Eric splashed his face with warm water before drying it tiredly with a towel. He probably should have had a shower to help wake himself up, but he didn't even feel like he could be bothered with the effort it would require to merely stand under the water, so washing the sleep from the corners of his eyes was the best he was going to get this particular morning. He walked to the top of the stairs and listened. Since he'd woken up, he was yet to hear any sounds drifting up from downstairs, almost like he was alone in the house – not that such an inconceivable event would ever happen, but still, there was nothing to indicate otherwise. He checked his watch and according to the time, Peter should have been at work and Elizabeth would be fussing about fixing Scottie some mid-morning snack, but when he came down the stairs and rounded the corner into the living room, he felt let down as his eyes took in the scene of Peter, sitting at the table, busily tapping away on his computer. He sighed deeply and sulked across to one of the chairs opposite. His stomach was grumbling from its emptiness – he hadn't eaten anything since the popcorn at the baseball, but he was feeling too depleted to even consider going into the kitchen to pour a juice or butter some bread for a sandwich. Even the fruit bowl in the middle of the table seemed a mile too far.

He glanced over at Peter but the monitor was blocking a direct line of vision so he had to assume that was the agent's way of saying, 'I can't face dealing with you right now.' Which was fine because he didn't feel like dealing with Peter either. In fact, he didn't feel like discussing anything with anyone least of all someone who was trained in the fine art of interrogation techniques. Eric twisted his wrist so he could observe the time. Ten fifteen and forty-two…three…four seconds. It was now at least fifteen hours since his mom had no doubt departed from Kingsbridge Road. In the fifteen hours she could easily have made her way to anywhere in Canada, or maybe she went the other way and travelled south. At the stadium, he hadn't even been able to ask her where she'd been hiding out for the past six months or what she'd been doing, and now, how long was he going to have to wait for another chance to find out? Eric clicked the buttons on the side of his watch until another time read-out appeared. This one read, . His finger lingered over the reset button while he hum'd and hah'd whether the two minutes at the baseball had counted. In the end, he decided they didn't so he clicked a different button and returned to the time.

Eric stopped staring at his watch and looked up, surprised to see Peter staring back at him across the table, the laptop pushed off to the side. "What?" he challenged but Peter simply continued his silent stare. "Am I cramping your style?" More silence. "Oh, I get it now," Eric tapped the top of his forehead. "You figured if you just let me jabber on for long enough, I might slip up and tell you where you could find mom."

"No," Peter shook his head unenthusiastically, "I just figured I'd let you get it all out of your system because you never hear anything until you do."

"Maybe I choose not to hear what you're saying cause it's like a broken down record and I've heard it all before, many times over."

"Maybe," Peter repeated before pausing to take in a long, weary breath. "You must be hungry. Would you like me to fix you a sandwich or there's some left over pizza from last night's dinner that I could heat up for you?"

"I'm not hungry."

"Okay," Peter shrugged and went about collecting some files and notes from his brief case that was perched on the chair beside his.

Eric was waiting for more but when none was forthcoming he stated, "I was expecting to see the bathroom window all bordered up this morning."

Peter made a neat pile out of the folders, which he laid carefully on the table, before looking back across, "This isn't a detention centre, Eric. You've never been a prisoner in this house and you never will. And regardless of that, a screw in the window wouldn't keep you in. If you want to leave, you'd find a way."

"You wanted me to escape last night." It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"So I'd lead you to mom."

Peter nodded even though it wasn't a question either.

"Well, your little trick didn't work, Agent Burke."

"It wasn't a trick, Eric. Out of nowhere, after being off the grid for more than half a year, your mom appears at Yankee stadium. I'd be derelict in my duties if I didn't take measures to locate her whereabouts."

"So, because your job made you, you let me travel by myself, all the way across town and through a sleazy park at night, and yet," he pointed towards the front door, "I'm not even allowed to walk home from school by myself."

"You were never alone. Agent Garrison trailed you all the way to Mosholu Parkway and through the park. Once back out on the street, I had eyes on you the whole way. You were obviously in too much of an emotional state to notice that you were being tailed by an SUV."

"And obviously you were too emotionally careless to realise it was all a decoy to get you as far away from Mom as I possibly could."

"Eric, you might think you are, but in actual fact you aren't doing your mom any favours by protecting her. And it's not fair of her to expect that of you, or to put you in a position where you need to. Do you think it would be right of Elizabeth to ask the same of Scott-Allen some day when he is a little older? Can you even imagine Elizabeth doing that?"

