Three's a Crowd

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters that you can recognize without reading the rest of this story.

A/N: This chapter should get *quite* a reaction…especially from my beta reader! _____________________________________________________________________________________

Kendall talks to Barnett for a few moments after Sydney's session while she's still in the side room.

Barnett advises Kendall to send her home for the remainder of the day.

"It was a huge break through. It went much further than I would have liked. It's emotionally draining," Barnett argues.

Reluctantly, Kendall tells Sydney to go home.

Vaughn comes up a moment later and asks for time off.

Amanda follows soon behind him and also asks for time off.

The three of them meet, unintentionally, in the parking lot.

Amanda sees Sydney and walks over to her. When Vaughn sees Amanda approaching Sydney, he rushes to referee. Amanda sees him coming and thinks he found out about Sydney asking her to help and is now mad.

Sydney can't help but see the looks on the two's faces, and she bursts out laughing.

"What?" Amanda and Vaughn ask together.

Sydney fails to explain the humor to their satisfaction. Finally she just laughs again.

"Vaughn, I talked to Amanda at lunch today. I asked her to help us look for my baby," she says.

"Syd," he says, looking at Amanda who finally gets the humor, out of the corner of his eye. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"No. But we can make it work. Vaughn, it's only right."

"Um…I…I want to help," Amanda says, reminding them she's still there.

"Okay," Vaughn surrenders, throwing up his hands. "Why do I get the feeling *I'm* getting the raw end of this deal?"

Sydney and Amanda look at each other, slightly more anxious than before, and laugh.

**************************MEANWHILE***************************************************

In savannah, Georgia, a twenty-one year old woman tucks her baby girl into her crib among an abundance of brand new stuffed animals. She and her husband, Bobby, had planned for this for over a year, but Kassie had only been with them for three months, ever since her first birthday.

"Lizzy, you can't watch her sleep forever," Bobby says from the doorway of the cute pink nursery.

"Sure I can," she says as he joins her beside the ivory crib with the teddy bear mobile.

Bobby wonders again how such a beautiful little girl could be dropped in front of the adoption agency at two weeks old.

******************************************************************************************

Vaughn, Amanda, and Sydney all sit in the living room of the Vaughn's apartment. Lists of adoption agencies, grouped by state, are spread all over the coffee table and floor. Each of them is going through, each taking a state, and calling every agency on the list. They each give the same story: "My friend had a baby a little over a year ago, and she was kidnapped. My friend has reason to believe she was left with an adoption agency. Have there been any unusual cases in the past 15 months or so?"

They had all come up with a list of a few possible places where the baby could be, but none of them looked likely to pan out. Most of them fall into the wrong time period.

After finishing a state with a short list, Amanda grabs another state. After half an hour on that list, she finds one place that looks more likely than some of the others.

"Why do you want to know about unusual adoptions?" the man she's talking to asks suspiciously.

"My friend believes the child's abductor was in your area. That means it's likely that the child was left there," Amanda explains convincingly.

"Okay. I can't give out any names," he warns.

"That's fine."

"About 14 months ago, there was a kid left out front. There was a note left with her, nothing else."

"What did the note say?" Amanda asks, trying desperately to sound only mildly interested.

"It said, 'take care of her for me.' It was signed Laura Bristow. Local authorities looked into it, but nothing ever came from it."

"Thank you. You've been very helpful," Amanda says, hanging up before the man hears Vaughn and Sydney's immediate stream of questions.

"What was that? Did you find her? Where is she?" She can't tell who's asking what.

"There was a baby girl left at this agency. Right time period. There was a note. It was signed by a Laura Bristow." Amanda looks at them intensely. "I think we found her."

"Where? What agency?" Sydney cries.

"Georgia. An agency called Adoption Services, Inc., based in Pavo, Georgia."

Sydney swallows hard.

"What did the note say?" she forces herself to ask.

"Sydney, do you really think…" Amanda starts to say.

"What did it say?" Sydney repeats in a carefully controlled voice.

Amanda sighs.

"It said, 'Take care of her for me.' "

Sydney looks at Vaughn, who has remained silent since his initial outburst.

"Vaughn, we found her!" Sydney squeals, encouraging him to look, *act*, excited.

He nods and smiles slightly.

"Yes. We found her. Now what?" he asks seriously, looking back and forth between Sydney and Amanda.

*************************************************************************************************

Irina Derevko stands in the dark outside the house. It is nearly midnight here. When she hears no more cars going down the road, she makes her way to the lighted window of the now familiar house. She has been here often in the last year. Not always at night, but she's sure she's never been spotted.

At the window she can see the cute young couple with their baby, who's crying. They're boucing her around the room, trying to get her to sleep.

Derevko smiles sadly at the sight.

But it's for her own good, she reminds herself.

*************************************************************************************************

"Bobby, I think there was just someone at that window!" Lizzy cries softly.

"Lizzy, no one is there now. Kassie's safe here. Nothing's going to happen. You're just tired. Why don't you go back to bed? I'll stay up with her," Bobby says.

"No! Bobby, there was someone watching us! She came back again!"

"Liz, I've never seen this mysterious face in the window, but you've seen her three times now. Don't you think there's something wrong with that?"

"May be you're right. But I want Kassie to always be safe with me," Lizzy says softly.

*************************************************************************************************

Amanda sits in her living room at one in the morning. Vaughn has slept restlessly, but at least he's slept. She hasn't, not a wink. She keeps coming back to her husband's question: What now?

She has decided to take the next two weeks to figure out the answer to that. She will give her notice to Kendall first thing in the morning. After the past week, and how *normal* Vaughn has treated it, she realizes she's not cut out for the CIA. She can't do anything like this again. She has decided she will go back to college and finish the psychology degree she abandoned when the CIA recruited her. Anything more than that will have to be figured out in the two weeks.

*************************************************************************************************

Sydney is up late as well. She sits on her bed with the contents of the box spread out, even the ring in it's little box. She just looks at it all, not allowing herself to touch any of it. She looks at it as a test. She finally makes a very painful decision before sweeping it all quickly back into the box.

Sydney catches Vaughn in the parking garage that morning, having sat watching for him.

"We have to talk. Now," she says quietly but firmly.

She takes a breath before she begins, but doesn't give him a chance to respond.

"Vaughn, we have to end this, really end it. You've made a life without me, and I have to live with it. I don't want to ruin it. I have to get on with my life, and leave yours alone. I have to say it's over to do that." She turns quickly, punching the elevator button frantically, desperately hoping there's no one inside.

Vaughn stands dumbfounded, frozen with his mouth hanging open, in the middle of the parking garage.

He knows she's right, she needs to move on. But it hurts to hear her say it so coldly. Even if her eyes didn't reflect her words.

After giving her several minutes to get off of the elevator, he moves slowly toward it, hoping to avoid her for a while at least.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Okay, not as much of a cliffhanger as ya'll are used to from me, but I don't think you'll be too terribly upset about that…

One more thing, I wanted to end it by introducing Kassie, Lizzy, and Bobby, but someone else tried a cliffhanger similar to that and she got a bunch of reviews from people telling her the cliffhanger was extremely predictable…