A/N: Again, not much to say, so there you have it.

Rob Lautner was exactly where Elliot had said he would be: at home, where he was sitting at a table in the backyard, working on a term paper. Upon hearing footsteps, he turned, and, seeing John and Fin, he closed his laptop and sighed.

"Detective Stabler told me you'd be here," he said. "What can I do to help you?"

"Rob, I'm Sergeant Munch, this is my partner, Detective Tutuola," said John. "We just need you to answer a few questions."

'Well, that's what I'm here for," said Rob. "You can sit if you'd like. Can I get you anything?"

"No, but thanks," said fin, as he and John both sat. "The story we've heard is that you and a bunch of other kids tried to call for help after you got word something was wrong."

Rob nodded. "Yeah," he said. "That's how it went. I got a text message from Kari Camden. She said the Stablers' place had been invaded, and I needed to start trying to call in and get a squad car down here."

"Records say you called," said John. "How many times before you got through?"

"Three," said Rob. "Kari sent me another text message, to tell me that she and three other people were trying to do the same."

"If you don't mind our asking, which one of Detective Stabler's kids are you friends with?" Fin asked. Rob laughed.

"All of them, really, but I grew up going to school with Maureen. I guess you could say I'm closest to her." He trailed off for a moment and sighed. "Actually, I suppose you could even say that she and I are more than friends."

"You've heard that there's evidence that the family is still alive, then," said John. Rob looked over at him.

"I don't think Elliot would have made it this far if you'd turned up any evidence that they were dead," he replied. "It's nothing against him as a cop, but I've known him for most of my life, and his family...they're everything to him."

That was certainly no secret. John and Fin exchanged glances, but before they could say anything, Rob continued.

"I thought...Well, I thought that Keiran was just trying to freak Kari out, telling her something like that," he said, staring down at the table. "That's who Kari heard everything from, Keiran McKendrie. It wouldn't have been the first time that she and Dickie had done something to scare her, but then Keiran called me herself."

"What did she say?" Fin asked.

Rob sighed and ran a tired hand over his face. "She was upset," he said. "She started crying before she could get everything out, so Chris took over. He told me that Dickie had called Keiran, panicking, asking them to call in and get a hold of as many people as possible to do the same. I heard shouting after that, so I asked Chris what it was, and he said Keiran had gotten through on her cell phone and that she'd heard shouting when Dickie had called her...these people were threatening to kill the entire family."

"That was why Keiran was shouting?" John asked.

"I'm assuming so. Someone over in dispatch must have thought it was a joke, too; Keiran was pissed. I could hear every word she said."

"And this was after you'd already gotten through yourself?"

"Yeah. After I hung up with Chris, I called again from the house phone, got through again, told 'em the exact same thing as before. They told every one of us that they were sending help, but no one ever came."

"Did you hear from any of the family yourself?" Fin asked. A pained expression crossed Rob's face at this, but disappeared as quickly as it had come.

"Yeah, I did," he replied, quietly. "Maureen called me. We'd had plans, but she told me she had to cancel. I heard voices in the background, so I asked, but she told me someone of her mother's relatives had come up unexpectedly from Baltimore."

John looked up sharply from his note taking, a slight frown crossing his face. "Did you say Baltimore?"

"Yeah. Kathy's from there. Maureen told me that her mother didn't move to New York until 1980."

Silence fell. The unit had been chasing leads all across New York, but until now, had never considered the fact that the family might have been taken across state lines. It was not something that either partner had wanted to hear. If the family had indeed crossed state lines, they would have no choice but to get the Feds involved.

"And you didn't hear anything else after that?" John asked, finally, and Rob shook his head.

"No," he said. "That was it. I tried to call Maureen back after I got the message from Kari, but she didn't answer, and neither did anyone else."

She'd been allowed to bring her journal with her. She wasn't particularly sure as to why this was, but she'd been allowed to, and it was more than just a little bit comforting. The old one had been all filled up by the time that she and her mother and siblings had been taken, so she'd grabbed the new, completely blank one that her father had given her a few days before. Ever since then, she'd been keeping a record. Everything that happened, everything that she'd seen, everything that she'd heard...it all went in there, with no exceptions.

"You know, they're probably going to ask for that when they find us," said a voice, and Kathleen jumped. A split second later, Maureen came into view, pulling out a chair and sitting in it backwards as she went on. "I'm going to take a guess and assume that you'll tell them to kiss off when they do."

"Why would I do that?" Kathleen asked, sarcastically. "I'd love to let them know that you and I have been passed around like a bag of chips, and that Mom's been tied to a bed ever since we got here. Nothing would make me happier."

"Sarcasm isn't going to get you out of this one," Maureen replied, giving her a look. "There's nothing you can do about it, and there's nothing I can do, either."

"So, what? We're supposed to deal with it, and hope for the best? Just lay there and take it because if we don't, we're all going to die? I'm starting to think we might be better off dead!"

"We're going to make it out of this. All of us are. Don't tell me you're so ready to give up now."

