A/N: I'm back. Please don't hate me lol, I know I'm very late, but writer's block is real and hopefully, updates will be more frequent. This was a super hard chapter to write but it's finally done! I know! I know it's a short one but I promise the next chapter will be longer. For some reason, I just couldn't find the words to continue it but hopefully, this will get the characters talking, and trust me…they all have a lot to say. See y'all next time!

Little Girl Lost

Chapter 14: Murder Most Foul

Chapter Summary: Toby observes his surroundings and finds more than meets the eye.

"Some things you just can't fix. You got to live with them. You don't take innocent lives." Agent Cabe Gallo Season 1 episode 2 "Single Point of Failure"

Previously on Little Girl Lost: "Not until yesterday" Tessa repeated with a strange look on her face. "So what all of you see now, the mess we're in….it's all because of that. They want blood for what happened. Retribution, money isn't enough. They want revenge. We killed their boss and now….they want to kill us."

"Blood for Blood. At least it was fair." Tessa muttered leaning back onto the desk as her eyes shifted to Paige and Paige's shoulders locked up as she stiffly nodded.

Toby observed all of this and although they were telling the truth (Toby was certain of that given the blank stares and echoed voice, clear signs of trauma) they both still gave off deception markers. He had no doubt that the major events happened, but they were still lying about something or at the very least omitting a fact. The omission was such a tricky thing to catch, it could be about anything, from the smallest detail and yet the deception markers would be the same. What would they possibly have to lie about after confessing to that?

"Something on your mind Freud?" Tessa quipped as she raised her eyebrow and settled her stare on him. Toby just shrugged as he studied the postures of both women, clear differences showing now that the spotlight wasn't on them. Tessa was agile, tense; in her fight or flight response, she was ready for her fight. Slight posture change of leaning forward, twitchy fingers, flushed cheeks, and dilated pupils all pointed toward offense but Paige, well she was the opposite. Her closest foot to the door shifted and her breath hitched combined with a pale complexion and unconsciously licking her lips because of dry mouth. Paige wanted out of there. Her eyes weren't focused on the people in front of her rather than the wall, the floor anywhere where she couldn't look at us, and when she did her eyes would go blank.

All this that Toby observed in the 2.3 seconds that he formulated his response "No, I'm just thinking that your family needs therapy. My couch is open and for you both – no charge."

"Funny." Tessa deadpanned as Paige, as expected, moved her glance to the floor but Tessa kept her glance at Toby. The same intense expression and similar thoughts going through her head. It makes perfect sense why Tessa would be more suspicious of him. If their roles were reversed Toby would be watching her every move. Tessa wasn't a woman who trusted easily that was obvious, but she kept special watch on him….and Walter.

Not once has she paid any scrutiny to anyone in the garage if Walter or Toby were in the same room. Tessa was on guard of course, but with them, she was extra cautious, dare he say fearful. Something about them both put her on edge. Toby had his theories and given this short interaction it was being close to proven, at least for him.

Toby was a shrink.

He'd always enjoyed the jokes and being stared at when his predictions were too on the nose but Tessa was another story. In less than 24 hours Toby had convinced Paige to stay despite Tessa's insistence, weighed his opinion on matters where Paige listened to him, and above all and most likely the most dangerous fact in Tessa's mind – Toby was able to get through to Tessa herself. Calling out mental health disorders was never fun, especially since about 90% of the time people didn't appreciate his candor about pain, embarrassment, or any other negative emotion you can think of but hey, it was his job and he was damn good at what he did. He was a genius after all.

He knew the human psyche and from a hacker's perspective, he could manipulate his way into his subjects with a few well-placed words and body movements. In short, he could hack their brain. So, for a woman who clearly has secrets within secrets hacking their brains would be the last thing she would want, especially since Toby has the strongest connection to Paige at the moment. Paige has proven she was willing to listen to him and even defy her own sister if his ideas would help them better. He was a threat to whatever Tessa was trying to hide and do.

Even now as Paige was talking about the various crimes their mother did, her eyes going glassy and talking as if she were somewhere else Tessa never lost the defiant look or loosened her body language. Toby supposed that should be flattering, after all, it meant that if she was this ferociously protective of this secret she had it obviously concerned someone special. This amount of protective anger doesn't come from something frivolous or replaceable like an object. No this was personal. The only link to that kind of ferocity that he's seen so far was only ever displayed when Tessa talked about her family.

Walter too forced this out of her. He stood by Paige's side almost like a pillar, slightly ajar and half an arms distance away from her was clear he wasn't comfortable around her (or as comfortable as he once was. The change was subtle but trust was still there and Toby was willing to bet love was still present too; now if Walter would handle those emotions was always a surprise so he won't bother with 197 but his feet were angled towards Paige. Sure, the scowl he had never changed but the brief flickers of his pupils meant he was brimming with emotion. Now if he understood it was another question, so far, he was very impressed with the emotional maturity of his former boss but that didn't mean that Tessa was lowering her guard.

