Mmm, bye," before hanging up.

"What was that about?" asked Fraser.

Ray was still staring at the phone in utter confusion. "Dunno. She's coming over. Something about the paper. All I know is, I need some coffee, and I need it now."

"Good idea," agreed Fraser, and the three of them made a beeline for the craft truck. They managed to tuck away a large quantity of eggs, bacon, coffee and doughnuts (being careful to save half a jelly donut for Dief) before they saw Dot striding toward them, newspaper in hand.

"Good morning, Ms. Dottweiler." Fraser greeted her with a smile, extending a styrofoam cup in her direction. "Coffee?"

She peered carefully into the cup before accepting. "Certainly, thank you, Constable." She nodded curtly in Ray's direction. "Detective Vecchio."

"Dot," Ray replied just as curtly. "Uh, listen, would you mind tellin' us what's got you all in a tizzy? We were up all night protecting your guy, you know."

She looked around nervously. "Where is he now?"

"Not to worry, ma'am," Fraser said, "he's in the makeup trailer."

She relaxed. "Good. Daga will make sure he stays out of trouble. Now, would either of you mind telling me how this got out to the papers?" She pointed to a headline on the front page of the local section of the Guardian. It read, "DEATH THREATS PUT CANUCK HUNK IN FUNK," and had a picture of Tony looking down at the ground in his Justin Powell uniform. A small patch of out-of-focus red serge in one corner confirmed that this picture had been taken yesterday afternoon from behind the roadblocks where fans could watch the filming. "In about four hours, I'm going to be deluged with angry calls from LA, and I'm 'all in a tizzy' because I could lose my job. It's my responsibility to ensure that things like this stay on the set, and look what happened."

Ray still wasn't buying it, and his glance to Fraser said as much.

Fraser extended a hand toward the paper. "If I may?" Dot reluctantly handed it to him. "Thank you kindly. Did you talk to a Clark Kent at any time this week?" he asked, tapping the byline.

Dot shook her head emphatically.

"According to the text of this article, the information was provided by 'anonymous sources who spoke to The Guardian by phone.' That could be just about anyone. Why do you feel Detective Vecchio or I had something to do with it?" Fraser was still flawlessly polite in the way only he could manage.

Ray, however, was starting to feel decidedly surly, and went straight for the jugular. "For that matter, how do we know it wasn't you pullin' a Scooby-Doo?" he snapped.

***

"What time is it?" Tony asked Daga, suppressing a yawn. A smudge of pink was visible off to the east through the trailer window, and the morning symphony of city traffic, honking taxis, and the pffft! of transit buses' pneumatic brakes was just beginning to play in earnest.

She checked the clock on the opposite wall. "Eighteen after six. You had a long night, I know, so I am nice to you. I give you coffee-but you drink only from this side," she warned, tapping the unblemished left side of his face.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"No smiling until this sets! Don't ruin it," she blustered, before giving his shoulder an affectionate pat and inspecting the coffee still in the pot. In deference to her advanced years, Daga was given the end chair in the trailer, and both the door and the kitchen appliances were within easy reach.

"Today is your lucky day, this is only from yesterday. Two minutes in the meecro-wave, and it's like fresh!"

He began to smile before remembering her admonition. "You're too good to me," he deadpanned.

As she hunted for a clean mug, transferred the coffee into it, and tapped the necessary keys to bend the microwave to her will, Tony's eyes wandered over the pictures Daga had carefully taped around the entire expanse of her mirror. Some were in color, showing laughing children with stuffed reindeer or Easter eggs in their laps, and others were obviously much older, showing thin, dour couples and families glowering at him from their joyless black-and-white existences. All of the pictures were lovingly sheathed in clear plastic sleeves, so the tape she used never touched the pictures themselves. Even though they were only here for a week, she had insisted on bringing her "entourage" with her, telling Stillwell that leaving her family behind, even for a week, would be a terrible dishonor to them. Since she was dearly loved by the cast, and a great makeup artist to boot, her ancestors had indeed made the journey with her from Toronto to Chicago.

***

Dot was thrown completely off-balance by Ray's outburst. "Pulling a Scooby...what?"

Fraser intervened once more. "Ma'am, Detective Vecchio believes it is possible...although it is merely a tentative working hypothesis at this point...that you yourself had someone place those calls yesterday to spur a round of publicity for your film, resulting in coverage such as..." He gestured apologetically to the paper. "...this."

Dot looked ready to explode. "I most certainly did not! How dare you accuse me of making false threats!" she spat at Ray.

"Oh, yeah, but it's OK for you to finger us because you're a fancy-pants suit and we're just two dumb cops?" Ray shot back, all decorum forgotten.

***

"There." The microwave obligingly kicked into action. Daga saw Tony's eyes on her pictures and walked over to them, tapping an older one of a particularly sour-faced young man with a mustache. "That was my uncle Wladyslaw," she said, resuming her work on Tony's face, "just before the First World War broke out. Funny man, great sense of humor. You think the craft truck has bad coffee...during the war he made coffee from barley! Pretty terrible, too, my father said. He was something of a hero during the war, my father. He..."

Tony was suddenly distracted by the microwave and lost the thread of the conversation. It was making what could only be described as unnatural noises and...sparks?!

"Daga, hold up a second. Something's wrong with the microwave." He moved to rise from the chair, but Daga was absorbed in her artistry and did not step aside. Maybe Daga put tin foil over the top of the mug for some reason? He didn't want to ruin hours of work over a piece of tin foil.

The microwave made an ominous popping sound, and the outlet into which it was plugged began to smoke. So much for the tin foil theory. The microwave was apparently dying a spectacular death worthy of a special-effects crew. They needed to find the fuse box and cut the power to this place before it started a fire!

"Daga. Something is very wrong," he added more stridently. Daga had suspended her story about her heroic father, but was still bent over his face.

The smoke greatly increased in quantity, and now he saw flames licking out of the socket and beginning to spread up the wall. Oh, shit.

"Daga, stop!" He grabbed her wrist and moved the fine brush away from his cheek. "We have to get out! This trailer is *on fire*!"

Daga took one annoyed glance over at the fire, obviously wanting to wring its insignificant little neck for interrupting her work. "We put some water on it, it's OK!"

But Tony was already up and pulling her toward the door at the other end of the trailer. "No, it's an electrical fire! We have to get out, now!" He could feel the smoke beginning to sting his eyes and burn his throat.

***

Fraser stepped between Ray and Dot before any more ugly words could be uttered. "Ms. Dottweiler, Ray, this is not productive. I think we have established that to our knowledge, no one here was involved in leaking any confidential information. The best we can do is talk to the reporter and see if we can get him to reveal his sources."

Dot laughed, a harsh, mocking sound. "Constable, journalists tend not to reveal their sources unless there's a court order involved."

"Then perhaps we should consider--" He broke off and sniffed the air in alarm.

Dot and Ray did the same. "Burnt...toast?" suggested Ray, looking toward the back of the craft truck.

Fraser shook his head, sniffed again, and then it clicked. "The makeup trailer." He was eight feet away by the time the newspaper he'd dropped hit the ground.

"Oh, God," Dot gasped, "oh, God!"

Ray tossed his phone at her. "Call it in! Call it in!" he barked, before taking off after Fraser.

Dot dialed as she, too, ran for all she was worth.

***

Daga planted her feet like a stubborn mule and snatched her wrist away from Tony's grasp. "Not without my pictures!" she cried. "I just grab them, it only takes a second..." She started pulling down Wladyslaw and his kin from the right side of the mirror, coughing, squinting through the smoke, the left side of her face lit by the advancing flames.

Tony spared another nervous look at the fire. It was generating thick black smoke, and the flames were closing in on the ceiling and the near corner of the trailer. He'd had a small part in a movie about firefighters a few years back, and his blood ran cold as he recalled the lectures they'd been given by the expert consultants. They'd talked a lot about flashover, the scary moment when a fire went from growing to fully developed, burning all available fuel within a compartmentalized area. The trailer was not all that big. If they didn't get out before the ceiling caught...

"Daga, no! Get out! Come on!" He grabbed her upper arm and dragged her away from her mirror, ignoring her feeble protests, knowing every second counted. He was barely able to see. The far wall wavered in his vision. His head was starting to swim, and he felt dizzy and lightheaded. The smoke will kill us long before the flames will, he thought frantically, and then he remembered that air closer to the ground was usually less noxious. He dropped to his hands and knees, his mind racing. What do I do? What do I do? He panted for air, panic threatening to rip a scream from his throat.

There. The silver door at the other end of trailer winked in the light of the flames like a beacon, cutting through the smoke that was now so thick and dark it seemed palpable. Now if he could just get over there without passing out! Crawling on all fours, he began to drag Daga to the far door. His eyes stung fiercely, like a dozen paper cuts at once, and teared until he was blinking a constant stream out of his eyes. He felt like he was breathing through a straw. Where the hell was the silver door? Maybe he had only imagined it.

The heat was rapidly growing unbearable. He was a dying man trying to crawl across the desert to the shimmering oasis. His vision narrowed until he was looking through a tunnel, the rest consumed by the fire. His heart pounded wildly in his ears. Daga suddenly seemed to be made of solid gold, she was so heavy. He felt strangely disconnected from the flesh and muscle of his body, as if he were guiding a remote-control robot rather than his own arms and legs. He was just aware enough to realize they weren't going to make it out. He and Daga were going to die inside a makeup trailer. Christ, what a way to go. If only I had quit smoking, he thought ruefully, his free hand flopping to the right as he crashed to the floor.

His hand hit something smooth and hard and cool. The door. He was there! But it was so comfortable here on the floor, he just needed a minute to rest... Stand up, you idiot, he told himself sternly. Get up! Now! This is your only chance to live!

Summoning his strength for one last effort, he wobbled unsteadily to his feet. He saw stars; it would be a matter of seconds before he blacked out, and he wasn't going to be able to get up a second time. Daga leaned on his left hip, apparently dazed but conscious. The fire was now roaring audibly in his ears, hissing and popping in some sibilant demonic language of death and destruction. He used both her weight and his to lean on the bar stretching across the door.

It opened, and the cool air embraced them like a benediction. Unable to right themselves, they both tumbled onto the landing and down the two steps to the ground. Flat on his back, Tony coughed and gratefully sucked in a lungful of downtown Chicago air, then another, and nothing in his life had ever tasted so fresh and pure. The cloudless blue sky above him, stars slowly winking out as the sun prepared to make its grand entrance, gradually took on a crisper outline. He heard Daga alternately coughing and crying a few feet away.

His head began to clear. They had not died in a makeup trailer. They were alive! Alive, alive, alive! Then it occurred to Tony that six feet away from the door was probably not the best place to be, especially with all the cosmetics and aerosol cans still inside. He got up as quickly as he could, helped Daga to her feet, and moved her into the center aisle, away from the burning trailer. "Daga. Daga. Daga! Look at me. Are you all right?" He was not a particularly tall man, but he towered over her. Gently, he lifted her chin and looked down into her sooty, tear-streaked face. She was crying and mumbling brokenly, one hand clutching his shirt, the other a half-dozen photos. He couldn't make anything out except the music of the sirens in the distance. "Listen, the fire engines are coming. Sssh, Daga, we're all right, and that's the important thing."

Movement caught his eye, and he looked up to see Fraser and Vecchio barreling toward them, followed by Dot. He nodded that they were unharmed, more or less, and saw profound relief wash across their faces before looking back down at poor Daga, who didn't deserve any of this.

"Nie, nie, no, I'm not all right," she sobbed. "My family...I only save a few of them." She looked down at the pictures in her hand and cried even harder. At a loss, Tony wrapped his arms around the old woman and held her close, trying to spare her the view of the fire. He stroked the top of her head and watched with a feeling of utter helplessness as the trailer burned, the orange, flickering light casting hideous shadows on his half-finished scar.

***

Don Stillwell was clearly in a melodramatic mood. "How could this happen? How could our star come this close to being burned to a crisp?" he bellowed.

"And Canada's best makeup artist," Tony added, shifting uncomfortably. An hour after the fire, he was showered and in costume, sipping a mug of hot tea as he tried to wrap his mind around what had happened. He had suffered only a few minor, easily camouflaged bruises in his tumble out of the trailer. He looked like his usually dapper self on the outside, but he was still shivering inside at his narrow escape. The first thing he had done was call his family back in Toronto to let them know he was all right, before they heard about it through the grapevine or on the news.

The chic interview couch was not really made for extended sitting, and Tony's back was already beginning to complain, but the interview room was the best available place for an impromptu meeting. Stillwell, Dot, Tom Daigle, the fire investigator, Genevieve, and Fraser and Vecchio, along with Dief, arranged themselves as best they could on the couch, the matching armchairs, or the carpet to form a rough circle. Daga had been taken to the hospital as a precaution, but would likely be released by mid-day. How could Stillwell forget about her? Precaution or no, she was the one in the hospital, damn it!

Stillwell still wasn't satisfied. "What about the sprinkler system? Wasn't there a fire extinguisher, at least?"

