The loud whistle from Casey's teapot was her cue to vacate her seat on the sofa next to Maddie. The little girl was happily settled in front of a cartoon, a relaxation Casey had agreed to only until the water for their hot chocolate heated.

She had offered to make cocoa under the guise of Maddie needing it after her travels. The girl had indeed jumped on a bus after sneaking out of school, and the bus driver had been more than happy to tell her which routes she needed to transfer to in order to complete the trip to the address she had given him.

But the hot chocolate was in reality a way to make Maddie comfortable enough to talk. Though she'd always opened up to Casey more than anyone else, Casey also knew that questioning her outright would put her on the defensive.

Casey swiftly tore open two packets of Swiss Miss cocoa powder--the variety with the tiny marshmallows included in the pouch--and poured the contents of each into a mug. After filling each cup with the steaming water and then stirring the mix and water together, she splashed a little bit of milk into the mugs, simultaneously cooling the cocoa and making it creamier.

She returned to the living room and handed one of the mugs to the little girl. "Be careful, sweetie. It's still very hot."

"Thank you, Casey," Maddie replied, smiling widely. She blew on the hot liquid before gingerly taking a sip. The creamy chocolate tasted sweet in her mouth, and she grinned. "So what do you want to do now? I'm up for Go Fish if you are. Or maybe War again?"

"Before we play anything, I want to have a little talk with you," Casey said, settling back on the sofa next to Maddie. She picked up the remote control and switched off the television.

Maddie frowned. She knew Casey well enough by now to know that when she said she wanted to talk and she turned off the TV, things were serious. "Okay, sure, I guess," she said somewhat hesitantly. She gave Casey a half-hearted shrug.

Casey smiled at the girl, hoping to put her more at ease. She set her mug down on the end table and Maddie quickly followed suit, reaching across Casey to place her mug right next to the ADA's. Then Casey turned on the sofa so that she was sitting sideways, facing Maddie. "Why did you come where tonight?"

"Because I'm going to stay here now," Maddie answered with a puzzled frown. "Remember? You said I could."

As Casey inhaled through her nose, she hoped her face didn't give away how confused she was. What we've got here is a failure to communicate. The quote rang through her head, unbidden. She didn't even remember what the hell movie it was from, but it seemed to fit. "Sweetie, we never talked about you coming to visit me again."

"No, not to visit, silly. To stay!"

Okay, I know we never talked about that. "We've been over this so many times, Maddie. ACS will not let you come live with me."

"Right, but that's because you work late and you get called in the middle of the night and stuff," Maddie reminded her. "But when I was here before, you didn't have to work late and nobody called you!"

Casey gave another quiet sigh and reached out to take the little girl's hands in her own. "I didn't have to work late because it was a Saturday. I didn't have to work at all. And nobody called me because they knew that I had special company."

The smile quickly faded from Maddie's face, and Casey felt the girl's hands begin to tremble as she began to fully process what Casey was telling her. "But if they left you alone that once, can't they leave you alone all the time?"

Casey tightened her grip on Maddie's hands. "If they leave me alone all the time, I can't do my job right."

Maddie's lower lip began to tremble. It was very important for Casey to be able to do her job right. She helped to put really, really mean people in jail, and Casey had told her that people don't always break the law during regular business hours. And that meant that Casey's work hours were crazy and all over the place and that she wouldn't be home any more than Maddie's mom was.

Maddie wrenched out of Casey's grasp and slumped back against the sofa. Her gaze was directed at her hands as she began nervously pulling at her fingers. "Maddie, you need to stop this," Casey said, her tone gentle. "You can't stay here. It doesn't matter how much you want to and it doesn't matter how much I want you to. You can't."

"But you said I could!" Maddie cried, tears springing into her eyes. "Before George and Beverly picked me up that day, you said I could stay with you!"

Now Casey knew her confusion was written all over her face. When the hell did she ever give Maddie the impression that she could stay with her?

Oh, damn it, she thought as she replayed their last conversation that day in her head. She should have figured from Maddie's phrasing--"Do you promise I can come back to stay?"--that the little girl thought that Casey was telling her that she could live with her. And of course Maddie had been so happy and comfortable this past week and a half. She had just been excitedly biding her time until she could finally get what she wanted.

"I meant that you could come for a visit like before," Casey explained around the scratching in her throat because she could not break down in front of Maddie. "I didn't mean that you could stay forever. I'm so sorry, honey."

"But you said!" Maddie whined as the tears spilled over and trickled down her cheeks.

