Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who's still with me! I'm not sure how much longer the case will take. I want to say three chapters, which probably will make it four or five. *eyerolls at self* Anyway, Jane gets to be sneaky in this chapter.

Having Kurt with her in this hellhole calmed some of Jane's anxiety. It was impossible to get too overwrought when she was spooned with him on his narrow cot, feeling his chest rise and fall with every breath. His arms around her, and his familiar scent, reassured her like nothing else could.

They dozed together for a while, then—as Kurt's watch showed the time was edging past midnight—reluctantly separated. Jane returned to her own cot to await their potential summoning when the cameras went out within the next hour. She would have liked to spend the time in Kurt's arms, but if they both fell asleep, and somehow slept through the guard approaching and unlocking the door, it would look suspicious if they were sharing a cot. Penny Yates, as Jane had been playing her, would never deign to fall asleep in her 'ex'-husband's arms, even if she did give in to his advances and sleep with him.

From the other side of the room, she couldn't quite tell if Kurt had managed to find sleep again, but she hoped he had. He probably hadn't gotten more than two hours' rest last night, while he worried about her and tried to come up with ways to save her life. Not that her night had been particularly comfortable either, but she'd gotten about five hours, aided by the knowledge that the door was locked, with a camera tracking past outside. There had been nothing she could do but sleep, except worry about the kids.

Jane was wondering if Avery was okay, wishing she could hug her daughter, when rapid footsteps approached the door. The lock clacked open with a suddenness that jolted Kurt awake on the other cot. Jane didn't have to feign dazzled weariness when the overhead light blinked on without warning, and the guard who'd locked them in earlier levelled a gun at first Kurt, then Jane.

"What the hell, man?" Kurt mumbled, shielding his eyes from the brightness.

Jane groaned and struggled into a sitting position. "What's going on? Did you mishandle another one of the brats?"

"They're both here," the guard said into his radio, presumably communicating with whoever had noticed the cameras were off.

"Yeah, where else could we be? You locked us in, remember?" Kurt said, shaking his head.

The guard examined them both suspiciously for a moment, then sighed. "Might as well get up and help us. The camera system just went out."

Jane immediately lurched to her feet, alarm on her face. "And you think someone's planning to get in? Are we in danger of being compromised? Damn, this can't be happening, not before my first payday."

Kurt rubbed his face, looking stressed. "Is it sabotage, or could it be an electrical fault?"

"We're still looking. You know anything about electronics, either of you?"

"No," Jane said.

"Little bit. You must have someone who knows that stuff better than me, though?" Kurt stood up, giving an exaggerated stretch once he was on his feet.

"We do, but he's on the day shift. You come with me, see if you can figure it out."

Kurt nodded and grabbed his shoes. He'd had to sleep in his clothes, since he hadn't planned to be caught and to stay overnight in a locked room. In fewer than ten seconds, he'd be ready to go.

"What about me? Yesterday, when this loser tried to sneak in,"—Jane indicated Kurt—"Shapiro told me to go make sure the kids kept quiet. You want the same now?"

The guard scratched his cheek, uncertain. "I still don't like the coincidence that he comes in here after you, and then the cameras go out."

Jane shrugged. "Yeah, well, Shapiro seemed satisfied after he tested us. Said we were definitely married once. What, you think they let married cops work cases together? That would be a total disaster. They'd put each other's safety before the cases." When the guard still looked hesitant, Jane gave up on the idea of being allowed to roam through the warehouse. "Fine, you don't trust us? Lock me in with the kids or something. I'll keep 'em quiet, and you don't have to worry about what I'm doing. And if you have me locked up, Mark will want to make sure you let me out again, so he'll be on his best behaviour. Deal?"

This obviously appealed to the guard. "Yeah, that sounds like a plan."

Jane scowled at Kurt. "Best behaviour, you got it?"

"Yes, ma'am." Kurt gave a terrible approximation of a salute. Knowing he'd been to military school, it was difficult for Jane not to smile.

Jane turned back to the guard. "Can I get dressed first?"

"No."

Rolling her eyes and muttering about dying of hypothermia, Jane toed on her shoes, then followed Kurt and the guard over to the cage on the darker side of the warehouse. The smell of a soiled diaper or two reached her nose as they approached.

Their guard wrinkled his nose at the man guarding the cage—his name was Niles, Jane remembered. "Don't these little noise-blasters ever stop shitting?"

Jane sighed and reached for the diaper-changing supplies near the cage door. "Thank your stars that's my problem, not yours."

"They got you changing diapers?" Kurt said, sounding as disgusted as if he'd never changed one in his life. "Gross."

"For the money they're paying me, I'll put up with it," Jane said, and looked at Niles. "Can I go in?"

