A/N: I'm going to try and update again tomorrow because I'm going out of town on a business thing this weekend and so I won't get the chance to update again until maybe Sunday night. So, there might be an update tomorrow but if there isn't, I made this chapter super long to make up for it, in advance. :)

Anyway, I wish I had time to post individual replies to your GREAT reviews and I promise I will next time...but thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to review! I hope you all enjoy the chapter!

Second Chances

Chapter 25

The next morning, Nancy rolled onto her back and stretched as she slowly woke up. With her eyes still closed she stiffened when she felt the arm draped across her stomach, 'Where am I? What did I do?' she thought in a half awake, half asleep panic.

"Do you always wake up like that?" a voice mumbled too close to her ear for comfort.

She opened her eyes and turned to stare at the source of the voice, it was Frank. She sighed a little in relief as she took in her surroundings and the night before came back to her. She was sleeping in Frank's bed, which had been her choice and that's all they had done, sleep. On a quiet breath she said, "Wake up like what?"

"Ready to go and slightly panicked," Frank murmured and nestled further into his pillow.

"No I just, couldn't quite remember where I was for a second." Nancy turned on her side to face Frank who still had his eyes stubbornly closed.

"I'm that memorable, huh? Good thing I don't have a large ego or you would have just killed it." Frank smiled when he felt Nancy lean over and kiss him on the cheek, "I think you missed," he teased, cracking open one eye. Nancy was laughing as Frank reached over to kiss her on the lips, "there, much better." He pulled her closer into his arms and sighed, "good morning."

"Good morning to you too," she replied and laid her head on his chest.

The door opened and Nancy lifted her head to see who it was and of course, it was Joe. "Come on you two, breakfast is ready."

"Leave," Frank muttered, not even bothering to lift his head.

"You're grouchy this morning." Joe commented, "I wonder why that is…" he laughed loudly as Frank grabbed his pillow and threw it in the general direction of the door. Instead, the pillow hit the bookshelf and they could hear Joe laughing all the way down the stairs.

Frank laid his head back down but without a pillow his head was bent at an uncomfortable angle, "I should have thought this through," he murmured, "here, let's share yours," he reached over to pull the pillow closer to him but Nancy stopped him.

"No, we've got to get up," to prove her point Nancy turned and swung her legs over the side of the bed. "Your mom made us a nice breakfast and it would be rude not to go down and enjoy it while it's hot."

Frank groaned but moved to the other edge of the bed and sat up, rubbing his hands over his face and the stubble that was there.

"Come on Frank," Nancy called from the doorway.

"What? No motivating kiss? I'd think that my gentlemanly restraint from last night ought to earn me a little kiss." Frank's eyes danced as he watched Nancy laugh.

"Gentlemanly restraint?" she laughed, "you were asleep before your head hit the pillow last night. I'd say that you owe me for not taking advantage of you in your comatose state," and with that she waltzed out of the bedroom, leaving Frank shaking his head and smiling to himself.

Nancy walked into the kitchen to the wonderful mixture of breakfast smells. She groaned in appreciation when Joe just smiled at her and handed her a cup of coffee, "thank you." She took the first invigorating sip and smiled.

Joe took a sip of his own coffee as they all went out to sit around the dining room table. Everyone looked up as Frank trudged down the stairs and yawned hugely. "Hey, where's my coffee?" he grumbled, eyeing everyone's mugs.

"In the kitchen, sleepyhead," Joe replied. Frank shuffled off and came back a minute later with a cup of coffee and took a seat next to Nancy. "This looks great, Mom." He sniffed appreciatively at the table full of food in front of him, "I haven't eaten this good since the last time I had a meal at your house."

"It's true, it looks delicious." Nancy smiled at Laura and Laura smiled back.

"Well, it's not meant to just look delicious. Everyone, dig in!" Laura declared and reached for the eggs.

There was silence around the table for a few minutes while everyone ate their eggs, bacon, hash browns and other various breakfast products. A timer went off and Laura excused herself to the kitchen. She came back a few moments later with a plate of homemade cinnamon rolls.

