Short Fuze, Stunner, Flash and Lifeline had stopped at the information desk just long enough to find out that Cadence was in the ICU. When they step off the elevator, Lifeline holds his hand up for them to proceed cautiously so that they don't wake anyone up. They turn the corner and find their teammates, sacked out in some apparently very uncomfortable positions.

Taffy reaches in her backpack and pulls out a disposable camera, swings around the corner, and quickly snaps a picture of Hawk and Grand Slam both asleep in the waiting room of the ICU, and then swings quickly back around the corner. All three guys with her tell her that they want copies of the photo.

"Blackmail purposes, huh?" she asks them. All three nod. "Okay."

They find themselves somewhere to sit and they all wind up playing a board game until Grand Slam wakes up. The first thing he sees is a pair of denim encased legs. He follows them up until he realizes the identity of the legs' owner, none other than Taffy Carantini, better known as Stunner.

"What the hell are you doing here, Taffy?" James asked, still more than half asleep.

"I don't know, Grand Slam, it's your dream." The rest of the group laughs softly.

"Where the hell did you come from?" James mumbled, still more than half asleep.

"Um...the base?" Tony answered. "Duh."

"Oh yeah. I seem to remember Hawk saying something about that." He turns over and goes back to sleep. All of a sudden, he sits bolt upright, wide-awake. "You're here."

"Well, yeah, genius, I do believe we are." Stunner told him. "We've been here for a couple of hours, but we didn't want to wake you or Hawk up."

"Thanks. For letting us sleep, and for showing how much you care about Cadie. She's likely to be moved to a private room tomorrow, but for tonight, she'll still be here in the ICU."

"So what happened?" Short Fuze asked, curious.

James heaved a sigh and stretched. "I had taken her out on my bike for a little picnic at the park by the lake, and while we were there, somebody ambushed us. She was the target, which leads me to believe that it may have been someone in her family. I still can't believe I didn't notice that we had a tail until I was thinking about it afterwards. I was so naive to think that we were safe here because as far as any of us knew, she had no family here." He looks around at the stunned faces of the group and continues, "Well, anyway, we were sitting there, relaxing-"

"Cadie, relaxing?" Stunner asked in shock.

"Yeah, I know, hell froze over. Anyway, we were sitting there and her cell phone rang. When she answered, she got really pale, like she'd seen a ghost or something. She jumped up and started looking around. Because of her reaction, I had an idea about who was on the phone. I took it from her and confronted the person. The first shot rang out and hit her in the arm. She told me it was just a flesh wound, which it was. Only a graze. The second shot was all my fault. I started taunting the person and that was when the second shot came, hitting her in the chest."

"How bad is it?" Lifeline inquired, concerned.

"It looks a lot worse than it really is. For all the damage the bullet did, it completely missed any vital organs, and according to the doctor, it also missed her collarbone by centimeters. Nobody knows why, it just did. He says that she may never have full use of that arm again if the tendons and muscles don't heal perfectly. If she still lives up to her name, I don't think we'll have much of a problem with that. She's a very lucky little girl."

"Now, we need to form a plan on what we're going to do." Stunner declared, flatly.

"None of this goes any farther than the ones involved. It would embarrass Cadie big time if everybody knew. The thing that's been weighing heavily on her these past few weeks is her past. That legal letter that she got about four months ago, when she punched through the machine shop wall, was a notification that her parents and the rest of her family were disavowing her. She literally has no family, except for us, now. I saw the letter the other night. It quite simply said that they wanted nothing to do with her, that they were not acknowledging her. That she wasn't good enough to be a member of their family. The only things she owns are the things in her quarters on the base."

"Um, James?" Stunner queried, tremulously.

"What?" he snapped.

"She doesn't even have that anymore. Somebody firebombed our quarters a couple of days ago. We lost everything."

"So now all she has is what she brought with her here to Wisconsin?"

"Pretty much."

"Damn. And just after the bomb that took out the rest of her things in the lab just before we left. She's not going to be able to handle this news anytime soon. Let's wait until we absolutely have to tell her before we clue her in. She doesn't need this stress added on to the amount she's got to deal with already."

Looking at each face of the Joes in the waiting room, he was stunned to feel the rage emanating off of them. All of the pieces fit now. So that was the reason she worked so hard. She thought that they would accept her only if she worked hard enough.

"Well anyway, her mother sold her to men as a child no more than four or five, at least until she was seven or eight, a-"

"That vicious bitch!" Surprised by the language, everybody looked at Lifeline in shock. "Anyone who would do that to an innocent child like she must have been..." he trailed off, but they all knew what he wanted to say.

"My sentiments exactly. Anyhow, this went on for a few years. Then the woman sold her to, how did she put it? Oh, yeah. A guy that lived down the street from her as a sex slave. The man brought her back to her family when she was ten or so and her body had begun to develop. He didn't want that, and her mother had never wanted her in the first place, so she threw her out onto the streets, where she learned to fight and survive." He shook his head. "She said that when she got old enough, she joined the military because it had to be easier than living on the streets. Guaranteed food and shelter? She jumped at the chance. And that, she told me, was the reason that she could eat B.A.'s cooking and live."

"I always knew there was something different about her, and was wondering why his food never upset her," Lifeline mused.

"That explains her tendency to put her back up against the wall when she's sleeping, too." Stunner added. Everyone else nods.

"She molded her back to me the other night as if I could protect her from all her pain and whatever wanted her dead, which I would have with my last breath," James vowed.

"I don't believe you, James Barney. I thought you really cared about her, and here you go sleeping with her at the first opportunity. I hope you had fun, because I don't think it'll happen again," Stunner hissed at him in anger.

