AN: when I change locations within one scene (namely the search for Richie) I used to separate it. Got it? Good! Here we go!

AN2: More chaps coming. not done yet! if you can't get a review through, please send it to

"Anyone find anything?" Bryan asked anxiously as he, Judith, Collin and Jake gathered in the living room.

"Not in the garage."

"Not in the basement."

"Not upstairs."

"Not downstairs."

"Where is he?" Judith wondered. "Are all the bikes here?"

"I'll go look," Jake volunteered.

"Where's Richie's file?" Judith asked. "Where did you put it, Bryan?"

"In the office, with all the others. Why?"

"There was a business card in there. For the people that he used to work for. Maybe he went there."

"I'll go call. They can at least be on the look out for him." Bryan went into the office and found Richie's file. He dialed the number on the business card for MacLeod and Noel Antiques.

"MacLeod," a voice groggily answered.

"Is this Duncan MacLeod?" Bryan asked.

"Yes. Who is this?"

"My name is Bryan MacCaffrie. I'm Richie Ryan's foster father."

"Is anything wrong?" Duncan asked.

"Not really," Bryan answered playing with the phone cord. "But he isn't with you by any chance?"

"No. Is he missing?"

"He's not in his room. We can't find him. Do you know where he might be?"

"He might be on his way here," Duncan admitted. "I have a few other ideas, too. Look, give me your address. We'll leave him a note here to call you and see if we can't find him on the way to your place."

"Do you see anything?" Duncan asked as he drove slowly down the streets toward the MacCaffries' home. They had already checked the dugouts where he had found Richie that first night.

"No one is out here," Tessa said. "It's freezing."

"He's somewhere."

"It's a big city, Duncan. He's only one boy. He could be anywhere."

Collin and Jake rode their bikes down the street to the north of their own.

"Man, what a night to run away. Couldn't he at least give us a chance?" Jake groaned. "I mean, he was only there for a few hours."

"Hey, he's nervous. Maybe you should give him a chance," Collin said. "Let's check the bike path."

They turned their bikes along the small path that wove its way through the neighborhood.

Judith drove up and down the alleyways peering into all the driveways and side yards.

"Where are you, Richie?"

Bryan jumped when there was a soft knock on the front door. He threw it open, to reveal and young, disheveled couple.

"Mr. MacLeod?" Bryan asked.

"Duncan. Is he here?"

Bryan sighed as he stepped aside for them to get in. "No. I was hoping he was with you."

"We didn't see him on the way. Where all have you looked?" Tessa asked.

"All over the house. Judith has one of the cars and I have two boys out on bikes. We're letting the younger ones sleep."

"Where can we look?" Tessa offered. "We'll stay until he's found."

Bryan sighed again. "We have Tamara on the look out. If we don't find him in another hour, we're going to call the police."

"I'm sure that won't make him run," Duncan said sarcastically. "Our best bet is that he's headed to our place. Why don't Tessa and I take a back route home. And we'll call when we make it back. If he's still not here, we'll try something else."

"All right," Bryan agreed. "Here's our number." He scribbled it on a piece of paper laying on the table. "If he's there when you get back, don't bring him home; we'll come get him."

"Of course," Tessa agreed. "He's somewhere. Someone will find him."

"Thank you. I'll call you if he shows up."

Duncan and Tessa set back out to search.

. . . . . .

"No, thank you, Duncan," Bryan said into the phone twenty minutes later. "I'm about to call the police. This is getting ridiculous. I'll call you when we find him. Thank you again. Yes, bye."

"No sighting," Jake announced coming into the front door with Collin right behind him. "We looked all over the neighborhood and froze our butts off."

Bryan sighed. "Alright, thank you for helping, boys. Go on back to bed. I'm going to call the police when Judith gets back."

He had begun to pace the floor when he heard someone behind him. "Judi-Richie?"

Richie stood in the entrance to the living room, wrapped in a blanket, a sleepy look on his face. "What's goin' on?" he asked.