"Oh man," Joe groaned and reached enthusiastically for a roll. "I can't believe you made homemade cinnamon rolls!" He moaned dramatically after taking the first bite.

"It's not every day I have both my boys and their girls over for breakfast," Laura replied and looked absolutely pleased. Fenton smiled at her and grabbed her hand that rested on the table.

"You're awfully chipper this morning, Joe." Fenton smiled at his youngest son, "in fact, it looks like we've had a bit of a role reversal. Joe's usually the grumpy Not A Morning Person brother and Frank is usually the one ready to go."

"I guess I just slept really well last night," Joe grinned widely. His smirk at Vanessa and her reddening face were missed by Laura and Fenton but not by Nancy and Frank. Joe turned to his brother, "what's your excuse big bro?"

"I slept really well. A little too well, I guess," he smiled at Nancy who smiled back and took a careless bite of her eggs.

"You did snore," she shrugged, "studies say that snoring is a sign of the deepest of sleeps."

Frank snorted into his coffee, "studies say…" he mumbled.

Fenton and Laura exchanged a glance, they were not as oblivious as their children liked to believe. Fenton raised an eyebrow at his wife and Laura nodded, she understood completely and wasn't that just the cutest thing? Her son and Nancy, simply sleeping together for comfort?

"So, boys what's your plan for today?" Fenton asked and turned to face his two sons.

"I was thinking I'd watch a little TV, relax, and maybe catch an afternoon nap." Joe yawned and gave Vanessa a little wink.

Fenton narrowed his eyes at his son, "think again."

Frank smiled, "I guess we'll be going into the office, that is…if they'll let us into the office, seeing that it's the scene of a crime. Then we'll see if we can get in to see Giamatti, find out what he can tell us. Maybe Nancy can get us some information from the FBI."

"That's our Frank! Frustrated, but still sharp as an ax," Joe said, flourishing his fork dramatically.

"I think the saying is, 'sharp as a tack,' Joe," Frank rolled his eyes.

"You say tomato I say tahmato," Joe shrugged.

Nancy cleared her throat to disguise a laugh, "maybe Giamatti is feeling so betrayed he'd be willing to tattle on his former partner. I'm sure the bureau has people on it right now."

"Sounds good," Fenton nodded.

"What are you going to be doing today, Dad?" Joe asked.

"Owner of the business privileges, I won't be coming in today." Fenton shared a smile with his wife. His children weren't the only ones interested in taking afternoon naps.

Nancy stood in the bathroom an hour later after taking a much needed and relaxing shower. She flipped her head over to towel dry her hair for a few minutes. Standing up straight again she looked at her face in the slowly de-fogging bathroom mirror. She pushed her hair up off her forehead to inspect the bruise running along her temple; it was already going the sickly colors of healing around the edges. She took stock of her other cuts and bruises, grimacing at a particularly nasty one under her shirt on her abdomen. 'Well, at least I look well rested,' she thought to herself and leaned forward to inspect a cut along her hairline.

She looked behind her in the mirror and saw Frank standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed. She couldn't quite read his expression; "hi" she said and focused her gaze back on the cut. She prodded at it a few more times before leaning back from the mirror. Looking at Frank again she turned to face him and leaned against the bathroom counter, "what?" she asked.

"Nothing," Frank pushed himself up off the doorjamb and came to stand in front of her. He pushed her hair back himself and took a look at the bruises and the cuts. "Does it hurt?" he asked slowly.

Nancy could see the guilt and anger swimming in Frank's eyes, "no," she replied. It was partly true, the cuts and bruises on her face didn't trouble her nearly as much as her aching ribs did.

"You're hurting," he said simply.

"So are you," she replied and ducked out from between him and the bathroom counter. She hung her used towel up on the towel bar and turned to face him again.

"Still…" Frank began but Nancy held up a hand.

"Don't start with that 'I couldn't protect you' line. I can handle myself and we were all pretty incapacitated," she huffed.

"I won't, because that's not what I was going to say. You think you have me all figured out, don't you Drew?" he leaned against the bathroom counter and crossed his arms, staring at her. "What I was going to say was, even with it all you still look beautiful."

