Sarah arrived just as he finished talking to Nikki. Scott was driving and she was out of the car and running towards him before it had even stopped moving.

"Ben!" She cried racing over to him. "What's happening?" She looked from Ben to the mass of people around the house. The neighbours had all come out to see what the commotion was and the house was crawling with police officers. A crime scene team had just arrived to collect evidence and police officers were roping off the front yard. This was bad, very, very bad.

"Are you Sarah?" The detective standing beside Ben asked.

"Yes." She drew her eyes away from the scene and towards the woman.

"Good." The woman gave her a nod and started going over what they knew had happened and what needed to happen now. Finding Nell and the people responsible for what had happened was their highest priority. Time was of the essence and the sooner an AMBER alert was out the better. They wanted to talk to each of the boys separately and needed to know the names of anyone who'd want to hurt their family. It became obvious at that moment the detective didn't know who they were, didn't know what kind of abuse the family had been receiving since Bill's announcement.

They had to tell them everything, explain their family, the houses, and the living arrangements. They told them what Bill had done and that the number of people who wanted to hurt the family was huge. The detective seemed to nod, take it all in and then the FBI arrived and they had to go through it all again. Scott sat with Wayne as he told the police what had happened, while Sarah sat with Raymond as he did the same thing. Ben went with the detective to get a picture of Nell and show them the letters and Teeny occupied Lester and Aaron, the youngest boys didn't really understand what was happening.

-8-8-8-

Gone, stabbed, hospital, the words kept running through Barb's head as she raced down the highway towards Sandy. It took every ounce of her self control not to speed, not to floor the car and find out how fast her old beast could really move. Being arrested for dangerous driving or worse causing an accident was the last thing she and her family needed right now. She needed to get home, her children weren't equipped to handle this, as well as she'd taught them she hadn't taught them this, no one had taught her this. She needed to be with her children, all her children and Margene, she kept thinking about what Ben had told her, he'd been vague on the details but she could see Margie fighting to hold onto her girl. The images made her feel sick, and the guilt started to eat at her, she couldn't help thinking if she'd been there it wouldn't have happened, that if she'd been more focused on her family and not the casino she could have stopped it.

She could have stopped it, the thought suck in her head and she began to feel tears run down her face. She began to cry and she could feel her body want to shake, if she didn't need to get home so fast she would have pulled over but that wasn't an option she had to pull herself together, be the adult.

After seventy odd minutes of driving she turned the car into their street. She slowed the car to a roll and took in the scene around her. The street was full of cars, big black SUVs, station wagons, police cruisers, there were lights on in every one of their houses, and Margie's front door was wide open. People wearing jackets with the letters POLICE and FBI blazed across the back walked in and out of the house. She pulled the car into the driveway and climbed out. She didn't linger on the scene outside she went straight to her front door and let herself inside.

Inside the house did not look like she had left it. There were police and FBI, two men attaching machines to the telephone, and a man and woman sitting at the dining table with Ben and Sarah. The table was covered in piles and piles of the letters the houses had received over the last week. Seeing them spread out like that she hadn't realised there were so many. For a moment she froze, she didn't say anything stopped moving. Ben saw her before she could react.

"Mom!" he said standing and walking towards her. He moved quickly across the room and embraced her tightly. Soon Sarah was there too, and for a minute they just stood there together holding each other. It felt good to hold her two eldest children, to feel them, smell them, it had a comforting effect but it didn't take away the sick feeling of knowing her family wasn't whole. Eventually she let go and the FBI agents from the table introduced themselves. Their team was heading the investigations, they told her they were doing everything they could to find Nell and the people responsible. They told her what had happened and asked if she knew of anyone who'd want to hurt her family. She could think of lots of people Bill wasn't exactly short of enemies but she didn't think any of them would do this. The Greens had kidnapped before but they would have done it clean, and would already be asking for something. So far there had been no demands, no contact, they'd just disappeared.

After talking with the agents she walked over to see Teeny and the boys. They were at Nikki's house, Scott was keeping an eye on them. There was an old movie playing on the TV and the three youngest had fallen asleep over the sofas. Teeny and Wayne both jumped up when they saw her and ran over. The whole family felt the need to hold each other so again she found herself standing there holding her children. She held them until Wayne started talking.

"I tried to stop them." He told her, "Margie tried to stop them but they were too big."

"I know sweetie you did good." She said trying to reassure the boy. She knew they'd done everything they could, they'd been raised to do nothing less.

"Is Margie going to be okay?" He was asking a question she didn't know the answer to. Her instinct was to say yes, to shelter him from the reality but he'd already seen the reality, he'd been there and she hadn't.

"I don't know," She telling the truth. "I hope so."

-8-8-8-

"Mom! What's happened?" Cara-Lyn asked. There was a sense of fear and urgency in her voice.

"Something bad." Nikki responded, "Something really bad." She shook her head and glanced down at the cars speedo. She was going well over the limit, faster than she had ever driven in her life. It crossed her mind to slow down but she didn't want to. "Check that police scanner make sure it's working." She said instead. She'd pulled the device out of one of the hummers as she'd raced off the compound but she hadn't had time to check that it was functioning.

"It's working fine." Cara-Lyn responded glancing at the device. "What's happened?" She knew it was bad, she'd never seen her mother drive so fast or look so scared but she wanted to know what had happened. At the moment worse case scenarios were rushing through her head and she was scaring herself. "Has someone died?"

Nikki hesitated before she yelled, "No," and shaking her head, no one was dead, not yet but the reality was it could still happen. "No one's died." She hoped that would be enough but Cara-Lyn still wanted to know what happened. "Someone broke into Margene's house." She said speaking as calmly as she could manage. "They took Nell, and hurt Margie real bad."

"Oh," The news shocked Cara-Lyn into brief silence, she processed the information and finally asked. "She'll be okay, won't she?"

"I," She wanted to say yes, it would have been easy to say yes, to let her daughter think it would all be okay but her daughter was smart enough to see right through that. "I don't know." She told her instead.

"Okay." Cara-Lyn didn't ask any more questions, she turned and just stared out the window, watching the countryside race past. For the rest of the drive they didn't speak, in each of their minds what was happening turned over and over. They were trying to make sense of it, process it into a logical order, find a way to fix it, make it okay. Neither one of them had much luck, nothing about this was okay, and the outcome couldn't be certain.