“He’s just trying to help you with your headache,” Megan explained, matter-of-factly.

“Well, I got things to do. It’s getting close to dinner time. I should be putting up the steaks.”

Jasper suddenly began to snore, and Megan smiled. “Don’t worry about that. We’ve got leftover stew. I’ll get up in a bit and make some biscuits to go with it. You just relax.”

Leaning his head back on the recliner, Frank rubbed the back of Jasper’s furry neck and closed his eyes. Maybe he could use a little nap. He was feeling particularly tired.

###

“I’m frankly surprised you’ve already managed to go through all that crap I handed you,” Nate said. “That was only a couple weeks ago.”

Hendrickson scoffed as he led Nate through the building. “What the hell do you think I do all day, sit on my ass and look pretty? Though I can’t help but wonder where the hell you got some of this stuff…”

“You know I can’t say.”

“I know. And even if you did,” Hendrickson dramatically stuck his fingers in his ears as he walked through the near-empty lab, “I’d have to pretend I didn’t hear a thing. Anyway, you’re certainly keeping me on my toes.”

“Glad to be of service. Oh, and by the way, I’m sort of sad to see that the green is finally gone out of your hair.”

Hendrickson scowled and shook his head. “That was almost three years ago, man. When are you going to forget about that?”

“Never.” Nate tapped the side of his head. “I’ve got the memory of an elephant.”

Nate liked messing with Hendrickson. But even better, he liked working with him. The man was an excellent analyst. Thorough and dogged, determined to dig into things that didn’t appear to add up.

Hendrickson swiped his badge at the special access room, which was reserved for highly classified material. They walked inside, and he sat down at a terminal and looked over some handwritten notes.

Hendrickson harrumphed as he unlocked the evidence drawer and began sorting through some files.

“So,” Nate remarked. “What’ve you got?”

“Okay,” he said. “The stuff your team provided fell into three categories: chemical analysis, data recovery, and DNA analysis.

“First, let’s deal with the chemical analysis. Pretty much everything you brought back was covered in traces of an accelerant. Specifically, a form of jelled gasoline. The ratios of the constituent ingredients matched what we used to drop in Korea.”

“Yup.” Nate nodded, remembering the stinging fumes of the gasoline and detergent. “Whoever came up with that saying, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning’ is a total asshole. I hate that smell.”