Kenny folded up the pages that Max had written, and was almost afraid to let go of them. He didn't know where she had gone, but he couldn't forget the look on her face when she left. She looked defeated, and he was worried about her. Kenny had no doubt that Max was perfectly able to take care of herself, but whether it was the pregnancy or something else, her emotions were raging. He knew how she felt about doing this, and he cursed himself and everyone else for pushing her on it. Max was so damn stubborn, he thought, but she does pick her moments. He leaned back against the step, and waited for his wife to come home.

333333333333

Max didn't know where she was going after the initial peal out of the driveway. She just needed to get away from it all for a few hours, and longed to be anonymous. Flipping off her phone, she vowed to ignore the world for a few hours. Easing her foot off the accelerator, she cruised out of town trying not to feel guilty for doing it. Flipping through the facts and what she knew, Max tried to string some of the information together to make sense. Cranking up the music, she pulled into Windsor Park, where she and Kenny got engaged. Leaning up against the seat, she closed her eyes not liking herself that much for fleeing from her home, and she was pretty sure that Kenny would have a mouthful to say to her when she got back.

Walking down towards the pond, she spoke to aloud to her unborn baby. "Well, little thing, welcome to Rome. If it's one thing, it's interesting. I can promise they'll always be plenty of activity, but I can't promise that your Dad and I will always see eye to eye on everything. It's so strange to think of us like that though, even though I've always thought that Kenny would make a terrific father. I have my doubts about me, and I apologize before hand for anything stupid I might do, or not know."

Enjoying the solitude of the park, Max began to string the case together.

333333333333

"DNA," Carter exclaimed. "The DNA matches!"
"We thought it would," Jimmy replied to the overly excitable medical examiner. "She had scratches on her arms, and he had skin under his nails."

"No, No," Carter insisted. "Yeah, that matched, but Gina and Kurt have matching DNA too! They're related!"

"Excuse me?" Jimmy exclaimed. "How related?"

"Very," Carter nodded. "I'm guessing immediate family. Sibling, parent. Or sibling, sibling. This isn't some normal married couple. This is big, Jimmy. Big. I should be deputized on this."

Jimmy shook his head, and reaching for the phone. "Not a chance Carter. That's why there is nothing on her family, and all Max said was that she came from Fort Lauderdale. If Kurt's from there too… that might give us some more insight into her past."

"And give her a strong motive for killing a family member," Carter nodded. "If they're blood relatives living as a married couple, what couldn't go wrong? Affairs, abuse… these people have problems."

Carter fell quiet as Jimmy dialed Kenny and Max and spoke. "Kenny? Yeah, it's Jimmy. Is Max there?"

Kenny felt his relief fade because he had hoped that it was his wife replied. "No, and I'm not sure where she is."

"Shit. Gina and Kurt have DNA that shows that they're blood relatives," Jimmy stated. "That makes things a little more complicated."

"No way would Max let anyone get away with that," he replied, catching Jimmy's implication. "She's tolerant about a lot of things, but incest and abuse aren't anything that she would let go."

"She was certainly adamant about keeping confidentiality," Jimmy replied dryly. "You mind if I swing by and wait?"

Kenny eyed the pages Max left him before he replied. "Sure come on over. I could use the company."

He heard the door open, as they hung up. Pissed because she had left him here with all of this, they just looked at each other silence for a minute.

"Where the hell have you been?" he finally asked. "Max, it's been over three hours, and when my upset, pregnant, wife disappears, shit. I was worried about you."

"Can't I just have some space?" she shot back. "Don't smother me."

"Not like this. You can't just walk out, and leave me with something like this," he replied. feeling his temper rise. "I've been trying to call you for hours, and they invented cell phones for a reason! Damn it Max!"

"Don't yell at me," she snapped. "You told me to do what I thought was right, and I did! You wanted to know, and it's something I don't like to talk about! You just don't get it!"

"Get what?"

"What it's like! To have someone hurt you like that, and to be powerless to stop it! That poor girl had her father beat her since she was a child, and he started raping her during puberty! He locked her in a room with her brother, and taped them doing sexual things together. What Danny did to me sucked, but what happened to Gina is one of those crimes that you see in the news that makes you want to be sick! So if Kurt was hitting her or anything, which she eluded too, yeah it gives her a motive!"

Kenny could see her trying not tremble after her outburst, but he was still angry about her disappearing act. "I watched you go through it! And my sister! So don't tell me I don't know what it's like. Max, it killed me to see you like that."

