"What did I miss?" Lucas asked, crossing the Grid to where Tariq, Beth, and Dimitri were furiously combing through paper files while the facial recognition software whirred on a laptop near by

Beth handed over Ruth's personnel file, dug out of storage only a few moments before. "Harry's favorite intelligence analyst has returned from the dead. Her daughter's been kidnapped, and we're trying to figure out why."

Lucas leafed through the file, stopping near the end when he reached the Cotterdam section.

"Jesus," he muttered, "Have you looked at this?"

Tariq swiveled around his chair. Harry and Ruth had been gone for perhaps forty-five minutes, and this was the first time he'd looked up from his computer.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Little miss mousy had to go into hiding because she pushed some guy in front of a train," Beth answered.

Dimitri whistled. "It's always the ones you least expect, isn't it?"

Beth had to agree, it was difficult to fathom. Difficult to picture the shy, timid, fidgety woman who'd cried in Harry's arms pushing the head of security for southeast prisons in front of train. Difficult, but not impossible. Stranger things had happened, and she knew Harry wasn't telling them everything. While else ask for five minutes alone with her? Why else de-rail the interview when they'd gotten so close to finding out who the child's father was? Beth for one didn't blindly accept Ruth's statement that he couldn't possibly be involved; no one could just walk out of a daycare with a child these days. He would have to have been very convincing indeed, and what would be more convincing than a sick child rushing into her father's arms?

"There's a video," Tariq said, having returned to his computer, and sure enough, there it was. CCTV, grainy, but plain as day. Ruth Evershed, pushing a man in front of train.

"But it could be a fake, right?" Dimitri asked, his face creased with a worried frown. Beth knew he wanted to believe the best about Ruth, knew that was just the sort of person he was. Dimitri wasn't made for this, she thought. He had too much heart. Not like her. Not like Lucas. Not like Harry.

"It's pretty low quality to begin with, so it would be fairly easy to manipulate. The corruption of the original file makes it difficult to determine what's legit and what's been tampered with."

Lucas grunted. "And nothing in any of her old files to warrant child-snatching?"

Beth shook her head. "Lucas, there are so bloody many of them!" She wanted to tear her hair out; it had seemed innocuous enough, going through some old files, but the sheer number of them was daunting. The woman had had a hand in every single Section D operation for four years. It appeared Harry had been telling the truth when he'd spoken of how much he'd trusted her.

"And there's always the possibility that this is directed at Harry, not her, in which case…" Dimitri left it hanging.

That was a prospect none of them wanted to consider. Harry had been around for so long, first as a soldier, then a spy, then a section head, that the list of people who might want something from him was too long to even consider. Beth had the sinking feeling they were just going to have to wait for morning, and she hated it. She hated feeling like she was two steps behind her enemy.

"What the hell is that?" Lucas asked sharply, pointing to the laptop behind Tariq. It went blurry for a moment as the face recognition stuttered to a halt, and then the program stopped altogether, replaced by what appeared to be video feed of someone's empty kitchen.

Harry's kitchen.

Tariq was typing furiously, swearing under his breath. "It's a hack. Remote feed. No idea where it's coming from."

Lucas and Beth exchanged a glance, and she dove for the phone.

"Pick up, pick up, pick up," she groaned, but there was no answer. She swore in frustration when she got his voicemail. "Harry's not answering his bloody phone!"

And why the hell not? A child missing, a woman returned from the dead; why wouldn't Harry answer his phone?

Unless he couldn't.

Beth felt her stomach drop to the floor, but Lucas was already scrambling an emergency response team and Dimitri had rushed off to liberate some weapons.

She turned. "Tariq, if we take the van can you keep that feed going? We can't reach Harry and we need to know what's going on."

Tariq nodded seriously, already on his feet. "There's wifi in the van. As long as they stay connected we should be able to see what's happening. And I can use the equipment in the van to try to trace the hack. We'll be slow but-"

"There's nothing else for it. Lucas has a team on the way."

Dimitri came running back, pressing a pistol into each of their hands.

"Let's go."

"Come on, come on, come on," Beth muttered under her breath, drumming her fingers restlessly on the armrest of the seat where she perched in the back of the wildly careening van. She knew Lucas was doing his best, but the van was slow, and the clock was ticking. So far the image of Harry's kitchen had remained dark, static, but it didn't take that long to pick up a curry. He and Ruth would be there any second and then….

She didn't want to contemplate what could happen next.

Tariq was still furiously trying to trace the hack, his vocabulary growing more sulfurous with each passing second. Lucas and Dimitri were up front, and Beth was sat with nothing to do but stare at the image of Harry's empty kitchen.

And then the image changed; the lights flicked on, and she could hear the sounds of footsteps as Harry and Ruth entered the frame. She leaned forward, half in curiosity and half in horror, turning up the volume as she watched the scene unfold.

Ruth followed Harry on leaden feet, dropping into a chair by his kitchen table, wrapping her coat that much tighter around her. She felt cold, and exhausted, and horrified, like she'd never be safe or happy ever again. Which, she supposed, she probably wouldn't.

"Wine?" Harry asked her softly as he deposited their dinner on the table.

"Yes please," she answered, trying hard not to think about the last time they'd shared a glass of wine together.

