"She's not going to be a problem anymore," Freddie said, "she's dead."

"You killed her?" Timothy asked.

"You said that you wanted to be rid of her," Freddie replied, "so I got rid of her, she didn't even bother to put up a fight."

"Did I tell you to kill her?" he asked.

"No," Freddie replied, "but I thought..."

"You didn't think, that's the problem," Timothy said, "I gave your father my word that nothing would happen to either her or her son."

"My father's gone soft," Freddie snapped, "he's defending a traitorous whore."

"He's carrying out my orders," he said, "something that you're not capable of doing." Freddie wasn't the smartest branch on the tree which was why he hadn't allowed him to rise very high in the cause. However, that didn't stop him from doing things that he thought would get him promoted.

"But..." Freddie began.

"I had my own plans for her," he said, "plans that I now have to change." He had been looking forward to dealing with Elizabeth himself, and now that pleasure had been taken away from him. "You're going to have to explain what you've done to your father," he added. That was going to be a very interesting conversation, it was a pity that he wouldn't be able to hear it as he had other things to do. However, his old friend was going soft and he would have to do something before that attitude spread to other people.

"Mother said..." Freddie began.

"You shouldn't believe everything that your mother says," he warned him. Louisa was a very devious and power hungry woman, someone that he was keeping a very close eye on in case she began to pose a threat to him. Women were only good for one thing in his opinion, and that was why he was having to wipe out all the evidence of his past indiscretions. Naturally, he was being careful to make sure that he could in no way be connected to any of the bodies that might turn up later on. However, he had to admit that he was more than a little worried that someone might have DNA evidence against him. His followers were not going to be too happy if they found out that he had broken one of the cardinal rules of the Cause, never breed with the impure. Although, he still didn't understand who Elizabeth could have produced a child like that unless she really was the whore that he had made her out to be.

"I hope that you don't mind my sitting in," Simon said, handing Anne a mug of coffee.

"No," she replied, "but I should warn you that some of what I have to say is pretty horrendous."

"I can imagine," Jim said.

"There's no way that you could imagine," Anne said, "I lived through it and at times it still feels like a nightmare to me." At least she didn't wake up in the middle of the night screaming any more.

"Why don't you start at the beginning," Jim suggested.

"My life was pretty normal until I was fourteen," she said.

"Normal?" Simon asked.

"It was normal for us," she replied, "the house was probably bigger than most peoples. There were meeting in the house nearly every night, Timothy Mackenna was always there, planning a new empire takes a lot of time and energy, he was already the leader of the Cause."

"Does this have any relevance to your being shot?" Simon asked.

"I was just getting to that," Anne said. It was important that they knew all the details. "Joseph and I would sit at the top of the stairs listening to what was being said," she added, "we weren't supposed to though. It took me a lot longer realise what was going on. I didn't want to think that my father was capable of doing something evil." Nobody wanted to think that their parents were capable of doing terrible things.

"The man who hugged you is your brother," Jim said.

"One of them," Anne replied, "it was Freddie who shot me. He's the eldest of us, a stupid and vicious man. He hangs on Timothy's every word, always has done."

"I still don't understand why he would want to shoot you," Jim said, "my brother and I don't get on all that great, but I wouldn't want to kill him."

"You mean apart from the fact that I can place Timothy Mackenna at two lynching?" Anne asked, "how about the fact that I could do permanent damage to the Cause with one interview. Mackenna and Frederick Curtis would be hanging side by side from the same tree minutes after it started."

"I can understand your father," Simon said, "but Mackenna?"

"He's trying to wipe out all his victims and their children," she said, "or should I say his children." It was a lot harder to say than she'd thought it would be. "He's been raping teenage girls for at least the past thirty years."

"And nobody's reported him?" Jim growled.

"They've tried, but he has so much power nobody will listen to them," she replied, "I told and was beaten doe daring to suggest that he would ever do something like that. He got the son he wanted, just not the one that he was expecting."

"He's Henri's..." Simon began.