"Bullshit. Have you ever felt totally helpless? No, of course not tough guy. So don't tell me you understand," Max spat. "She shouldn't have killed him. We all know that, but if she felt threatened… she wouldn't think twice about defending herself."

"Maybe you should be a therapist," he snapped.

"Oh, shut up," Max said spinning away from him, as he grabbed her wrist. "Let go of me."

"Not yet," he replied, trying to hold his temper in and studying the fire in his wife's eyes. "I didn't read it."

"What," Max stuttered, utterly shocked. "Why?"

Kenny shrugged. "I knew what it all meant to you, and do you know how proud I am of you for this? I don't agree with you, and you know that, but Max what you did was right."

She shook her head, not trusting her voice for a second. "No it wasn't. What kind of example does it set? Kill your husband, and get away with it?"

"He's not her husband," Kenny said, watching her face, and knowing in that moment that she didn't know.

"What?" Max gasped. "Are you sure?"

"They have DNA that shows that they're related. At least according to Carter. Closely related."

"If Gina was locked in a room with her brother," Max trailed off, hoping he would catch her drift.

"Yeah," Kenny agreed. "We look at Campbells from Fort Lauderdale, and find out why she might want to kill her brother."

"What about the rest of her family?" Max asked. "And his?"

"We didn't find any Troy's down there, but we didn't look for Campbells," Kenny reasoned, as he let go of her.

"And they're one in the same," Max said. "Nothing here is ever simple."

"This wouldn't be Rome then," Kenny replied, as they heard another car in the drive. "Jimmy's stopping by, he called about the DNA stuff and wanted to know if you knew that they were related."

Kenny passed her the unread sheets and she took them gingerly. "I'm not sure what I should do with these."

"It's up to you," he said, kissing the top of her head, as Jimmy knocked. "C'mon in."

Jimmy eyed the young couple before focusing on Max. "Did you know?"

Max shook her head, "I swear I didn't. You know me better then that."

Kenny wrapped his arm around his wife's waist before adding. "She nearly fell over when I told her, Jimmy."

He could tell that his two deputies were telling him the truth, and he had known deep down that Max hadn't known. "You two are both off tomorrow? I want to start digging into finding out about the Campbell family, so can you come in?"

"Ah, I have an appointment at 10," Max said, thinking about her sonogram. "But after that… it should be fine."

He turned to Kenny. "I'm going with her, so when we're done we'll be there when we're done."

Jimmy caught the quick happy glance between them, and knowing that these two were apt to go investigate on their own he wanted to know what they were planning. "What sort of appointment?"

They exchanged another glance, and Kenny shrugged. "Well one person can't hurt, Honey?"
"Probably not," Max conceded, gladly forgetting about the case for a moment, and turning back to Jimmy. "We actually have something to tell you. A good thing."

Jimmy studied them for a moment, as Max paused and noted despite the tension that he sense earlier in the week they seemed to be quite content.

Max continued nervously in his silence. "I'm pregnant."

"Pregnant?" he sputtered, after a moment.

"Do you need to sit? Or have a drin?," Kenny asked, as he watched Jimmy's shocked reaction, and turning back to Max. "I'm glad someone was more shocked then us."

She grinned at him, as Jimmy leaned back in one of their infrequently used kitchen chairs. "Me too."

"You're having a baby," Jimmy repeated, coming out of his state of shock. "We're you planning on this?"

"Not right away," Kenny admitted. "But we're warming up to the idea."

"When?"

"About seven months, so sometime in November."

"You two are having a baby," he repeated again shaking his head. "Congratulations, and I can't believe that Jill wouldn't tell me this."

"Thanks," she replied grinning. "Neither of us any idea what to do with a baby, but it can't be that hard."

"Oh, you'll see," Jimmy predicted, happy for his young friends.

Max glanced at the pile of papers on the counter, and because of the recent developments, she felt that the confidentiality agreement was null and void. Married to her brother, Max thought to herself, and she wondered if anything else she said was true. Kenny followed her glance, and gently squeezed her around the waist. Making a quick decision, she turned back to Jimmy.

"If you're glad about this, I have something else to tell you too," Max began picking up the sheets. "After a lot of thinking about everything, I wrote down what Gina told the group in the sessions."