"Well, it would have to be someone whose conversation you enjoyed, yet who understood the need sometimes for quiet," he said, and she felt her heart quiver in her chest. She couldn't seem to take her eyes from his face. Was he really saying what she thought he was saying? "Somebody with a gentle sense of humor, principled, but not foolish…or naïve." She'd grinned then, just for a moment. She couldn't help it. He could be so bloody charming when he wanted to be, so kind, so funny. You wouldn't think it, just to look at him, that Harry Pearce could be a funny man, but he made her laugh. Made her feel like her heart was growing inside her chest. Made her feel like running as far and as fast as she could. "Good qualities," she said, to have something to say, to fight down the panic rising in her chest. "You don't often find them in one person," he told her, and she couldn't help but drop her eyes to his lips for just a moment, to imagine for an instant what it might be like to kiss him…

"Where did you go?" he asked her quietly, placing a glass of white wine in front of her.

"White Burgundy; thermobaric bombs," he said thoughtfully as he topped off her glass yet again. "Quite a species, aren't we?"

"I was thinking about Emilia," she lied. She lied, but then it was true as her thoughts turned to her precious little girl, and her stomach did another somersault.

"Tell me about her," he said, coming to sit across the table from her, smiling at her sadly as he set about unpacking their dinner.

God but that was the last thing she wanted to do, to sit here in Harry's kitchen and tell him about her daughter, all the while knowing in the darkest corner of her heart there was a very good chance she would never see her again. Never hold her again, never hear her laugh again, never have the chance to see her baby girl playing with her father.

Ruth had to head off that line of thinking or else she'd be a crying mess again, and so she did as he asked.

"She's a funny little thing," Ruth said sadly, taking a sip of wine. "She's always inventing these little games and trying to make me laugh. She sets up her stuffed animals all in a row, has them put on little plays for me. Speaks better French then I do." Her voice trailed off as she fought to hold back the tears that threatened to spill once again. If he kept looking at her like that, with sorrow and love radiating out of his kind brown eyes, she'd have to tell him, and then where would they be?

"Ruth," he said her name with such warmth, such heart that she couldn't help but remember how good it had been to be held in the circle of his arms, how safe, how protected she'd felt, even if only for a few hours one night so many years ago.

"She's yours, Harry," Ruth breathed, unable to stop herself.

"She's yours, Harry," Ruth said on the monitor, and Beth rocked back on her heels as though someone had struck her in the face.

"Shit," Tariq whispered, bowing his head.

"She's your daughter, Harry," Ruth said, as if she had to clarify her last statement, and Beth found she couldn't look away. The camera was positioned so she could see Ruth's face, not Harry's, and what she saw there was heartbreak and misery of a kind she couldn't recall having ever seen before. She wished she were somewhere else, anywhere else, far away from the tragedy unfolding before her.

"Two minutes," Lucas called from the front of the van.

Two minutes was an eternity.

She's your daughter, Harry.

The words set off a roaring in his head. His daughter.

He'd wondered, when he first saw the first photograph. There was something about her face that reminded him of Catherine when she was that age, not that he was around all that much when his children were small. He'd tried to quash that hope in the meeting room, certain that if he were to entertain the possibility for too long he'd go mad.

And now he knew.

Ruth was staring at him, desperation on her face, but he found he could not speak.

"I wanted to tell you, Harry," she said in a rush, frantic almost with the need to explain herself. "I wanted so badly to tell you. I must have written you a hundred times, but I-"

"You couldn't," he answered for her, hoping she understood that it wasn't an accusation. "It wasn't safe, Ruth. You did the right thing." It sounded hollow, even to his own ears, but he meant every word.

"Did I?" she asked, searching his face. "She asked me, not two weeks ago, if she had a Papa. Her little friends at the daycare, you see, their fathers drop them off sometimes and she's so bright. She notices things. She didn't ask where her Papa was. Just if she had one."

Harry's heart was in his throat, emotion constricting it, making it difficult for him to speak.

"What did you tell her?" he asked.

"I said yes. I said yes, you have a Papa and he loves you very much, and one day, if we're very lucky, we'll get to see him again." She lowered her eyes to her lap. "I prayed, Harry. I prayed that something would happen, that somehow I could find my way back to you. And now this…" she lost her voice, buried her face in her hands as she began to cry again, and Harry could bear it no longer.

He rose from his chair and made his way to her, easing himself down to kneel in front of her, ignoring the protests from his nearly sixty year old knees. He caught both her hands in his own, drew them away from her face, begging her without words to look at him. He needed her to look at him, needed her to know how much he loved her, that he would do anything, anything for her and for this little girl who had so suddenly burst into his life.

She raised her ravaged face to gaze down at him, at their hands clasped together in her lap. "It's my fault, Harry," she whispered. "I did this, I wished for something to happen and now-"

The door burst open, cutting Harry's reply short.

Lucas and Beth were the first through the door, guns drawn, brought up short by the scene that greeted them. Beth would never, ever forget it; Harry, on his knees in front of Ruth, both her hands in his, a look of such tender regret on his face that it quite stopped her heart.

"We've got to get you out of here, now," Lucas barked, and Harry was on his feet in an instant, pulling Ruth up with him. "They've got your place bugged."

"How-" Ruth started to ask, but Lucas cut her off.

"Later. Right now we have to get you somewhere safe."

The heavily armed ops team rushed Ruth and Harry from the house still hand in hand, their food left to grow cold on the table behind them.