Chapter Ten

The Doctor ran out the back door into the garden and then around the house. Meanwhile Rose began to search inside in case they were wrong about the intruder having left. By the time they had each completed a thorough search, a Torchwood van pulled up to the front of the mansion, followed closely behind by the limo carrying Pete and Jackie Tyler. The Torchwood field agents left the van and immediately began a perimeter search of the grounds while Pete and Jackie got out of the automobile.

"What's going on?" Pete asked as the Doctor jogged up to him.

"Not sure yet," he answered. "When we pulled up, we noticed the light from a torch in one of the rooms."

"Which room?" Jackie demanded from Pete's side.

The Doctor looked from one to the other. "Yours."

A momentary look of concern passed over Jackie's face. "Well, all I can say is thank goodness Tony's at Mrs. McDonald's tonight. What did they want?"

"Well, we don't know if it was a they. It might have been, although the evidence points to a single individual." The Doctor crossed his arms and grimaced. "As to what he or she wanted, we won't know that until we do an inventory of the house."

"Do you think it could have been a burglary?" Pete asked.

"Maybe," said Rose, exiting the house and coming to join them on the drive. She had taken the time to slip on a pair of flat-heeled shoes. "I looked around a bit and I didn't notice anything missing. I didn't look hard, but the computer's still there, as is the telly. On the other hand, we did surprise whoever it was. Maybe the person didn't have time to grab anything." Jackie made a move to head towards the house and Rose stopped her. "I'm sorry, Mum, but you can't go in yet. We'll need to dust for fingerprints first. When you do go in, we'll need you to go through everything and see if anything's missing. Particularly in your jewelry box since whoever it was was in your room when we got here."

Jackie nodded tightly as Pete put his arm around his wife.

The Doctor cleared his throat and then jerked his head toward the mansion. Leaving Pete and Jackie in the drive, he and Rose went back inside.

"Where do you want to start?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Might as well start here."

"Torchwood will handle the fingerprints, although I doubt there will be any," Rose said.

"Really?" the Doctor asked, his mouth twisting into a small grin. "Are you deducting, Miss Tyler?"

"Absolutely," she replied, unable to keep a smile off her face despite the seriousness of the situation. "The mansion isn't without security. It has deadbolts, an internal alarm system and is wired into the Torchwood security system. Yet whoever did this managed to bypass all of that and get in without alerting anyone. If they are professional enough for that, they are professional enough not to leave fingerprints.

"What concerns me, though," she continued, "is how they knew the mansion would be empty. The party was well publicized, but usually there's someone here, at least staff or something. But whoever it was seemed to know the mansion would be totally empty, even of Mrs. McDonald and Tony."

"Or they just didn't care," the Doctor pointed out.

"Oh, I don't want to even think about that," Rose said.

While the Torchwood team dusted for prints and other evidence the intruder might have accidentally left, the Doctor and Rose did their own investigation. They split up, Rose examining the ground floor, the Doctor starting with Pete and Jackie's room. Although he wasn't familiar with all of Jackie's jewelry, there was enough still there, real jewels instead of paste, that would hint at this not being a question of simple theft. Still, the bedroom was where the intruder had been interrupted, so it was possible he or she just hadn't had the time to grab anything upon hearing the motor of the limo.

He quickly checked the other rooms. Most were empty, being used only for guests, and Tony's seemed untouched, which made sense as even an intruder would know that there was nothing of value in it. Rose's also didn't look like it had been touched, although he wasn't certain he'd be able to tell if it had been. He wasn't aware if Rose owned any jewelry other than the hoops she typically wore. Even the jewelry she had worn this evening had been borrowed. All in all, however, none of the other rooms on the upper floors looked like they had been searched, let alone had anything stolen from them.

Until he reached his own.

