The sun had gone down some time ago. Desert was finished, with the men clearing the table and washing what was left of the dishes. Jamie and Sydney had washed the ones that were cleared before they left.

The cousins had spread about the house. Sean and Jack in the living room with the TV playing their video games. Nicki was in another room finishing her homework. Which left JoJo to sit on the staircase, waiting for whatever bad news their grandfather was about to send her way.

"Talk to Grandpa yet?" Jamie asked over the phone. His question was met with silence. "You didn't call to complain about anything, so question asked and answered…"

JoJo sighed. She could fight this until she was blue in the face. It wasn't going to change anyone's mind.

"Why bother? Could I ask one thing, though?"

"Brenna," Jamie warned.

"I ju-"

"I was very specific about this."

"Do I have to have a guard posted in the house? I tried going to my room to put Cheeto away and Pop told me I had to wait for one of them or someone from my security detail to come to the house," she explained. So far, it was her only complaint. Everything else up her grandfather and uncle's sleeves had yet to be revealed to her.

Jamie's voice softened. He did realize what his niece was being forced to sacrifice, and he wished… oh, how he wished things could have gone differently. But he couldn't take the risk. Not with his second month on the job and an off-the-books undercover investigation his own father didn't even know about.

"What are they doing now?"

"Washing dishes and talking about Uncle Danny's suspect," she replied. "Sent me to the staircase so I wouldn't hear a certain word."

"Probably for the best. You don't need to be thinking about that when you're already dealing with something else."

"About that other thing…Did you talk to Uncle Danny and Aunt Linda before going home?"

"We'll talk about it when I come back tonight, or in the morning when I pick you up for school, okay."

"Don't really have much of a choice. Do I?"

"Change the attitude, Bren."

"Sorry… Uncle Jamie? If you're my legal guardian, why are you leaving Grandpa to tell me what's going to happening?"

"I told you before leaving that I would be back later tonight to help with the transition. Aunt Syd needs to get some sleep because she has an early morning… Look… Grandpa just wanted to talk to you alone before we both discussed this with you. It's one thing to hear about it from me. It's another thing to hear about it from the person who's going through it. I thought you'd feel more comfortable talking to him without everyone there. If things don't get worse, Aunt Erin and Uncle Danny don't have to know anything. This can easily stay between the five of us."

"Five?"

"Grandpa lives with Pop. Do you really think they won't talk about it? Or that Pop won't ask why security has risen at the house? And don't forget Syd."

It was a momentary lapse in memory. There were at least two reasons for security details to be stationed outside that house. And they both shared a name and title. Though one had the words former and retired attached to his. And in the case of these two commissioners, the position was earned, not bought through favors or trading on their family name.

"Let Aunt Syd and me finish getting our leftovers inside and in the fridge. Okay? Grandpa won't discuss the details without me. He just wants to find out what's going through your mind and have Detective Baker look into this before anything drastic happens." Jamie hung up before she had a chance to respond.

Erin sat at the kitchen island, eating a plate Nicki had made for her and talking to Henry by the time JoJo set her phone down in its designated place in her grandfather's office. The teen jumped at the voice behind her.

"Your uncle tells me there's something we need to talk about," Frank's low voice carried through the room.

"Said the same thing to me… talking about changing my security detail."

"He's not wrong, you know. Only a Reagan, especially ones who either have custody of or share a roof with you, should be able to penetrate a protection detail without calling one of us."

"What would Dad have done in this situation?" Frank had to think about that for a moment. None of his children, or grandchildren for that matter, ever had to go through something like this. It certainly wasn't a situation they remembered from their childhoods. "I didn't get to know him like the rest of you."

"You were the light of Joe's world. He would have done everything within his power to keep his little girl safe..."

"Uncle Jamie practically said the same thing earlier. Might have been a full ten years to Dad. But I only remember three."

"It wasn't easy for Joe to sacrifice that time he could have spent with you. What you need to understand is how hard your uncle is on himself. It's not easy entering a line of work that has his grandfather and father sharing a title, and both brothers holding a rank. No one, not even the media, thinks I'll ever go easy on your Uncle Danny when he steps out of line. But they think I'll go easy on my youngest."

"Are you asking me to go easy on him?" Frank gave a tight-lipped smile in answer. "Do I have to? He's just as hard on me as he is on himself… Did you know he ripped the blankets off me as an alarm clock his first morning out of the academy? You never did that."

"I never had to with you. But I did come close a few times… And from what I understand, it was beyond deserved."

