Karl, being Karl, somehow managed to trash the room Laurie gave him thoroughly since moving in, and half his stuff wasn’t even unpacked yet.

Laurie had pretty much been cleaning up after him since he stepped foot inside her door. But, because he wanted his privacy, he didn’t like her entering, especially when he wasn’t there. After he'd shouted at her the last time she was in there without him knowing, she hadn't gone back.

Basically, this meant no one had cleaned his room in the two weeks since he'd been living with his older sister.

On the one hand, he was grateful she'd respected him on this one thing. Though she was a little too fond of walking in on him, he could tell she hadn't touched a thing in his room since he asked her not to. But on the other hand, he wasn’t exactly careful with his own stuff and picking up after himself wasn’t a skill he'd learned all that well. He didn’t even consider his room a mess until he wanted to look for something and couldn’t find it.

His room was a mess, and as a result, he had managed to lose the kilo of weed in there, along with the papers he copied from Pentagon files and printed on his dad's printer.

He had to find the stuff, though. He wanted his weed, he'd had to actually work to get it instead of just using his dad's money to acquire some. In a way, he had earned it. But he also needed the papers. He'd told Randy he'd get them ages ago. The only reason he hadn't handed them over yet, was because he'd been wondering if he could get more for them.

Karl wasn’t all too sure what files he'd gotten. He just knew they had something to do with his dad's work and they were important. Beyond that, it didn’t really interest him to know, so he'd never bothered to find out. He didn’t bother to find out why his friend wanted them, or how they'd known about his dad's work in the first place.

He didn’t care. He just wanted out from under his dad's thumb and to have his fun. But he did know, that if he didn’t have those papers the next time he went to meet Randy, he'd be meeting the other guy his buddy worked with, the guy he didn’t want Karl hanging around. Karl had no idea who he was, just that the guy was dangerous, and he had more interest in the papers than Randy did.

So Karl absolutely had to find those papers. Right after he found his weed.

But why the hell was there so much stuff to sift through?

Laurie somewhat noticed her brother was swearing and moving things around a lot in his room. When she thought she heard it, she froze and listened carefully. Of course, every noise he ended up making made no sense to her, so she didn’t really know what he was trying to do.

Was he trying to clean up his room? Laurie scoffed at the thought. More like throw everything around a different way. It couldn’t count as cleaning, but he'd told her not to go in there, and save the couple of times she'd gone in to get her computer when she caught him using it without permission, she'd stayed away. It had almost hurt to allow it. The place probably smelled like a pig sty, or would soon, and she was just grateful it hadn't spread to the rest of the rooms yet. Eventually, though, it would. And she would have to put her foot down and make him clean the room, make him let her do it, or toss him out along with his trash and return the room to how it had been before he arrived.

But Laurie wasn’t thinking of any of those options, not right then. Whatever her brother was doing, she doubted it would be anything productive. No, he would probably call her and have her do it for him. She figured he'd just lost his bong again.

In any case, it was none of her business. He hadn't run out of his room screaming for her to do something, so she didn’t have to get involved. The argument from earlier, while he was injured, still hung heavily on her. Laurie still couldn’t believe she had been so callous. Her brother had barely escaped death, and instead of helping him out, she chatted to the driver of the car and proceeded to pick an argument with him. She'd known he wouldn’t take the argument well. She'd known, as soon as he'd stood near her, that he was high and not in his right mind, the smell hung so heavily around him. And still, she hadn't followed common sense. She wasn’t proud of herself that it had happened, and in front of Mickey, no less.

But she was determined to forget it. Laurie decided to focus on getting ready for her date instead of worrying about being roped into whatever Karl's drama was. It changed so often, it was seriously a pain having to try and keep up with it. After what she'd had to put up with from him so far, she deserved the break.

It took some effort because he wasn’t just making a mess out of his room, but her home. Still, she managed to ignore him.

Meanwhile, Mickey was all ready. He'd been feeling a little excited, partly because he thought he was getting closer to closing the case, and mostly because of the planned date with Laurie.

It had been a while for him. Before his wife, he could hardly remember any dates he'd gone on. So, he was a little nervous about the date, for more than one reason. It wasn’t the best thing he could do, considering he was on a case, Although, he could argue he wasn’t deviating much from the parameters. He was supposed to get close to both siblings. Karl had been his priority, but Laurie was still the number one target because she was the easier target, and she was the access he needed into the house.

Still, when he proposed the date, it had just been a reaction to seeing Laurie in distress. He hadn't been thinking about the job at all. He just wanted her to feel better, and he'd said the first thing that came to mind.

Hell, he hadn't really thought about what he'd done until he'd settled down to do a little more spying and got the new information pertinent to the case.

He'd worried that he'd made a hasty decision, earlier. As he'd listened to Karl have his chat with his buddy, Randy, Mickey now had some more information confirming him as someone of definite interest. Karl had completely lost his head after the call, throwing stuff around in his room, probably looking for drugs he'd lost in all the mess. He could barely see through the window from his vantage point, and even Mickey knew the boy had made a mess of his space.

It had been interesting, for a couple of seconds, to watch him run around in a panic. Mickey took sadistic pleasure in it, and though it was nowhere near enough for what he'd put his sister through, at least he was feeling some pressure.

But after a while when nothing more interesting happened, Mickey realized he would be late for his date if he didn’t get a move on. There was some hesitation, wondering what he would miss while he was outside. But that was what all the equipment he'd placed in their house was for.

He made sure that everything was set up to record conversations in the house and any cell phone calls that were made in the vicinity.

Fingers crossed that he wouldn’t miss anything too important, he went over to greet Laurie and took her out on their date.