"Captain?"

Mike turned at the sound of Alisha Granderson's voice. "Yes, Lieutenant?"

"We just made contact with vulture team. They are headed to the rendezvous site as we speak."

"Is everyone ... okay?"

Mike wasn't sure why he hesitated. Alisha didn't appear upset, like she would if something had gone wrong. Maybe it was the way Kara clung to Danny in San Diego, her eyes still puffy from the tears she shed upon seeing the Henan go up in flames. Maybe it was the look on Tom's face when Allison Shaw revealed her final, despicable act. Maybe it was the memory of Christine's voice when he reached her from the Arctic. But part of Mike refused to believe that he was getting out of this one unscathed.

Granderson's face softened. "No injuries reported, sir. They'll be here within the hour."

Nodding, Mike turned back to the scene before him. The room was in shambles, of course, with the elder Burk attempting to get the computers up and running while Tex was being treated for a bullet wound and Miller and Diaz swept up shards of glass. But Mike's gaze was drawn again and again to the corner of the room where Danny Green stood holding his son, both he and Kara in tears as they exclaimed over the boy. It was a scene reminiscent of any delivery room.

And one that hit too close to home for Mike.

The look on Kara's face – that was how Christine looked when Whitney was born, as she cradled their firstborn against her chest and then turned her for Mike to see the little bit of perfection that they had created. The look on Danny's face – that was how Mike felt when he disembarked from the Ronald Reagan to find Christine standing on the dock, waiting to introduce him to six weeks old Shaylyn. The swell of emotion that meeting your child for the first time brought, no matter when that happened. The love. The wonder. The pride. The terror. Each time felt just like the first.

Thoughts of meeting his girls gave way to other memories. Building forts in the living room. Riding bikes in the yard. The two of them covering his head with barrettes while he slept (and Christine taking a picture). Birthday cakes and American Girl dolls and sleepovers with fifteen girls playing karaoke until 0300.

And then the Whitney hit high school and Shaylyn hit middle school and suddenly their only topics of interest were designer clothes and dance competitions and who-was-stealing-whose-boyfriend, all the while giving Mike and Christine attitude over homework and school and whether they should have their own cell phones.

Mike found himself smiling at the memories. Funny how even those moments – when he was so frustrated that he longed to be back at sea – now felt so bittersweet. Because even when he was ready to tear out the little hair that he had left, Mike could see the future. Each time Whitney railed at Mike for being part of an institution that used whale killing sonar, Mike imagined her channeling that passion into a career in law. Each time Shaylyn drew a picture of him as the devil, complete with horns and a tail, Mike saw a future graphic artist. Actually, Lucas was the one he worried about the most, with his struggles in school and his lack of a social life, fearing that he would never find his place in this world.

As his own mother used to say, there was no point raising children without any spunk.

Thoughts of his girls made Mike's chest ache, the burden of not knowing worse in many ways than the certainty of Lucas's death. At first, knowing that Christine and the girls were alive was what kept him going. But as the days stretched with no news, as he searched first Norfolk and then Chicago and found no sign of them, as more and more people trickled into St. Louis once word of the cure spread, hope slowly faded until all that remained was a hole in his heart the size of Antarctica.

Not that Mike had given up – could give up – but the search for his family was now secondary to the infant who was depending on him. And though his introduction to Kaito had been very different than his other children, Mike's feelings were no less engaged, his determination to keep Kaito safe actually more pronounced by what happened the first time around.

He wouldn't lose his second chance to have a family.

"Captain! You have to see this!" Nishioka's voice was almost frantic, and he was waving what looked like a flash drive as he dashed into the room. Immediately the room came alert.

"What's the problem Lieutenant?" Mike kept his voice calm.

"We were searching Shaw's office and we found this." Nishioka attempted, unsuccessfully, to activate one of the laptops. "It wasn't even encoded."

"And what is this?" Mike demanded, somewhat impatiently. Carl was easily excited and Mike usually depended on Foster or Burk to calm him down.