"Where have you been?" Bryan asked.

Richie paused. "In bed."

"Sit down." Richie did as he was told. "Where were you?"

"I already told you, in bed. I woke up, heard someone down here and wanted to know what was going on."

"You want to know what was going on?" Bryan exploded. Richie jumped and shrunk back into the couch. "I've been up for hours on the phone with half the city trying to figure out where you had gone off to. You weren't in your bed, we looked. Now where were you?"

"I was outside!" Richie admitted quickly. "Honest, I was in the tree house. I couldn't sleep so I went out back to get some air and I put on my headphones and I musta fell asleep. I didn't do anything wrong! I swear, I didn't!"

"You were in the tree house?" Bryan asked.

"Yeah."

"This whole time we've been worried sick about you, trying to figure out where the hell you had run off to and you were just outside in the backyard?"

"I'm in trouble, aren't I?" Richie asked, quietly.

"Oh yeah. I know in your last home you got away with a lot..."

"I didn't get away with anything!"

"Well, I know that things were inconsistent there. That's not how we run things here. Here you follow the rules. When you're told you have an eleven o'clock bed time, you're in bed by eleven o'clock. That means under the covers, lights out, no little trips to the back yard. You understand?"

Richie concentrated on the floor. "Yes, sir."

"You had us worried half to death! We had no idea where you were!" Bryan continued yelling. "We didn't know if you were hurt, or in trouble, or worse! All we knew was you weren't where you were supposed to be!"

"I'm sorry," Richie whimpered.

"Rich..." Bryan reached out and put his hand on Richie's shoulder.

"No!" Richie screamed and jerked away. "Don't touch me! I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Richie."

"Leave me alone! I didn't do anything wrong!" Richie yelled. He jumped to his feet and tried to runaway and ended up cornering himself behind a recliner. "Don't touch me!" he begged. "Please, don't hurt me. I'll do whatever you want!"

"Richie, calm down," Bryan soothed. "It's okay."

"No! Don't! Please, Jonathan, leave me alone!" Richie pushed Bryan away and ran to the fireplace. "Stay away from me!" He grabbed the fire poker. "I swear I'll do it! Leave me alone!"

"Richie," Bryan put his hands up and backed away. "Put that down. You're going to hurt someone."

"No!" He swung the iron poker.

"Richie, put that down! Now!"

"Bryan?" Judith asked from the front door. "What's going on?"

"He's having a flashback. We have to get the fire poker away from him."

"Richie," Judith said softly. "Richie, listen to me." She slowly approached him. "It's Judith. Everything's okay. You can put that down."

"No! He's gonna hit me! Tell him I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Richie, no one said you did. We were worried about you. We couldn't find you. We didn't know where you were or what had happened. Now put that down. You don't want to get hurt do you?"

"He will! He'll hit me if I put it down!"

"Richie, please."

"Stay away!" he screamed swinging the poker.

Bryan came up from behind him and threw grabbed his arms. "Richie! Snap out of it!"

"Lemme go!" Richie tried to swing the poker.

"Get that away from him!" Bryan yelled.

"What's going on?" a forth voice asked.

"Collin, get out of here," Judith ordered. She grabbed the fire poker from a momentarily distracted Richie.

"No!" he screamed. "Let me go! Please! Don't!"

Judith put her hand over his mouth to stifle him. "Richie, Richie, look at me. You're okay. No one here is going to hurt you." Richie looked up at her, tears in his eyes. "Do you know where you are?" He nodded. She moved her hand. "You're okay. Bryan, let him go." She reached out and Richie grabbed her around the waist and buried his head in her shoulder. "There you go," she whispered rubbing his head with one hand and rubbing his back with the other. "Just let it all out. Everything's okay now."

Bryan put his hand on her shoulder, silently taking his leave, taking Collin with him. "Let's do damage control with the boys. Just tell them everything is okay, no one is hurt and to stay in their rooms and go back to bed."

