Chapter Four:

Prevailing Stubbornness

"What sort of problem?" Mac asked Lindsay as she came into the living room. She had an expression on her face that told Mac that there was something seriously wrong.

"We might have a child abduction on our hands" Lindsay said

Jessica looked at Lindsay like she was insane "That's impossible. Erickson said we had five victims and every family picture in this house has only the two parents and three kids. If there were another child why isn't there any pictures of him or her?" Jessica said. It didn't make any sense.

Lindsay replied "They have a nursery, just pass the master bedroom."

"I didn't go pass the master bedroom" Jessica said

"When you went to get ID's on the family I kept looking and I found this in the nursery, it looks like the Roland's just took a new family photo" and Lindsay held up the photo that she was holding in her hand, the photo was of the Roland family, all five were smiling brightly and held in Jenna Roland's arms was a baby girl, maybe a couple of months old.

"I'll get an Id on the baby so we can put out an alert" Jessica started to say but than the sounds came again. Bang, crash, bang.

"Upstairs" Flack quietly whispered. They pulled their guns out of their holsters and they carefully walked up the stairs, looking around for any sign of life, trying their very best not to disturb any evidence in the process. Jessica gave Flack a signal letting him know that she was heading towards the nursery, she opened the door and nothing. The room was empty, she lowered her gun but did not put it away she had a weird feeling about it. She took a look around and that is when she heard the sound again bang, crash, bang coming from the closet. She walked over to the closet door, raised her gun and opened the door. At first she saw nothing only a pile of clothes on the closet floor until a little hand poke its way out of the massive pile of clothes. She moved the clothes out of the way and discovered the tiny baby, Jessica picked her up and called out "Guys, in the nursery, I got something"

"What do you got?" Mac asked as everyone came running into the room.

"a little angel" Angell said turning around so they could see the baby in her arms.

"Glad to know the baby is Okay. Now Danny and Lindsay, lets get the scene processed" Mac said "Lindsay there is a backup kit in the car"

"On it" Lindsay said

"I'll start canvassing the neighbourhood. See if anyone heard or saw anything" Flack said

"I'm going to track down a birth certificate for this little one, contact social services than I'll head over to Bellevue and talk to Mrs. Roland's co-workers." Jessica said

Mac nodded his head in agreement and everyone set off to work.


Three hours later Angell walked back into the empty precinct. She looked at her watch it told her it was nearly three in the morning. She had just got back from interviewing the staff at Bellevue, at least those on call, she would head back there at a sensible time to interview the rest. So far they had nothing but wonderful things to say about the Roland family, and couldn't think of anyone who would want to hurt them. She did discover the baby's name was Lily Roland and she was born on October 14th, 2008, making her almost two months old and she was already an orphan. She also found out that Jenna was off on maternity leave. In addition, she had woken up a rather annoyed social worker and Lily had been placed in emergency foster care until they could locate any family of the Roland's.

Flack walked into the precinct, his and the uniforms' canvasses of the neighbourhood hadn't turned up anything useful. All the neighbours had the same opinion about the Rolands, they were the perfect family and no one had heard anything or seen anything out of the ordinary around the time of the murders. He notice that Angell also had gotten back and she was sitting at her desk. God she looked gorgeous sitting there with her eyes drooping. Back at the crime scene things hadn't seemed so weird between them but than again he guessed that neither had been really thinking about their relationship while standing around five DB's. He took a deep breath if they were going to work on this case together than they would have to talk to each other. He walked over to her desk "Hey Angell, where's your little friend?" he asked

"Named Lily, two months old and she's been placed into emergency foster care pending finding any family" She replied without looking up. "get anything from the canvas?"

"Perfect family, can't imagine who would want to hurt them." Flack replied

"Yeah I got the same story about the mother from her co-workers, she was the perfect nurse, the perfect mother and perfect wife. Not an enemy in the world." Jess responded purposefully avoiding eye contact.

"Right. Listen Jess you were off duty when you responded to the call, we can talk to captain tomorrow to get you reassigned, I can take the case" Flack said the moment the words came out of his mouth he realized he said something wrong,

"Excuse me" Jessica said this time she look up and directly in the eyes "Why would you want to get me reassigned?" she asked looking hurt. That was not what he wanted at all, the last thing he wanted was to hurt her. Flack had only suggested her getting reassigned because he figured she wouldn't want to work this case because it would require spending a lot of time with him.

Flack didn't really know how to answer her so he just looked dumbfounded at her "Ok fine you don't want to tell me that's your right but technically I was first on scene which makes this my case so if you don't want to work with me than you go to captain and you get reassigned" She replied sternly standing up and folding her arms, she was dead serious and she was not letting this case go because of one stupid kiss. However great it was.

"Well I'm not giving up the case either" Flack replied just as sternly

"I guess we have a problem than" Jessica replied stubbornly

"Look you know that I like working with you. I only suggested you getting reassigned since you're currently avoiding me and avoiding me is going to be pretty difficult if we're working the same case." Flack said

Jessica blushed slightly and said "I'm not avoiding you" Flack looked at her and raise his eyebrow "Ok I'm avoiding you" she admitted sitting back down in her chair. Lindsay had been right she needed to swallow her pride and talk to the guy but it was late and she really wanted to get at least a few hours of sleep.

"It's late" Flack said "we can talk about it later"

"No we can talk about it now. Come on walk me home and we'll talk along the way" Jessica replied smiling.

"Ok" Flack said

And with that they both left the precinct and headed towards Angell's place. They had a long and well needed conversation ahead of them.