Dot paged through some notes. "The trailer was old enough that it wasn't required to be equipped with a sprinkler system. There was a working fire extinguisher...it passed inspection three months ago. Unfortunately, it was at the opposite end of the trailer from where the fire started, so there was really no opportunity to use it." She passed a few pages over to Lt. Daigle, a gray-haired but still robust man in his 50's.

"Thank you," said Daigle, glancing through the forms and checklists. "From what Mr. Klein says, it sounds like there was a simple short circuit in the outlet. Faulty wiring causes a lot of fires like this."

"Sir," Fraser chimed in, "is there any evidence that the outlet or microwave was tampered with?"

"Slow down, son. The site's not even cold yet, and you want me to traipse through there and tell you that? I need to fill out some paperwork on this, talk to a few folks...it'll be this afternoon at the earliest before I can tell you anything useful." He got to his feet. "I'm sorry about all the ruckus, but I think most people would rather replace one trailer than hold two funerals. Thank you for your help. If you'll excuse me, I need to get back to the office and start working on this." He gathered his things and left.

"Ruckus is right," sighed Dot. "Channel 12 and Channel 6 both had their traffic copters over the fire, sending live shots of our burning makeup trailer to every house in Chicagoland. Channel 8 has already asked to send a team down to cover the fire for the noon news. And now they're all going to ask me about the death threats while they're here. Maybe I should just resign now."

"Maybe you should," said Genevieve tartly, looking at her watch. "We were supposed to start our first scene twenty minutes ago. It's all day scenes today, so we need every minute of sunlight if we want to stay on schedule. We can do a quick rewrite to get by without Tony's scar today, but the show must go on," she reminded everyone, rising from an armchair and brushing the lint off her clothes. "Chop chop!"

"Uh, excuse me, Genevieve, but before you go, aren't we forgettin' something kind of important?" Ray said.

"I don't think so, and it's Ms. King to you, Detective," she replied coolly, as if she were talking to an eight year-old.

Ray swallowed his anger with difficulty. "Your star, Ms. King. We need to tighten things up around this place to keep him safe."

"Really? Who died and made you Security God?"

"Look, lady, I have direct orders from the Chicago Film Office to do everything I can to prevent an international...big mess." Not totally accurate, but close enough. "So listen up. One: no extras wandering around the set. They're supervised at all times. Two: put the fan barricades further back. You've got the crowd so close, someone could take him out with a slingshot. Three: the press bozos go through metal detectors on their way in, and their stuff gets searched. Anyone who doesn't like it doesn't get their story. Any questions?"

To his surprise, Dot had his back. "Those are very solid suggestions, Detective. We'll implement them right away, and thank you for bringing them to our attention." She handed him his phone back, her eyes imploring his forgiveness. "Thank you."

Genevieve sighed dramatically and looked at her watch again. "Fine, whatever. Now we're twenty-two minutes late...let's just get on with this. Tony, fire or no fire, you're not being paid to sit around and mope." She shuffled her clipboards importantly and breezed out the door.

As much as he wanted to smack her, Tony knew Genevieve was right, and offered no argument. He felt like he was eighty years old as he got to his feet and followed her out the door, Dot and Stillwell close behind him.

"Why couldn't our wacko nail her instead?" Ray murmured to Fraser as they brought up the rear.

***

Emerging from the small building, Fraser and Ray nearly collided with Margaret Thatcher.

"Inspector Thatcher," Fraser greeted her with surprise, "good morning, Sir."

"Constable Fraser, Detective Vecchio," she nodded briefly to each of them, smoothing the skirt of her tailored business suit. "I saw the news report and wanted to make sure that everything...was secure." She looked Fraser up and down, a slight frown on her face. "You don't even smell like smoke."

"Yeah, he was Febrezed at birth," volunteered Ray.

But Fraser knew he was guilty as charged, and he looked down at his boots in shame. "Yes, Ma'am...I'm afraid we didn't arrive on the scene until after Mr. Klein and his makeup artist had already extricated themselves from the structure. We were...otherwise occupied at the moment of crisis." He slowly lifted his eyes, expecting the Inspector to fix him with a disappointed glare, but she just looked confused.

"Constable, I saw you on television. Your face was sooty, you had a gash on your right cheek, and you were comforting an elderly woman, whom I assumed you had saved from the inferno. Are you telling me I'm blind?"

"No, sir. It seems that Tony Klein and I look remarkably similar. It was Mr. Klein whom you saw, but he was uninjured. The makeup artist was applying the gash when the fire broke out."

"Ah." She considered this for a moment. "Well, that's not why I'm here. The voice analysis is in." She pulled a folder out of her bag and handed it to Fraser.

"No match," he read, disappointed.

"That's right. But I thought that since you've spoken with many of the crew members since the calls came in, you might recognize the voice now, so I brought a copy of the tape. It's been re-mixed for the best possible clarity."

"Good thinking, sir."

"Just tell me you recognize the voice." She pulled a small tape recorder out of her jacket pocket and pressed the play button. Fraser and Ray leaned in to listen. Ray closed his eyes and tried to relax, letting the voice wash over him.

"Nope," Ray said, "whoever that guy is, I haven't talked to him."

"Nor have I, I'm afraid," said Fraser.

"But," Ray added, "I'd bet everything I own he's a hometown boy, born and raised right here."

"That's some help, at least," admitted Thatcher. "Listen to it again and see if you can tell me anything else." She rewound the cassette to the beginning and played it once more.

The first call, a message left on the Consulate answering machine, was brief and to the point. "Tony Klein is dead," the voice said menacingly, and hung up. After a slight pause, the second call began to play: "Good morning, bon jour, Canadian Consulate, Consulat du Canada, Temporary Assistant Interim Associate Deputy Liaison Officer Renfield Turnbull speaking, Provisoire...uh, sorry, I don't know what my title is in French, pardon, je ne sais pas ce qui-"

"Shut up and listen to me, you twit!" the caller yelled in frustration.

"I beg your pardon," replied a hurt Turnbull, "but I was just trying-"

"Shut up! Do I have put to put a padlock on your big fat mouth? Now listen..."

"What was that?" said Fraser.

Thatcher stopped the tape. "What?"

"There's something in the background there. Could you play that section again?"

She briefly rewound the tape and turned the volume up. "...PUT A PADLOCK ON YOUR BIG FAT MOUTH? NOW LISTEN..." There was something tinny in the background at the end of the question and at the beginning of the following sentence.

"Trash cans clattering? Someone emptying a dumpster?" mused Thatcher. She rewound the tape and played it again.

"A clock!" exclaimed Ray. "Big one, too. It's chiming, uh..."

"Quarter past the hour," supplied Fraser. "But the call was received at ten-eighteen."

Thatcher nodded. "The clock must have been three minutes slow."

"Hey, wait a minute," Ray interrupted, "why didn't Turnbull tell me about this if he was the one who took the call? And how do you know your clock wasn't three minutes fast?"

"We had to get clearance from Ottawa before we could share that information with anyone outside the Consulate," Thatcher rejoined frostily. "And we have three radio-controlled clocks that automatically synchronize themselves with the National Clock in Ottawa every morning at 3 a.m. We communicate with people in five time zones on a regular basis, so it's important to know what time it is."

"Sure, but down to the nanosecond? Is being anal a requirement to get into Mountie school?" Ray found this thought highly amusing.

"Laugh all you like, Detective, but unless your forensics squad gets our man's fingerprints from that note, this is the only concrete lead we have."

"So we're looking for a public clock that chimes Big-Ben style and is three minutes slow? What are we going to do, drive around the city with our windows down until we hear it and go, 'Ah-ha! That's the one!' and then seize the cell phones from every house within earshot?"

"It is a nice day today," Fraser said. "Finding the clock would at least help us pinpoint the suspect's location."

Ray shrugged. "I guess it beats watching the robots recite their lines five hundred times. OK, let's rock and roll."

"Wait." Thatcher produced the smallest of the Consulate's three radio-controlled clocks, a small desktop model, from her bag and handed it to Fraser along with the tape recorder. "Good luck, Constable. After the latest incident, we really shouldn't leave Mr. Klein to his own devices. I'll keep a close eye on him until you get back."

"I bet you will," Ray muttered.

"What?"

"I said, 'It's such a thrill.' Watching a real movie being shot, I mean."

"Mmm." Thatcher didn't believe him for an instant, but let it pass. "I'll call if there are any developments here. Hopefully, Turnbull will manage not to burn down the Consulate in our absence. He said that if our would-be murderer called again, he'd be sure to take down a number where he could be reached." The last elicited an exasperated eye roll from the normally composed Inspector.

"Very good, sir. We'll let you know if we find anything."

"Yeah, like Turnbull's brain," snickered Ray.

***

[If you like, you can play Anita Ward's "Ring My Bell" on your mental jukebox over this montage...] Ray might have been better off with the robots. He and Fraser crisscrossed the city all the way up to Evanston and went west, out to Park Ridge, before turning south and heading toward Cicero, keeping their eyes peeled for large public clocks. They seemed to be everywhere: on churches, libraries, city administration buildings, and at the university campuses they crawled past. Every one required finding out whether it chimed, and how, and for the few that seemed promising from pedestrians' descriptions, they had to wait until the next quarter hour and listen to it.

They'd heard five Big Ben clocks so far today, and only one of them sounded close to the recording, but it was two minutes fast, not three minutes slow. Frannie had tried to help as best she could by providing some addresses gleaned from the phone book, but she kept giving them Oak Park when they were in Skokie, and vice versa. Despite growing up in Chicago, she had a notoriously poor sense of direction. She'd once gone to visit an old school friend at her new apartment in Naperville and ended up in Milwaukee.

Ray checked the gas gauge and sneezed for the twelfth time in the last hour.

"Bless you, Ray." Fraser reflexively extended a tissue so his partner wouldn't have to take his eyes off the road.

"Thanks. This ragweed is killin' me." The windows on the car had been down all day, of course, the better to listen with, and it was beginning to take its toll on him. "Hey, we're going to need some gas soon." His stomach growled noisily. "And some lunch wouldn't be bad, either." He turned his head toward the back seat for a moment. "You hungry, Dief?" he asked the warm amber eyes. Dief's head popped up eagerly, but when no food was immediately forthcoming, he lay down again with a long-suffering sigh.

"Now would be a good time to refuel, while we're still in the suburbs. As you know, there aren't many stations inside the city limits. I wonder why that is?" Fraser pondered.

"Who cares? There's a Shell station, that'll do." Ray swung the car around expertly and began fueling. He moved the metal tab into place to secure the pump handle, then leaned his arms on the driver's side window.

"You ever want to be an actor, Fraser?"

His partner considered the question for a moment. "Since I was home-taught, I was never in any school plays--of course, they were restricted to pieces with fewer than ten parts anyway. There was the Nativity play at church at Christmas. I was a bit on the retiring side, and...different from the other children, so I didn't enjoy that much. I usually tried for a bit part or handled the costumes. One year I was a camel." He smiled ruefully at the memory.

Ray swatted at an errant yellow jacket, shooing it away. "I guess that's a 'no,' then."

"Yes, I suppose so. But every so often they'd have Film Night at the Greater Tuktoyaktuk Community Centre, showing wonderful old classics like The Wizard of Oz, or Casablanca, or a Doris Day movie, and I was..." He cast about for a word, a faraway look in his eyes. "Transported. It all seemed so exotic, and magical, and so completely unlike how we lived. I always thought of America as a place where everyone was terribly witty and loved to burst into song for no particular reason."

Ray chuckled appreciatively and wanted to reply, but was suddenly busy shooing away several more buzzing insects. "These things make me crazy...there's always a ton of 'em this time of year. Do you have yellow jackets in the Northwest Territory?"

"Territories," he corrected automatically, "and no, we just have poisonous tundra beetles, polar bears...Ray, I suggest you move away from the garbage can behind you..."

Ray realized his swatting was only angering the insects, and moved back to take the nozzle out of the now-full gas tank. "Receipt..." he reminded himself, turning to the touchpad above the pump.

"They won't reimburse without a receipt any more," Ray explained as he jumped back in the car, careful to roll up the windows so that the yellow jackets were on the outside.

"What about you, Ray, did you ever want to be an actor?"

"With a name like Stanley Kowalski? Every year on the first day of school, the teacher would call it out off the list, and the whole class would laugh at me. I'd tell her I go by Ray, but the kids would tease me about it 'til Christmas. They'd come up to me and yell, 'Steeelllla!! Steeeellllla!'" Ray broke into a grin, and his voice softened. "I think it helped me win Stella. I'd tell her all the time that it was fate, that she was meant to become Stella Kowalski..." The grin vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. "Well, we see how that worked out." He gunned the car out of the parking lot. "Let's drop by the station and light a fire under Forensics. They should have something by now." His appetite had vanished.

***

The file folder whizzed across the bullpen like a manila Frisbee, narrowly missing Jack and his partner Dewey, who had to bend back to avoid being clipped in the nose.