"Henri is my son, no one else's," Anne said.

"When you said wipe out, you meant kill, didn't you?" Jim asked.

"Of course I meant kill," she said, "the question is what are we going to do about it?" If they wouldn't do anything then she would act on her own, because she couldn't allow Timothy to get away with murder again.

"Of course, you haven't done anything wrong," Louis assured her son.

"But Timothy said..." Freddie began.

"Timothy is under a great deal of stress at the moment," she said. Which in no way excused the way that he had spoken to her son. Freddie might not be the brightest person in the world, but he had always been loyal to the Cause and was willing to do what he thought was right. She just wished that she had been able to say the same thing about her other two children, but they had done nothing but brought shame on the family.

"He said that father was carrying out his orders by not doing anything about her," he said.

"Your father isn't well at the moment," Louisa said. Her husband seemed to be having a major crisis of faith and was currently staying elsewhere until he decided that she had made the choice by sacrificing Elizabeth for his advancement in the Cause. "So we shouldn't bother him with this," she added. The only thing that telling Frederick would do would be to make him even more determined not to return to the Cause. He had to come back, though, because people were starting to avoid her. She had not spent her whole life working for the Cause only to be thrown out just as her family was about to reach the highest levels of it.

"Yes mother," Freddie said, "do you think that I should take care of her son as well."

"No, I'll do it," she replied. It would prove to all those people who were avoiding her that she was as loyal the Cause as she had ever been. It was just a pity that she wouldn't be able to see the look on Elizabeth's face when she saw the body of her son. "In fact, it will be a pleasure to do it," she added, "and I don't want you to worry about anything." He'd always been very nervous as a child, and she had been able to use that to mould into the man she had wanted him to grow up to be. Even now his only purpose in life was to try and please her.

"What about Joseph?" he asked, "I know where he is."

"You do what you have to," Lousia replied. Soon he would be her only child.

So that was one of Anne's brothers, Joel thought, well, he couldn't see the resemblance. He had to admit that he did have a few questions for the man, such as why he hadn't been in touch with her before now. There were bound to have been times in the past when Anne could really have used her brother's help. However, she seemed to have welcomed him back with open arms so it wasn't really his place to say anything, but if he saw any sing of that man hurting Anne then he would get involved whether she wanted him to or not. Anne had been hurt a great many times in the past from what she had told him, and he wasn't going to let anyone else hurt her. She didn't always make it easy for him to protect her though, she could be damned stubborn when she wanted to be and she didn't always listen to advice when she was given it. Yet she seemed to have a knack of turning any given situation to her advantage.

He was going to find it hard to keep his temper when she told him who Henri's father, but he knew that she wouldn't want him to get angry. Anne had had the past thirty years to come to terms with what had happened to her, that was if it was ever possible for someone to do that. She'd been little more than a child when Henri had been conceived and the world had been a very different place back then. The fact that she had gone on to make a success of her life showed that she was strong, and it was probably that same strength that had kept her going while she had been undercover with the Sisters of Purity. He wasn't sure whether he would want her to go undercover for that long again, because he would spend the whole time worrying about whether he would ever see her again or not. However, he couldn't ask her to give up doing something that she loved, and more than she would ask him to give up defusing bombs.

He should have been in there because it was his mom, Henri thought, and he had the right to know what was being said. If she didn't come out soon then he was going to go in there and demand to be told what was going on. By rights she should have been being checked out at the hospital rather than giving a statement. He'd been shot while wearing a kevlar vest and knew just how much it hurt afterwards, she could have cracked ribs or anything. And why was the guy still hanging around, he hadn't liked the way that he'd hugged his mom at all. It was bad enough that she was going to marry Joel without there being another man in her life as well. As he was rapidly learning there was a great deal more to his mom than he'd ever thought. He'd always assumed that she lived a pretty quiet life when he wasn't with her, only she didn't.

"She's still in there," he said when Blair joined him at his desk. "Any idea what they're talking about?" he added. Ellison was bound to have told him what was going on.