On the surface it seemed untouched as well, but he could tell immediately it wasn't. A tiny adjustment to a pillow, a drawer that was almost but not quite closed, his clothes and shoes in the wardrobe just slightly moved, all told him that his room had been carefully, and possibly professionally, searched. And the items on the shelf above his clothes, the ones that had come with him in his pockets from the TARDIS, had been gone through as well. He could tell that each was in a slightly different place. Including the small velvet bags that contained the gems and other items of value that was the entire nest egg he had brought with him. They had been gone through, but they were still there.

After he finished checking the rooms on the upper floors, he joined Rose on the ground floor. Jackie and Pete had been allowed to enter the house, and they were standing in the living room, waiting for the go ahead from the Torchwood staff that it was alright for them to touch things. Jackie was standing ramrod straight, jaw clenched, watching the agents as they finished dusting the ground floor of her home for prints. Although necessary, the Doctor knew that to Jackie, this was as much a violation as the intruder had been. But she didn't complain, and he realized that the years spent as the wife of the Director of Torchwood had strengthened her. Or perhaps, he thought, she always had been made of sterner stuff and the experiences of the past years had just brought it to the surface. After all, she had managed to raise Rose alone on a council estate, and look how Rose turned out.

"It's about time you got down here," she said sharply when she spotted him. "I blame you for this. I don't know how, but somehow this is your fault."

And there was the Jackie he knew, he thought ruefully.

"Mum, please," Rose scolded, and then turned to him. "We didn't find anything in particular out of order, at least not at first glance." At a meaningful glance from the Doctor, she continued. "Mum, I think they are done in the kitchen. Why don't we go make a pot of tea and then go check your room."

Jackie looked at each of them in turn. At the pointed expressions on their faces she sighed and then she and Rose headed towards the kitchen. The Doctor waited until Jackie was out of earshot before turning to Pete.

"This was no simple robbery," he said softly to Pete to make certain he wouldn't be overheard.

"How can you be so sure?" Pete asked, matching his tone and volume.

"Not only was the intruder in your room," he answered, "but my room was searched as well. And I have, let's just say, some items of intrinsic value that I was planning on selling at some point or another, and those items are still there."

"Is there any chance that the intruder just missed them?"

"No," he said flatly. "They had also been moved. Not by much, mind, but enough that I would be able to tell."

Pete Tyler looked troubled. "If it wasn't theft, then what did they want?" he asked.

The Doctor pursed his lips and shook his head. "It might have been a theft, but there was nothing simple about it. And as for what they wanted, I dunno yet." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Pete, I assume you have a safe."

"Yes, but I've already checked it," Pete responded. "It doesn't look like it's been touched."

"Check it again," the Doctor said. Pete nodded.

Once they were in his study, Pete walked to one of the bookcases and reached under one of the shelves to press a small button located on the back wall behind some books. Nearby, a panel slid outward and to one side, revealing a safe with an electronic keypad built into the wall.

"I checked this first, while you were still upstairs."

"Did you open it?"

Pete nodded. "Was one of the first things I did after the agents were done in here." He turned back to the safe, quickly typed in a code, and the door swung open. Pete stared into the safe for a minute before shaking his head. "I don't think anything's missing." He reached into the safe, pulled out the contents and quickly rifled through them. "I really don't keep much in here. A few contracts, a few stocks, some money…. It all appears to be here."

"If they didn't plan on taking anything, why search the bedrooms?" the Doctor wondered aloud.

Pete took a deep breath and turned to him. "Other than the architect and construction workers and the like, not many people know this but I have another safe upstairs in our room. Even Jackie doesn't know about it. We should probably check that one as well."

~oOo~

Pete and Jackie's room was a large, corner room at the front of the mansion. It was more of a suite than a bedroom, as it featured a sitting area and a separate dressing room which led into the en suite. Professionally decorated as was the rest of the house, it had been done in a pale peach with a subtle floral pattern which echoed the style of Rose's room.

When the Doctor and Pete got there, Jackie and Rose were already going through her belongings.

"Everything of Mum's appears to be here," Rose said to them as they entered the room, "and she thinks Dad's stuff is here, too."

"We need to check the safe," the Doctor told her.