"Hey!" Dewey protested. "I said I was sorry about that thing I said!" Jack said something to Dewey in a low voice, retrieved the folder, and brought it back to the desk from which it had been so violently flung. Ray looked even worse than usual: his eyes were drawn and puffy, his skin looked blotchy, and neither he nor his clothes were April fresh. He had the look of a man who'd been on stakeout for too long.

"Ray, what's eating you?" Jack asked, a note of actual concern in his voice.

Ray accepted the folder with a sigh. "Forensics couldn't ID the perp from the note...the film crew, you remember." Jack nodded. "They're sending some little fibers and hair particles and stuff for DNA testing, but none of that's any good unless we have someone to match it with." He banged his fist on the desk, making the phone and desk lamp jump in apology. "Unusable prints! No voice match! It's like this guy doesn't exist!"

"That bites, all right," Jack agreed. "I guess you'll just have to keep digging." He really didn't know what else to say, and moved off to rejoin Dewey, who was waiting at the door.

"And I swore I'd already come up in China," Ray tried to joke, but it fell flat.

Fraser carefully opened the bullpen doors with his back and struck a course for Ray's desk, a cup of coffee in each hand. Then he saw Ray's sour expression and stopped short. "The prints were unusable." It was a statement, not a question.

Ray nodded. "The crew prints were perfect. Only the last set belonging to Mr. Bad Guy was unusable." He gratefully accepted a cup from Fraser and took a long swig, not tasting the coffee at all. "What now?"

Fraser sipped his own coffee as he considered their options. "Perhaps we could schedule an appointment with the reporter who wrote the story about the death threats. Although he is not legally required to divulge his sources, if he knew how important it would be to our investigation, perhaps..."

"He'd help us? Maybe. I don't know the guy. But, since we have no leads anyway," Ray said, with a dirty look at the Forensics file, "we might as well give it a shot." He picked up the phone, then put it back down again. "Maybe you should talk to him. You could sell ice to an Eskimo."

"Inuit, but thank you," Fraser corrected reflexively, picking up the receiver and dialing a number.

"You remember that guy's number from seeing it at the bottom of the article for two seconds before running off to a fire scene?"

"I'm afraid so," Fraser replied with a hint of a smile. Ray heard someone answer the phone on the other end and listened in amazement as Fraser proceeded to wheedle his way into an appointment, writing a few notes on a pad as he spoke.

"Mr. Kent will see us in an hour," Fraser noted with satisfaction as he hung up. "That gives us plenty of time to have lunch first."

"Great idea." Ray realized he was ravenous.

***

Clark Kent was surprisingly young, perhaps only in his mid 20's, and wore heavy black glasses to frame his wavy dark hair and blue eyes. Fraser and Ray watched Kent's face intently as the tape drew to a close. Kent himself looked down at the floor, equally intent on hearing the threat-maker's voice. "Does that sound like the same man who called you yesterday?" Fraser asked, hitting the "Stop" button.

"It sure sounds like him. I can't be a hundred percent sure, but I'd say yes, it's him. So who is this guy?"

Ray and Fraser exchanged a disappointed look. "We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on the matter," Fraser replied evenly. "He didn't provide you with his name, or a way to contact him?"

"I asked him, but like a lot of people who call in with tips, he didn't want to identify himself. Nothing unusual about that, really. So the tip panned out and I published the story. That's all I know."

Fraser frowned slightly. "Mr. Kent, it is standard practice to have at least two sources for each piece of information included in a story. Who was your second source?"

"Just someone on the set. I don't have to give that person's name to you without a court order, and I'm not going to." Kent sat back, petulantly crossing his arms and waiting for a reaction.

But then a clock chimed into the tense silence, and two heads swiveled as one toward the wall of windows.

"That sounds like our clock," said Ray.

"It certainly does," Fraser agreed, pulling the small clock Thatcher had given him out of his pocket. "And it's three minutes slow." They both gravitated to the windows, looking up and down the street at the surrounding buildings.

Kent seemed disappointed that he couldn't get a rise out of the pair. "Gentlemen, I really need to get back to work. If you insist on gaping at the clock across the street, please do it from somewhere else."

But now the duo had their backs to Kent and barely heard what he said. "Incredible," fumed Ray. "Right downtown, and we missed it. OK, I'll have Frannie get me a list of all the apartment buildings in this area, maybe coffee shops and restaurants..."

"Wait, Ray." Fraser pointed at the building on the far corner of the block. "Look."

Ray looked as he hit the speed dial. "Yeah, it's a hotel. So what?"

"That's not just any hotel, Ray, it's the hotel where the crew is staying this week." He looked apologetically at his partner, who was still holding his phone to his ear.

"District 27," a familiar female voice floated out of the earpiece.

Two and two came together, and Ray's hand fell back to his waist like a deflating balloon. "The crew hotel. So they're all suspects again. Why are all our leads dead ends, Fraser? Why? Can you tell me that?"

"Nikki, is that you?" the voice in the phone asked with considerable annoyance. "Nikki, this isn't funny..."

Ray slammed the phone shut.

"I wish I could," Fraser answered. He then turned to the reporter still fuming at his desk. "Thank you kindly. We'll show ourselves out," he said with a polite tip of his hat as he and Ray beat a hasty retreat from Kent's office.

Ray and Fraser entered the elevator, and Ray leaned the back of his head against the elevator wall.

"They're not all dead ends, you know," Fraser tried to cheer Ray up. "The fact that the threat-maker and the newspaper source are likely one and the same man lends credence to your theory that Ms. Dottweiler may be directing the incidents as some kind of publicity stunt."

Ray straightened. "Yeah, right. And the way she was so eager-beaver to pin the newspaper thing on us...I think I'd better have another little talk with her." Ray's phone suddenly rang shrilly in the confined space.

The elevator dinged, and the pair exited as Ray answered, "Vecchio."

"Ray?" It was Frannie. "We've been trying to call you."

Ray stopped walking, not liking the tone of her voice. "What's wrong?"

"Tony Klein's in an ambulance. He's in animal-plastic shock."

"Animal...what?"

"From a bee sting. He's big-time allergic. They're taking him to Chicago General."

"We're on our way." Without further ado, Ray hung up and turned back to Fraser. "Actor Boy's in trouble. Chicago General kinda trouble."

***

Inspector Thatcher stood alone in the hallway outside the ER area, still in the business suit she had been wearing that morning, fidgeting and pale with worry.

Fraser reached her first. "Inspector Thatcher. What happened?"

She wanted to sink through the floor in shame. "I failed," she snapped, "that's what happened."

"Yeah, obviously," Ray growled, with a glance at the forbidding double doors marked "Medical Personnel Only Beyond This Point."

She stiffened and puffed up, as if to yell back at him, but then she turned away and slumped onto a bench set against the wall. "Detective, this isn't just some unsolved case we're talking about here." The fight had gone out of her voice. "That man has a wife and children. If he dies..." She leaned her head on the back of the bench, unwilling to complete the thought aloud. Her eyes were unnaturally bright.

Fraser sat down next to her on the bench, careful to maintain a reasonable distance. "I'm sure it's not your fault, sir," he offered. "Ray was just remarking today about the abundance of yellow jackets this year."

Even Ray softened, realizing he and Thatcher were being tortured by the same demons of guilt and perceived incompetence. "Just tell us what happened," he urged, coming over to stand beside them. "Maybe we can put some pieces together."

Thatcher slowly pulled her neck back to a normal position, glad to have something to do to distract her from the inner voice screaming accusations. "The crew was filming a gun battle outside some bank for a while. Quite a while, actually. There were long breaks between the shots, but I made sure to keep my eye on our target. He went back to his trailer once or twice, and he did two interviews, but things were going very smoothly, or so I thought."

She had a bitter, acrid taste in her mouth, and had to push herself to continue. "It started to cloud over, and the wind picked up a bit. He walked over to where he'd left his leather jacket, over the back of someone's chair, and put it on. Then he cried out and grabbed his hand, like he'd been burned. I ran over and he said, 'I've been stung, I'm allergic.' He had his Epi-Pen in the other pocket, so he pulled it out and injected himself in the thigh. But then he realized that someone deliberately emptied it...there was only carrier liquid and no medication left in the syringe."

Her voice had gone flat and dead, her eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance, as if she were watching it all happen again from some faraway spot beyond her reach. "He became very frightened and started having trouble breathing, so I had...someone...call an ambulance." She knew there had been other people all around, but she hadn't really seen any of them through the fog of crisis.

"He literally swelled up before my eyes. He was staring at me, clutching his chest and wheezing, silently begging me to help him, and then he went into convulsions and stopped breathing. I gave him mouth-to-mouth until the paramedics took over." She'd never forget the look of abject desperation in his eyes just before he passed out.

The two men fell silent for a long moment, not knowing how to respond to Meg's raw pain. "Sir...I have your clock," Fraser finally said, drawing it out of his pocket and offering it to her.

She accepted it grimly. "Did it help?"

"We did find the clock heard on the recording, but it was in a densely populated area downtown that included the crew hotel."

"So it didn't really help at all, then."

Fraser's tone was heavy with regret. "That would be more or less correct, sir. On the other hand," he added, brightening slightly, "the reporter who wrote today's newspaper story about Tony Klein confirmed that the person who called him to leak the information about the death threats, and the man who issued those threats to the Consulate, are one and the same."

Meg thought this over for a moment before a commotion arose at the other end of the hallway. Dot, Stillwell, and Genevieve were hurrying toward them, bickering among themselves about wrong turns and one-way streets. It was Inspector Thatcher, not Meg, who stood to meet them, all traces of vulnerability hidden once more.

Stillwell addressed her first, rapid-fire. "How is he? Is he all right? Can we see him?"

"They took him into the ER about twenty minutes ago. I was told to wait here, and that someone would be sent to update me on his condition. That person has not yet appeared."

"God, I hope he's OK," Dot sighed. "First the trailer fire this morning, and now this..." She wiped her nose with a tissue, her eyes red.

"This production's cursed, if you ask me." Genevieve shook her head. "We've only got three scenes left to shoot. Maybe we should just call it off before someone gets killed."

"The doctors know what they're doing," said Thatcher with more confidence than she actually felt. "As for the investigation, the Chicago Police Department has already secured the scene and collected evidence, including the insect that stung Mr. Klein, and someone will be over to provide a preliminary report and take statements shortly." The tense minutes after her arrival, when she'd been pacing outside the main entrance all alone, frantic with worry and guilt, had given her the opportunity to organize a response. Her cell phone battery was a mere shadow of its former self.

Everyone jumped to the side as the double doors opened and a nurse in scrubs emerged. She sized up the group before deciding that the well-dressed brunette was in charge. "Are you the one who asked about Tony Klein?"

Thatcher nodded, feeling her heart thudding in her chest.

The nurse's eyes darted to Stillwell, who was dialing a number on his cell phone. "You need to turn that off immediately. No cell phones in the hospital. Are you a relative, sir?"

"Hell, yes. I'm his director! The whole damn picture's riding on his bedroom eyes!"

Thatcher's hands and feet felt like icicles. If the nurse was insisting on speaking to a relative..."His family's in Toronto," she replied woodenly, ignoring Stillwell's outburst.

Ray gave Fraser a shove forward. "Except for his twin brother here."

"Identical, not fraternal, I'm guessing," commented the nurse brightly. "Right this way," she said to Fraser, taking his arm and leading him toward the double doors.

Fraser looked back at Ray with surprised indignation and opened his mouth to explain his true identity, but the looks from the assembled group, especially Meg, all pleaded with him to keep quiet...so reluctantly, he did. This was a lie of the first order, but at least he would be able to find out more details about Tony's condition.

Now the doors had closed behind him. He'd have to keep up the charade.

"So how is...uh...he? Can I see him?"

"It's lucky you got him in here when you did," the nurse confided. "Another five minutes, and it would have been very dicey. Anaphylactic shock can be nasty."

"Ah. I'm guessing you employed standard epinephrine therapy? One intramuscular shot of 0.01 cc's per kilogram, to be followed by a second shot if there is insufficient respiratory recovery and/or resolution of urticaria..."

"...within ten minutes," finished the nurse. "How'd you know that? Oh, yeah, I guess you've gone through this with him before."

"No, I haven't," Fraser admitted, but something suddenly clicked in his head at her question. He filed the thought away for later. "He's out of danger, then?"

"Yes. They're transferring him to a room for observation now. He's getting a little oxygen and an IV to re-hydrate him, and his blood pressure will continue to be monitored for a while."

Fraser nodded. That was standard procedure, in case there was a secondary round of shock over the next few hours. It was an enormous relief to know he would be all right, in no small measure because of Meg's assistance.

The nurse walked swiftly through the maze of hallways until they were in another antiseptic hallway on the opposite side of the building. "Wait here," she said, indicating a bench. "Let me go in and make sure he's settled, and then you can see him." She disappeared into a room across the hall.

Fraser obediently took a seat, wishing he had some way to share the good news with the others. He understood Meg's feeling of having failed in her duty. He'd felt exactly the same way this morning. Of course, a shower had been enough to alleviate the problem this morning...

The door opened, and the nurse came over to him. "You can go in now. I understand a police officer will be in soon to take his statement, so you might want to make it a quick visit. Have you contacted your family?"

