A/N: This is kind of a transitional chapter, so I figured I would post this in the middle of the week before the fun of chapter 8 this weekend ;)


Maura, deep in thought and some regret, walked through her courtyard and up to her front door. She had cut Jane down, small, when they argued in her office. Jane had tried to strike back, and she landed some punches, but Maura was the true prize fighter when it came to wordplay and insults. It was a skill she rarely brandished because her personality was so kind, but she struggled to think of anyone who could match her when they drew her ire.

The dropping of the lock mechanism as she turned her key satisfied her and she almost wanted to do it again, so starved was she for comfort in the last few days. She pushed through that feeling, however, and when she walked through the doorway, she thought about calling Angela for lunch just so that she wouldn't have to be alone.

Her bag dropped from her elbow to her fingers when she looked up to her living room - a tornado seemed to have ripped through it. Chairs were overturned, upholstery slashed, books and papers destroyed with tatters scattered about the room. Fear coursed through her. "Oh my god," she exclaimed in a whisper. "Oh my god." The back door had been kicked open, and whoever had robbed her hadn't bothered to shut it when they left.

Ok, she thought to calm herself, ok. What do I do? Her phone sat in her hand before she knew she had grabbed it out of her purse.


Jane scratched with disdain at the itchy polo tucked into her evidence management-issued khakis. She sat at the desk of some poor pencil pusher that had just gone on vacation, and she rued that she was the poor pencil pusher now. Robert, in Florida taking his kids to Disney World, had a nice-enough looking family based on the pictures adorning his tiny personal area. She knocked over a few of them when she flinched from the ring of her phone against her hip.

It was dark in the basement, even damp, but Jane recognized the caller instantly when their face lit up her iPhone's screen. "Hey," she answered softly, "listen, that… this morning was stupid of me, I'm sorry." Jane heard beats of silence on the other end, as though Maura were letting the words wash over her. The beats were punctuated by heavy breath. "What's wrong?"

"Someone broke in, Jane. The place is a mess. My living room is destroyed," Maura finally explained, "I didn't know who to call, where to go. I just needed to hear -"

"Hey hey, calm down, ok?" Jane saved Maura from the confession she knew the woman did not want to make. "Tell me what you see."

"Like I said, it's a mess. They tore up all my couch cushions, ripped up all my books, cut open the dining table chairs. Turned over everything," Maura said.

"Ok," Jane thought as she tapped a pen against her desk, "so whoever it was was lookin' for something. Anything noticeably missing?"

"Not from the main room. I'm too afraid to check upstairs," confessed Maura. "Will you come?"

Jane paused, gulped loudly. There was no way in hell that Connors and Cavanaugh would let her go anywhere near Maura right now, not while she was on the clock. "Baby, I…" the pet name slipped, and as soon as she heard it out of her own mouth, she knew they played a dangerous game. "I gotta do this evidence thing, lay low and be a good girl, you know? I can kiss my job goodbye if I go anywhere near your place right now. But, I'll, I'll do you one better, a'right?"

She could hear the reluctant acceptance in Maura's voice when she said, "Ok."

"I'm gonna send Frankie and Korsak. They'll be over as soon as they can. What I want you to do is walk out, get in the car, and park it down the street until you see them pull up," Jane scanned her surroundings, motioning over to Frost when she saw him enter the bullpen. "I'm gonna hang up so I can call them, ok?"

Maura hung up before Jane could receive an answer. "Who was that?" Frost asked Jane, two coffees in his hands.

"Maura," Jane said sternly. "She got broken into."

"No way," said Frost.

"Yeah, gimme a minute. I gotta send Korsak and Frankie over there." She speed-dialed Korsak and gave him the details. When he said he would get Frankie over there, she breathed a sigh, not necessarily of relief, but more of accomplishment.

"You alright?" Frost asked, putting one of the coffee cups on Jane's desk. With his now free hand, he straightened his tie.

"Yeah I'm good," Jane lied. She waved him off with her left hand and took a big gulp of her coffee.

"Wish you could go over there, huh," He pushed, and it was all she needed to throw her head back and groan.

