A/N: Not really much to say here, so I'll leave you all to it.

They'd been split up. She figured that she really shouldn't have been surprised by it, and honestly, she wasn't, but it still scared the hell out of her. There had always been a risk in anything they did, and the one that she had taken in wearing the department shirt outside had led to this. It was of some small comfort that she could still hear the voices of her children every now and then, but the fact that she could not see them bothered her.

As far as she could tell, all of the lights in the windowless room she'd been shoved into two days ago were off, and had been ever since. It wasn't like the last place they'd been in, when the lights in their rooms had been regulated by a timer. No...this time, it was dark, and she didn't like it, at all. The sound of the door opening and closing made her jump, and then there was the faint sound of laughter.

"I do have to hand it to you," said a voice. "It was an awfully smart idea to pack up that department shirt and wear it outside. Did you think that anyone would notice?"

"This is New York," Kathy replied, icily. "No one notices anything unless they have to."

"Except for the police. By now, your husband and his unit know that we were in that rowhouse."

"This surprises you?"

"Honestly, no. But since you wore that department shirt outside, we had to move." A hand reached out to touch her face, and Kathy pulled away, glaring into the darkness.

"They'll find us," she said, defiantly, "Keep your hands off me."

"I run the game here, if I might remind you. Wouldn't want anything to happen to your children, would you?"

"You stay away from my kids."

"It's a bit late for that." The hands touching her were cold, and unyielding. Kathy fought the desire to pull away again, knowing what would happen if she did.

"You've learned your lesson, then," said the voice, and she bit back the want to spit in the general direction of the sound.

"You go to hell," she said, unable to keep her voice from shaking. "You hear me? You go to hell."

"That's not a very nice thing to say."

"I don't give a damn."

"You've got a mouth on you."

"So my husband tells me."

"Sometimes, I don't think he knows what he's got in you. If he did, he might not stay away so often."

"He does the best he can, not that it's any of your concern."

"Are you sure about that?"

"You're damn right I am."

Silence fell after this, and Kathy was half-tempted to believe that she was once more alone in the room, but then the hands came again, and so did the voice.

"You know the drill," it said, coldly. "One word, and you aren't going to like what I do next."

"Do what you will and get out."

There was the faint sound of laughter, again, but Kathy said nothing else, closing her eyes behind the blindfold and gripping the bedcovers with both hands. Seconds later, the sound of a baby's wailing filled the room.

It was the only thing that she could hear.

"I thought I told you two to go home."

The second search of the rowhouse had turned up a few things that had kept John and Fin in and out of the squad room for the past two days. It had finally gotten to the point where their captain had seen fit to order them both home. That had been a few hours ago, and they still had not gone.

At present, Don Cragen wasn't sure whether he should be annoyed or somewhat amused by this. On the one hand, it was a relief that they had not yet given up on this. But on the other hand, the last thing he wanted was for them to run themselves into the ground. Neither John nor Fin had made any move to acknowledge that he was there, or even that he had spoken to them; a low sigh escaped him as he walked over to where their desks were, knocking once on John's desk, loudly enough to get their attention. Both of them looked up, slightly guilty expressions on their faces.

"We had something else that we needed to run down," said John, after a moment. "Figured we might as well not wait."

"That's what you told me at..." Don paused to look at his watch and then continued. "Five o'clock. It's now nine o'clock. What's so important that the two of you couldn't wait?"

"This," said Fin, and held out a folded up sheet of paper. CSU had found it inside of the teddy bear when they'd processed the evidence gathered from the rowhouse, but in the slew of cases that had followed in the two days since, the paper had been overlooked. It hadn't been until he and John had gone back down there to see if anything new had come up that they had discovered the note. "It was inside the teddy bear we found. CSU missed it when they were giving us what they'd found."

"What does it say?" Don asked, pulling the chair from underneath Olivia's desk, which was now right next to John's, and sitting in it. "Anything that might help?"

