That day was a long one. The good news was that most of the drug runners in that cellar were incapacitated for long enough that they were arrested when the police arrived. The bad news was that John needed to be under observation for several hours before Finch and Sam could smuggle him back to his apartment. The drug in his system was a lethal cocktail that would have killed him if Finch and Sam had been any later than they were.

Sam jerked in a shallow sleep and awoke, lifting her head from her curled up position in the easy chair she'd set next to John's bed. They were in his apartment, with the door bolted. Sam had a shot gun next to the chair, her handgun was in the chair with her, and extra rounds were in her pockets. Finch had thought it a wise precaution just in case they were followed somehow. Drug lords could be nasty when they wanted to be.

Sam uncoiled her legs, letting the blood flow freely into them again, and sat up in the chair. She checked the clock on the night stand. It was a little after three thirty in the morning. Letting out a groan, she got to her feet. Her gun thudded onto the floor. Sam jumped and blatantly shushed it as she approached the bed to check on John. In the semi-dark room, his color looked a little better and he was breathing steadily. Sam had seen him bruised up before, but never this bad. The poor man had really taken a beating.

She absently brushed his short hair away from his forehead as she checked the IV that hung from the coat rack she and Finch had rigged up next to his bed. The bag was nearly empty, and his temperature was down, which was a relief. He'd been close to feverish when they got him to the hospital that morning because of whatever drugs were in his system.

Sam stepped away from the bed, stretched and shuffled her way into the bathroom, where she washed her face. A flash of John's bloodied face and his unfamiliar gaze went through her mind again. She had thought of little else the entire day, even when she knew he would be fine and back to normal soon.

Sam had been scared before. She'd been horrified, frightened, and panicked. But, seeing John that way, weakened to the point that he was nearly dead, chilled her to her very core. John was solid. He was a veritable, dependable rock that she had leaned on countless times before. In that cellar, when she looked at him for the first time in months, he was nearly broken, and it was terrifying. It also infuriated her.

That's why she was able to pull the trigger so easily on the way out of that place. She had to get John back to the way he was. If anyone stood in her way, she wouldn't hesitate in dealing with them. And that's exactly what happened. Sam didn't know if she killed that man or not. And as she patted her face dry with a towel in John's bathroom, she found that she was still too numb to wonder about it.

Sam yawned and stretched again as she walked out into the main room. Even thinking about it then, if she had the time, she would have taken that fire poker and shoved it right up that guy's –

John inhaled sharply, and seemed to shock himself awake. He bolted upright, his arms reaching out as he let out a low yell.

Sam rushed to the bedside. "Whoa, whoa! Calm down, it's okay. You're okay, John," she hushed him gently and pushed him back down onto the bed. "You wake up like you're in the middle of a war zone," she joked. Then, after a moment's thought, she said: "Never mind."

"Where did you come from?"

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I've been hit by a mack truck," he mumbled. He lay back down on the pillow, his eyes half closed and his voice gravelly.

"Nah, you would look better if that had happened."

Sam never would have pictured her reunion with John to occur in such a way. He was lying in bed, injured, in the early hours of the morning, looking at her in the dark. It had been a while since she felt that she was being looked at. John was really the only person who instilled that in her. For some reason, Sam could always feel when he was looking at her.

John looked her over slowly, as if he was taking in every detail. "You cut your hair."

"Yeah," Sam looked away, feeling the blush come from her neck. She ran her hand through her hair as she sat down on the mattress next to his legs. "A couple of times actually. I just wanted a change, I guess."

"Why did you come back if you wanted a change?"

"I've been in town for a little while. Harold called me, said you needed help. I figured that our little agreement goes both ways: If you need me, I'll find you." Sam touched his hand, which he pulled away from her. Instead of taking notice of the somewhat cold maneuver, Sam folded her hands in her lap.

John looked at the IV in his arm and moved to take it out, but Sam jumped up again and stopped him. She put her hand over the taped needle in his arm. "No, no. It's counteracting whatever that was in your system. It nearly killed you, John. I'll take it out when it's empty."

