Carefully jimmying the lock to one of the sliding patio doors, Glenn Hubbard quickly let himself into the apartment. Despite being the middle of the day, he had the good fortune of approaching the building unnoticed. Not that he worried much. His State Trooper credentials ensured that he wouldn’t be bothered in the course of performing his duties. He did, however, want to remain undetected to avoid arousing the suspicions of his target.

The apartment was, as one would expect for a young, single lady, neat, tidy, plenty of potpourri and woman oriented magazines. There wasn’t an overabundance of knickknacks cluttering up the place, but they were there. Both the small living room and kitchen offered nothing out of the ordinary.

His main interest was the bedroom and hall closet anyway. Thus far his experience was that untrained people tended to hide things in their bedroom or hall closet. He wasn’t sure why that was. Maybe it was a byproduct of a false sense of privacy normally afforded those areas. He had to chuckle to himself, he was about to do anything but respect the young ladies privacy.

He’d prefer to simply “toss the place” and tear it apart in the process, but that would likely be noticed by the occupant. So he set about searching all of the common places an amateur would likely hide something of value without leaving signs that he had been there. Under the mattress, in the nightstand and in jewelry boxes all proved barren ground in his search for anything incriminating.

For a good fourty minutes he methodically searched for any item that might give him a clue as to his targets activities. Despite his best efforts he found nothing of interest.

Moving on the hall closet he searched under all the towels, behind the shampoo bottles and felt on the top shelf for anything secreted there. Again, this search proved fruitless.

By the time an hour had passed, Glenn Hubbard had less information on his target than before he broke into her apartment.

Going back to her bedroom closet he double-checked jacket pockets, shoeboxes and any other area that could contain items other than the intended purpose. Other than learning her shoe size and noticing that she liked nicer clothes he again came up empty.

He was just about to give up. He’d been there an hour already and despite the remote chance of her returning home during the workday he didn’t want to push his luck too far.

It was then he noticed them; hanging towards the back of the closet were several pairs of woman’s negligees. It was likely he noticed them on his first pass though the closet but this time they caught his attention. These were more than common nightgowns, these were clearly meant for more romantic situations.

His target was single and confirmed by several sources to not be seeing anybody. He thought it odd that such an attractive girl would be single, but people were quite clear about the matter.

Feeling a bit like a pervert, he then re-inspected her undergarment drawers. There too something was out of place; all of the fancier, more intimate garments were in the front of the drawer. The plainer, utilitarian ones were shoved to the back.

Going back to the nightstand he surveyed the belongings and found what he had expected, various forms of birth control.

Making sure to put everything back in its place Hubbard quickly made his departure from Julie Dawson’s apartment. As he walked back towards City Hall he mulled over his discovery.

Despite the appearances being kept, one thing was clear: Julie Dawson was seeing a man.

He hurried his pace as he approached the security checkpoint. Her phone records would be available soon.

****

“How’d it go?” asked DeMetrie as Miller returned to their compound. DeMetrie had been reviewing some maps of the area when his friend returned from inserting the team into the Northeastern corner of the county. It was much later in the day as Miller had made some legitimate farm related trips to continue the cover of being on ClarMar business.

After exchanging greetings with the other solider in the room, Miller replied, “Piece of cake. The stretch of road was perfect. Pulled over to the side. Pretended to take a leak. Bingo, the boys were into the woods”.

Nodding his head DeMetrie pressed on, “no signs of being followed or watched.”

“Nope. Kept my tail clear and was in and out in a minute. Wouldn’t want to do it all the time, but not a bad way for getting men to the scene quickly. Far easier than those damn motorbikes through the woods,” said Miller.

Simply nodding his head DeMetrie fell silent.

As Miller poured himself a cup of coffee from the seemingly never-ending pot available in the room, he sensed something was wrong.

“So what’s the matter?” he asked the clearly bothered Captain.

“Franks, could you give us a minute?” the Captain said to the other man in the room. He politely nodded his head and made leave.

“We lost another team”.

“Damn” swore Miller. They couldn’t afford to lose any men and entire teams created gaping holes in their fragile movement. Instantly collecting himself Miller got to work. “Details?”

The Captain sighed. “I’m afraid there aren’t many to report. Their runner just left before you came back. They were from that new group that joined up a month or so ago. They didn’t report back in and a scout party found them. Didn’t take much. The bodies had been left propped up along the trail where they got jumped.”

“A message obviously” said Miller.

Agreeing DeMetrie said, “Their commander sent them out on that patrol we requested up north. Didn’t happen too far into the patrol either.” Leaning back in his chair he continued, “we obviously can’t sustain losses. That’s clear. I’m more worried that these other groups aren’t going to stand for us running the show if this keeps happening. If the network falls apart there’s no way we’re stopping Donovan.”

“What are your plans?”

Thinking for a long while, almost an uncomfortable amount of time, DeMetrie finally said, “Nothing much I can do. We’re just not ready for a head-to-head confrontation yet”.

Miller nodded. “Agreed. Let me look into a couple things. I think I need to go see a little bird at City Hall.”