"Not yet. I'd prefer to tell them that it's all over with and he's fine." That was certainly the truth!

The nurse nodded in understanding and strode away down the corridor to her next patient.

For someone who had been five minutes away from dying, Tony Klein looked surprisingly good. He was wan and obviously tired, but the hives were barely noticeable, and he looked up alertly as Fraser entered the room. The oxygen tubes in his nose and the IV in the back of his hand were the only reminders of his recent brush with death.

"Tony," Fraser forced himself to use the man's first name as a twin brother would do, "are you all right?"

Tony did his best to smile. "Yeah, I'm OK. Just a little light-headed. I had to use these things," he motioned to the tubes in his nose, "for a TV show once, but I don't remember them being this uncomfortable. How'd you get in here?"

Fraser blushed and looked away. "Detective Vecchio falsely presented me as your twin brother, and I went along with the ruse."

Tony smiled again, more genuinely this time, at Fraser's reaction. "Don't worry about it. Thanks for coming to check up on me. And please thank that other lady, the one who helped me..."

"Inspector Thatcher."

"Yes, Inspector Thatcher. They told me she did mouth-to-mouth until the paramedics got there. She probably saved my life."

"I'll be sure to tell her, but she will probably say it was merely her duty." Fraser offered a small smile of his own and took a seat in the chair nearest the bed. "She said you were stung when you put on your jacket, is that right?"

Tony nodded. "The bee stung me, I pulled my hand out of the pocket, and sure enough, there it was. I shook my hand and saw it fall on the ground."

Fraser frowned. "Was there anything sweet in your pocket, like a candy bar or a piece of fruit? Or perhaps you'd spilled some soda on it earlier today?"

"No. That pocket was empty. I was surprised the bee was in there, to say the least."

Fraser glanced around and zeroed in on a bag of Tony's clothes on a table on the other side of the bed. "Is the jacket you were wearing in there? Mind if I have a look?"

"Sure, go ahead."

Fraser extracted the jacket, an exquisitely tailored medium-weight black jacket in top-quality leather, from the bag and scrutinized the pockets. The openings were covered by heavy double-stitched leather flaps. Fraser pulled a flap up and let it fall, watching carefully, and repeated the process several times.

"These flaps...I don't think a bee could have easily wandered inside." He turned the pocket inside out, continuing his examination. The lining was a sturdy, quality cotton/silk blend. It was clean, with no noticeable stains on it. "No holes in the lining, either," he noted. He put his nose into the cool cloth and took a deep whiff, failing to note Tony's widening eyes. "There's a strong residual scent of tobacco, of course, but there's something else, rather faint, that might be more recent..." He quickly ran his tongue across the spot that seemed to be holding the smell.

The expression on Tony's face was somewhere between fascinated and appalled. "Eww. Do you mind? That's my favorite coat."

Fraser looked up, still paging through a mental catalogue to identify that faint taste. "Sorry," he said absently. "There is something there...a faint combination of...plastic and chocolate pudding. How odd. Have you put a container of chocolate pudding in that pocket recently?"

Tony was still giving him a strange look. "Uh, no, not ever, as far as I know. Plastic and chocolate pudding? What does that mean?" He liked the Mountie, but this was getting a little weird.

"I'm not sure." He glanced into the left pocket and saw the EpiPen, but decided not to touch it, since he could be destroying evidence. He frowned as he remembered Meg's account of the events. "Inspector Thatcher said someone may have tampered with your EpiPen."

Tony nodded again. "There's a gray cap that you pull off when you're about to use it, and that cap was missing. There was still some liquid in the syringe, so I went ahead and stuck myself with it, but I guess the epinephrine was already gone. The instructions say something about there being a lot of liquid left over after you give yourself a shot, but it won't do you any good. It's a single-use device."

"You seem to be very familiar with it. Have you experienced anaphylactic shock before?"

"Yeah, but not like this," said Tony ruefully, gesturing at the room around him. "I had my first bad reaction two years ago. Not quite like this one, but bad enough that I went right to a doctor and had to take it easy for a couple hours until I felt better. He prescribed the pen and made sure I knew how to use it. I was on a movie set then, too."

"Oh, really? What movie?"

"It was called New Moon Rising, and we were shooting out in California. My first big-budget American movie." He rolled his eyes. "What a disaster. If that's what Hollywood is like, I'm staying in Toronto."

"I'm afraid I didn't get to see it," Fraser noted politely. He had, in fact, never even heard of Tony Klein before this week, but that didn't need to be said.

"Don't apologize," rejoined Tony with a self-deprecating smirk, "it wasn't a very good movie."

"Was the current cast and crew aware of your allergy to bee stings?"

"Hell, no. I like being employed."

The door opened, and Ray stuck his head in. "Hi, Tony. I'm glad you're OK."

"Yeah, me too," the actor joked.

"Fraser, could I see you for a minute?"

"Certainly, Ray. Excuse me," he said to Tony, and went into the surprisingly crowded hallway, where Ray, Inspector Thatcher, Lt. Welsh, and Detectives Huey and Dewey were all milling about.

"What's all this?" Fraser asked.

"First things first," said Ray. "The Fire Inspector guy called. Long story short, he thinks the outlet was tampered with. Sabotage. That's a felony arson charge and possibly attempted murder right there."

"And here's your preliminary incident report on the bee sting," said Jack, holding up a manila folder. "We've got some photos, some statements..."

"Someone needs to give that woman Genevieve an attitude adjustment," Dewey tossed in.

"...and we have the bee that got Tony Klein right here." Jack held up a Ziploc bag, which Fraser took and held under the glare of the nearest fluorescent light.

"Interesting," murmured Fraser. "This is not a yellow jacket. It's an Apis ligustica--an Italian honeybee. They're often used for commercial honey production because they are very tractable. They're also sold at some holistic health stores for use in bee-sting therapy."

Ray recoiled. "Why would anyone deliberately get themselves stung?"

"It eases the pain of arthritis in some people, among other things." Fraser moved over to the bench and carefully dumped the bee onto the seat.

"Hey, be careful with that," warned Dewey uneasily. "It is dead, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, don't worry," said Fraser. "A honeybee always dies once she stings someone." He inspected the bee's legs. "No pollen on here. Hmm." Then, to the horror of everyone assembled, he leaned in as close as he could without touching the bee and took a careful sniff.

The group all groaned in some variation of disbelief and disgust.

"Plastic and chocolate pudding," he confirmed, standing up and carefully herding the insect's remains back into the bag with the brim of his Stetson. "This was no accident. This honeybee was meant to be a murder weapon. Ray, as soon as we're outside the hospital, could I borrow your phone for a moment?"

***

It was full dark by the time the Intrepid pulled up in front of the Consulate, the night made darker by the heavy clouds blotting out the moon and stars. Dief was highly annoyed at having to share the back seat with Fraser, but since Tony was now riding shotgun, Dief had little choice in the matter.

Inspector Thatcher pulled up behind them in her own car, set the hazard lights, and hurried up to escort Tony inside the building, Dief close behind them.

"I'm still not sure this is a good idea," Ray said to Fraser as they grabbed two duffle bags out of the trunk. "Our guy's called here. Twice. He knows exactly where the Consulate is." He slammed the trunk shut a little more firmly than necessary.

"We've been over this, Ray. Lt. Welsh couldn't help because of budget cuts, and Inspector Thatcher would have to get approval from Ottawa, but no one can be reached this late in the day. At least this way, no further expenditure will be involved." Fraser opened the front door of the Consulate with his free hand, then held the door open so Ray could enter behind him.

"Thanks. Oh...speaking of expenditures, next time, don't volunteer me. I was kinda hoping to get some overtime for this until you opened your big mouth." He dropped his bag on the plush carpet in the foyer with a clunk.

"Sorry, Ray."

Inspector Thatcher and Tony came back downstairs. Thatcher was actually smiling. "I think it's only appropriate that our esteemed guest stay in the Regal Suite. Turnbull's just putting on the finishing touches."

"That's very thoughtful, sir," Fraser replied, "but it may not be the best choice from a security standpoint, with those large windows along two walls, and only the single exit back downstairs..."

Thatcher's smile faltered, then disappeared. Constable Fraser was incredibly annoying, but he was right, as usual. "Ah. Well...what would you suggest, Constable?"

Ray winced. He knew what was coming.

"My office, sir. Both the front and back doors are easily accessible from that location, and the room itself is...inconspicuous. Should someone break in, it would not be the obvious place to look for Mr. Klein."

"That's puttin' a fine point on it. We'll be stuffed in there like a can of sardines," Ray groaned.

Thatcher smiled again, a nervous, insincere smile this time, but Tony stepped in, clearly uncomfortable at the squabble his presence was causing. "Listen, I'll sleep in the broom closet if it will keep me safe. If Fraser thinks we should be in his office, that's fine with me."

Fraser nodded. "Very good. Right this way." He led Tony down the narrow ground floor hall to his office and flipped the light on.

"You live like this?" Tony blurted out before he could stop himself. The room was even smaller than he had envisioned. File cabinets and file boxes dominated the dcor of the near two walls. An ugly brown radiator in one corner warmed the room. A cot so narrow that it fairly screamed "military issue" was arranged under the window on the opposite wall. Most of the fourth wall to his far right was taken up by a large shelving unit, in front of which Fraser's chair and desk were squeezed. A small portrait of the Queen above the unit and a dingy map of Canada above the radiator were the only decorations in the room. He mentally tried arranging three men, in any constellation, on the floor, and failed to see how they could possibly fit.

"Don't worry," said Fraser hastily, guessing his thoughts, "the cot is yours, of course." He set Tony's duffle down on top of the tightly made bed. "I can move some of those file boxes into the closet..." He mentally calculated. "And I can sleep under the desk, if necessary."

Fraser picked up two file boxes and went to the corner behind the head of the bed to put them in the closet. He opened the door, only to have his father pop out, resplendent in his red serge. Bob Fraser walked up to Tony and stared at him in awe, only inches away from the unsuspecting actor's face.

"Would you look at that, son? He looks just like you! I haven't seen anything like this since...since..." He straightened in surprise and put a hand to his chin. "I've never seen anything quite like this, I suppose."

Why did his father insist on talking to him when there were other people around? He'd even gotten Fraser into trouble with the RCMP psychologist when he'd built that ridiculous cabin of his in this very closet. Fraser sighed and stacked the boxes on the right-hand side, then crossed to get more.

"Here, let me help you," Tony offered, bending down to pick up a stack of his own.

"Helpful lad, too," Bob interjected.

"Oh, no, please, allow me," Fraser insisted, with a quick glare at his dad.

In short order, there was enough space cleared along the wall to allow at least two people to sleep on the floor with more than six inches between them. Fraser retrieved blankets from the closet and laid the nicest of them on the cot for Tony, and when he was sure Tony wasn't looking, he made a firm gesture toward the interior of the closet.

"Oh, so now you're ashamed of me all of a sudden?" Bob protested, but disappeared back into the closet as ordered.

Fraser closed the door firmly and turned back to his guest with a slightly forced smile.

"You must be hungry," he said, thinking of his own stay in the hospital and the appalling food he'd had to force down.

"That too," said Tony, "but I'd kill for a nice hot shower." He removed a change of clothes and some toiletries from his duffle and eagerly followed Fraser's directions to the shower.

Fraser hummed a sea chantey as he arranged his old bedroll on the floor for himself and a fluffy quilt nearby for Ray. He deliberately failed to set out a blanket for Dief, knowing that the wolf's snoring would only shake the walls in such an enclosed space. Hopefully his lupine companion would get the message and sleep in the hall tonight. It was a bit tight, all in all, but it would do for just the one night.

Ray stuck his head through the door. "Is he gone?"

Fraser nodded. "In the shower."

"Good." Ray entered the room, making it considerably more crowded than it had been a moment before.

"Careful of the bedding there."

"Oh." Ray stepped around the bedding on the floor and into the far corner of the room near the closet where Fraser stood. "The fire marshal should set the maximum occupancy of this room at two people. Or maybe just one. Maybe I'll sleep in the hall." He dropped his duffle between the shelving unit and the desk.

The floorboards in the hall set to creaking once more, and Inspector Thatcher entered, making the room even more crowded.

"Watch out for the linens, sir," Fraser reflexively pointed out.

"Yes, of course." She stepped around them and wedged herself into the small space remaining next to the two men, careful not to step on Ray's duffle. "Constable Fraser, Detective Vecchio," she nodded to each of them, "I'm glad you're here. I'd just like to apologize for my behavior earlier today." Her voice was low, but the three of them were already quite close to each other out of necessity, so Fraser and Ray had no difficulty hearing her. "I was..."

"Upset?" supplied Fraser.

"Freaked out?" suggested Ray.

Thatcher's nostrils flared. "No, just...not entirely professional."

"No apology is necessary, sir," said Fraser.

"Yeah, you were just freaked out," added Ray generously.

Thatcher glared, but continued with what she had come to say. "I think we should get together after dinner and go over the details of the case. We've got to figure out who's behind this. We can't afford another...incident...like the two we've had today."

