4 years pass by. The army still chases the team, but now that they are protected by General Stockwell it's less of a threat. General Stockwell knows about Cassie, but he tends to keep her out of things. They continue to help people, but always without Cassie. She's a mother now and stays home to be with her children.

She and Murdock have a four year old daughter Abigail and a three year old boy Stuart. Abigail looks a lot like her father, especially when she smiles. She is Murdock's little princes. She's very opinionated, like most 4 year olds are, but she's so very polite about it. When she has her imaginary tea party she drinks with her pinky up. BA absolutely adores the little girl and frequently lets her boss him around.

Stuart looks like his mother. He's a very adventurous little boy. You'll always find him reaching for a tree branch, running after his sister in the hallway and generally laughing and babbling loudly. Cassie has to keep a close eye on him, because if he's left unsupervised he can make an unbelievable mess.

Murdock still goes on missions with the team but he tries to spend as much time as possible at home. Because he's now married, he has sort of been released by the VA hospital. Once a month he has an appointment with his psychiatrist and once a month he has to go to the hospital for a day of treatment. Mostly it's group sessions, talking to his fellow patients. He became sort of a model patient.

When things get too intense, when his fever pitch of madness returns, he simply goes back to the VA for a few days. This happens maybe once every 5 months. They seem to make it work. Cassie does the accounting for a little shop down the road. She can do this at home, so it's a great job for her and it brings enough money in to get by.

Sometimes she'll help out the team with research and things like that, but her crime fighting days are mostly over. Murdock never stays home when the team goes on a mission. That was the deal they made and Cassie absolutely insists that he doesn't let the team down because of her.

Everything goes on without a hitch. They have even gotten a new member, Frankie. He's a young and bright kid, even though he can be a bit crude at times. It was quite a shock for him to hear that the quirky Murdock is a married man with two children but they became very close friends. He frequently comes over for dinner at their house and Abigail and Stuart adore their uncle Frankie.

Cassie's home one night. Everything is going great. The kids are in bed. She pushes the last of her papers aside and sighs contently. She stretches the kinks out of her back and takes a last sip of her coffee. It's cold, of course it's cold. She sometimes gets so swept up in her paperwork that nothing else penetrates her brain.

Suddenly there's a knock on the door. Cassie frowns. Who could that be? It's ten 'o clock at night. The knocking gets louder and more frantic. Quickly she gets up and walks towards the door. If this wakes up her babies, she'll be furious. Before she grabs the door handle she gets her can of pepper spray ready. At the moment she's alone. You can't be too careful when someone knocks at your door at ten 'o clock at night when you're alone.

Pepper spray in hand, she opens the door. The rain outside is pouring. It's a truly terrifying night to be out, right out of the movies. Lightning flashes and she recognizes the man in front of her.

"Frankie!" Cassie exclaims in surprise.

Frankie looks very tired. His clothes are dirty and scratched. He smells like he needs a bath with 5 different types of oils and bubbles. He looks like he could use one as well. Cassie gets the impression he's been running for a while. As he stands there he sways softly from side to side. Cassie manages to catch him before he passes out on her doorstep. Suddenly an icy pick of fear gets her right in the stomach. Worry for her husband. Fear for her friends. She swallows the feelings for now and focusses on the unconscious man in her arms. She drags him inside.

She puts him on the big table. He has a blanket under his head for comfort but that's all she can give him. His clothes are soaked so she needs to take those off immediately. When he's completely naked, she can see the bullet wound in his side. It's just a graze, but this doesn't help her fear to go down at all.

She drapes a blanket over the unconscious man and starts to attend to his wounds. He has some minor scrapes, some serious cuts on his arms and that bullet wound. She takes care of everything and goes up to get some of Murdock's clothes.

As she enters their bedroom, it feels like a punch to the gut as everything suddenly reminds her of her husband. Tears stream down her face and she grabs the clothes she needs. The soft fabric underneath her fingers feels so familiar it's almost unbearable. It's like her husband is there in the room with her, only he isn't. She cries in silence because her children are asleep in the room next to theirs. Cradling the clothes she peeks inside, tears obscuring her vision. Both of them are fast asleep, their chests going up and down without any worry or thought.

She closes the door and heads back to her patient. As she comes down, she can see he's awake. He's looking at her, clutching the towel very closely. She wipes her eyes quickly although she knows he saw her cry. She hands him the clothes.

Frankie recognizes the outfit. It's Murdock's. He looks at Cassie's tears and feels incredibly guilty once more. He didn't want to involve her in this at all. He takes the clothes and puts them on. It's a nice blue shirt and some jeans. It feels terribly wrong to even be wearing Murdock's underwear, but beggar's can't be choosers.

