THANKS FOR YOUR REVIEWS! THEY REALLY MADE ME HAPPY! I'D FORGOTTEN HOW NICE IT FEELS TO PUBLISH MY WORK AND HOW MUCH I LOVE WRITING.

ANYWAYS, HERE'S ANOTHER CHAPTER FOR YOU! I WANT TO HAVE A CHRISTMAS CHAPTER UP HERE, TOO. I'VE GOT SOME IDEAS FOR IT, SO HOPEFULLY I GET IT DONE WITHIN THE NEXT FEW DAYS, MOST LIKELY NOT ON CHRISTMAS, BUT PROBABLY BEFORE THE NEW YEAR.

SO MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE IN CASE I CAN'T POST BEFORE THE OFFICIAL HOLIDAY. I HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED HOLIDAY AND A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR WITH ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!

XOXO MEG 3

It takes two hours and twenty minutes to get from Jersey City to New Haven, Connecticut. Nicky had never felt like less of a cop than when he stared down the I-95 with Carlo in the driver's seat, having covered more than 50 miles in under an hour. Nicky was too afraid to look at the barometer, but his nauseated stomach was evidence enough of their high speed.

Glancing over his shoulder, he caught Carlo's attention.

"What are you looking at?" Carlo raised an eyebrow, peering into his rear-view mirror to see for himself.

"Just checking to see if anyone's chasing us."

"Why would someone be…" Carlo trailed off, realizing Nicky's sarcasm. He gave him a shove and a tight-lipped smirk, but otherwise did nothing to demonstrate he'd taken Nicky's complaint to heart.

Nicky gripped the door handle while his younger brother weaved around two cars. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Carlo, appearing on the 5 o'clock news in a high-speed police chase will not get me my job back! Do you understand?"

"Relax, Nick! I've been driving like this since my feet could reach the pedals!" He shot Nicky a look. "So have you!"

Nicky grasped the back of his brother's seat, his eyes accidentally laying on the barometer. "Carlo, you're doing 130 mph! Are you insane?! I didn't even have to go over 110 when I took down a serial killer on the Pennsylvania interstate last year!"

"Did he have his victim in the car?"

"Why?"

Carlo licked his lip, pensively, and answered him with a shrug. "Well, because he'd be trying to blend in if he had his victim with him."

Nicky flashed his raised eyebrows in his direction. "The fact that you know that terrifies me." He asserted, shifting his weight in attempt to relax his tense muscles. "Just don't get yourself arrested. I'm in no position to call in any favours."

Nicky could hardly stand being in the car a second longer. His legs were stiff, his little brothers wouldn't stop whining, and he was feeling pain in a place that he didn't want to think about.

The young family was on their way to the airport to see their mother off. Her aunt had died in Sicily and she was returning home for the funeral, so it wasn't exactly a cheery outing already, but Nicky had good reason to believe they'd never get there.

A 6-year-old Matthew hugged a bear to his little chest, his cheeks flushed and tear stained from agitation. An 11-year-old Carlo couldn't seem to stop flicking the younger boy's ear and it took only seconds for Matthew's wailing to begin.

"Carlo Davide, comportati bene! Leave your brother alone!" Their mother scolded, landing a slap on Carlo's knee.

"Matty started it!" Carlo smiled, sliding his arm around Matthew's shoulders, annoyingly.

Matthew sucked his upper lip while trying to escape his brother's hold.

"No, he didn't, Carlo. Leave him alone." Nicky muttered, as his fingernails found a familiar place on his wrist.

Nicky glimpsed his father's eyes on him in the rear-view, before the man barked at his middle child. "Carlo Davide, I will stop this car and teach you a lesson right now, young man!"

Carlo dropped his arms and instead folded his hands in his lap, solemnly. Not to be fooled, Nicky knew this peace was only temporary.

He caught his father's eye in the rear-view one last time before he slid his hand up his sleeve and scraped his nails deeper over his scabbed wrists.

"I don't know, baby. Whatever you think." Chris gripped the phone tighter, completely aware that he'd said the wrong thing. In truth, he couldn't concentrate on the wedding or the stag or anything that wasn't trying not to get fired. He was angry, restless, and his superiors had his ass under a microscope. All because of Nicky and his coming clean about burying his childhood abuse, Chris was viewed as having betrayed his brothers in blue. He was a traitor to all.

