And here's the next chapter! A lot more details about the plot I introduced last chapter are in this one, so I hope you all enjoy!

Also, Irma has a nickname for Mona here that I actually got from a cousin whose name is also Mona. We call her Monie, "Moan-ee" as an affectionate nickname. I just thought I'd give the proper pronunciation because it's a little weird to read it without knowing how to say it.

In no way, shape, or form, do I own TMNT or anything related.

Chapter Four

We went to a small French café several blocks away and got a table in the corner, near the window. Jason sat in one of those child-chair things next to his mother. He was a very cheerful baby, always smiling at something. He giggled a lot too, especially when his mother spoke to him.

The waiter brought us our drinks, and after I took a sip I gave her a meaningful look. "Soooo," I started, "A new mom, huh?"

Mona laughed. "Well, not quite new. He's a year old after all."

"Yeah, but you… a mom!"

"I know, believe me. No one was more surprised than me when it happened."

I took a sip of my cranberry juice, briefly wondering if I should ask, or if I shouldn't. Curiosity won out in the end. "So, um… Jason's father. Is he around? I mean, you don't have to tell me anything if you prefer not to."

"No, no, it's fine. Jason's, ah, father…" Mona massaged her forehead. "It's a little embarrassing. I got drunk one night at a party and, well, Jason here is the result."

I blinked. That didn't seem like Mona at all. She wasn't one to do something like that lightly. "What about the guy? Did you ever see him again? Does he know?"

Mona shook her head. "Not as far as I know. I had never seen the man before in my life. We were introduced at the party, but honestly, I don't even remember his name. Or much of what he looks like. I was really drunk."

"But you hardly drink at all!"

"Well, I was celebrating that night. I got a big promotion at work."

"Really?" I leaned forward excitedly. "At the lab? What is it?"

"Assistant Director." Mona leaned back in her chair, her expression pleased. She was a geneticist, who studied mutations and possible cures. She was very good at it too. I could never keep up with her discussions about it, but she was very good at explaining the basics of her research in a way that people could understand. It was natural that she'd get a promotion so quickly.

"I'm really proud of you, Monie," I said, using my old nickname for her. She gave me a pleased smile and then it faded away as she looked down into her glass of iced tea. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I just… it's just this whole thing with Paul."

"Oh, of course. Obviously. I really should have picked up on that…"

She gave me a small grin. "I don't blame you for not caring about him. He was an ass to you. You deserved better."

Mona and I had always had a very strange relationship. When Paul had first introduced me to his twin sister, we had gotten along beautifully. Our personalities just seemed to mesh, even better than mine and Paul's, which really should have been a warning sign, but of course I wasn't paying attention at the time. During my marriage with him, she and I had been nigh inseparable as friends. During the divorce, she supported my side implicitly. Normally that would be a strange thing, but Mona and her brother got along very rarely. They had no parents; the two of them had passed away in a traffic accident when they were very young, and they had little in the way of extended family. You'd think that this would bring the two siblings together, but it couldn't be further from the truth. They barely got along in the best of circumstances, and did their best to avoid one another as best they could.

I smiled sadly at her. "It was my fault. I ignored the warning signs when I was dating him. But that doesn't excuse me not keeping up with you. I should have kept in contact with you better."

"We were both busy and I didn't really keep in contact with you either."

I didn't speak for a minute, and neither did she. Finally, I asked her what I had been meaning to since we came to the restaurant. "Mona, what's happened with Paul?"

She shook her head slowly. "I really don't know. I spoke to him a couple of months ago at Jason's first birthday party. He came with his girlfriend. He didn't act any differently than he ever did. He said a few inappropriate things, hit on a couple of my friends while his girlfriend was in earshot." Sitting back, Mona thought for a moment. "The only time he acted any differently was when he was talking about Jason's blindness with me."

I sat up straighter. "Hold on. Jason is blind? When? How? Was it something genetic that you didn't know about? How did you find out?"

