Thank you all so much for the wonderful reviews! This fic is slowly coming to an end (I think it'll be about 40 chapters) and I'm planning a sequel. Well, two sequels. So my question is: which one do you want to see first?

Option A: Tate being Will's biological kid (would start before he meets JJ)

Option B: Tate in her early twenties on the BAU

I'm definitely going to be writing both, it just depends which one you guys would rather read first, so lemme know in the reviews :D

Chapter Thirty-Three: When The Levee Breaks

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The precinct was already bustling by the time the team arrived. There had also been a hostage situation earlier in the afternoon, which meant almost every officer on the force was in the building, either filing paperwork or coming or going from their shift. The smell of caffeine hung in the air–someone had clearly just made a fresh pot. Hotch led the group through the precinct until they arrived at the back of the station, where the captain was talking to a clearly distraught Will.

"Will!" JJ called as she threw herself into his arms.

She hugged her husband tightly for a moment, letting his presence ground her. She knew she needed to get her panic under control if she was to be of any help to Tate. All too soon, Will pulled back from JJ, but not before pressing a soft kiss to her lips.

"Thanks for coming," he said to Hotch, sniffing slightly.

Will's eyes were red, and the man had obviously been crying at some point in the day, but no one commented on it. Any sane person would have done the same in his situation, and JJ herself had cried while she was on the jet.

"Of course," the man replied.

Hotch was always the pinnacle of professionalism; he was constantly put together, and never let his emotions get in the way of a case. Having worked with Hotch for years, JJ knew he was just as anxious as the rest of them, but he would never let it show.

"This is Captain Green. Captain, this is Unit Chief Hotchner and SSAs Morgan, Blake, Rossi, and Dr. Reid," Will said, introducing the Captain to the team.

"Daniel Green," the captain said as he stuck out his hand. "The department is willing to help with anything you might need,".

"Thank you," Hotch replied, shaking the man's hand.

"Do we have an Amber Alert out yet?" Morgan asked.

"I was just getting the description of what she was wearing from Will to issue it," Greene told the team.

"Yeah uh…a white t-shirt, blue flannel, black leggings, and…white converse maybe?" Will said.

He couldn't even remember what his own kid had been wearing when he saw her not twelve hours beforehand. How was he supposed to be of any help finding her if he couldn't remember the most basic details? Will was just glad Hotch had agreed to come because, despite the faith he had in the force, he knew they had no chance of finding Tate.

"What about security cameras?" Rossi asked.

"The school doesn't have that many and the ones they do have are all inside, so once she leaves the building we've got nothing," Green informed the team.

Nothing. They had absolutely nothing to go off of. Their child was missing, and they had no clue as to where she was or who took her. Looking at it from a profiler's perspective, JJ knew this was one of the worst-case scenarios in a missing person case. They had no leads, no suspects, and no information. Tate was just gone.

"We should try canvassing the school and see if anyone saw anything. At the very least, we can get a time for when she was last seen," Reid said.

"I want to talk to her friends, they might know if anyone new has been hanging around Tate," Hotch told JJ and Will.

"I can call them," Will replied quietly.

Morgan, Rossi, and Reid went to set up in one of the conference rooms, and Will went to call Tate's friends, leaving JJ, Hotch, Blake, and Green in the bullpen. JJ could see the captain giving her a look of something that could only be pity, and she tore her gaze away from the man. Pity would only make her distracted and that was something Tate couldn't afford.

"I want you to help run point on this," Hotch murmured to Blake.

"Me?" Blake asked.

"You've only met Tate once so you're least likely to let emotion dictate your decisions. An outsider's perspective can also be helpful, especially when we have to start interviewing the kids," he explained, and Blake simply nodded her agreement.

"JJ, can you make sure Will has that boy come in? The one she was dating," Hotch inquired.

"Carter?" JJ asked, and Hotch nodded. "Of course, but why…"

The answer to JJ's question hit her like a truck, and the looks on Hotch's and Blake's faces confirmed it; they thought Carter had something to do with it. Sweet, kind Carter, the kid who would never hurt a fly, and yet they thought he was capable of kidnapping someone.

"Hotch, he had nothing to do with this," JJ argued.

"Tate broke up with him, didn't she?"

"It was…amicable. They're still friends,"

"Or maybe he's just letting her believe that," Hotch said, and JJ sighed.

She didn't want to think it was Carter, she really didn't, but she knew he had to be ruled out as a suspect before they continued in the investigation.