"Safe? What safe?" Jackie interjected. "There's no safe in here. The safe is downstairs."

"Actually, there is a safe in here, Jacks," Pete told her. Ignoring the possible coming tirade of his wife, he rolled the bed away from its location in the center of the room and rolled up the large Oriental rug which lay on the floor, revealing the floorboards.

"This section of the floor was designed like a Chinese puzzle box," he said as he got down on his hands and knees. He carefully slid one of the floorboards down a fraction of an inch and then over to the side. He repeated the movements several times before lifting up a section of the floor. Underneath was a small safe, flush with the subflooring.

Jackie stared at her husband. "And when exactly were you going to tell me that this was here?" she demanded.

"Jacks, you really didn't need to know. I only have a few things in here, things that I don't trust to store at Torchwood."

"You have alien stuff in here? In my bedroom?" Jackie said incredulously. "You know how dangerous aliens are."

"Oi!" the Doctor protested. "Standing right here, Jackie."

"I didn't mean you, ya plum," she responded, rolling her eyes. She crossed her arms and stared at him. "Although I coulda. You and danger are as thick as thieves, you are. We've been here for seven years without any problems, but you get here and in the space of two weeks my only daughter gets kidnapped and my house gets broken into."

"Mum, this is not the Doctor's fault," Rose interjected. "You can't blame everything on him. And we don't even know why the house was broken into. Besides, we wouldn't even have known the house was broken into if he and I hadn't come home early."

Jackie looked suspiciously at the two of them. "And why exactly did the two of you leave so early anyway?" She threw a hand up. "No, don't answer that. I really don't wanna know."

The Doctor felt his face grow abnormally warm. Inwardly cursing his new, and rather primitive, cardiovascular system, he really hoped he wasn't blushing. Ignoring Jackie, he crossed the room and bent down next to Pete. He looked in the hole that held the safe. "Any problems?"

"For some reason the lock on this isn't working. I've typed in the code, but it's not taking," Pete said.

The Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. He sonicked the lock and the door to the safe swung open on its own.

"That's really pretty handy," Pete said.

"Oh, yeah," the Doctor responded emphatically. "Doesn't have near the settings the old one did, but it'll do. For now."

"Doctor, is there any chance…" Pete began.

"No," he said flatly, putting his screwdriver back in his pocket.

"Not even…"

"No."

"Dad, you might as well give up now. The other Doctor didn't even give him a sonic screwdriver. There's no way he's gonna give you one," Rose said, trying to keep a straight face. "Besides, he barely got this one to work."

"Oi!" the Doctor protested, looking up at her. She smirked at him. He couldn't help but smile back.

When he glanced back down, Pete was going through the contents of the safe. "Looks like everything's here," he said. He started to close the door when the Doctor stopped him.

"Wait!" he said. He reached down into the safe and pulled out a small blue boxlike object. "What's this doing here?" he asked.

"What is it?" Rose asked, coming up behind them. "Wait a minute, isn't that…"

"The battery the Doctor gave me that contains the Kern. I'm just waiting for a transport that can get it off planet."

"How ya gonna do that?" Jackie asked.

Pete sighed. "Jacks, there are a number of aliens that come here on a fairly regular basis as tourists and to trade with us and there's a smaller number that live here permanently. I should be able to send this off with one of the next ships that leave our solar system, but there isn't one scheduled to depart for at least another couple of months."

"We got aliens livin' here on Earth?" Jackie asked in shock.

The Doctor rolled his eyes.

"Mum, you've got an alien living here right in your own house," Rose reminded her.

"But that's just the Doctor," Jackie replied. "He doesn't count."

The Doctor wasn't certain if he should be flattered or insulted. Given the comment came from Jackie, probably insulted, he thought as he handed the battery back to Pete.

"So let me get this straight. You have a box with aliens in it in under my bed?" Jackie demanded of her husband. "When you said you were keepin' alien stuff here, I thought you meant alien technology. I didn't think you meant actual aliens. Why on Earth would you be keeping a, whatsit, a battery with aliens in it under our bed?"