Jimmy silently cursed them for nearly giving him two heart attacks in a span of three minutes, as he grappled with Max's second surprise. He looked at the twisted sheets in her hands, and wondered what could have possibly made her change her mind, knowing her the way he did. "Why?" he asked simply.

Max shook her head. "She needs help Jimmy, more then I realized before with this whole incest thing. I don't think that she should just be able to kill someone and get away with it maybe it's the cop in me. Thousands of women every year are abused, but they don't go out and kill people. I understand why they would kill their abuser, and when I stabbed Danny part of me wanted him dead."

Jimmy wasn't surprised at that, but he never expected Max to admit it to him. "I think we all wanted him dead, but the difference is that you didn't kill him."

Max nodded before unfolding the sheets of paper, and skimming over her written words. "I don't even know if what she said is true or not anymore, and part of me is against doing this, but…"

She trailed off turning to Kenny, and seeing she had his full support in this. She longed for the simpler days of underground electrical currents killing the district attorney in the bath tub, or mayors spontaneously combusting. Knowing that Jimmy was waiting for her to continue, Max gathered her conflicting thoughts again.

"Gina grew up in Fort Lauderdale, with her parents and brother, who we now know is probably Kurt. Her Dad hit her for years when she was a kid, but when she started to develop he began doing sexual things to her, especially when he was drunk. Later, he would put his two kids in a room together," Max paused feeling slightly nauseated, not knowing if it was because of what she was saying or one of those weird pregnancy things. "He would make them touch each other, and film it. I know she ran away from home a few times, and was dragged through the juvenile court system for a few years, but her Dad was some kind judge down there, and nothing ever came of it."

Jimmy and Kenny processed Max's admission before Kenny responded. "How come there is no record of it then? Even if she changed her name, her fingerprints should have come up in the database if she'd been through the courts."

"I don't know. She could have made it all up," Max said softly.

"Whatever happened to the rest of the family?" Jimmy asked. "A judge Campbell?"

"That shouldn't be too hard to look up," Max responded, burying her feelings of guilt over this to think about later. "Her juvenile record would be sealed, but the lack of her identity on paper really irks me. Even if she had been running from her family, there should be something. It's like they both appeared out of nowhere."

"You feel like digging now?" Kenny asked them both because they knew that this was their first real break in the case.

"Someone has to be up early tomorrow, and I know pregnant woman need their rest," Jimmy said watching for Max's reaction. "Jill got cranky when she was pregnant with the boys."

Max tried not to groan, and she heard Kenny trying not to laugh behind her. One thing she was sure of was that she wasn't going to let anyone, including these two, keep her strapped to a desk for the next seven months. "I'm pregnant, not comatose," Max replied evenly to the two men.

"It can wait until tomorrow," Jimmy insisted, sensing that they needed some alone time together. He stood up, and extended his hand to Kenny. "Congratulations, again. Max, get some rest, you'll need it in a few months, and we'll finish this tomorrow."

"Okay," she said caving because the idea of going back to the station now wasn't highly appealing, and she was tempted to crawl into bed at this early hour. Jimmy shot one last look at his two deputies, and suppressed a smile. He would have never thought they would come to this point, but both Kenny and Max had been surprising him for years.

33333333333333333333333

"Here we go," Jill said the next morning, as she ran the bulb over Max's flat stomach, as Kenny hovered above her. "See that?"

Max looked at the blurred shape on the monitor, and wondered if it was a terrible sign that she couldn't tell what she was looking for. "Not really."

Jill pointed to the circular shape. "Over there is the head, and that's the body."

Kenny squeezed his wife's shoulder, as Jill pointed out their baby, and Max couldn't help but to feel awe at what she was seeing.

"He's so tiny," Max said.

"You think it's a he?" Jill asked.

"That's what we've been calling it," Kenny said, as Jill printed of the picture.

"I can tell you the sex if you want," Jill said, turning back to the screen. "Jimmy was shocked when he came home last night, and that takes a lot after everything that goes on in this town."

Kenny looked down at Max who replied. "I hadn't seen him like that since Pugen exploded."

Jill smiled at her young friend, and was so glad for both of them to have good news in their life now. "Do the two of you want to know the sex?"

"I kind of want to be surprised," Kenny replied slowly. "Max?"

She nodded in agreement. "I can wait a few more months."

"Well, everything is fine so far," Jill replied, studying the results. "But knowing you, I want you to take care of yourself, and not take on to much at work."

