Sitting around the dining table in the safe house, Alison was doing her best not to yawn too loudly. She had hardly slept the night before, finding herself tossing and turning. She knew that she had probably kept Q awake with her constant movement, but he didn't complain. Instead, he had just laid beside her, his arm stretched out towards her for her to burrow against his side whenever she did wake from her fitful sleep.

"You've found their mother?" Alison checked, holding the mug of tea that her father had made her. He had left it on the table in front of her, his hand briefly taking hold of her shoulder and squeezing it encouragingly, or so he hoped that was what it had felt like. And then he had sat down and told her of Q's discovery.

"What do you think that means?" Madeleine had asked, sitting next to Bond and tossing her hair over her shoulders. The damp curls were slowly drying considering she had forgone using the hairdryer after her morning shower. She smelled of honey and cinnamon, a sweet smell that wafted into Bond's nose every few seconds.

"I'm not sure," Q admitted to them. "From what I can see, she is a pretty ordinary woman with an ordinary life. She has a Facebook account that isn't private. She's divorced, lives on her own with a dog called Bonnie…but there's no mention of her children. Usually parents who are active on social media talk about their parents, but there is nothing on Carl or Jennifer."

"Do you think she has contact with them?" Alison wondered, taking a sip of her tea and then placing the mug on the table, her hands wrapping around it firmly.

"Perhaps, perhaps not," Q responded, closing the lid to his laptop and then pinching the bridge of his nose, lifting his glasses up in the process as he tried not to think about getting a headache from the work he was doing. "I suspect there is only one way for us to find out."

"I would ask what that is, but I suspect we already know," Madeleine retorted, sitting back on her chair and folding one leg over the other, glancing to Bond for a moment as he met her eye and nodded his head. "When do we go find her?"

"I have an address for her in Manchester," Q said.

"Then we should leave sooner rather than later. It will be a good three hour's drive down to Manchester," Bond declared. "And I think that all of us should go. I don't want to take the risk of leaving anyone here, despite the fact that this is supposed to be a safe house."

"Well, her brother found the last safe house quite easily," Alison responded and Bond almost wanted to wince at remembering that. He remembered the fear he had felt when he had gotten to the house and found his daughter in the bathroom, surrounded by broken glass and cowering next to Carl's body. Bond had fretted over her, scared about what he had done to her, but then relief had coursed through him when she told him that she had killed him before he could hurt her.

"And that is why we're not taking any chances," Bond said, his gaze catching Alison's. "So, we're going together. We're going to Manchester and we're going to see if we can get to the bottom of this."

…

Sitting in the backseat of the car, Alison looked at the apartment block they had parked outside of. It was five storeys high and looked new and modern, the brown bricks clearly having been recently built. It had a buzzer on the main door and a tiled lobby leading into it with post boxes lined alongside the wall. Madeleine was sat next to Alison in the backseat, looking over to her and wondering what she was thinking.

"Are you alright?" Madeleine asked from her and Alison looked back to her and away from the apartments. Her father and Q had gone in together, the four of them agreeing that it might be best not to overwhelm the woman with questions.

"Yeah," Alison said, not sure if it was the truth, but she was holding herself together. "It's just that it's a bit…I don't know how to explain it, but I managed to work through what happened with Carl. I know that I killed him and I wish that there had been a way to avoid that…to avoid killing him and instead lock him in a cell for the rest of his life like Blofeld. I know that everyone told me that I did what I had to do. He would have killed me, but it doesn't make it any easier."

"I think that's understandable," Madeleine promised the young woman, seeing her push her hair behind her ear and then glance down into her skirt covered lap. She tugged at the thick black tights she wore on her legs, straightening out the creases that had formed on her thighs. "You're not a killer, Alison…and taking a life, no matter the circumstances, is never easy nor is it something that you forget. All you can do is try to work through it, which you had done a good job of."

"I tried," Alison admitted to her. "I mean, there were times when I thought back to him, but I never dwelled on it like I am doing now. I just don't want to think about it for much longer."

"Understandable," Madeleine promised her. "And you know that if you want to talk then I am here for you."

"Thank you," Alison said to her and gave her a grateful smile. "You know that I joked with my dad that you were far too young to be my new mother." Madeleine chuckled at that. "But you've really been great Madeleine…not just for my dad…but with me too. I know it must be weird for you being with him and having to worry about his adult daughter too."

"Well, it's not a situation I thought I would ever end up in," Madeleine confessed to Alison. "But it's not a situation that I would change for anything. I really like you, Alison, and I never want to be anything like your mother because you had a mother…but I'd like to think that you can talk to me as you would her."