"We think it's in some kind of code that only Elliot's going to understand, but we haven't been able to get a hold of him or Olivia," said John. "Could be one of the kids trying to tell us where they were headed."

"Or even that their mother's alive. They had to have been there when the picture from the kitchen was taken," said Fin. "Either way, until we get hold of Elliot, we're not going to know anything."

"Have you tried calling Olivia's apartment?" Don asked, and both John and Fin nodded.

"Both their cell phones, Liv's apartment, and Elliot's house," said John, "They're not answering anywhere."

"Left both of them text messages," said Fin, "They either haven't gotten them yet or they're avoiding...Hold on a second."

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open; a few seconds later, he looked up and continued where he'd left off.

"That was from Elliot," he said. "TARU pulled the records on his house phones; they just got the results. Someone tried to call for help."

"Where are they now?" Don asked, startled by this. "How the hell did we miss that?"

"Dispatch probably screwed up there; the call would have come through otherwise," said John, looking slightly disturbed by this. "I suppose the question there is why the hell didn't it come through?"

"They disappeared in the afternoon on a Friday," said Fin. "Lot of stuff goes down once school lets out for the weekend. Might have been a lot going on right then."

"That's still no excuse," said Don, annoyed now. "Find out what Elliot and Olivia are doing now and tell them to come back to the squad room as soon as they're done."

"Does this mean we're no longer required to go back home, then?" John asked, dryly. Don cast a half-exasperated look at him, but nodded.

"I doubt either one of you had any intention of leaving in the first place, but yes, this means you no longer have to go home," he said. "Next time, you'd both better be gone before I come out of the office."

But this last part was said with enough distraction that although both John and Fin took it seriously, it wasn't as seriously as they might have taken it otherwise. Don got up from where he was sitting as the phone in his office started to ring, and disappeared as the door closed; John turned to look at his partner and sighed.

"They answer you yet?" he asked.

"They're down at Central, talking to the dispatch shift that's on now," Fin replied. "I let 'em know to come on down here."

"Elliot's not going to be happy if your theory about too much going on proves to be right," said John, "But...it makes sense, but it doesn't, y'know? There might have been too much going on, but if someone's calling saying that someone's in their house holding their family at gunpoint or knifepoint or whatever...how the hell doesn't that come through to someone?"

"Could be someone thought it was just kids looking for a laugh," said Fin, "Either that, or too many calls were coming in and whoever called just slipped through the cracks."

"And we wonder why no one has any faith in the police these days," said John, shaking his head. "They had to have been wondering why no one ever came to save them from these people."

"They're never going to give up hoping that Elliot's going to come for them," said Fin. "They know he ain't gonna let go of this until they're home."

"I know," said John. "None of us are going to let this go. But...say the call did go through, and went to the local precinct. Then what?"

"Then if they were paying attention, they would have responded," said Fin. "Where are you going with this?" As he spoke, he flipped his phone open again when it went off, signaling that another text message had gone off. Before John could answer, he continued. "That's Liv. You might be right; she says the call went through."

"If we're dealing with a cop, it's going to get complicated," said John. "Any idea what Elliot's home precinct is?"

"He and Liv aren't coming back here, they're headed over there now," said Fin. "Last time I looked at the boundaries, his home precinct is the four-nine. What are we going to do about Internal Affairs?"

"I don't know. We're going to have to find some way to stall them, though, otherwise, we're not going to get anywhere. Once people figure out the rat squad's sniffing around..."

John trailed off there, but didn't need to go on; Fin already knew what he meant. Once the Internal Affairs Division got involved, there wouldn't be one cop in the department who'd tell them what they knew about anything, if they knew anything at all.

"Tell Liv we'll meet them over there," John said, finally, picking up where he'd left off. "And let her know we have something that might help."

The halls of the 49th Precinct were mostly quiet, given the late hour. There were a few people there, but not many, and certainly not enough to distract the two detectives currently making their way down the back hallway. There was one thing on their mind, and that thing was finding some answers.

