AN: We're ramping up towards the end here. Making an educated guess I'd say we've got about three or four more chapters to go.

A ringing phone broke the tense silence in the SUV that had previously only been disrupted by Dominic giving directions to Ella. Everyone checked their phones and it turned out JD was the lucky winner. "It's Detective Messer. Lindsay Messer," he clarified.

"Don't answer that," Dominic told him.

"Are you crazy?" JD asked incredulously. "You might have that luxury, but I value my job."

"Give the phone to Ana," Ella told him, locking eyes with him in the rearview mirror as they were stopped at a red light. "She can talk her way out of anything."

"You make that sound like a bad thing," Ana protested, holding out her hand for the phone anyway. JD looked at Ella for a long second before handing it over.

"Hey, Mom," Ana greeted, as if her mother were calling to ask about her day. "No, you dialed the right number, but I'm here with him and I wanted to talk to you…Yeah, Dom and Jack are here, too, and Ella…We're on our way to the deaf community center to ask a few questions…I'm sure we're on a wild goose chase, but we didn't want to sit around and do nothing…Us, getting in trouble? Of course not. Dom's just antsy and we're going along to make sure he doesn't cause trouble and stub a toe or something and have to go on the disabled list…I promise, we'll call if we find one dust mote out of place…Okay, love ya, Mom." The phone call ended and JD looked at Ana like she was something from outer space. "What?" she asked as she gave the phone back to him.

"Not everyone is used to your ability to talk at warp speed and verbally maneuver others into doing your bidding, hon," Jack teased her, putting an arm around her shoulders. He looked to JD who was sitting alone in the middle seat between Ella and Dom up front and Jack and Ana in the back. "You should see her with suspects. Outside of the ones you get ten seconds after you put the guy in the interrogation room because he's so scared, she clocks the fastest confessions of anyone in the Bureau."

Dom wasn't paying attention to the conversation behind him anymore. Staring out the window of the vehicle he prayed that Ana had lied to their mom, that this wasn't a wild goose chase. Something in his gut told him they didn't have the time to waste.

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Their group entered the community center with JD up front. It had been decided in the car that he would take the lead since he was the only one who technically had any kind of jurisdiction. "Detective Deveraux, NYPD," he identified himself, holding up his badge to the receptionist who wasn't Charity Connors. The woman looked with wide eyes at the five people in front of her, four of them with guns on their belts. She rapidly began signing at them.

"She doesn't read lips well," Dominic translated. He began signing back to her, talking out loud simultaneously which enabled everyone else to know what he was saying. "Have you seen Charity Connors lately?" His heart beat faster at her answer. "She says Connors was here earlier today." He moved his hands again. "Was anyone with her?"

The woman nodded as she signed. "That's all? There was no one else?" Dominic asked her.

"What? Who was she with?" Ana asked since Dominic had failed to translate that part. "Dom?" she prodded again when he didn't immediately respond.

"Just a sec," he told her, concentrating on what he was signing and on what the receptionist was trying to tell him. Eventually he turned to the group. "She saw Connors here with Jim, but she hasn't seen anyone else unusual. She asked them why they were here so early in the day especially when it was Connors' day off, but they brushed off her questions and left pretty quickly. She doesn't know where they went."

"Shit," JD swore. "I'll get an APB out for Connors' car."

Ella noticed Dom's confused look. "You should have paid better attention in the car on the way over."

"What? Why?" He wasn't going to protest an all points bulletin being put out on Connors, but he was somewhat perplexed at how Deveraux suddenly thought they had enough information to do that.

"Because then you would know why hearing that Connors was with Jim has us concerned," Ana told him. "JD told us that Kaile and Scagnetti went incommunicado right after they got to Jim's place this morning to talk to him. When JD followed them over there after he couldn't get a hold of either Scags or Kaile, all he found in the apartment were their phones. Added to that the fact that Mom and Uncle Sheldon think our killer might be a woman and you can see how we might be concerned."

The color drained from Dominic's face and he felt like his knees might buckle. Jack obviously thought they would since he moved closer to support him in case he did fall. "Then where the hell are Kaile and Scagnetti?" Dom asked almost frantically.

"That's what we have to find out," Ella told him. She gestured towards the receptionist who looked about as pale as Dominic. "Ask her exactly what Connors and Jim said when they were here earlier."

Dominic shook his head, desperately trying to clear his thoughts enough to be able to sign. After a few moments of signing back and forth with the scared woman, Dom turned his head to his sister. "She says Connors and Jim were coming out of the basement and that Connors claimed that they were looking through some old stuff down there and discussing whether they thought some of it could be tossed out, which is evidently weird because the center just did a big clean out of their storage spaces about a month ago." His eyes widened as he suddenly realized what that could mean. "Do you think they're here?"

"Only one way to find out. Which way to the basement entrance?" Dominic asked the receptionist who told him and then reached into a desk drawer for a key. Ella took it before he could. "Where's the door?"

"I'll show you," he said, knowing full well what she was doing.

"The hell you will," she snapped. "The situation has changed, Dominic. I will handcuff you to this desk if I have to."

"The desk isn't bolted to the floor. He'd probably just drag it with him and follow us anyway," JD said as he approached, having finished his call.

"Stay out, Deveraux, this doesn't concern you." Dominic wouldn't have been surprised if Ella's eyes had set the NYPD Detective on fire.

"Step back and think, Ell," JD shot back, not even flinching. "Connors is the one we're thinking is the bad guy and she evidently left long ago, which means that there's likely nothing dangerous in the basement. However, if you leave your brother up here and Connors comes back for some reason, suddenly he'll be up here without any backup."

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Dominic almost burst out laughing at the way Ana's eyes bugged out. Nobody talked that way to Ella. The family didn't because they valued their relationship with her, and everyone else in the world didn't because they valued life and limb. Jack, knowing his fiancé all too well and that she was probably about to say something like, "He's a keeper," put his hand over Ana's mouth.

Obviously not noticing anything beyond Deveraux's eyes, Ella finally relaxed just a smidgen. "Fine. Dominic, tell the woman she should get everyone out of the building, then you tell us where to go, but stay back. Jack, your sole responsibility is watching over Dominic. Ana, you should probably call Mom and let her know what's going on." Everyone obeyed without comment. As they headed down a hallway, approaching the door to the basement, Dominic hoped that JD was right and that there was nothing bad downstairs. And "bad" possibly included finding Scagnetti and Kaile. Not until after Ella had agreed to let Dominic come on the trek to the basement had he realized that there was another reason besides his safety for keeping him upstairs. If they didn't find Kaile alive, Dominic didn't know how he would survive.