•••

Oz fiddled with the sandwich Gunn had made for him, not sure if he was hungry or not. Compared to most people, the werewolf looked fairly calm and collected. For him, however, he was a bundle of nervous, twitching energy. The vampire hunter and Angel didn't notice the difference, but Wil did.

"He'll wake up," Wil said reassuringly, seeing how Oz was pretending to be interested in his food. When they'd gone up to check on the others, they had found Oz awake. Wesley and Xander, however, were still comatose.

"I know," Oz replied, looking down at the soft brown bread in his hands. His rational mind knew that Xander would wake up. The wolf, though, didn't have the same confidence. It was growling and pacing, impatient and not happy about not having its mate by its side. For his wolf half, it was bad enough to have a mate that was so closely related to what it considered to be prey. Having a mate that was hurt was far worse—especially when he couldn't do anything about it. Oz was nearly vibrating under the strain of keeping himself together. When he'd first woken up, he'd figured that Xander would follow him. Two days later, however, he still hadn't shown signs of life. Angel and Wil had called in a doctor to take care of them, so he didn't have to worry about that aspect of their recovery. That wasn't much comfort, though.

All that he, and the others, had in terms of entertainment was deciding what to do about Wolfram & Hart. He and Cordelia had agreed with Wil's idea—that Wolfram & Hart were distracting them from something bigger and that the law firm didn't want them gone, just rendered useless. Oz also thought that attacking the firm outright would be a very bad idea, one that would probably get them killed.

"If you're not going to eat that, can I have it?" Cordelia asked, eyeing Oz's sandwich. He glanced down at it before handing it over. She, like him, had recovered nicely after a long night's sleep. Now she was making up for lost time on the food front, trying to satisfy a ravenous appetite.

"Did you find out anything about W & H?" Oz asked Angel, hoping that the vampire had gotten useful information about the law firm.

Angel shrugged and scowled. "Yes and no. I mean, they're up to their usual antics, helping out people we'd rather they not, but I've not heard about anything big going on. "

"They're rarely into big," Wil reminded the group. "After all, what good would it do them to destroy the world, or cause widespread destruction?"

"But there has to be something they're doing that requires us to be elsewhere," Cordelia said around a bite of sandwich. "I mean I haven't had a vision in a while, but in general we've been running our asses off dealing with piddling little stuff, and they've got fingers in way too much of it."

"What do you mean?" Angel asked, frowning.

"She means that according to a snitch or two, Wolfram & Hart have been funding some of the activities that have required our attention lately," Gunn answered.

"Oh," Angel murmured.

"Which just makes me think that they're up to something," Wil surmised. "I wish I knew what it was."

"Yeah, don't we all," Gunn said. "I've got to run. The old neighborhood's not cleaning itself up on its own."

"Will you be back soon?" Cordelia inquired hopefully. She didn't like it when Gunn was away for days on end working with his old gang.

Gunn shrugged. "I'll call."

•••

It was three days before Gunn showed back up at the hotel, exhausted and battered. When he got up to the office, he had just enough time to set down his axe and duffle bag before Cordelia pounced, fretting over all of his wounds. "You're in so much trouble, mister!"

"They're part of the job, Delia," Gunn replied tiredly. Now was not the time to start pestering him about war wounds.

"No, you're in trouble because you didn't turn your cell phone on! Wesley and Xander woke up!" Cordelia shot, pushing the hunter into a chair. He winced as she took out a bottle of antiseptic and a bag of cotton balls, and swore when she started cleaning his wounds.

"How are they?" Gunn asked, trying and failing to avoid the stinging cleaner.

"They're fine, now that they've both slept it off like Oz and I did," Cordelia answered. "Wil's still leery about letting us out on the town, though, so we're stuck here until he changes his mind."

"Good luck," Gunn said, knowing how likely it was that Wil would just decide everyone was fine. After a few minutes, Cordelia decided that she'd gotten the worst of his injuries cleaned and left him in the office, saying that she had better things to do than hang around a grimy little boy. They may have buried the hatchet and started liking each other, but they'd never promised to have a smooth relationship. At any given time at least one of them was a bit pissed at the other. Gunn wouldn't have it any other way.

It was a couple of hours before he saw anyone else enter the office, since it was still fairly early in the day. When Wil and Angel came in, he was going through the mail that had piled up in his apartment during the weeks he'd been away. There was way too much of it, considering that he had all the important stuff sent to the hotel.

"Oh, look. J.C. Penney's white sale!" Angel quipped, plucking a flyer out of the stack. "Have you told Cordelia about this?"

"Not funny, Soulboy," Cordelia said from the doorway. "Besides, that was a month ago."

