(I will have you all know I suck at math. So trying to figure the numbers out in this chapter was not easy, like it took me a couple of hours and I am still not sure I got it right. So If I am wrong and made Donnie sound like an idiot by all means correct my math and let me know. and in reality I think It would take longer to actually crack the code than I said. So I took some liberty with that.)

Chapter 14

"Searching"

"How long is this gunna take, Don?" Frustration and anger radiated form Raphael as he paced Don's lab. The fact that the decoding of the GPS was taking longer that Raph wanted it to was bad enough, you add that to the newspaper snippet about a raid on a vet and her arrest, that his brothers had tried to keep from him, and it left Raph furious.

"You can't rush this." Don sighed.

"Why the fuck not?!" Raph slammed his fist down on the desk making Don jump.

Don shot Raph a glair. "Look it's coded, and not with a password but with numbers. So instead of dealing with just twenty six letters, or more depending on the language, arranged in accordance with one of the 6,500 different languages they may have used, some more likely than others, but instead with a huge amount of number sequences. Which means I am trying to crack a permutation that uses a sequence of ten numbers, each place being any of the numbers zero through nine. Which is 100, cause we are counting the zeros, to the tenth power of combinations. Do you have any idea how many possible combinations that it?"

Raph shook his head as he started to speak. "I really don't care. I just…"

"It is this," Don wrote down the number 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 and held it up for Raph, who raised an eyebrow because he didn't even know what the term would be for the number, which was probably why Don had written it down for him.

"Let me put this into perspective for you." Don continued. "The normal search time for a 60-number dial with three number placements would be 65 hours. That is five days… we are looking at a hundred number dial, basically, which could take anywhere from two to three weeks of the program searching the number combinations. Not just a couple of days, as it has been. On top of it, this is government not civilian. And thus not only is it coded it is also highly sensitive. If I mess it up it will wipe the GPS memory. Then we will be, in no way, closer to finding Arayah than we are right now."

Raphael just stared at Don for a long moment as he tried to process this information. He then looked back at the shifting numbers on the screen. "A couple of weeks."

"Ya." Don said with a sigh. "It might not take that long cause the computer is faster than I would be doing it in my head, and it already has the first number. So we might get lucky."

"That's not good enough, Don!" Raph turned on his brother. "What am I gunna be pulling out of there in two weeks?!"

Don didn't have the answer. He didn't know what Bishop's plans were and Raph wouldn't talk about what had happened, so he couldn't even hypothesize about why Bishop had released Raph but held on to Arayah. He gave his brother an apologetic look, but could offer him no reassurance.

Raph slammed him fist into the desk in his frustration. "Damn it!"

"Raph…" Don tried to find something to say, anything that would help.

"This is all my fault." Raph said as he stared down at the dent he had put in the desk, struggling with his guilt. "I caused this and then I couldn't stop them. I…I."

"Should go out and look for her." They had looked for him and turned up nothing until the break with the tracker, but looking for her would help Raph keep busy and help him to regain a feeling of control. "You showed up in the Bronx." Don continued. "Maybe you should go look there."

Raphael gave a slow nod of acknowledgement. Don was right. He was going to go crazy if he sat around here waiting on this decoding program. Without much more to say Raph left the lab and made his way to the garage.

He pulled his jacket on and zipped it up before straddling his motorcycle and lifting his helmet to his head.

"Hey." Mikey called as he hurried up to the bike.

Raph paused. "What?"

"Leo is meeting up with Casey to search the east side of the Bronx. Splinter and I were going to go look in the west side want to come with us?"

Raph looked over as Splinter who, had entered the garage behind Mikey, then back at Mikey, wondering if Don had known and thus suggested searching to him. "Umm. I'll catch up. I am going to swing by Arayah's and see…"

"We already searched it when you went missing." Mikey informed.

"Well maybe you missed something." Raph snapped before slamming his helmet on and cranking the motorcycle, then spinning it around and peeling out of the layer.

Mikey frowned as he watched his brother take off. "We shouldn't be letting him go off alone."

Splinter placed a hand on his son's shoulder. "We aren't." He said before walking from the garage.

Mikey followed Splinter to the roofs of New York where he watched Splinter take a moment to stretch his old muscles and loosen his old bones. "You sure we can keep up? I mean you're kinda…umm…"

Splinter raised a furry eye brow at Mikey and smiled. "I may be old Michealangelo, but I am not infirm. Though I am going to have to follow you, I don't know where Arayah's apartment is. And I would prefer to take the shortest route." The old rat straitened.

Mikey chuckled then started across the roof. "Just let me know if you need me to slow down."

As usual, Splinter did not disappoint. The rat may in fact be old, but he was a ninja and, at whatever age he was, was still quite skilled and in decent shape, though not as much as the younger spryer turtle he was attempting to keep up with.

Half way to Arayah's Mikey slid to a stop so that his sensei could catch his breath. Taking a few deep breaths himself Mikey looked out over the city from his spot on the roof. "Crazy that a couple of days ago there were tons of helicopters flying around here. Now there are like… none."

Splinter too looked around at the skis, the silence not putting him anymore at ease or convincing him that they were any safer. "Do not let your guard down. Just because we cannot see our enemy does not mean they are not there."

Mikey nodded getting goose bumps as the shadows looked a little longer than usual. "Maybe we should get moving."