How much of the history she knew was yet to be determined but she was smart enough to guess that out of everyone in that garage…..Walter was the biggest chink in whatever armor she placed around the both of them.

Now it was all a matter of why and Toby would have this puzzle figured out but for now, he was content in digging out the pieces, storing them away until he could come back and fit them together to create the big picture.

"What I don't understand" Toby suddenly said as Paige stopped whatever story she was telling "is why all the secrecy to begin with….about all this." Toby bluffed as Paige locked her jaw and Tessa eyed him curiously.

"I'm sorry for interrupting what I'm sure was a riveting tale of crime and punishment but I can't seem to work this out and I think we need to stop letting Paige divert us from this topic because she's acting on a flight response."

"What? No, I'm not" Paige said stubbornly as she flicked some hair behind her ear and took a subtle step away from Toby.

"Paige, I know this is hard, but we can't let ourselves shy away from pain if avoiding it hurts you in the long run. What kind of doctor would I be if I did?" Toby asked smirking as Paige scowled, an eerie similar expression Walt was giving him now.

"A good one" She shot back as Toby sighed.

"No, not a good one but there's still a lot to unpack here and something tells me we've only just scratched the surface"

That caught Tess's attention as she jerked her head to the side before quickly smirking "well we did tell you we were going to give you context…. just not all of it. This is strictly on a need-to-know basis and this is what you need to know. Nothing else."

"Yet less than two hours ago you were telling us we wouldn't know anything. I'd place my bet that we'll find out eventually." Ralph muttered as he crossed his arms and Tessa simply leaned back against her pillar with a defiant look as Happy smirked.

"Cheeky. That was purely your mothers doing. This is all mine. Believe me, this is as much as you're going to find out from me. You don't need to know anything else and Paige" Tessa glared giving her a hard look "wouldn't give up anything else because not only would it place us in a predicament, but it would put all of you in danger. More danger anyways which is the last thing your mother wants. So, might want to place your bet elsewhere. We'll tell you everything you need to know to keep everyone alive, but the backstory is a no-go. We've all got painful upbringings – ours was just a bit more colorful. Let's just leave it at that." Tessa said hard as she leaned against the pillar, her stance was rigid.

"Yes, Tessa's right. We're going off the deep end. Toby, we can say as much as we can, but details are dangerous. The less you know them better, for everyone." Paige mumbled as she crossed her arms tighter over her stomach and sighed. "We lost contact with mom. When they – when Drew was killed." Paige started taking another deep breath "They took her too. Her location was found out and we had a trace on her, but we lost it. We have a general area of where she could be, but we don't know where she is now, and we need to find her exact location."

"Because if we don't then we're really in trouble. Veronica has incriminating evidence on Paige, myself, and Ralph. Our identities, our alias now, even alias we don't even have yet. With that info, they can do all kinds of damage. They could kill us without warning. Right now, we're okay but after tomorrow if we don't have a location on Veronica; Paige, Ralph, and I will all have to go into hiding. Deep in the underground and even that might not be enough. We have 24 hours to find Veronica Dineen, or we die. I tried what I could but….I need more hackers. I'm not fast enough to go against a computer. Once we have a location, we can devise a plan to move forward." Tessa explained taking off her jacket and opening her laptop exposing lines of code that Walter quickly started looking over.

"Right, so you're going to need me to break down the firewalls simultaneously with you, and Sly and Happy can replace them 5 seconds after we remove them. The complexity of this is astounding, it's a learning algorithm – so we have to code faster than the algorithm can place. That's not humanly possible."

"Your right it's not – at least not without this," Tessa said placing a piece of paper on the table. "This is an algorithm of my own. It will counteract the machine as we hack into it, the problem comes in with the firewalls. As I'm dismantling one another pops up. I would need six more hands."

"Or two more hackers with the intellect to understand the code." Walter supplied getting out his own laptop as Happy sat hers on the table. "We can break-in," Walter said as lines of code sat on the screen and Tessa quirked her eyebrow as she sat her own laptop on the table.

"If this works and we can have access I have a plan on how we can get in but you all may want to sit tight. This may take a while." Tessa frowned as a tense silence filled the room and Ralph made himself scarce with Sly, both talking quietly in the corner laptops in hand as they prepared for the break.

Toby continued to subtly look at Paige, even with everyone moving away she stayed still, her eyes glassy until eventually she started to move robotically towards the kitchen and started cleaning a cup in the sink.

"Whatcha doing?" Toby asked lightly as she jumped and glared at him before turning and continuing the task, much harsher than before.

