The sirens of Jane's unmarked cars were off when it reached the police tape. It was a clear day, but Elizabeth didn't make out very much as she had tunnel vision and the blood rushed in her ears while her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. The image became only slightly clearer as Elizabeth exited. She could make out two members of the bomb squad in padded protective gear examining the Jeep. Katherine's Jeep. By not being able to see her two daughters, even if they were in the car. Jane had told her the story she had been told via cell phone. The kidnapper, presumably the Anagramist, had stopped the car in the middle of an intersection. He got out, showed the girls a remote control, and warned them that if they tried to escape through the door or a window, the Jeep would blow up. Then he had disappeared into the densely wooded park, as the girls told the first cops to arrive.

Without thinking, Elizabeth walked toward the police tape.

"Where are you going?" asked Katherine reassuringly.

Elizabeth didn't answer her sister. She was about to duck under the police tape when Jane grabbed her daughter by the arm. "Are you crazy?" she cried loudly, her eyes wide. "You can't go there." Elizabeth wrenched free, but her mother grabbed her again. "Liz, please. Let the bomb squad guys do their job," she pleaded.

"I'm their mother," Elizabeth replied firmly. "If they blow up, they're not blowing up alone."

"That's exactly what this asshole wants," Jane countered in an exasperated voice.

"If you're trying to stop me, you're going to have to cuff me already," Elizabeth retorted, looking Jane straight in the eye.

Jane didn't want to let her daughter go but came to the realization that she had no other choice. After a moment, she let go of Elizabeth, who nodded curtly in thanks and made her way, first slowly and then at a run to the Jeep.

Katherine felt burning guilt for dragging Elizabeth into the story about Rosa Castillo's murder, and she wished for a moment that she had not. But of course, in doing so, she had never thought Elizabeth and her children might be in danger. She couldn't help it now. But maybe she could mitigate the damage.

She walked toward the yellow barrier tape and tried to duck under it before anyone noticed. But Jane grabbed her by the shoulder and now pulled her younger daughter back. "No way, Kate."

"But I can reassure them," the younger woman begged. "Please."

"I can't even justify Liz being there," Jane hissed emphatically while her heart hammered wildly in her chest. "You're a civilian. If I let you through and the car blows up, it doesn't matter what the on-duty consequences are, I'm going to put a bullet in my fucking head anyway."

Katherine complied without another word. She stood behind the barrier tape and watched Elizabeth reach the car, wondering if her sister felt even more helpless than she did when she saw her children cowering in the back seat, scared and whimpering.

"Mommy!" cried Ashlyn.

"Don't move!" yelled a bomb squad officer, turning slowly like an astronaut on the moon to Elizabeth, who wore nothing but his charcoal gray suit of hundred-percent worsted as protective gear. "Get out of here!" he yelled.

"Those are my daughters," Elizabeth said calmly as if it explained everything. She stopped inches from the rear passenger door of the Jeep, her mind sharp and clear again, and her eyes taking in every detail. The first thing she noticed was that all four windows were ajar. Thank God the son of a bitch at least gave them enough air to breathe. Elizabeth leaned as close to the window as she could without touching the car. "I'm here, and I'm not leaving without you," she told the girls. "These men here are the best. Just stay calm, and we'll get you out of there. I promise."

The girls were too frightened to say anything.

Elizabeth turned to the bomb squad. "Where's the detonator?"

"Man, I gotta say," the man replied. "We've searched the car three times and we can't find anything, from the outside, though."

Elizabeth turned back to the car door and spoke through the window crack. "Nikki, do you see a device with wires anywhere in the Jeep?"

Nikki looked around without letting go of Ashlyn, who pressed anxiously against her. "I don't see anything, Mom."

"Okay, dear," Elizabeth said as calmly as she could. "Tell me everything that happened from the moment he picked you up to the moment he got out of the car."

Still shaking, Nikki began to recount. "I got in the car in front of the school. He said he would take us to you."

"And then?" her mother asked.

"He had one of those plugs in his ears, you know like you wear. I asked where we were going. He said you'd wait for us in Southbridge. At that point I then said I'll call you, and that's when he pulled out a gun and made Ash and I give him our cell phones. I can't believe I was so stupid."

"You weren't stupid, you were smart," Elizabeth assured her. "When someone has a gun, you better do what they say. Tell me the rest."

"We drove around the neighborhood for a while, like he was looking for something. And then he stopped here and said if we tried to get out of the car, it would blow up."

"Did you see the remote control? The one he was going to use to set off the explosives?"

"Yes," Nikki said, trying to keep her shaking under control.

"Can you describe it to me?"