Wordlessly, Niles took the keys from his belt and unlocked the door. The kids, huddled as far from the cage entrance as they could get, whimpered sleepily.

"Lock her in, then go help Jim and Pedro with the perimeter sweep," their guard said.

"Are you nuts? I'm not leaving my post without relief!" It seemed Shapiro had harsh penalties for whichever guard left the kids alone.

"I am the relief," Jane said, stepping past Niles. "Leave me a gun if you really don't think I can stop a few ankle-biters from getting out of a locked cage."

After a moment's hesitation, Niles locked the door behind her. No gun was forthcoming, but Jane hadn't expected miracles.

She turned to glance at the kids, wishing she could smile and reassure them, before looking back at the adults outside the cage. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get going and figure out why the cameras are down! This whole thing is making me jumpy."

"You and me both," Niles grumbled, and wandered off after Kurt and the other guard.

Jane watched Kurt go with a sinking heart. With a double escort, he'd be hard-pressed to get away for long enough to find something capable of causing distraction tomorrow, and she didn't dare pick her way out of the cage when she didn't know how many other traffickers were roaming this floor.

There was a lamp on a table just outside the cage door, which acted as a night-light for the kids. Jane guessed the crew had learned the hard way that toddlers were often scared of the dark. She crouched near the light, setting out her diaper-changing supplies. "Hey, you guys—it's Lauren. Anyone need a hug?"

There was a scuffle, then red-haired Mandy tottered over, not stopping until she could throw her arms around Jane's neck. "I'm scared."

Jane hugged her tightly, glad to be able to show her some comfort now that there was no one nearby. "It's okay, Mandy. We're gonna get you home soon, I promise. You just have to wait one more day, okay?"

"Home?" Dark-haired Leo approached tentatively.

Jane nodded, gently easing Mandy back from their embrace. "Hey, Mandy, can I give Leo a hug now? I want to give all of you who want them hugs before the bad men get back, okay?"

Mandy whimpered, but after a few moments of gentle coaxing, she let go of Jane, sitting down next to her instead. Leo flung himself at Jane, sniffling, and as Jane tried to comfort him as best she could, the rest of the kids began to gather around.

"Quick hugs, okay?" she told them all, checking to make sure the coast was still clear. "And when everyone has had a hug, I'll do diaper changes."

There were more than a few tears shed, Jane's among them. The feel of each small child in her arms reminded her of comforting Bethany after she'd skinned her knees at the park, the last time she'd seen her stepdaughter. She strove to keep it together for the sake of the kids whose lives now depended on her.

"I'm sorry, kiddo," she murmured, encouraging Rebecca—who was sobbing as though her heart was breaking—to unwrap her arms from Jane's neck. "If you need more hugs, you can hug each other, okay? But if they see me hugging you, they'll be mad."

Rebecca clung to Mandy, sniffling. Seeing the other girl patting Rebecca's blonde curls in an imitated gesture of comfort made Jane want to laugh and cry at the same time.

As she changed Leo's wet diaper, she told the kids, "You can't tell anyone you're going home, okay? It's our secret for now. Don't talk about it at all, not even to each other. If you want to talk about going home, just say 'chocolate', okay? It's a secret code."

She had no idea if kids of this age even had a good enough understanding of secrets and code words, but she had to try. Hopefully, they'd be too intimidated to talk much while the guards were near.

"But tomorrow, if I come get you and say you have to come quick, you have to be really quiet. Quiet as a mouse. There's a magic tunnel that will take you back to your moms and dads, and my friends are on the other side to help you get home. But we have to be really quiet and really quick, okay? No crying or shouting, or the bad men will make you stay."

The looks on the faces around her ranged from determined to frightened, but everyone nodded.

"But you can't talk about the magic tunnel until we get there, so if you want to talk about it, you could call it..." She stalled, thinking.

"Squirrel!" Kayden half-shouted. He was a little older than the rest, she'd learned through talking to them all earlier, though he was small for his age.

Jane grinned at his enthusiasm, though how he'd gotten to squirrels from tunnels, she had no idea. "Right! You can say you're gonna get the squirrel to take you to get chocolate, because 'chocolate' means home, right?"

Someone giggled. It was a little forlorn, but at least it was something. Anything she could do to keep the kids from losing hope was worth it.

"Anyone else's diaper need changing?" From the smell, she suspected so.

Rebecca reluctantly stepped forward, her expression glum, and Jane got to work. Making sure they were still alone, and the kids were all listening, she said, "I've got a friend in here, too. He was just outside there when I came in, but you might not have seen him. He had a blue shirt on, and really short, brown hair, and a kinda short beard. Did anyone see?"

A couple of the kids nodded.