"Never mind then," Angel replied, tossing the flyer into the garbage. "How was the neighborhood?"

"Fine," Gunn said absently. "Vamps mostly, and a few demons here and there. They're shaping up nicely under the new leadership." Gunn was very grateful that the traumatic events that had gone down in Caritas had served to teach his old gang a valuable lesson. After that they reorganized themselves into a much better, and more respectable, fighting unit. They still didn't like nonhumans, but they did stop indiscriminately killing everything that crossed their path.

"What's this?" Cordelia said, holding up a postcard.

Gunn squinted at it. "Some guy running for city council."

"Huh," Cordelia hummed. "Anthony Salis. I know him."

"Unlikely," Gunn shot back. "Not your neighborhood."

Cordelia shook her head and took the card to Angel. "No, really. I know this guy—from a party somewhere."

Angel smiled. "Cordy, you go to a lot of parties. If the guy's into politics, he's going to be at them."

The seer snorted and threw herself into a chair. She was stumped by the face—it was relevant somehow, if she could just figure it out. There was something about him…and she never had stuff like this come up if it wasn't relevant. Xander and Oz shuffled in a few minutes later and sat down to visit, since they were grounded from work. Neither of the seers had had any visions since waking up, so Angel, Wil and the other 'healthy' investigators were playing catch-up on their other cases.

•••

"Mark Forrester!"

Wil, Angel and Wesley looked up from the book they were studying. Cordelia was sitting at her desk with a stunned expression on her face. "Excuse me?" Wesley asked the seer.

Cordelia jumped up and ran over to his desk. "I know where I've seen that face! It was at that party I went to hosted by Mark Forrester!"

The three men looked at each other. "Face?"

"You know, the one on the flyer—the guy running for City Council?" Cordelia explained.

"Yes, I remember that now. However, I do not see—" Wesley's brush-off was interrupted by the werewolf seer.

"Um…and I recall correctly, Mark Forrester was a movie producer funded by interests connected to Wolfram & Hart. Big players at that party, let me tell you!" Cordelia said, grimacing. "Actors, directors, you name it…and this guy."

Angel frowned. "What was he doing there?"

Cordelia shrugged. "I don't know—I didn't actually talk to him. Hey, I was just a pretty face!" Cordelia replied hotly.

"Interesting as this is, the connection is tenuous at best," Wesley continued once Cordelia had quieted. "And business has picked up considerably. I don't think we can spare any resources chasing far-fetched leads such as this."

"Uh huh," Cordelia muttered. "Of course, you'd be saying the same thing if *you* had seen the guy at a Wolfram & Hart-backed party, right?"

Wesley shot her an evil glare and turned back to his book. Wil shared a glance with Angel. They both agreed with Wesley that the lead was a bit unlikely, but it was worth investigating. After all, they hadn't gotten anything else. "Maybe we can ask around while we're out working on other cases," Angel offered. Wesley grimaced but nodded his head. He may have been the boss, but he couldn't really tell any of them to just not investigate something.

"Don't bother," Cordelia announced. "I'll do it myself. That way you won't be distracted by my nonsense." Before Wesley could respond, Cordelia stormed out of the office.

"She's certainly…friendly today," Wesley remarked as he delved deeper into his text.

•••

"So tell me one more time why we're doing this?" Xander asked as Fred booted up her computer. He, Fred and Cordelia had been left behind while the others went out on a case. Cordelia had wasted no time in rounding up the other to and putting them to work. First off, Fred was to hack into Anthony Salis' bank accounts and poke around a little. Maybe they'd give the group a clue as to what was going on with the candidate.

"Look," Cordelia began, "I've got a feeling about this guy, and my feelings are usually right."

"Well, let's see what we can find out," Fred murmured as her fingers began to fly over the keyboard. Xander and Cordelia sat back to watch as the girl delved into the bank's secure server. "Hmm…"

"What?" Cordelia asked excitedly.

"Not much," Fred admitted. "He gets paid on automatic deposit—directly from the city, pays his bills on time and doesn't have a dime out of place."

"Oh well," Xander huffed.

"Damn," Cordelia swore. "I wanted something on him."

Fred kept typing. "Let's see…He's one of the city's top prosecutors, and he… almost never goes up against Wolfram & Hart," She said, looking through the city's files. They were public information…if you knew where to look. "And when he does, he loses."

"Huh?" Xander said, waking from his daze. "Always?"

"Yup," Fred replied. "Ok, let's try this."

"What?" Cordelia asked.

"His degrees are on the up and up…" Fred said after a few minutes. "But I've never heard of this scholarship before."

"What scholarship?" The werewolf asked.

