Maura sat in her black BMW Z4 Roadster, parked near the curb of a smaller South Boston home, just as she had for the last ten minutes. The car was clearly stood out in the older neighborhood, where young families who couldn't afford such a luxurious automobile lived with their young families. The fact that Maura had drawn the attention of several of the young mothers playing outside with their children went unnoticed by her given her level of anxiety.

The house was plain; there were no distinguishing factors from the others lining the street. In fact, it was landscaped nearly identically to every other house on the smaller block, full trees that were beginning to lose their leaves since it was mid-Fall and several burning bushes that had already changed into a vibrant red color. She instantly noticed the mulch color had faded and weeds were growing in parts of the lawn and could have simply been treated with a strong weed killer. The small clumps of grass that poked up from the spaces in the driveway were oddly comforting despite it being a glaring clue that the house needed some serious TLC.

Maura took a deep breath, trying to calm the anxiety that had been steadily climbing since she received the phone call that brought her to this moment. Her mind was racing with facts about South Boston, how it is becoming an increasingly desirable area for young professionals and their families to live but was once a predominantly Irish Catholic community. This fact made it hardly shocking that Patrick Doyle lived in South Boston, in the very home that Maura was now in front of.

"How could the police not find him when he lives right in front of their faces?" Maura mumbled to herself as she exited the car and locked it for good measure.

Her designer heels clicked on the pavement as she wrapped her trench coat around her tighter. She knocked softly, twice, before the front door was opened by someone she had never seen before. Maura reminded herself that Patrick Doyle surrounded himself with employees of his crime organization, yet somehow it seemed intrusive to her that they were in his house. She hadn't expected that. The young man stepped aside, no words exchanged, and merely pointed in the direction of the first room on the right.

Maura stiffened her posture, ensuring her shoulders were back as she held her head high, and journeyed toward the room she was certain had once been a living room. The homes in this area were all quite similar and she had been in a few of them on duty as the Chief Medical Examiner. This room, however, was set up very differently. Instead of what Maura expected to encounter in the way of furniture, the room housed a hospital bed. What was more alarming was the individual who lay in it.

"No zip ties and kidnapping this time?" Maura made no effort to hide her anger toward Patrick Doyle.

Sweat gathered on Patrick Doyle's face, journeying down his neck and disappearing into his plain white t-shirt. His head was propped up by several pillows and Maura was slightly shocked to see him in such a physical state.

"I got the message last time; it wasn't high on your list of acceptable behaviors." Patrick Doyle mustered a weak smile toward his daughter, meeting her hazel eyes with his own. "I've heard of a phone obviously."

"I was rather surprised you used one to contact me." Maura placed her purse on the table next to Patrick Doyle's bed and squinted at him, taking in his physical symptoms. There was no obvious wound, no reddish-brown stains on the sheets indicating he was bleeding yet his color was pasty and characteristic of someone who would have had significant blood loss.

"Desperate times…."

Maura paused for a moment, expecting the rest of the popular saying to fall out of Patrick Doyle's mouth. When it didn't, she pressed on.

"What makes them desperate?"

Patrick Doyle struggled to sit straighter, to preserve some dignity as he talked to his only daughter, but it made him break into a fit of coughing and additional sweat beaded up on his forehead.

"Easy." Maura helped her father despite herself; straightening his pillows and stepping back once he was settled.

"I think you know why I'm desperate."

"I'd rather hear it from you," Maura said, arching her eyebrow to challenge her father. "I don't like to guess."

"I know you don't have to guess."

"Obviously you're ill," Maura began, placing her cool hand over Patrick Doyle's forehead. "You're perspiring, but not from a fever, so likely you're experiencing a high level of pain for some reason. I see no apparent wounds or blood stains near you that would indicate an injury." Maura walked around the bed taking in her surroundings and Patrick Doyle remained silent, awaiting her diagnosis. "Care to tell me what illness you seem to have contracted?"

"Cancer," Patrick Doyle stated clearly, "of the terminal kind."