Chris had tried to help Nicky, tried to help him deal without revealing anything. He had tried to do the right thing and get him the help he needed of family, the captain off his ass, and a shrink even, but still no one trusted him. He didn't like the position he'd been put in. He didn't ask to be there without any allies and he couldn't take the new image the rest of the force viewed him in. He wasn't this person. He hated being hated.

"Are you listening to me? Christopher!"

Chris breathed deeply before responding. "Babe, I hear you, but I am having the worst day possible. I can't think about any of this right now. You're doing a good job. I trust you. Just… whatever you think, Emily."

"This isn't just my wedding, Chris. I'm not just going to plan it all the way I want and then find out years later that you hated it. And you know, I don't exactly have all the time in the world, either. UPenn finals are coming up and I'm only halfway through marking term papers. Dr. Geist is riding me like a…like something you ride, I don't know! But he wants them done. SO if you want to get married…!"

"Getting married? Who said anything about that?" He waited a beat, sure he didn't need to test the waters, because the ice was pretty damn thin already. "Look, can we at least talk about this when I get home? I've gotta go get doors slammed in my face."

"That's not a bad idea." Emily breathed, clearly having reached the end of her patience.

"Just tell me you love me."

Chris hung up the phone, feeling confident that he could at least make one right decision. Emily was the love of his life and he needed her more than he needed his bulletproof vest. He lacked words to describe how she made him feel and it made him smile, knowing that her Ivy League education provided her with the ability to describe what they had between them just fine and beautifully at that.

He found himself a sweet little school girl on her way to becoming a Political Science Professor. She was beautiful, smart, funny, and she found a way to leave Chris breathless every day. She was incredible and Chris felt he was the luckiest man alive.

Chris stuffed his phone in his pocket and looked up with a smile, still enchanted by his fiancée's voice. His gaze met Sergeant Conseiko's in the driver's seat next to him, who tore off a bite of his burger with a shit-eating grin. Chris felt his mood deplete instantly.

"Who you talking to, Rivera? Nicky? He's the only one you call 'baby', ain't he?"

Chris forced a chuckle, feeling his fists clench, heedlessly. "If I didn't know better, Jacob, I'd think you were trying to get your ass kicked."

Conseiko slurped his soda and spoke with a mouth as smart as it was full of food. "You better watch how you talk to your superior, Rivera. I could get you suspended with no pay. That pretty fiancée of yours wouldn't like that much, would she?"

Chris grabbed the sergeant by his white collar and pushed his forearm, painfully, into his scrawny chest. "You're harassing me and it's going to stop right here, right now. I could file a complaint against you faster than I could flatten that filthy little nose of yours. After I do that, not even daddy-in-law could get you that promotion." He released him slightly to gather a firmer grip. Conseiko jumped at the quick maneuvering. "And if you ever do so much as look at my fiancée again, I'll put you through the pavement." He said lowly, before letting the idiot go.

Climbing from the car, Chris pulled out a file with him and opened it on the roof. He read the reports from front to cover, finding what he already knew. They were searching for witnesses to a kidnapping of a twelve-year-old boy, last seen getting into a wood panelled station wagon three days prior. The boy's mother called in a panic, against the wishes of her friends and neighbours for infuriating racial reasons. Chris knew better than any of his co-workers that growing up in racially segregated neighbourhoods caused strife in the community. But his father was a navy seal, thus earning his family a status that could not be ignored.

He, unlike many of his own family members, did not grow up in a poor neighbourhood. He grew up down the street from Nicky's family in Jersey City, used to being the black kid in an Italian dominated city. Despite the kinds of anecdotes one could conjure up with that knowledge, Chris enjoyed his childhood the way it unravelled. He didn't find himself the subject of prejudices for being Black any more than Nicky did for being a 'wop'. Unfortunately, Philadelphia was a different story.

"I say we pan out. These people are scared. These are mothers scared for their children."