Alison nodded her head and smiled. "I know," she agreed with her on that part. And she did know. She knew all too well. She enjoyed spending time with Madeleine. She actually enjoyed her company quite a lot and she was glad that her dad had found her too.

"They're back," Madeleine suddenly said, looking over Alison's shoulder to see Bond and Q approaching. The two men had unreadable expressions on their faces as they approached, both talking to each other and glancing to the ground. Opening the door to the driver's side, Bond climbed in and closed the door as Q took the passenger seat and Alison sat on the edge of the seat behind him.

"What happened?" she asked them.

"She claimed that she hadn't seen Jennifer or Carl in years," Bond spoke.

"Claimed?" Madeleine asked, picking up on that key word.

"There was a pile of ironing in the corner," Q declared, turning around in his seat so that he could look to the back seat clearly and he glanced between his fiancée and Madeleine. "While she had her back to us, I checked the pile and there was a jumper there that was a size eight."

"So?"

"Well, it wasn't her jumper because there was a size fourteen beneath it and that was hers. It was a completely different size," Q concluded.

"Does that mean that it hers?" Alison wondered from him and shrugged her shoulders ruefully. "That could mean anything…she could be ironing for someone else? She could have just found an old jumper?"

"And the two mugs on the draining board alongside the two plates from last night's dinner?" Q added on. "Something doesn't add up in there. She was clearly lying to us. She could hardly look us in the eye when we asked her about her children and here's the funny thing, her phone went off while we were in the kitchen and there was a picture of Jennifer and Carl as her background…a picture where they were both adults."

"So she is definitely lying?" Madeleine checked with them.

"I would say with certainty that she is lying," Bond declared. "She is covering for her daughter, which means that we know Jennifer has been camping out here."

"Do you think she still is?"

"I think if we hadn't have found her here then she would be," Bond said. "But I suspect that her mother is calling her right now and telling her not to come back here."

"But that means she has nowhere to hide now," Q said. "Her mother must have been keeping her safe and she will panic now. She might start making mistakes knowing that we are onto her."

"So what do we do?" Alison asked from them.

"Well, I can hack into the CCTV from around this area to confirm that she was here and then, with any luck, I might be able to find out where she's gone," Q said and reached into the foot-well for his satchel, pulling out his laptop. "But it could take a bit of time to reach that stage so I suggest we go somewhere else before her mother becomes even more suspicious."

"How did you even persuade her to talk to you?" Alison wondered as Bond put the key in the ignition and started the car.

"I told her that I worked with her daughter and hadn't seen her in a long time," Bond said. "And that Q here was a colleague who was also concerned. I don't know if she bought it, but it got us into the apartment."

"Either way, the net has to be closing in on Jennifer," Q declared and began typing as Bond pulled out of the parking bay and began driving aimlessly around the streets of Manchester, waiting for Q to see if he could find anything useful out for them.

…

Bond had parked in a drive-thru coffee shop and had gone inside with Madeleine to buy them all a coffee as Q continued his work. The quartermaster sat on a wooden picnic bench outside the store with Alison sat next to him, drumming her fingers on the wooden table in front of them. The parasol was raised in the air to protect them from the strong mid-afternoon sun and Q's laptop from being a victim of the glare of the sun.

"It's impressive," Q declared. "She's clearly moving around in broad daylight and not even trying to hide her movements."

"She's confident in what she does," Alison said. "We know that much by what she's already done."

"Well, yes, but…"

Alison looked to Q as he trailed off, his gaze still fixed on the screen in front of him. Turning her upper body to the side to face him, Alison looked over him and felt her stomach flip in anticipation.

"What is it?"

"She…how did she know…" Q trailed off, trying to form a coherent sentence but struggling.

"What is it?" Alison asked him.

"She knows my email," Q said. "Not my work one, but my personal one. She's emailed it…she must have gotten it from the estate agents."

"What has she sent?" Alison questioned him and he turned his screen slightly so that she could see exactly what she had sent. They were images of her in their new apartment. She was in their bedroom, lounging on top of worktop surfaces in the kitchen and then sat by the window leading onto a small balcony.

"When did she take these?" Alison wondered.

"Oh, that would be last week."

The new voice spoke from behind the two of them. Alison began to jump up at the sight of the woman before she felt something prodding into her back. She startled as the woman grabbed hold of her shoulder and forced her to sit back down. Q remained where he was, straddling the bench as he looked to his fiancée who was peering up at the woman above them.