"I'll make sure Will calls him," she conceded.

"Thank you,"

Suddenly, Hotch's phone rang and the man dug into his coat pocket to answer it.

"Hotchner," he said.

"It's me," Gracia told him, and Hotch switched the phone's speaker on. "The police were right; the cameras are basically useless, we aren't going to get anything off of them. The GPS on Tate's phone has been turned off, but it's probably safe to assume whoever took her has already ditched it,".

For some reason, Garcia's lack of a witty greeting bothered JJ. Even on their hardest cases, Penelope always answered the phone or greeted the team in some unique and strange way. Instead, Penelope was being completely professional and serious, and it was yet another reminder to JJ how awful their situation was, and how grim Tate's future looked.

"Can you get us the phone records so we can see who she's been talking to?" Hotch asked.

"Already on it, boss. Most of her calls are to friends or Will and JJ. The only thing really out of the ordinary is a few calls to Camp Pendleton out in California,".

Hotch didn't respond and simply glanced up at JJ, waiting for her to reply.

"Those are just to Mack,".

"Mack?" Blake asked.

"Captain Owen Mackenzie, he's an old friend of Theo and Grant's," JJ provided and watched as Hotch decided to move on to other ideas.

"Who does she call and text the most?" Hotch asked Garcia.

"That would be Carter Fuller,".

"But who has she talked to in the last four months?" JJ asked, slightly exacerbated.

JJ knew Tate had said she and Carter were still friends, but JJ knew there was no way she talked to Carter the most out of all her friends. They didn't need to be going off of information from a year ago, they needed to know who Tate had been talking to recently. Unreliable and incorrect information was something the team couldn't afford to use right now.

"In the past four months…" Gracia trailed off, and JJ heard the distinct noise of keys clacking on a computer. "Also Carter Fuller,".

"You said they broke up," Hotch said.

"They did…" JJ murmured.

Had Tate been lying to her when she'd said they broke up? JJ couldn't imagine Tate doing that; she was basically the most honest kid on the planet. Besides, why would she feel the need to lie to JJ? Was she really that awful of a mother?

"We really need to talk to this kid," Blake told her.

Ellie O'Connor sat in front of Hotch and Blake in the interrogation room of the precinct. It wasn't that the girl was suspected of anything, but they needed a quiet place to conduct the interview. They had decided to talk to her before speaking to Carter in the hopes that she would know more about Tate and Carter's relationship with JJ. Hotch had flat-out refused to allow JJ in the room, knowing she would let her emotions get in the way of the investigation, so she sat behind the two-way mirror. Meanwhile, Will was still out in the bullpen with Morgan and Reid, who were planning on going to the school to see if anyone had seen anything suspicious.

"So, when was the last time you saw Tate?" Blake asked the girl.

"Just before two o'clock, I think. We'd been sitting in the library during our free period, and I left a few minutes before the bell rang to head to my locker," Ellie replied.

"Did anything seem…out of the ordinary about her behavior?".

"No," Ellie said, shaking her head. "She seemed fine,"

"Do you know if she was heading anywhere after school?" Hotch asked.

"As far as I know, she was going straight home. She said she had to watch the twins since Anna had an exam or something,".

Hearing the girl's responses, JJ found herself wishing she would say something different; something that would contradict what everyone else was saying. If Ellie said something different, then the team would have something to go off of. Something they could use to find Tate. To find her daughter.

"What can you tell us about Carter Fuller?" Hotch inquired.

"Tate and he used to be friends, then the dated, then they broke up, and now they're friends again,"

JJ could see Ellie was fidgeting, and she could tell the girl was hiding something. Hotch could too and stared at her for a moment before continuing.

"Ellie, if you're lying about something, maybe something Tate asked you not to tell anyone about, we need to know. No matter how insignificant it might seem, it could help us find her,".

"She's been hanging out with Carter a lot recently. I don't think she wanted people to know, so she would tell everyone she was hanging out with me and Carter,".

"Were they dating again?" Blake asked.

"I don't think so, but there was definitely something more to it than just hanging out. Something either of them didn't want me to know about," Ellie explained.

Hotch and Blake exchanged a look, and JJ knew what they were thinking. The panic in her was rising up at the thought that Carter had done something toTate. He'd always seemed like such a nice kid, and she'd trusted him. She'd trusted him with her daughter, and he'd hurt her. Hell, she'd encouraged Tate to date him. What kind of mother encourages their daughter to date? Tate could be dead, all because JJ trusted a teenage boy.