"That is rather painful." Maura's voice remained neutral, but Patrick Doyle took comfort in the fact that her eyes portrayed sadness. Even if it were pity, any emotion from his only daughter other than anger was a blessing.

"I found out two months ago, stage four stomach cancer, and it's been a battle ever since."

Maura sat on the edge of Patrick Doyle's bed, her disposition softening as he began to talk to her about his medical condition.

"I've got to be honest; I thought someone would kill me before I contracted a terminal disease." Maura scowled at her father; he was clearly trying to minimize his condition but his eyes gave him away.

"How long?"

"I was hoping you'd tell me?"

"It's impossible for me to know without seeing your medical file along with your test results, blood results, prior medical conditions," Maura began as she pulled his covers up, absentmindedly tucking him into bed further. "I would need to know what treatment you're taking, frequency, drug dosage…"

"None," Patrick Doyle's words cut Maura off mid-sentence. "I'm not being treated."

"You've opted to forego treatment?" Maura was surprised at this admission. "I know that traditional chemotherapy has many negative side effects, but treatments are advancing everyday that make those manageable or negligible and there are always the more unconventional treatments coming out of Europe."

Maura tensed when her father's hand covered her own on his bed. His skin color and consistency was much different than her own.

"There is surgery, did you know that you could actually have a complete gastrectomy and still live? Depending on what type of tumor you have and whether or not it there are traces of a metastasis. You can use Gleevec and Sutent rather effectively."

"I opted out of treatment." Patrick Doyle handed Maura his medical file as she lifted her hand from under his to peruse it. "Maybe this is karma, getting revenge on me for what I've done. It seems fitting to be in pain and dying for some reason."

"Everyone deserves a chance at redemption."

"I can't very well walk into a hospital for treatment, Maura," Patrick Doyle closed his eyes as he spoke. "I'm one of the FBI's most wanted. If I walk into a hospital for treatment I'll die in jail. Maybe I have no right to want something different after some of the things I've done, chosen to do, but the selfish asshole in me wants to die in peace at my home."

It was not lost on Maura that Patrick Doyle used exactly the words she had used, that he had chosen his life, the last time they had spoken. It seemed that he had taken to heart her feedback, zip ties and all, and it had an odd influence on her.

"So this is about getting treatment." Maura stood up suddenly realizing what Patrick Doyle had called her for. "You want me to treat you? I'm not a practicing Oncologist Mr. Doyle, I am a Pathologist." Maura recognized her own voice rising to a dangerous level and took a breath to calm down. "I'm not qualified or equipped to treat stage four stomach cancer."

"I want to be comfortable," Patrick said, desperation lacing his voice. "I'm not asking for another chance, just some humility so I can rest in peace until the inevitable happens. I want to be comfortable."

"Hospice makes people comfortable…"

"Not when you're a known Irish crime boss it doesn't," Patrick said suddenly feeling nauseous. "I can't bring someone into the house that doesn't know me already. I'm not interested in corrupting someone else; I just want to be comfortable."

"I can't make you comfortable without the proper medication," Maura reasoned with him.

"If you tell me what you need, I'll get it for you."

"You're asking me to deliberately hide you from the police." Maura raked her hands through her long, golden hair. "You're asking me to hide you from my friends."

"Ah yes, Boston's finest homicide crew."

"I have a duty to protect people from criminals." Maura felt her anger rising as Patrick Doyle dismissed her unit. "There's a reason I didn't call you to tell you Colin's killer. My life is very black and white Mr. Doyle; there is a difference between right and wrong."

"And I protected you anyway," Patrick Doyle shot back. "And stop calling me Mr. Doyle like you have no idea who I am!"

Maura had never witnessed Patrick Doyle's anger. In fact, in her interactions with him he was rather collected and calm. This was a side she had no idea how to interact with.

"I don't know you," Maura said softly. "Even though you've followed me throughout my life I had no inclination that you were even there. I only know about you now because my half-brother showed up on my table and frankly the one thing I asked of you, you refused. I never asked you to protect me from Tommy O' Rourke."

"And yet I did it anyway," Patrick's voice was weaker now as he was growing tired.