"Sir?" The group turned to find Turnbull knocking on the door frame, a few water droplets falling from his hat and his sleeves. He looked like he'd run through a sprinkler a few times. "I parked the cars a few blocks away as you suggested. Ray, here are your keys." He started into the room.

"Look out!" the three of them admonished at once, pointing at the bedding on the floor.

Turnbull neatly leapt over the area and nearly landed on Thatcher's feet. They instinctively moved away to give the tall (not to mention wet) man room. Thatcher nearly toppled backwards over Ray's duffle in the process. Fraser's back was now against the closet door.

"Dinner is served," Turnbull announced, dropping the keys into Ray's hand. "I took the liberty of whipping up a hearty lentil stew. It would seem to be an inspired choice, given the change in the weather."

"Good man, Turnbull," Fraser said gratefully, his stomach rumbling. "Oh, and one more thing, Turnbull..." He wedged his hand into his breast pocket, trying not to poke anyone around him with his elbow in the process, and produced a piece of paper. "Could you possibly check and see what we have in our library about these items? We'll be meeting in the conference room in approximately 36 minutes."

Turnbull accepted the paper gravely. "As I live and breathe, it shall be done." He saluted Fraser crisply, provoking cries of annoyance as everyone around him received a shower from the constable's sleeve.

***

Tony had greatly enjoyed his shower, but now he was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open. He'd just sleep in the T-shirt and jeans he was wearing. The Sudafed capsules the doctor insisted he take for the next 24 hours were making him positively loopy. He slogged groggily back down the hallway and into Fraser's microscopic office, only to see the four people responsible for protecting him crammed together in one corner so they could hardly move. The expression on their faces was priceless. These people were nuts! And his life was in their hands! He burst out laughing and just couldn't stop.

"It's like your grandmother always said, son," Bob's voice came through the closet door. "If you're going to stand around in each other's hip pockets, go buy a phone booth."

***

After a hearty dinner, the group sat down at a long table in the conference room/library at the front of the building. During the day, people came here to read the library's offerings of Canadian newspapers and periodicals, or fill out any of a plethora of forms involving their status in Canada. Now the room took on the decidedly unusual function of makeshift investigation center.

Fraser pulled the drapes to assure their privacy, lending the room a dark, thick, vaguely funereal air. Ray fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling the walls closing in on him.

"Let's retrace the course of events thus far," Fraser began. "First, we have the technical glitches on the soundstage in Toronto: broken lights, microphones, automobiles, air-conditioning systems, and a lost reel of film. Then the crew came to Chicago, and filmed for two days without incident. Yesterday morning, a mutilated Canadian flag was discovered with a note pinned to it."

He looked up and recited the brief threat from memory: "'This is only the beginning. You are thieves. Give back what you have stolen or face the consequences.' Shortly thereafter, two calls threatening Mr. Klein's life were made to this building. Next, we had the makeup trailer fire this morning, thanks to the outlet that our criminal tampered with. There are only two possibilities to explain how that happened: either he was able to sneak onto the set a second time after shooting finished for the night, despite the increased security, and enter the makeup trailer to do his nefarious work with a flashlight, or...he was already on the set during the day, and simply went inside the trailer when he knew it would be empty." Fraser clearly favored the latter alternative.

"So you think it *is* one of the crew," Thatcher said, vaguely disappointed. They had seemed like genuinely nice people...with the exception of Genevieve, of course.

"It's possible," Fraser admitted, not liking the thought either.

"Then, of course, we went on a wild goose chase all over Chicago looking for a clock," Ray provided.

"And we did find it," Fraser reminded him. "But more importantly, we found out that the man who made the death threats also leaked them to the reporter."

"But what does that mean?" Turnbull was scribbling furiously. He had already filled an entire sheet of paper with notes.

"For a while, it seemed as if Ray's theory must be correct: the man was working for Dot to generate publicity for the film."

"But you said the honeybee was a murder weapon," Thatcher protested. "Dot wouldn't kill her leading man...would she?"

Tony, who had been sitting immobile with glassy eyes up to this point, not really paying attention, snapped to life. "What the hell? Do you honestly think Dot would try and kill me?"

"Well, maybe not kill you," Ray hastily reassured him. "Maybe she figured you'd get taken care of, no harm, no foul. Maybe she just wanted the sirens and the drama."

"You mean, to use me as bait for the media? She wouldn't."

"What makes you so sure? It wouldn't be the first time a publicist stirred up trouble." Again, Ray's thoughts turned to that scumbag Orsini and his spin doctor.

"I'm inclined to agree with Tony," Fraser said. "It'd be a terrible risk to take with your leading actor. If it were just the incidents in Toronto, and perhaps even the trailer fire, I might agree with you, Ray. But the vandalized Canadian flag, the note, and the fact that the perpetrator initially phoned the Consulate to make his threats, are not consistent with a movie publicity stunt. They are much closer to the pattern of a hate crime."

"Hate crime?" Poor Tony's eyes were nearly bugging out of his head.

Ray went on as if Tony hadn't spoken. "Yeah, I guess...but crossing Dot off our list means it's back to square one." He didn't want to be back at square one. He had already spent way too much time there on this case, and it was getting hellishly frustrating.

"Not quite," Fraser countered. "Let's return to this afternoon's incident. It is next to impossible that an Italian honeybee would be flying around downtown Chicago, and with no pollen at that. The faint odors of plastic and chocolate pudding suggest that she was smuggled onto the set in a small plastic container, probably concealed in a cooler. The low temperature would have kept her torpid, making it easy for someone to put her in the pocket of Mr. Klein's jacket without attracting undue attention, and the pocket had a heavy leather flap to keep her contained. As the pocket grew warmer and warmer in the day's sunlight, she became quite active. Furthermore, bees dislike the smell of leather, so being encased in it would have agitated her."

Ray nodded, seeing it all come together. "So by the time Tony stuck his hands in the pockets, the bee was ready to rumble."

"Precisely. Inspector Thatcher, do you recall anyone approaching the jacket or moving it?"

Thatcher's eyes narrowed in concentration as she sifted through her recollections of today's events. "No," she said bleakly. "It was well away from the area where the scenes were being shot." She refused to admit that she hadn't been watching it. How could she have foreseen something like this? It was just one kick in the teeth after another today. She bit the inside of her cheek, hard.

Ray leaned back in his chair and absently scratched his tricep. "So what it all boils down to is, who'd commit a hate crime against Tony Klein? It looks like we've got 400 people with opportunity, but where's the motive?"

"Turnbull?" Fraser prompted.

"Ah, yes sir, here's what I found." He handed Fraser three newspaper clippings. "And this just arrived by fax from Ms. Dottweiler. It's about twenty pages."

"Excellent. Thank you, Turnbull."

The younger man beamed at Fraser's praise and returned to his seat.

"Mr. Klein had his first episode of severe anaphylactic shock two years ago while shooting a movie called New Moon Rising." He laid the first clipping down on the table. It was a brief four-line item in an entertainment news column that simply reported Klein had sought medical attention for an undisclosed injury suffered on the set. "However, since he didn't tell anyone on his current film about it, they would be unaware of the problem...unless they also worked with him two years ago."

Ray's cell phone was instantly in his hand. "I'm sure Dot can get me the list of everyone who worked on that movie and this one. We find a match, we got our guy."

"It's already been taken care of. Tony told me at the hospital," Fraser cast a concerned glance at Tony, whose head was resting on the smooth surface of the conference table like a preschooler's at quiet time, "about the incident during New Moon Rising. I used your phone, Ray, to request that Dot fax over the cast and crew lists for both that film and this one, and she has done so."

"So what are we waiting for? Find the matches so we can start cracking some heads."

Fraser flipped through the pages and frowned thoughtfully. "Hmmm."

"Hmmm what? You know I hate it when you do that."

"Hmmm," Fraser said again, rifling through a few more pages.

"Fraser, the names, the names..." Ray prompted.

"There's only one match: Melinda Dottweiler."

"What?!" Ray and Tony cried simultaneously.

"That's right. According to this, no one else who worked on New Moon Rising is also working on Justin Powell, Supercop."

"So it was Dot the whole damn time," fumed Ray. "Unbelievable! She's so nuts that she shreds a flag and makes googly eyes at me when she comes in to file the report, has someone make phone threats for her, sabotages a trailer's electrical system, and plants the honeybee? That's insane. Why would she do all that? This is way beyond getting press coverage, if you ask me."

Tony shifted uncomfortably.

Fraser noticed. "Tony, how would you describe your relationship with Dot?"

"She did work with me on New Moon Rising, that's true. We got along fine."

"Fine?" Fraser's eyebrows lifted slightly.

Tony sighed. "OK, we hit it off. It was our first film together. She was always professional on set, but I suspected she had a little crush. And then we kinda, well, got a little too friendly with each other at the wrap party."

"And you were married at the time?"

Tony's eyes brushed across his wedding band, and he squirmed even more. "We'd both had way too much to drink. There has to be another match on that list. It can't be her! There has to be another explanation. She'd never try to kill me."

"I'm sorry, Tony, but she is the only match."

"No, you're wrong. Something's not right here." Tony struggled to figure out what was bothering him, but his mind was just too foggy. "Something's not right," he repeated weakly, putting his head back down on the table.

"Constable Fraser, you did just say that it would be a terrible risk for Dot to take," Thatcher pointed out. "Maybe it's someone who's not on this crew. What else do you have?"

"Two items about Justin Powell, Supercop. The first one's from February of this year. It says Arcadia Films greenlighted the film...pre-production to begin in two to three months...shooting to begin in Los Angeles in June...projected budget, a few of the actors signed to play the roles...but no mention of Tony Klein," Fraser summarized as he scanned the article.

"How can our bee-planting, flag-shredding electrical saboteur target Tony Klein if he hasn't even signed on to do the movie yet?" Thatcher's tone was scathing.

Fraser's hand rose a few inches from the table, begging her patience as he scanned the last article. "The third item was published on April 20th. Arcadia announced it would shoot most of the movie in Toronto for cost reasons." His eyes lit in sudden understanding.

Thatcher didn't react. Fraser looked intently at his superior officer, waiting for the penny to drop.

"The movie moved from Los Angeles to Toronto..." she began, still not seeing where Fraser was going.

"Causing hundreds of American crew members to lose their jobs to a 'runaway production,' as the unions call them. Canadian tax incentives require that local Canadian talent be used. The note said, 'Give back what you have stolen...'"

Now she got it. Oh, God, did she ever. "They stole his *job* ...so he followed the film to Toronto, sabotaged the sound stage, decided that wasn't enough, shredded a Canadian flag, issued a death threat in Chicago, and then tried to kill the lead actor."

"Yes," Fraser said simply.

Turnbull looked up from his note-taking, frozen in shock. Tony didn't even lift his head. He had apparently dozed off, which was not really a bad thing under the circumstances.

Fraser nodded toward his partner. "Ray was right--this *is* essentially a publicity stunt. It's just not Dot's publicity stunt. This man is trying to make a political statement. Each of his attacks has grown bolder and more direct, and his handwriting on the note indicates a determined, detail-oriented personality. He won't give up. I think he wants to murder Tony Klein for shock value and use the ensuing publicity to spread his message."

The color drained from Thatcher's lips, her eyes locked in disbelief with Fraser's. "Then the man we're searching for is a terrorist," she breathed, horrified.

The stunned silence in the room was finally broken by Tony's soft snoring.

***

Fraser slept fitfully, with much tossing and turning. How could they make sure they caught their terrorist before he could get to Tony? How could they keep him safe?

The hallway door opened, and Fraser sat bolt upright, ready to tackle the intruder.

"Don't worry, son, it's just me."

Fraser looked over at Ray and Tony, but they slept on, undisturbed by the light streaming in from the hall. "Dad," he whispered, "I don't know if you noticed, but there are people trying to sleep here."

"Yes, I know. You're dreaming yourself, son. This way I won't embarrass you in front of your friends." He smiled at his own thoughtfulness.

"Oh." Fraser scratched the back of his neck. "So why are you here?"

"You know how to solve this problem, the one that's worrying you."

"It's a crazy idea, Dad. He might be able to do it, but I'm no actor, and never have been."

"Not an actor? Ha! You manipulate people day in and day out to solve your cases."

"'Manipulate' is a very harsh word, Dad."

"But true enough, isn't it?" his father chided. "Son," he added more gently, "you can do this. What's more, you *have* to do this. An innocent man's life is in jeopardy, and you let the fear of failure keep you from your duty?"

Fraser winced. "If you put it that way..."

"I most certainly do. Now, you'd best be off. Your doppelgaenger's wandering out the back door."

"Thanks, Dad." At last, he knew how to proceed, and felt a great weight lift from his shoulders. The path before him was clear.

His father smiled and went back into the hallway, beginning to pull the door closed. "Don't mention it, son."

Fraser woke with a start. An inch of light came through the slightly cracked door. Apparently Tony hadn't wanted to make noise by pulling it all the way shut. Fraser silently rose, pulled a gray fleece jacket from the hook on the back of the door, and put it on over the dark blue sweats he'd worn to bed before padding down the hallway in his sock feet and opening the back door.