"Sure."

Judith held onto Richie for over half and hour as he cried into her shoulder. Slowly he pulled away, sniffling and whipping at his cheeks.

"There we go," she whispered letting him go, but still running her fingers through his hair. "I think we need to have a little talk."

"I'm sorry, Judith," Richie said, hoarsely. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone."

"You didn't," she assured him. "But you sure gave us a scare."

"I didn't mean to fall asleep out there. I just needed some space."

"I understand that. But that wasn't what I was talking about. I want you to tell me what happened just now. What was going on?"

"I don't know. It's all jumbled up."

"Can you just tell me what you remember? Maybe we can make sense out of it together."

Together they sat on the floor in front of the fireplace and talked out what had happened from Richie's prospective. They figured out that Bryan yelling at him and then reaching for him was what set off the flashback. When Bryan had reached for him, Richie had assumed he was going to hit him and when he got chased into the corner he had panicked and saw Jonathan, not Bryan, trying to coax him out into the room.

"What are we going to do about this?" Judith asked after they had talked through it all.

"I don't know."

"Well, the easiest way to avoid getting yelled at is to stay out of trouble. But, let's face it, a seventeen-year-old boy living in a house with seven other boys is going to get into some kind of trouble. So what are we going to do?"

"You yell at me?" Richie suggested.

"It's a possibility, but what if I'm not home. What then?"

"I don't know."

"Well, that will be something we'll have to think about. We need to come up with some sort of solution for this, because next time someone could get hurt. And I know that wasn't your intention. You were just trying to defend yourself, but next time we might not get so lucky."

"Okay."

"So, is there anything else you want to talk about? Girls, sports, cars, anything?" she offered.

"Not really."

"Okay then." She stood up and gave Richie a hand up as well. "Why don't you go upstairs and wash your face and get cleaned up. I'll be up in a few minutes to check on you, okay?"

Richie nodded. "Okay."

. . . . . .

Judith decided that she and Richie should talk three times a week at least. So, they set up a time when the boys were at school to talk and work through his anger, aggression, resentment and any other negative feelings before they manifested themselves in another violent out burst.

Their talks really seemed to help and Richie adjusted to life at the MacCaffries rather quickly. In just a few weeks time, he could be found in the middle of a dog pile in the backyard, wrestling for the remote, or fighting over whether a pitch was a strike or not. He even warmed up nicely to Bryan, who did his best to keep his distance unless Richie instigated any sort of physical contact. There were a few nightmares, but other than that everything was just fine.

He seemed genuinely happy...until the trial started to be brought up. He had to go to meetings with his lawyer, which he found very unpleasant. He didn't like having to divulge every little thing that happened to him. He didn't like that Judith and Tamara were both there to hear every detail. And he didn't like that all the boys at the house could tell what was going on. They'd already figured out he had a court date.

"If you end up here, at one point or another, you'll have a court date," Collin explained when Richie asked how everyone figured it out. "Sometimes it's a custody hearing, sometimes it's suing your parent, sometimes it's to see if you're going to end up in juvie."

"What about you?" Richie asked. "Sorry," he immediately backpedaled. "I don't need to know. It's none of my business."

"Mine was to see if my mom was a fit mother. Obviously she lost," Collin told him.

"I'm sorry, man." Richie sat down on his bed.

"Don't be. She was crazy." Collin sat on his across from Richie.

"Really?"

"Yeah. She thought the government was spying on us."

"A lot of people think that. And if you're a foster kid, you know that."

Collin smiled. "Let me put this into prospective. We didn't have a phone or a TV or a radio. We had a generator so that there were no wires to tap. She searched the house from top to bottom everyday looking for microphones. She used to hide me under the bed for days at a time. She was a nut case. They don't even think I was her real kid."

"Like what, she kidnapped you?"

"I don't know. I remember doing a DNA test when I was nine but they said they were 'inconclusive'. I think they're still working on it."