"It looked like one of those key things you use to open a car door."

Elizabeth was silent for a moment, then she made a decision. And she hoped it was the right one, because her children's lives, and therefore her own, depended on it. "Here's what we're going to do," she told Nikki and Ashlyn, waving the bomb squad closer. Then she pulled out her notepad, wrote something on it, and showed it to everyone. "No one says a word, just nod in response. All right?"

The girls obeyed. Elizabeth turned to the bomb experts, who also nodded.

Behind the police tape, Katherine watched with bated breath. "I think they're trying something," she told her mother.

"Keenly observed, Sherlock," Jane replied tensely. "Start praying, Kate."

"I haven't even stopped yet."

Elizabeth took a deep breath. "Okay," she said, "I'm going to count to three: One. Two. Three!" She yanked open the rear door, grabbed Ashlyn and ran, while Nikki crawled out of the car on the other side, right into the protective arms of a bomb squad officer who also ran with her. They were several yards from the jeep before they turned around.

Nothing. The jeep was still there and in one piece.

Elizabeth grabbed her daughters and hugged them tightly. Both were crying and shaking after the horror they had lived through.

Slowly, the explosives experts approached the car again, looked inside, peered under the seats, into the spare tire compartment, under the hood.

"Everything's fine," one called out after a few minutes.

Katherine and Jane ran to Elizabeth and the girls, who stood huddled tightly halfway between the police tape and the Jeep.

"What the hell was that?" barked Jane, but the relief was clear on her face.

"That guy is a real asshole," gasped Elizabeth, who was just starting to breathe again.

"You wrote something on a piece of paper and showed it to everyone," Katherine said as she breathlessly arrived at her family.

Elizabeth pulled out her pad and showed them what she had written:

THE BOMB THING IS BULLSHIT! ON THE COUNT OF THREE, WE RUN!

"How did you know?" asked Jane, both amazed and relieved.

Elizabeth reported what Nikki had told. "Our Mr. Anagramist improvised," she continued. "He must have been listening to one of our frequencies, and when the order came over Dispatch to lock down the entire city. He went around for a while and came up with Plan B, the fake bomb, so he had time to run."

Katherine walked over to the girls and hugged them.

"Are they all right?" asked Jane.

"They're in shock," Katherine said, and indeed they were both shivering despite the unseasonably warm spring day. "They should be checked out at a hospital."

Jane nodded slowly and agreed. „What do you say you take them both over to the paramedics. The nearest emergency room is at Mass Gen." Then she turned to her granddaughters and squatted down. "We're going to need your help, sweethearts. Unfortunately, you're the only ones who saw the guy. I'll send a sketch artist to you at the hospital so you can describe the man to him. That's okay, right?"

The girls still hadn't recovered their voices and only nodded after pressing themselves against their grandmother.

Jane held them both tightly and closed her eyes before looking at Katherine and signaling her, who put an arm around Elizabeth's daughters and slowly led them to two approaching ambulances.

"Captain -," Savarese began breathlessly from running down the block.

Jane was not interested in what he had to say. "When we get that drawing, I want it distributed to every police department in Massachusetts. The son of a bitch finally made a blunder and messed with the wrong family at the same time, and we're going to get him, whether it's in handcuffs or in a fucking body bag." She now took aim at the Jeep. "And have CSRU tow this thing into the garage and take it apart. Maybe he was stupid enough to leave fingerprints and/or his DNA."

"Let me take a look at the car first," Elizabeth said. "I felt like I noticed a dent that, to my knowledge, wasn't there before." She walked around the Jeep, and sure enough, she spotted a freshly dented area with some white paint on the red car. "Kate!" she called out, waving her sister over.

Katherine looked in her direction while two paramedics took the girls' blood pressure and pulse. "The paramedics will take you to the hospital, and we'll meet there," she told her nieces. Then she hurried over to Elizabeth and the Jeep. "What is it?"

Elizabeth squatted down next to the car and pointed to the damage. "Do you remember if that was there the other night when you parked the car -" She interrupted herself because she heard something coming from the direction of the park. A sound like a balloon popping ...

Katherine felt her sister grab her by the arm and pull, just at the moment when the sharp pain, the burning right in the small of her back, started as if someone had put a branding iron on her. And then suddenly everything slowed down and started spinning.

"Shots are fired!" she heard Elizabeth yell as she tried to hold on to a door handle of the jeep, but it only broke her fall. She was too weak and the pain too great for her to hold herself up.

"Kate!" screamed Jane, running to her daughters to catch Katherine, but she wasn't fast enough.