"If you didn't see him, that's okay. If I can show you in the morning, I'll do that. But if he comes in and there are no bad men, and he says it's time to go, you go with him, okay? He's a kind man, and he wants to help you. He knows where the magic tunnel is, too. I mean, the squirrel."

She finished up Rebecca's diaper just as the freight elevator whirred to life. Kurt and the guards coming back, or other new arrivals?

"Remember, like we talked about before we went to bed," she murmured to the kids. "Don't all come and see me at once, okay? Can everyone except for Tommy go back to bed now, before the bad men come back?"

The other kids scampered back to their sleeping corner, while Tommy lingered, looking nervous.

"It's okay," Jane reassured him. "I just want to check how your arm is doing."

"Hurts," Tommy said, looking down at the sling Jane had managed to make out of a torn, discarded T-shirt.

"I know, Tommy. But just let me have a little feel. I won't make you take your shirt off this time, I just want to see if it's any better." Carefully, she felt around the sprained shoulder joint, trying not to let her worry show.

There was no way Tommy was going to be able to crawl very far on his hands and knees. Maybe if she'd had time to help him practice crawling, while using only one arm, it might have helped. As it was, though, he was too young to manage a sustained crawl with a sprain. She and Kurt would have to protect him—much easier to do with one child than eight, though even one was more than Jane liked to have near a gunfight.

Niles approached as she told Tommy to go and get some sleep with the others. Jane picked up the plastic sack full of diaper refuse and shook it in the guard's direction. "How long until I can get rid of all this?"

Niles unlocked the cage. "You're a free woman, until Boyd locks you back in your room for the rest of the night. Your husband found the source of the camera malfunction. Said the cable looked like it had been chewed through by a rat."

Jane hushed him. "Ex-husband. And do you wanna scare the kids?"

"Okay, mice," Niles amended, rolling his eyes. "Fluffy, friendly mice, like Mickey Mouse."

More like Patterson Mouse, Jane thought. Or maybe Kurt Mouse made it look less like sabotage somehow. Either way, that takes the pressure off us when Shapiro gets here and demands to know why the cameras don't work.

"Can they fix it tonight?" she asked, feigning nervousness. "I know I'm still new, but I don't like us not having eyes where you guys usually have 'em."

"You and me both. Your guy said something about the system having old connectors, might be needing a whole new cable we don't have now. If Mike doesn't have a spare one to bring in tomorrow, we're gonna have to go out and buy one."

If they could get through the next twelve hours without cameras, that would make things so much easier.

"I'm gonna go wash the crap off my hands," Jane said. "I can go alone, right? Now we know it was a rat that did it?"

Niles waved her off, sitting back down next to the lamp and picking up the worn paperback he'd been reading.

Maybe I can actually do some recon, after all.

After disposing of the trash, quickly washing her hands and reapplying the tattoo-concealing makeup to them, Jane shot a longing look down the hall towards Shapiro's office. If she hid his log book now, he'd notice it gone first thing in the morning, and the kids wouldn't have a chance. Instead, she went the other way, checking behind a closed door she'd been unable to get to while the cameras were active.

It was a cleaning closet. Jane scanned the chemicals, noting what could be mixed together to form dangerous gases, or sprayed in vulnerable faces to blind or stun.

She closed the door quickly as footsteps approached, and ducked back into the room she and Kurt had been sleeping in. Then she stuck her head out.

"Boyd? That's your name, right?"

The guy looked up on the way into the room he'd been semi-guarding their 'bedroom' from. "Yeah. What's up?"

"Uh, this is kind of embarrassing, but…oh, what the hell. I just started my period."

Predictably, the guy froze. Works every time.

Jane doubled down. "I wasn't expecting to start until a couple of days from now, but you can't predict these things a hundred percent, I guess. And my flow is really heavy at the start. I've got maybe ten minutes before I bleed through all the toilet paper I just put in my underwear. Do you know where I can find some sanitary products?"

"I, uh…no."

"Damn it!" Jane covered her face with her hands, then let them drop, putting on a slightly frantic air. "Do you ever have any other women come through here? Can I check the bathrooms, see if anyone might have left something I can use?"

"Go right ahead. I'm not getting involved with this." Boyd backed away, holding up his hands as though to ward her off.

It would be so easy to take him out. But with the kids still here, it's way too risky to start picking off guards. Kurt might have been stalling and trying to fool them into thinking they can't repair the surveillance system until tomorrow, but it only takes one of them to find the right way to connect things up, and I could be caught on camera any second now.

She relaxed her hands from the fists they'd been making, and gave a false smile. "Thanks, Boyd. Just…get on your radio and make sure no one shoots me, okay? I'm already bleeding enough."