"Full ride to Harvard Law," Fred replied. "The Wrathalfmor Memorial Award."

"Wrathalfmor?" Xander echoed. "That sounds like bad sci-fi stuff."

"It's also an anagram of Wolfram & Hart," Fred announced. "It's given out every fourth year."

Cordelia thought for a moment. "Can you pull up the names of other recipients of that award?"

"Sure," Fred replied, typing away. "Let's see, we've got Anthony Salis right there, and about ten others, dating back forty years. And, wouldn't you know…our buddy Gavin's right there on the list."

"What about Lilah?" Xander asked, getting excited.

"Not on here," Fred said. "But I can look up her history as well."

Cordelia and Xander waited impatiently while Fred slogged through public records. "Ah. She went to Yale, you know, on scholarship…the Marl F. Owarth Scholarship for Excellence."

"Another anagram?" Xander guessed. "Who else got that award?"

"It's a partial scholarship, given out every year to three lucky finalists," Fred replied, reading from a website. "Not as prestigious as the Wrathalfmor, but still quite nice. Angel's friend Lindsey is on here as well."

"I wonder how many other scholarships they have going on, funding lawyers like that," Cordelia muttered. "Can we find out?"

Fred scowled. "Maybe. I can set up a search to look—there are all sorts of databases of scholarships. Then we'll have to cross reference those awards with people in the area. Who knows how many people are connected to the firm in some way or another…"

•••

Wesley, Angel, Wil, Oz and Gunn stared down at the mountain of papers Cordelia had given them. "Care to explain?" Wesley asked shortly. "Or are you simply showing us how well you can denude forests?"

"Read it and weep, Hornboy," Cordelia shot back. "I told you there was a connection between that candidate and Wolfram & Hart." The guys' eyes goggled.

"That's the connection?" Angel asked, his jaw dropping.

"Actually, that stack is the connection between Wolfram & Hart and various city officials, including Anthony Salis," Fred explained. "This stack," She said, thumping down another two-foot tall pile of papers, "is the connection between Wolfram & Hart and ten law schools, fourteen scholarship funds, two junior colleges and nine professional sports franchises."

"What kind of connections are we talking about here?" Gunn asked as he peered cautiously at the paperwork. He did not want to have to read that stuff.

"Wolfram & Hart is providing some level of funding for the law schools—technology, books, endowing professorships, you name it. They're also shelling out big bucks to set up scholarship funds—which paid for Lilah, Gavin, Lindsey, and Anthony's law degrees. The junior colleges they own outright and they have at least 10% stakes in each of the sports franchises."

"How did you figure this out?" Angel asked after a moment.

"Fancy fingerwork on Fred's part," Cordelia explained. "It took a lot of digging. Most of this stuff is well-hidden—under dummy corporations or held by anonymous organizations overseas."

"But you all found it easily enough," Wil replied.

"Once we found a loose thread, well, it didn't take as much tugging as you might think. All it takes is one mistake, and they made two," Fred explained.

"And those two mistakes would be what?" Gunn asked.

"First off, the oh-so-wonderful prosecutor Anthony Salis avoids going up against Wolfram & Hart at all costs, and when he can't avoid them, he always loses. Always," Xander answered. "But the kicker was a scholarship he won. Its name is an anagram for Wolfram & Hart."

Wil slumped down on the desk. That was way too easy. "They named a scholarship after themselves?"

"No, they named fourteen scholarships after themselves," Cordelia said. "About half of them are anagrams of the entire name; others include parts of it—or are anagrams of one of the firms' subsidiaries. We cross-referenced the scholarships' recipients with employees of Wolfram & Hart, as well as public and private figures of note here in L.A., and the results are rather depressing."

"How so?" Wil inquired.

"That firm has its greedy little mitts in just about everything. They practically own this city," Fred replied. "From city hall to the sanitation department, they've got people with some sort of connection to them."

"Garbage men?" Gunn said skeptically.

"They paid for their kids' college educations," Xander explained. "The kind of thing that wins a lot of loyalty, you know."

"This isn't a short-term setup," Angel said finally. "They've been laying the groundwork for this for a long time."

Cordelia nodded. "Yeah, but mostly here in L.A.—until recently. If you look at this drawing Fred did," She handed over a sheet of paper, "Right now most of the connections we found do exist in L.A.—but they're starting to reach out to other cities, like New York and London."

"We think that maybe they used L.A. as a guinea pig—to see if they could set themselves up like they did. Since it worked so well, they're branching out," Xander said.

"But where to we fit into this?" Gunn asked. "Why even bother with us, why not just wipe us out?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Cordelia said. "We're running numbers now."