"It wasn't hard. Here, see." Mona picked up a spoon and waved in slowly in front of Jason's face. He didn't even react. He stared right past it, out the window, munching on the cheerios the waiter had brought for him. "That was the first big warning sign. All babies who can see follow everything that's in front of their faces. Waving something in front of them and seeing their eyes follow it is a sign of healthy eye activity. But Jason… Jason has no sight. He can't even see shadows." Mona stopped talking. Her expression was one of deep sadness as she reached out a hand to caress Jason's head. Jason gave a content gurgle and reached up to pat the hand that was petting him. It made Mona's grim expression ease somewhat before she pulled her hand back. "It's not genetic. It happened when Jason was only a few months old. He got some bacteria in his eye and the doctor prescribed a new type of eye drop that apparently had great success with other infants. It was a very mild one, safe, he said, so I didn't think too much of it. I was just concerned for Jason. Up until that point, he had shown healthy eye sight. He could track movement, see objects, everything. But I started putting the drops in…"

Mona had to look away and picked up a tissue to blow her nose. I didn't comment on her eyes looking like they had tears in them. "Anyway, I started putting the drops in, and the infection went away, but so did his sight. Within a week I noticed a change in his ability to perceive objects and the like. I took him back to the doctors, and they were horrified. Jason is perfectly fine in every other way. His hearing, his body, all that, but he's just blind now. I've done some research. Other parents who've used it said it worked great. No defects or anything. My baby is the only one."

She was struggling now, and I felt awful for having made her dredge up all this for me. I reached out a hand and covered hers with mine."Monie, you don't have to keep talking about this. I didn't mean to make you remember all this. I'm so sorry."

"No, no, I want to talk about it." Mona's eyes were a little damp, but her gaze was strong. "I really do. I don't have anyone else to discuss it with really. The, ah, chemical in the eye drops that I used, they weren't developed by a medical company. A group called TCRI made it, and I cannot find out what it was originally for, or how the hell it got into eye drops for infants. But Paul… Paul told me at Jason's birthday that he would find out. He promised me that he'd figure everything out and get compensation." She took a steadying breath. "That was the last time I spoke to him. He sent me a text message about a month ago, saying he was getting closer, but after that, nothing. Irma, I… I'm afraid something has happened to him."

"Hey." I took her hand again. "Look, Monie. We both know that as far as I'm concerned, he could be kidnapped by aliens and I wouldn't be too upset. But we also know that Paul is one of the smartest guys out there. Even when he's drunk, he's got a mind like razors. He never did-does," I corrected myself, "anything without a plan. Except for cheating. I don't believe he really thinks that through. But wherever he is, whatever he's doing, I'm sure he's got everything well in hand. You know how much he loved theatrics and all that."

Mona seemed unconvinced. "Yeah, but, he's just gone. Poof. Into thin air. He's never done that before."

"Yeah, but he's not the kind of guy to do that sort of thing without a good reason."

"But that's what I'm worried about! What if his reason is because he was being chased or something?"

I pulled my hand back as the waiter came with our food. We both plastered smiles on our faces and pretended everything was fine until the waiter left. I took a bite of my sandwich as he walked away and then turned back to Mona. "But Mona, why would someone chase him? There's no reason I can think of, unless he's got in with a bad crowd these past few years."

"He's a prosecution lawyer. Maybe he put someone behind bars and they wanted payback. Or maybe it's TCRI itself. You never know."

I gave her an incredulous look. "TCRI? Really? I've heard of it, it was in the news a few days ago. It's a big cooperation. Maybe there was an oversight in the batch of drops that you gave to Jason. Maybe Jason was horribly allergic to something in the drops. I just can't see a large group like that targeting one guy, even if he was intent on prosecuting them. That's actually probably par for the course for those guys. Large companies are almost always in some kind of lawsuit with something or another."

Mona stared straight at me. "Irma, I know what I feel. I don't have facts, I don't have proof, but I just know that Paul is in trouble. You know how often my hunches are right."

I sighed. "Yes, I know very well." It was true. It was her gut instinct that led me to suspect that Paul was having an affair which led to our divorce. Mona had a very keen and rather uncanny sort of insight that gave her great abilities of deduction. Unfortunately they also had a habit of making her overconfident. "But no matter how you feel about it, you can't just go into TCRI and demand to know what they did with your brother, and the police cannot act without proof of some kind. Your hunches work great when you're trying to figure out new ways to manipulate genes, or remembering where someone left their keys, but you can't just use your hunches on something like this. You have to have something to really go on."

Mona scowled at me, but couldn't argue with that. "Look, Monie, if you need help looking for facts or something, just let me know and I'll do my best. But I'm not going to storm a building because of a feeling. It'll just get you into trouble."

She grumbled a little but ultimately agreed. "Maybe I can use your research skills to use and have you find something for me. The library has to have something I can use."

I shifted in my chair. "Well… I don't work at the library anymore. It kind of burned to the ground."

Her eyes widened almost comically. "It what?!"