Tony sat outside under the shelter of the overhanging eave, his back against the wall of the building, pensively smoking a cigarette as he watched the wind and rain. An occasional flash of far-off lightning lit his dejected face more clearly than the single light on the wall. This man had little resemblance to the laughing, larger-than-life dynamo Fraser had met less than two days ago.

Tony felt his gaze and looked up, not at all surprised to see the Mountie standing there.

"I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep," he said.

Fraser just nodded and sat down on the other side of the door.

"Cigarette?"

"No, thank you, I don't smoke."

Tony looked at the cigarette in his hand, the smoke curling up and out into the night. He shuddered as terrifying snatches of the fire--the roar of the flames, the blinding smoke, the acrid smell--flashed before his mind's eye yet again. "Yeah, I really should quit. And it's finally starting to hit me...someone really wants me dead." He felt a sharp stab of fear as he admitted it aloud.

"I'm afraid so. But I promise you, I will do everything in my power to keep you safe, as will every member of the Consulate staff and every police officer at the 27th." Fraser's voice rang with quiet conviction.

Tony looked over at the man who was outwardly identical to him, and yet so different from him. "You really mean that," he realized. "Thank you." He took another leisurely puff on his cigarette, feeling a bit more upbeat, and marveled again at Fraser's face. "I can't get over it. What are the odds that two people could look so much alike?"

"Oh, it's happened before," Fraser said with a certain grim edge. "I have a friend, a good friend...he had the great misfortune of looking like a powerful criminal."

"So he was falsely arrested?" Tony guessed.

"No. When the criminal was killed in a car accident, my friend stepped into his role to gather information, and now he spends every day pretending to be someone else. If he's found out, he'll be killed." He felt his throat tighten unpleasantly and looked away. There wasn't a day that went by that he didn't miss Ray and wish he knew how he was doing. There'd been no word from him since the postcard a few months ago.

"Oh." Tony ground the stub of his cigarette out on the concrete. "I'm sorry."

Fraser unconsciously cleared his throat. "I was thinking about doing the same thing...with you."

"Oh!" Tony's head snapped over in surprise. "You mean, switch places?"

"Just until we catch the perpetrator."

Tony considered the idea for a moment. "What if he comes after you?"

"I'll subdue him," Fraser shrugged. "I am a trained police officer. I may not carry a gun, but I am not without my resources."

"You can say that again." This man had balls! He was nuts, but he was ballsy. "I've never really been an acting coach before, but I guess now's as good a time as any to start." He brushed off his jeans and stood up. "Stand up and say something as me."

Fraser brushed off his sweatpants a bit too thoroughly and got to his feet. "You can say that again."

Tony raised a critical brow. "The voice is pretty good, but relax the posture! You don't have a flagpole up your ass! Loosen up!"

Fraser over-slouched to compensate.

"Good God, I'm not the Hunchback of Notre Dame, either."

Fraser looked over at Tony and adjusted his shoulders and feet.

"That's better. You're a pretty good mimic. A little less tension in the face, and you'll have it...there." Then Tony fingered Fraser's hair, frowning. Fraser tensed momentarily, but quieted himself, realizing "Tony" wouldn't think anything of this. "I'll show you how to gel this so it looks a little longer, a little messier, and I'll trim a bit off mine so I can pass as you."

It had been Fraser's own idea, but he was slightly unnerved that this man would pretend to be him, that he would don the red serge and Stetson of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. "Can you do it...I mean, be a Mountie?"

"Absolutely," said Tony, straightening with authority, his voice ringing with quiet conviction. "I promise you, I will do everything in my power to keep you safe."

It was dead on. Perfect. Fraser nodded, deeply impressed and unsettled at the same time.

***

Fraser's head was swimming by the time he and Tony finally came in to wake Ray. Tony proved to be a surprisingly good acting coach, and they had filled each other in on as many habits, mannerisms, and favored turns of phrase as possible. They'd had only a few hours to learn their parts, but hopefully it would suffice. The storm had blown over, the sun had risen to welcome the new day, and here he was, wearing Tony's jeans and T-shirt and sporting gel in his unruly hair. It was supremely disorienting to look over at Tony and see...himself, but not himself...in the red serge.

The floorboards creaked gently as Inspector Thatcher and Turnbull moved about the building. It wouldn't be long before they came around to offer breakfast (Turnbull) or tell him to clock in (Thatcher). Fraser quickly shut the door and turned to his double.

"We might be able to fool Inspector Thatcher and Constable Turnbull, but we'll never fool Ray. I'd best give him a quick update."

Tony nodded his agreement.

Fraser started to turn to Ray, but immediately pivoted back again. "Oh...hat off inside the Consulate."

"Damn! I mean, right you are." Tony quickly removed the hat and tucked it under one arm in a perfect Fraser-esque move. Fraser nodded and returned to his original task.

"Ray?" No response. "Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray. Ray."

"Whaaa," groaned Ray, "it's too earrrly..."

Fraser gave him a gentle thunk on the head with the side of one black biker boot. "It's eight o'clock already. Coffee?" He bent down and held the steaming mug low enough that his partner could smell it and waited a moment.

"Mmm. Good. Thanks." Ray's eyes finally opened. "Fraser? What the hell are you doing in those clothes?" His eyes wandered upward, and although he couldn't see much more than a big red blur without his glasses, he put two and two together. "And he's wearing your uniform? Isn't that, I don't know, sacrilegious?" He sat up, retrieved his glasses from under the cot, and gratefully accepted the coffee, inhaling the steam reverently before taking a sip.

"It's necessary, Ray. We're trading places today. It's the only way to protect him until we bring in our man."

"Trading places? You're going to pretend you're a movie star, and he's going to be a Mountie?" He cracked up at the thought. "You were a *camel*, remember?"

"Ray, I'm just doing my duty, and if that includes acting in front of...in front of a few dozen people...well, I'll just have to get through it, that's all." He paused a moment. "What is that odd feeling in my stomach?"

Tony grinned and clapped Fraser on the shoulder. "Stage fright. Don't worry, you'll stop throwing up once this show gets rolling."

There was a smart rat-a-tat-tat on the door. "Gentlemen, breakfast is the most important meal of the day," Turnbull called. "Now being served in the conference room! Get it while it's hot!"

Fraser nodded over at Tony, and the game began.

"Thank you, Turnbull, we'll be there momentarily," Fraser* replied.

"Holy..." Ray breathed. "That was good. Really good."

"Just wait 'til I get warmed up," said Tony cheerfully, cracking his knuckles and moving to open the door.

"I never crack my knuckles," Fraser lectured, "only my neck. Oh, and...what was that you said about throwing up?"

***

It didn't help her dispel the feeling that she had failed Tony horribly, but Thatcher had insisted on staying the night at the Consulate as well. After surfing the Internet into the wee hours, even going so far as to make a list of every establishment in or near Chicago that kept Italian honeybees, she had fallen asleep on the couch in her office. Fortunately, she always kept an extra suit in her closet for emergencies. Thatcher was a firm believer in the old saw, "It is better to look good than to feel good." She sipped her coffee at the head of the conference table, which Turnbull had covered with a white linen tablecloth, and looked at her watch, shaking her head faintly in disapproval. Ten after eight. The day was half over! When were the men finally going to get up?

As if in response to her thought, the three men entered, Vecchio still cradling his beloved mug of coffee like a firstborn child.

Fraser* looked a bit haggard. "Good morning, sir," he greeted the Inspector, taking a seat two seats down so he wouldn't have to sit right next to her.

"Good morning, Inspector Thatcher," said Tony*, taking the seat directly opposite Fraser.*

Ray slumped into the chair between Fraser* and the Inspector, still not fully awake. "Mornin'," he nodded.

"Good morning," she answered, deciding not to press them about the time...yet.

Turnbull entered, still wearing his crisp white apron and bearing a steaming casserole dish. "Look out! This ham-asparagus strata is hot!" He carefully set it down on an iron trivet shaped to look like an outline of Canada and looked around the table in satisfaction: a basket of bagels, a plate of pastries, the lazy Susan with the butter, cream cheese, maple syrup, and six different kinds of jam, the big glass pitcher of orange juice, the insulated carafe of coffee, and the chafing dish with waffles and Canadian bacon were all here. "I think that's everything. Bon appetit!" he removed his apron and took the seat between Tony* and the Inspector.

Plates were quickly and enthusiastically filled, and enthusiastically emptied again.

"Mmmmm," Fraser* moaned appreciatively, his mouth so full one cheek stuck out to the side like a chipmunk with a fat acorn. "These waffles are heaven."

Tony*'s eyes widened at Fraser*'s boarding-house table manners. He quickly put a fingertip up to his left cheek, where the others couldn't see, and tapped it urgently. Still, he envied Fraser* his appetite. He didn't seem to have any. He ate half a bagel and a little oatmeal, but seemed to be pushing the strata around his plate rather than eating it.

Thatcher noticed. "How are you feeling? Are you all right?" she asked gently.

"Oh, uh, I'm...okay. Okay," he said, nodding vigorously to convince her. "I'm just not...not a big breakfast person. Actually, I usually skip breakfast," he added hastily.

He could see Fraser* wince ever so slightly across the table. Ray looked pained. Why had he ever thought he could do this?!

Thatcher continued to look at him curiously, and now Turnbull looked over as well.

"Is the strata not to your satisfaction?" Turnbull fretted. "I knew I should have put in a little more caraway..."

"No, no, it's fine," Tony* reassured him, "in fact, it's quite good, much better than fine, it's..." He stuffed a mouthful in so he wouldn't have to say anything else and managed to choke it down. For a horrifying moment, it felt like it might not stay there, but the feeling soon receded.

"The medications are throwing him off a little, I think," Thatcher whispered sotto voce to Turnbull. Then, to the group, she said, "We're all running a bit late this morning, it seems. We need to open the Consulate soon anyway, so if we could clear the table..."

Everyone stood, murmuring thanks to Turnbull for the delicious repast before hurrying off to the kitchen with the plates and cups. With five people helping, the Consulate was soon back to its old, familiar appearance.

Tony* only wished he could say the same.

***

Once they were in the Intrepid, they could drop the act and be themselves, at least temporarily. Tony sat in front to keep the red serge in its traditional shotgun position. Fraser shared the back seat with Dief again, who acted just as put-upon about it as he had the night before.

"I'm just going to swing by the station and update Welsh on the way down to the set," Ray announced as they pulled into the morning traffic.

"Do we have time, Ray?" Fraser fretted. "We're supposed to be on the set at nine, and it's already..." He belatedly realized Tony didn't wear a watch.

"Eight fifty," Ray read off the car's clock radio. "Don't worry, the show can't go on without you. Speaking of which, what happened back there?"

Tony sighed in frustration. "God, he was so good last night."

"What?" Ray looked over sharply.

"I taught him how to walk and talk like me," Tony explained. "And he had it down pat!" He turned to look Fraser in the eye. "But now your stage fright is ruining your concentration. Not to put any more pressure on you or anything, but our lives may depend on this performance."

Like Ray, Fraser thought morosely. Oh, Ray, if only you knew.

"Fraser," Ray jumped in, jolting him back to reality, "I don't get why you're so nervous...well, I do, but you don't have to be nervous. You just got the wrong mindset. Stop thinking about movies and Hollywood and all that. Think of this as an undercover operation. You've done undercover work before, lots of times, and you're good at it. You don't have to really be an actor, you're just going undercover as one."

Fraser took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "You're right, Ray. I can do undercover work. If I can dress up as a woman..."

"What?" Tony looked back sharply.

"I had to impersonate a substitute teacher at a Catholic girls' school. We were a bit pressed for time," Fraser explained. "And if I can dress up as a woman, I can certainly do this." He relaxed further. "Thank you, Ray. I *can* do this."

"That's the spirit." His partner smiled in satisfaction as he pulled the car up near the door of the 27th. "You two wait here. I'll be in and out." He hurried inside.

Francesca was in one of her finest--and skimpiest--Civilian Aide uniforms, looking earnestly into the mirror in her compact.

"Hey, Frannie. Seen Welsh?"

"The Lieutenant is busy," she responded without looking up. Ray chanced a look into Welsh's office. Huey and Dewey were standing at attention while Welsh paced back in forth of front of them, speaking into the men's faces and punctuating his words with staccato gestures. His expression alone could have soured milk. This was clearly not a good time.

"OK, can you give him a message from me, then?"

"Do I have lipstick on my teeth?"

"What?...No, I guess not. Can we focus a little here? Tell Welsh that the guy trying to whack Tony Klein is not a member of the crew. It's somebody else with access to the set."

"Well, that narrows it down to several hundred people."

"Hey, the sarcasm is not appreciated. And what's with the getup? Fraser's not here, you know."

Francesca threw the compact back into her purse and stood up. "Since I am part of the 27th, the district assisting in the protection of Tony Klein, I thought I'd head down to the set and see if I could help out." She put on her jacket and slung her purse over her shoulder. "Are you going down there now? I'd love a ride."