"Yeah, I guess it was."

"You guess?"

"Nothing is sacred in this family," JoJo grumbled. "I was mad at Aunt Syd. She'd started talking about their wedding plans, which I don't care about..."

It'd only taken a few phrases from her for Frank to figure out what the problem was.

"I see… While your uncle Jamie took on the role, and even signed the documents that made him your father, he never tried to replace your dad. Never made you call him Dad."

JoJo nodded. "I know Angie isn't my biological mother, Grandpa. I also know she never signed the adoption papers Dad had drawn up for her," she said, letting him know she wasn't living in a fantasy land. "But she was Mom for eight years, even when Dad was deployed, and I lived here… Just felt like Aunt Syd was trying to take her place."

"Things seemed a lot better between you after dinner tonight," Frank noted. "Could it be you misread the situation?"

"If you're strictly referring to Aunt Syd… she said it would only be on paper, like it is with Uncle Jamie. As for the other thing? I wouldn't consider someone who isn't part of my security detail knowing where I am every second of the day as my misreading the situation. Would you?" She'd started off confident in her assessment but wavered toward the end.

The information gathering continued until Jamie's return an hour later. He still didn't want to hear any complaints since she obviously wanted these people to leave her alone, something that wasn't likely to happen without better security. But he was willing to listen to them now that everyone had either gone home or turned the TV on to watch a game.

"I don't understand," Meghan said during their shared lunch period. "How do you not get a say in this?"

"Because I'm a minor, which means Uncle Jamie gets to make all of my legal decisions, that's how."

"And no one has thought about how this will look at school?"

The two looked at the four suit clad people at the table behind and in front of them. Each one had an earpiece like an agent with the secret service. Their shields were on display for the teachers and security guards to see. The principal was made aware of their presence. The only request was that they be unarmed during school hours. Seemed reasonable to her… however… being unarmed, especially while on the job, was a ginormous no-no in Frank's department.

"You mean making me look like a spoiled rotten rich kid?"

"Well," Meghan hesitated before agreeing. "You are the commissioner's granddaughter. And he did have custody of you for six months."

"Come on, Megs," JoJo said with a pointed look.

"What?"

"You've met my grandfather. Believe it or not, you have it easy with Grammy. Media didn't snap a photo of you with your tongue stuck to flagpole last year. They cropped you out of it and sent mine to print."

"Yeah, I remember Linda wasn't too happy with you for doing that."

"Uncle Jamie wasn't too pleased with the bill either… That might have been when he started thinking I needed constant supervision. Even Sean knows better than to do something like that and he's seven."

"What does that have to do with them? Your security detail doesn't usually come inside unless they're picking you up."

JoJo considered not telling her, but she figured Meghan, who happened to be in witness protection, could be trusted.

"The reason is really two-fold. Probably heard about Uncle Danny's case on campus. Diplomatic immunity. Can't touch his suspect even if his own life depended on it."

"Miss Reagan," one of the people from her detail said. There was a gesture to follow the woman into the empty halls.

JoJo, who preferred to be called Brenna, a request that often went ignored, leaned against the lockers that lined the walls. She wasn't going to talk about what hadn't made it to the news and became public knowledge. That didn't mean her new protectors knew that. Made her wish for her old detail if only for a minute before recalling why those people weren't there anymore.

"What's wrong with my talking about what's already public knowledge?"

"We don't discuss active cases with civilians, Miss Reagan."

"And what do you call this?" Brenna asked, her hand going back and forth between herself and her new bodyguard. "Is this not an active case? You didn't stop me from telling my friend about that."

"Miss Reagan, you are not an active case unless something real turns up in the commissioner's investigation. So, until then, you can discuss this all you want. Active cases, however, always have, and always will, remain unspoken."

Brenna slammed her head back against the metal wall. Her grandfather had never once said she couldn't talk about what was discussed at Sunday dinner. Usually what was discussed were cases that the siblings had either closed or had the right suspect but somehow came to a standstill. Current cases were masked as hypothetical situations so her younger cousins wouldn't know. The ten-year-old was starting to see through that veil, though.

"Not another word about the case. Now go back to your table and finish your lunch. Come up with something else to talk about."

Brenna grumbled the whole way back to her table. Her grandfather didn't mind if she discussed such cases with her best friend, especially now that he knew her friend had her own reasons to stay quiet.

"What was that about, Jo?" Meghan asked, watching as Brenna returned to her seat. Brenna opened her mouth to reply, stopping when she heard a throat clearing.