"I'll make sure of that," Kenny replied, as Max shot him a dark look. "C'mon, humor me here, Max."

"Oh, I'll humor you," she promised, as Jill went over the rest of her instructions.

333333333333

Picking the paper off the fax machine later Kenny beckoned Max over as he read the sheets from Fort Lauderdale. "Take a look at this."

Max quickly skimmed the sheets, and felt an ache in her chest over what had happened to Judge Frank Campbell. Pulled out of the ocean, after he stumbled off of a pier in Fort Lauderdale drunk. Survived by his wife Lena and two sons Kurt and Troy, Max read. Shooting Kenny a quick glance at that last line, she didn't know what to make of that.

"Two sons," she asked. "What about Gina? And the other boy?"

Kenny shrugged. "Maybe they weren't siblings? They could have been cousins, or something else. We'll have to wait for the DNA to come back on that one."

"Yeah," Max replied, lost in thought as something clicked in her mind. "I thought…"

"Max," Kenny said warily, knowing that look on her face. "What's up?"

She shook her head. "Let me think for awhile on this? Besides, I've got to go out with Pete on patrol in a few minutes."

Kenny was tempted to make her stay and tell him what was going on in her head, but let her go of with the young deputy, who Kenny knew had a crush on his wife. He had seen Pete staring at her for months now, and while part of him wanted to pound the younger man into the ground, he knew where he was coming from. And Kenny trusted Max implicitly, but he was worried about her running off after some lead alone. Watching his wife head out and Jimmy called him into his office to go over what he had found.

333333333333

"Hmm," Max purred, as Kenny kissed her neck later that night. "If you keep doing that, I don't think we're going anywhere."

"I don't mind," Kenny replied inhaling her scent. "We've got time."

"Oh, you're such a man," Max said airily. "Throw on a clean shirt, and you're ready to go. I on the other hand have to do hair, makeup, and coordinate between clothes and accessories."

Kenny studied Max's white tank top and knee length blue silk skirt. "You look good to me."

"You're biased," she said grinning. "Besides I won't be able to fit into these clothes in a few months, and it is a party."

"Carter turning 40," Kenny trailed off, thinking of their friend, and knowing that he'd had a rough time after Sue had died last year. "We're getting old, Max."

"Nah," she said, running a brush through her hair, as she slid into some low heeled sandals. "You ready to go?"

Pulling her into his arms one last time, Kenny kissed her and Max was tempted to forget the whole party and just stay right here.

333333333333

Max and Jill watched Laurie and Carter talk together in the corner, and if Jill didn't know any better she would swear they were flirting.

"They do look cute," Max said, following Jill's line of thought.

"He does look happy," Jill whispered back. "He's had a tough year, and when was the last time you saw Laurie on a date?"

Max shrugged, knowing that Jill wanted to talk about breaking the confidentiality of the counseling group, but hesitant to bring it up. Looking around for Kenny, she saw him talking with Kimberly, and she did her best not to feel jealous. She knew that their week long attempt at dating was a fluke, but Kim was a beautiful young woman. Shaking off her negative feelings, she turned her attention back to Jill.

"Not for awhile," Max said. "She had the baby over two years ago, and before that I don't know. We'll have to wait and see on that one. I know you want to say something, so just go ahead."

"That group is built on trust Max," Jill began. "And once it's broken, it's hard to get back. I know all about the confidentiality agreements that come up in our lives, and I've struggled with it myself, and divulged the information before. I know it's a decision that you struggled with, and sometimes there is no right answer."

"I know," Max said softly, as she turned the situation over in her brain, as Laurie made her way over, and Carter broke towards the bathroom.

"He's cute," Laurie signed, gesturing towards the departing Carter.

The three women moved closer together, and delved into conversation.

333333333333

Jimmy observed Kenny talking with his daughter as he stood by the bar, and he thought back to his reaction a few years ago when they tried to date. What a difference, Jimmy thought thinking about the past few years. Walking over, he tried to block the case out of his mind, but as he observed the people around him he couldn't. He watched his daughter, so young and pretty, and so strong. She would make a great doctor, Jimmy thought, and the way she stood up for people made Jimmy proud, and gave him a pause as he thought back to the Christmas pageant, and how they had found out about Louise Talbot.

"Gina Troy," he said aloud to himself, "Kurt Campbell had a brother named Troy."

As the pieces fell into place, Jimmy knew that if what he was thinking was correct, this thing was about to blow.