"You have to see for yourself," Nishioka answered, again fumbling in his attempt to enter the password.

"Let me." Kara passed Frankie to Danny before reaching over, hitting the correct combination of keys and sliding the thumb drive into the computer. The screen came to life immediately, and Mike almost cursed Kara's efficiency as he stared as an image of his wife and daughters appeared on the screen.

Andrea – never shaken by even the craziest of events – was the first to react. "Is that…."

"You know what my name is," Christine snarled at someone off camera, her arms wrapped defensively around her daughters.

Despite his shock, Mike almost smiled at her ferocity. Christine's face might be smeared with dirt, her hair straggling around her shoulders, but the look on her face was pure defiance. Whitney was copying her mother's attitude, glaring at the camera, while Shaylyn huddled into Christine's side, the ten, no eleven-year-old, still a child in so many ways.

"Humor me."

"Shaw!" Kara's gasp was a more civil version of Mike's reaction. Every eye in the room was now glued on the computer screen.

"My name is Christine Marie Slattery. And that is all that you are getting from me," Christine snapped back.

Allison entered the frame, perfectly put together, wearing one of her trademark skirt suits with blue suede pumps, her attire clashing horribly with the plaid, seventies-style couch where Christine, Whitney and Shaylyn sat. "That's not very cooperative Mrs. Slattery. Do you really want me to take my frustration out on your children?"

Mike couldn't stop the growl that rose at Shaw's threat, even knowing that Shaw was now dead and beyond his ability to hurt.

"What do you want?" Christine snapped.

"Please state the date."

"March 30, 2015," Christine answered.

Someone gasped.

"Can you confirm that?" Mike demanded, looking at Kara.

"I'll see what I can do," Kara replied, her fingers already running over the keyboard. "That correlates with the date the file was created, sir. It's possible to fake, though. Let me check Allison's schedule."

The seconds ticked by like days. "Shaw was supposed to be in NYC with Croft that week."

"Croft." Mike's mind swirled. "Christine and the girls were last seen in Maryland and that was Croft's territory."

"If she wasn't in St. Louis, she could have been anywhere," Cameron pointed out.

"And how long have you been here?" Shaw continued.

"Since that asshole Williams tricked us into trusting him." This time it was Whitney who spat out the answer, her chin jutting out at Shaw defiantly.

For the first time, Mike really looked at his daughter, noticing how much older she looked from a year ago. Fifteen. His baby girl was fifteen now – assuming she was still alive. But she was four months ago. And that was more than he knew earlier today.

"Mrs. Slattery? Please tell the camera what happened after you left Deer Park."

"The safe zone was infected so we left, holed up at a summer camp the girls went to when they were younger."

Mike gasped, cursing his own stupidity. He'd been so close to them. Why hadn't he thought to look at the camp? He had endured months of uncertainty and pain that didn't need to have happened.

"We got to Baltimore in December but there was no more cure," Christine stated as though she was reading from a script. "The laboratory had been bombed but people said the Nathan James would come back so we decided to wait. Then in January the contagious cure arrived with word of what happened in St. Louis. Todd Williams was the man in charge of cure distribution. I asked him to get word to Mike that we were alive. A few days later he found me again and said Mike wanted us to go to St. Louis. But instead you brought us here. Wherever here is."

Mike felt sick. While he was sailing south to Norfolk and then west to St. Louis, Christine and the girls were headed north to Baltimore, like ships passing in the night.

"The mountains," Whitney interjected. "We're in the App…."

"Shut up!" Shaw snapped. Visibly calming herself she turned her back on Christine, moving until she was off-camera. "Thank you, that's all I need."

"Where are you going?" Christine demanded. "What do you want from us?"

Although her face barely changed, Mike could hear, could see, Christine's panic. It was in her voice, in the lines around her eyes, in the way her arms tightened around the girls. Despite her brave face, she was worried.

"From you?" Shaw asked, her voice amused. "Nothing. You are simply my insurance policy in case your husband decides to deviate from orders."

