A/N: Remember a few chapters ago when I hinted that I had some evil tendencies? Well...Read on.
"Hey, Roy, I'm making a coffee run. Want anything?" Jules offered, using her feet to push her chair back from her desk.
"Yeah, uh…a double double?" He started to turn back to his computer screen, but then he caught the odd look on her face. "What?"
"That's what your brother orders," she admitted sheepishly, to which he promptly rolled his eyes. He was used to her little moments of nostalgia by now.
She was thinking about the epic time Ed went all coffee shop on Sam's newbie ass. She doubted she'd have as much fun with the guys from Guns and Gangs, but she was open to the possibility.
"Did I hear something about coffee?" Wordy perked up. Although he sympathized with the team's loss, he was thrilled to have his friend in his department.
"That you did," Jules confirmed. "Whatcha havin'?"
Roy's cell phone rang and he got up and walked away to take the call. Neither Jules nor Wordy found this odd considering how noisy the bullpen could get. Jules seriously missed the quiet of the barn. Hell, she missed the team. Wordy nudged her. "It gets easier, kid."
She gave him a half smile. "Sorry, what'd you want again?"
He shook his head. "You're hopeless," he chided.
She crinkled her nose. "I'll just grab your usual.
"Atta girl."
Roy walked back in and asked Wordy, "You mind coming with? I need to check out a tip one of my CIs just called in."
Wordy grimaced. "Is it going to take more than a couple of hours? I have a school play to get to this evening."
"I could go," Jules piped up, eager to do something besides sitting behind a desk today.
"Aren't you off soon?" Roy asked.
"Yeah, and then I won't be back for two weeks, when I get back from the honeymoon. Come on…gimmie a proper send-off."
"Don't you have last-minute wedding stuff to take care of?" Wordy asked, amused.
"Do I look like a bridezilla to you?" Jules asked loftily. "Natalie's taking care of everything for me. Sam's sister," she added for Roy's benefit. "Give me five to make a quick phone call?" she asked Roy as though it was a given she was riding shotgun. At his nod, she pulled out her cell phone and called Natalie. "Hey, I'm going to be a little late."
"Okay, but you realize I need to wash your hair, do your nails, wax your legs, and cleanse your pores, right? And that you still need to get in 8 hours of sleep?"
Jules shuddered. She'd already received a big fat no when she asked if she could skip the primping, and just get dressed and go. "I won't be that late. Just let yourself in and wait for me. Order a pizza or something for dinner." And so we reach her primary reason for calling. Sam had decided to bow to at least one tradition and sleep elsewhere tonight, and Jules wasn't in the mood to cook.
"And reclog your pores? Are you demented? Don't worry, I'll think of something. See you later."
As different as they were, Jules was happy Natalie was going to be her sister. She'd never had one before and she was pretty sure she'd be lost without Natalie to obsess over everything on her behalf. That didn't mean she wanted the blonde trying to cook for her, but Natalie hung up before she could say so.
"Hey, what about my coffee?" Wordy demanded, walking out with Roy.
"Sorry, Officer Wordsworth, you're on your own. Officer Lane, if you don't mind making a pit stop, I'd like a regular coffee, with cream, no sugar."
Sam was just not feeling the new recruit. It was nothing personal and, unlike with Donna, he really tried to like Andrea. She pulled her weight as best she could, he guessed. She just wasn't Jules…who he trusted to work as an extension of himself out in the field when it counted. And then there was the fact that Raf still needed a little smoothing out as well, so they were cross-training two people at the same time…
"Hey there, buddy, take it easy on that bag….I'm sure it's sorry for whatever it did to you," Ed joked from one of the exercise bikes.
Sam flashed a grin, but kept hitting the bag.
"So, Samtastic, wedding's tomorrow. That mean drinks tonight on you?" Spike asked from a treadmill.
"Isn't the best man supposed to foot the bill?" Andrea asked before Sam could respond, which, inexplicably, irritated him.
"I think I missed that memo. See, the one I got was the one that said 'Samtastic, who is grateful you're letting him go home with you to partake in the consumption of your mom's lasagna and even sleep on the couch, will be happy to take you out for drinks to express his gratitude.' Which one did you see?" Spike cracked.
"Hot call, Team One, home invasion in progress, sending the address to your phones." The exercise equipment was abandoned as Winnie continued. "Shots fired, neighbor said a couple lives there with an infant, looking up the homeowners' names right now…Henry Frank's the only name on the deed."
Greg halted on his way to the equipment room where his team was already suiting up. "The same Henry Frank we pulled off a rooftop a few months ago?" He asked Winnie.
"The very one," Winnie confirmed with a frown as she pulled up the associated file and sent that to the team as well.
Troubled, Greg went to go suit up. "There's something hinky about this, guys," he cautioned before reminding them of who one of the possible victims were.
"Another hot call involving this guy only a few months apart?" Ed asked incredulously. He thought hinky was an understatement.
Natalie pulled into Jules's driveway, not yet accustomed to thinking of it as Jules ad Sam's driveway, yet, and reached over the console to grab the bags she'd brought with her. This was the closest she could get to getting Jules to agree to a spa day, so she wasn't pulling any punches. She was totally looking forward to an evening of pampering someone who was damn near impossible to pamper.