"But I'm working for an acquisitions group now. My friend April runs it, so it's still a bit research-y."

"Your library burned down?!"

"Yeah. That's actually why I got short hair. It got set on fire so I had to cut it all off."

"Irma, what the hell!"

Our lunch continued for another hour with the two of us catching up with everything that had happened in the past few years. Paul and his unknown circumstances were, for the moment, put aside as we lost ourselves in a long session of catch-up. I told her everything that had happened over the past year and a half (leaving out the turtles and my kidnapping, of course), and she told me several amusing anecdotes about Jason. It was a very enjoyable way to spend the afternoon, besides the whole missing ex and sadly blind baby. But Jason was otherwise very happy and hearty, loving it when his mother and I picked him up and played with him a little.

But we both had other things to do that day. We exchanged contact information and said goodbye with a promise of having lunch again soon. My drive back to my apartment was uneventful, other than Gary the Camery starting to make some engine noises. It was understandable though. He was more than ten years old, after all.

When I walked back to the store, the sign on the front door said closed, and I found a note on my desk from April that said she had to go with Casey somewhere and would be back in an hour or so. I settled myself back down in my little office area, and after a moment of thinking about everything that I had to do that day, I decided to let all that stuff wait and went online to look up information about TCRI.

I had heard about the group before Mona had said anything about it. It was a large, fairly new group that had been around for the past four or five years. It had only risen to prominence within the last two, however. Their website said that they were focused mainly on creating new, sustainable energy sources with a small side business of discovering new chemicals and compounds that could be used in medicines, but also with numerous other applications. It was this 'other' application that worried me.

I did this research for about an hour until I heard a loud crash coming from upstairs. My apartment. This was not good. I immediately stood up and went to a table upon which sat a very heavy, somewhat large metal sculpture of the Eiffel Tower. It was half the length of my forearm and weighed at least three pounds. I didn't want to seriously injure anyone, but it could pack a serious punch if I needed to defend myself. I kicked off my heels at the bottom of the stairs before I began my slow ascent up to my apartment, the model held securely in my hands. When I got to my door, I put my hand on the knob and turned it slowly, grateful that it opened without a sound.

When I saw the state of my living room, I had to suppress a large gasp of shock. The place was in shambles. Cupboard doors were flung open, books were pulled from the shelves and lay on the floor. Every drawer had been yanked open and the contents were spilled about the room. My bedroom door was open as well, and I quickly but quietly walked over, the tower held up, ready to bash the intruder on the head. My bedroom was in as much a state as the rest of my room. The mattress had been flipped over, my dresser had been obviously rifled through, and my jewelry box lay on the floor with the contents scattered everywhere. The window was open. I quickly walked over to it. I knew it was locked- I never kept that window unlocked when I was gone, and I saw scratches in the paint around the lock. It had to have been picked. Popping my head out, I gave the street a cursory glance. I saw no one, and no strange cars, so I pulled my head back in and rushed to the bathroom to see if the stranger was in there, but it too was empty. Towels had been pulled out from under the sink and lay in heaps on the floor, but other than that there wasn't much damage in there. But what had the crashing sound been?

I looked back to my bedroom and saw it. The flower pot where I had kept the peach seed from the magical peach a year ago lay shattered on the floor, the dirt spread over the carpet. I could see the top of the seed glowing against the black dirt. It still shone gold. With a cry I ran to the kitchen and quickly grabbed a mixing bowl and rushed back to my bedroom, where I hurriedly picked up handfuls of dirt and tossed them into the bowl before gently picking up the dirt around the seed and placing it in the bowl as well, covering it up. I then brought the bowl to the kitchen and set it securely on the counter before turning around again to see the chaos that currently reigned in my apartment. It was then that I noticed something important.

The box that had been sitting on my coffee table was no longer there. I rushed over to see the box and its contents on the floor. Or rather, what remained of the box. It was torn to shreds. The photo album was laying open on the ground, several photos and pages torn out of it. The books that had been in the box were also shredded to pieces, as though the person who did this was furious about something. And then I noticed. The letters, the ones that I had thought were love letters, the ones that had turned out to be written in code- they were gone. I quickly looked around for them. They weren't under the carpet. They weren't under the sofa. I didn't have to look under the cushions themselves because whoever destroyed my home had the same idea that I had, and had already torn open those cushions.