Ray's eyes went wide. "Uh, sorry, Frannie." He started backing away. "No can do. I have to swing by the Consulate first for a meeting with the Ice-Inspector Thatcher. About this case. Could take hours."

Francesca pursed her lips in distaste. If there was anyone she did not want to spend hours with, it was Inspector Thatcher. "OK, I'll just drive down there by myself, then."

If he could just stall her for thirty seconds..."Great. Welsh has the directions." That was a half-truth at best, but it would give him time to escape.

Francesca looked off toward the lieutenant's office. "Oh, okay. So I'll see you later?"

"Yeah, see you down there." He went back to the car as quickly as he could without arousing suspicion and closed the door with a sigh of relief.

"Frannie was this close to gettin' in the car with me," Ray reported worriedly as he rocketed out of the lot, keeping his eye on the rear-view mirror until they were out of sight.

"Who's Frannie?" asked Tony. "Your mother-in-law? Your boss?"

"No, worse, she's my sister."

Ray could almost see the gears grinding in Tony's head.

"Let's just say you wouldn't have made it out of Chicago alive if she'd gotten her mitts on you."

Tony looked down at the red serge. "Oh, so she hates me...I mean, Fraser?" Now he was really confused. Fraser could be a bit irritating, certainly, but he'd been unfailingly polite, even holding doors open for Dot.

"No, more the opposite, if you catch my drift." Ray grinned.

"Oh!" Tony looked down at the handsome uniform again, then back to Fraser in the back seat, whose cheeks were slowly but surely turning crimson. "So do you, y'know...feel the same way?" He tried and failed to keep a straight face and couldn't resist throwing a little more fuel on the fire. "Is she going to come down to the set and offer herself to me? And why did this not come up during our discussions last night?"

Fraser cleared his throat and cracked his neck noisily. "That's not really important right now. What is important is that we have neither identified nor apprehended the person who wants to kill you. Or, that is to say, me. Or rather, the person formerly known as you, and indeed still known as you, whom I am now impersonating."

Ray smirked at the exchange, but Fraser's words brought his mind back to the problem at hand. Fraser was putting his life on the line for Tony, making himself an even bigger and more obvious target than usual, and they still didn't know who would go after the bait. If they didn't play this just right, Fraser, his partner and best friend, freak though he was, could be in a world of hurt. The thought made his stomach clench.

Ray went over everything in his head again, but couldn't think of anything they might have missed. "Now doesn't that just butter your muffin," he said angrily. "We have no name and no description, and we're supposed to get him before he gets you? This is insane. How is this supposed to work?"

Fraser shrugged. "We'll just have to be on our guard, Ray. At least we know it's not one of the crew."

They pulled into the set parking lot, identified themselves to the security guard, and took a spot near the gate. "I don't like this," Ray grumbled. "Not one bit."

Dot stood just on the other side of the gate, watching a steady flow of crew members, newspaper reporters, and TV news crews being checked with the metal detector wand. A nearby table was manned by two more security guards looking through people's bags.

"Good morning, gentlemen," she waved to them as they approached. "You still in one piece, Tony? How you feeling?"

"I'm fine," Tony* responded jauntily. "Oh, and I've decided to stop skipping breakfast. I just had the most amazing meal...homemade waffles, fresh bagels, and oh, the egg casserole! I bet it beat the hell out of anything you had this morning," he teased with a smile.

Ray and Fraser* traded a quick look of impressed approval.

"Good." Dot smiled back. "I'm glad you were well taken care of." She moved to the gate. "You guys can just come on through." She waved the guard with the wand away. "It's all right, they're with me."

Ray eyed the line worriedly. "Dot, could we talk to you...over here?" He gently steered her far enough away from the crush of people at the gate that no one would be able to overhear.

She looked down at his hand on her shoulder, but did not protest. "Far enough?" she finally asked.

Ray looked around and dropped his hand. "Thanks for the fax last night. The only problem is, you were the only match."

"For God's sake, it certainly wasn't me! Didn't Tony tell you about the wrap party?"

Ray held his hands up. "Yeah, yeah, we know, and we know it wasn't you. All I'm saying is, our guy's still a question mark. He's not a member of this crew."

Dot nodded, disappointed. "That's too bad." She looked back toward the gate. "And they couldn't hear that because...?"

"Ms. Dottweiler," Fraser* said, "if the ba--perpetrator is not part of this crew, then it seems likely that he's with the media."

"Right," Ray nodded. "So for safety's sake, we need to get all those guys with cameras and notepads off the set. Crew only today."

Dot considered, clearly torn, but finally shook her head. "I can't, not today, not after this disaster of a week! I came this close," she put up her thumb and finger, "to getting fired yesterday. Now I'm finally going to get some positive publicity, and you tell me to throw them out? Don't worry, they won't get too close. They're just going to do nice fluff pieces and get some footage...you know, the director saying 'Action' and the extras running into the shot, you know, nice cheesy stuff. Please, guys, I really need this...today's the last day of shooting," she pleaded, her eyes moving from one cop to the other.

Ray and Fraser* exchanged a look, and Ray finally nodded. "All right. But they're supervised at all times. One crew member for every media guy. Follow 'em to the craft truck, into the john...everywhere. Deal?"

Dot smiled in obvious relief. "Deal. Thank you, Ray. Oh, and...I'm sorry I accused you of being the leak."

Ray smiled back. It was the first time she'd used his first name. "No biggie. Forget about it."

***

"Ready...and...go."

A bald, broad-shouldered cameraman looked through his lens at Danielle Weston, entertainment reporter for Channel 6 News, as she launched into her story.

"It's the last day of filming for the cast and crew of Justin Powell, Supercop, a rock-em sock-em Don Stillwell action flick, and we're here on the set in downtown Chicago to give you a little taste of the excitement."

"Good. Cut," said the segment producer, a lithe woman with long dark hair named Kristin. "Did you get that OK, Mark?"

Mark pushed a few buttons, then smacked the side of the camera, his blue eyes narrowing in frustration. "It's not rewinding or advancing. The tape must be bad. Just what we need."

"You want me to get another one from the truck?"

"No, that's OK," Mark sighed, gently setting his camera on the ground. "I've got a couple extras in the camera box." He walked off toward the building where their equipment was stored, two female crew members right behind him.

A fresh-faced intern was stationed at the door to the building to check his ID. Mark flashed his station ID card and continued inside. The two women gossiped with each other and were content to stand a few feet away as he opened the reinforced metal camera box.

The lid and the inside of the box were covered with a thick layer of light blue foam shaped to hold the camera and protect it from being jostled around in transit. Mark fished out a tape and then chanced a quick glance back at the pair. They were laughing and talking and paying no attention to him.

He could see himself in his mind's eye, standing at the edge of the abyss. He didn't have to jump. He could walk away from this whole thing right now. But where would he go? What could he do? He couldn't go on with this ridiculous charade any more. He had to stop regular Joes like himself from being squashed in the name of corporate greed. He had to stand up and do the right thing. Did he really have a choice? He was boxed in, with nowhere to go but over. The bee he had gone to such great lengths to obtain and plant had failed, so he would have to take matters into his own hands.

Careful to keep his body between the women and his hands, Mark deftly reached behind the layer of foam glued to the top lid of the box. He had loosened it in the back left-hand corner and carved out a hollow from the inside, careful to leave plenty of foam facing outward so no one would notice. It was from this hollow that he withdrew a gun and quickly tucked it into a special cloth pouch in the front of his pants. He could explain the pouch, too: it was for his imaginary hernia.

He turned back to his would-be guards with a smile. "Sorry about this," he apologized.

"Oh, it's no trouble at all," said one, a tall Asian woman.

No trouble? he thought. Oh, if only you knew. He saw himself sailing over the edge, falling, tumbling end-over-end into the blackness waiting to devour him. There was no turning back now. His cause was just, and he would do what needed to be done.

The three of them exited the building and returned to Mark's crew.

"Hey, Mark, this tape works fine now," Kristin called as they approached.

"That's strange," he replied, scratching his close-trimmed goatee. "It must've been stuck before." He shook his head in feigned surprise, as if to say, Well, you know those technical gremlins, and went back to work.

***

Tony* handled the six people who herded him into his Justin Powell wardrobe, polished his shoes, styled his hair, brought him coffee, and applied subtle touches of makeup with aplomb. He even managed not to flinch when Sheila fluffed his hair. However, he was relieved when Genevieve stuck her head in to announce that they needed to get moving.

After the assembled crowd of assistants had deemed him ready to film, Tony* put on his sunglasses and stepped out into the bright morning sun...and nearly tumbled face-first down the steps. Francesca beamed up at him from beside the bottom step, as if she were welcoming him home after a long flight on the corporate jet, a pocket camera dangling off one wrist.

He regained his balance, gave her a snappy smile that said, Hey, I did that on purpose just to make you laugh, and closed the distance between them, glad he could conceal his eyes behind the sunglasses. It would be disastrous to take them off, but merely rude to keep them on. He opted for rudeness.

"Hello, Mr. Klein," Francesca breathed, obviously star-struck, "I, um...I'm with the 27th and I just wanted to say hello and how nice it is that you're here in Chicago and, uh...hi." She was giggly and jumpy, and rather adorable, in a Francesca sort of way.

"Well, hello there," Tony* oozed, "I don't believe I've had the pleasure of meeting you before." He extended a hand.

"Oh, I'm...Francesca Vecchio," she sputtered, covering his hand with both of her small, cool hands and shaking it enthusiastically. "I have to admit I'm not really, uh, well acquainted with your work, but boy, wild horses couldn't keep me away from this one when it comes out. I read all about it in the paper this week."

"Thank you. It's very gratifying to hear that."

Francesca suddenly remembered the camera dangling off her wrist. "Oh, uh, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could I maybe take a picture of you?"

"Sure, but..." He held a finger up to tell her to wait and ran back into the trailer, emerging a few moments later with a large black-and-white glossy and a Sharpie. "Why don't I just autograph this for you?"

Francesca clasped both hands to her chest. "Wow, that's so nice! Thank you, I'd love that!"

Tony* uncapped the Sharpie and paused for a moment. How did Tony typically sign his autographs? That was one detail they hadn't gone over.

"You look sooo much like this guy I know, it's not even funny. I want to put this somewhere where he'll see it. Could you do me a favor? Could you sign it 'To Francesca, the hottest hottie I know'?" She tried and failed to squelch a nervous laugh at her request.

His eyes grew wide behind the sunglasses. Undercover. Undercover. Remember, you're undercover. "It doesn't seem to be a stretch to me." He smiled as he wrote the desired inscription, signed it with what he hoped was a decent approximation of Tony's autograph, and handed the photo to her.

"Tony!" Genevieve yelled from the set. "Stop chatting up the women and get in position, will ya?"

"Oh, I'd better let you go," said Francesca, with a worried look at Genevieve. "Would you mind if I stayed for a while and watched you film?"

His stomach churned at the mere notion of it, but he managed to give Francesca the most flirtatious smile he could possibly muster. "I'd like that."

Fortunately, the first scene didn't require a great deal of acting ability. Tony*, or rather Justin, was tied up in a chair with a fake bomb placed underneath. His role in this scene was simply to wriggle about in the ropes, trying to free himself, with repeated worried glances at the bomb. This wouldn't be much harder than being a camel, when it came right down to it.

After Stillwell and several prop people laboriously arranged the rope around his wrists and ankles in the most visually appealing way (who knew it could be so complicated?), and Sheila had fluffed his hair three or four times, the director at last called for quiet.

"This is just a rehearsal. Let's see how it looks. And...action!"

Tony* wriggled and grimaced as instructed. The TV crews were clearly eating this up. The cameramen circled him like wolves scenting a carcass.

"OK, OK. That was great," Stillwell said after a few seconds, "but I think we need a little more. How about some soft grunting to show how hard you're trying to get out? Nothing too huge, just some low soft sound to convey your Herculean efforts. Beautiful, let's go again, OK? And...action!"

Tony* wriggled, grimaced, and grunted, the cameramen swooping about, madly recording every moment for posterity.

"Wonderful, wonderful," Stillwell stopped him again, "but maybe ease up just a touch on the grunting. Shuffle your feet around a little more instead."

Mark, the Channel 6 cameraman, was panning back and forth between Stillwell and Tony* to capture every nuance of their conversation. Suddenly, he kicked Tony*'s chair over on its side and drew a gun from his pants, aiming it at Tony*'s neck.

Stillwell stood frozen in shock. "What the hell are you...?"

"Get away!" Mark fired into the air to show he meant business, and then again, and people screamed and plugged their ears and clutched at each other.

Stillwell backed away, his arms in the air, and Mark set his camera down on the ground before taking a quick look around to make sure everyone was staying out of his way.

"Cell phones off and on the ground! Now! And you!" He leveled the gun at Ray, who was standing next to Fraser*. "Bring me your holster!" Ray reluctantly obeyed. "And you two," he gestured at the Channel 8 and Channel 12 cameras, "you keep rolling. I want people to hear what I have to say."

