"...this some kinda joke I'm not privy to?" Lieutenant Simon Riley, who never really lost his alias of Ghost - even after his retirement int he British Military, asked with a single raised brow.

"Listen, Ghost," his boss sat across from him in the meeting room, squirming slightly under the masked man's piercing gaze. "It's not that we don't think your capable of doing this on your own. Your record speaks for itself when it comes to catching the killers. However, an offer like this comes once in a blue moon and we would be stupid not to take them up on it-"

"Let me get this straight," Simon practically growled, leaning forward in his seat and resting his tattooed forearms onto the wooden table before him, hands clasped with disapproval. The skull-printed balaclava he wore doing little to muffle his displeasure. "You want me to take an unarmed, untrained squint out into the field?"

"A Forensic Anthropologist, Agent Riley," his boss corrected, grimacing slightly at his agent's tone. "They are highly trained in matters of the human body. They helped Agent Ross last month catch a perp he'd been after for years, and that was their first time working with us."

Simon already knew the details of the case. Of course he did with the way Agent Ross blabbed about it whenever he was in the break room. A case that had plagued Ross' career for years, solved in a single week by one little squint.

"Then saddle Ross up with them" Ghost protested.

"I don't ask this of you lightly, Agent Riley. In fact, I'm not asking at all," his senior cleared his throat. "A collaborator such as the Jeffersonian Institute will be invaluable when cases eventually go to court... you are the only agent I trust to keep them safe while they work. I'm doing this because you are my best agent."

"...and I can't refuse?"

"Not this time, Lieutenant."

Which was exactly how, that afternoon, Simon found himself waiting at an active crime scene for his new partner to show up; sipping on a polystyrene cup of tea, his nose wrinkling at how weak it was. America and their inability to make a good cuppa, he thought bitterly to himself as his gaze flickered around at the chaos. His team of agents and the FBI's own laboratory division securing the remains and surrounding area.

A body had been discovered in the early hours of that morning by two joggers who'd wandered off the trodden path by accident. Discovering the shallow grave and, what remained, of a body. The state of the remains long since past the point of being able to ID the victim through the FBI database.

However, the joggers had rang in the case and the matter had been bumped up and up the chain of command before finally falling into Simon's lap.

He supposed this would be a good test run considering the state of the remains, if nothing else. Yet, how the squint was going to get anything from the mess before him was beyond Ghost's understanding...