A/N Hey guys. So I don't know about you but for me, school starts on the 3rd this year. Yeah, that is in two days. For that reason you might not get a new chapter for a little longer than usual but I promise I'll have one up as soon as I can. Anyways, thank you for all your reviews and follows and favorites and keep them coming because they really motivate me to write, other than that, enjoy the longest chapter in this story so far.

"Cammie," a female voice says. "Cammie! Cammie wake up!"

My eyes snap open. I'm still in the nursery and the picture of Zach and me is lying on the floor, the glass in the frame is cracked. I sigh. "I'm up." I mutter, "I'm up Bex."

"Come on, we have to get you dressed. The Director's in your living room."

My heart stops and I look at her, terrified. "Is…" Zach okay? I think, I can't finish the sentence out loud though.

"He's fine Cam," Bex grins. "He'll be fine but the Director needs to talk to you."

"He's fine?" I ask timidly.

"He's fine! You have to get dressed though."

"Help me up then. I'm also going to need help getting dressed if you want me to be downstairs in less the half an hour."

"Alright," Bex says. Then she pulls me to my feet and follows me to Zach and my room.

I cross to the closet and grab a pair of yoga pants from a shelf and a grey t-shirt from a hanger.

"Bex, can you grab me a pair of running shoes?" I call to where she sits on my bed.

"On it," she answers. "Where are they?"

"They should be at the foot of the bed beside Zach's."

"Got them," she calls.

I waddle out of my walk in closet now dressed and cross to the dresser to grab a pair of socks. After two attempts to pull them on I give up. "Bex," I say. "I can't get these on."

Bex laughs. "Give them here," she says, then pulls me over to the bed and forces me to sit down. "I can't believe you can't do this on your own." She says as she pulls the socks onto my feet.

"When you're so pregnant and can't bend over or see your feet, I'll remind you of that," I say with a grin.

Bex snorts as she pulls my running shoes onto my feet. "The day I can't bend over or see my feet is the day I will have that child out of me."

"You don't get that choice Bex. The baby comes when the baby wants to come."

"Not if I'm the one carry it." She grins. "Okay, you're ready. Is mommy going to need help getting down the stairs?" I glare at her and she grins.

I walk into my living room and see the Director sitting in an overstuffed leather arm chair talking to Townsend, Grant and Abby. I glance at the clock. It is eleven thirty in the morning. I sigh for the second time since I was woken up because I never get up this late. Ever. I can last for two days on only one hour of sleep. I can go a week with only five. I think of how much of my day I've wasted. Oh well, I used the night productively.

"Cammie," says the Director when he sees me. "How are you?"

"Well sir. I'm due next week and my husband is in Paris partaking in a mission that may be compromised. I'm great." My voice is drips with sarcasm.

The Director smiles, "Zach is on a plane Cammie. He's coming home. I was up all night organizing it and we got lucky. Zach was out running errands for his targets and we were able to pull him off the street. We put him on a plane about an hour ago and he'll be able to see you sometime tonight after he debriefs. His flight should be about eleven hours and thirty minutes."

I look at him, unbelieving. "He's coming home? He's safe?"

"Yes. He's on a commercial flight and left from the Charles de Gaulle airport. Cammie, he is safe."

"Thank you," I say with tears in my eyes. "Thank you."

"Cammie, I married the two of you. I'll be damned if I'm the reason you aren't together. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go home to the wife and try to catch a couple of hours of sleep before Zach gets back and I'm called in for the debrief." With that he stands up and lets himself out.

I turn to my friends. "He's safe." I say. Everybody grins at each other.

Knowing that Zach is safe is a huge weight lifting off my shoulders and in celebration of Zach's safe return, Bex and I decide to go shopping. Bex, who I let drive, pulls into a parking space beaming like a maniac because she only drove on the wrong side of the road twice and she hasn't been driving in America once she went on her last mission.

"Where are we going?" I ask as Bex drags me the mall.

"The food court, we're meeting Hector," she answers as if this should have been obvious.

"Hector? The guy you did that mission with? The one who flew us from Gallagher to Headquarters?"

"No the one who cuts my lawn every Saturday." She says sarcastically.

"You have a guy named Hector cut your lawn on Saturdays?" I ask innocently.

"No. I don't have a lawn which you'd know if you and Zach would come and visit Grant and me."

I grin. "So we're meeting the helicopter flying spy who you did a joint-mission with in the food court?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I invited him."

"Why?"

"I missed him."