"I gave up a long time ago, Maureen. It's been a month. If they haven't found us now, they're never going to."

Silence fell between the two sisters, then, and lingered. After a while, it started grating on Kathleen's nerves, but still, she said nothing, choosing instead to stare at the table with a half-defiant expression on her face. Another long moment passed before Maureen spoke again.

"You really think they're not coming for us, don't you?" she asked. Kathleen didn't look up.

"Don't you think that if they were, they might have done it by now?" she asked in reply. "Come on, Maureen. You need to quit looking at this through rose-colored glasses."

"And maybe you need to start," Maureen told her. "I don't know what's up with this fatalistic attitude of yours, but it needs to go somewhere."

"There's nowhere for it to go. You know as well as I do that one of us is going back down to that basement tonight, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it." Kathleen looked up, finally, and continued on, cutting Maureen off before she could say anything. "We don't even know what they did with Eli. What the hell is that supposed to tell us?"

"I thought you heard them saying that they were going to take him home," Maureen said, slowly, and Kathleen nodded.

"I did," she said. "But it doesn't mean that's what they ended up doing. Eli could be dead for all we know."

"He's not dead."

"What makes you so sure of that?"

"They would have told us." Maureen trailed off for a few seconds, and sighed. "They would have been flaunting it. They'd have found some way to let us know if they'd killed him."

Kathleen looked back down at the table, shaking her head, as a faint laugh escaped her. "Do you realize that we haven't seen Mom or the twins since we got here?" she asked. "They split us up for a reason."

"Yeah, I know," said Maureen. "They think they're going to be able to break us, and it's pissing them off that they haven't after all this time."

"Maybe they have and it just hasn't hit us yet. Some kind of delayed reaction, y'know?"

"I really don't know why I bother with you sometimes, Kathleen. If all you're going to do is sit here and try to come up with reasons why we're all screwed..." Maureen trailed off, annoyed, and got to her feet, moving to walk away, but before she could, Kathleen spoke again.

"Don't go," she said, quickly. "Seriously, Maureen, don't. This place is giving me the creeps; I was actually hoping you'd come in, and I'm sorry, all right? I'll keep my mouth shut."

Maureen sat back down and sighed again. "It's not that I want you to shut up," she said. "I just don't want to hear all the reasons why you think this isn't going to end well when I'm trying to hold onto the idea that it will."

She had a point, and Kathleen knew it, which was why she was already starting to feel slightly guilty. There was always a chance that they would make it out all right, even if it didn't seem that way at the moment. Kathleen leaned back in her chair, then, and suddenly fell over as something she'd done came back to her.

"I left a note," she said, the words tumbling out in a breathless rush as she sat up again. "In Eli's teddy bear. That's why I forgot it."

Maureen looked at her with raised eyebrows. "You left a note?" she asked. "When?"

"Right before we left. I heard them talking about leaving Eli home, so I started listening harder, and I heard that they were going to move us again so I left a note inside the teddy bear for Dad. That's why I left it."

"All that bitching you did at Mom when she gave you hell about it, and you left it because you left a note? Why didn't you just tell her that?"

"There were people listening." Kathleen got to her feet and started pacing back and forth as she continued. "You remember that secret language the twins used to have, when they were like, six?"

"Kathleen, do you have any idea what they're going to do to us if they find out you did that?"

"Even if they do and they find the next note I'm going to leave if they move us again, the only thing they're going to be able to understand is that the note is for Dad. I wrote it in that language."

"You and I didn't even know the twins' language."

"Dickie told me about it. When I told him what I was going to do. I said I needed a way to get information to Dad without these idiots figuring out what I was up to, and he explained everything."

Maureen stared at her younger sister for a long moment in shock, and then shook her head, a faint smirk crossing her face. "You know, I underestimate you sometimes," she said. "I wouldn't have thought of that."

"I'm surprised the twins didn't. It's exactly the sort of thing they might have done."

"Maybe they didn't think it would work."

"Well, neither did I, but...Maureen, what if it does? Maybe that's the way to help them find us."

"I swear living with you is like a rollercoaster; one minute you're up and the next you're down. What happened to thinking that we're all screwed?"

"That was before. This is now. If Dad figured out what the note said, we have a way to communicate with him."

"Yeah, if we leave again. We don't even know who these people are; we've never seen their faces."

That was true. Kathleen stopped in her tracks and frowned slightly as she mulled this over, and then sighed.

"I didn't think about that," she admitted. "But there's got to be a way for us to..." She cut herself off as a voice came drifting down the hall towards them, and bit her lip so hard that she drew blood.

"I guess it's not us they want tonight," she said, quietly, and fell back against the wall, sliding down to the floor and burying her face in her hands. A few seconds later, a muffled sob came, and Maureen got up from where she was, coming to sit down beside her, pulling her into a hug that was more like an anchor for both of them than anything else.

The lights above them went off soon after. Neither of them bothered to look up. The lights wouldn't be on again until morning.