"No," Blair replied, "All I know is that Jim didn't want me in there so it has to be pretty serious."

"Someone did try and kill her," Henri reminded him. When he found out who'd pulled the trigger he would make them pay for threatening his mom's life.

"It was a good thing that she was wearing a vest," Blair said.

"I didn't even know that she was," he admitted. He certainly hadn't been able to tell that she had been wearing one. Still, his mom had probably suspected that someone might try and kill her. He wished that she'd told him that so he could have done something to try and protect her. "That guy is a writer," he added, looking at James.

"He wrote "The Death of Mead Perkins," Blair said, "that book gave me nightmares."

"Why?" Henri asked. He would have thought that there would be very little that would scare Hairboy after working with Jim all this time.

"The sheer brutality that one person can be put through," Blair replied.

"How did he die?" he asked. Not that he had any intentions of reading the book.

"He was lynched," Blair replied.

"They beat him first and burned down his home," Anne said from behind him.

"You knew this Mead Perkins?" Henri asked.

"I knew the person he was based on," she replied, "but that was a very long time ago."

"Why didn't you tell me that?" he asked. For her to have remembered the event it must have been a pretty big one in her childhood. "Is..." he started to add.

"Honey bear, your father is 100% white all the way back to the Mayflower," Anne replied, "and we're going to talk about his later today."

"Why not now?" Henri asked.

"Because this isn't the place to talk about it, that's why," she snapped.

"Okay," he said. Something had obviously upset her, because she rarely snapped at him. He wanted to find out what it was, but he suspected that it would only upset her more.

"All you need to know for the moment is that I love you and never for one second did I ever think about giving you up," Anne said, "it's important that you remember that no matter what anyone says."

"Why would anyone want to say otherwise?" he asked.

"Because they would hurt you to get to me," she replied.

"You're going to do something, aren't you," he said. She had the same determined look in her eyes as she'd had the day that she'd gone to see the Principal of his high school about the way that some of the teachers were treating him, the Principal had never stood a chance against his mom.

"I'm not going to answer that on the grounds that you will tell me that it's a bad idea," Anne replied, "but don't worry I'll be very careful."

He'd let Elizabeth down again, Frederick thought. She'd expected to take a stand and he hadn't. However, he had taken a huge step back in order to gather his thoughts. What Timothy was doing now went well beyond what the Cause believed. It was one thing to want to strip an entire race of people of their rights, but a totally different one to try and destroy the evidence of the crimes that you had committed against children. Now he had no choice but to try and stop Timothy before he killed anyone else. If he went to the appropriate authorities there was no guarantee that they would get here in time. In fact, at the moment there was only one person that he could trust to do anything and that was Elizabeth. No matter how angry and disappointed she might be with him, he knew that there was no way that she would allow innocent children to be harmed, although, he wasn't sure what she would be able to do on her own, but it had be more than he could do.

Louisa was no doubt never going to forgive him for this, but he didn't care. For far too long he had allowed her to dictate what happened to their family. In return two of his children had been banished, one was a weak fool and the youngest lost to him forever. Not even Louisa knew that their youngest child had been born alive. In order to protect his secret he'd had to convince her that the child had been stillborn. The only person who knew where Henri was, was the doctor who had arranged his adoption. Not even his son's new family had known the truth about his background, it had been for their safety. He could only hope that his youngest son had grown up to be a decent man, something that he had never been.

"She is one hell of a woman," Simon said. It was easy to see why Joel had not only fallen in love with her, but had asked her to marry him.

"If she's right we have a serious problem," Jim said, "so what are we going to do about it?"

"I'm not sure," he replied. Both legally and morally they had to do something. Anne might not have said the word, it was obvious to him how Henri had been conceived. How the hell did you tell your child something like that. "We could start by trying to find timothy Mackenna," he added. It shouldn't be that hard to find the man considering the fact that he was on the news most days. Arresting him was when they would have serious problems though. A man like Mackenna would have an army of high priced lawyers to bail him out of trouble and demand that his rights were protected. However, it was Mackenna's followers that he was most concerned about, because there was no telling what they would do when they discovered the charges that he would be facing.

