A/N: Muse of mine is still stuck on the fact that Cpt. Deakins is still around, and since I pulled the MCS into this, he gets to come along, so there you have it.

Taking up with the Special Victims Unit wasn't exactly what the four detectives of the Major Case Squad had in mind, but considering the fact that the order had come down straight from the commissioner himself, they hadn't had much of a choice. It wasn't that they had anything against the other unit, by any means, but the fact that the case had been going for over a month already didn't exactly settle well with them. It was no secret that they wished they'd been pulled in sooner, but it remained that they hadn't been, and they would have to deal with it. They'd been warned by their captain that they were to cooperate, and so that's what they would do.

At present, however, it didn't look like they were going to be cooperated with. Silence had been ringing in the interrogation room for a while now, but it was the only place where they could be assured of complete privacy, and it was where Kathleen Stabler sat now, nervously drumming her fingers along the surface of the table. Outside in the observation room, the four MCS detectives watched.

"We can't leave her in there much longer," Mike Logan remarked finally. "She shouldn't even be in there."

"It's the only room we've got right now. We put her in the interview room, everyone will be able to see her and she'll be less likely to talk." Alex Eames turned to face him and sighed. "I don't get why she thinks it'd be easier to talk to us than to SVU."

"She doesn't want her father to know what happened to her and the rest of their family." A few feet away from where Alex was standing, Bobby Goren looked up from the case file he was holding and went on. "She probably has no idea that he already knows."

Silence met this. They'd only gotten the copies of the case files that morning, and had been informed that they would be taking over the investigation into the abductions. It was something that they were comfortable enough with; they'd investigated that sort of thing before, but the fact that this time it was a cop's family had them all thrown for a loop.

"Even if he does know, he's not going to let her know that he knows...at least, not right away," Carolyn Barek said, from where she stood beside her own partner. "I get the feeling that if she starts to think he already knows, it's going to make her clam up even more."

Almost as if on cue, Kathleen got up from where she was sitting and walked over to the two-way mirror that allowed the four detectives to see in, but didn't allow her to see out.

"I know you guys are out there," she said, her voice shaking slightly. "How much longer are you going to keep me in here?"

None of the detectives said anything. The door to the observation room opened, and they all turned, just in time to see one Captain Jimmy Deakins walking in.

"Have you talked to her yet?" he asked.

"No," Alex replied. "She's been waiting; just started walking around the room like that."

"She's not a suspect," said Jimmy, casting a half-annoyed look in her direction. "Why hasn't anyone been in there?"

No answer came. After a while, Mike turned to leave the observation room, reappearing a few seconds later on the other side of the mirror. Kathleen turned to look at him.

"What are you doing here?" she blurted, the words escaping before she could really think about them. "I thought you were still on Staten Island."

"I've been over here for three years now," Mike replied, pulling out a chair. "Come sit with me, will you?"

Kathleen cast an apprehensive look in his direction before coming to sit, across the table from him. Almost at once, she began drumming her fingers on the table again.

"Why'd you take so long to come in here?" she asked, looking over his shoulder at the two-way mirror. "I haven't done anything."

"We know you haven't, kid," said Mike. "We just weren't sure how to go about talking to you."

"Oh." Kathleen trailed off for a moment and stared down at her hand. "This wouldn't be because you guys aren't SVU, would it?"

"That's part of it," Mike admitted. "We heard they were having a hard time getting you to talk to them."

Kathleen's face went bright red, so quickly that for a moment, Mike was afraid she'd pass out, but she didn't. Instead, she brought her other hand up onto the table, and examined her fingernails.

"Do you have any idea how incredibly stupid this feels?" she asked, a faint laugh escaping her as she spoke. "I mean, here I am, twenty-one years old, Dad's been a cop all my life, and I still can't look him in the eye and tell him what happened to me."

"That's understandable. You don't want him to know what happened, Kat, it makes sense. I wouldn't want to tell my own parent, either."

"You don't get it," said Kathleen, looking up. "All my life, I've been telling myself that if something like this ever happened to me, I'd be able to tell him. I'd be able to talk about it. And now it's happened, and I can't."

"Will you tell me why?" Mike asked. Silence came when she didn't answer. He waited, for what seemed like forever, and finally, she spoke.

"I don't want him to look at me differently," she admitted. "Dad and I haven't been getting along for a few years now. There's so much crap between us now, and it never used to be that way. I've screwed up way too many times before, what's to say that this isn't just another screw up?"