"Wow." They sat in silence for a while until Richie blurted out: "My foster father beat me up."

"Really?" Collin asked. He had noticed the odd marks on Richie' back, but had never mentioned them.

"Yeah, pretty bad."

"That sucks. So he's on trial?"

"Yup... you aren't gonna tell anyone, are you?"

"No. Around here, we don't talk about each others' pasts. Your secret's safe."

Richie nodded. "Thanks."

. . . . . .

"Put this over your head," Judith said, handing Richie a coat.

"What?" Richie asked, looking at Tamara in the front seat of the car.

"It's so people can't take pictures of you," Tamara explained. "Unless you want the whole city to know who you are."

Richie did as he was told as the car drove past the front of the courthouse and a pack of news crews and tabloid photographers rushed up to the street yelling questions and taking pictures of the car.

"We're almost there," Judith said encouragingly as she put her arm around his shoulders. "When the car stops, I'll get out first and then come let you out. Don't get out on your own. They have a back entrance set up for us and no one should be able to see you, but just in case, keep yourself covered, okay?"

Richie nodded under the jacket.

"Okay..." The car pulled to a stop. "Here we go."

Richie heard two car doors open and close then someone opened the door next to him.

"Come on out," he heard Tamara say.

He struggled his way out of the back seat, which was not easy to do with a jacket over his head and the two women escorted him into the courthouse.

"We're all clear."

Richie took the jacket off his head and followed Tamara and Judith as they were escorted to the judge's chambers to await the start of the trial. They had been alone in the dark cherry wood room for twenty minutes when Mr. Marshall, his lawyer, came in.

"Hey, Richie," Mr. Marshall greeted. "How are you feeling?"

Richie shrugged. "Okay, I guess."

"We're scheduled to start in about fifteen minutes. I know we've been through this, but I want to just go over all this one more time."

"Okay."

"You will be taking the stand as a witness, but not until the very last day of testimony. When you are on the stand, I want you to be perfectly honest and if you can stomach it, as graphic as you can be about what he did. We really need these people to understand exactly what happened. I'm going to ask you questions as plainly as I can, but the defense will probably try to twist your words to make what happened a much smaller deal than it was. They are going to try and make you look like a problem child, bring up your arrest record, your school records, your grades, anything to make you look bad. I'm not sure what angle they're going to take.

But the way I see it, they have two choices: deny that Mr. Cooper laid a hand on you and tell the jury that you could have gotten the bruises from gang fights and the like or acknowledge minimal abuse and say it was a last effort to discipline an unruly kid. What I'm going to do is make you as innocent and defenseless as possible. That means I'll be talking about how small you were at the time, how weak physically and how dependant you are. It's going to be the angel versus demon child. I need you to be the angel while in court. You sit still, don't talk out of turn, be polite to a fault, be soft spoken and as innocent as you can muster. If you feel the need to say something, you tell me and I'll do all the talking for you. You got it?"

Richie processed all the information. "I think so."

"Good." He gave him a good natured slap on the shoulder. "We all know this is in the bag. The only deliberation will be to decide a sentence."

Richie nodded.

"Are you going to be okay, Richie?" Judith asked. "You think you can handle all this?"

"Yeah. If he gets out, he can do it to another kid and then that'd be my fault," Richie said. "I want him behind bars. If I have to play the runt of the litter to do it, I will."

"Richie," Tamara cut in. "None of this is your fault. You don't hold any responsibility for his actions."

"I have to put him in jail to stop him from hitting another kid," Richie insisted. "I know what I'm doing."

Just then, the back door to the chambers opened and the court bailiff walked in. "Mr. Marshall, they're ready in the courtroom."

They all got up and filed into the courtroom to take their seats. Richie waved slightly to Duncan and Tessa who had taken seats right behind him.

"We're proud of you, Rich," Duncan whispered.

"We're right behind you," Tessa added with a wink.

"All rise," the bailiff announced. "Court is now in session, the honorable Judge Wilson Keenan presiding...."