Ten

Disclaimer: Not mine!

"I screwed up, Danny. Okay? Is that what you want to hear? I screwed up. I think we've already established that fact."

Samantha paced the bullpen of the Miami office, a disgruntled Bea on her hip, only about half aware that the agents were watching her warily. They had given them unqualified support, and they had been understanding of the fact that Samantha couldn't just sit at home—at the Caines' home—while her husband and her son were out there, somewhere. Out of professional courtesy they let her hang around, and she'd been splitting her time between here and the Caine's home office.

"Samantha, you know Jack. He thinks everything is his fault on his own. He doesn't need your help."

Samantha gritted her teeth. "Like I said," she ground out, "I realize what I've done, Danny, but thank you for so kindly pointing it out just in case there was any doubt." She was still pacing, her mind racing even as her eyes took in what she saw as she rounded the agents' desks for about the 87th time.

Thomas Jeridan reminded her a little of her husband. He shared his dark good looks, but that was about it, if his desk photos of his family were anything to go by. He spent too much time being a husband and a dad to ever even think of becoming a supervisory special agent, and she could relate. Even while getting a tongue lashing from Danny long distance, her eyes fell to his desk calendar, the events handwritten into the big squares labeled with a different color for each family member.

She stared, suddenly tuning Danny out, looking up into her daughter's eyes as it hit her. Her spontaneous delighted laughter made her little girl laugh as well. "Danny!" she all but shouted into the phone, stopping his tirade aimed at her obvious failings as a wife. "Danny, can we continue this as—this butt-chewing at a later date and time? Because right now I want to know how Clea knew we were going to be here, in Miami, at the right place and the right time."

In New York, Danny's mind was already at work. "Hey," he yelled at Martin, his excitement palpable. "Travel agents. Yesterday."

The agents looked at her as she hung up the phone. The wheels were already spinning as they looked at each other. "None of her known aliases got any hits," Jacinda Ruiz stated.

"If we find the travel agent that gave out our info, we'll know the alias she was using," Samantha said, hope now coloring her features where moments before had been only self-loathing for sending her husband so thoughtlessly into an impossible, even deadly, situation, even though it was the last thing in the world she'd intended to do at the time.

"It could give us the name she's using here," said the team leader, Tabitha Miles.

"As well as a timeline of how long she's been planning this, how entrenched she is in the community, when she would have been looking for a job and a place to live," Jeridan said.

Samantha already had her phone out. "I booked the trip on March 28th," she said quickly, making the others look at her sharply. "What? We have five kids. I've gotta be organized or I wouldn't get anything done."

And then all the blood drained from her face. Quickly, before her legs gave out, she put Bea in her stroller, grabbing a banana to appease the little girl's vocal displeasure at being set down. She sat down hard in the closest rolling chair as comprehension dawned. Fuck. Damn it, her husband had been right, just not in the right department. It was her fault.

She looked up to meet the worried eyes of the agents who were now staring at her. "My phone was… I lost my phone. I got a replacement. All of our information was on there. All the details of the trip, personal details, phone numbers… this is all my fault."

"Hey," Agent Miles said fiercely, wanting to snap her out of it. "You couldn't have known. You didn't even know if her existence at the time. She had to be following you, stalking you to get your phone. Where did you lose it?" Samantha looked up, her mind suddenly a blank. "Where, Samantha? Think!"

She got up to pace again, bringing that day back to her mind, with effort. She had been at the mall, with Bea and John Michael. The phone had been on the tray in the stroller, right next to the changing room where she'd been trying on clothes, the kids inside with her. It had been a long day and they were fussy; Bea had thrown up all over the dress she had been trying on. She'd been so preoccupied in dealing with that that she had grabbed up the clothes and the kids and hurried to pay, anxious to get her sick baby home. That had been the last time she'd seen her phone. She hadn't thought anything of it. She'd called and gotten another phone the next day, and hadn't thought of it again. Oh, God… Jack.

He'd been right. This was all her fault. She saw him in her mind that last day. He'd been so angry at her, so fierce, and yet so adamant that they work it out, together. She'd been the one to falter. Again. To fail him. Again. If she ever saw him again, she was the one who would be offering him his freedom. From her. Because he sure as hell deserved it. And she didn't deserve him, any of it.

Damn it, she was going to get him back. She was going to get them both back. For the first time in this whole ordeal, her mind suddenly focused. She would get them back. She looked up at Tabitha Miles. "Macy's. May 2nd."

And then she was on the phone again. "Danny? Pull the video from Macy's, the one closest to the office. May 2nd. My phone was taken off the stroller next to the women's dressing rooms. Around… 6:30 p.m. We may have her face on that video."

She stared up at the wall, at the picture tacked up there, at the woman who had tried her best to make herself look like her. The woman who was trying to take everything she loved from her: her son, her husband, her entire life. Her face hardened, and she was suddenly filled with resolve. That wasn't going to happen.

No matter what the future held for her husband, herself, and their family, it was going to be their choice. Not this woman's. In that moment she vowed it, both to herself and her family, and there was no going back.

That bitch had her family, damn it. And she was coming for them.

TBC...