Cage was unclear about the logic here because Jimmy had some information involving Pat that he did not share. However, for Jimmy, it was already enough to compile this information together.

These people must be Frog's peers or other gangs coming to grab turf. Previously, when Nut was around, maybe due to combat power or other reasons, nobody had reassessed the distribution of territories.

Now that Frog had taken over Nut's territory, to others, this was the best time to expand their domains.

Jimmey stopped the drunk driver, and if brought back to the police station, the next step might be spending a few days in detention, which would seriously affect the hitmen's plans and could possibly blow their cover. So upon receiving a call from Jimmy, they came over, ready to hijack the driver back. These gunmen were not locals; as long as they dealt with the situation and ran off to other places, they wouldn't have to worry much about police retaliation.

Of course, their fate was sealed, thanks to Jimmy's unconventional play.

Pat had already briefed Jimmy about the previous conflicts between Nut and Frog. So, according to the information provided by the driver, the donut shop was Frog's stronghold and one of the gunmen's targets. In theory, they should have wanted to attack this shop to lure Frog out of the pawnshop. If they already knew Frog's location, they would have made their move from the top down.

"Cage, I think we should call the DEA agents over," Jimmy said, not wanting to struggle anymore. After all, any clues found would eventually be handed over, and this case no longer belonged to them; working for nothing was pointless.

Cage, "Do you have any new discoveries?"

Jimmey, "Not much, but this drug dealer's case has already been handed over to the DEA; we don't need to get involved."

Cage wasn't an overly diligent person either; since things had come to this, it was time to take it easy.

When the DEA agents arrived, Cage transferred the testimony of the driver caught by Jimmy and the weapons and evidence found in his house to the DEA. They would go to the evidence room to collect them themselves, and the rest was up to Jimmy.

"Gentlemen, I've got a point of view, just my conjecture, of course. You may consider it," Jimmy said.

Jimmy went to the whiteboard and wrote Nut, Colin, and Pat, connected them with lines, then wrote Frog below them with a question mark, and connected it to Colin's subordinates.

"This is the relationship map we gathered before. Now Nut is in prison, Colin and Pat are dead, and their subordinates are currently being managed by Frog. However, Frog isn't directly managing them; otherwise, we would have found out who Frog is by now. The middleman here has never been confirmed.

Now these hitmen have given us a new hint. They mentioned three names, Frog, Thomas, and Pat.

Pat is already dead, and the hitmen are not aware of this, which suggests that they are not from a local gang. If they were, there would likely be some information leakage from Nut and Frog's people, and they would know about Pat's situation.

Frog and Thomas must be their targets. The driver had already received a notice that they were headed for a donut shop, owned by twin brothers, Tim and Thomas. This Thomas must be the Thomas spoken of by the gunmen.

So if we place these twin brothers below Frog, the entire chain is linked up."

Jimmey wiped off the other names on the whiteboard, leaving only the line of Frog, then drew two lines beneath the names of Tim and Thomas.

"I believe the targets now should be this donut shop and these two brothers. I think if you monitor them, you should be able to gain quite a bit.

That's all I can think of for now. At this moment, I'm still on administrative leave, so I won't waste any more of your time. Goodbye."

After sharing the leads, Jimmy left promptly, with the rest of the situation no longer concerning him.

The DEA agents didn't fully trust Jimmy's assessment. They returned to their own cabin, where they had a massive whiteboard laden with far more leads and photos than the small whiteboard Jimmy and Cage had worked on.

All of Colin's former subordinates were there. Cage surely hadn't been inside this cabin because the guy who had lured his son, Nick, into drugs would certainly be on there. If so much information and so many figures didn't include this guy, then his disguise was exceedingly successful.

DEA Agent Torsten Marcus was also listening to Jimmy's analysis and returned to the cabin, where he wrote down the latest leads on sticky notes and added them to the board.

The thread pertaining to Frog was growing; aside from Colin's subordinates known to Jimmy, they had also marked Kael and Swen.

Torsten took a careful look at the leads board, then arranged for someone to investigate the donut shop first, as he still couldn't make sense of the Frog thread.

These DEA guys were also in a tight spot; they had many leads, but Jimmy had obscured the line involving Pat, directly causing a break in their clues. They couldn't link Kael and Swen because although they had tracked these two delivering drugs and money, they were merely the lowest level operators with no trace or means to the middleman arranging their actions.

Pat had been a dead man at every stage in the web of clues; he was shot in a ranger's cabin and burnt to death, an outcome verified by the park committee's investigation and assisted by the county police.

Following conventional logic, Pat's subordinates should have disbanded and scattered after Pat's death, or someone else should have taken over to continue operations. The current situation was that they continued working, but without finding any liaison.

If one tried to elevate their status to that of middleman, there was still no trace or method found linking them from above, just like a highway overpass that had a separate path extending from it, but with no connection to the overpass itself. It was as if a car could drop off the bridge onto the path and continue driving or magically jump from the path to the overpass.

This was also a slip-up by Frog; he knew Pat and knew of Kael and Swen. However, since the original route had not been disrupted and could run on its own, with the money being received as usual, he didn't actively contact the two, leaving them as an independent squad detached from the team.

After returning, Jimmy continued his dull leave, staying home to idle or going to the gym to work out – he didn't want to end up like Cage. Post-workout, he'd head to a bar for a couple of drinks. Being of Chinese descent, it was easy to attract attention in the bar, but difficult to maintain interest, especially in conservative states where finding girls curious about something new wasn't so easy.

After a week's leave, Jimmy received a notification; he could return to the police station. Back at the station, dressed in his familiar uniform, the urge to find troublemakers emerged once again.