"And once we've found him?" Jim asked.

"We are not going to break the law," Simon replied. Doing that would only serve to drag his department down to Mackenna's level and he'd be damned if he was going to let that happen.

"H shouldn't be involved with this," Jim said, "he's too close to it."

"That would rule Joel out for the same reason," he said. However, they were going to need every officer that he could get if they were going to arrest Mackenna.

"Joel will stay calm under pressure, can you say the same for Henri?" Jim asked.

"No," he admitted.

"I'm going to keep Blair well away from this," Jim said.

"He does have a habit of finding trouble," Simon said, not that it was always the kid's fault.

"He really likes Anne, wishes that she was his mom," Jim said.

"Considering what he got you can't blame him," he said.

"I'm Joseph, Beth… I mean Anne's brother," James said, "and you must be her fiancé."

"Why do you say that?" Joel asked.

"Because you're watching every move that she makes," he replied. Only someone who really cared about Bethie would be this worried for her.

"I did offer to go in with her, but..." Joel began.

"She can be very stubborn when she wants to be," James said, "it used to drive Louisa mad." He'd stopped referring to that woman as his mother a long time ago. "Bethie only had to do the slightest thing wrong and she would be punished." He'd lost count of the number of times that he'd taken the blame for something that Bethie had done, but Lousia seemed to have a rabid hatred of her.

"Punished?" Joel said.

"I don't think that I should go into that without talking to Bethie first," he said. It looked as if he might have gone and said something that he shouldn't have.

"Until recently Anne's never told me anything about her childhood," Joel said, "I'd really like to know what happened to her."

"Louisa demanded perfection from us all the time," James said, "we were supposed to set an example to the others. Needless to say she was always disappointed with us. Freddie on the other hand was the perfect son, he never questioned anything." That was how their elder brother had ended up being so high up in the Cause.

"What did she do to Anne?" Joel asked.

"She constantly picked on her, belittled anything that she did, made her wear grey all the time," he replied, "the violence started later." He could still remember the first time that Louisa had hit Bethie, and the utter shock that she could do something like that without their father trying to stop her. "Freddie would make things up just to get her punished." If he ever saw his brother again he would beat the crap out of him, that was if Bethie didn't do it first. Freddie should pay the ultimate price for having treated her so badly all those years ago, and he was more than willing to give her a rock solid alibi if she needed one.

"And you just left her there to suffer like that?" Joel asked. "Didn't you think about getting her out of there?"

"I thought about it every single day for a long time," James admitted, "but I was sixteen and there was no way that they would have let me back in the house, let alone take Bethie with me. The next thing I'm being told is that she's dead. It's taken me thirty years to find her." There had been times when he had feared that he would either never find her or that someone would kill her before he'd had the chance to tell her that he was sorry for having let her down all those years ago.

James had warned her to be careful and she'd thought that she had been, Hope thought, but obviously she hadn't been careful enough, because she'd been grabbed and thrown into the back of a van. While she didn't know for certain who had grabbed her she had a pretty good idea. No doubt, they were planning to use her as some sort of bargaining chip with James, only that wasn't going to work, because he wasn't the sort of man who would give in to blackmail. Once they realised that she wasn't going to be of any use to them they would kill her. This was precisely the sort of thing that both James and her had been expecting to happen for some time. Now that it had she wasn't sure what she could do to try and get herself out of the situation that she was in.
Her abductors weren't going to make it easy for her to escape. So she was just going to have to try and lull them into a false sense of security. She'd heard brief snatches of conversation that James had had with one of his contacts and it had sounded to her as if Timothy Mackenna was going to do something major and soon. This could be her chance to find out what he was planning to do. She might not be able to stop him, but she could certainly try and though a huge spanner in the works. Now that might really be worth dying for, not that she had any intention of dying just yet. There was a certain detective that she was hoping that would call her. James wanted her to have a life outside of campaigning, but it wasn't easy to have a relationship with anyone, because she and James were constantly on the move. The last time that she'd had a permanent home had been when she'd been a police officer. It might be nice to be able to put down roots again, and she might be able to do that if the Cause was brought down. However, there were still other organisations for her and James to speak out against.

