Disclaimer: It's theirs, all theirs, except for Anna.

When Anna came downstairs the next morning and went into the kitchen for breakfast, she was surprised to see Alfred alone in the room.

"Morning Alfred. Is Bruce still asleep?" She asked as she sat down at the table.

"Good Morning," he replied. "I don't know if Master Bruce is still sleeping or not. He never came home last night."

Anna was taken aback, that wasn't like Bruce. "Did he call?"

The butler shook his head, and when his eyes met hers, she could see that he was concerned. "No, I haven't heard from him. I waited up for him, but I fell asleep around 3. When I got up this morning I checked his room, and found his bed hadn't been slept in and his bag is still here. I rang his cell phone just a little while ago, but it went straight to voice mail," Alfred answered.

That really wasn't like Bruce. "Rachel drove him down there, maybe she knows where he is. I'll call her," Anna said, heading for the phone as she spoke.

"Why don't we wait awhile? Master Bruce will probably come home this morning and then we'll have bothered Miss Dawes for nothing," Alfred suggested.

Reluctantly, Anna agreed, and sat back down at the table. Alfred served her another bowl of oatmeal. She stared at it, thinking that it was a good thing she liked oatmeal, because she saw a lot of it in her future, at least until she got the use of her left hand back.

Anna picked at her food, not really hungry. She just wanted to know where her brother was. Why wouldn't he have come home? Where else would he have gone? To a hotel, she supposed. But why?

Breakfast was finally over, and she had managed to eat some of her oatmeal. As Alfred started clearing plates, Anna wandered into the library, maybe she could find something in there to distract her for a couple of hours. She found a novel that looked interesting, took it into the family room, and settled on the sofa.

Around 11 o'clock, when Bruce still hadn't come home or called, her worry and impatience got the best of her. Picking up the extension in the family room, she tried Bruce's cell phone again, but all she got was his voice mail, so she left a message.

Anna went back to the kitchen, found the small, personal phone book, and dialed Rachel's home number.

She was relieved when Rachel answered, she had begun to worry that no one was home, and she didn't have another number listed.

"Hi Rachel, it's Anna. How are you?" Anna said politely.

"I'm fine. Are you feeling better? Bruce told me about your accident," Rachel replied.

"Just a little sore, but I'll be fine. Speaking of Bruce, you wouldn't happen to know where he is, would you?" Anna asked, unable to wait any longer.

There was a long pause. "He's not at home?" Rachel inquired, the worry evident in her voice.

"No, he never came home last night, he hasn't called and he's not answering his cell phone. Did you drop him off here last night?" Anna queried, not liking the direction this was going.

There was another long pause on the other end of the line. "No, I didn't. We…had a disagreement, and I left him someplace else," came the hesitant reply.

"Where did you see him last?" The mild alarm that Anna had felt initially was on the rise.

"Down by the docks," Rachel said. Then she continued, "In front of a club. Carmine Falcone's main hangout."

Falcone. Even to a 14-year old who had grown up in the right part of town, that name was a harbinger of evil. Why on earth had Bruce and Rachel been down by the docks, much less anywhere near Falcone's favorite joint?

Rachel's voice cut into Anna's thoughts before she could get too worked up. "Look, Bruce was pretty upset yesterday. Have you checked the hotels downtown? He might have needed some time to himself, and checked into one of them. Or called any of his friends at Princeton? Maybe he's with them."

"Not yet, I wanted to talk to you first. I figured you would know where he was. Bruce doesn't keep a land line at his apartment, and since he lives off campus, and doesn't have a roommate, I'm not sure who to call up there," Anna replied.

"I'm sorry, Anna, I don't know. Do you want me to help you call the hotels?"

Anna thought about it for a moment, then said, "No, that's okay. Alfred and I will take care of it." She said good-bye to Rachel, and went to find Alfred. He was in the library, dusting.

"Rachel doesn't know where he is. Apparently she and Bruce had an argument last night, and the last time she saw him, he was down by the docks, in front of Carmine Falcone's club." Anna informed him.

You had to be quick, and know Alfred well, but Anna was and she did, and so she saw his hand falter, and nearly knock over a small figurine as he dusted it. It was a brief crack in his unflappable manner, but it scared Anna. She had never seen Alfred be anything but completely collected, even in some extreme circumstances.

"She suggested that we call the hotels downtown and see if Bruce is registered at any of them, and call his friends from Princeton. I don't know any of them, though," Anna said.

"Yes, that sounds like the logical next step," Alfred agreed. "But let's call the hotels before we try the college." Based on the conversation he'd had with Bruce the day before the trial, it didn't sound like returning to Princeton would have been a likely destination for the young man. Alfred made a mental note to also call the hospital. It would be farfetched to think that Bruce wouldn't have been recognized, even if he had been brought in without identification. But it wouldn't hurt to check, and he didn't think he'd mention it to Anna.

Alfred put down his dust rag, and headed into the kitchen, with Anna following close behind. They pulled out the yellow pages, consulted the hotel section, and divided it between them.

Two hours later, after contacting all of the hotels in Gotham City, and several more calls to Bruce's cell phone, they came up empty handed. Alfred had quietly phoned the hospital, and to his immense relief, no one matching Bruce's description had been brought in last night, or today. He had managed to avoid mentioning the name Bruce Wayne, but he knew that that small success would only delay the media firestorm that would inevitably ignite once the press found out that Bruce's family was looking for him.