"It's been over three hours," Ellie said quietly.

"What?" Hotch asked, caught off guard by the girl's statement.

"JJ had been on a case once and someone had asked about the type of cases they do. Tate told them mostly serial killers and kidnappings. Then, she said that 74% of people are murdered within three hours of their kidnapping. That means there's only a 26% chance she's alive right? That's not that much, it's not enough,".

JJ felt sick as she heard Ellie's words. The girl was right; Tate was most likely already dead. Sweet, wonderful Tate; the girl that would never hurt another living soul, who would do anything to help anyone, who was so incredibly smart, could be dead and JJ couldn't do a thing about it. She'd sworn to herself that she'd never let another one of her children be hurt and she'd failed. Even if Tate wasn't dead, she was no doubt suffering and that thought was somehow worse.

It wasn't the first time Aaron Hotchner had met Carter Fuller. He'd met the boy several times at dinners or parties hosted by JJ and Will, and he'd always liked the boy. He was smart, polite, charming; there was not a thing wrong with Carter Fuller. Yet, something wasn't adding up and Hotch didn't know what to do. As much as he dreaded the thought that Carter had done something to Tate, he knew it was statistically probable. The real question was: how had he missed the wolf in sheep's clothing?

"When was the last time you saw Tate?" Blake asked the boy sitting at the table.

"Around one o'clock this afternoon, maybe a little later," Carter replied.

"Where were you this afternoon?"

"I was at soccer practice,".

"You and Tate broke up in June, right?" Black questioned, and Carter nodded. "Why?"

"Tate didn't want to date anymore and she thought it was for the best,"

Hotch could tell the boy was bouncing his leg underneath the table; a tell-tale sign that he was nervous, that he was lying.

"Did that make you angry?" Hotch asked.

"No…" Carter replied, looking slightly confused.

"Can you tell us why-even though you broke up-you're still the number one person Tate talks to on her phone?"

"We're friends. We talk. That's about it,".

"Walk us through your day today," Hotch ordered the boy.

"Why is that…" the boy trailed off before his eyes widened slightly. "You think I had something to do with it, don't you?"

"We're eliminating possible suspects and you're simply one of them," he explained. "Now, if you could tell us about your day,"

"I got up, went to school, went to soccer practice, went home, and then came here. That's it," Carter said, leaving no room for argument.

"Did you leave the campus at any point?" Hotch asked.

"No, didn't I just say that?".

Blake sensed the boy was getting defensive and knew that it would only lead to Hotch getting more aggressive.

"Look, Carter, we're trying to help you. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can eliminate you as a suspect and you can go home. Then, we can focus on other people that might have taken Tate. We just need you to tell us the truth,".

Carter seemed to consider Blake's plea for a moment, and JJ could swear the boy made eye contact with her through the mirror.

"I want JJ to be in here," the boy demanded.

"I'm afraid that's not possible," Hotch told him.

"Then I'm not telling you jack shit,".

"Carter, be reasonable," Blake tried.

"I am being reasonable. No offense, but I don't trust either of you as far as I can throw you,".

Hotch sighed, knowing the boy wasn't going to give in. He stood up from the chair and headed into the viewing room where JJ was waiting. She could tell by the look on his face that he had caved but waited until he told her to go in before heading through the doorway and sitting down beside Blake.

"So why'd you break up?" Blake tried again and watched as Carter hesitated.

"Tate wanted to," was the only response he gave.

"But why?" JJ asked.

Carter looked JJ in the eye and she knew he was struggling. He was hiding something and it seemed like he wanted to tell them, but couldn't.

"I said something, and it wasn't really something you can take back," he explained.

"What did you say?" Blake asked, and Carter didn't respond.

"Carter, what did you say?" JJ inquired coldly.

"It…it wasn't anything bad," he said so quietly that JJ almost missed it.

JJ felt lost. Clearly, Carter had said something to upset Tate, but Tate hadn't seemed bothered by it when she mentioned the break-up to JJ. If Tate hadn't been upset about it, then why would she have broken up with Carter?

"You told her you loved her, didn't you?" she said softly, realization dawning on her.

It was the only thing that made sense, the only reason Tate would've broken up with Carter.

"I don't think she believed me," he said sadly.