"Get off of her."

Bond's voice suddenly spoke and Alison saw her father behind Jennifer's shoulder, no doubt his own gun pressing into her back. People moved in and out of the coffee shop, completely unaware as to the situation going on just beyond them.

"I would love to," Jennifer drawled, "but you see, I'm running on a very tight schedule now that you've found my mother."

"So you were hiding there?" Bond checked.

"Clever of you to work that out," Jennifer said. "But I knew as soon as she called me that you would be looking for me and having the dear quartermaster track me and so I had to get ahead. It's impressive, if he had just spent another ten minutes searching then he'd have probably found me on CCTV heading here."

"Well, it looks like you saved me that job," Q declared and Madeleine stood besides Bond, looking over to the back of Jennifer's head and wondering if she would say anything about what she knew concerning Madeleine and Blofeld. "But I have to question what is the plan now."

"Well, the plan is quite simple," Jennifer confessed. "I'm going to take your fiancée and torture her until she is begging me for death and only then will I give it to her, just like she killed my brother."

"Your brother was going to kill me," Alison retorted.

"And you think I care about that?" Jennifer demanded, bending down and hissing into Alison's ear loudly. "You murdered my brother and because of that, I'm going to take my revenge, don't you worry."

"And what makes you think I'll let you go anywhere with my daughter?" Bond queried. "I have a gun pressed right into your back."

"Because I know that you wouldn't dare pull that trigger with me having a gun pressed against her back," Jennifer retorted and turned her head over her shoulder, looking at Bond with a glimmer in her eye as she then glanced to Madeleine and shot her a knowing look. "Besides, I know that there is one guaranteed weakness that will make her come with me."

"And what's that?"

In a flash, Jennifer had the gun pressed to Q's back instead as Alison stood up and shook her head firmly. The quartermaster winced at the pressure of the barrel against his spine, but he tried not to let it show.

"His life," Jennifer said. "She'd do anything for him."

"Don't," Alison said firmly. "Let him go…just leave him alone."

"See? Sentiment gets us all eventually," Jennifer declared. "And that's why she's going to walk to that red car over there and get into the driver's side and I'm going to follow her and bring the beloved quartermaster with us."

"Fine," Alison said. "I'll go with you, but you need to let Q go."

"And I will when we are away from here and I don't have a gun pointed at me," Jennifer declared and moved her free hand into her pocket and dropped the car keys onto the table. "Now go and fetch the car like a good girl."

"Don't," Q said, his eyes meeting Alison's. "Alison, I mean it. Don't do this."

"For once I'm inclined to agree with Q," Bond said, but he knew that his daughter wasn't going to listen to him, not while Q was in danger. "She wouldn't risk shooting him because she knows that I would shoot her instantly."

"Do you want to test that theory?" Jennifer enquired as Alison picked up the car keys. "Because I know that killing Q might just be as horrendous for her as her own death."

"She's right," Alison said. "I'm not letting Q get hurt."

"Good girl," Jennifer said. "Now, leave your phone here and go and fetch the car. I'll be waiting."

"Alison, don't," Q begged from her.

"I have to," Alison said and she left her phone on the table. Madeleine looked to it and knew that there was an app that let them find her iPhone. Without it then it would be harder to track her. But there had to be a way to track her. And then Madeleine remembered she had her own phone with the same app. She could sneak it to her.

"You can't do this," Madeleine declared, attracting attention to herself and grabbing Alison by the wrist to stop her from walking away, her phone in her hand as she held Alison's wrist behind her back to stop Jennifer from seeing what she was hiding.

"You know, it gets pretty tedious being told what you can and cannot do," Jennifer complained. "Now hurry up, we don't have all day."

Alison pretended to snatch her wrist from Madeleine, hiding the phone as she turned around away from Jennifer and adjusting the waistband of her skirt, tucking it in there as she made her way to the car. She sat down and turned the key in the ignition, ensuring that the phone was concealed as she put the car into drive and moved to the front of the coffee shop. Parking up, she watched Q stand up awkwardly and move towards the car, Jennifer's gun still trained on him as Madeleine whispered to Bond and he listened intently, his gaze meeting his daughter's as Q climbed into the car and he nodded to her and she nodded back, both of them understanding that they could stop Jennifer if they played things right.

...

A/N: Thanks for reading! Would love to know what you think. I am hoping to take this into No Time To Die, but I have yet to see the film as I've been in hospital. So as soon as I see it, then I'll move on to that if people are still interested!