Katherine fell to the ground, on her back, looking up at the blue sky and thinking that it was a beautiful day. Thinking about what tomorrow would be like. All the noise around her died away. She was in her own bubble, and she wanted to sleep. Like a dream version, Jane's face loomed over her. "Get that ambulance over here, now!" she heard her mother yell, but it was strange because her voice was just a whisper.

"She's been shot ... shot ... shot -" It echoed on and on. She was aware of Elizabeth's voice near her, but she just kept looking up at the sky above her. With those big, fluffy clouds...

"Don't give us any slack here," Jane said quietly. "We'll get you to the hospital."

She knew she had to try hard to keep her eyes open.

But she couldn't.

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The first thing Katherine heard was the beeping. She felt like she was in a fog. It took all her strength to open her eyelids. Just a crack, but enough for the light to blind her. She pieced together all the impressions, the various sounds, the antiseptic smell, the lines running rhythmically across a monitor: she was in the hospital.

"She's awake," came a feminine voice she knew but couldn't place.

Her pupils adjusted to the light, and she began to see sharply. She was in surgery at Mass Gen, in the post-op recovery room. She had been there before to observe neurosurgical procedures. She couldn't remember why she was in a hospital now.

"Katherine."

The same female voice. She tilted her head to the left. Galloway stood there, smiling, concern written all over her face, her eyes red. From what? From crying? About me?

"'Hello,' Katherine replied, it was a hoarse squeak.

"Don't speak," Galloway said. "They just took your breathing tube out ten minutes ago. Just get some rest. But it's good to have you back."

Back? Back from what? Where was I? And then Katherine suddenly remembered. The clear blue sky. Jane standing over her. "My mother," she whispered.

"She's here," Galloway said an idea too quickly. "It's like a police convention out there in the waiting room."

"I got shot," Katherine said, her memory coming back piecemeal. "Where was I hit?"

"In the abdomen," Galloway replied, sounding like the doctor she was. "You lost a lot of blood, my dear. Phil Mecklin had to cut you open to stop the bleeding."

Katherine remembered the burning in her back. Although she was not in pain and had never had surgery, she felt a tension that must have come from the incision in her abdomen. "A laparotomy?" she asked, "Where did I bleed?"

"The bullet hit the right renal artery, right where it enters the organ and lodged in the renal pelvis," said Galloway, who had been dreading the moment. "The damage was too extensive to save the kidney. Phil had to remove it."

Katherine was so dazed from the anesthesia that she barely registered the bad news. "That's okay, I only need one," she said, "I'm really glad you're here."

Galloway forced a smile. "I'm glad to have you back," she repeated. "Your parents can't wait to see you."

"Tell them it's not that bad," Katherine snapped, though she knew Galloway wouldn't stop them. "How did I get here?"

"You were flown in on a medivac chopper."

"I was flown here?"

"Courtesy of the outgoing Chief of Police," Galloway said. "He felt it was the least he could do."

Katherine recalled Elizabeth pulling her by the arm at the exact moment she felt the bullet's impact. "Elizabeth was trying to save me. Tell the Chief of Police to do something for my sister." Then she remembered Nick Simms helping to push her on the stretcher to the ambulance. "What about Detective Simms?" She looked up at Galloway, who in turn averted her eyes. Tears glistened in her eyes. "Please, has something happened to him?" she asked in the strongest voice she was capable of.

Galloway took her hand and stroked it. "There was a second shot. Detective Simms was hit."

Katherine registered. "How bad?" she asked with a slight frown.

"He was lucky. He was just turning to lift you into the ambulance when he was hit. The bullet hit his right ulna, it's just a chip."

"He could have been killed," Katherine said, tears springing to her eyes.

"No," Galloway brought out with difficulty.

"Excuse me?"

Galloway took a deep breath. "He was at the head of the stretcher. His arm was right in front of your left ear."

Even in her befuddled state, Katherine realized what that meant. "The bullet was meant for me. It would have hit me in the head."

"But it didn't," Galloway replied. "You're here -"

"Where are Nikki and Ashlyn?" asked Katherine suddenly, remembering how the girls had sat shivering in the car before Elizabeth rescued them.

"Your nieces?"

Katherine nodded.

"I don't know, my dear. But I'm sure the police know. Your mother said no one else was hurt."

Still, Katherine sensed an uneasiness in Galloway. As if her mentor, and therapist, was withholding an important piece of information. "You're hiding something from me."

Galloway shook her head, surprised that Katherine, in her current state, had noticed her hesitation. "It's because of your kidney. But I want to be sure you're awake enough to understand me because it's important -" She broke off as the curtain parted and her parents, accompanied by Elizabeth, rushed to the bedside.