"Well, I needed to keep it somewhere, Jacks!"

"Not in here, you didn't!"

"I'll put it in the safe downstairs, alright?" he said.

After a moment, Jackie nodded grudgingly, only slightly mollified at his suggestion. "When did you bring it here?" she asked.

"Right after the business with Rose," he told her. "It should have been safe here. Obviously it wasn't."

Jackie stared at her husband in shock as the words should have been safe here resonated in her mind.

"They were in my house," she said in disbelief. "It just hit me. They were in my house. They went through my things. They were in our bedroom. All that time we lived in the Estate, and we never had anything like this happen."

"I'm sorry, Jackie," the Doctor said.

"And now everything's filthy from where Torchwood tromped all over in here and dusted everything for fingerprints. I bet there isn't a clean space in the house," Jackie complained.

"We'll get a cleaning service to come in tomorrow," Rose said reassuringly. "They'll put everything to rights."

Pete crossed over to her and wrapped her in his arms. "It'll be okay, Jacks," he said softly.

"I mean, what if Tony had been here?" she continued numbly. "We live in a mansion and we're no safer than we were at the Estate. Maybe even less."

"It's alright, Mum," Rose said. "It'll be alright. Why don't we go down to the kitchen and have that tea we made." She put her arm around her mother's shoulders and led her out of the room.

"Jackie's right," Pete said angrily after the women had left. "Here we are, surrounded by security, and they still managed to get in here."

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. "As troubling as that is, and it is troubling, the real question is what did they want? They don't appear to have taken anything. Well, not that we've noticed yet at any rate. So what did they want?" He started pacing the room running his hands through his hair, a look of frustrated concentration on his face. "Okay, there are two main reasons for breaking into a place. One is to take something…." Suddenly he whirled on Rose's stepdad. "The other is to leave something. But we haven't seen anything. Pete, we need to search the house again, but this time to look for something they may have left."

"Like what?" Pete asked.

"I dunno, could be a lot of things," the Doctor answered. "But the most likely…."

Pete watched as he pulled out his sonic and swept the room. Evidently he didn't find what he was looking for, because he walked out of the room and down the hall. Pete followed close behind.

"What are you looking for?"

The Doctor distractedly waved a hand at him and continued to examine the hallway and then the other rooms in turn, waving his sonic around slowly. Eventually he made his way downstairs.

"What's going on?" Rose asked as she and Jackie came out of the kitchen. "I heard the sonic."

The Doctor ignored her in favor of examining the readings on his sonic, so Pete answered.

"We were talking about what the intruder could have wanted if he didn't take anything, and then he pulled out his sonic and started waving it around. He's looking for something, but he hasn't found it yet."

"What's he looking for?" Jackie wanted to know.

"I dunno," Pete replied. "He didn't say."

After a few more moments examining the hallway, the Doctor shut off his sonic and turned to them.

"Shhh," he said, putting a finger to his lips. He winked at Rose, who grinned back at him before putting a finger to her own lips.

The Doctor and Rose headed toward his study, Pete and Jackie following close behind, but before they could enter the room the Doctor stopped them.

"Wait here a tick," he said.

Looking at Rose, the Doctor jerked his head at the door, and the two of them entered the study.

"Wha…"

"Fingers on lips," he reminded her quietly, putting one to his again to demonstrate.

Rose rolled her eyes but complied.

The Doctor turned his sonic screwdriver back on and held it in front of him. It whirred, the light at the tip turned blue, and things began to squeal all over the room.

Pete rushed in. "What's going on?" he demanded. Rose gestured to him to be silent.

With a flick of the Doctor's thumb, the sonic whirred louder and the squeals turned into a series of popping sounds. After the popping stopped, they all watched as the Doctor wandered the room, looking under and around things.

