Bobby POV

It took every ounce of willpower that I possess to stay out of that apartment while Alex went at Travis.

I knew that she'd get him to swing at her.

He was a powder keg and she knew exactly how to light the match.

Of course, I also knew that she could take him out without any help from me.

But I still hated running the risk of having her get hurt.

But in the time it took me to cross the ten feet of hallway and enter the apartment, she had him flat on his back.

The woman packs a serious punch.

And oddly enough, that thought sent a little rush of pride through me.

My wife knows how to take care of herself.

Of course, I love the idea of being able to protect her, too, but still…she was bad ass.

"Alex?" I'd called out, just to hear her voice and be sure that it sounded strong. I can tell a lot from the tone of her voice, sometimes more than the words themselves.

"I've got him. Check the apartment, just to be sure."

She sounded good.

I went about searching through the rooms while Alex got payback for what Travis had done to Cathy.

And Steve…he was immobilized just inside of the door. I had no doubt that he'd be blaming himself after hearing the conversation and realizing that maybe Cathy had been a victim in all of this, too.

Not originally, of course, but she apparently hadn't been trying to screw him over when she'd slept with him yesterday.

She'd been sincere, and she'd tried to tell Steve that but he wouldn't listen.

I continued my search, but I couldn't find any hint that Cathy had been here recently.

Or Nate.

And usually six-year-old boys leave behind clues. They can't help themselves.

Nate in particular liked to carry a dozen or so Hot Wheels around with him and he was invariably leaving at least one behind any time he stopped moving for more than a minute.

"Where is Sean?" I heard Alex call out.

Before I could answer, I heard Sean's reply.

Good. He could take custody of Travis and carry him back to jail where he belonged.

"Did he get you?" Sean asked Alex as I went back into the living room.

"Barely," she replied. I looked over at her and saw a red patch of skin on her jaw. She caught my eye and shook her head.

I'm fine, the look said.

I told them what I'd found, which was nothing.

Travis regained consciousness so Sean roughed him up a bit and got him to shut up, so then my focus went to Steve.

"She was telling the truth," he mumbled. "She…she didn't…he threatened her, didn't he?"

"Yeah, I think so," Alex said.

"This is my fault. I told her that she'd never see Nate again because I thought…I thought that…oh my God, Alex. What am I going to do? This is all my fault. I'm no better than he is."

"We'll find her," she said. "We'll find both of them."

The five of us left the apartment, Sean with Travis, and Steve along with me and Alex.

I needed to think, to re-evaluate the situation.

Because removing Travis from the situation really changed things.

Cathy had taken Nate because she was afraid of being forced out of his life.

She'd been in a panic and so she'd run.

Where would she go? She barely had any money, she had no car…

And then it hit me.

"Alex," I began as she started up the car.

"What are you thinking?" she asked carefully.

"Helen."

"What?" she asked in surprise.

"Who's Helen?" Steve asked.

"We talked about that case all weekend," I said, ignoring Steve altogether. "It's not a stretch that she could've overheard. We've had that file lying around…"

"She was listening when we got home Saturday night," Alex said suddenly. "She asked me Sunday morning about the soccer trophy. She must have heard me tell you about it Saturday night."

"And we were talking about the case then, too."

"Oh no," she said. "If she went to her…"

"With bruises on her body…"

"Bobby," she said, her voice filled with worry. "We've got to talk to her. If she gets into that system, we may never find her. We won't have any way of contacting her. We'd have to wait for her to contact us, and she may never do that. Not if she thinks that we believe the worst about her."

"Guys!" Steve yelled. "What the hell are you talking about?"

I watched Alex carefully as she battled with her own emotions.

"We need to take him home," I said quietly. "And go talk to Helen."

"We don't need to take Steve anywhere," he argued. "I'm coming with you guys. This is my son."

"Exactly. That's why you shouldn't be involved," Alex said gently. "This is what we do. Let us do our jobs."

"He's your nephew. How is that different?"

"Because I'm an expert at separating my personal feelings from work," she replied with a pointed look at me. "I did it for years."

"She's right," I said, turning towards the backseat so that I could look at Steve. "We're going to take you home. Stay there in case she tries to call. We promise to keep you in the loop."

Steve reluctantly conceded, so we dropped him at his place and then headed for Helen's.

"You really think that she'd go to her for help?" Alex asked me as she sped down the Henry Hudson Parkway.

"I think that she was feeling desperate. And she heard us debate about how sometimes custodial kidnappings were understandable. I didn't even put the two together, but we're probably the ones who planted the seed," I told her. "Otherwise she might not have even considered it."

She sighed heavily and pushed down harder on the accelerator.

"I doubted her," she said with a shake of her head. "Steve came over and said that she'd gone back to him…"

"You only partly doubted her," I corrected. "Because you picked up on the fact that Travis was lying. And you knew that she wouldn't treat Steve so callously."

I watched her as she drove recklessly through the midday traffic. The red mark on her face was slowly getting some color, subtle shades of black and blue.

I reached out and touched her gently.

"One more thing I need to get payback for," I said quietly.

"I'm fine," she said automatically. Then she cast me a quick glance and smiled. "Although I think maybe I broke a toe when I kicked him."

