“ Uh, sir? Why are we going to Tennesse?”

Page glared at the young man standing before him.

“ Because I’m sending you there, O’Malley,” he snapped.

“ Don’t they have their own special unit?”

“ Yes, but they aren’t familiar with this link. You are. Now shut up and go.”

Kate put a hand on her partner’s arm, silently telling him to bite his tongue. He complied, and the two walked out of the room.

The moment the door closed Nick exploded.

“ TENNESSE!” he moaned. “ Nashville, Tennesse! Home of the yodeling hicks!”

“ They don’t yodel, and they’re not hicks,” Kate replied smoothly. “ Besides, Elvis made it big there.”

“ So? It’s famous for the Grand Old Opry, which is a collection of the elite of the yodeling hicks. They’re a bunch of warbeling hillbillies!”

Kate rolled her eyes. Hard rock fans can be so closed minded.

“ Nick, can it.”

Nick and Kate walked through the streets of Nashville, planning their next move.

“ So how are we going to find this guy?” Kate asked.

Nick shrugged.

“ Look for large groups of women looking hot and bothered and following a guy,” Nick replied. Kate responded to his suggestion with a glare. “ What?”

Kate rolled her eyes, and didn’t respond.

“ When we get back to the hotel, I’m going to call Sean and see if he can’t come up with a device to measure phemeron (SP!) levels. We can track the link using that.”

Nick nodded, and saw out of the corner of his eye people snapping pictures of him.

“ Why are they taking pictures of me?” he asked his partner.

“ Because they’ve never seen a real live moron before?”

“ Ha ha, very funny.

A kid came up and asked Nick for his autograph.

“ Sorry kid, you got the wrong guy,” Nick replied. He then quickened his pace, and practically ran back to the hotel.

Two days later, Sean’s device came in the mail.

“ Finally!” Kate exclaimed, examing the device. “ We need to catch this thing before any more women go mad.”

The link they were after was one of the less evil. In fact, they didn’t really think the thing was evil at all. By some work of chance, it’s body emitted a phermeron or something similiar that drove almost all women crazy with lust. Intentionally or not, it had created havoc in Chicago, and was probably doing so in Nashville as well.

Once Kate had the device figured out, she looked up at Nick and grinned.

“ Shall we hit the town?” she asked archly. Nick grinned back at her.

“ Bring it on!”

They had wandered around Nashville for about two hours with no success. Nick was irritated that they had no sign of the link, and he was getting creeped out by the way everyone was stopping and staring at him. Some even took pictures of him, and he got more than one request for an autograph.

A sudden squeal pierced the air, and a girl’s voice shouted “ OH MY GOD, IT’S HIM!”

Nick whirled around to find a herd of girls racing towards him. Before he could react he was swamped with pictures and autograph requests and lost in a sea of bodies.

“ I AM NOT BRAD PAISLEY!” he shouted miserably. “ I AM DETECTIVE NICK O’MALLEY FROM THE CHICAGO POLICE!” They didn’t listen. “ I CAN’T SING FOR BEANS!” He sang the only country song he knew, and everyone within hearing range covered their ears. When he stopped, everything was blessedly silent.

Kate took the chance to take out a picture of the link and show it to a nearby girl.

“ Have you seen this man?” she asked. The girl studied the picture.

“ Him?” she said. “ Oh sure. He’s dreamy. He’s going to open up the Brooks and Dunn concert tonight. My mom and I were going to go, because Kix Brooks is hotter then hell, but my mom’s sick, and I’m trying to sell my tickets. You want ‘em?”

“ Sure.” Kate took out her purse, and promptly bought the tickets.

The mob surrounding Nick had finally dispersed, and she walked up to him.

“ I’ve got tickets to see our link,” she said. “ We can administer the antidote there. Bring a blow gun.”

The crowd at the concert was rabid, with fans screaming and waving their signs and singing bad renditions of Brooks and Dunn songs before it even started.

Finally a man walked onto the stage, and began talking in the microphone.

“ Ladies and gentlemen,” he shouted, “ here to open for Brooks and Dunn is......”

Another man walked onto the stage. It was the link. Nick quickly loaded the antidote into his blow gun, and shot at the link. It flinched a bit when the dart hit him, but nobody noticed, and it seemed fine. Nick relaxed, grinning proudly.

“...CHRIS CAGLE!”

The link started singing in a voice that didn’t need phermerons to drive women wild, “ My love goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on!”