This was all Elizabeth's fault, Timothy thought, watching the screen as women and children cowered in fear. If she had just kept her mouth shut he would have been able to leave everyone in peace. Now he was going to have a great deal of blood on his hands. Still, his followers were not going to be too happy with him when they found out what he'd done with those girls. He'd broken just about every rule that he expected his followers to live by. He was also going to have to deal with Elizabeth again and soon, before she had a chance to cause any more problems for him. Frederick was not going to be too happy about that, but even his friend would have to accept the fact that he was simply putting the Cause first. Without him at it's helm it would rapidly turn from a well run organisation into just another hate group.

"Hello Frederick," he said, when the door behind him opened, "I've been expecting you."

"You have to stop this," Frederick said, "it's not right, they're just children."

"They are the biggest threat that this organisation has ever faced," Timothy said, "they could destroy us."

"No, they could destroy you, there's a big difference," Frederick said.

"I suppose that if I don't stop that you're going to try and make me," he said. There was nothing that Frederick could either say or do that would make him change his mind about the plan that he'd put into action.

"We're all going to be branded as murderers," Frederick said.

"My friend, you're going t soft in your old age," Timothy said, "this is going to be a glorious new beginning for the Cause, with all the mistakes of the past wiped out." He wasn't entirely sure that he could call Frederick his friend any longer, but he was prepared to give him the benefit of doubt for the moment.

"All your mistakes, not mine or anyone else's," Frederick said, "what you've done is sick and perverted. Nowhere in the charter does it say that we have the right to abuse children. You've been using me and the others to hide your crimes for years, well no more, it stops here and now."

"You knew what I was doing all along and you turned a blind eye to it. In my opinion that makes you just as guilty as me," Timothy said. Not that he really thought that he had done anything wrong. He'd just used his right as a member of the master race to take what would have been his eventually.

"Perhaps I am," Frederick admitted, "but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to do something about it now. And you can be sure that Elizabeth will as well."

"She is being taken care of as we speak," Timothy said, "unfortunately, she seems to have more lives than a cat." He should have known that Freddie would screw it u, but that really didn't matter, because there was more than enough evidence to convict him of the first shooting to make everyone think that he had decided to finish off the job that he had started.

"Killing Elizabeth is only going to make your problems worse," Frederick said, "she's smart enough to have made sure that if anything happens to her that evidence of what you've done is made public. Why don't you let me go talk to her, see if I cant persuade her to hand it over."

"How do I know that I can trust you?" he asked. Frederick had a very strong motive to see him exposed.

"Because I've never lied to you," Frederick replied, "I know all your secrets and could have exposed you any time that I wanted to."

"And what do you get out of this?" he asked. Nobody did anything for nothing these days.

"You leave her and her son alone," Frederick replied, "and you let those women and children go. They don't know who kidnapped them. If you do the right thing you could end up being a hero on the eyes of the public."

"A hero," Timothy said, "I like the sound of that, but I want the evidence in my hands before I let them go." Even then he might decide to change his mind at the last minute.

"Don't worry you'll have it," Frederick assured him.

Her son might have failed, but she wasn't going to, Louisa thought. At long last the spectre of shame than had hung over her family for the past thirty years was about to be lifted. She was going to get a great deal of pleasure from seeing the look in her daughter's eyes when she realised what was about to happen to her. This one act was going to show Timothy and the other members of the Cause that she was just as loyal as she had always been and that in no way did her husband speak for her. Frederick could do whatever he wanted from now on, because she was going to divorce him. Their marriage had been on shaky ground for some time now, but if she was being honest with herself she doubted that she had ever loved Frederick. However, marrying him had been a very smart move on her part, because she had been able to shape his future and hers along with it. From behind the scenes she had been able to shape the policies of the Cause, but she wasn't content to be in the shadows any longer. There was a great deal of good that she could do for the Cause if she was allowed to play a more public role. Getting rid of one of Timothy's greatest enemies would make sure that she got that role. He wouldn't be able to deny her anything once he knew what she'd done for him.

