'The harmonies grew strong
When the children came along,
And somehow, in a song,
A family survived.'

"Somewhere in a Song" ~ Alan Doyle

Police officers never get paid what they should, what they deserve for all the trauma and injuries that come with this profession.

One thing Wordy will admit, though—the SRU doesn't skimp on coffee.

It's an expensive Italian dark roast, courtesy of Spike's complaints way back in his rookie days over terrible store bought coffee. The new stock was Spike's first Christmas gift at the SRU, to them all really, from Holleran.

Ever since then, that's all they order.

Now, they're spoiled. Anything less than imported coffee just doesn't cut it.

Wordy carries only one mug of it, mainly because he only ever has one hand to spare these days, the other on his cane.

The lobby is quiet for once. Nearly silent. Peter is on dispatch this time, Winnie having been convinced to go home and rest.

Wordy softens at the sight of his wife, Shelley on the floor with Izzy playing some kind of guessing game. The toddler giggles while pointing to one of three plastic cups.

Shelley gasps in an over the top sound, and lifts the cup. It reveals a bouncy ball underneath. "You found it!"

"Foun' it!" Izzy echoes. She snatches up the ball.

"Toss it here!" says Shelley, and the little girl does. "Good job, Izzy."

Wordy's eyes wander for his own child, only to find her fast asleep—on Sophie's lap. It's endearing, to see the two women watching over each other's daughters. A wise switch.

Sophie looks tired, like Lilly on her chest, the antithesis of Izzy with her Ed Lane bouts of energy.

Clark is dead to the world in the briefing room, asleep with his head on his arms. Dried tear tracks mar his cheeks.

Sophie has her elbow propped on the edge of the dispatch desk in one of the rolling chairs. One hand holds Lilly steady, the other on her cheek. Wordy's other two children are off at Shelley's sister's house.

Sadie Braddock is asleep in her carrier, and Sophie rocks it with her foot.

Unlike most wives, or even her son, Sophie didn't receive the news of her husband's abduction with weeping or fury or any kind of hysteria.

She's shed a few tears, sure. Had to explain in halting tones to her almost-three year old child that Papa was away on business and had gotten 'lost.' She hasn't eaten much, which is par for the course.

No, mostly Sophie Lane just looks weary. Heart sick. Weary of grief and knowing all along that this would probably happen someday.

Wordy indulges in a few more seconds of watching the scene, a mental snapshot. Then he shakes himself and ducks to catch Sophie's far away gaze.

"Coffee?"

Sophie straightens, relief in her eyes. She matches the quiet tone. "You're a saint, Wordy."

"You can thank Spike, actually. If this was standard issue coffee, we'd all be dead on our feet."

Sophie's face falls. "Still no ransom demand?"

Wordy glances at Peter. The young man shakes his head, brow stormy. His eyes drift to Wordy's cane and then he pushes the spare chair closer.

"Thanks, Peter." Wordy rolls it up next to Sophie and eases down. "And thank you, for letting Lilly sleep. She hasn't needed a nap in ages."

Sophie smiles at the sleeping girl in her arms. "Too much excitement around here. I could use a nap myself and it's not even lunch time."

"There's a few spare cots, if you want," Wordy immediately offers. "I'll take Lilly and Sadie off your hands so you can go lay down."

Sophie touches Wordy's forearm, a warm stroke. Her smiles turns forced when Izzy runs past them, after the rascally bouncing ball.

"I need to be a part of what's happening," Sophie whispers. "Even if it's just to help the kids feel safe, closer together."

Wordy respects that. If being a police officer is hard, being a police officer's spouse is unbearable sometimes. He saw the lightheaded relief on Shelley's face, the day he announced he was done with the SRU, resigning from bullets and flashbangs and car chases.

Sophie chugs the coffee while Shelley checks emails on her phone. Sadie snuffles in her sleep, three fingers in her mouth. Peter's murmuring to Team Five out on patrol provides a comforting background noise.

Izzy chooses this moment to waddle over and hand her beloved stuffed giraffe to Wordy.

"Here, Unca Wordy!"

Wordy leans down to tweak Izzy's pigtail. "Thanks, poppet. You want me to keep him while you go play?"

Izzy balances herself with a hand on Wordy's knee to point at one of the giraffe's front hooves. "He got a' owwie."

It's no secret that Izzy has trouble talking for her age, whip smart but her mouth struggling to make certain consonant sounds.

Turning the stuffie around in his hands, Wordy spots the tear. The stitching has loosened in a one inch section around the hoof. Cotton stuffing pokes out the hole. "Looks like he needs some help, huh?"