Sam moved to the nightstand, turned on a lamp, and then moved the easy chair closer to the bedside. John sat up, and she slipped a couple of pillows behind him as he did so. He winced and inhaled sharply at the pain.

"Careful. You have stitches right here where you were shot," Sam put her hand gently on his left side. "They said you were lucky it didn't hit your kidney."

"You found me," John said. "Are you going to run again?"

"I didn't run," Sam automatically put herself on the defensive as she sat down in the chair.

"What would you call it, Sam?"

"I – " Sam stopped in mid sentence and really looked at him. John's eyes were clear and bright under the bruises, swelling and cuts left from that fire poker beating. His mouth held a slight frown. Han's words from earlier that day entered her mind.

A smile crept its way across Sam's face, like a flower blooming. John squirmed a little. "What is it?"

"John Reese… you missed me," she said triumphantly.

John opened his mouth to reply, but she didn't give him the chance.

"Don't you dare deny it. I was gone, and you noticed!" She propped her elbows next to him on the mattress.

John tried to glare at her, but the effect wasn't complete, probably because it hurt his face to show any kind of expression. He didn't smile, but his frown didn't deepen either. "You still didn't answer my question."

Sam kept her little victory dance to herself. "Come again?"

"Are you going to run again?"

The denial that she ran at all came to her lips again, but she refrained from voicing it a second time. Best to stick with what she was certain of. "Actually, Harold asked me to stick around, at least until your back to one hundred percent. Or, you know, eighty five, ninety…"

"Is there another number?"

"Not yet, but soon, probably." Sam smoothed out the blanket over the edge of the mattress. "John, Harold told me something else too. He said that you've been getting more and more… reckless." Sam met John's eyes, which gave away nothing.

"It's a dangerous job, Sam," John reasoned.

"I know that, but he gave me a few examples of some unnecessary risks you have taken." Sam's words were halted, but she waded through it. "Risking yourself, of course. You'd never do that with anyone else."

"What's your point, Sam?"

Sam held up her hands in front of her innocently. "I just want to remind you that there are a few people who care about your well being, and it would be rude to risk that doing unnecessary heroics."

"Like what you did today?" John's eyes glinted and Sam felt as though she'd just tripped even though she was sitting down. "I wasn't completely out of it."

"Could have fooled me."

"I remember the tear gas and the… was it a fire poker?"

"That they beat you with? Yes," Sam growled a little in her throat. "If I'd had a little more time, I would have taken that damned thing and shoved it right up his – "

"Thank you," John said quietly. "Thank you for finding me."

Sam smiled. She took his hand resting on the mattress. He didn't pull away that time. "You're welcome. Do you remember anything else?"

John shook his head once and winced at the pain. "It's all really fuzzy."

"Just out of curiosity, how many languages to you speak?"

He appeared taken aback by the seemingly strange question. "Five or six… seven, maybe."

"So English," Sam began ticking them off on her fingers.

"Yes."

"German,"

"Ja."

"French,"

"Oui."

"Arabic, and…?"

"Spanish – "

"Si!" Sam said. "I knew that."

John tried not to smile as he continued, "– two dialects of Arabic, and a passable Russian."

"Say something in Russian," Sam said excitedly.

"No, Sam," John's efforts to keep from smiling were quickly failing.

"Oh, come on. Just a few words?"

"Je ne vais pas dire quelque chose en Russie."

It wasn't Russian, but Sam smiled anyway. The way John flipped his r's and the way his voice changed a little in tone when he spoke in a different language was quite pleasant to listen to.

"You should do that more often."

"For your entertainment? I don't think so," John smiled a little despite the denial. "It's good to see you, Sam."

John squeezed her hand and Sam felt John, her dependable rock, coming back to her again. "You too. It'll be even better to see you when your face gets back to normal. Lie back down, you need to rest. I'll get you another ice pack."

Sam released John's hand and walked across the apartment to the kitchen.