"So?"

"So I spent nine months with the guy and wanted to meet his wife and daughter so I told him we'd be at the mall today and he should join us with his family."

I grin again. "You told him to meet us at a mall because you wanted to meet his family?"

"Yes."

"You do realize you could have just invited them over to my house, right?"

"Well yeah, but there is a really good sale on shoes that Grant told me about and I really want new shoes so I figured I'd just kill two birds with one stone."

Shoes make me think of Macey but I don't say anything because I don't want to ruin a perfectly fun afternoon, instead I laugh. "Shoes, your reason for meeting them at the mall is shoes?"

"Yes, shoes."

"You realize my feet and ankles are swollen and that I don't want to stand up most of the time, let alone wear the types of shoes you'll put on me? "

Yes. Also you're in luck if you don't want to stand." Bex says, pointing at a table in the food court. "There's Hector and he saved us two chairs."

I groan. "Fine but you're not making me buy shoes at this sale."

"We'll discuss it there," she answers with a smirk that reminds me of Zach. Then she pulls me over to Hector and his wife and daughter.

"Hi," Bex says with a grin, introducing us to Hectors family. "I'm Bex and this is my friend Cammie."

I nod and sit down. "Hi." I turn to Hector. "Sorry about barfing in your helicopter."

"S'okay," he says with burger in his mouth.

"I'm Lisa and this is our daughter Megan." Lisa says, gesturing to the little girl beside her coloring in a coloring book with crayons. "Say hi honey," Lisa says.

The girl looks up and eyes me and Bex who sits down. "Hi. I'm Megan and I'm seven," she says.

"Are you?" I ask with a smile. "You're a big girl Megan."

Megan grins. "I can even use the big girl swings all on my own." She looks at Bex. "My daddy says you fight good."

"Fight well," Hector corrects.

Bex smiles. "Did your daddy tell you how I jumped off a building without a parachute?"

"No, why would you do that?" Megan asks.

"Yeah," I echo. "Why would you do that? We talked about not doing things that could result in death unless it's absolutely necessary."

"It was," Bex says. "There was a clown chasing me."

"A clown?" I say as Hector and Megan laughs and Lisa looks on with a small half smile.

"Yes. If he'd been chasing you, you would have jumped off that building too. I landed in a bush anyway."

Lisa is laughing now too. "I jump off buildings when I'm being chased by people who are going to kill me or I'm spending my vacation running from my boyfriend's mother and she wants to torture me. Not when a clown is chasing me. Wait, how did a clown chase you somewhere you could jump off a building?"

"First of all, you killed Catherine and Zach is now your husband so that example is no longer valid. Second of all, I was doing surveillance on the top of a building during a parade and the clown saw me and chased me onto the roof where he started calling me a pervert and screaming that he'd have me arrested. His big red nose and painted face where too much for me and when he started chasing me around the roof of the building I was on I just panicked. You know I hate clowns."

"It was hilarious," Hector says once he's caught his breath. "I hear come guy screaming from the roof she's on and when I look up, there she is holding a huge bunch of helium balloons and falling from the roof."

"Balloons? You didn't have a parachute so you took the guys balloons and jumped?" I ask in disbelief.

"Well it worked didn't it? I'm not dead."

"No," I mutter. "Just crazy."

"You two are funny," Megan declares in between bursts of girlish giggles.

"Are we?" Bex and I ask at the same time, making her laugh harder.

When everybody's calmed down, Lisa looks at me with her warm brown eyes. "So Cammie, when are you due."

I smile and lay a protective hand on my stomach. "Next week but the doctor says it could be earlier."

"Do you know what it's going to be?" She asks.

I have the sudden urge to say, a baby, but I repress it and instead answer, "a boy."

"Well congratulations," Lisa tells me.

Hector glances at me. "Bex told me Zach is safe," he says with a grin.

"Yeah, the Director says he'll be home sometime tonight but then he'll have to debrief so I won't see him until late."

"That sucks," Lisa says. "If they'd kept Hector late when he got back from his mission with Bex, I might have had to go down there and get him myself I missed him so much."

"Well, Zach has only been gone for two days," I say, "so there isn't a lot of danger in me doing that, not that I'd be able to get passed everybody as pregnant as I am without using lethal force. I'd have been able to before I got pregnant but until this baby's out of me, I'm not breaking my husband out of headquarters when the Director needs him."

"Um… lethal force?" Lisa asks.

"Oh… yeah sorry. Not exactly table talk is it?"