"Elizabeth," she said. Even saying her daughter's name made her stomach turn, and to think that she had given birth to such a traitorous creature.

"Mother," Anne said, "I wish that I could say that this is a pleasant surprise, but it's not."

"The feeling is mutual," Lousia said. It wasn't helped by the fact that her daughter bore such a strong resemblance to her.

"I suppose that you're going to tell me what a dreadful disappointment I've been to you," Anne said, "well, I don't care what you think. I stopped caring abut that a long time ago."

"At least you're admitting the truth now," she said, "both you and Joseph have been grave disappointments to me. I gave you everything and just look at how you repaid me, you slept with one of them. Timothy was prepared to give your father the Vice Presidency..."

"Let's get one thing straight, he raped me," Anne said, "you deserve to be sitting in a cell for colluding with him, but I should have known that your husband would bail you out."

"He didn't," Lousia replied, "Your brother Frederick did."

"Good for him," Anne said, "what you should be asking yourself is that if Timothy's the father of my son why isn't Henri white?"

"That is none of my concern," she said. The question had never even entered her mind, not even after Frederick had told her about the child that Elizabeth had given birth to. "What does concern me are the lies that you are still telling about a good and decent man." she added.

"Good and decent men don't rape children," Anne said, "or are you stupid enough to think that I'm his only victim? Maybe you set some of the others up as well?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Louisa said. Timothy would never do such a terrible thing, not when there were so many women in the Cause who would be only too willing to give themselves to him.

"I don't have time for this," Anne said, "I'm going to stop him and make sure that neither he or you can hurt anyone ever again."

"I can't let you do that," she said, producing a gun, "I wish that I could say that this isn't personal, but it is. With you gone things will get back to normal."

"They were never normal to begin with," Anne snapped, "you're not normal. If you pull the trigger you're going to be killing yourself as well, it's a one way ticket to Death Row for cop killers in this state."

"I don't care," Lousia said, "I'll be a martyr for the Cause." She would be held up as a shining example of what women could achieve if they put their minds to it. Elizabeth probably thought that she didn't have the guts to pull the trigger, but she did. "I'm going to do it," she added, tightening her finger on the trigger.

"No, you're not," Anne said, lunging and disarming her. "You're under arrest and when Freddie comes to bail you out he'll be arrested as well."

"I'll soon be out," she said confidently. She had friends who would bail her out.

"Think that if you like, you're going to be disappointed when that doesn't happen," Anne said, pocketing the gun before slipping handcuffs onto her mother, "Now start walking, because it's a block to the station."

"I insist that you call a cab," Louis said.

"Insist all you want, it's not going to happen," Anne said, pushing her in the direction of the station, "you know, I'm probably setting some sort of record by arresting you twice." she added.

He was taking a big risk by coming here, Freddie thought, getting into the lift, but this was where his contact had told him that Joseph had come. No doubt, his brother was busy making false allegations about Timothy and the Cause. Well, that was all going to stop in a few minutes. He might even have time to take care of Elizabeth's son while he was here. Naturally, he would be arrested, but he could afford to hire a lawyer who would get him off by claiming that he hadn't been in his right mind at the time. His mother had told him to do this, and she would be so proud of him afterwards. However, his wife was not going to be too happy if this imposed on their daughter's wedding. Still, she was marrying into a family that had supported the Cause for almost as long as his had. This was precisely the sort of thing that would help his future son-in-law to rise to the upper echelons of the Cause.