"Oh my God," exclaimed Maura, who was being supported by Jane.

Katherine tried to sit up, but Jane stopped her. "Don't," Jane said, gently placing a hand on her daughter's shoulder.

Katherine looked at the captain for a long moment. "Are you sure no one else was hurt?"

"Don't worry, the others are fine. It's time you stopped worrying about everyone. And for us to start taking care of you."

Katherine waved her sister over. "I need to talk to Liz, alone."

„They know everything," Elizabeth replied in a soothing tone her sister had never heard before.

That was exactly what Katherine had feared. "Everything?"

Elizabeth just nodded.

Katherine turned to her parents. "Did she finish a sentence without swearing?"

Elizabeth let out a laugh and shook her head in amazement.

"Yes," Maura said. "And apparently she just managed two more curse-free sentences."

"Then I declare you cured," Katherine said, beginning to slip into the realm of dreams, prompting Galloway to bring the visit to a close.

"We'll have a room ready for her shortly," she said, "and you can visit her there. In the meantime, we'd better let her sleep." She said it directed at Jane, and it was more of an order than a suggestion.

It was the last thing Katherine heard before she fell asleep.

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Katherine sensed movement. She opened her eyes and squinted into the neon lights passing overhead, hypnotizing her. She realized she was being pushed toward her room. Then she fell back asleep.

The next time Katherine opened her eyes, the light was much duller. The headboard of the hospital bed was elevated, and she looked west out a window at the last glow of an orange and pink sunset over Boston.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" said Maura, sitting by her bed.

Katherine, no longer so much in the clutches of anesthesia, noticed that her mother's usually neat hair was disheveled. She fell asleep. Here in this chair. Next to my bed. "Yes," she said, and her voice was already much stronger. "It's beautiful."

"How are you?" asked Maura.

"I'm grateful to be able to see the sunset." Katherine knew she was at Mass Gen, but she had never seen a room like this. "Where am I?"

"At Mass Gen."

Katherine rolled her eyes. "I know that, Mom. What part of the hospital?"

"On the VIP floor," Maura replied with a hint of pride in her voice. "Dr. Galloway and I made sure of that. I guess I'd better make sure she doesn't take my place, though."

Katherine looked at her mother for a long moment. "No one can ever take your place, Mom."

"You mean a lot to these people," Maura said, looking around. "When they treat you like this. You mean so much to all of us."

She said it as if she had never realized how much her daughter had accomplished. Katherine knew it was her mother's twisted way of saying how proud she was. Maura Isles had always been the most emotionally closed off person Katherine knew. Maura herself tried to make it out to be a stoic nature, in contrast to Jane's open, emotional personality. It was no secret to Katherine that she took after Maura in this regard. She turned back to the window. "How long have I been here?"

Maura looked at her watch. "They let me in just after three p.m. And now it's almost eight. For most of that time, you've been asleep."

"I don't remember waking up in this room at all."

"You weren't, strictly speaking," Maura replied, brushing a strand of hair from her daughter's face. "But you spoke."

Oh, damn, Katherine thought. What did I say?

"You called out for Nathan," Maura continued as if she had read her daughter's mind. "Do you remember anything?" Katherine remembered her dream, but she didn't want to talk about her fiancé. To her horror, however, Maura said, "You can tell me, honey. I'm not afraid of anything you want to say."

There's so much I want to tell you, Mother. I'm not sure you're ready to listen. But what do I have to lose? "I still blame myself for what happened to Nate," Katherine replied, staring straight ahead where the sun was sinking behind the Boston skyline. "But in my dream, Nate wasn't killed, I was." When Maura didn't answer, Katherine thought it was one of those occasions when her mother couldn't find the right words. But a sniffle made her turn her head, and she saw a tear fall from Maura's eye. Katherine had never seen her mother cry in her entire life and was surprised at how deeply it upset her. "Mom?"

"Don't worry about me," Maura said chokingly.

"I'll be okay."

"I know," Maura replied, wiping the tears from her face before standing up and adjusting the chair so she was facing her daughter head-on.

Katherine looked at her long and hard. "Then what is it?"

"While you were sleeping," Maura said, sitting down again, "Dr. Galloway came in. Jane was here, too, and Dr. Galloway wanted to talk to us. She wanted to tell you what I'm going to tell you now, but I insisted that I do it. And you know I can be very persistent." Katherine nodded, that much at least was true. "I know you and Dr. Galloway are very close," Maura continued. "She's not just your supervisor, is she?" "She's also my therapist," Katherine confessed, mainly to make Maura feel less threatened by her mentor.

"Well, she told us that since you lost a kidney, they would have designated your tissue, whatever that means, in case your other kidney failed and a transplant became necessary."