"It's killin' me, Frost," she said, her words tinny and double-toned from the way her neck elongated and her head knocked the back of her office chair. "I mean, my best friend just got burglarized and I can't go help her because Connors and Cavanaugh'll have my head if I do. Why does Cavanaugh have me down here anyway?"

"I don't know," Frost shrugged seriously, "Wish I did."

Jane made a face and ran a hand through her hair. "Well I guess I can catch up on emails."

Frost let her sit in the helplessness for a few seconds before he smiled cheekily at her. "So she's still your best friend?"

Jane blushed in light of all that Frost didn't know. "I mean, if I have anything to say about it, yeah," she said.

Before Frost could continue grilling her, a man, presumably in charge, came up to the desk and dropped a letter box full of firearms. "If you're done with the crossword puzzle, Detective, how about you break down these seized guns? Parts go in the evidence barrel here."

When he walked away, Jane and Frost shared a predatory stare. "You wanna…?" asked Frost, pointing to the box.

"Oh yeah," agreed Jane as she scooped up both coffees and followed him out with the box, "we're just gonna, you know, with these guns," she said, not even bothering with an excuse as they went down to the firing room.

When they closed the door behind them, Jane put up her hair and donned the requisite safety goggles, snatching the shiny Desert Eagle off the top of the pile before Frost could get to it. "Shame I'll have to be melting this down, huh?" she said as she held it heavy in her left hand.

"Damn shame," Frost nodded, then stepped away so that she could test fire it.

She wasted no time readying the gun and then blasting four shots into the water. "Damn! I could do this all day!" she yelled, her ulnar veins popped with the exertion of aiming and shooting.

"Right?" said Frost, grabbing another gun from the box and taking his turn, "at least we got this out of Connors swooping in and taking our ball."

Jane moved to the tank with a net for the bullet she unloaded into it. "Yeah, he's got a shit list a mile long with me. Sleep with a federal agent, 'forget' to put a BOLO out on Paddy Doyle, have a cat fight," she imitated the last one with a particularly whiny man voice.

"He didn't really say that," Frost commented, incredulous. He pulled his ear muffs off and crossed his arms.

"Oh yes he did," Jane confirmed. She pulled the bullet out and moved toward the window to hold it up into the light.

"Well, you gals do tend to do a lot of squealing when you get upset."

"Shut up," laughed Jane. Then she glowered at the bullet. "Hey, Frost, look at the lands and grooves on this bullet."

"Damn," whistled Frost.

"This is the bullet from the Desert Eagle," she started, and then went to the evidence shelf to pull the container Frost had just brought down not hours before, "and this is the one from Wally's back."

"No doubt about it," Frost said, "those gotta be from the same gun."

"That means this is the gun that killed Wally," reasoned Jane as she held it up to her face for a better look. "Let's get Korsak to look at them under a scope, and then we gotta tell Cavanaugh."


"This isn't a burglary," Korsak called out to Maura as he walked back in from the door closest to the guesthouse. Frankie was right behind him. They had secured the area and determined there was no threat, so Maura was back in her living room to survey all the damage that had been done.

"No?" She asked absentmindedly. She ran a finger over the back of her ruined couch.

"Somebody was looking for something," he said, having the same look around, but through a cop's lens. "And they didn't find it, so nothing's missing. Your father ever mention a book?"

Maura grew warm at the act of someone in her life finally calling Doyle her father, even if their relationship was complicated. Finally, someone who just stated the truth. "No, but Captain Connors is looking for it, too."

"We have Paddy," Frankie said, approaching them. "And if he lives, he can name all the dirty cops himself. Why do you need the book?"

"Because Doyle will never testify; it's why he's still alive," Korsak explained. He turned to Maura, and she thought for a moment that his salt and pepper hair, close cut, made him kinder. "But… if you could get your hands on that book, you can run Boston." he raised his eyebrows at the potential.

Maura was confused. "How?"