Tony* was not all that unhappy at this turn of events. They'd forced the criminal to go after the wrong target, he was going to confess on tape, and as an added bonus, he didn't have to wriggle and grimace any more. Yes, it was true that the man aiming the gun at his neck fully intended to kill him...but he'd worry about that part later.

He shouldn't play it too cool, though. Very few civilians would be able to remain calm in such a situation. He decided to go for a combination of shock, fear, and dawning realization of his impending death. "So it was you in Toronto, from the very beginning?" he asked querulously, doing his best to look cowed.

"You pigs are stealing our jobs, our livelihoods!" Mark roared. "I was supposed to be working on this project, until you lured the studio away with your big tax credits and your weak Canadian dollar. There was no reason this film had to be shot in Canada, none! The studio only caved in to save money. I haven't worked on a big-budget picture in two years now. Two years!"

"But why kill me? I didn't make that decision," he wheedled, trying to bargain for his life like a good hostage. You've got to stay calm if you want to walk away from this one, he told himself. Just wait him out.

"I tried being subtle. I thought maybe if things didn't go so well in Toronto, the studio wouldn't send any more work up there, but guess what? They're going to do three more films up there next year. Three! And then you come here and rub my nose in it, right in my hometown, and I have to read about it in the paper! And then I have to pull made-up stories about on-set bloopers out of my ass so my mother won't know your penny-pinching studio execs destroyed me." He shook his head in angry resignation. "I've been working my ass off trying to get a break in this business for years. I've had enough. It's over." There was a dreadful finality to his tone.

Thatcher's heart was in her throat as she watched from the sideline, far from Ray and Fraser's* vantage point. She hadn't been able to resist the temptation to come and see the last day of filming. She told herself she just wanted to protect Tony Klein and see him home safely, and that was true, but she also enjoyed watching the crew work. It was like a big family where everyone knew each other's quirks and gossiped behind each other's backs, but still cared for each other and stuck together, no matter what.

"The trailer fire--" Tony* started to speak again.

"Shut up!" Mark exploded, the veins on the side of his neck protruding like rain-swollen earthworms. "Just shut up!"

Thatcher blinked, tears stinging her eyes once more. She couldn't let this crazy man shoot Tony Klein. She just couldn't. She'd nearly gotten him killed yesterday, and she wasn't going to fail him again. Her honor as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police depended on her rescuing this man from certain death. Maybe if she could humanize Tony*, Mark would see him as more than just a Canadian actor-hostage to be dispatched in front of rolling cameras. She would need her tears to pull this off.

"It stops here!" Mark raged. "No more runaway productions!" He turned and faced one of the cameras. "If any other American studio tries to send anyone else to Canada, this is what will happen to them." He turned back to Tony* and raised his arm, but suddenly a sobbing woman threw herself between him and his target.

"Get away from him!" he snarled.

"No, please, don't!" she cried, the tears smearing her meticulously applied makeup into a hopeless mess. She turned to Tony* and caressed his cheek. "My darling husband," she sobbed to him, making sure she spoke loud enough for Mark to hear, "I wanted to surprise you by coming down early to watch. I'm..."

"Sssh, don't cry, sweetheart. How are the kids? How's the dog?" Tony* was one sharp cookie, but of course, he was an actor. He understood exactly what she was trying to do, and she was grateful for it. Sure, he was in a bit of an awkward position, tied up and lying on his right side, but he was still able to emote quite nicely.

"They're fine," she smiled through her tears. "Jamie wanted to come with me so badly. She misses you terribly."

Tony didn't have a daughter named Jamie, but thankfully, Mark didn't seem to know that.

"I hope you know how much I love you," she breathed. Inwardly, she steeled herself. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it. This had to look absolutely convincing if there was any hope of saving him.

She brought her lips to his and kissed him, her arms encircling him as best they could. To everyone watching, it looked like a passionate good-bye kiss, but Thatcher applied almost no pressure to Tony's* lips, a bit embarrassed about doing something so intimate with a man she barely knew, even if it was to save his life. Still, she was unprepared for the sheer pleasantness of it, for the strangely, tantalizingly familiar warmth and softness. For a wild moment, her mind flashed back to that kiss with Fraser on top of the train, and she had to curb her enthusiasm just a bit. It wouldn't do at all to maul the poor man, no matter what fond memories his lips conjured up. Tony's* side of the kiss was a bit strange. It started off...well, "polite" was the only word to describe it, but then there were tantalizing flickers of something more, flickers that were quickly extinguished. It was as if he couldn't decide between letting the kiss be strictly for show and injecting it with some passion.

She finally pulled away from Tony*, a notch more breathless than she should have been, and noted with satisfaction that several of the crew members were wiping their eyes and sniffling at the romantic scene.

"Awww," said Mark, "wasn't that sweet...so I'll make sure to shoot you both, so you can be together forever." Again he raised his gun.

***

Tony looked on in horror, his mind in a fog. His mimicry from last night echoed mockingly in his ears. "I promise you, I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. I promise you, I will do everything in my power to keep you safe." And yet he was standing here like a coward watching a psycho cock the gun at someone else!

Looking back later, he was never sure if it was the uniform, the fact that he was playing a courageous character, the medication, his conscience, or some combination of those things, but a deadly calm descended on him like a curtain, so total and so complete that he could hear his own heartbeat as it slowed and steadied, feel the perfect outline of a leaf under his boot, and see everything before him snap into focus in crisp outlines and bright colors, as if it were etched in glass. His mind cleared, focused its energies, and became utterly certain of one overarching truth: Fraser and Thatcher were not going to die today.

"Hey!" Tony stepped forward with his arms in the air.

"Stop! You got a death wish?" hissed Ray, his hand going for where his holster should have been, but Mark had already swung his arm around and trained the gun directly on Tony.

Tony advanced a few more steps, feeling supremely self-confident. "I'm Tony Klein," he said defiantly, taking the Stetson off and holding it in his upraised right hand so his attacker could see his face clearly. "That man," he nodded at Fraser, "is just my stunt double. He's American, and he's union. Leave him alone. I'm the one you want."

Mark took three or four steps toward him, an ugly grin spreading across his face. "All right. Fine with me. Any last words?"

Thatcher watched Mark recede, thankful for Fraser's* ruse. Fraser* was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid to bait Mark like that, but it gave her the opening she needed. "Relax," she whispered to Tony*, slipping her pocketknife slowly out of her pocket.

Tony Klein, the real Tony Klein, stood straight and tall, as calm as an unruffled pond. "Just a few," he replied evenly, conversationally. "It may be wrong for the Canadian government to subsidize American film production in Canada, but try looking at it from our point of view."

"Thank you, sir," Fraser whispered to his commanding officer, "but the ropes are actually quite loose." He took out one hand to demonstrate.

"Canadian cinemas are full of American blockbusters," Tony said, "mindless shoot-em-up films like this one, while most Canadian films get one screen in Toronto, one in Vancouver, and one in Montreal, if they're lucky."

Thatcher's brow wrinkled in confusion. "What...*Fraser*?" Then her eyes grew positively volcanic. "Why didn't you tell me about...and then I went and...you know..." Her fingers moved unconsciously to her lips, and she flushed a deep red.

"Our televisions are full of 'ER' and 'Friends'," Tony forged on, his voice rising in indignation as he warmed to his topic, "while great Canadian shows like 'North of 60' teeter on the brink of cancellation."

Fraser kept his voice low. "I'm truly sorry, sir, and everything will be explained in due course, but perhaps we should attempt to subdue the gunman before he shoots Mr. Klein."

Tony was gamely continuing, his voice carrying beautifully across the set. "And if you're an actor in Canada, the question is not *if* you'll go to Hollywood to make a decent living, but *when*." At the edge of his vision, he could see Thatcher and Fraser talking. Come on, do something! I can't keep this up all day! he thought frantically.

"All right." Thatcher relented, turning her head to assess the situation, and noted that Mark was presenting them with his left hip and back, quite an advantageous angle for them. "Back of the knees?"

Fraser nodded. "On three." They began to creep into position.

Tony worked up to a dazzling finish. "Leslie Nielsen, William Shatner, Michael J. Fox, Jim Carrey--they all had to leave to do what they love. And me, too. I'm no different from any of the rest of them. Just another Canadian trying to keep working."

"One," mouthed Thatcher.

Mark's gun had drifted downward just a bit during Tony's impassioned speech, but it came right back up again, and his finger was tight on the trigger. "Well, well, that was almost touching..."

"Two," whispered Fraser.

"...but somehow, I still really want the satisfaction of seeing your brains splattered on the ground."

"Three!" Fraser and Thatcher cried together as they leapt forward, striking expertly at the backs of Mark's knees. They buckled at the surprise attack, the gun went off, and Mark sailed forward into the asphalt, like a peasant bowing before a sultan, his arms extended in front of him. Fraser and Thatcher crashed on top of him in a tangled heap.

Tony's world suddenly slammed back into full speed and became foggy again, and he sat down on the ground a bit harder than he meant to. He looked down at his red tunic in a daze.

Ray was already there, shaking his arm. "Tony! Are you all right? Are you all right!"

Tony looked up at the detective's stricken face, not knowing what to answer, and then he saw the bright point of light coming through the very top of the Stetson. He dropped the hat and ran his hands over his head, but his fingers felt nothing warm or sticky. A shaky sigh of relief escaped him as he licked his dry lips.

"He shot me in the hat," Tony said dumbly, looking at his clean hands in amazement. "But he missed my head."

Ray nodded and clapped him on the shoulder, then ran to assist Fraser and Thatcher. Thatcher handed Mark's gun to a nearby crew member, and Fraser sat on Mark's back with the man's well-toned arms in a half-Nelson. "Maybe I couldn't blow your head off," Ray growled, slapping his handcuffs on Mark none too gently, "but the cuffs still work." Then he noticed a TV camera zooming in close and offered it one of his best cocky grins and a wink. The crew broke into joyous, whooping applause.

The news ratings that day were the highest they'd been in years.

***

The crew had taken over the bar at their hotel for their wrap party, and the festivities were in full swing when Fraser walked up. His hair was back to its usual clean-cut look, but he wore jeans and a cream-colored cable-knit sweater rather than the red serge. He wasn't too keen to wear the uniform after today's harrowing events, and the Stetson had to be replaced anyway.

He lingered outside in the darkness, looking into the crowded bar through several large windows. Ray was getting his picture taken with Stillwell and grinning from ear to ear. Huey and Dewey were on a small stage in one corner talking into microphones, apparently telling jokes, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. Inspector Thatcher was conversing easily with Dot and Daga, and Tony was telling stories to a rapt audience at the bar, probably about his brushes with death. The light was back in his eyes, and he gestured, made hilarious faces, and laughed quite a bit as he talked. Francesca, dressed in a simple but elegant black dress, was among his eager listeners, but then she turned her head and saw Fraser standing outside.

He had every reason to be happy. They'd taken Mark Caldwell into custody with no injuries and no loss of life, and the film had wrapped on schedule. So why wasn't he happy? Maybe it was the fact that he, Ray, Thatcher and Tony were all over the TV and being hailed as heroes, while Ray Vecchio slaved away at a similar, yet far more important task for which he could never receive any recognition, forgotten and cut off from the rest of the world. Yes, that was it exactly. The world had a disturbing tendency to focus on the flashy, the hollow, and the superficial, while ignoring, if not actively mocking, the people who quietly did heroic deeds without trying to wrangle a movie deal out of it.

He looked again at the people talking and laughing inside the hotel, so obviously enjoying themselves, and shook his head. He wouldn't go in and dampen the atmosphere with his gloomy-Gus thoughts. He could go back to the Consulate and read on his cot until he unwound enough to go to sleep.

He was just turning to leave when Francesca came through the lobby doors and approached him, stopping so close that he could smell her perfume--Raging Passions, if he wasn't mistaken.

"Hi, Fraser."

He nodded soberly. "Francesca."

"Uh, listen," she began, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, "I'm sorry about before...you know, this morning outside your--I mean, Tony's--trailer..."

He held up a hand to stop her. "No, I'm the one who should be sorry for deceiving you. I was just playing a part. I wish I could have told you the truth, but Ray was the only one who knew. Even Inspector Thatcher didn't know about our plan." And he knew he'd be getting a heated dressing-down about withholding information from one's superior officer on Monday because of that oversight, but the prospect didn't bother him. In a strange way, he was almost looking forward to it.

Thatcher didn't know? Well, that was certainly good news. Francesca's lips twitched upward in schadenfreude. "That's okay. I just didn't want you to, uh, get the wrong idea about me." She looked up into his face, with its shadows of duty and worry, and it was ten times as handsome as its talkative twin inside.

"Oh, no, Francesca," he reassured her, offering her a warm and gentle smile.

She smiled back, her dark eyes sparkling. She was glad to see his mood lift a little, and gestured to the party playing out in the bar. "Everyone's been asking about you. Come on inside where it's warm, and forget your troubles for a while." She offered her arm to Fraser, the smile still lighting her face.

"Thank you." Deeply moved by her thoughtfulness, Fraser forgot the "kindly." He linked his arm in hers, and together, they left the deserted street behind and joined in the celebration.