Just over a day later, Sam sat in a parked black Lincoln in an older residential neighborhood. It was early afternoon, and she just got back into the car after stretching her legs for a few minutes.

She picked up the digital camera with the telescopic attachment and looked through it again. The car was parked on a street corner that connected to a wide residential street, which held rows of nearly identical houses. Sam peered through the windshield at a house two down from the one in front of her. She could see into the front window and part of the side kitchen window.

A woman was dusting furniture in the front room as one of the children of the household, a little girl, ran up to her to show her a picture in a coloring book.

"Still nothing," Sam said.

"You've said that every five minutes for the past hour, Miss Watts," Finch said through her earpiece. "We both need to be patient."

"I don't know, Finch. It seems like a happy family. Mr. Kits works long hours and drinks a little more than I'd prefer, but other than that – "

"The Machine is never wrong, Sam," Finch cut her off with that voice of absolute certainty. "The youngest daughter is our concern, as it is her number the Machine gave us. I've been looking into her visits to the emergency room, but someone is keeping a tight lid on the records. I was considering breaking into the hospital just to find an old chart."

"Breaking and entering?" Sam smiled as she set the camera down. "That doesn't sound like you at all Harold. I'm sure you can get the records using methods more inside your comfort zone."

"I'm beginning to wonder," Finch said. "I'll keep looking."

"She doesn't seem sick at all to me." Sam picked up the camera again as another little girl, the youngest named Ellie, bounced into the room and tried taking the coloring book from her older sister. Ellie was three, her sister, Caroline, was five. "They both keep Mrs. Kits on her toes all freaking day. I bet the woman is looking forward to getting the older one into Kindergarten once school starts up again. It'll give her at least half of a break."

Another thought came to Sam as she spoke. "Finch, don't you think that the hospital stuff is for regular accidents that happen to a hyper three year old?"

"For cuts, bruises, maybe a broken bone, but the dates Ellie Kits was admitted into the ER greatly outnumber any amount of childhood accidents."

"How many?"

"It looks like… eight, maybe nine times in the past year."

Sam's brow furrowed. "Abuse?"

"By whom? According to you the parents aren't the type."

"Well, it definitely wouldn't be the mother, and she's home with them all day. Has Caroline been to the hospital as many times?"

"I'm checking."

Finch went quiet for a moment as Sam set the camera down on the passenger seat. The surveillance bit was the hardest of the job, she was beginning to discover. She'd done some of her own before, but she had rarely been alone. John was usually with her, or Finch, or even Detective Fusco sometimes. Surveying on your own was rough.

Sam didn't have any more time to dwell on it though. The front passenger side door opened and John sat down – then he got up, handed the camera to Sam, and sat down again, closing the door.

'What the hell are you doing here?" Sam snapped at him, mostly to release some of her shock. "You're supposed to be resting. That's why I'm here, remember?"

John looked at her with a hint of a smile. "I'm tired of resting."

"I doubt you finished that whole book of sudoku I gave you. I knew I should have tied you to that bed like a mental patient."

"John never stays still for long, you know that," Finch said obviously.

"It hasn't even been two days," Sam put her finger to her earpiece. "Harold, did you tell him where I was?"

"No, I did not," Finch said innocently. "But that would hardly stop him, would it?"

"What have we got?" John asked.

"We have not got anything," Sam replied snidely. "Let me see your face."

John turned and looked at her fully. Sam squinted at him. He did look better. The cuts were healing nicely and the bruises on his temples and jaw were already turning from a deep purple to a yellow. The swelling was basically gone. John looked much more like John.

He used her distraction to grab the camera from her. Sam reached out to snatch it away from him, but he held it out of her reach.

"It doesn't help if you don't know what you're supposed to be looking at."

"So why don't you tell me?"

As he spoke, Sam watched a beige pickup pull into the Kits' driveway.

"Mr. Kits is home early," she said to Finch.

John caught on instantly and pointed the camera to the correct house, watching Mr. Kits get out of the truck.

