"Eliza?" I greeted the woman as she turned around to face me. She had a narrow face that complimented her dark skin, while her grey-blue eyes held a softness that was both familiar and oddly comforting to me, which sometimes happened in my line of work. I worked with a lot of different people that when I passed them on the streets or saw them at the store, I wondered if I had seen them before. This time, it was like that but more of a deja vu moment, like I had seen her in my past. "I'm Detective Upton."

"Eliza Harwell." She glanced back at the little girl who was busy coloring at the table. "Do you think we could talk over here privately?" In the little time I had been in the room with her, I could deduct by her manner she was here for professional reasons, although there was something else about her that I couldn't quite put my finger on yet.

"Sure." I agreed reluctantly, following her to the other side of the table so we were facing the wall and just out of earshot from Eva hearing our conversation. I didn't exactly like where this was going even before she said anything. "Detective Upton is it?"

"Please, call me Hailey."

"Hailey. You are quite a hard woman to track down." The way she said my name, brought back the familiarity I was talking about earlier, and I was wracking my mind. It was as if I blanked her out completely. Then again, I always had that thought in my mind that I was just comparing her to someone I had seen before; and what did she mean about me being hard to track down?

"I'm sorry. Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Maybe this will explain why I'm here." She handed me the file while an unsettling feeling came over me. There on the first page was the unmistakable picture of a blond-haired, blue-eyed little girl, the same one who was sitting at that table coloring. If on instinct, I moved the picture over and read the name printed at the top of the paper.

"Eva?" Her name came out more of a surprised whisper as I glanced over my shoulder at the name of the child and it all clicked to why they were here. Are you kidding me? "You've got to be kidding me," I stated, a little louder than I wanted the words to come out. I hoped nobody was standing close to the door or wall listening in to what would most likely be a muffled conversation, thanks to sound barriers constructed in the building.

"I wish I was." Eliza shrugged a little too calmly for my satisfaction. My heart was suddenly racing at facing my past, while my brain was spinning with all the questions in my mind. The one that went through it the most was why was she here? "Look, I've watched the news and know what's going on with the case you just wrapped up. Although, I don't have all the details about what happened and probably will never have them. What I do know is there is a little girl right now who needs you and wants her real mother to care and love her."

"Sorry, but I'm not sure I can trust someone who just comes waltzing in here with a little girl, who I haven't seen since she was a baby." Okay, so I was skeptical about her presence. There were good people who had been fooled, but if someone was playing with me, there were going to learn I wasn't that kind of person they should ever mess with.

"Your boss, Arthur Carson warned me you would be hard to convince." She smiled warmly, folding her arms across her chest as if she were making an attempt to protect herself from all the questions I was about to throw out at her. "He told me you've been through some horrible things, which would make it difficult for you to believe what I was saying was true."

"My old boss sent you here to Chicago?" I questioned in disbelief as I looked over the file again. I learned over and over again how to decipher what could be real or fake and to me, this file seemed legit. She seemed legit. Heck, she had gotten past Trudy and she wasn't an easy person to convince with most anyone. If I hadn't told her about the path we shared, I probably would still be on her bad side, even to this day. I could almost laugh when some unsuspecting person crossed her in the wrong way. I just hoped this wasn't one of them.

"He did, yes." Reaching into her purse, she dug around until she pulled out a white business card. "He told me to give this to you, knowing he couldn't be here himself." Taking the card slowly, I turned it around in my fingers. Again, it all looked legit, but one could never be so sure. On one hand, I had to believe Booth was trying to get to me, even from jail. The timing between his arrest and my daughter showing up was a little too uncanny, even for my taste.

"You might want to look on the back." She hinted, observing me closely as I looked over the card. I read the words scrawled in black pen and somehow I wondered if she was really telling the truth. Could that number on the back really be my boss reaching out to me? "He said you'd probably know what it meant." I read over the words once again and then for the first time I suspected she was telling the truth.

Beata es lu lucerna mea

Those words were ones I hadn't heard in a long time. They pretty much translated to you are the sunshine in my lantern. Even though it sounded cheesy, Garrett would always tell me that whenever he could. If fact, the last person I had confided in with those words from him was my old boss, Arthur Carson. I hadn't told anyone else, so if they had come from some other place besides him, I had to find out who else knew about my past.