"Which time?" I asked, matching her smile. "Because I think you got in a few good licks."

"Yeah, well now he knows how it feels."

Twenty minutes later, we pulled up in front of Helen's house.

"You really think that she would help her?"

"Do you know anyone else she would go to?" I asked.

"No. I mean, if she didn't come to any of the family, then…no."

We got out of the car and went up the front steps. This time, Alex didn't knock politely.

She banged on the door.

"Alex, Bobby," Helen said in confusion when she opened the door. "What's wrong?"

"Did you help a woman today?" Alex asked her. "A woman and her son?"

"I told you that I was done sharing confidential information. I'm not going to have you two knocking on my door every day to interfere with what I'm doing. If I can't help people privately, then they'll quit coming to me, and I can't have that."

"Helen, I need an answer," Alex insisted. "Did you?"

"I'm not…"

"It's her sister," I spoke up. "Her sister and her nephew, and it's all a huge misunderstanding. We need to find them."

Helen stared at us for a long minute and then she stood back and let us into her apartment.

Lupo POV

My black ops shit guy called me as we approached the Holland Tunnel.

"Dude, I got it," he said when I answered.

"You cracked the code?"

"Shit, man, it's not cracking. How many times do I have to tell you that? They don't call it that anymore. They…"

"Hey!" I shouted, interrupting his tirade. "Do you know what it says or not?"

"Yeah, dude, this guy is awesome," he continued, not the least bit put off by my impatience. "At first I thought that he was just using a substitution cipher, but then I realized that it was more like a transposition cipher, and I was like dude, who is this guy, because then I ran through the potential resolutions and I kept coming up with a big pile of shit, so I had to start again, only this time I tried a polyalphabetic cipher in combination with a deranged alphabet and then I thought, dude, you're over-thinking it, so then I went for a simple Atbash cipher. And dude, guess what?"

"You're killing me," I muttered.

"Nah, man, shit but you're close."

"Huh? Close to what?"

"The code."

"What?" I yelled in frustration. "Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me what you found."

"I'm dead."

"That's what it said?"

"Nah, dude, shit! Pay attention. That was the cipher."

I sighed heavily and ran my hand over my face.

"I'm dead is the cipher," I repeated, hoping desperately that by saying the words out loud I might somehow come to an understanding about what they meant.

"Okay, get this. Picture the alphabet written out across the page."

"I'm with you so far."

"Now write it again, directly below it, only this time start with I-M-D-E-A-D. Then you continue on with the missing letters of the alphabet. So next would be B-C-F-G and so on. Still with me?"

"Uh huh."

"Line them up and each letter is a different letter."

"But you've got two D's," I pointed out, grateful that I actually did grasp what he was saying.

How he'd figured it out, I have no idea.

This guy was freaky smart.

"Yeah that tripped me up for a bit, but I worked it out."

"And wouldn't that mean that you'd have an extra letter in the code?"

"Shit, dude, you do understand it!" he said proudly. "Yeah, that's kind of how I figured out that there was a repeating letter in the cipher. No Z anywhere in the code, dude. And I know Z isn't all that popular of a letter, but still…"

"So have you translated all of the files?" I interrupted.

"Some of them. Enough to know that my cipher is accurate. And seriously, dude, I want to meet the guy who wrote this shit."

"You can't. He's dead."

"For real? Dude," he said quietly. "Prophetic."

I had to remind myself that ultimately, this guy was really quite helpful, so I needed to be tolerant of his wandering focus.

"What did you get from it?" I asked.

"It's a log. It looks like maybe this guy was following someone. It's a listing of dates and times and locations, but there aren't any names. Not yet anyway."

"Give me some of the locations."

"1PP," he said. "That's One Police Plaza, right?"

"Yeah, keep going."

"Okay, dude. Shit. 1PP, New York Times Building, Willow Lane, John Jay Park…"

"Keep working on it," I told him. "I'll come by in another hour or so and see what else you've got."

I hung up the phone as Bernard pulled into the 1PP parking garage.

"He cracked the code?" Carolyn asked, and I had to chuckle.

"It's not called cracking, dude," I said.

"What?"

"Sorry," I said with a shake of my head. "I just…yeah, he got it. It's some kind of cipher and he's going through all of the documents with it now. The first document was a listing of places and dates."

"He was following someone," Bernard said.

"Or someones," I said. "I'm betting that he overheard a sketchy conversation and then he started tailing them to see what they were up to."

"And he must have gotten spotted," Carolyn said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "And he knew it, too. He knew he was in trouble, so he rewrote his notes using the code and then he saved it to the data stick. By hanging it on the key rack, he made it damn near impossible to find. I'm guessing that maybe he assumed it would stay there until his roomie got back from wherever."

"So he got busted checking up on them. And we're still saying Hemmings and Harker, right?"

"That's all I've got for now," I agreed. "My theory is that they paid Pebo to take him out and gather the evidence that Brubaker had been collecting, only he couldn't find it, so then they sent in the two goons that you guys ran across."

"It sounds like a great theory," Mike agreed. "But there's one problem with it."

"Only one?" I scoffed good-naturedly. "You're being too kind. But please, do tell."

"Who the hell is C-Dog?"

TBC...