Sam snatched the camera back from him once he let his guard down, and looked through it. Mr. Kits entered the house and greeted his wife with a kiss. He was tall, broad shouldered. Finch had already reported that he worked construction, so his physique wasn't exactly a surprise.

Sam placed her phone on the middle console and set it on speaker.

"Where are the girls?" Mr. Kits asked.

"In their room probably," Mrs. Kits answered. "I'm going to take Caroline to the store with me. Will you watch Ellie?"

"Sure," he said happily.

They walked out of the front room. Sam put the camera down.

"Ellie is our number. She's three years old," she explained. "All we have are some mysterious visits to the emergency room that Finch is getting records on. I haven't had much luck with watching the father, but from what I've seen, he's just a normal guy who loves his little girls," Sam shrugged.

"Caroline has not been admitted to the emergency room in the past year," Finch reported.

"What is it about this one little girl, then? Is it a baby sitter?"

John turned up the volume on the phone. "It might be."

"Can I come, Mommy?" Ellie's voice came through the transmission of Mrs. Kits' phone. "Please?"

"Don't you want to stay here with Daddy? I'm just getting some groceries."

"No, I wanna come," Ellie sounded a little desperate.

"Why doesn't she want to stay with her Dad?" John asked the car at large. "You said you haven't watched a lot of Mr. Kits."

Sam stared at her phone. "No, no I didn't. He works all hours. But it's only been about a day so – "

"Please, Mommy?"

"Stay and play with Daddy, sweetie. I'll be back soon. Caroline!" Mrs. Kits shouted. "Get your shoes on!"

"No way," Sam muttered under her breath as she came to a chilling conclusion. "No freaking way."

"Finch, see if you can match Ellie's ER visits with the days Mr. Kits has come home early from work."

"Already on it," Finch said.

"Did you clone Mr. Kits' phone?"

"I managed it, yeah," Sam tapped a few indicators on her phone as Mrs. Kits walked out the front door with Caroline in tow.

Mr. Kits watched them through the front window as they pulled out of the driveway in an old Ford sedan. Once they drove away, he closed the curtains over the window.

"Ellie," Mr. Kits called loudly. "Where are you sweetheart?"

"No way!" Sam said in dismay. "How can he? Why does he - ?"

"The dates match, Sam," Finch's voice was stiff over the phone. At least she wasn't the only one who couldn't believe it.

"Are you playing hide and seek? I'm going to find youuuu," Mr. Kits said in a light, sing-song voice that suddenly creeped the hell out of Sam.

"She's hiding from him on purpose," John said.

"Harold, you might want to tip off Carter or Fusco," Sam said as she grabbed her phone, and got out of the car, drawing her gun.

John followed suit, but stopped when he saw Sam staring at him over the hood of the car.

"What do you think you're doing?" She asked.

"I'm going to keep that bastard from hurting his little girl," John shrugged as though it was obvious.

"Are you in the closet?" Mr. Kits' voice still came over the speaker in Sam's phone. "Nope, you're not in here."

"Oh no," Sam shook her finger at John. "I'm not going to have your face messed up again. I'll shoot him before you get to wrestle with him. You shouldn't even be here! Stay in the car." She slammed the car door and started across the street.

There was a certain thrill to it, ordering John around like that. She'd never done it before. Not that it helped. John caught up with her easily and passed her when they reached the sidewalk.

"John!" Sam hissed, running up to him. "You'll pull your stitches!"

"It's a good thing you're here in case that happens, isn't it?" He said smugly.

Sam grabbed onto his arm and made him face her. They stood on the sidewalk in front of the house.

"Don't be stupid," Sam said. "I'm here because you couldn't be here."

"Now we're both here."

"I'm not going to have you beaten all to hell again," Sam said harshly.

"As long as there are no fire pokers - "

"You might want to settle this soon," Finch said irritably.

"I found you!" Mr. Kits said.

They heard Ellie's shocked scream over the phone. John and Sam bolted toward the house.