Anna was really worried now. Bruce had plenty of superficial 'friends', society people, but no one that he would go to for a serious problem. No one besides Rachel, and they knew he hadn't been with her. Where he had disappeared only added to the level of concern.

Anna wanted to know what Bruce and Rachel had fought about. She could certainly understand being unsettled by what had happened yesterday, but she would have thought that Bruce would have been relieved by the events. Sure the system had let Chill go, but he had only been a free man for a matter of minutes. True, judging by the fact that the woman who shot Chill had mentioned Falcone, his murder had not been committed out of a desire for justice for Chill's victims, but to keep him from testifying about his former cellmate. But the end result was the same, and justice had been carried out in a round about manner. If Chill hadn't murdered Dr. and Mrs. Wayne, he never would have been in prison at the same time as Carmine Falcone, he never would have gotten the information that had leveraged his early release, and he wouldn't have been murdered the way he was. So if you looked at it from that point of view, you could say that his death was a direct result of his crime, and that seemed like justice to Anna.

But what had caused their argument? Had it been something personal? That was a possibility. Bruce and Rachel had been friends for a long time; there was certainly chemistry between them, and Anna suspected that her brother wouldn't mind them being more than just friends. That hardly seemed like a topic that would have come up yesterday, after the hearing. Whatever the fight had been about, Rachel wasn't talking, so until Bruce turned up, that question would have to go unanswered.

With a sigh, Anna laid the list of hotels on the coffee table, and went into the kitchen. Alfred was there making tea, as he always did in times of distress.

She took a seat at the table just as Alfred was setting the tray down. "So, does a good cup of tea cure everything?" Anna asked in a half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood.

Alfred smiled. "Just about," he replied.

Anna sipped her tea, fighting down the panic that threatened to rise up and choke her. Bruce wasn't at a hotel, he wasn't with Rachel, and he wasn't home. It was possible that he had headed back to school, but not very likely.

"Miss Cartwright phoned while I was making the last of the calls on my list," Alfred said. "I told her that you were rather busy, but that I would pass along the message."

Anna sighed. Maggie Cartwright was her best friend, had been since the second grade. But calling her right now would involve a lot of explaining, and truthfully, Anna just didn't feel up to it. "Thanks Alfred. I'll call her later," she said.

Her tea finished, Anna wandered upstairs. She had come up here with the intention of changing her clothes and going out to see the horses. But as she reached the door to her bedroom, she paused. Even though the odds of Bruce suddenly returning to school without telling anyone were slim, it wouldn't hurt to see if he had any phone numbers for his friends in his suitcase.

She slipped down the hall, and into her brother's room. Bruce's suitcase was sitting at the foot of the bed, and she set it on the bed so she could look through it.

As she unzipped the bag, guilt washed over her. What if this was all just a coincidence? Bruce could come home any minute with a perfectly plausible explanation for his whereabouts and she would have invaded his privacy for nothing, and he would be angry with her. Well, she'd just tell him to blow it out his ear, it was his fault for not calling.

With that thought in mind, she whipped the lid to the bag up. A disordered array of clothing greeted her. I guess I'll start at the top, she decided as she opened the pocket in the lid of the case. But there was nothing useful there, only Bruce's return train ticket, and a silk necktie. Pulling the ticket out, she stared at it. The fact that it was here, and Bruce was not, seemed to indicate that he hadn't returned to school. Of course, he could have easily purchased another fare, if he had wished to leave suddenly, but why would he have done that? All he had to do was come home, grab his bag, and leave. No one would have stopped him.

After replacing the ticket in the pocket, Anna systematically rummaged through the pile of t-shirts, and other items of clothing. She pulled a pair of blue jeans out, accidentally unfolding them, and a small, plastic box tumbled to the ground.

There were no markings on the box, and the contents weren't visible through the opaque material. Anna opened it, and tilted it forward, spilling the contents into her palm. Bright, brass cylinders, flat on one end and forming a blunt point on the other filled her hand. It took a minute for her to identify the objects, and when she did, she had to resist an impulse to throw them down. Very carefully, she put them back in the box and placed it back in the suitcase.

Bullets. What on earth was Bruce doing with a box of bullets in his suitcase? What was he doing with them, period? Bruce hated guns, understandably so. Guns, she thought, if he had bullets there should be a gun here somewhere.

A thorough search of the suitcase failed to turn up a gun, or any of the phone numbers she had come here in search of initially. She put everything back in the bag, more or less how she had found it, including the bullets. After replacing the suitcase to its original location, she sat down on the bed, her mind whirling with this new development.

There was no reason she could think of that anyone would have a box of bullets without a gun. Since she hadn't found the weapon, and the box wasn't full, she had to assume that when Bruce had left for the hearing, he had taken a loaded gun with him. This was an unsettling development. What was he intending to do with it?

A/N - Never fear, the next chapter is nearly done. Yes I realize that it's not a cliffhanger, since we all know what Bruce was doing with the gun, but it's news to Anna.

To all of the kind people who have left such lovely reviews: Thank you soooooo much! I see now why all the other authors crave reviews, they're addictive! Which is not say that I don't want more, so please review! Thanks so much.