Korsak had to take a second to remind himself that Maura was not technically from South Boston, even though she was born there. "There's more than just dirty cops on Paddy's payroll - city workers, politicians, maybe even judges." When he saw Maura's eyes light up in alarm, he said, "Frankie, call operations. I want you to stay with Dr. Isles."

"Got it," Frankie nodded, and walked back out the door.

Korsak approached Maura then, got close enough so that he could speak for just the two of them to hear as cops bustled about the scene. "Jane didn't know Dean would be there," he told her, figuring she knew but trying anyway, "is that why you resigned? Word is traveling, Maura."

"I'm the daughter of a mobster," Maura replied simply, openly. "Jane is under investigation for trying to protect me."

Korsak nodded. It was her way of protecting them back, so he let her have it.


"Can't believe you stuck me there on purpose, sir," Jane said as Cavanaugh used bolt cutters to get into storage for the barrels of broken down weapons in the BPD basement.

"Yeah well, I needed you good and pissed off to confirm what I suspected, Rizzoli," Cavanaugh said. He smiled at her and she smiled back, recalling the little field trip they had made that afternoon to Wally's house after she had found the gun that killed him.

Cavanaugh thought that Doyle had an in within the evidence management department, and with Wally being the one in charge of evidence breakdown, they went with the simplest answer: Wally was the in. When they walked into his living room and found a picture of him as an altar boy with Paddy Doyle in the same parish and a wall full of cash, that was all they needed to keep digging. "BPD seizes up to a thousand guns a year."

Now, here they were, the four of them long after dark, breaking into their second building of the day. "Good scam," said Korsak. His flashlight pinged against the metal of all the drums beyond the gate. "Cops seize the guns, Paddy takes 'em from us. A million bucks right there if you can figure a way to get 'em outta here."

"How?" asked Jane. "They're logged in, weighed, and dropped into these barrels."

Korsak nodded as if to agree with her. "Armored car takes 'em away to be melted down…"

"They don't even tell command staff when they're movin' 'em," Cavanaugh finished.

"Maybe Paddy was intercepting the trucks," Frost guessed.

"Think we'd've heard about it," Korsak posited.

"Y'know…" Jane took a second to think, "Dean told me somethin'."

"Ok… Don't tell us what you were doing when he told you," joked Cavanaugh.

"I wanna hear what they were doin'," Frost said, and Jane glared at the both of them.

"FBI thinks cops on Paddy's payroll were about to make that move," she said, plowing over their teasing.

Korsak shrugged. "Now would be the time with Paddy in the ICU," he said. They had to admit, the play was a good one if that's really what the cops were up to.

"They can't do anything without the guns so let's find 'em," Cavanaugh commanded. His team began popping the tops off of the barrels.

Korsak found one that Wally had swapped with scrap metal, Frost found another.

"Fucking Christ," Jane yelped when she opened her barrel. The body of Cliff Cummings, second in IA command, lay stuffed inside.

"Hey, the hell's going on?!" It was one shock after another when they all turned to see Captain Connors at the gate, staring them down.


After frontloading Connors, and giving a few moments for him to collect his thoughts, Cavanaugh motioned him over. "I'm sorry, John," he said as they stood over Cummings' body.

"Yeah, I'm sorry too. Cliff was my partner; I trusted him."

"Looks like it could be a .44," Korsak said as he looked at the bullet hole in their victims' back.

"This is a .44." Jane held up the Desert Eagle.

Connors nodded, had them seal up the drum, and put the gun back into evidence. He reasoned that if they started to investigate Cliff's murder, whoever was responsible would run. Instead, they should look for where Wally stored the guns he was to eventually smuggle out to Doyle.

As it turned out, due to some good old-fashioned guesswork on Jane and Frost's parts, they discovered that he hid the stash in Paddy's case evidence boxes, and both Connors and Cavanaugh ordered them to keep the guns where they were until homicide could find the other dirty cops.

"Hey look at this," Jane nodded to a case file she had pulled out of one of the boxes. "Old surveillance photos of Doyle from 1976."

Images of a woman leaving a cafe, and the same woman clearly distraught at a gravesite littered the file.