Casey inhaled deeply and pulled the little girl onto her lap. She dried Maddie's cheeks with her thumbs before lightly wrapping an arm around the girl's tiny shoulders. There had to be a reason that Maddie was so adamantly refusing to let this go. "What's the matter, Maddie? I mean, what's really the matter?"

The little girl was quiet for a long moment. "I don't like George and Beverly."

After seeing the girl with the couple, Casey didn't believe that Maddie truly didn't like them. However, she also knew that if she was ever going to get to root of the problem, she couldn't discount anything Maddie said. "Why don't you like them?" she asked, indulging the little girl.

Maddie just shrugged.

"Are they mean to you?" Casey asked.

Maddie shook her head, her voice barely audible. "No."

"Do they hurt you?"

This time, Maddie abruptly shot her head up to look Casey in the eye. "No! They would never hurt me."

Casey gave a half-smile. An extremely good sign, she thought. At least Maddie cared enough about the couple that she didn't want Casey believing that they'd done anything wrong. "Then what's the matter?"

Maddie sniffled and bit her lip, but she couldn't stop the tears. She turned on Casey's lap and threw her arms around the ADA's neck while burying her face in her shoulder. "I want to live with you! That day at the hospital when you told me that I wasn't going to be living with my mom anymore, you said that I didn't have to live with the new family if I didn't like them. You said you'd figure something out. So I thought that maybe if I didn't like Beverly and George, Ms. Lowe would let me live with you instead. Because I don't want to live with them anymore, Casey, I want to live with you!"

Casey closed her eyes against her own tears as she tightened her embrace on the girl and stroked her dark curls. She waited a few moments before addressing her, wanting her voice to be controlled and gentle. "Maddie, Ms. Lowe's not going to change her mind. All that's going to happen if you say you don't like Beverly and George is that Ms. Lowe's going to take you away from them and place you with another new family. You'll be starting all over again from scratch. You don't really want that, do you?"

She felt Maddie shake her head. After taking a minute or so to compose herself, the little girl released her hold on Casey and wiped her hands over her face to dry her tears. "No. I don't want that."

Casey gave the little girl a small, approving smile. "Now, do you really not like the Archers or were you just saying that?"

"I was just saying that," Maddie quietly admitted, looking down in shame. She'd never told a lie like that before. "George and Beverly are really, really nice to me and they take really good care of me. But I'm kind of afraid to like them."

"Because you thought that if you let yourself like them, you wouldn't get to live with me."

Maddie nodded, sniffling in an attempt to keep more tears at bay.

The ADA pulled Maddie into another tight hug. "I wish so hard that you could live with me, sweetie, but you can't. It's not fair, but those are the rules and they're not going to change just because we want them to. But you know what?"

She felt Maddie shake her head.

"You have foster parents who adore you and want to protect you and can't remember what their life was like before you were sent to live with them. You belong with Beverly and George, Maddie. They love you so much and I know that deep down, you love them, too."

"I do," Maddie said, again sobbing into Casey's shoulder. "I really do."

Oh, that was one of the best things Casey had ever heard! "They'll be so glad to hear that."

Maddie pulled out of Casey's grip and met her eyes hopefully. "Will they really?"

"Absolutely," Casey nodded, giving the girl a gentle smile. "Elliot and Olivia are coming over soon to bring you back to them. But we have one more serious thing to talk about first."

Maddie frowned and gave a slight wrinkle of her nose. Another serious thing? Sometimes it felt like all she'd done for the past two months was have serious talks with people. "What's that?"

"You have to one-hundred-percent promise me that you will never take off on your own like this again. This city is way too dangerous for you to be out there all alone, Maddie. Besides, nobody knew where you were and we all thought you were missing. We had the police looking for you and everything!"

Maddie's eyes widened. It was obvious that she hadn't at all realized what she had inadvertently put all the adults in her life through. "Really?"

"Really," Casey confirmed.

"I'm really sorry, Casey. I didn't mean to make everyone worry."

"I know," the ADA assured her with a smile. "It's all right. You're safe and that's all that matters now. You should finish your cocoa. Elliot and Olivia will be here soon."

Maddie nodded as she slid off Casey's lap. She snatched up her mug from the end table and leaned against back the ADA as she sipped her hot chocolate, which was now finally cool enough for her to drink more than a sip at a time.

Casey reached around the little girl's shoulders, holding her close, and absentmindedly began twirling one of her dark curls around her finger. With the comfort of having Maddie nestled safe and sound next to her, the adrenaline that had been keeping Casey going for the past couple of hours began melting away. As she was again left with nothing to do but wait, she found herself completely exhausted, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was that Maddie was perfectly safe.