"That's right. I SLEPT with her. That's all that happened. We slept. She explained to me why she was such a loner and why she is so terrified of people. I was trying to be there for her, and we spent the night in my old treehouse, just talking until she fell asleep. I didn't want to try anything even remotely resembling love, because I'd have put her on the run." James sighed, heavily. "She was the one that wanted me to hold her. She kissed me a couple of times, and we fell asleep in the corner of the clubhouse. That's it. Those nightmares that usually plague her didn't make an appearance, and she said that she thought it was because I was there. I had made her feel safe for the first time in God alone knows how long was how she put it."

"I'm...I'm sorry, James. I tend to get a bit defensive because I know how scared she is of people," Stunner apologized.

"Apology accepted, Taffy. I knew that you were going to react that way." He holds up the chain with the charm. "I finally got the courage the other night to give this to her. You all know what it means."

Stunner grins, and the guys jokingly groan.

"It means that you've finally claimed her as your woman, James. Congratulations," Tony said.

"Her split second reactions and heightened hearing and sight must have been the result of her years growing up on the streets. No wonder nobody can sneak up on her, not even Snake Eyes, and believe me, he's tried." Short Fuze snarled.

"Boy, has he," Lifeline agreed, chuckling. "Cadie used to let him get to a certain point and then call him on it. He was testing her, or so he said. I think he was embarrassed."

"Let's get back to the problem at hand, guys," James interrupted. "What are we going to do about this attempted murder?"

Even in her dreams or knowing beyond doubt that there was a group of people who truly loved her and cared about her, the small young woman got no peace. Every time she closed her eyes, her mind went back to her past, and remembering why she was such a loser and why no one could love her.

The mental and emotional wounds that she thought were healed tore open and poured their pain back into her psyche. She thrashes in her sleep, threatening to pull out some of the stitches in her arm and chest. Tears slide down her cheek.

A nurse hears the commotion and comes to check it out. She runs back to the nurses' station and calls the doctor in charge, asking him if it was okay if she gave her a sedative. According to him, it was. She rushes back to the room and gives it to her.

Meanwhile, out in the waiting room, Hawk had awoken and was just as deeply incensed by what James had told the others.

"How could any mother do that to her own child? Now I understand why she lives by the belief, 'trust no one- no matter how trustworthy they may be'."

"Or how much you believe they're supposed to love you, General," Taffy added. "I don't think that, outside of the Joe unit, that she's ever known anyone who hasn't stabbed her in the back at some point or another."

"What about her father? Have any of you ever managed to find out anything about him?" Short Fuze asked.

"Eric, I know exactly what happened to that jerk. I also know about almost every blow that poor child in there has taken, and even where and when she got that horrible scar on her face, because I was there. You see, there's a reason Cadie and I got along so well when I joined the team, and why it worked out so perfectly that we became roommates. Because, you see, Cadie and I are cousins. Her mom and my mom were sisters," Taffy revealed.

James looked at her in disbelief. "Cousins? Hmm, how'd she manage to keep me from finding that out?"

"It's not very hard. Not very many people know that we're even related. She told you when she found out it was me that was joining that she had known me when she was growing up, right?"

"Well, yeah, I think that's how she put it. Huh, cousins. No wonder you can read each others' minds," James stated.

"Pretty much," she told him.

"So, give us a little background on her family. Maybe we can work out a plan of attack."

"Well, to start with, her name isn't Cadence Tolliver, or at least it wasn't until she changed it when she got into the military. It took me a long time to track her down and get ahold of her. Her given name is Melanie Stewart. Her mother was and possibly still is, into drugs. She's pretty much quit drinking as bad as she used to, but she still drinks a good bit. Cadie's younger brother is a drug user and dealer, and her youngest brother is a doofus."

"Her father left before she was born, much to the chagrin of her mother. He slept with her only once just to get her to quit stalking him. When Cadie was born, her mother transferred all of the rage she had at her father to her. I know for a fact that she used to put vodka into her bottles as an infant, in an attempt to keep her quiet," Taffy told them.

"Talk about a happy baby!" Eric Friestadt, Short Fuze, exclaimed, jokingly.

"No wonder she doesn't drink," Lifeline mused, "The only reason she ever gave me was that if she did drink, it would quite possibly kill her."

"I've got an idea, it might seem to funny to you guys, but I think it would be right up Cadie's alley," Flash stated. "It seems like something she would do."

"Well don't just sit there, tell us!" James ordered.

Flash chuckled. "We could use the old fashioned fake out- but with a twist. We could let it slip that Cadie died in surgery, and then, when her family shows up for the funeral, she could confront them."

"You know, that just might work, Tony! Cadence always said that that would be one heck of a practical joke," Taffy exclaimed. "We could have her in a coffin and then when her family goes to "pay their respects", she could sit up and start bawling them out."

All the team members laughed. James stood up to stretch. "I'd have to run that one by her. It seems like something we could and would do."

"I'm all for it. And when the reactions are done, we'll arrest the person who did this to our little buddy," Hawk agreed.

"That's what I was thinking," declared Flash.

"If Cadie agrees, I say let's do it," James affirmed.

As the group huddled and planned, other visitors start to filter in. Thankfully, the Joes are over in the corner and when the nurses let the visitors know that visiting hours had begun, the group decides that James and Taffy should be the first ones to go see Cadie. When they get there, she is awake and propped up in the bed, sitting up.

As they walk in, they can tell that Cadie has had a bad night. She is deathly pale. Taffy walked over to her.