Comprehension lit Christine's face and she looked straight at the camera. "Don't do it Mike! Whatever they want don't do – "

As the video cut to black, the silence in the room was absolute as everyone took in the implication of what Shaw was saying, understood her plan.

Step 1, get rid of CNO Captain Thomas Chandler.

Step 2, blackmail his assumed replacement by holding his family hostage.

The only remaining question was whether Shaw carried out her threat once the plan went awry.

"I want to see Croft." Mike said. "Now."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"I'm telling you, I didn't know anything about it." Croft shrugged, still half-sloshed from his bender the evening before. Something told Mike that the guy was rarely sober. "Shaw and Price were the ones who figured all of that shit out. The only reason they didn't kill me when they took out Beatty was because they couldn't control the factions in the Northeast without my particular … skill set."

If Mike hadn't already known that the man was a mobster, he would now. Unfortunately, however, he believed the man. Roberta Price was a sharp woman, and Allison Shaw wasn't someone to put her cards on the table. It made perfect sense that they would keep Croft in the dark as much as possible, seeing him as a necessary evil at the moment, but planning to eliminate him at the earliest opportunity.

"They were at a safe zone in Maryland. That's your region. How would Shaw have kidnapped three people in your territory without you knowing?" Mike pressed.

"I only picked up Maryland after Granderson died. It took a while to wrestle control from Thorwald's people." Croft said, taking a gulp of his coffee. "Thank your Captain Chandler for that, by the way. The woman was a thorn in my side."

"How would Shaw have done it?" Mike asked, struggling to keep his voice calm.

Croft shrugged. "Easy enough. Once the cure began spreading, people started registering as survivors. It was Michener's idea, remember? A way to help people locate family?"

"I remember," Mike growled, his impatience drawing a smirk from Croft. The man was enjoying this, damn it.

"Well, they probably registered. Shaw handled the lists as they were compiled. It would have been easy enough for a few names to disappear from the official register," Croft noted. But the crafty look on the man's face told Mike that he wasn't speculating.

Mike's family was not the only one to disappear.

"Who else?"

"You have a pen?"

Thirty minutes and almost fifty names later, Mike left the interrogation room feeling sick. They had barely touched upon the depths of Shaw's depravity. Political enemies, people of strategic importance, leaders who emerged during the Red Flu who might have challenged the power of the Regional Leaders, all had been eliminated or blackmailed into compliance.

Wolf spoke the second that Mike turned the corner into the hallway. "Croft give you anything, Captain?"

"He thought Shaw mentioned a cabin in the Poconos once," Mike said. "Near the Pennsylvania-New York border. He remembered it because it seemed an odd thing for her to raise, given that she was a born and breed Midwesterner. That squares with what Whitney started to say about being in the Appalachians."

"That's a pretty big area to search," Danny commented. "You believe him?"

Mike nodded. "The man's a drunk and a liar, but this has Shaw's fingerprints all over it." He stopped, looking around the room. Russ, Danny, Carlton, Tex, Wolf, Rick, Teylor, Ray – even Cameron had hung around to hear the news. "I'm planning to leave as soon as I clear it with Tom."

Tex snorted. "Do you really think we would let you go alone? You'd probably do something stupid like getting yourself killed."

"We're with you sir," Carlton said, drawing a round of nods.

"Doc Rios said I'm good to go," Rick noted.

"Kara already volunteered to watch Kaito," Danny added.

"Maybe she knows how to change a diaper without smearing baby shit across the entire ship," Carlton muttered, drawing chuckles from the assembled group.

"Hey, those suckers are wigglier than they look," Danny defended himself.

Mike raised an eyebrow. "I've changed four babies and never before have I had to clean poop off the ceiling." He paused until the laughter died down, meeting each man's eyes, knowing how hard the last few months had been on each one of them, knowing that every one of them was fried, and yet none of them turned away. "This mission may be a wild goose chase. I'm not asking any of you to come with me."

It was Jeter who responded. "The only way you are getting away from us is to give us a direct order to stay, sir."