Mike stared at her. "You're not serious, are you?" he asked, but when she didn't say anything, he reached across the table, gently taking her chin in his hand and lifting her head so that she was looking directly at him. "This is not your fault, Kat. No matter how many times you've screwed up before, this isn't your fault."

"I let him into our house," said Kathleen, pulling away. "I answered that damned door, and I should have slammed it right back in his face, but I didn't."

She glared down at the surface of the table, where Mike knew that she could likely see her own reflection, but she didn't say anything else.

"Who are you talking about, Kat?" he asked finally. "Who did you open the door to?"

"My boyfriend," Kathleen replied, bitterly. "My ex-boyfriend, actually. I'd broken up with him a few days before we were taken. I only opened the door to tell him to go screw himself but he pushed his way in. Next thing I knew, four more guys were walking after him."

"Did they have any weapons?" A new voice entered the conversation and both Mike and Kathleen jumped, not having expected anyone else to come walking in, but there Jimmy was, now leaning back against the door, waiting.

"Only one of them did," Kathleen replied, looking over Mike's shoulder at him. "I didn't recognize him, but he was older."

"Think you can describe him?" Mike asked. She looked back at him.

"Maureen took a picture of him," she said. "With her phone, before anyone noticed that she had it out. I don't know where her phone is, but it's probably still in our house. None of us got to take our phones with us."

"Did this older guy seem interested in anyone in particular?" Jimmy asked, suddenly, and Kathleen gave him a strange look.

"Actually, he did," she said. "He kept staring at my mom, like he knew her from somewhere, only he never said anything about it. Everyone else kinda just did what he told them to do."

"Did any of these guys say anything to you?" Mike asked.

"They knew the twins weren't there," said Kathleen, shuddering slightly as the memory of that day came back to her. "They kept saying they were going to kill us all unless someone told them where the twins had gone, but none of us knew."

"How'd they find out where the twins were, then?"

"Eli started crying upstairs, so one of them went up to find out what the noise was. That's how they found them."

Her grip on the table had become tight enough that her knuckles were turning white, but she made no move to let go, even as she started shaking. "After that, they took us. They wouldn't say where they were going, they blindfolded us and tied us up, and when we got to the first place, it started."

And there it was, the hard part, and the part of this conversation that she'd been hoping they wouldn't ever get to. Hot tears started to make their way down her face, and she closed her eyes, bringing a hand to her mouth to muffle the choked sob that escaped her.

"They went backwards," she said. "From the youngest up, but they left Eli alone. The first night...I could hear Lizzie screaming, but all they did was laugh and tell her that it wasn't going to do any good. No one would be able to hear her."

Kathleen trailed off for a long moment, then, long enough that both Mike and Jimmy thought she had finished, but before either of them could say anything to stop her from continuing, she did.

"They took pictures when they got to me and Maureen. They said because I'm twenty-one and she's twenty-three, it wasn't against the law, and when we tried to fight them off, they tied us down, right there in the same room. They did the same thing to the twins."

"Where was your mother?" Mike asked, unable to stop himself. Kathleen's eyes opened and she glared at him.

"She was screaming in another room," she said. "At the older guy. Trying to get him to leave us kids alone, but all he did was laugh at her and tell her to shut the hell up. He said that she'd gotten away from him once before and that it wasn't going to happen again."

"What's your ex-boyfriend's name?" Mike asked. Kathleen rubbed the back of her hand across her face.

"Tony Martin," she said. "His mom's a cop out in the Bronx, but he's a nutcase. I wish I'd known before. Maybe then this wouldn't have happened."

"This isn't your fault," Mike said, again. "We're gonna find this kid, and we're gonna get him to talk, all right?"

"I'm not going to have to see him again, am I?" Kathleen asked, and there was a note of fear in her voice that neither Mike nor Jimmy missed.

"No," Jimmy told her, after a brief pause. "At least, not for a while. We may have to ask you to pick him out of a lineup, but if that happens, he won't be able to see you."

"He'll be behind a mirror like that," said Mike, motioning backwards. "He'll know someone's there, but he won't know who it is."

Kathleen didn't answer. Instead, she looked back at her hands, and said nothing for a long moment. When she finally broke her silence, both Mike and Jimmy had to move forwards to hear her.

"I want to go home."

Across town from where this conversation was taking place, one of a completely different nature was going on.

