Scott and his colleagues exchanged glances, nodded, and continued to review the documents and listen to the recordings. Six trainee agents had already checked all the corresponding people for the cell phone numbers, including a dozen unregistered phones. Even the names noted for reference were investigated, but to little avail—as names alone revealed hardly any useful information.

The recordings they were listening to were nearly a month's worth of phone call records of journalist Ashi before his death, obtained by the NSA. They were arranged in chronological order according to the phone numbers, and all of them had to be listened to and analyzed to determine which calls were related to the case and which were irrelevant contacts.

It wasn't an easy task, but it couldn't be delegated to the few trainee agents; it was up to the three of them to bite the bullet and handle it themselves.

Gordon stared blankly at the whiteboard in front of him. There were now four whiteboards in total, representing Abdul, journalist Ashi's social network, the materials from Ashi's death scene, evidence, and photographs of evidence related to the car driven by Abdul.

The biggest problem now was the lack of direct leads to lock in a suspect—even a list of potential suspects was nonexistent. Abdul was just an executor and, besides his superior, he had no contact with anyone else. Although he had been in New York for a long time, none of the other people he knew daily were of any value for arrest.

Since the assigned tasks were completed, the four trainee agents and two trainee intelligence personnel had left Jimmy's office and returned to their originally assigned teams. Now, Jimmy's office was left with just him. Chris had disappeared after briefly showing up when Gordon and his team arrived; Jimmy had no idea where he had gone.

It was tough to write the report for today, as Jimmy had initiated the issue. Normally, gang-related cases fell under Ruiz's jurisdiction. Jimmy only intervened in Ruiz's case because he had previously worked with Ruiz and was familiar with the T14's background. It was already somewhat improper for him to step in directly. To include that in the report would be even more problematic.

While smoking earlier, he had thought of an excuse for the report—he wanted to inquire about their warehouse leasing period and see if they had any impressions of Abdul. This reason was barely justifiable. It was only because the gang members, after realizing he was an FBI agent and that he was alone, prepared to attack that Jimmy retaliated.

He would have to use that excuse, and although it might seem like a dog chasing mice, it was somewhat defensible. As long as Ruiz and Hughes could say a few good words for him, theoretically, he should be able to slip by.

Jimmy couldn't submit the report directly—it would cause trouble. After writing it, he carried the report to find Ruiz, but, he hadn't returned yet; it seemed like the warehouse cleaning was taking longer than expected.

There was no choice but to discuss it later. Jimmy took the report back and threw it on the desk.

Gordon's team finally made some progress—Joey had heard a section of the recordings where journalist Ashi arranged a meeting with someone, scheduled a week before Ashi died. Although the content of the meeting wasn't mentioned on the phone, it was already a very clear lead. The recording contained the location of the meeting, and since the person used an unregistered phone, their identity couldn't be confirmed. However, with this phone number, they could investigate the location of the cell phone.

Gordon immediately called Jimmy to look into the meeting between Ashi and that person in New York. It's more convenient with a local agent involved.

After receiving a call from Gordon, Jimmy entered the conference room, where Joey repeated the contents of the call to him. Once Jimmy got the location, he and Joey set off. As for the cell phone number, it was left to Gordon and his team to investigate where the phone was last located. If that unregistered phone was still in use, they could even pinpoint its approximate location using triangulation.

A coffee shop in Brooklyn, eh? It was a rather large one, also serving light meals. Jimmy and Joey parked their car outside the coffee shop, looked around, and then walked into the establishment.

Jimmy: "FBI, is your manager around?"

The server looked at Jimmy and his partner, nodded, and walked towards the kitchen area. After a while, a chubby old man came out from the back.

"Hi, I'm Mike, the owner here. What can I do for you two agents?" The old man extended his hand to shake with Jimmy and Joey, then led them to a table on the side and invited them to sit down.

"FBI Special Agent Jimmy, this is Special Agent Joey. Do you have any surveillance in your shop?" Jimmy flashed his badge briefly, introduced their identities, and asked the owner, Mike, about the surveillance. It had been almost two weeks, so it was unlikely that the staff would remember clearly.

Mike nodded. Jimmy took out a photo of journalist Ashi, "We need to check the recording from a week ago, and the circumstances when this person came to the store."

Mike asked, "May I know what this is about?"

Jimmy: "He's involved in a case we're investigating, and we need to see who he met with here at that time."

Mike stood up, "Come with me."

In the manager's office, there were two monitors on the wall opposite the owner's desk that corresponded to the two surveillance cameras in the store.

Owner Mike pulled out a cardboard box from a cabinet and placed it on the desk, searching through it until he found the day's recording Jimmy was asking for, and inserted it into the adjacent video player. Jimmy started to fast-forward the video until journalist Ashi appeared on the screen.

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