Disclaimer: I don't make any claims to owning WOEICS or its characters. If I did, would it allow me to "put the miss in misdemeanor?"

Author's Note: Huzzah for the final chapter! Thank you to all my lovely readers and reviewers. It's been a fun ride. There may be a short epilogue in the works, stay tuned!

"San Francisco has only one drawback. 'Tis hard to leave."

-Rudyard Kipling

It was a long flight back to San Francisco.

Fortunately for Carmen, the silence and anonymity of the red-eye provided valuable solitude in which to think. A full twenty-four hours had elapsed since her successful break-in at the National Gallery and she still felt wrapped in a blissful, almost post-coital haze. Her heavy heart defied gravity, turned cartwheels, danced on air. Returning the Rothko to a much humbled Director Van Vleet had not grounded her in the slightest. It would seem the loot had little power over her. It was the theft itself that mattered.

For the first time in her life, the young woman asked to be paid in unmarked bills. She suspected it would not be the last.

For months Carmen had felt restless, bored, so filled with anger and sadness she hardly recognized herself. And now, one night's larceny had rendered her better than well. While breaking into the museum was a thrill unlike any other, it went deeper than that. The weeks of planning and puzzling had honed her mind back to its familiar razor-sharp edge. Matching wits against a formidable foe kept her personal demons at bay. The sense of tranquil power she had achieved was not a sensation she would relinquish lightly.

It would hurt to leave, she knew. It would hurt her, but she would hurt others more.

But truthfully, Carmen did not like what awaited her if she stayed. She was tired of tacking between rage and despair, dithering about Hamlet-like and angst-ridden. Not to mention the ever-present threat of passing out- that she could not abide. What were her options? Go cry it out on some analyst's couch twice a week for the next five years? Such treatment promised personal sacrifice without any guarantee of cure. However immoral this was, there was no denying its efficacy. Crime- as a remedy for what ailed her- paid.

She could not, would not stay. Stay and live in the shadow of her past, the bright red pillars of the Golden Gate Bridge a constant reminder of her greatest failure and deepest secret. Carmen laughed bitterly to herself; Suhara had been both right and wrong about her. She was abandoning the search for her parents because she didn't want to know. But it was not failure or even the truth that she feared most….it was disappointment.

Her life she would gamble a hundred thousand times. Her heart she would not.

"Passengers, this is your Captain speaking," a folksy male voice broke over the intercom. "We are now beginning our descent into San Francisco International Airport. We will be arriving at Terminal C, Gate 4. The forecast calls for sunny skies and a high of 70 degrees…"

Carmen looked out the window and caught a glimpse of rosy dawn breaking over the waters of San Francisco Bay. It was arrival, but it was departure, too.

The hallowed halls of the ACME Detective Agency were blessedly deserted when Carmen arrived at 7 am sharp. The Agency ran with a skeleton crew during the night, but the majority of the agents and staff wouldn't show up for at least another hour or so. The young woman briskly navigated the building on auto-pilot, as if pausing for even the briefest of seconds would derail her plan entirely.

When she finally made it undetected to the familiar safety of her office, Carmen, acting on instinct, retrieved a cache of fake driver's licenses and passports from her desk drawer. Leftovers from old undercover operations, they weren't much but they would give her somewhat of a head start until she could get new ones made.

What next? Money, she needed money if this was going to work. And tools and equipment. ACME required agents to sign out currency and gadgets from the equipment locker. Right now, it would be locked, but Carmen had a key. The Inspector had given her one years ago because who was more trustworthy than the agency's star detective? Carmen frowned and felt sick with guilt. Could she really bring herself to steal from those who trusted her?

If you can't do this, honey, better quit right now.

The darkly sarcastic voice within her was right. If she was going to be a traitor, best to get it over with. Carmen slipped into the equipment room, opened the safe and filled her briefcase with a patchwork quilt of pounds, yen, francs, pesos, and rubles. She found a duffle bag and loaded it with all the equipment she could carry without looking terribly suspicious. Let no one accuse her of doing things by half measures. There.