I sat down on the floor and put my head between my hands taking deep breaths. I had to think about this calmly. Okay. What was missing? The letters. The letters were obviously important. The question was why had they torn up my apartment in the search? The box they had been in had sat on the coffee table the whole day. I hadn't moved it even once. If they had been after that, they could have found them without a problem, unless the person had just gone through the apartment first and seen them last. But that didn't make sense. The package had been completely obvious. It wasn't like I had secreted everything in it away. And it made no sense for the person to find the letters and then rip my place apart. What would that accomplish besides being a serious inconvenience to myself? Of course, that was assuming that whoever did this wanted to be sneaky about it. Maybe they were sending a message, tearing it all up. But it still didn't make sense to me. If the letters had gone missing by themselves, I might have just looked around for them until I gave up, and not noticed anything else.

I decided to put aside the theory that they found the letters right away and then destroyed everything. It seemed very obvious that they had been looking for something, and the letters were the only thing missing. So someone came into my apartment looking for them. They weren't there. They wrecked everything in the search. Then they left. That left the question of what the hell happened to the letters. If they hadn't taken them, it meant that someone else did. That meant two people had been in my apartment searching for the same thing. Probably these two people were not working together; otherwise the mess in my home wouldn't have happened. Who were these two people? There was no way for me to know without looking. I didn't want to look right then. My home, my privacy, had been violated.

I sat there on the ground and took deep, calming breaths. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. That would just make it all worse, of course. There was nothing else to do but try to stay calm. I sat there for a good twenty minutes taking deep breaths and thinking calming thoughts before I opened my eyes. The room was still an unholy mess. I slowly stood up and took a closer look at everything. My picture frames were thankfully unbroken. I began picking them up and putting them back on the walls. I flipped the coffee table right side up. The TV hadn't been broken, so I put that back as well. I picked up the scattered cushions and put the ones that weren't ruined back on the sofa. There weren't too many of those. Most of them had been ripped open. Then I went to the kitchen and began picking up the cutlery and dishes that had been tossed to the ground. A lot of them were broken and I had to sweep the shards into a pile. I stared down at the broken pieces and found that I didn't want to sweep them up yet. I leaned against the counter and stared down at the remains morosely, contemplating all the strange, awful, terrible things that had happened to me within the last year and a half.

I'd been shot at, stabbed (twice), kidnapped, threatened, blackmailed into having sex with my worst enemy, almost died, my old apartment was set on fire, and now my new apartment had just been ransacked. This was not how I'd planned to spend my late twenties. Was this going to be my future from now on? A never-ending line of one terrible occurrence after another? God, this was depressing.

With a sigh, I walked away from the mess on the floor and went back to the stairs that went down to the store, and sat down halfway down. I couldn't deal with that mess upstairs right now. I needed to detach myself. I needed to sit down and think of something else for a while. I didn't want to call the police. I didn't want any more strangers up there. At least not right now. I also didn't want to go back to work. I just needed to sit for a while.

A while later, I was still sitting there, still in the midst of an existential crisis and wondering why the hell I put up with all the weird crap around me when I heard someone upstairs. For a moment there I was worried, but then I heard "Oh, god, Irma! Where are you?!" A second voice swore loudly, and said "You look on that side, I'll check out over here!"

Donatello and Raphael. I didn't even want to get up to talk to them, my mood was so black. I heard them running from one room to another, calling out my name, their voices becoming increasingly frantic. With a sigh, I stood up and started walking upstairs again, knowing that they had to know I was okay.

I stood in the front door of my apartment and just waited, not having the energy or will to go back in on my own. If I stood outside the door, I could pretend that it wasn't my apartment that was ruined. It was someone else's. Mine was still wonderfully clean and safe. Mine was still bright, and happy, and cheerful, and in my imagination I could imagine a bo staff in the corner and a pair of strong arms around me-

"IRMA!" I was jarred out of my mental imaginings by the voice calling my name. Donatello was standing in the doorway, staring at me, his eyes wide. The next thing I knew, his arms were wrapped around me tightly and he was pulling me into the apartment, tight against him, and all I could do was wrap my arms around him as best I could. My face was pressed against his neck, and I breathed in his wonderful, comforting, familiar scent.

"You found her?! Where?!" And then Raphael was in the room, his eyes staring into mine. I could see the faintest edges of fear in them- fear for me, and then the worry disappeared in a visible flood of relief that spread through his body, letting him relax out of his aggressive stance.

And then I knew why I put up with all the crazy shit that happened around me. Because no matter how insane things were in my life, it was all worth it if I got to spend just one more day with these amazing people- the ones who had welcomed me into their family and loved me, despite all my shortcomings. And even if my apartment was well and truly wrecked, at least I had the strong arms around me.

