Notes...disclaimers....page 1

Ch. 3

The walls of the parlor closed in on Kathryn at Milo's casually offered statement. She had to take a deep breath in to steady herself. Her blood was still pumping furiously from her altercation with Sheila and her adrenalin levels had to be through the roof, but all of that felt as though it turned to ice in her veins. Her nostrils flared, and she gritted her teeth as the last moments in her home replayed in her mind.

The utter look of shock on her daughter's face as she stood staring from the front of the hall, watching as her mother fought with two strangers. Frozen in place by confusion and fear. Chakotay's strong voice still issuing from the open comm. line. The moment broken as Maddie had looked down at the comm. badge she still grasped before turning away. Turning towards the kitchen. Kathryn had seen her move even as a strong hand had clamped down over her mouth from behind. Maddie was fast; she was smart. She would've had plenty of time to reach the console and transport out. Kathryn had bitten down on the hand over her mouth at the same time the guy in front of her had trapped her kicking legs together. And then the third man had appeared at the end of the hall. No! Maddie had just needed a few more seconds, but Kathryn couldn't be sure. Pain had exploded in the back of her head, blotting everything else out.

But, surely, there'd been enough time for Maddie to push a button. Just one button and she'd have been safe. Kathryn couldn't believe anything else, didn't want to believe anything else. She glared at Milo still sitting smugly across from her. Her voice was a harsh rasp. "You lie."

"Do I?" he asked slyly before pushing a button, activating a comm. screen on the wall. "Take a look."

Kathryn rose on shaky legs and moved towards the screen. She clinched her fists as she saw Madelyn sitting on the floor of a room not unlike the one Kathryn was in now, playing some sort of game with a young Orion woman that appeared to be around Icheb's age.

"As you can see, Kathryn, I do hold all of the cards," Milo said, sidling up behind her. He leaned casually against the console and spoke into it. "Stefan?" A large humanoid male with faint Cardassian skin ridges moved into view on the screen. "Would you bring the young Miss Janeway to see her mother?"

Kathryn's heart pounded when Madelyn stopped playing the game and looked up to the viewscreen, obviously able to hear Milo's voice. Stefan nodded and shut off the screen, leaving Kathryn staring at her own reflection in the dark panel. "If you've harmed her…in any way…I swear…"

"You'll what?" Milo asked, utterly confident. He waved his hand in the air absently as he walked away from her and back towards the couch. "Relax, she hasn't been hurt. I even had the young slave girl's pheromones neutralized for the time being. Your daughter won't even have so much as a headache."

Concentrating on her own nails digging into her palms, Kathryn swallowed tightly and managed to control the rage that was building inside her. And the fear. This entire ordeal had just become incredibly untenable. Slowly, she turned back to face the two people in the room that in some ways she now feared more than any adversary she'd ever faced in the Delta Quadrant.

"You know, you were right Sheila," Milo commented happily. "This is fun."

"We've got trouble."

The bold statement interrupted his thoughts as the PADD was placed in front of him. He barely glanced up. "Tell me something I don't know."

"He's putting together his own investigation."

"Damn."

"It's going to complicate things."

Crossing to the window, he couldn't help but think of simpler times. "Damn Maquis…anyone else would just trust Starfleet to do the job. They wouldn't set out to do it themselves."

"He's also using his Maquis friends to help him."

"What Maquis?" He turned back to the young man reporting to him. "There aren't that many of them left."

"The ones he served with." The young man paused. "The ones from her ship."

He sighed. He'd never thought this was going to be easy, but he hadn't expected this much trouble from the woman's former crew. "Well, we'll have to use that against them."

"How do you mean?"

"Focus the investigation on them," he explained. "Distract them enough that they worry more about themselves instead of her."

"Using the Maquis is dangerous. We need this problem to go away," the young man argued, "not explode in our faces."

"It doesn't have to be public knowledge. It's an investigation. Keep it quiet."

The young man glowered. "You better be right about this."

"This is crazy. Either all the security cameras in the area were on scheduled maintenance, or they didn't capture anything." B'Elanna slammed her hand against the wall panel. "The 24th century and we can't find a single holocamera that took an image within a kilometer of their house for a ten minute window during the middle of the day."

"Is the ten minute window out of the ordinary?" Tom asked, shifting Miral to his other shoulder.