JJ knew it wasn't the fact that Tate didn't believe him that upset the boy but rather that her disbelief was due to constantly being cast aside by everyone. Tate was used to being unloved and ignored and to be completely honest, sometimes JJ doubted that Tate believed Will and JJ loved her. She'd been so hurt by everyone in her life that she couldn't even trust someone saying they cared about her.

"So, if you two aren't in a relationship then why do you spend so much time together?" Blake asked.

"We're friends,".

"It's more than that," JJ argued, and Carter hesitated.

"My mom's been sick and it's um…it's not looking good,"

JJ immediately felt awful for assuming Carter had done something. He'd never been anything but supportive to Tate and she was simply returning the favor in what was the hardest experience of his young life. JJ had met his mother, Tess, several times and she'd always liked the woman. She was a fantastic mother to Carter and his little brother, and it'd be devastating for them to lose her; Tate was simply trying to help him get through it.

"I think we're done here," Blake said quietly, and Carter looked up in surprise.

"But I thought…" he trailed off.

"You have over a dozen people placing you at school all day so as of right now we can rule you out," she explained.

Five days. It'd been five days since Tate went missing, since his daughter vanished off the face of the earth, and they were still no closer to finding her. Frankly, Will was surprised he was still even remotely put together. Not that he was exactly put together-he hadn't slept more than ten hours in total since Tate went missing and he was currently running off of stale coffee-but he hadn't had a mental breakdown yet.

The team had long since moved back to their own office to continue to search for Tate since they had more resources there. JJ and Will had basically been living in the office, as had most of the team. The night Tate went missing, Will had called Grant to see if he knew anything that could help them in the search. While the boy hadn't had a clue as to who had taken Tate, he'd shown up the next morning to help look after the twins while JJ and Will were at the Bureau. Much to everyone's surprise, he'd shown up with a girlfriend in tow. A girlfriend he'd been dating over a year that he'd neglected to mention. Tess had sandy brown hair and soft green eyes, and although JJ and Will were loath to trust their children with a stranger, Grant clearly trusted her and that was good enough for them. So, while JJ and Will were looking for Tate, Grant and Tess took care of the twins. Beck had offered to come out to DC but Amelia was having a hard pregnancy so she couldn't travel, and Will didn't want her to have to be home alone with the boys.

It was well past 11 o'clock at night and the entire team was still at the office. They'd tried double and triple-checking the school's security cameras and interviewing students again and again, but nothing had turned up. Will was sitting on the corner of JJ's desk as he half-listened to Reid ramble about geographic profiling while JJ was trying not to fall asleep.

"This place isn't as cool as it is in the movies," a voice spoke up from the doorway, and Will looked over to see Grant standing at the entrance of the office.

"Yeah well I blame the two-day-old coffee," Morgan said.

"No way is it two days old," JJ argued as she lifted her head from her desk.

Grant walked over to the kitchen and lifted the pot, sniffing it for a moment before pouring a little into a mug and drinking it.

"Oh yeah, that shit's old," he told her as he plopped down into the empty chair at Reid's desk.

"What are you doin' here? Will asked.

"Thought I'd come try and convince you to head home for a bit and get some sleep. Or at least fresh coffee," he said, frowning at the taste of the coffee.

"If you know it's stale, why are you still drinking it?" Blake asked.

"Once you go to law school, caffeine is just caffeine," Hotch explained and Grant nodded in agreement.

"So, is anyone gonna go home or am I fighting a losing battle over here?" Grant asked.

"JJ and I will head home once Penelope finishes going over the phone records again," Will told him.

JJ looked towards him, ready to argue, but he stopped her.

"We aren't getting anything done here tonight," he said softly and she slowly nodded.

While Reid continued his profile on the large map that'd been pinned to a corkboard in the corner, everyone else took a break and sat down at their desks. Not wanting to go into his office, Hotch used Reid's desk, and they all finished the last few sips of coffee. Hotch and Rossi were discussing one of Jack's soccer games while Blake and Morgan talked about one of the houses Morgan was renovating. None of them had any more work they could do for the night to look for Tate, but they didn't want to leave until JJ and Will did. They wanted them to know the team was there for them. Garcia came into the bullpen a few minutes later to tell the team she hadn't found anything else, but still, no one got up to leave

It was almost midnight when the elevator dinged and the team had yet another surprise visitor. JJ once again lifted her head from her desk to see a head of bright red hair.

"You didn't think to call me?" Mack asked Grant.