"No. I can't see Mrs Brady letting Bobbie have a puff of a cigarette but that doesn't mean she isn't running a meth lad out of her garage and selling it to all the Riverside High Seniors either…So where is Carol, I mean, Elizabeth and the squirt anyway? Did I scare them off?"

"They're out having a playdate with one of Scottie's kindy pals."

"A playdate? How perfectly Burke," Eric scoffed. "So why didn't you wake me for school this morning? Did Head Mack find something else to blame me for and extend my suspension another week or two?"

"No. Is there something else? Should I expect another call?"

"Probably. At Barkley, I only have to look the wrong way and I'm in trouble."

"Elizabeth and I thought you'd be in no fit state to return to school today," Peter explained, "after what you went through last night. We didn't want you 'looking the wrong way' at someone and getting yourself into trouble."

"Does that mean I get to have the whole week off? I am feeling rather agitated and it wouldn't take much to set me off. And now that I think about it, it probably would be best for every one involved if I took off the rest of the term."

"That's not going to happen. You're going back to school tomorrow."

"Excellent," Eric stated sarcastically. "I am so excited, I wish it was tomorrow already."

Peter eyed the boy but didn't comment as he turned his computer around so Eric could see the monitor. On the screen was a low resolution imagine, but clear enough nevertheless, that he could easily identify his mom standing on Kingsbridge Road Station.

Eric clenched his fists on his lap as he spat out angrily, "Why? Why do you even give a flying fruit basket where the hell my mom is? Haven't you got some actual criminals to catch, Agent Burke or are you so hard pressed to find a real case that you'll drudge up any old B&E?"

"This isn't a simple B&E, Eric."

"Because you've made it that way. What's got you so personally involved that you're scouring through subway surveillance footage trying to track my mom's every move?"

"You want to know the reason I'm personally involved?"

Eric shrugged, non-committedly.

"Well, I'm staring at that reason right now. I'm personally involved because one, when your mom slipped away from hospital security, she didn't seem to care that she was leaving behind her eleven year old son in the care of someone he'd known for less than a week and two, until she comes forward and confesses to being the sole perpetrator of the theft of the Gorilla Spindle Neuron Jade valued at almost two million dollars, your father…my best friend, has to sit in a prison cell twenty-three hours a day. That's why I'm personally involved and if those reasons weren't enough on their own, Alexandra Hunter is currently fronting the top five of the White Collar Most Wanted list due to the theft in the Village and because she is under investigation by Interpol after allegedly stealing a matching Whale Jade from a Croatian drug lord named, Lorekovic."

At the mention of the name, Eric found himself getting a familiar pain – the one that made him feel like someone had placed a slab of concrete atop of his chest, like he couldn't take in enough air to fill his lungs, the one that made him want to call out to his mom so she would coming running to wrap him in a loving embrace while whispering gently in his ear that everything was going to be okay. 21…22…23…Eric's eyes became fixated on the time on his watch as his heart rate matched the beat of the seconds ticking over…29…30…31… And the more seconds that ticked over, 34…35…the more laboured his breathing became…38…39…40… As he struggled to take in enough air, Eric startled when he felt a warm hand come to rest on his shoulder and another that wrapped itself over the top of his watch, effectively blocking the time. Eric looked up. Peter was now crouched beside him, holding him gently and whispering, "Hey kiddo, it's going to be okay, just take a couple of deep breaths."

Eric nodded and did his best to comply and after a few minutes of matching his breathing with Peter's, he found the pain in his chest dissipating. He wiped the sweat from his palms on his sweat pants before stating, shakily, "I'm good."

"Okay," Peter guided the boy onto his feet and led him across to the couch. "You sit here while I fix you some food. Which would you prefer, sandwiches or pizza?"

"I'll have ice-cream."

"And sandwiches it is," Peter declared over his shoulder on the way to the kitchen."

"I'll have egg and salad," Eric called after him.

"You'll have whatever I feel like making."

"Fine," Eric grumbled, too weak to do any more. "I just wont eat them if it's not egg and salad." But he knew he would. He didn't want to feel the hunger pains any longer than he needed to. The last time he'd felt a similar emptiness in his belly, he'd been locked away for days in a dark, unheated room in some derelict building in a compound belonging to the Croatian. At the time, he'd promised himself if he ever made it out, he'd never have to feel that hungry again.