After walking up to the porch, she set her bags down, and then stooped down, peeled back the welcome mat, and felt for the loose floorboard she knew hid a spare key. Finding it, she unlocked and opened the front door, replaced the key, and picked up her bags before entering the house and bumping the door shut with her hip.
Humming the song that had just been playing on the car radio, she checked the food supply. After a few minutes, she found herself considering pizza after all. She wasn't yet comfortable enough to cook without Spike's mom looking over her shoulder (which was going to suck when the older woman moved to Italy to take care of her own elderly mother, even if Natalie was looking forward to her and Spike having the house to themselves) so their options were limited to salad and fruit salad.
Mulling over her dilemma, Natalie dispersed hair, nail and facial products between the kitchen and the living room before taking the bag containing the body stuff upstairs to the master bedroom and adjoining bathroom. She was setting scented candles around the tub when she heard a floorboard creak. "Sam?" she called out, startled. She'd expected to have the house to herself for a few hours at least since Jules was at work and Sam was spending the night with Spike.
When no one responded, she went out into the bedroom and poked her head out into the hallway. Seeing someone besides her brother coming up the stairs, someone she didn't recognize at all, Natalie immediately retracted her head and slammed the door shut, locking the door as the stranger seemingly threw his all his weight against it on the other side.
"So…what lead are we following up on?" Jules asked Roy, keeping her eyes on the house he'd pointed out to her.
"My CI says the top brass of the Green Gang resurfaced and might be holing up here," he explained.
"Aha…gunning for a promotion, are we?" Jules supposed. The leader of that particular gang had eluded being identified, let alone caught, for years.
"Just doing my job." The humble claim wasn't at all convincing, but all he got from Jules for it was a brief smirk. "We're just waiting for a gang member to make a drop so I can get permission to put the house under surveillance, starting yesterday," he added, handing her a file filled with faces and names.
Jules flipped through it, focusing more on the faces than the data, then froze on a face that was pretty much seared in her brain.
"What?" Roy prompted, flicking a glance at the photo of a known acquaintance of the gang's before turning his attention back toward the house, where the front door had opened and a woman had stepped outside.
"I know her. Kind of. She shot me," Jules said, spellbound by the mug shot.
"Emily Ames."
"Yeah."
"No, I mean that's her. Right there," Roy said, pointing.
Jules looked up with wide, stunned eyes. "She's supposed to be in jail!"
A car pulled up in front of the house and a man emerged, and then reached into the backseat for an oddly shaped package. "Is that a…?"
"Baby," Jules breathed.
The team's feeling that something was off was intensified when they arrived on the scene and discovered that the patrolling officers who'd arrived at the scene was the first indication to the neighbors that anything was amiss. Nobody had responded when they'd knocked on the door and the officers weren't sure anyone was home.
"Winnie, can you get the person who called this in on the line, please?" Greg requested as he attempted to call Henry Frank's cell phone. Ed broke the team up to do some recon and find a way into the moderately sized single-story house or at least get some eyes in. "Nobody goes in until we figure out what's going on here," Greg added.
Sam and Andrea took the back of the house while Ed and Raf checked out the front of the house. Spike was running the command post.
"What do you make of it?" Andrea asked as they looked for a crack in the curtains or signs of forced entry.
"I'm not trying to jump to conclusions," Sam hedged. He had a feeling someone was playing with them, but, beyond that…
They both spotted the broken window at the same time and Sam reported, "Signs of forced entry." After getting close enough to see inside, he added, "Broken window in the master bedroom, two people tied up on the floor, can't see them clearly because the bed's in the way."
"Hey," Andrea called out in a voice a little over a whisper. "Can you hear me? We're here to help."
"Boss, they're not moving," Sam reported.
"Boss, the call was made on a throwaway phone and no one's picking up," Winnie reported.
"Boss, let us go in," Andrea requested. "Nobody else is in the room and they could be hurt or dying."
"Any sign of the baby?" Greg asked.
"Negative," Sam reported. "Nothing but static coming from the baby monitor," he added.
"Possible child abduction?" Raf asked.
"Boss, we need to get in there," Ed advised.
"All right, go," Greg consented after a moment's hesitation.
Sam gave Andrea a leg up so she could climb in through the broken window, and she immediately rounded the bed to look at the couple, who were both lying face down on the floor with plastic wrap taped around their heads. "Dead…no gunshot wounds," she reported as Sam was hefting himself through the window. She turned the man over and shouted, "Bomb!"
Cradling her baby boy for the first time since he had been whisked out of the prison mere moments after being born, Emily Ames felt the cold satisfaction that only overdue revenge could bring about. She had lost everything. Her husband, her baby, her power… She could never get Scott back, but she was now seizing the rest of it. By the time anyone realized she'd escaped the prison, she would have already gone underground. All she was waiting on was confirmation that her revenge had been carried out.
The phone rang and she answered it. "Go."
"Julianna Callaghan is dead."
Smiling, Emily Ames hung up.