It had been thirty years since he'd last seen his brother in the flesh, but he'd seen him on television speaking out against the Cause, so he wasn't going to have any trouble recognising him. Fortunately for him Joseph didn't seem to recognise him at all, he thought, getting out of the life. He was going to have to tell him who he was so that he would know who had killed him and why. It had been so easy to get the knife into the station, he might have screwed up when it had come to killing Elizabeth, but he wasn't going to screw up this time. A knife was a much more personal weapon, and he'd used a knife a great deal in the past.

"Joseph Curtis," he said, walking up to his brother, "you are a traitor." He then pulled out the knife that he had in his pocket. "You have been found guilty and you will be..." He then found himself on the floor in a great deal of pain.

"Freddie, didn't anyone ever tell you that it was dangerous to play with knives?" James asked, one of feet was pressing down hard on the hand the knife was in.

"My name is Frederick not Freddie," he said. He hated being called Freddie and Joseph had always taken a great deal of delight in calling him that when they'd been children.

"You're not going to be punishing anyone today, or any other day," Joseph said, "all you're going to be doing for the foreseeable future is staring at four grey walls. That is unless you decide to co operate with these nice detectives and tell them where Timothy is holding the women and children he had kidnapped."

"Go to hell," Freddie snapped. He wasn't going to tell anyone anything that could be used against either Timothy or the Cause.

"I've already been there and back," James smiled, "Maybe I should just hand you over to Henri, I'm sure that he'd be delighted to show you what happens when you try to kill his mother."

"You wouldn't," he said.

"Wouldn't I?" James asked, "it's up to you, but co-operating might just save your sorry ass from getting the crap beaten out of it."

This was rapidly becoming a habit, Anne thought, handing Louisa over to the booking sergeant, along with the gun that she had taken off her. In order to protect both Joel and Henri's sanity, not to mention their blood pressure she wasn't going to tell them that she hadn't been wearing a vest when she had disarmed Louisa. She'd had no choice but to disarm her, because she would have short if she hadn't. At least the woman wouldn't pose any sort of threat to her for the next couple of hours, perhaps longer with any luck. However, Freddie was still out there and there was no doubt at all in her mind that if he got another chance to kill her he would take it. Well, she didn't intend to give him that chance. She was determined to live long enough to see her grandchildren grow up, not that she had any at the moment. Still, once she had persuaded Henri ask Joseph's assistant out she would be one step closer to becoming a grandmother. Most women her age looked on grandmotherhood with horror, but she didn't. Henri was an only child, it would have been nice to have had more children, but it had taken quite a while for her and Joel to build their relationship up to the point where she had felt comfortable enough to sleep with him. As soon as things had settled down she was going to book them a table at nice restaurant and afterwards she would make up for all the love that they had missed out on over the past year. No doubt Henri would have something to say about her spending the night with Joel, but he was going to have an even bigger one when she told him that she was going to be moving in with Joel. She had never lived with anyone apart from her son since she'd left home. It would take some getting used to compromising over things, but she knew that Joel wouldn't have asked her to move in with him unless he'd given it a great deal of thought first. It would probably be strange at first waking up next to the man that she loved every morning, but it was something that she was really looking forward to. However, she still had to decide what she was going to about a job, there was only so much good will that Captain Banks would be willing to extend to her. Joel would know which departments had openings for a detective with her qualifications, but she wanted to work somewhere that she could make a big difference to people's lives. Henri would try insisting that she take some dull desk job, but she needed to be where the action was. although, she was willing to cut down on the amount of undercover work that she did from now on so that she could spend time with Joel.

"She said that she'd be out in a couple of hours and just look at who came to bail her out," she said, walking over to where her father was stood, "I thought that we had a deal?" Still, she should have known better than to expect him to keep it.

"We do, and that's why I'm here," Frederick replied, "Timothy's gone and done something terrible."
"Since when hasn't he done something terrible?" Anne asked.

"Elizabeth, this it worse than anything that he' done in the past," he said, "and I need your help to stop it."

"First Freddie tried to kill me, then Louisa and now you come begging for my help," she snapped, "right now I wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire." He had some nerve wanting her help.

"Your mother and I are separated," he said, "and I have never been able to control Freddie. I wouldn't ask for your help if it wasn't urgent."