Izzy nods, delighted with Wordy's answer. "Fiss-It! Need Fiss-It!"

Wordy's grin slides clear off his face and he runs a hand down his eyes.

Sophie's eyes swim with held back tears. She puts on a lighthearted tone for her daughter. "He's lost too, okay? Uncle Greg and the others will find him."

Izzy's eye contact is split between the two adults. Her tiny fingernails catch on Wordy's jeans, clenching in an unconscious motion. She has that thinking face, strategizing what to do next, a miniature version of Ed's.

Caressing the giraffe's mane, Izzy opens her mouth—"'Pike!"

Shelley's head whips up from her phone and Sophie's coffee sloshes down her hand. She quickly sets it down and wipes off her fingers before it can drip onto Lilly. Even Peter's eyes are wide.

There's an ominous hitch to Izzy's chest. "Need 'Pike!"

Seeing the emotion on Sophie's face, Wordy intercepts, hefting his daughter onto his own lap. She mumbles but doesn't wake.

Thus freed, Sophie bends to cup her child's cheeks in both hands. She looks at Wordy. "That's the first time she's ever said his name."

Tears run down Izzy's face. "Where's 'Pike?"

Izzy might still be a toddler, a verbally delayed one at that, but children always know what's up. Wordy realizes all the kids are suffering the emotions of this absence. They know the team isn't there, goofing off and smiling, where they're supposed to be.

Sophie thumbs away the tears. "Oh, baby—"

"Fiss-It!" Izzy points to her giraffe. "H-he c'n fiss it!"

"Yes he can," says Wordy, slow enough to grab Izzy's attention and keep it. "And he will, the second he gets back. He'll get his tool kit and stitch our giraffe friend right up. Probably with some nerdy explanation on the history of stuffed animals. How does that sound?"

Izzy hiccups. "He gone?"

"He'll come back soon." Sophie tugs the girl up into her arms and rocks them. "Papa will make sure of it."

Wordy glances sharply at her. He's not sure they should be making such promises, though he has all the hope in the world of them being true.

Izzy sobs into her mother's chest.

In that immortal chain reaction of young children everywhere, Sadie starts to fuss too. Her hands flail, toothless mouth opening in stuttered cries. Clark jolts awake.

Shelley pushes to her feet. "Uh oh."

Soon they're all holding wailing babies, exhausted and sad of all the adults being sad. Shelley bounces Sadie while walking to the weights room and back. Considering both of Sadie's parents aren't even in the country, she's doing better than Wordy expected.

Murphy's Law doesn't exactly extend to police work, but it does to bad timing. Peter swears, loudly, when the main doors fly open.

Holleran bursts through, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sandals fresh off the plane. He's panting.

Agent Damien Cho follows hot on his heels, so red faced Wordy wonders if he's about to pop.

Holleran completely overlooks him. Though his mouth opens for a flustered shout, he flounders to a halt.

He blinks a few times at all the crying and chaos. "Not having a great day, I see. I flew back as soon as I could."

Wordy juggles Lilly, slowly blinking awake, to shake Holleran's hand. "Commander, you didn't have to cut your vacation short."

"Don't be absurd, Wordsworth." Holleran cranes over to peer at the giraffe. "I can fix that, if it would help."

Izzy sobs brokenly, startling Holleran.

"Never mind," he says. "Any word on this absolutely harebrained scheme to cross the border? I heard Sam and Greg snuck along for the ride."

Cho's hands fly, and it's somewhat vindicating to see him so unkempt. They all turn to him. "You knew about this?!"

"Of course." Holleran puffs up to his full height. "And if there are any charges to be laid—I forced them to do it. They were following my orders."

Wordy snorts. This plan was all Jules, with a bit of Greg's desperation thrown in.

"They nearly died!" Cho, for the first time, looks stricken. Wordy wants to feel triumphant that he finally cares but the panicked expression makes his stomach clench. "Border Patrol took over fifteen shots at them, including Dean Parker—he's technically a civilian! They were lucky to drive out alive!"

Every adult in the room makes a choked sound. Peter has his hand on his headset receiver, fingers frozen over the keyboard. Clark's face is pallid, with a fresh bout of tears and horror in his eyes at hearing what his friend went through.

Wordy sets Lilly on her feet and stands. "Agent Cho—"

"No." Cho's chest heaves. "I'll see that they are not only fired for this but prosecuted to the fullest extent I can manage."

Sophie hides her eyes in her hand. Shelley stops pacing.

But Holleran must see something in Cho's face that they don't. He lights up in an arrogant, devilish smirk. "No, you won't. What did they find?"

