AN: The chapter literally everyone has been pestering me about...

2200 hours March 13:

The apartment was dark. Unlike his last quest, there were no staff, no bodyguards. Just an empty room with a couple other empty rooms. Harry had people with him but, like himself, they sat in the shadows. Waiting.

The door finally opened and the man Maybourne had been waiting for stumbled in smelling of cheap beer and cheaper sex.

"Leave the light off detective." Harry told him.

Pete for his part was sober enough to draw down on Harry. He swiftly found himself with a cold barrel to his head and disarmed however by one of Harry's many faceless flunkies.

"Have a seat. Hands on the table." Harry said companionably. "Would you like a drink? Apparently all you have is boxed wine and Old Milwaukee in cans around here but I'm told you aren't a fancy fellow."

"Who are you? What do you want?" Pete demanded as he was shoved into a chair at the kitchen table across from Harry.

"I'm no one. I'm not here and that gun doesn't exist." Harry tossed a medical folder at the detective and indicated he should open it.

Pete followed directions, unsure what the point of all this was. "What do you want?"

"Oh, nothing really. You'll find your bank account a little short. You didn't have quite enough to cover the second mortgage so I requisitioned your retirement fund. Apparently you had a change of heart and decided to pay off the entire thing to the best of your ability." Harry told him.

"That would wipe out my entire savings!"

Harry leaned forward and tilted his head. "And you don't even have kids to support." Harry tsked. "So did you read that?" He tapped the medical report.

Pete looked down at the page in front of him. "Notice the dates." Harry said companionably.

"So?" Pete asked him flippantly.

"Well, it's none of my business but I notice those tests were run nine years ago. You've known all along. What were you planning to do? Lie to her about it until after she was married to you? But then you hit the jackpot didn't you? She came home, upset, heart broken, and already knocked up. Handy for you. You could have just left things alone but you just had to stir the pot and see how far she'd go, didn't you? Were you hoping she'd come clean so you could get out and blame her?" Harry asked the blond man who was now graying at the temples.

"This doesn't prove anything. It doesn't say I can't have kids, just that the probability is really low." Pete was just smart enough to know Sam had used a fertility clinic but he didn't know much about how those things worked and he had assumed the sperm Sam used was his. Knowing both the kids were that bastard she'd been fucking around with before burned in his gut.

"Yah… that's not going to hold up buddy after forcing her into a corner. Were you hoping to force her back into bed with her ex? That's pretty funny if things had landed like that, he'd been snipped by then." Harry laughed.

"Why exactly are we having this conversation?"

"Can't a guy have a friendly conversation with his friend's ex-husband?" Harry asked innocently. At Pete's flat expression Harry grinned. "No?"

"Well, be that as it may, as you can see, I can pretty much get my hands on anything I really want to. I suppose you're wondering why I'm telling you that? For a detective you don't seem very bright really." Harry told him companionably.

"I'm going to find out who you are." Pete said, his voice slightly annoyed.

"I told you Shanahan, I don't exist. You're looking for a ghost. I'm not your real problem anyway. You're going to leave Sam and her kids alone. When your paperwork comes through, you're going to sign off on using your retirement savings to pay off the home loan you falsified records on because if you don't, this little tidbit of information is going to get back to the local papers that you misrepresented yourself, an officer of the law. How does your police chief feel about detectives that lie to their spouses about their fertility then force them to go to extreme measures to get pregnant thinking how cruel it was to you if you found out that way?" Harry shook his head in amusement.

"And if I find out you've done otherwise? You won't need to worry about being broke. If you catch my meaning." Harry said in a companionable voice like he was talking about getting together to watch a game.

"I don't have a lot of use for a man who refuses to love the children of the woman he professes to love anyway. I've never treated any of my step kids the way you did those boys. The oldest hates you and you earned that."

Harry rapped the table with his knuckles twice. "Nice talk." He said dismissively and motioned for his people to move out. "Follow directions detective, and everything will be just fine. Hunky dory even"

The last one to leave was the faceless goon who had a gun to Pete's head. Before the man moved away the recognizable click of the safety being disengaged popped next to his ear. The man silently left and it was several minutes before Pete dared turn to see the apartment was empty, his side arm was laying on the table by the door, having been silently deposited. He'd have it checked for prints but he already knew the lab geeks would come up with nothing.

Pete got up and pulled a beer out of the fridge. He never should have answered the door nine years ago. None of this shit would have happened had he turned that woman away but he'd let his ego remind him that she'd come back to him after rolling with the General so there had to be something he had that the other man didn't.

For a brief moment Pete considered defying the man who had broken into his home and threatened him, just to see what might happen. But a warning went off in his head that unlike O'Neill, this man would not hesitate to solve the problem with the final solution. Whoever the agent with a smarmy grin was, he wasn't someone who made idle threats.

He was better off just letting the matter drop. He had no doubt that man or one of his associates would be back if he didn't and he got the distinct impression he wouldn't be getting any second chances on this one.