Katherine didn't understand why her mother had to tell her that. "It's standard procedure, Mom," she said, "nothing to worry about."

"I'm not worried about your kidney, the doctors say it's fine," Maura paused, not knowing how to continue. Then she took a deep breath. "Dr. Galloway came in here about an hour ago. And she informed us that the DNA in your kidney is different from the DNA in your blood."

It took Katherine more than a moment to process that information. But she knew there was only one explanation for such a phenomenon. "I'm a chimera," she said, thinking back to her embryology lecture in medical school. She remembered that a chimera is formed when cells from one embryo are absorbed by a second early in pregnancy. The reason why the DNA of her kidney and blood differed could only be that the kidney came from the cells of a twin she had absorbed. Katherine looked at her mother and realized from her chagrined face that this wasn't the whole story. "What is it, Mom?" she asked, "You look so sad." And then she realized what the rest of the story consisted of. "You always knew, didn't you?"

"Yes," Maura said. "An ultrasound early in my pregnancy showed twins. And the next time I went back to my gynecologist, the twin wasn't there."

Katherine was thunderstruck. Does that explain why I always felt like something was missing inside me?

Maura saw the pain in Katherine's eyes and took her daughter's hand. "Ever since you could talk, you've been asking about the other girl. Even though you never said it, I knew you felt a part of you was missing, that you were reaching out to someone. And I knew what you were missing because I lost that child, too."

"Why didn't you tell me?" wanted Katherine to know.

"At first I thought you wouldn't understand. And then later I was afraid you would blame yourself for your twin not surviving."

"Mom, I'm a doctor. I know how these things work. This happens in the embryonic stage. It couldn't possibly be my fault or yours or anyone else's."

"I never claimed my reasoning was always right," Maura countered. "After a while, it just didn't seem important to me. It didn't seem to have any impact on your life as you got older."

If you only knew how much it affected everything in my life. How much it would have helped me cope with the sense of loss I always felt.

"But I was wrong," Maura continued. "Or I just didn't want to admit the impact it had on you."

It was as if her mother had just read her mind. "What do you mean?" asked Katherine. What did her mother see that she didn't?

The two women's eyes met. Maura licked her lips and took a deep breath. "Even after Nate died, you couldn't let go of what happened to him -"

"I know it wasn't my fault, Mom -" Katherine began.

"Mentally, maybe you know, but emotionally, you never dealt with it, and you still don't," Maura replied. "But this ... survivor's guilt, or whatever you've been carrying around, I think it started long before Nate."

It was a shock to Katherine, mitigated only by the still lingering effects of the anesthesia. "Why do you think that?"

"Because you were unstoppable from the day you were born," Maura burst out, tears streaming from her eyes. "You handled everything you tackled or looked at. It was like you were doing the work of two people. Or making up for something that was missing in your life. Or maybe both. You're the psychiatrist -"

She fell silent and just cried softly to herself.

Katherine found the button to raise the headboard of the bed. "Mom, please -"

Maura raised her eyes. "I'm sorry. I just didn't see it."

"How could you have seen it?" tried Katherine to comfort her mother. "You're right, I actually felt a sense of loss much earlier than before Nate died. And I'm the psychiatrist, and I didn't realize what was going on until you just said it."

Maura pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped her eyes. "I wish I had said it sooner."

"You can't say something you don't know," Katherine assured her.

"But I could have helped you," the guilt-ridden Maura replied.

A faint smile appeared on Katherine's face. "You just did."

"Better late than never," Maura said, half laughing, half crying.

"Does Ma know?"

"Yeah, she's known since I've known. She's been wanting to tell you for years. The only reason she didn't is that I wouldn't let her."

Katherine knew that no matter how much Jane adored her, she was unswervingly loyal to her wife. Katherine was about to reply that she wished Jane had overridden Maura's will when Jane walked in the door as if on cue. Balancing two large mugs on a cardboard box, she carried a bag that smelled like burgers and fries.

"How are you?" she inquired with a gentle smile.

Katherine wondered if that was why Jane looked so relieved because she had been spared being there when Maura told her the news. "I know about the twin, Ma."

"Finally," Jane sighed. "You should just know that after what your Dr. Galloway told us, I threatened to throw your mother under the bus if she hadn't been willing to face you."

"Fair enough." Katherine couldn't help but make the comment. It was meant to lighten the mood and end the discussion, and the smiles on her parents' faces told her the strategy had worked.

"I brought you an iced tea and one of those disgustingly healthy burgers," Jane told her wife.

Maura rolled her eyes but thanked her wife.