Cho deflates a little. His volume dials down to something on their level, sounding human. "It's what we didn't. No paper trail for the bulletin the FBI put out on Jules Braddock. I had her flagged in case she crossed the border, but that was just for detaining and questioning only."

Cho pauses. He seems to notice the children present as if for the first time.

His voice lowers. "Someone put out a kill-on-sight order against both Braddocks, Commander."

Warmth sucks from the room.

Shaking, Wordy has to sit down again.

"It didn't come from us," Cho defends. He sounds distressed, a small consolation. "I don't know what's going on, or why anyone would issue the need for lethal action against two SWAT officers with a personal stake in the case. Whatever this is, it came from the United States end of our investigation."

"It really is a cover up." Clark's voice bears the musical quality of someone in shock. "That's what Hartford and Greg thought, that maybe someone in the US government was cooking the evidence."

Cho nods. "This certainly incriminates someone, whoever ordered the hit. We've put an immediate halt on the order, so they're in no danger now, but there's a money trail coming from an offshore account into the FBI's accounts that raised a red flag. That's probably the source."

They're all buzzing with questions and confusion and maybe a hint of mania, but no one says a word.

Lilly shuffles over to Shelley. "Can I hold her, Mom?"

"Of course, sweetheart," says Shelley, all in a rush like she's not really hearing it. "Make sure to hold her head."

Sadie is just pushing one year old but she's small, with Jules' petite frame. She doesn't look much over eight months, all podgy fingers and sparse hair that can't decide what colour it wants to be.

Sam and Jules have a debate going over whether she'll get auburn or Sam's twenty four karat hair. Spike claims he already knows, based on the science of genetics, but no one can get a peep out of him one way or the other.

Wordy feels a hot flash of pride, the way his daughter expertly cradles the baby in her arms. She's wise beyond her years, with a face that looks forty years old instead of ten. Sometimes he feels she sees things they don't.

"This visit is a courtesy." Cho buttons up his long coat. "We tracked your team's cellphones and their GPS locations have stopped in Pennsylvania. I'm heading there now…unless anyone would like to come with me?"

It's the mother of all olive branches, a peace offering.

It is also unfathomably generous, after how much trouble every single of them is in for this breach of protocol. Of the law.

Wordy wonders if he and Sophie will go to jail for just knowing about it, or if it will count as withholding information.

Cho's brows stay up, a question.

Holleran looks to Wordy. "I'm going."

"You don't have to, sir." Wordy cants his chin to indicate the sandals. "You're off the clock and that's rare."

A gritty, sand in the ointment hardness sweeps over Holleran's face. He points one dark finger at Wordy. "It's Spike and Ed, and they're my people, just like you. If I lose my job over this choice, so be it—they deserve no less."

Wordy's eyes burn but he smiles, and it feels refreshing in its authenticity. "I'll hold down the fort."

Holleran claps Wordy on the arm. "I'm counting on it, Kevin. I'll keep you posted."

With that, the two men are gone. Izzy still cries, softly.

Sophie flicks a quick tear away. "What are we going to do, Wordy? What if Jules doesn't find them?"

The quaver in her voice sets Wordy off. He wants to cry too, wants to fling his chair across the room and spill Spike's coffee everywhere because none of this is just. There's no mercy in his veins, not for such a heinous crime.

"Morning has broken, like the first morning! Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird…"

This sudden bursting to life of sound, growing, is familiar at once. A tune Wordy has heard dozens of times from his wife while she cooks or gets dressed in the morning.

It's still a total shock.

Wordy turns on his heel, slowly, not sure he believes what he's hearing or if moving too fast will spook it. Shelley has both hands over her mouth. The corners of her eyes are crinkled—a hidden, excited grin.

Even Izzy pauses in her fit to listen to the tender sound.

Wordy has never heard this outside of the shower and bed times with Mom. Even then, it's usually timid and breathy in an effort not to be heard.

Everyone's eyes land on Lilly.

She sways in place, grinning down at Sadie, who has a hold of her index finger. Sadie's gummy smile turns into a laugh, a baby giggle.

"Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning…"

There is complete silence, even from Peter, while they listen to a little girl sing her lullaby.

On Peter's screen, a file is pulled up about ballistics and guns—a .38—for whatever subject Team Five is pursuing. Something about filed off serial numbers. Another screen shows a man's mug shot.

And yet…Lilly still keeps on singing without one hint of consternation or unease. The contrast is a gut punch.

Wordy's breath quivers in his lungs. He closes his eyes.

"Praise for them springing fresh from the word…"

Nobody speaks for a long, long time.