"Eh, what would you have done?" he replied.

"Sorry, who's the ginger?" Morgan asked.

"Captain Owen Mackenzie," JJ told the team.

Will looked over the young man that he'd heard about but had never actually met. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and carried only a backpack, so he'd clearly come in a rush. Like the rest of them, it seemed he hadn't slept in a while.

"You really didn't even think to pick up the phone?" Mack asked, turning his attention back to Grant.

"So you could sit here and worry like the rest of us? Besides, I didn't think you'd even be able to get off base," Grant argued.

JJ could understand why Grant didn't tell Mack. He deserved to know about Tate, but at the same time, Grant was trying to save him from the crippling anxiety that they were all feeling. She'd give anything in the world not to feel the worry that she did, not to feel the pain in knowing that her child was out there somewhere all by herself suffering.

"If Grant didn't tell you, then how'd you hear?" Will asked.

"Matt Cruz ran into me at Pendleton and let me know,".

"Who's Matt Cruz?" Reid asked.

"Just an old friend," JJ said hurriedly.

None of them could know about Matt Cruz. They couldn't know what JJ had been doing when she went to work for the State Department. The only reason Matt had even known about Tate was because JJ had been worried her disappearance had something to do with her work in Afghanistan.

"How did you even get in here?" JJ asked.

"You really doubt me that much? In case you haven't noticed, there are plenty of marines hanging around Quantico and no one has enough energy in the middle of the night to ask questions," he told her.

"Congratulations, now you get to sit here with the rest of us and drink stale coffee while doing absolutely nothing," Grant snapped.

"Some of us actually have a reason for being here," Mack told him.

"And what's that?" Will asked tiredly.

"Theo told me something a few years back and…I think it might be important," he said quietly.

Everyone seemed to sit up a little straighter in their seats as a wave of hope coursed through them. This was it, thought JJ, the lead they needed to find Tate. They'd had absolutely nothing to go off of, no evidence or witnesses, but now they had something, no matter how small it was.

"What is it?" Hotch asked.

"When we were seniors we took AP bio and we did this experiment on blood types. We were supposed to ask our parents what their blood types were and apparently Theo had known Lauren and Thomas were both AB. A few months later, Theo was going on a trip with a few friends from foster care and he asked me to watch Tate for the weekend. She ended up getting appendicitis so I had to take her to the hospital. Except her blood type was O so…" he trailed off.

"So Lauren and Thomas couldn't possibly be her biological parents," Reid finished.

Frankly, JJ was surprised none of them had guessed it sooner. Besides the fact that Tate didn't exactly look like the rest of the Jacobs, there was also the Jacobs' strange behavior towards Tate. Lauren and Thomas hadn't loved her nearly as much as they loved Theo which was something JJ had never understood. She couldn't imagine loving one of her kids more than the other. However, if Tate wasn't actually their daughter, then maybe that was why they'd been so indifferent to her.

"I asked Theo about it and he made me swear never to tell anyone,".

"How did he know?" Grant asked quietly, and JJ could tell he was slightly hurt by the fact that Theo had never told him.

"Besides the way Thomas and Lauren acted towards her? For starters, there's not a single photo of her from when they lived in New Orleans due to a supposed house fire that there's no record of," Mack explained.

"She has a birth certificate with Lauren and Thomas' names listed under mother and father. I've seen it, Will's seen it, JJ's seen it, hell, you've seen it," Grant argued, refusing to believe what Mack was saying could be true.

"And yet there is no record of a single baby named Natalie Jacobs being born in the state of Louisiana in June of 1995. There's no record of one being born in 1995 at all, and there's no record of Lauren Jacobs ever being admitted to a hospital in Louisiana after Theo was born in 1989,".

"So, you've known about this for years and never said anything?" JJ asked, slightly outraged.

"I knew she wasn't their kid but I didn't get any of the evidence until this was delivered to me two weeks after Theo died," he said as he reached into his coat and pulled out a thick envelope which he handed to JJ.

She quickly opened the envelope to find a long letter written in a language she didn't recognize, but it was clearly addressed to Mack and signed by Theo.

"What is this?" she asked as Hotch got up to examine the letter.

"He wrote it in Gaelic, eight pages front and back. It's everything he ever found out on his trips to New Orleans,".

"He wasn't going about the car crash," Will stated, and Mack shook his head.