"No, not really. Just damned inconvenient." She turned, wanting to take Miral but knowing her current mood would just imprint on the baby. "Maintenance breaks and systematic shutdowns happen all the time with the security grid. Ten minutes every twelve hours."

"And whoever did this just happened to pick the ten minutes of the day when cameras weren't recording?" Tom whistled. "Sounds like a conspiracy to me."

"But the ten minute shut down is never at the same time. Every day a different ten minute window is used so that it appears random, precisely so something like this can't be planned."

"But is there a list somewhere that someone could access and know when the ten minutes would occur?"

"I don't think so. I'll check, but I think it's randomly generated. It could be a coincidence," B'Elanna sighed, shaking her head. "A one in seventy-two shot...that's a hell of a coincidence."

"Coincidence or not," Seven said, joining the conversation. "It does not explain the malfunctioning of the emergency transporter within the home."

"Well, over the comm. line, we heard Kathryn deactivate the house alarm system," Tom considered. They had all listened to the recording more than enough times to be able to repeat it word for word by now. "Is it possible she accidentally deactivated the transporter as well?" B'Elanna and Seven stared at him in disbelief. "I didn't say it was likely; I just asked if it were possible?"

Seven recovered first. "No. Admiral Janeway would've had to open a completely different command protocol set in order to disengage the emergency transporter. There is no reason she would have done so."

"She told you to call her Kathryn, Seven," B'Elanna chided offhand. "Besides, Madelyn specifically said there were no lights on at all. Even if Kathryn had turned it off," she held up a hand to stop Seven, "which is highly unlikely. That wouldn't explain there being no power to the panel whatsoever."

"And yet the panel was active when security arrived?" Receiving a nod, Seven continued. "Could the child have been mistaken?"

"Well, sure," Tom shrugged. "Maddie's just a kid, she was scared. She could've hit the wrong button."

"Are we talking about the same people here?" B'Elanna exploded. "Kathryn Janeway does not accidentally turn off emergency transporters. And Maddie was raised on a starship. A starship that was under attack more often than not. She's used emergency transports before under duress. She could probably dismantle the entire transporter panel and put it back together if she needed to. If Maddie said the panel had no lights on…the panel had no lights on."

Tom raised one hand in his defense. "I'm simply playing devil's advocate, hon. These are the questions the actual investigation team is considering right now, and even if we know better, it doesn't mean they won't accept the more plausible explanation."

"What more plausible explanation do your arguments suggest?" Seven questioned. "Are you suggesting that Admiral Janeway and Madelyn were not abducted from their home?"

"No, I'd say we're pretty clear on that, at least," Tom admitted. "I just have a gut feeling Starfleet isn't looking in the right direction. They're treating this like it's a ransom, but it's been two days, and we haven't heard anything. What's the point of a ransom if you don't demand anything? "

"We're all missing something," B'Elanna griped, throwing another PADD on the coffee table. "Tom, you said they told Chakotay he'd never see Kathryn again, but that eventually Madelyn would be returned to him. That doesn't even sound like ransom."
"Do you believe they intend to kill the Adm…Kathryn?" Seven asked.

"They might've killed her already," Tom suggested darkly.

"That is not acceptable."

B'Elanna looked up from the couch at Seven's vehement denial. "Seven?"

"We cannot pursue this investigation with the mindset that the Admiral is deceased. It would not be," she paused, causing Tom and B'Elanna to exchange a look of concern, "logical. Making the assumption that the Admiral is dead will narrow our search parameters. To ensure that we do not miss any possible avenues of investigation we must assume that she and Madelyn are alive."

The silence following Seven's emotional speech stretched past the point of comfortable as Tom and B'Elanna stared at the blonde, dumbfounded.

"Okay," B'Elanna cleared her throat, "that sounds…reasonable to me, Seven."

"Yeah," Tom agreed, nodding his head. "So, uh, Seven, how's life treating you without your fail-safe device?"

"I have found it to be disconcerting at times," she admitted. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason." Tom gave his wife a significant look, and she brought the conversation back to their original topic.

"Well, since we aren't allowed to examine the evidence ourselves, what do we work on next?" B'Elanna asked. "Motive? Suspects?"

"Starfleet Security already has a prime suspect in mind," Chakotay announced from near the front door causing all three of them to jump. "Me."