"No, it really isn't."

"So," I ask her trying to take the topic away from lethal force. "What do you do?"

"I'm a stay at home mom." She must see the confusion on my face. "I've always been a civilian. What do you do?"

"Defeat bad guys and save the world." I grin at her look of confusion. "Same as your husband Lisa, I'm a spy."

"Probably a better one then I am though, if the stories I've heard are true." Hector says with a smile.

"Believe me, with the things that make me good at my job, I wish I was average."

"Yeah well if I had the clearance level you probably do, I'd never wish that."

"Oh really? What do think my clearance level is?"

"11," Hector guesses, Bex barks a laugh.

"17," I say with a grin. "How about you?"

Hector's eyes look like they're going to fall out of their sockets but he manages to answer. "Seven. It was just bumped up from five because of the mission Bex and I went on. How the hell did you get a clearance level of 17?"

"It's classified," I answer with a smirk that reminds me of Zach.

"The words that have ended many an interesting conversation," Bex says. "It was nice meeting you Lisa, you to Megan," she says to the little girl. She hugs Hector then helps me out of my chair and we set off to buy shoes. I'm dreading it.

After three painfully slow hours in the mall trying on shoes until Bex found a pair she liked and forced me to buy four pairs of ridiculously high heels that I will never wear in my life, I am finally back in my house. I decide to take a nap and after making sure Bex and Grant know that they can't spar outside the basement gym and that there is a spare key to the house in the hall closet and if they go out, they should take it with them so that they can get back in because our door automatically lock after three minutes. As I lay down on my side of the bed and try to get comfortable, I reflect on my panic yesterday when I'd found out that Zach might have gone into a mission where his cover would be compromised and that Macey's had been. It seems stupid now, that I would have freaked out so quickly and completely. Every mission there is a chance of being compromised. Every time one of us is sent away, there is a chance we won't come home. I guess that yesterday I was forced to think about just how dangerous our jobs really are and how close we can come to dying on any given day. With those overly depressing thoughts running through my head, I fall asleep.

When I wake up, it is to Grant shaking my arm.

"What?" I ask groggily.

"Townsend and Abby made dinner and then Abby told me to come wake you up."

"What time is it?"

"Just after six," he answers.

"Help me up," I order.

"You want me to help you get out of bed?"

"No Grant, I just said help me up because it seemed like it would be fun." He helps me up. "Do you know what supper is?" I ask on the way down the stairs.

"I think it is spaghetti and salad," Grant answers.

"Did Abby make it or Townsend?" I ask him.

"Abby did most of it I think, why?"

"She and my mom have the same level of cooking skills," I answer.

Grant, who has been forced to sit through one of my mom's home-cooked dinners groans. "We're screwed."

It turns out Abby only made the spaghetti and that Townsend made the salad. It also turns out that Abby forgot to stir the noodles so they cooked into a solid heap and are uneatable. Since salad isn't much of a meal for five people, we order Chinese food from a place that doesn't deliver but since nobody wants to go pick it up (it's raining) Bex gets on the phone and convinces whoever's on the other end that it would be in there best interests to bring the food to us. When the guy gets to my house, I answer the door and tip him quite generously after taking the bags of food out of his hands and paying our bill. We decide to ditch the dining room and instead sit on the living room floor and pull out Monopoly to while we eat. It is my recommendation that you don't play Monopoly against two very competitive British spies and two very competitive American spies, it makes the game last forever because, well, Monopoly always lasts a long time but also because when somebody (Bex) comes up with the bright idea to, instead of going to jail, having to draw a name out of a hat and fight whoever you get until one of you yields and gives the other five hundred dollar in Monopoly money, the game takes even loner. It is for this reason that at 11:30 at night when my front door opens and a very familiar voice calls "honey, I'm home," I am sitting on the floor surrounded by empty Chinese containers and listening to an argument between Abby and Grant over whether or not you can borrow money from other players. Everybody freezes and it is silent for a minute as we all listen for the voice I just heard to speak again.

"Cam? Baby? Where are you?"

Bex pops to her feet and without me even having to ask helps me up. I grin at her then take off in the direction of the voice we just heard. "Zach?" I call heading towards the front door.

He smirks at me when he sees me. "Hey baby, how're you and Junior doing?"

I ignore his question and throw my arms around his neck. Then I back up and punch him in the shoulder.

"Ow! What was that for?" He asks.

"Stop leaving in the middle of the night." I say. Then I hug him again.