"You sure Munch and Fin said they were going to meet us here?" Elliot asked, and Olivia turned to look at him.

"Yeah," she said. "They didn't say how long it would take them to get here, though. Said they had something that might help us get somewhere."

"Well, if we find anything here...How the hell do we miss something like that?" said Elliot, sounding frustrated. "It should have been one of the first things that we thought to look for!"

"I know," Olivia replied. "Believe me, I know, but we didn't have any reason to look. There was no indication that they made a call."

"What I want to know is how it went through and didn't get an answer," said Elliot. "You can't tell me something like that slipped through the cracks. Even if it was two kids calling, you can't just ignore it when someone says they're stuck in a home invasion."

"Elliot, even if the call went through, there's a chance that it got lost in the fray," said Olivia. "You know how these things work. Calls can be dropped. There's a chance that it went through, but these people found the twins upstairs before they were able to say what was really going on."

"Then someone in Dispatch should have known enough to trace the call, find out where it was coming from, and send help," said Elliot. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Liv, but last time I looked, that was standard procedure."

"So they screwed up. Someone's going to take the fall for it, El, there's no use dwelling on it. We're over here now, not over there. All we can do is move forward and ask the desk sergeant if anything came in on Friday afternoon."

"We're going to have a lot to go through." Elliot trailed off and sighed. "Maybe we can narrow it down to within a few blocks of my place."

"If that's what we have to do, then we'll do it," said Olivia. "Let's just find out what we can get from here, and we'll move on from that, all right?"

Silence fell when Elliot didn't answer. He knew better than to argue with her, even though doing so would have kept his mind off of the questions that had arisen within the past few hours. There was too much to go over, already, even without finding out whether or not a call had come into this precinct from dispatch. The fact that John and Fin had found something that might help them was of some sort of comfort, but it wasn't enough to make the empty feeling inside of him go away.

"Hey," said Olivia, finally, waving a hand in front of her partner's face, "You all right in there?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," said Elliot, blinking once. "I was just thinking. Not sure that's the greatest idea right now."

He didn't say anything else, and Olivia didn't press for it. Already, the precinct's front desk was coming into view. Turning into the main hallway, she looked over at him again and sighed.

"We're getting somewhere," she said. "Even if it leads us to a dead end, we know the trail isn't cold yet. That's something to hold onto, isn't it?"

Elliot nodded, mutely, and continued walking, finally moving past her. She remained where she was, and looked at the back of his head for a long moment before following after him. When they reached the front desk, the desk sergeant sitting there, a man by the name of Mark Lautner didn't notice them for a few minutes, but when he did, he looked at Olivia blankly for a moment before seeing Elliot.

"Hey, Stabler," he said, by way of greeting. "What brings you down here at this hour?"

"My family," Elliot replied, careful to keep his voice neutral. "Listen, Lautner, my partner and I have a problem, and we think you might be able to help us."

"Sure, man, whatever you guys need," said Mark. "Anything specific you're looking for?"

"Records," said Elliot. "TARU pulled the records for my home phones. Someone tried to call for help, but dispatch screwed it up. We need to know if that call ever reached this precinct."

"Or if any calls within at least a five block radius on any side reached this precinct," said Olivia. "Other people might have tried to call."

Mark looked over at her and then at Elliot with raised eyebrows. "You think one of the kids had a chance to call it in?" he asked.

"We've got the proof that they at least tried," said Elliot. "What I'd like to know is why it appears like no one believed what they had to say."

"If it came through here, I might have heard about it; I was on the desk that day," said Mark. "Let me take a look at the old record book..."

He took the old book out from where it was beneath the desk, and started flipping through it until he was almost to the end. Turning the book around so that Elliot and Olivia could read it, he continued on from where he'd left off.

"That's the record of calls that came in the day your family went missing," he said. "There were calls coming from all over that area on every side."

"A cell phone," said Olivia. "Both of the twins have one?"

