The RRT had overpowered Carl.

He had offered little resistance. When he saw the black-clad cops, he knew that resistance was futile.

It surprised Elizabeth that Carl hadn't killed himself in a spectacular kamikaze maneuver as the Nameless One had done then. But perhaps this course of action distinguished him from a true psychopath.

Maggie marched with long strides past the cops and the criminal technicians who had gathered in front of the building. It seemed as if the entire Massachusetts police and emergency services had banded together to track down Elizabeth and, in the worst-case scenario, provide her with medical care.

With each step she took, her heart pounded harder against her chest as if it were trying to jump out, only to die at her feet if she was led to a hearse instead of an ambulance and found her wife in a body bag.

She saw that Katherine and Nick were standing a little apart from the others, talking to each other with tense expressions. Katherine had a look on her face that the redhead couldn't place and forced herself to keep breathing when she realized she had been holding her breath.

She saw the looks on the faces of the other cops and techs, and she suspected terrible things.

Then she caught sight of Jane and Maura, the chief's forehead was deeply furrowed, and Maura kept shaking her head, both women showing a solid tension.

Maggie felt her chin begin to tremble as she took giant steps toward the two women. "Elizabeth?" She felt as if she had only whispered her wife's name, but Jane immediately turned to the doctor. "Elizabeth, where is she? Where is my wife?"

Jane took a deep breath and pointed in a direction. "She's there."

Maggie sucked in a sharp breath; this moment felt like a terrible joke; she recognized an ambulance and a hearse right next to it. She needed to find out which of the two vehicles the chief was referring to.

Jane put her hands on Maggie's shoulders and changed the redhead's line of sight. "Elizabeth is right there."

"Oh," Maggie breathed shakily when she saw Elizabeth sitting on the ambulance's footboard and marching toward it with long strides. "Oh."

Elizabeth sat hunched over on the footboard, running her fingers thoughtfully over her forehead as if trying to shoo away from her mind the images that had presented themselves.

She realized someone was coming toward her and straightened up as the silhouette turned out to be her wife's. "Maggie," she breathed in relief.

Maggie stopped directly in front of the detective and stared long and hard at Elizabeth as if to ensure that nothing was wrong with her wife, at least physically.

"Maggie," Elizabeth repeated, sitting up even more.

At that moment, the doctor blinked as if she were finally coming back to reality from her worst imagination. "What were you thinking?" she asked suddenly, giving the detective such a shove with both hands that Elizabeth tipped backward a little. By doing this and asking the question out loud, she drew the attention of the other cops and rescue workers to the two women. She gave Elizabeth another shove as she just let it happen. "What the hell were you thinking, Elizabeth?" she repeated the question louder, and the others turned to watch the action, stopping what they were doing in surprise and fascination.

"You could have died," Maggie said with another shove.

This time Elizabeth stood up jerkily and took Maggie's wrists, frowning deeply as she looked into the doctor's eyes. "I'm okay, Maggie," she said in a calm voice as she skillfully ignored the others who had witnessed the scene. She let her hand slide down Maggie's cheek and smiled a little. "I'm okay," she said, and the redhead took a deep breath, sounding like she was swallowing a sob. "I'm okay, Maggie." She repeated before kissing the doctor. "Everything's going to be okay," she whispered as she rested her forehead against Maggie's.

Katherine watched her sister lovingly place her hand on Maggie's stomach, unaware that the entire team had watched the two of them. Her eyebrows shot up the second she realized what that single gesture meant and glanced at her husband. "Holy shit."

Nick looked at his wife with furrowed brows, and his astonishment was quite evident. He knew that one brief, innocent gesture himself, the one he had made after learning he was going to be a father. "Did you know about this?"

Katherine looked at him with wide eyes and slowly shook her head. "No," she said, overwhelmed.

xxx

Katherine stared at the sky as she sat on her parents' patio, swirling a whiskey glass. "My intern," she said, lost in thought. "I can't believe it. My intern - a serial killer."