"There's something else, isn't there? Tate not being their biological child isn't a reason for Theo to have done this. For all he knew, she could've just been adopted," Hotch reasoned.

"He has this memory from when he was around eight or nine. It was apparently pretty hazy since he thought it happened at night, but he remembered enough. His mom and dad woke him up in the middle of the night and drove somewhere, a hotel maybe. He remembered Tate being there and three men…one of which was your father," he said as he looked over at Will.

"My daddy wasn't the type of man that would've done that," Will told him.

"Theo was one hundred percent certain it was him," Mack replied.

Will sat there, slightly stunned. His father certainly had his faults-he was human after all-but he couldn't believe he would've done something like that. So far, it was looking like the Jacobs had kidnapped Tate or something along those lines, and his father had helped.

"What about the other two men?" Garcia asked.

"After a few trips to New Orleans, he figured out one of them was Harlan Tibideaux. He wanted to talk to him but he was already in the nursing home with Alzheimer's. He never managed to figure out who the third person was,"

"So…they what? Kidnapped Tate and then got out of dodge?" Morgan asked.

"Theo didn't think it was like that. They were running from someone or at the very least hiding from them but he didn't think they were scared for themselves as much as they were for Tate,"

"Why do you say that?" Hotch asked.

"Right before they left the hotel or wherever they were, Bill pulled Theo aside. He told him he could never tell anyone else what had happened that night and that it was to protect Tate,".

JJ suddenly realized she could barely breathe. Granted, she hadn't been able to take a deep breath since she found out Tate was missing, but it had suddenly gotten so much worse. Someone was after Tate, and from what Mack was saying, they'd been after her for years. This wasn't just the case of some stranger taking Tate at random; whoever had done this had been meticulously planning it.

"You said he was eight or nine right? So this would've been 1997?" Morgan asked.

"He thinks it was sometime in the fall of that year, probably October," Mack replied.

"Was it raining?" Will asked quietly and Mack looked over at him, slightly surprised.

"Yeah, actually. He said it was raining the way it only does in New Orleans, almost like a hurricane,".

A bad storm in October of 1997. Just like his father had written about in his journal so long ago. Something had caused his father, Harlan, and the Jacobs to get up in the middle of the night and drive to Mississippi, but the question was: what? There had to be a good reason his father would do something like that; a reason why he would lie and maybe even steal a child.

"It was the 10th of October," Will told Hotch.

"Are you sure?" the man questioned him.

"Without a doubt," Will replied before he explained his father's journal.

"Okay, am I the only one confused here?" Garcia asked.

"No, something isn't adding up," Morgan said. "Why would two distinguished police officers help one of the best lawyers in the country kidnap a kid or at the very least lie about who her real parents were?"

Everyone sat in silence for a moment before JJ looked over at Grant. The young man seemed to be deep in thought and had grown quite pale, like he had come to a realization. If Mack had known something about what had happened that night, maybe Grant had been hiding something too.

"What is it Grant?" she asked, and everyone looked over at him.

"It's nothing," he assured her.

"Tell us, anything could help at this point," Hotch ordered him, and Grant glanced over at Will.

"You're asking why your father and your uncle would lie and maybe even commit a crime to protect a stranger's kid, but what if she wasn't a stranger? What if they knew who her parents were?"

"I'm not sure what you're getting at," Will told Grant.

"I think I do," Spencer spoke up. "They have similar mannerisms and share a lot of the same features. People have assumed he was her father before, and it would explain why Harlan and Bill felt the need to protect her,"

Will felt a wave of horror and disbelief crash over him as he realized who they meant. It couldn't be, there was no way the man they were insinuating was Tate's father.

"It's not possible," he croaked out.

"They have the same eyes, Will. Not just blue eyes, but the exact same shape and shade," Grant said as he walked over and handed Will a picture frame off of JJ's desk.

And there it was, clear as day in the photo JJ had taken last summer. Two heads of dark brown curly hair with identical deep blue eyes. Even their facial structure was similar. Will had looked at the photo at least a hundred times and he'd never seen it for what it was. He always thought it was a family photo, with his brother and daughter right in the center. Looking at it now, it was remarkably clear why Bill had so willingly lied to help protect a stranger's child.

It wasn't a stranger's kid. It wasn't some elaborate scheme to help the Jacobs' get a kid. It was to protect a child, a very special child that was near and dear to his heart..

To protect his granddaughter. To protect the child of his eldest son.

Beck's child.

"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice"—Robert Frost