"I missed you too Gallagher girl," Zach says into my hair. Then he kisses me and I know it's all fine. He's safe, I'm safe. He's here.

"You're here," I say, echoing my thought out loud.

Zach barks a laugh. "Of course I'm here, you didn't think I'd be able to stay away from you, did you?"

I grin and kiss him. "Of course I didn't," I say against his lips.

"Dude," Grant says, interrupting us. "Long time no see."

"It's been like six weeks since I saw you last Grant, I stayed the night at your place when my flight got cancelled because of that huge storm."

"Yeah well I haven't seen you in over nine months," Bex says pushing past Grant. "As I've told Cammie, you guys need to visit us more."

"Bex, you live across an ocean."

"And there are planes and boats and I miss you guys when I don't see you." I step back as Bex hugs Zach and then she steps back as Grant and Abby do the same and Townsend shakes his hand.

"Is there any food in the fridge baby?" Zach asks looking at me.

"No idea," I answer, "I haven't been cooked today."

"Like you ever cook," Zach mutters with an affectionate look.

"Hey, I cook!" I defend myself.

"She cooked a roast last night," Bex informs him.

"It's a miracle," Zach says mockingly. I glare at him and he quickly changes the subject back to the contents of the fridge. "So somebody that has cooked… any food?" He asks.

"It was pretty empty when I made the salad," Townsend answers.

"I may have eaten a lot well you were taking a nap Cam," Grant tells me apologetically. "Bex got called down to headquarters and nobody else was around so I helped myself."

I sigh then remember that the last time I went grocery shopping I threw a bunch of stuff into the extra fridge we keep in our basement laundry room. "There's food in the downstairs fridge," I tell Zach with a smile. "I think there is even some of your post mission ice cream."

"I'll save it for tomorrow," Zach decides. "I probably shouldn't eat ice cream at 11:30 at night anyways."

"Bex caught me doing that once," Grant says with a lopsided grin. "I didn't eat ice cream again for a month."

"Only because I didn't buy it," Bex mutters, "you're just too lazy to buy it yourself."

Grant grins. "I left for a mission in Portugal the next day and got stuck on a remote farm for reasons I can't share. There wasn't anywhere to buy ice cream. I don't think that qualifies as lazy."

"Totally does," she says.

Zach looks at them then at me. "Want to help me unpack?" He nods to a grey duffel bag on the floor.

I yawn, registering the time for the first time tonight. "As long as I can go to sleep afterwards," I answer.

"It's a deal," he grins.

I look at everybody else in the room. "Turn the lights off before you go to bed, okay?" I request.

"Okay," they all chorus at the same time, then go back to the living room, presumably to finish the Monopoly game.

The second we get to our bedroom, Zach throws his bag on the bed and pulls me into his arms.

"Are you all right?" I ask him as he buries his face in my hair.

"Fine, I just really missed you."

"Zach, you go on longer missions than this one all the time." I laugh.

"Yeah, but this was different. Macey and Ava Grey have already been compromised on this mission and you're so close to giving birth I was afraid I was going to miss it."

"Like I wouldn't wait for my husband to come home," I say jokingly. "I was really worried about you," I add in a more serious tone.

"I know, the Director told me during my debrief. I saw the wall." He adds as an afterthought and I can feel his grin like a stamp against my neck.

I grin sheepishly. "I was pissed and couldn't exactly punch the Director."

Zach laughs. "I love you," he kisses me deeply and I let myself get lost in it, the taste of his mouth, the feel of his skin. Too soon he pulls away. "We should get started on the bag," he suggests.

I groan. "I think our previous activity was much more fun." I say but I join him at the bed anyways and start empty out the bag.

I fold the socks that Zach seems to be unable to fold on his own and watch as he takes folded piles of clothing to our closet and puts them on hangers and shelves. I take his favourite gun out of a concealed pocket in the bag and dismantle it piece by piece than absently put it back together, letting my fingers work without thinking about it. The familiar movement is soothing to me and I don't really realize I'm doing it until Zach comes over and plucks the gun out of my hand to put in the weapons safe. He raises an eyebrow at me and I just shrug then lay back on our bed and place my hands protectively on my stomach. It is at this moment that the baby starts to kick and squirm and Zach laughs as he watches my stomach bounce up and down.

"I love you," Zach tells me as he walks towards the bed and places his head on my stomach.

Five hours later, my eyes shoot open and I shake Zach awake.

"It's time," I tell him.