"Nothing, Megs. Rules just changed overnight."

"Those rules never changed, Jo. Your family just knows I have my own reasons to stay quiet about what you tell me."

"Yeah. Uncle Jamie and Aunt Syd were the only ones who knew… until now," Brenna replied, pointing with her eyes to the security detail around them.

"And how did they know?" Meghan asked as if she already knew the answer.

"Because I'm terrible at keeping secrets and Uncle Jamie reads my texts whenever I'm grounded," Brenna's voice rose with the last word.

"Well, the secret keeping part we all knew. But Jamie reading your texts?"

"Something about earning back his trust after all the stunts we've pulled in the last year."

"Did he ground you for tagging that bike? Dad grounded me for it."

"No, but I was where I wasn't supposed to be. And for that, I was grounded. Forgot he set up the location sharing so they'd all know where I was."

"How'd you get out of it?"

"Uncle Danny caught me going back so I could give the owner money to cover the damages. He told Uncle Jamie everything. So not going home and making him come home early from work because I need supervision. Uncle Jamie's words." Brenna rolled her eyes after she'd quoted the man.

Meghan nodded. Her mouth formed an oh. "I would have done the same thing, but Dad caught me just after you left. Haven't seen the outdoors aside from going to school since."

"What's your brother been up to lately?"

The change in subject did not go unnoticed, and the mention of a brother drew the attention of Brenna's security detail. They'd done a background check on the girl once receiving this assignment to find she did indeed have a brother. But Meghan must have had another brother no one knew about as she was consistently referring to the one in her file as Dad.

"Some program with the FBI. Also something we're not supposed to talk about," Meghan said in a way that told Brenna they'd talk about it when she wasn't surrounded by her grandfather's people.

"Good luck with that. Can't even go up to my room without one of them checking it before I go in now."

"Why'd Jamie go directly to the commissioner about this? Thought it had to go up the ladder, not pull volt over every rung."

"It is going up the ladder, but Uncle Jamie thought he should know directly since I'm still living there. It's also why the move got postponed."

Brenna and Meghan followed their usual routine toward the end of their lunch period. They cleaned up their trays and threw away their trash. The security detail followed suit, one covering them from every compass point.

"See ya next period. Oh, and you need to stop by the nurse's office. Mike's been texting me over the weekend about you not taking your meds."

"Of course, he has."

"Hey! Heart issues are no joke, Megs. I'd hate to lose my best friend to something that could have been prevented."

Meghan waved back in acknowledgement as she disappeared around a corner, presumably on her way to the nurse's office. And Brenna headed to her next class. The two friends shared four classes and a lunch period.

The one who pulled her out of lunch to remind her she couldn't speak of Danny's case had led the way to Brenna's next class. She turned to face her charge, holding a hand up to stop the teen from breaking protocol. It allowed two of the other officers to check the room.

"Sir, your granddaughter was breaking protocol left and right today. How did she make it this long with the ones she had before us?"

Brenna turned her eyes to the floor. She could feel her grandfather's gaze that was still fixed on her. The rules, which he and Jamie had discussed with her at length the previous night, had changed. Before, if she ditched her detail, it was a just a slap on the wrist since Frank was not leading her by example in that regard. It was more of a joke with the family.

She took what was supposed to be an unnoticeable step. Her foot had moved only an inch, but somehow it was still enough for the commissioner to see. "I'm just gonna-"

"Have a seat," he ordered the teen. Brenna slowly made her way to the chair Frank had pointed to. One that was as far away from the door as possible without letting her sit on his side of the desk. His attention returned to the officer who headed the new team. "I read your report officer. Ditching her detail for three hours. Going against my explicit instructions concerning active cases. Not letting your team do their job of securing a room before entering." Frank continued reading the list of every protocol his granddaughter had broken.

He looked up at her every few seconds. "While nothing new, Detective Winters, you are correct. Each case has its own set of protocols. And the commissioner's granddaughter, of all people, should know what happens when they're broken."

His eyes met Brenna's. "You would be right in most cases, Winters. However, your issue is not with my granddaughter, but with my son. Officer Jamison Reagan, who has legal say over her, has not requested you to stop doing your job. Thank you for giving this to me directly," Frank referred to the report. "I'll bring your concerns to my son's attention while this comes back to me through the proper channels."

"Yes, Sir," Winters replied, taking her report from Frank's outstretched hand.

"Now, what were you doing during the three hours you went AWOL, Brenna?"