"What…" Pete started, and the Doctor turned to him, a finger on his lips again. Once again he held up his sonic, and a number of other things began to squeal and pop. This time when the room quieted, the Doctor nodded. He shoved his screwdriver in his pocket and walked across the room, searching under and behind things for a moment before finally seeming to find what he was looking for behind a picture frame.

"What's going on?" Pete asked.

The Doctor walked over to Pete, holding his hand flat in front of him. Pete's eyes widened as he saw the Doctor was holding a tiny metallic disk in the palm of his hand.

"My study was bugged?"

The Doctor nodded. "Sound and visual. Tiny, tiny things. Really impressive technology for 21st century Earth. Beautiful." He pulled out his glasses with his free hand and put them on, then pulled the sonic back out of his pocket. He scanned the disk and examined the readings he got. "It wasn't developed here. Far too advanced. Actually resembles Quevvil technology in some ways. Do you remember the Quevvils, Rose? Nasty creatures, resembled hedgehogs? Tried to get humans to fight their war with the Mantodeans with video games? Not that this is Quevvil technology, at least not from the time period that we ran into them. Much more advanced. But still…."

"Are you saying my study was bugged with alien technology?" Pete demanded.

"Well, yeah," he responded. "Thought that was clear." He squinted at the object in his hand and then looked at the readings on his sonic again. "Definitely alien," he said, nodding.

"They had to have gotten it from Torchwood," Pete said in shock, running his hands through the sparse hair on his head. "Someone at Torchwood planted bugs in my house."

"Or someone who has access to Torchwood for some reason," the Doctor added.

"How could they expect to get away with this? I'm the Director of Torchwood. Did they really think I wouldn't find out?"

"You wouldn't have," the Doctor told him. "No way you could have. Or I should say, no way you should have. Not with this level of technology. Almost completely undetectable. Should have been completely impossible for you to find this. And you wouldn't have found it if it weren't for me. And even I wouldn't have found it if it weren't for my sonic."

Pete tried to take that in. "So is this why we had an intruder? To bug my office?"

"There's no real way to know how long these have been in here," he said, gesturing at the tiny disk in his hand. "But it seems likely. It still doesn't explain what they were doing upstairs, though."

Jackie exploded. "Are you sayin' someone's put CCTV in our bedroom? I don't want anyone seein'…"

"No, Jackie, please, no," the Doctor interrupted, grimacing. "Don't say another word." The Doctor tried to erase the image that had sprung unbidden to mind.

"And there wasn't any CCTV in our bedroom, Jacks," Pete told her. "The Doctor already checked."

"Well, thank heaven for that," she said. "I really don't want anyone watchin'…."

"No, please don't," the Doctor said again. "I really don't want the mental images. I might be traumatized for life." While Jackie glared at him, he heard Rose snicker in the background.

"The person, or people, who did this…" Pete said, "Will they get suspicious when they don't get signals from the mikes?"

"Oh, I don't think so," the Doctor answered. "We're dealing with very sophisticated alien tech. Very delicate equipment. They'll probably figure that it was installed incorrectly or didn't work for some other reason.

"One other thing, Pete," he continued. "We really should check your office at Torchwood. If they bugged here, they could have bugged there as well."

Pete groaned loudly and then nodded. "What a mess," he stated.

The Doctor and Rose agreed.

After removing all the alien cameras and listening devices from Pete's study, the Doctor finished searching the rest of the house for surveillance equipment but didn't find anything else. Meanwhile, Pete and Jackie settled in one of the guest bedrooms as their bedroom was still a mess. Later, the Doctor joined Rose in hers, not even trying to keep up the pretense of sleeping in his own room.

"How's Jackie doing?" he asked her. They were lying in her bed together, his arms around her, her head resting on his shoulder.

"She's really upset, although she's trying to put a brave face to it," she told him. "We called Mrs. McDonald, and she's gonna keep Tony for an extra day."

"That's probably a good idea," he said. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm alright," she answered, snuggling closer to him. "I'm just glad you're here."

"Always, Rose Tyler," he said, planting a kiss on the top of her head. "Always."