Nancy stood staring at Frank for a moment, "well," she sighed, "there's the wind, there's the sail and there it is getting sucked right out," she said motioning with her hands and Frank just smiled at her, "okay, you don't have to smirk about it."

"I'm not smirking," Frank shrugged. They stood staring at each other for a few moments, "are you going to come over here, or what?"

Nancy laughed as she moved into his arms, "you are impossible."

"Impossibly manly? Impossibly amazing? A doer of the impossible? Impossibly great? I'm going to need you to clarify." Frank was laughing when Nancy brought her lips up to silence his.

It turned out that they couldn't get into the office to work and so decided to base their operations in Joe's apartment for the day. Nancy wandered in off the back deck from where she had been talking to Michael. Joe and Frank sat huddled around Frank's laptop going over police records.

"How did you guys get those?" Nancy asked, looking over their shoulders.

Joe clapped his hand on Frank's shoulder and smiled, "our Wonder Boy Frank here. He hacked into the police database."

"I'm no Phil Cohen, but I can get by," Frank said modestly.

"How often do you guys do this?" Nancy asked with a smile.

"Er, often enough," Joe hedged and glanced up at Nancy, "it takes less time than begging Con for a favor."

"I see," Nancy nodded her head and continued smiling.

"We'll try the FBI database next," Frank murmured as his fingers flew across the keyboard. "Sometimes I get lucky and hit it on a good day."

"Is that so?" Nancy said and Joe looked back over his shoulder at her. He tapped Frank's shoulder until he got his attention and then pointed at the smiling Nancy.

"What?" Frank asked, "Why are you smiling like that?"

"No reason, I just didn't know you boys preferred to take the hard route," she walked around the couch and took a seat in the recliner.

"What do you mean?" Joe's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"I just got off the phone with Michael, you remember Michael right? He's my partner…whom I work with at the FBI," she stressed the last part of her sentence and stared at the brothers in turn.

"Yeah…" Frank replied and his voice trailed off.

Nancy laughed, "you don't have to hack into any databases, you have a bona fide FBI agent sitting right here!"

Joe rubbed his chin, "oh."

"Yeah, 'oh'," Nancy said on a laugh and then leaned forward, "Michael is eager to get his partner back so he passed some information along to me."

"What did he say?" Frank asked.

"Well, he said that Giamatti is currently still in counting sheep mode," at Joe's snort she smiled, "and no, not because I gave him so many sleeping pills he's still asleep. He's sleeping because his body needs to recover from all of the stomach pumping they had to do." Nancy brushed her hair back, a look of total unconcern on her face, "anyway, they did find a few things in Giamatti's pockets."

"And?" Joe prompted when she didn't continue, "at the rate you're moving Drew, it would be faster to hack into the FBI database."

Nancy let out a long suffering sigh, "haven't you ever heard of dramatic effect?" she batted her eyelashes at him and continued, "They found additional ammo, a couple of cigars, a lighter, his wallet and a business card."

At the way Nancy said 'business card' Frank paused, "what was on the business card?"

"A website address," Nancy leaned back in her chair and smirked.

"Sometime today, Nan!" Joe cried in frustration, "What's the address for?"

"They haven't figured it out yet, but our top analysts are working on it. I say we try and figure it out first," she leaned forward. "Type this in," she instructed Frank.

Frank looked down at the web address he had entered into the URL box and read it out loud, "www dot jke dot com?" he looked at Nancy, "this isn't going to wreck my computer, is it?"

Nancy shrugged, "it hasn't wrecked the ones at the bureau."

"Okay, here it goes," Frank hit enter and waited for the website to load. A dialogue box opened, prompting him to enter a username and password, he looked at Nancy.

"The username is 'jkecrew' and the password is 'amazing'." Nancy shook her head as Joe laughed, "I know, it's ridiculous."

Frank entered in the combination and frowned at the completely white screen in front of him. "What?" he looked down at the status bar, the site was supposedly finished downloading.

"Scroll down," Nancy instructed and Frank did so. "Now right click at the very bottom somewhere in the middle and click, 'select all'."

