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"Madam Secretary…"

Bess looked up from her desk, her mind taking time to adjust from the mounds of information she'd been reading for the last few minutes…

"Blake?"

Blake walked in, and said, "Ma'am, you wanted me to keep you appraised of the FBI's investigation?

Bess nodded, looking at her watch, realizing it'd been three hours since she'd last looked up from the pages. Her neck felt the tension, as she rubbed it and asked, "And?"

Blake shook his head, quietly saying, "They've had no leads. They're still…"

Bess stopped listening after that. It'd been three days.

"Thanks, Blake." Then she looked up at him again, and said, "Blake, when was the last time you went home?"

He stumbled over words, "Ma'am, you know it's fine. I'm fine…"

She gave him the "tell me now" look.

"Last time you went home."

"Three days?" She shook her head in amazement. "Blake, please go home. Get some rest. I'll call you if there's any development."

He took a nervous step toward her desk. "With due respect, ma'am, you haven't been home either. You also need some rest."

Three days. Henry had come by a few times. He said the kids were shaken up, but ok. It was better for him to stay home with them. And he'd begged her to come home.

But. She couldn't. She needed to be close to the action. Right here where if any developments happened, she'd be ready to go get Emma.

"That'll be all, Blake." She said with a cold tone. "Go home. Rest."

She knew her tone told Blake that the discussion was over.

Bess leaned back in her chair, stretching her neck. She couldn't go home. It was too hard to be there without her daughter. And Henry. She wanted Henry. But she also couldn't get over how to explain to him that this was probably happening because somehow someone found out about Emma's father.

12 YEARS BEFORE.

xxxxxxxxxx

"You're what?"

The weight on Bess' shoulders just increased as she sat across the table watching her husband realize what had happened.

"You're pregnant?"

Bess nodded.

Henry's voice increased in volume. "Pregnant? But you JUST got back!"

Again, she nodded, looking at her hands in front of her on the table.

The chair squeaked against the floor as he pushed away from the table and stood to his feet. "You can't mean that! You're saying that…"

Bess looked up, and saw him pacing back and forth along the kitchen floor that was littered with Jason's trucks and Allison's dress-up clothes. She tried to help him understand, "Henry, I know it was wrong… I couldn't hide it from you…"

He sarcastically responded, "Yeah, that's not some honor code thing, Elizabeth. I'm obtuse sometimes, but I think I'd begin to notice when you had a baby. That gives you NO moral high ground."

She just nodded again.

Then came the question she'd been dreading. "So who was it, Elizabeth?"

She swallowed hard. And twisted her fingers back and forth over and over.

"Huh? Who was it?"

She took a deep breath. "Conrad."

Then it was silent. And she looked up softly to see Henry's hands clenched into fists. And him staring at the ground.

"Henry… it was a mistake. A big one. And I'm so sorry. But it means nothing to me now. I don't…"

"Conrad? Conrad Dalton? Your BOSS?"

She nodded.

"Did he pressure you into it?"

Oh the lies she could tell. She could make it easily go away.

She shook her head. "It was one drunken night… and I was… unsure of what you meant about when I came home. And…"

"Oh, of course, blame me."

She stood up, and quickly tried to patch things up. "No, that's not what I meant. This was all my fault. I was just saying that was what I was thinking… or not thinking because of the alcohol."

"So I wait for a year for my wife to come home, watching our children grow up without their mother for a year because this is what she felt was her duty to her country."

Bess had been over it in her head over and over again – how he'd react.

"And I realize that just maybe my wife was the only person who could do the job in Baghdad. That I was being selfish wanting her to stay home. And that was never what our marriage was based on."

Bess felt tears cloud her vision as she watched him walk to the kitchen counter cluttered with dirty kids dishes and cups…

"And then… she comes home, pregnant with someone else's baby?"

And in one swift motion, he pushed all the dishes onto the floor, clearing the cabinet in anger. Glass shattering, plastic cups rolled everywhere.

Bess shuddered at the sound and the pain that came in the weeping as he leaned over the sink.

"Daddy?"

Allison's call was accompanied with a cry of fright from Jason.

Henry hung his head, and called upstairs, "Go back to bed."

"Daddy, are you ok?!" Came Stevie's call.

Bess stood up and said, "I'll go put them back to bed." Giving him some time would be…

"No."

She looked at him as he turned towards her, anger clouding his pain. "Henry, I don't mind. I'll go…"

"Go."

Bess questioned, "What?"

"I don't want you with the kids right now." He wiped his eyes before going to the stairs, "I can't see you right now. I need to think about this. And seeing you is…" He walked up the stairs, "too painful. Go away."

"Henry, please, this has nothing to do with my kids…"

Henry's face hardened as he spat out, "You left them for a year. Give me some time to think about this. Don't be here when I come back down."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Bess wiped the tears from her eyes as she went to the closet and grabbed her running clothes. As she changed, she questioned her aversion to going home at this moment. She knew Henry didn't feel this way now. She knew they'd worked through it. But that first night at the hotel alone had engrained into her mind that she'd made a mistake.

Perhaps she was banishing herself from home. To protect everyone else from her feelings.

She needed to get out. So she took a run. Running. Her mind moving through all the parts of her daughter's kidnapping with each step in the cold air.

The cameras had been hacked. Hacked so well that they couldn't find the footage.

No trace of her on any toll booth, street, or police cameras.

No sightings of her anywhere.

And no increase in terrorist chatter. Nothing. Not one thing.

And no one had taken credit.

What had happened? If it wasn't for the cameras being hacked, they'd think it could've just been someone who didn't matter at all – an abduction – or even a random murder.

But there was nothing. Nothing.

As she stopped to catch her breath, she watched Mark, the head agent, come over to her. "Ma'am, Russell Jackson on the…"

Bess grabbed the phone out of his hand and breathlessly said, "What?"

"The president just received a message."