AN: COFFEE. End of discussion.

Mal stood in the doorway of his three-year-old son's dark room. It had been a long day at the station, and he was just glad to finally be home. He could hear the soft, even breathing of his son as he slept, and a smile played on his lips.

He pushed off of the doorway and crossed the room silently, careful not to wake Jared up. According to Molly he had only fallen asleep an hour ago. Mal kissed his forehead and stroked his thick, dark hair. Jared's eyes cracked open the tiniest bit and he blinked up at his father.

"Daddy?" he asked in a small voice. Mal laid his hand on his back and rubbed it in small circles.

"Go back to sleep, Jared. I'm right here."

Jared grabbed his father's hand and held on tight. "I love you, Daddy. I wanna be just like you when I grow up. I wanna help catch the bad guys."

"Mal smiled and pulled the covers higher and draped them over Jared's body. "Alright. You can do that when you're older. But for now you need to go to sleep, okay?" Jared nodded and yawned. "Goodnight, Jared. I love you too."

"Night Daddy."

"Thank you for letting us do this, sir." The principal of the elementary school grunted.

"Just be quick about it. The students should be coming back in from recess in half an hour." The principal closed the door behind him and walked away at a brisk pace. Jared chuckled under his breath and shook his head.

"What's so funny?" Malia demanded.

"The principal, Mr. Dodson. He was the principal when I came here, and he hasn't changed a bit." Malia rolled her eyes and moved towards the desk. She opened the bottom drawer and shuffled through its contents. Nothing really out of the ordinary: lesson plans, handouts, a few spare pencils. The top drawer proved more useful. In addition to pens, a couple packs of gum and make-up, Malia found a few pictures. She flipped through them as Jared took a look in the closet.

"Hey," she said suddenly. "Hey, come look at this." She held out the picture on top to Jared.

"It's the same picture," he said. "The same as the one Mrs. Alexander brought in."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Malia scoffed, dropping her hands.

"No prob, Lieutenant sarcasm. Anyway, we already knew that they were connected, somehow. She was in the background."

"Yeah, but you didn't see this one." She held out another photo. Kathryn posed next to Marvin as they smiled into the camera. Marvin had an arm wrapped around Kathryn's waist and Kathryn had one hand on Marvin's chest. Jared pointed to the ring on her finger.

"Kathryn and Marvin were engaged?" The door swung open and the two of them spun. A young woman stood there, a baffled expression on her face.

"Oh, I- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you," she apologized quickly. "I just heard voices in here, and then I heard Kate's name and I thought maybe... I'm sorry, I'm Mary. Mary Kingsley. I teach in the room next door."

"Did you know Kathryn well?"

Mary shrugged. "I guess. I mean we hung out a few times, and we talked all the time. In fact, I was the one she came to when she and her fiancé called off the engagement. She was so torn up about it, cause she thought Marvin was the one, you know?"

"Wait, wait, wait. They called it off? Do you know why?"

"No, she wouldn't tell me. I asked multiple times, but she just said he did something that she couldn't forgive him for, and then a few days later she went missing." Jared and Malia exchanged glances. Malia's phone beeped, and she opened the text she just got.

"Lauren wants us to stop by. She says she found something interesting. We'd better go."

"Thank you, Mary. You've been really helpful. Let's go." Jared stalked out the door and Malia followed quickly.

At the Crime Lab:

"What do you have?" Jared said as soon as he opened the door.

"Well I remembered that you told me that Marvin and his buddies often went down by Santa Cruz to go hunting, right? So I did a little digging, and I figured out that there's only one resort sort-of place in the woods around there. Turns out Marvin is a regular there, as are Richard Stark, Jason Schimmer and Peter Desir."

"Alright, but how does that help us."

"Jared, a J. Schimmer was the DA involved with the Meryl Vacek hit-and-run. My guess is that the other two are DAs as well."

"And your guess would be correct," Lauren smiled. "The four of them were up there almost every weekend. It's a crazy reclusive place, off in the middle of nowhere. It's relatively cheap, too. I checked their logs, and the four of them all booked spots up there for this weekend."

Jared groaned. "That's during the detective's retreat. There's no way my Dad'll let us skip it. Believe me, I asked and he said that unless I was dying or on fire or something, I wasn't getting out of it. The mayor's making him do it as part of his re-election campaign or something..." Lauren beamed.

"Well that's the best part," she said. "The lodge has been known to host event occasionally. For example, this week it's hosting a Detectives Retreat for the San Francisco Police Department."