Frank did this and then smiled, "it says, "Sign in Here followed by a box where you enter some sort of code."

"That's where the FBI is stuck as of right now. I think for a man of your computer hacking skills Frank, you should be able to beat them to it." Nancy smiled widely at Frank's stumped expression.

"I guess," he muttered, already thinking of how he was going to do this. "If the FBI already got this far it's only a matter of time before they get in." he pointed out.

"Well, they've been working on this since yesterday and I'm sorry, but a username so similar to the website address and a password like 'amazing'? It wasn't that hard for the FBI hackers to get through that." Nancy scoffed.

"What's with the address anyway? What does JKE mean?" Joe asked. "Just Kidding Experts? Jerry Knows Everything?"

"While Frank is working his magic over there, let's try and figure it out," Nancy suggested and got out a pen and paper and started writing down all of the possibilities.

A half hour later and Frank was still stumped and Joe and Nancy were just as stuck. Vanessa wandered in from the other room and sat on the couch arm to look at what Joe and Nancy were working on, "what's up?" she asked.

Joe sighed in frustration, "we're trying to figure out what this could stand for," Joe pointed at the three letters and Vanessa pursed her lips in concentration.

"J, K, E…" she murmured, "the other guy, what was his name? Jonathan Krieger? Could that be his initials or something?" she asked. When Nancy and Joe remained silent and stared at each other before staring at Vanessa, she flushed. "Sorry, you guys probably already thought of that. I should just leave the detecting work to the pros."

"No! No, Vanessa…baby, you're a genius!" Joe jumped up and gave her a big hug. "I mean, Jonathan Krieger E-something, it has to be that!"

"Jonathan Krieger….Enterprises," Nancy said and her eyes lit up. "It's so corny, but the man is so egotistical it works perfectly."

"So that means the user name is 'Jonathan Krieger Enterprises Crew? Wow, that's lame. The JKE Crew, it sounds like a street gang," Joe laughed, "And the password is 'amazing'. I guess that fits with the egotist vibes."

"I'm glad you guys are making breakthroughs over there but could you try not to sound so excited? I'm hitting one wall after another." Frank complained.

"Haven't figured out the code yet, love bug?" Nancy asked sweetly.

Frank growled at the silly nick name, "No, I figured that code out twenty minutes ago. It's the fourth code I'm having problems with."

"What?" Nancy stood up and looked at the computer screen, "you've hacked through three of the codes already? Frank, you should have gone to MIT."

"Oh, they wanted him," Joe piped up and continued in a teasing tone, "but Frank felt he had other, bigger and better things to achieve in life."

"I just wanted to go to college and work on the skills I didn't have," Frank replied in a voice that suggested he had explained this already many times, "I figured I should pay to learn new skills, not pay to learn skills I already had," he paused. "Wow, and that sounds really egotistical."

"It's okay, I understand what you're trying to say, love bug," Nancy smiled reassuringly at him and Frank groaned.

"Love bug…sheesh," Frank muttered and shook his head, his fingers continuing to fly across the keyboard.

An hour later and Frank still hadn't made it past the fourth code, "knowing how obsessed this guy is with us the code could have something to do with one of the three of us." Joe suggested.

"I've already tried all sorts of combinations. I've tried all of our birthdays, our initials, our names and all of the combinations and variations," Frank ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

"Well, we know the FBI hasn't made it very far yet. Michael said he'd call me when they figured it out," Nancy stood and went to the kitchen for a bottle of water.

"Hey Nan, grab me a Coke while you're in there," Joe called. Nancy grabbed the water and two Cokes from the fridge. She handed one to Joe and the other to Frank and then reclaimed her seat in the recliner.

She opened the water and took a sip, thinking hard about what the code could be. A long ago lesson from Quantico popped into her head, "hey, have you tried significant dates yet?" she asked Frank.

"What like his birthday?" Frank asked and nodded his head, "that was the first code, his birthday. For a man with no creativity this fourth code is a real doozy."

"Probably because it's the most important one," Joe commented.