Elizabeth sat beside her and breathed in the fresh air before taking a sip from her beer bottle. "We need to check our recruitment criteria sometime."

Katherine took a deep breath. "Once," she sighed, "I should have paid attention."

Elizabeth took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. "You mean you should have paid attention when Carl sat down in the chair, don't you? At the scene of Barbara Walton's murder." The armchair had been placed in front of the dead woman's bed. "Is that what they teach you at the FBI?" Elizabeth had asked Carl then, and he had jumped up as if stung by a tarantula.

Katherine took another breath and nodded slowly, not looking at her sister. "Yes, that's exactly where I should have noticed it," Katherine replied. "That's how his DNA got to the crime scene, where it probably was. He had been sitting there watching the wake at Barbara Walton's house. And none of us could be surprised that there was DNA from him there. Forensics. He knew all that, learned all that. At the FBI, but also at our place. Why did he do it there but not at the other crime scenes?"

Elizabeth took a deep breath and pulled the corners of her mouth down. "Maybe," she said, "because it was his first murder."

Katherine nodded slowly. "Maybe. He probably wasn't that experienced the first time, so he left his DNA at the crime scene. He wanted to eliminate that risk."

The detective turned her head to her sister and looked at the doctor long and hard. "But that's all you noticed?"

Katherine returned the look and slowly shook her head. "No, that's all I noticed, either. Carl so didn't fit the profile of the typical sociopathic serial killer. Many are traumatized and victimized, but here we're dealing with a unique combination." She fell silent, thinking for a few seconds. "The Guardian of the Dead," she said, "was the only one of his kind." She paused again, now looking back at her older sister. "When were you and Maggie planning to tell us she's pregnant, anyway? How long is she pregnant now?"

Elizabeth frowned deeply and twitched her brows briefly, licking her lips and taking a deep breath. She was well aware that these questions would come up. However, she hadn't expected to have to announce this news after her near death. "Shortly after we married, Maggie and I started thinking about expanding our family. I knew Maggie wanted to have her own children at some point; she told me that relatively early in our relationship. She loves Nikki and Ashlyn like they're her daughters, but --"

"It's different from having children of your own," Katherine added as the detective fell silent.

"We sat down with the girls and talked about how they would feel about having another brother or sister," Elizabeth said with a deep frown. "We wanted to involve them in the whole thing and not present them with a fait accompli like Sarah, and I did back then."

"Nikki was too young then to understand what you meant then," Katherine replied with furrowed brows.

"And now they're both old enough to understand what it means to have another child come into our family."

Katherine nodded slowly. "And they were --"

"Less enthusiastic at first," the detective answered the question, smiling a little. "But eventually, the girls became comfortable with the idea; Ashlyn, in particular, was eventually taken with the idea."

"How did you manage to keep Ash from dropping the bomb?"

"A lot of bribery," the detective replied, grinning widely as her sister laughed heartily. "You can't imagine how often she's been on the verge of blowing the whole thing when we'd been here."

Katherine narrowed her eyes with a grin. "You mean whenever you, Maggie, or Nikki wanted to talk to her privately on the spur of the moment?"

"Right then," Elizabeth laughed heartily, nodding in agreement. "Always right then. She's thrilled to be the big sister finally."

Katherine laughed herself and looked at her sister long and hard. "Since when? Since when is Maggie pregnant?"

The detective took a deep breath and raised his brows briefly. "Since two months." She looked at the doctor for a long moment. "She's been pregnant for two months. We didn't say anything because we thought it would take longer for the procedure to be successful. You know how long Sarah and I had to get pregnant with Nikki. And you also know that it's not as easy for Maggie and me to have a baby as it is for you and Nick or Ma and Mom."

The younger woman nodded slowly as she frowned a little. "I'm honestly happy for both of you. Even though you went out of your way to get yourself killed once again, but I'm happy for you and Maggie."