The silence seems to drag out for hours, even though it's only a few minutes. He looks up and Cassie's still looking at him. She doesn't badger him with questions, she doesn't rush him into explaining, she just waits patiently. Frankie suddenly realizes why his friend loves her so much. Her calm is a perfect match for Murdock's mania.

"I'm sorry to be barging in so late ma'am."

He always calls her ma'am, a little to tease but mostly out of respect for Murdock.

"It's no problem." says Cassie, her voice trembling only a little. "Now, what happened?"

Again, Frankie is impressed. She doesn't become hysteric at all and demands to know about Murdock. He looks at her as she stands there, trying her best to keep herself together.

"It all went wrong earlier and I only just escaped." Frankie starts. "I have no idea what happened to the boys, but I didn't know what to do, so I came here."

Cassie approaches him with a smile on her face. It's not a happy smile, she's just trying to reassure him. She puts her hand on his shoulder and coaches him off the table.

"Come Frankie. Let's sit on the couch for a moment. And breathe kid. Breathe."

He does as he's told and finds it slightly loosens the knot in his throat.

"Now, start from the beginning kid. What was the mission and what went wrong?"

Frankie takes a deep breath and begins his explanation.

A few days earlier the team came together. They had done the whole mr Lee thing, there was a hot dog vendor involved and they found no fault in the request. An 10 year old boy came to them, convinced his dad didn't run away but was in fact, kidnapped.

The kid didn't know anything about who would kidnap his father, only that his dad had bought tickets to a very important football game for them to watch together. He's utterly convinced his dad wouldn't miss that game for anything in the world. He didn't have enough the money to pay the team but he had taken all of his pocket money with him. It was something like 80 dollars and he wanted to give them all of it.

The team declined to take his money but took the case anyway.

So off they went, ruffled some people's feathers, broke in in someone's office, planted a bug or two, followed their noses and generally made a nuisance of themselves. They found out the father was indeed kidnapped and went on a rescue mission.

Frankie stops his story for a second to take a breather. Cassie can read his body language and goes to the kitchen for a glass of water. She's dying to just grab him by the shoulders and shake him and scream in his face "What happened to my husband!" but that wouldn't be very helpful in this situation. It's best to just let him tell his story his way. The kidnapping does worry her a lot.

She brings him the glass of water and he takes a sip. Frankie continues his tale.

Lying on his belly on the roof, Hannibal studies the building. It's your typical office building, an evil tower of steel and glass. The windows are tinted so nobody can look inside. With his special infrared binoculars he can see the people move inside though. They look like red blobs, red masses just walking around. So far it doesn't seem that out of the ordinary. All they know is that Scott's father went inside and never came out again. But how, Hannibal wonders. They could've taken him out on the underground parking lot, but he came by bus. It's rather difficult to move an unconscious body through an office and not attract any attention. Somehow Hannibal doubts that that's how they did it. Way to obvious. There are camera's in the parking lot as well. That's evidence. You can make it disappear, but it can usually be found by cunning investigators.

So not the parking lot. Hannibal moves his body slightly. Lying on a roof made of concrete isn't the most fun way to observe a building. So he keeps studying the building until he notices something. He takes a closer look to confirm his suspicions. He's correct.

"Face!" he yells behind him. His Lieutenant hears him and approaches.

"Yeah Hannibal?" he asks.

He motions down and hands him the binoculars. Face drops down on the roof and takes them from his commander.

"Ok what am I looking at?" he asks, binoculars in front of his eyes.

"Look at the right corner of the building."

It takes a minute for Face to study the building. "Sorry Hannibal, I don't see anything." he says as he puts the binoculars down.

Hannibal smiles. "Yeah." he confirms. "You see nothing right? No offices with people in, no people near the coffee machine like on the 5th floor there. There are no people in the right corner of the building."

Face's eyes open in wonder and his quickly gets the binoculars out to confirm that that's indeed the case. "Damn, you're right Hannibal. No people are in any of the rooms there. There must be offices in that corner, right?"

He puts the binoculars down again. Hannibal motions behind him and they retreat to cover. The team huddles together and Hannibal explains his hunch.

"You guys remember when that monstrosity was build? A lot of workers died here. It was quite the scandal and the company that build it went bankrupt." he explains. "It was in all the papers at the time. Now, I can see nothing moving in the offices in the right corner."

He looks at his team intently, to make sure they get the message. "Now, hear me out. What if there's some sort of lift or something going from the top to under the ground. All of those offices seem to be unused. It'd be the perfect way to get someone out of the building without anyone knowing where he or she went."

Murdock's eyes light up for a second. "A secret lift Colonel. That's brilliant!'

Hannibal smiles at him. "We'll have to check this. I know it sounds mad, but I don't know how they would have gotten him out of the building if there wasn't a secret passageway." he explains. "And that right corner is unused and empty, which is very odd for a normal office building."