"Agreed." Splinter motioned for Michealangelo to lead the way, which he gladly did.

When they reached the building across from Arayah's apartment Raph could be seen pushing open the plastic that had been put over the window sometime in the last week.

Raphael peered into the dark one room apartment and took a deep breath, that caused him to pause. The smell of bleach and other cleaning chemicals assaulted his nostrils making him want curl up deep into the untouchable safety his shell. It was something he hadn't been able to do since he was child nor had he wanted to ever since he got over being afraid of the things that bumped about in the dark corners, feeding the fears that lurked in a child's imaginative mind.

Raph took a shaky breath, pushed past his fear and shame and stepped inside.

He walked to the light switch by the door, tripping over a box on the way, and flipped on the light. What little furniture Raven had owned was gone. Two stacks of boxes sat in the middle of the room, one he had knocked over when he tripped over it. DVDs were now strewn across the floor thanks to his clumsiness.

Raph turned around looking for something that might give him a clue as to where she was being held. But the room had been pretty well scoured. Everything was boxed up except a key ring sitting on the counter. He picked them up and inspected them. One was the spare key to the hell cat, Casey still had the other, and the keys to the DUU. He closed his fist around the keys. Feeling the cold hard mettle pressed against his hand as he searched his mind for something that might give him an idea as to where Arayah was. He sorted through sounds, smells, the way the box truck had moved over the road, counting potholes he thought they may have driven over. But none of it helped him figure it out…except the smell of coffee.

Raph thought about that for a moment. "It had been at the first place the truck had stopped." He voiced his thoughts. "By the way the truck had paused before turning… right, it had been a stop light or a sign. How many coffee shops could there be on a corner in the Bronx?" Raph thought about it for a moment then let out a sad sigh. "Hundreds."

"It narrows down the search."

Raph jumped and spun at the sound of his sensei's voice. "Splinter!" Raph exclaimed as he tried to calm his thundering heart. "You startled me."

"You need to stay aware of your surroundings, Raphael." Splinter chastised, but softened his tone after Raphael nodded his understanding. "We will start looking for coffee shops in the upper north east side. Maybe things will start to come together."

Raph nodded again. "Ya, let's do that." He tossed Mikey, who was standing behind Splinter, the keys. "Can you get Arayah's motorcycle back to the layer?"

Mikey grinned ear to ear. "Absolutely."

"Be careful with it." Raph instructed.

Mikey practically skipped from the apartment, exited to get to drive the machine.

Raph looked around the bare room. "I fucked up."

"Yes." Splinter agreed.

Raph's shoulders hunched and his gaze fell to the floor, ashamed. He hadn't expected splinter to say otherwise and if he had Raph would have argued.

Splinter knew this and so continued placing a hand on his son's shoulder as he spoke. "But, dwelling on that will not help her. Stay focused and we will find her."

"How do you know? We have possible leads but by the time we can make anything of them it might be too late." Raphael looked up at his sensei then.

Splinter nodded as he let his hand drop to his side. "Indeed, it maybe."

"I already can't forgive myself for what I've done. If we're too late I..I" He couldn't find the words for the hopeless brokenness that he was feeling.

Splinter then reached for that ray of hope Raph so desperately needed even if the ray was small. "It is very possible that she is alive, and will be when we find her. And if that is the case she will have much to deal with, as you do…and did."

Raph ran his hand along the scar that ran down the center of his plastron, his injured half finger drawing his attention. "Ya, she will."

For the next week and a half Raphael with his brothers, and April and Casey, held stakeouts at different coffee shops. They would split up into groups of two so they could watch three coffee shops a night. They wrote down the coming and going of every vehicle that passed. It's color, license plate, any information they could see. Then Don would run the plates and see what information he could get on the vehicles, but there were hundreds. And there was no telling if they were in the right place at the right time to get the right vehicle.

Donatello put his hand over his mouth to stifle a yawn.

"Doing alright?" Leo, Don's stake out partner tonight, asked.

"Considering my legs went numb an hour ago, I'm doing alright." Don said as he wrote down the information of another vehicle that passed on the street below.

"How is your hurt leg?" Leo shifted his weight his own legs sore from staying in the same position for too long.

"Better. Puncture wounds heal relatively fast."

Leo nodded knowing this all too well from his own collection of scars.

Another car passed and Don wrote down the needed information before pulling out his buzzing phone and inspecting it. He had a million and one things that connected to it for one reason or another. This particular reason had him suddenly on his feet and running back to the van that sat in the alley behind the building.

"Don." Leo called as he trailed after him. "What's going on?"

"The code cracked." He answered as he opened the back of the van and climbed in hurrying to an array of computers and other tech gear he had set up against one of the walls.

"To the GPS?" Leo asked as he climbed in, closing the door behind him.

"Yes." Don answered. He powered up the computer, that was connected to his 'Master computer' at home, then got to work downloading and reading the box truck's travel log, then cross referenced the information with a map of the city.

Leo sat in one of the back seats and waited patiently watching Don work.

"The truck came frommm there." Don smiled as he pointed out the location on the computerized map.

"Great." Leo smiled in return. "I'll call Mike and Casey, you call Raph and April and tell them to hurry we only have a few hours before dawn."

"On it." Donatello nodded as he took out his phone and dialed the number.

Leo leapt into the driver's seat dialing Michealangelo as he cranked the engine.