"Why?" Maura demanded. "I sometimes wonder how that all happened. Who called you?"

"Does it matter now?"

"It does to me," Maura admitted quietly. "I have to know; was it Jane?"

"Ah," Patrick Doyle opened his eyes and offered Maura a rather warm smile at the mention of Jane Rizzoli. "Detective Jane Rizzoli, hero cop who shot herself when the drug siege happened at police headquarters. The two of you are very close; she is very good at what she does."

"Was it her?"

"No." Patrick Doyle held Maura's piercing gaze to ensure she understood he was telling her the truth. "Why would you think it was her?"

"I had to know," Maura said breaking eye contact with her father. "But now that I have that answer, which is why I really came in the first place, I need to leave and get back to work."

"I need your help," Patrick Doyle sounded desperate once more.

"I'd be risking everything," Maura snapped as she stopped her progression out of the room. "I am now, hiding a fugitive who can't even go into a hospital for treatment because you know you'd be arrested on sight. You're asking me to turn my back on what is right and wrong. I can't administer drugs to you either, before you even ask."

"Once I'm gone, you'll be safer. She'll be safer…." Maura knew instinctively that Patrick Doyle was referring to her birth mother and it garnished the appropriate attention when Maura placed her purse down on the bed to continue the conversation.

"My birth mother?"

"Yes," he groaned before squirming in pain.

"So you'll tell me who my birth mother is?"

"I can't until I'm almost gone and it becomes public that I've died, and then there will be no threat of harm coming to her or you. Nobody can use you to get to me, it will be too late. You both will be at peace and I'll have some version of that myself."

"And what about the people whose lives you've turned upside down by killing them or selling their kids drugs? When do they find peace?"

"Is that what this is about? You're unwilling to help me in my last few weeks because I've hurt people? Not all those people were good, Maura, I've killed a lot of people, but they weren't upstanding citizens either."

"My job is to be the voice for those that end up on my table, the dead can't talk."

"If you want to bring peace to those people," Patrick Doyle began, then closed his eyes knowing he was about to make the biggest decision of his remaining few weeks, "I will give you enough information from my organization to do that. I'll even give you your mother's name and address; she's well kept even after all these years. All I am asking in return is that you keep me comfortable until the end."

Maura stood and grabbed her purse, slinging the designer bag over her shoulder once more. She paused, not certain of what her response should be in this situation. It was hardly something that she ever thought she would be involved in.

"I need some time to think about it," Maura said, clenching her jaw.

"I don't have a lot of it; I just want the time I do have to be comfortable."

"Anyone can give you drugs, Mr. Doyle."

"Not the right kind in the right amount. I don't just trust anyone, Maura. It's how I've managed to stay alive all these years."

"That's not all of it."

"Is it wrong for me to want to know you, for you to know me, before it's too late?"

Maura still had those words floating through her head when she agreed to contact him tomorrow with her answer. She had waited her entire life to meet her birth mother, and it appeared this would be the only way. Patrick Doyle was the only person that could connect them, not to mention the amount of cold files she could help Jane solve just by simply going through the paperwork he promised to provide her.

Maura got into her car and started the sporty BMW's engine. Would her friends, specifically Jane, see the opportunity as a positive rather than Maura helping a known fugitive of the law? Images of Jane flashed through Maura's mind and suddenly she felt rather ill. They had argued the last time Doyle came up, Jane actually considered tipping Patrick Doyle off to Colin's murderer in an effort to protect Maura. It was Maura that had insisted it was wrong, and once Tommy O' Rourke had been killed it never came up again. Maura smiled, now knowing just how much she trusted Jane, how honest her friend could be.

Maura pulled away from the curb, oblivious to the car parked down the street watching Patrick Doyle's house. The two gentleman in the car certainly had their interest peaked when the BMW had pulled up to the curb. The woman was nowhere near the usual type of person that frequented the house. Something told them both that the woman was special.

Maura slowly passed the car, eyes focused on the road, and completely unaware of her picture being taken. Now that the two gentlemen had her face captured, it was only a matter of time before they knew her identity as well.