Elizabeth lifted a shoulder. "You know the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

"You don't have to do everything our parents do."

The detective smiled weakly and toasted her sister. "From your lips to God's ear."

Suddenly, Maura poked her head through the patio door and looked closely at both daughters. "Girls, dinner's ready."

Elizabeth stood up in a flash. "I'm already starving."

Maura tucked her chin in surprise at the statement.

Katherine frowned deeply and slowly got up from her chair. "I could understand that comment from your pregnant wife; after all, she is now eating for two --"

"Just shut up," growled the detective, with furrowed brows but with a hint of a smile.

Maura grinned broadly as her daughters re-entered the family home. "On top of that, you must remember that Liz has been eating mostly chips and sandwiches for the past few days," she added.

Elizabeth also rolled her eyes and smiled, even though she knew this statement was not untrue.

"Like mother, like daughter," Katherine continued to tease, and the prosecutor nodded in agreement.

"Like you two get to feed every day in an exemplary manner," Elizabeth muttered, catching Jalen running toward her and practically leaping into her arms with a gasp. "Well, little man."

"Well, I cook for myself at least once a day," Maura replied with the corners of her mouth pulled down.

"Me too," Katherine said with a sly smile. She knew this topic was getting on her sister's nerves. "Or I'll cook ahead for the next day."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the detective growled, aghast. "You two are model 1950s wives."

Maggie looked at her wife questioningly, and Elizabeth rolled her eyes with a smile before placing her nephew in his chair next to Katherine, kissing his head afterward.

Katherine walked over to Nick, standing at the kitchen island, and gave him a fleeting kiss.

Jane stood at the head of the dining table, pausing for a second before sitting in her chair, once actually intended for her late mother, years ago, when she, Maura, Frankie, and Nina had rejoined here after a severe case. Safe and sound, in their safe haven that had been wedged early on by Angela to create some normalcy in a world of human abysses that each of them had faced every day even while she was alive.

"You okay, Ma?" asked Katherine, noticing that the Chief was unusually quiet and thoughtful at that moment.

Jane blinked a few times and smiled after taking a deep breath. "Everything's okay," she said, her gaze shifting to Maggie. "I'm surprised we didn't notice you were pregnant."

Maggie opened her mouth after glancing briefly at her wife to answer the question that hadn't been asked but was still in the room.

But then Maura beat her to it, slapping her wife's arm with a deeply furrowed brow.

"I must confess," Nick said, raising a shoulder, "I didn't notice it either."

Katherine paused suddenly and looked at her son before turning her gaze to her husband. "Nick, you didn't even notice then that I was pregnant even when I was working more at the office and not drinking anymore."

Jane choked on the piece of meat she had shoved into her mouth.

Nikki was about to shove green beans into her mouth and paused. "How can you not notice things like that, please? Especially if you're a detective?"

Nick looked at the teenager for a long moment with furrowed brows. "Kate got pregnant shortly after we were able to convict Wesley Phelps ... And it's not like we didn't work less important cases after that, as far as I can remember --"

"I think I was the first to notice Kate had changed then," Ashlyn replied, furrowing her eyebrows. She was the first to notice that Katherine had changed in ways she couldn't describe in words, even today. "And I'm not a detective, either."

"Well, I'm not a detective in a conventional way. I analyze computer data, and I'm the guy behind the computer."

Ashlyn shifted her sitting position and looked at her uncle with a piercing gaze that closely resembled Elizabeth's. "So you're an analyst, a modern secretary."

Jane grunted into her beer bottle in amusement.

Nick looked at the girl for a long moment and then turned his gaze to his wife. Of course, he knew that his work in BRIC was valued by all the detectives, especially Jane's team. "I think I'm being bullied by my nieces right now."

Katherine grinned broadly and kissed his cheek. "Poor baby," she said before the family burst out laughing.

Jane laughed heartily and looked at Maura as she placed her hand in the Chief's.