"That's all the more reason for them to tell us what they know so we can catch this mother fucker!" Conseiko yelled, unnecessarily, as he too pulled himself from the car. "It's been more than 72 hours, they should know that he's dead and the sicko's looking for his next vic."

Chris tightened his jaw and answered him, convincingly. "What don't you understand about, they don't trust cops? We're supposed to show them that we're helping them not, 'we failed, so put the lives of your children in our hands'. We're lookin' for a brown panelled station wagon. How many of those do you see around these days? We should be looking for witnesses who've seen a car like that go by."

"And we haven't been doin' that? What's your point, Rivera?"

"We're not asking the right people. We should be talking to convenience store employees, grocery stores, porn shops, elementary schools."

"We've already analyzed gas station footage and pulled up nothin'. It could be stolen and he ditched it after he snatched the boy."

"If he ditched it we would've found it by now, which means he's hiding it. Paedophiles don't just snatch any kid, they usually know them and stalk them. The kid got in the car willingly, which indicates that he knew him. We're talkin' teacher, neighbour, or just someone he ran into often enough to arouse." Chris regretted wording it that way, immediately.

"We're asking people if they by chance happened to catch the license plate number of an old car three days ago."

"We're asking if they saw anything out of the norm? If they happen to know the kind of guy who'd drive such a piece of shit car. At least this way we might get something in particular to ask these people."

"Sounds damn good to me." Conseiko said, returning to the driver's seat. "You are good for something, Rivera. Who knew?"

Shawn had stared at the dark ceiling above him for hours before he finally gave up on the hope for sleep and rolled until his feet hit the floor. It hurt; his ankle was still sore from his sprint from the party with Cory, also sparking memories of why he had run in the first place.

Despite how terrified he'd become, Shawn hadn't the slightest idea of who that creepy guy in the tree line could have been.

The anxiety was weighing on his young, fragile body and no sooner after having gotten out of bed did he feel compelled to lay back down, this time on the living room couch. He put on an episode of the Simpsons, finding himself unable to turn off his cluttered mind.

Shawn couldn't help but think that this freak who had visited him in his bedroom and now stalked him to a party could be someone he knew. What if he was not one of Eddie's friends. He was older. Too old to be hanging around with Eddie's crowd. And somehow, the notion of a complete stranger stalking and terrifying him was even more unsettling, which left him with a gut wrenching feeling.

What if it was Chet? What if it was someone Chet knew? He imagined what Jonathon would say if he told him. In between yelling at him, he'd probably concede that Chet was simply trying to intimidate Shawn into denying Chet's guilt in abusing him. But even Shawn knew that it was a long shot and a huge risk to do something so stupid. Not that Shawn thought his father was above that kind of act, but he just didn't think he'd ever be able to come up with a scheme of that nature on his own.

Shawn turned his head slowly having felt Jonathon's presence without needing him to announce himself. His gaze lingered on the screen until the scene ended and he reluctantly shifted his eyes to find his guardian to explain why he'd gotten out of bed. But he couldn't find him.

Shawn felt his blood run cold in his veins. He muted the TV and sat, holding his breath in silence. No other noise besides a ticking clock could be heard for miles.

"Jon?" Shawn whispered, afraid his voice would muffle any movement in the apartment. "Jon, is that you?"

Sitting there in nothing but light from the TV was uncanny and suddenly, Shawn became wary that he was nothing but a sitting duck. He jumped off the couch and tripped over the coffee table, barely catching his balance. He was further from the TV light and facing a good square footage that was drenched in darkness.

Abruptly, there was a bang and the only thing preventing Shawn from hitting the floor fearing his life was the loud, ear-splitting meow that followed. He edged slowly toward the kitchen window and found a brown cat dusting off his paws next to the dumpster.

In time with Shawn's belated exhale, another bang sounded that did not originate from the back parking lot. It was the sound of a door slamming, which sent Shawn running back towards the couch. He heard a squeak. No, it was a scrape and it reminded him of that absurd folklore about the ghost with the hook for a hand.

It wasn't a hook; however, he was correct about the noise. It was metal scraping against metal. It was the turning of the front doorknob and Shawn watched it twist, slowly and dauntingly from his post on the couch until it could turn no more.