Donnie kept holding me close to him and I softly kissed his cheek. I could feel his whole body trembling just a tiny bit, from adrenalin or concern or both, I couldn't be sure. "I'm alright, Don," I whispered against his skin. "I'm alright. I'm just fine. It's okay."

He rested his forehead against mine and closed his eyes. "No it isn't. Your home has been vandalized. You could have been seriously hurt."

"But I'm not." With that, I leaned in and kissed him softly on the mouth. "And now you're here, and everything is fine."

He pulled back away from the kiss and gave me a hardened look. "Why do you keep saying that? It's not fine. Just because you weren't hurt does not make everything fine. What would have happened if you had been in here? You could have been attacked. You could have been…" He didn't finish the sentence. I kissed him again in an attempt to comfort him. Donnie made a sound that wasn't happy. The purple-clad turtle said nothing else after that, but it was clear that he wasn't done with the subject.

"Who did it, Irms?" asked Raph, the aura of anger creeping back into his voice. "Did they come after you? Did you see them?"

I shook my head. "I came back from lunch with a friend to find the place like this. I didn't see anyone, and honestly I'm happy about that."

Raphael grunted, and then Don volunteered to help me clean up my apartment as best we could. Raph didn't volunteer out loud, but he helped pick things up. We had to vacuum the place after everything was off the ground, and the things that weren't torn or ripped were put back where they belonged. We made a list of everything that was broken or ruined and I put it in my wallet for later.

When Don asked what had happened, I gave him my theory on the missing letters that were actually computer code. "There's nothing else they could have been looking for," I told him. None of my jewelry was taken, or my electronics. The box they were in was ripped to shreds. Literally nothing is missing but those. I mean, they destroyed a bunch of stuff, but they didn't take anything."

"They must have really, really wanted those letters," Don said, rubbing his chin as he contemplated. "Good thing I brought them down to the lab earlier."

I stared at him. "You took the letters!"

"Only to decode them. I meant to tell you when I came over earlier, but then this happened." He gestured to the apartment. It had been cleaned up, but the signs of attack were still there. A thought occurred to me and I slapped my forehead.

"I'm an idiot. I should have called the police to come investigate. They won't get anything now that we've cleaned it up."

"They wouldn't find anything anyway," Don consoled me. "I did some examination while we cleaned, and there were no fingerprints, DNA, indication of gender or height. Nothing. Obviously someone wanted something from here, but it's like they were a ghost. Nothing is left to indicate anything."

"'Sides," inputted Raph," if they did come, they'd probably find some really weird DNA, and that would just bring up more questions than anything."

I frowned and gave a small shiver. He was right of course. That was the last thing I wanted, but I hadn't considered it until just now. There probably was a great deal of DNA that could be found in the apartment if someone searched hard enough. Despite this reasoning, it was still terrible feeling unsafe in my own home. Don noticed and wrapped an arm around me. "Don't worry," he said. "I'll set up a security system in here as soon as I can."

"You haven't already?"

He shrugged. "I didn't want you to feel like I was barging into your privacy."

I gave him a small smile and then sighed. "You have my full permission to do whatever it takes to make this place safe again."

"Will do. And in the meantime, you're coming down to the Lair with me until I'm done."

"Really? The guys won't mind?"

"Your place is completely trashed and you're shaking." Raphael straightened from picking up some broken plate shards form the floor. "Even if they did have a problem, which they won't, I'd still tell them to jump off a bridge."

I looked down at my arms. Yep. He was right. I was actually shaking. "Huh," I said. "I did not notice that before."

My favorite turtle did not reply, and instead went to my bedroom closet and pulled out a small overnight bag. "If you go get your toothpaste and stuff, I'll get your clothes."

Some of the worry fell from my shoulders. At least there were some things I could rely on all the time. "Pack like four or five changes. I might be over for a while."

Well, this chapter ends on an exciting note! No actual fighting yet, but still, it's a taste of what's to come.

I have to admit, when I first thought about including Jason into the mix, I was somewhat iffy on it. But when I started thinking about the overall plot, it made perfect sense to me. Plus I plan to have some VERY interesting scenes including him in future chapters. I hope I don't annoy too many people with the baby-inclusion.

If you have any suggestions about how I can improve my writing, or just want to say that you liked it, please let me know via a review, which are always fun to read and respond to!