"You think that's the Harvard babe?" Frost asked.

When Jane continued to study the photo of the woman grieving, she looked up in horror. "I gotta go," she said, bolting past them back toward the entrance of BPD.


"Ma!" she cried out when she flung open her apartment door. Angela sat at the kitchen counter drinking her evening tea when Jane burst in. "Where is it?"

"Where is what?" Angela asked after finishing her sip, eyes annoyed.

"That creepy drawing Maura gave you," Jane explained as she bounced on her heels. "Where is it? Get it," she ordered.

"Why…?" Angela asked, suspicious.

Jane cursed her own hard-heartedness of the past twenty-four hours. "Just get it. I promise I won't hurt it, please."

Angela got up and went to her daughter's writing desk where she kept the drawing. She pulled it out of a drawer.

Jane pulled out the photo she had swiped from the file down in evidence and put it next to the drawing.

"Oh my god! Who is she?" Angela yelled, but Jane had already spun back down the hall. She followed close behind; shut and locked the door, cursing her daughter's constant absent mindedness in the face of a hunt. Jane had run all the way down to the car, and when she saw Angela huffing and puffing not too far away, she barely waited for her to climb into the passenger seat before speeding off to the hospital.

When she entered Paddy's room after blowing by the front desk and sprinting up the flights of stairs that were faster than waiting for the elevator, she was almost glad to see Constance Isles keeping watch, awake and alert. "Who is she?" Jane asked Constance or Paddy, whoever would listen and respond, as she held up both the photo and Angela's drawing.

Constance turned and sighed. "It's Maura's mother," she replied.

"What's her name?"

"I don't know. I never knew."

"He drew this?"

"Yes. He showed up at my art class at Harvard. I thought he was a student; I tried to encourage him. Then… he just disappeared."

"Then what? You found yourself pregnant with Maura?"

Constance scoffed. "No. He showed up months later with a newborn in his arms. He said the baby's mother had died in childbirth."

"Why didn't his family take Maura?" Jane interrogated.

"His father would have killed the baby. He didn't trust anybody, but me."

"Why did he draw this?" Jane tried to level with Constance, usually so guarded.

"They used to meet at the Boston cemetery," Maura's mother stated. "It's the only place they were safe from his father." Jane, apparently satisfied with this information, turned to leave the room. "Jane?" Constance called after her before she could completely disappear.

"Yeah?" Jane gave her the courtesy of turning back around and looking her in the eye.

"You are the person my daughter loves the most in this world," Constance said boldly. "Please do whatever you can to fix what has happened between you."

Jane only flattened her lips into a hard line and walked out.


Late the next morning, Jane knelt in the grass in front of a grave that read 'Maura Doyle - Born August 7, 1976 Died August 7, 1976 Safe From All Earthly Harm.' For all the times she had unintentionally made Maura confront her mortality, being confronted with Maura's stabbed at her heart. Obviously, the gravestone lied - Maura lived beyond the day of her birth. She lived a full, successful life, she continued to live it. She burrowed herself into Jane's life, too, to be loved and to love in return, and to picture all of that never having happened… Jane sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "Paddy told everyone that Maura and her mother had died. What if her mother is still alive?"

Angela dropped to her knees and put an arm around her daughter's broad shoulders. "I think a parent would do anything to keep his child safe," she said into Jane's hair.

"Even lie to the woman he loved and tell her her baby died?" Jane scrunched up her face, her Boston accent speaking around what she actually felt, all that she wanted to say about Maura.

"Even that," Angela said. She pulled Jane in for a full body hug, and Jane finally accepted it, wrapping her arms back around her mother.

Jane breathed in the familiar perfume on Angela's chest, looking on at the fresh flowers on Maura's grave. Wait, she thought to herself, fresh flowers? That seemed odd to her. She moved them out of the way.

"Jane!" Angela admonished, aghast.

"Ma, shh," Jane whispered harshly, pulling up at the displaced grass right at the base of the stone. She found a black liquor store bag just under the ground, and when she opened it, she discovered Paddy Doyle's little blue book inside.