The soon to be former detective returned to her office for a last look. The Detective of the Year Awards, the Certificates of Appreciation, she would leave behind- such baggage would only weigh her down. She caved in to sentiment and plucked two photographs from the wall- one of her with Suhara on their first case, and a more recent snapshot with the Chief. She went to her desk, picked up a pen, and briefly tried to compose a note…telling them not to worry, that she was thankful, that what she did was not their fault. But in that moment all her clever words deserted her; a blank page and an uncapped pen were her only testimony.

There was a part of her, a hardened, bitter part of her, that felt it was somehow appropriate. There were questions in her life that would always remain unanswered, parts of her past that would be forever dark to her. Let others have a taste of what it meant to live everyday in the shadow of a mystery. And besides, in Carmen's mind the answers were all there, painfully obvious to anyone who really cared to look. If her colleagues couldn't figure out why she left, they had no business calling themselves detectives.

Suhara and the Chief will know why. The ones her departure…her betrayal…would hurt the most were an old man and a robot. Carmen tried to brush it off. Suhara, she told herself, would find bright new agents to train, and they would soon erase the memory of one good girl gone bad. The Chief…well, his feelings for her were nothing but a collection of zeroes and ones rattling around on pressed silicon. A few clicks of the keyboard and it would be as if she had never existed. Carmen was tempted to enter the computer room and reprogram him herself, out of mercy…but couldn't bring herself to do it. Sentimental cruelty, that.

In her final act as an ACME detective, Carmen removed her badge and left it on a stack of old files. Her image stared back at her, mocking and defiant, hastening her exit.

She had nearly made it out ACME's little used side entrance when a soft voice stopped her in her tracks. "Carmen?"

She slowly turned and came face to face with the man she had been avoiding for weeks, David Kaplan. Dammit. Dammit. And, oh yes, dammit. Carmen let out a sigh and did her best to exude casual and quotidian, as if this were just another day at the office and not a robbery in progress. "Doctor Kaplan. Good morning. What brings you in so early?"

He scratched his red beard. "I could say the same to you. My daughter's got a karate match this afternoon, I was hoping to take a half day." He gestured toward her bags. "Going somewhere?"

"Returning. Just got off the red eye from DC," she replied laconically.

"Oh yes, we heard about your successful break-in. Is there no end to your talents?" He saluted her with his coffee mug, then turned serious. When he spoke, his tone was soft and protective, the older brother she had never had. "Listen, Carmen, the Chief told me you were looking for your parents. I think that's great. And for whatever its worth, if you want someone to talk to, I'm here." Carmen said nothing, her face impassive. Her silence only seemed to encourage him more. "I realize my specialty is criminal psychology and not talk therapy, but…"

"Oh, you might be more suited than you realize," Carmen muttered under her breath.

"Huh?"

"Never mind. I'm afraid you're a day late and a dollar short, Doctor. I was looking for my parents, but now…I have other projects to occupy my time," she told him, coldly and decisively.

Dr. Kaplan's blue eyes registered suspicion. "I've never known you to back down from a challenge."

"There's a first time for everything."

"Are sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine, Doctor. Better than well." Her voice held a newfound authority that surprised them both with its edge. The man's concern was touching, but terribly inconvenient. Time for a little verbal misdirection. "How are your kids?" A devoted father, Kaplan was obsessed with his son and daughter…what were their names again? Iris and Jack? No.

"Ivy and Zack?" His face brightened and he immediately reached for his wallet, pulling out well handled photographs. "Oh, they're growing up so fast. Too fast." He pointed toward a blond haired toddler, "Zack, he's just so smart. Molly found him counting to ten in Hebrew the other day. I don't know where he gets it from. Definitely not my side of the family. And Ivy, so independent, so strong," he showed her a picture of a red-headed girl, looking fierce in her karate uniform despite missing her two front teeth. Kaplan beamed, "You know she just adores you. Always pesters me when I come home, asking what the great detective Carmen Sandiego is up to. You're kind of her role model."

Not for much longer. Carmen felt the blood drain from her face, but forced herself to smile. "I don't know what to say." She honestly didn't. "I'd better be going. I need to get some things at my apartment."

"All right then. See you around?"

She shook her head. "No. I really don't think you will." The good doctor blinked, fazed by her serious reply to his casual question.

As she swept through the door, Carmen tipped her hat and spoke an oddly prescient farewell; "Say hi to your kids for me."

FINIS