She had to turn away before he saw her snickering at the horrified look on his face. As she hurried out of the room, she heard him announce to the rest of the guards, "Don't shoot the nanny. She's on the rag and looking for tampons or whatever. No, I'm not gonna go with her. She keeps talking about blood."

So predictable, Jane thought. Thank god stereotypes sometimes are based on truth.

She made her way towards the part of the warehouse Kurt had described, rummaging in containers and looking through doors as she went—partly pretending to search for sanitary products, but mostly trying to find the hatch that led to the 'magic tunnel'.

Mercifully, the hatch was in a corner of the warehouse that someone had tried to turn into a makeshift office, using packing crates and tall sections of chipboard. As a result, there was no direct line of sight to the tunnel from the rest of the warehouse. At least one thing was in their favour on this mission.

There were maps spread over the three desks in here—Jane guessed they must use old-school paper maps, in order to avoid leaving a digital trail of their routes. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best—unfortunately for law enforcement.

She switched on the lamp on one of the desks, opened the top drawer—so it'd look as though she were searching it if she had to quickly come up with an excuse for being in here—then turned to the hatch.

It wasn't too difficult to pull open, now Kurt had jerked it loose. There was something slick and gel-like on the hinges—had Kurt found liquid soap or hand sanitiser to lubricate them, so the hatch would open noiselessly?

The tunnel was a tetanus infection waiting to happen, but it was the only option they had to get the kids out. It was deep enough that a toddler could crawl on hands and knees, but Jane could tell it would be impossible for her shoulders and hips to squeeze through the same area.

The bag of weapons was within arm's reach, and she gave it a longing look.

Maybe I could just take the handguns now, so we can tuck them in the back of our pants and have them ready if we need them? She wanted to be armed so badly that her fingers twitched. She could improvise a melee weapon if threatened, but a firearm would be a much quicker, easier method when it came to taking these guys down.

She backed towards the rest of the warehouse, craning her neck to see if she could see anyone approaching. Everything was still and quiet in this part of the warehouse, so she returned to the hatch and pulled out the long canvas bag.

It was grimy, and she had to shake a roach off it, but when she unzipped it and pulled out her trusty FBI sidearm, the relief she felt was overwhelming.

She double-checked the safety on the weapon before attempting to tuck it into her pants—then cursing under her breath. She was still wearing her pyjamas, and the waistband was loosely elasticated enough that the weight of the gun made it slip right through. If she hadn't caught it, it would have gone straight past her ass and down the leg of the pants.

As for her underwear, Jane preferred it slightly loose-fitting, which was comfortable most days. The pair she was wearing under her pyjamas right now would just slip down, risking the appearance of a strange, tented bulge at her back that she couldn't cover with her shirt. When she started walking, the sway of her hips might cause the weapon to fall out completely.

There was no way she could pull off a concealed carry of one handgun, let alone two, in her nightwear. The risk she might have taken if it were only her life at stake, she couldn't possibly take with kids in the equation. Or Kurt.

Could she carry a single gun back towards the cage, hide it behind her back and then stash it somewhere before anyone got close enough to see her? Having all of their weapons in one out-of-the-way spot didn't seem wise. One handgun in a slightly less remote spot wasn't a huge improvement, but she'd take it.

She hesitated for one indecisive moment, then zipped up the bag, put it back into the hatch, then lowered the lid into place.

Her sidearm, she kept with her—holding it close to her thigh, partially concealed behind her leg. Jane's heart pounded as she quietly made her way back through the warehouse, towards the cage. It was a sprawling warehouse filled with crates, pallets, and giant shelving units— the traffickers shipped a variety of different products, as a front for their real business—so it would take her a solid minute to reach it at this slow, stealthy pace.

She kept close to the wall, fearing being observed before she noticed anyone coming, and scanned the area for a secure hiding spot. Once the cage was within sight—Niles was still engrossed in his book, and the kids were either sleeping or pretending to sleep—she decided on a gap between two stacks of crates, scanning the dockets attached to be sure they weren't scheduled for shipping before the raid.

After obscuring the spot with a bit of tarpaulin, she backtracked, headed to the opposite wall, then noisily began to work her way back towards the kids.

"You okay?" Niles called, seeing her coming.

"Are there any more bathrooms down here? I'm looking for tampons."

"Nope, gotta go upstairs if you're searching bathrooms."

Jane groaned and made a beeline for the stairwell, not wanting to waste unnecessary time waiting for the elevator. If Kurt hadn't managed to come up with an excuse to get away from the surveillance system, he'd need her help scouting for potential distractions in the morning.

Not only that, but she just wanted to stay near him. Maybe she was being paranoid, but this whole case had a cataclysmic feel about it. Knowing her husband was safe would ease her mind.