"Yeah, they do. One of them must have been trying to get through while the other was trying to get a hold of as many people as possible to get them to do the same," said Elliot, somewhat surprised by this. "I wouldn't have thought about that."

"Well, they're awfully smart to have thought of that," said Mark. "Not too many people would have considered the fact that they had two phones available for them to use. Have you tried calling any of their cell phones?"

"Every one of them has gone straight to voicemail every time," said Elliot. "There's no way to get a hold of any of them; they aren't even answering text messages. If they were, we might have found them by now."

"Dispatch gave us a list of numbers that called in," said Mark, and pulled a sheet of paper out of the book. "Recognize any of them?"

Olivia didn't answer; Elliot drew his own cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open, going to the contacts list to see if any of the numbers matched. After a while, he nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "Numbers match to your place, McKendrie's, Camden's, Courtland's and mine."

"Five different places," said Mark, frowning now. "Why the hell didn't anyone respond?"

"Did you send anyone?" Olivia asked, and he nodded.

"Yeah, I sent someone," he said. "You think I'm gonna blow that off as a joke? There were three different squad cars within a ten-block radius of your place, Elliot. I don't know what to tell you."

"You can tell me who was in those squad cars," said Elliot. "If they were that close, there's no way they shouldn't have made it there in time."

"Couldn't agree more." Mark turned the record book around again so that he didn't have to try and read upside down, and then continued. "I've got Applegate and Bennett to the east, Cochran and Dennison to the west and Ellison and Finley to the north, all within ten blocks."

"So why the hell didn't they make it there before the family was moved?" asked a new voice, and Elliot and Olivia turned to see John and Fin walking in through the precinct's main doors. As they turned back to look at Mark, John picked up where he'd left off. "There wouldn't happen to be any reports of traffic incidents on the way there on any side, would there?"

"Nothing in the reports," said Mark. "I really don't know what to tell you guys. The calls came through here, all of the guys out there answered, said they were on their way out. I don't know what happened."

"But you didn't bother to talk to any of them," said Olivia, unable to keep a note of sarcasm out of her voice. Mark sighed.

"I didn't have a chance," he said. "Internal Affairs came down here looking for them before I could."

"IAD?" John asked, startled. "What the hell did Internal Affairs want with a bunch of uniforms?"

"Hell if I know," said Mark. "They didn't say, and I didn't ask. But all three squad cars wouldn't have gone to that house. I never had a chance to ask which one of them even responded."

"Well, now they have to deal with me," said Elliot. "You mind making a copy of that record for us?"

"Not at all," said Mark, and got up, taking the record book with him to do so. Once he'd disappeared, both Elliot and Olivia turned to look over at John and Fin.

"You said you had something that might help us out?" Olivia asked, and Fin nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "This note. CSU found it inside the teddy bear but they missed it when they gave us the results from everything they found. We couldn't figure out what it meant."

Elliot took the note that Fin held out and unfolded it, frowning down at the seemingly nonsense words for a long moment before looking up again.

"The twins used to have their own language, when they were little," he said. "Used to drive Kathy and me up the wall; we could never figure out what they were talking about, but they explained it to me one day. This is from them."

"Do you know what it says?" John asked, and Elliot sighed.

"Not off the top of my head," he replied. "I'll have to sit and look at it, but I should be able to figure out what it says."

Footsteps made all four of them look forward again; seconds later, Mark reappeared with the copied records in hand.

"Hope this helps," he said. "Let me know if you find anything, will you?"

Elliot took the records and nodded. "Thanks for this," he said. "We'll keep you posted."

And with that, he turned and left, walking out through the precinct's main doors. Olivia, John and Fin followed after him, but said nothing, even as the doors swung closed behind them. The sound of a cell phone ringing made them all jump. Olivia, John and Fin glanced down at their own to see if it had been one of them; Elliot, on the other hand, flipped his open, but before he could say anything, the person on the other hand started talking, quickly.

"Wait a minute, what? Allison, slow down, I don't understand you...They left him where?"