"I mean important dates that are relevant to our relationship with Krieger." Nancy clarified, "The day we met him, the day we caught him, the day he was officially incarcerated or the day he broke out of jail." Nancy listed them off on her fingers.

"No, I haven't tried those!" Frank said excitedly and then turned back to his computer, "let's see," he bit his bottom teeth in concentration, "it's not the first day we met him. Let's try the next one," he punched that in and then shook his head, "Nope, let's try the next one," when that one was denied he tried the last date and let out a triumphant cry. "It worked!"

"It did?" Nancy asked incredulously. Even though it had been her idea she had been a little skeptical that it would work. She leaned over to stare at the screen in front of Frank. There was one box that looked like you would type a message in it and at the bottom was a 'send' button.

"This is great!" Joe said excitedly, "Frank, do something technical and find out where those messages go."

"I can try," Frank muttered and he started typing in a few commands. After fifteen minutes of getting nowhere he leaned back on the couch, "I think we're going to have to call Phil."

"Here," Joe handed him the phone, "call him. I'm getting tired of sitting around doing nothing."

"If you don't like it, why don't you get up and make us all some lunch or something?" Frank teased. He punched in the number to Phil's cell phone and waited for his friend to answer, "Phil, hey it's Frank," a few minutes later Frank hung up the phone.

"He grumbled a little bit about it being New Years Day but he said he'd be right over," Frank told the group.

"Great, that will give us time to eat lunch," Nancy stood up and walked to the kitchen and found Vanessa painting her nails at the kitchen table.

"Hi!" she said brightly, "you know, I haven't done this in so long." She held her hand out to inspect the polish, "I don't know why but I suddenly just wanted to paint my nails."

"I hear you, I get like that too sometimes," Nancy agreed

"How's it going out there?" Vanessa asked.

"Fine, we've reached a standstill for the time being, but I think it's going to be okay. Do you mind if I root around in the kitchen for lunch items?"

"Oh no, no problem. Here, let me help you, these should be dry," she blew a few times on her nails and then walked over to the refrigerator. The two women laughed and bonded over preparing grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. They were still laughing when Nancy called the boys in from the living room.

"Hmm, smells great!" Joe said and sat down in front of one of the plates of food.

"Next time, you cook," Nancy said sternly and took a seat herself.

After they were finished eating the girls left Frank and Joe to deal with the dishes and went out into the living room to continue their conversation. "Joe does this adorable thing when he sleeps," Vanessa said, "when he's feeling particularly feisty he likes to steal all of the blankets. I'm telling you, it's just adorable." The girls laughed and left the room.

"I do not steal the covers," Joe grumbled as he loaded plates into the dishwasher.

"You do sometimes," Frank said as he dried off the pan he had washed. He shrugged when Joe shot him a dirty look, "it's true. When you're feeling…what did Vanessa say? Oh yes, feisty, you don't share very well. Remember that time when we were going to the family reunion in Wisconsin and you and I had to share a bed?" Frank was about to continue when there was a knock on the door.

"There's Phil!" Joe called out and dashed out of the room.

Frank followed and smiled at his friend, "thanks for coming, Phil."

"No problem, I love it when you guys ask for my help on a case," Phil set his laptop case down and sat in front of Frank's computer. "Let's see here," he muttered.

Frank and Phil sat with their heads together as Frank explained to him all of the steps he had gone through to get to that point and Phil nodded his head. "What do you think?" Frank murmured.

"It'll take a minute," Phil replied and started working on the computer.

Much to Joe's dismay it took more than a minute but finally Phil leaned back, "there."

"There? There what?" Joe asked.

"I got it." Phil smiled, "it was hard to trace because the messages sent from this IP address are routed through a number of server farms here in the US and across seas, but I was eventually able to pinpoint the different locations where the messages were received. It's a pretty long list"

"Where are the locations?" Nancy asked.

"Well," Phil leaned in, "with a little help from Google maps," he typed in a few words and then turned the computer to face the group. "You're looking at locations all over New York, it looks like."

"Hey, that one is here in Bayport," Joe pointed at the screen.

"The Bayport Motel," Frank nodded, "looks like that's where we're going first."