"Katherine Annello is Katherine McCormack," Kay told John, over the phone. "Mike finally managed to track her down."

"So where is she now?" John asked, reaching for a notepad. "Anywhere we'd be able to find her and talk to her?"

"No," said Kay, but before John could say anything more, "Hear me out before you say anything, will you?"

"As long as you've got something to tell me," John replied. "Just keep in mind that it's gotta be something that can get us somewhere."

"It will be," said Kay. "Katherine McCormack moved to New York City with her family in 1980, and they settled in Queens. She got married straight out of high school in 1984."

"She took her husband's name, then?" said John. Kay nodded, briefly, before remembering that they weren't actually speaking face to face.

"Yeah," she said. "Katherine McCormack is Kathy Stabler. You guys might be looking for the same guy who set the fire in 1976."

"Did you find out who the primary on Phoebe Mitchell's murder was?"

"It was Gee. Mike's old lieutenant from the Arson squad picked it up on their side of things, and now both of them want in on finding this guy."

"Think he might be in Baltimore?"

"We're not sure. Gee and Lieutenant Pearson aren't too convinced he ever left Baltimore, but if we're right, Kathy Stabler's the only one he really wants."

Silence. The way that Kay had said this didn't settle well, and a cold feeling came over John as he sat on the edge of his desk. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You gave me the details of the case from Albany," said Kay. "This guy gave the kids up in a fair enough physical condition, but the mother almost died from her injuries."

"You think he'd leave her badly enough off that she might die?" John asked. Kay sighed.

"It's likely," she said. "I don't like it any more than you do, but unless you find them up in New York or we find them down here in Baltimore any time soon, we might not like what we do end up finding."

That definitely didn't settle well, even if it was true. There were two cities that the rest of the Stabler family might have been in, but if they weren't in either of them, there were over a hundred other cities where they could be. Pulling the Feds had proven to not really be all that helpful, what with the focus of their investigation changed, but there was no way to make them back off anymore.

"Speaking of finding things, what do the Feds think they have against you?" Kay asked. "And don't you dare hang up on me, either."

"You've gotten better at reading my mind, Kay."

"Oddly enough, the thought no longer frightens me. What do they think you've done?"

"Call me back on my cell phone. I'm in the squad room."

"Fine, but you'd better answer."

A click told John that he'd been hung up on; seconds later, his cell phone went off in his pocket. There was no one else in the squad room, but he drew it out and flipped it open anyway, before getting up and walking out.

"The Feds think that I might possibly be part of the group that stormed Detective Stabler's place and took his family," he said. "That's why they're keeping an eye on me."

Kay snorted. "You're joking, right?" she asked, but when no answer came, "My God, John, what evidence have they got?"

"Pictures. Trust me when I say you don't want to know what they're of," John replied. "That, and an internet history filled with other things that I won't repeat."

"What the hell is that?" Kay asked, annoyed. "That's hardly any evidence; don't they know that sort of thing is easy to fake?"

"Ah, so I do still have allies in Baltimore," John said, wryly. On the other side of the line, Kay glared at the phone, as if he could see her through it.

"Did you really think you wouldn't?" she said. "Come on now, Munch, you ran with us for long enough. I'd like to think we all knew you well enough to know you wouldn't do something like this."

"Of course I wouldn't. But the fact remains that the Feds think I did, and so now, I don't really have any choice but to stay here in New York."

"Have they brought you up on any charges yet?"

"No, but they're going to have to do it soon, if our crime scene unit doesn't come up with something to prove that someone's been in my apartment that shouldn't have been."

"Do you think they will?"

"I don't know, Kay. But now that I know what we're dealing with...They never caught the guy that set that fire, I know they didn't, because it would have been all over the news."

"I know it would've been. But..." Kay trailed off as a sudden thought hit her. "Did you ever think that maybe it's not Detective Stabler that these people were targeting in the first place?"

"No," said John, startled. "We didn't. Up until now, we've been assuming that it was Elliot these guys had a problem with, but if this cold case is the answer to everything..."

"Then it leaves everyone from the Baltimore side right inside this guy's strike zone," said Kay, picking up where he'd left off. "Including you."

There was a buzzing sound, suddenly, and John held his phone away from his ear. On the screen, there was a new text message, from Mike Logan. He read it once, and swore under his breath, though still loudly enough for Kay to hear him.

"What?" she demanded. "What's wrong now?" John sighed.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing's wrong. We just might have another lead on the New York side of things. I'll call you back."