"Keeping busy." She muttered

"Uh-huh, that's why you're cleaning a clean cup?" Toby asked as he leaned casually against the counter, his sharp eyes missing nothing.

Stiffening Paige jutted out her chin proudly as she promptly settled the cup on the drying mat and crossed her arms defensibly. "What do you want Toby?"

"Can't two friends just talk?" Toby asked smiling as he noticed how tense she was, her shoulders stiff, hands balled at her sides as she leaned away from, her feet pointed to towards the exit.

"Depends on what they want to talk about." She fired back, eyes darting to the door behind Toby as he frowned.

"Well considering recent events maybe safe topics like the weather?" Toby bantered as Paige looked away and sighed.

"It seems stormy." She let out as Toby looked toward the window, clear skies, and sunshine streaming through and Toby shook his head; not needing another explanation.

"You know with all the changes taking place, this might be a good time to talk." He hedged as Paige glared.

"About what exactly? How I've managed to place my son in danger? My friends, my team? How in the span of a few hours the life that I had tried so hard to build for myself and my son was uprooted in a span of a conversation? Or for the safety of my son, I must witness my ex-boyfriend and his…lack of a better word replacement move around and be on eggshells around each other? Or and let's not forget my sister, who I have not seen in a decade comes back, shows up, and just pretends nothing's happened! Talk about any of those issues Toby?" She breathed hard as her fists balled at her sides as Toby held her stare.

"That about sums it up, yes." He said easily as Paige groaned in frustration and turned away from him as he sighed and placed a hand on her shoulder only for her to shake it off. "Paige, I'm not trying to be the bad guy here. Honest, I mean, I'm concerned for you. I've been concerned for you for a few weeks now but this – I mean this is a lot, especially for you. Talking has always worked before, I don't see how this has to be different."

"It doesn't have to be different because it's already different." Paige snapped as Toby half-smiled

"That's not what I meant – "

"I know!" Paige said tensely before taking a deep breath "I know." She repeated much calmer before leaning against the counter. "I know" She sighed defeated as she looked at him with tired eyes "I just….dodon't know what to do. There's been plenty of times where I haven't had the faintest idea on what was going to happen, what we were up against, or even what was going on half the time but now…..its the opposite." She said softly looking over Toby's shoulder where he saw Walter, Happy, and Tessa typing frantically, all whispering to one another tensely and Sly and Ralph were still in the corner; Sly doing his best to comfort the young genius as he looked overwhelmed and Cabe and Florence were in another corner speaking softly to one another.

"We're the ones in the dark while you know more than you let on." Toby finished as her eyes darted back to his.

"Yes. A lot more. More than I care to know, and I want to tell you." She said her eyes welling up with tears "But I can't. It would be selfish. In this business, knowing too much. Being too smart for your own good – it's dangerous. This information could get you killed, it's bad enough that you are all willing to help me, and even though I'm grateful for it but it places you in a spot to be targeted. Not only for me but for Ralph…I've never been more scared."

"We don't have to be in the dark though; Paige you know what we can do? What we're capable of. So why don't you trust us?" Toby asked gently as Paige looked down and refused to answer. "What aren't you telling us?" Toby asked boldly as Paige bit her lip and opened her mouth before closing it again and set it in a hard line.

"Yes, I know what all of you are capable of, which is more of a reason to keep quiet. There's danger everywhere and even though Tessa will never admit it…. you're all a danger to us." Paige said as her eyes fully landed on Toby.

"Because we're geniuses? Or because we have close relationships with you?" Toby hedged as Paige sighed and looked once more over Toby's shoulder as she quickly grabbed his wrist and dragged him to the corner, slight privacy as she whispered in hush tones.

"Yes, all of that but also… because…." Paige stopped herself as she took a deep breath and stared at Toby with the most haunted look.

"Drew didn't kill anyone. I did."

Next Time on Little Girl Lost

"We're almost done – Sly are you ready?" Happy commanded as Sly nodded his head and before she could pause Ralph did a thumb up as Happy smirked and finished the line perfectly in sync with Walter and Tessa.

"Now!" Tessa said as Sly and Ralph both started typing furiously as the two experts followed them in and Ralph saw it immediately.

"Coordinates! Headed north in a warehouse in the Nevada desert, 6 miles outside Vegas." Ralph said as he memorized the coordinates and in the corner of his eye, he saw his aunt smile as she commanded them to do the exit process. First Happy would fire down the walls, removing herself and any trace of her IP address, then Sly would follow with the second wall, then Ralph would do the steps to trace out following the pattern and waiting for the light to blink. Walter would then shut it down and Tessa brought up the rear closing down and canceling out the machine.

It was seamless. Simple. They themselves were like lines of code, each doing their jobs as they were programmed to do. Each was different in their own way but together they made the bloodlines of a seamless, flawless machine.

If only life were this easy.