Hannibal's eyes suddenly shine bright with the Jazz. "We'll have to get our exterminator gear out gentlemen."

A while later the team enters the building. Face and Murdock walk on point and the others carry the 'heavy equipment'.

"Well yeah Frank, that's gonna be costly!" starts Face.

The poor bloke at reception just stares in confusion. Face has to clarify. "We had a call from Bob that there are rats in the building!" he concludes gravely.

Murdock next to him just nods and tries to look important.

"Euh, could you just give me your names please?" the man stammers.

"We're PEC. Philips Extermination Company." Face says as he leans on the desk. "Catchy ain't it? We just gotta check some offices around here, you know, to make sure the pesky buggers haven't spread too far."

As he says that suddenly they can hear a scream coming from inside.

Face starts gesturing furiously. "See now, that's gotta be what Bob warned us about. Pack up your gear boys, we're going in!" The team behind him grabs their stuff and walks towards the brightly lit hallways of this steel tower.

Now Hannibal takes the point and they march towards the office at the end of the hallway. His internal compass tells him it's one of the offices in the right corner of the company.

"Face." he says.

His Lieutenant understands and drops to one knee. He picks the lock in seconds and they go inside quickly. They unpack the guns they had hidden in the 'equipment' and start to investigate the room.

"Spread out guys and do it quickly." Hannibal orders as he heads to the filing cabinet.

At first glance it looks like a normal office. There's a desk, a chair and a window. It has a reading lamp, some stationary and a computer. A filing cabinet stands against the wall, and there's a large closet against the other wall.

Everyone searches frantically, but it's no use. There's nothing in the office. It appears to be unused. The filing cabinet is filled with empty files, the computer has nothing on it and there are no pictures of smiling children on the desk.

"There's nothing in these files Hannibal." Face confirms. "Just dust and mothballs."

Murdock looks up from the window. "Doesn't this room feel small to you guys?"

BA grumbles. "Now's not the time for yo crazy talk Murdock!"

Murdock silences him. "No BA, I'm serious. Hannibal, doesn't the wall look bigger on the outside than this wall here?"

Curiously, Hannibal comes closer. Murdock is right. The wall from the window to the edge of the building is almost tree meters long, but the wall in the office isn't even 2 meters long. Smiling, Hannibal puts his hand on Murdock's shoulder. "Well spotted Captain!"

Hannibal goes up to the wall and starts to knock on it. "There's gotta be a secret passageway behind this wall." He looks up to his friends. "It sounds hollow guys."

The first thing they check is the walk in closet. Why is there such a large walk in closet in an office anyway. It makes very little sense. After a little prodding and pushing random things something clicks. Murdock jumps backwards as the secret partition disappears in the wall.

Hannibal grabs his gun and goes in. "Keep your eyes open guys."

The team finds themselves on a very small platform. Right next to them is a hole in the floor, it leads down and up. Cables hang there, dangling ever so slightly. It's an elevator shaft. There is a very small ladder next to the elevator shaft, presumably for emergencies.

Hannibal looks at his team and they all nod. He turns around and goes down the ladder. It's not a nice sight, seeing your commander disappear in darkness. Everyone descends, and Frankie goes last. He's halfway down, he can see all the others stand there. He has butterflies in his stomach, but it isn't any worse than any other mission. Before his foot touches the ground, all hell breaks loose. Guns go off in every direction. People shout. BA grunting in pain, Face yelling defiantly and Murdock pushing him back up the ladder. His feet don't seem to obey quick enough, but Frankie flies up the stairs, he hits his head and sees stars. Murdock behind him yells in surprise.

Frankie looks down and sees a goon pulling his friend down. Murdock now lays on the concrete, looking dazed. Frankie looks at the goon and something clicks in his head. He sprints up the rest of the stairs. He still has his gun, but he isn't confident he can ever shoot someone. He runs for his life as the bad guy is in hot pursuit. He bursts out of the closet, passes the filing cabinet and kicks open the door. He sprints out of the office and starts to run through the hallway. A shot is fired and he nearly falls flat on his face as his brain registers the impact. Then the pain hits him. The bastard has shot him. Frankie keeps running and doesn't slow down.

He's faintly aware of the alarm. He arrives in the lobby. There are security guards near the exits. The guy is still chasing him with a gun. Frankie doesn't hesitate, shoots a window and jumps through it. Glass cuts open his palms and arms as he holds them in front of him in an effort to protect his face. When he's outside he simply runs away in a panic.

Frankie looks at Cassie. His story is finished and he doesn't quite know what to do now. She looks lost in thought.

"Ma'am?"

Cassie looks up at him and he can see she's scared. Really scared.