"I suggest that you go and talk to Captain Banks of Major Crimes," Anne said, "and then I might be interested in talking to you." Only if he could prove that was he was saying was true though.

"What about Timothy's other victims?" Frederick asked, "are you going to turn your back on them just because you're angry with me?"

"I'm not angry with you," she replied, "I hate you. If you were any sort of father you would have gone after Timothy for what he did to me." If anyone had tried hurting her son like that then they wouldn't have been breathing for long afterwards. "And how many times have you helped him to get away with the same thing?" she added. He could have put a stop to Timothy's activities along time ago if he'd chosen to, but he hadn't.

"What floor is Major Crimes on?" Frederick asked.

"The sixth," she replied, "I was just going up there."

"Perhaps you could introduce me to Captain Banks," he suggested.

"And what makes you think that I would want to do that," Anne said, heading towards the stairs.

"There's certainly no love lost between the two of you, is there?" Henri asked.

"No, there's not," James replied, "and I've wanted to do that for a long time, and I don't feel guilty about doing it either."

"Would you have really turned him over to me and Joel?" he asked.

"Probably not," James admitted, "it would have meant sinking down to his level and no one with any sense wants to do that."

"He's your brother," Henri said. If he'd had a brother he would have tried not to hate him no matter what he did.

"Son, he hasn't been my brother for a long time," James said, "and even when he was we weren't that close. He believes every word that Timothy Mackenna says, always has done and that makes him dangerous."

"An attempted murder charge should keep him in a cell for a while," he said. Long enough for him to insist that his mom went into a safe house, not that she would want to go into one, because she thought that it was her job to try and set the whole world to rights. What she didn't seem to understand was that she could get seriously hurt doing that.

"Not for as long as you think," James said, "he'll have an alibi worked out, and the Cause has some pretty high-powered lawyers working for it."

"Including your father?" Henri asked.

"Frederick Curtis is a hypocrite," James said, "I figured that out at a very early age. No matter how much you want to keep something a secret the truth will always get out."

"What about my mom?" Henri asked. This was her brother so he had to know what had happened to her during her childhood, he might even know who his father was.

"Your mother is an amazing person," James said, "always has been. I have to admit that I was more than a little worried about how she might have done over the years."

"Because of me," he said. While growing up he'd heard some of the names that his mom had been called and had wanted to hit out at the people who had called her them. However, his mom had told him that would just get him into serious trouble.

"Not only because of you," James replied, "Bethie bore the brunt of Louisa's anger. I know that it's probably had a big effect on the person she's turned out to be."

"My mom is a good person," Henri said, "I know that she gave up a lot to raise me."

"Then you're very lucky, because not everyone in Bethie's position has done so well," James said.
"What about my father?" he asked, "do you know who he is?"

"Yes, but I promised your mother than I wouldn't tell you," James said, "she will tell you when she's ready to, but you should remember that she has always loved you, put you first even back then."

"How do you know that?" Henri asked.

"She took you with her when she ran away, that's how I know," James said, "and when they beat her she would try to protect her stomach, because you were in there."

Elizabeth had every right to be angry with him, Frederick thought, getting out of the lift when it reached the sixth floor, but her hadn't know what either Freddie or Louisa had been planning to do. If he had even suspected that they were up to something then he would have contacted Elizabeth and warned her. As it was she was in a great deal of danger from Timothy and his followers, but she probably already knew that. However, at the moment she wasn't going to believe anything that he told her, not that he could blame her. He hadn't exactly been a good father in the past, he'd been too concerned with protecting his own secret to make sure that this children didn't suffer. Now there was no way that he could possibly make up for all the mistakes that he'd made in the past, but he could hopefully try and stop Timothy from hurting anyone else. If he had to get a gun and kill Timothy in order to do that then he would. Just being here marked him out as being a traitor and that carried a very heavy punishment. If either Timothy or one of his followers didn't kill him then there was a very good chance that he could end up in jail for his role in Timothy's crimes. Yet, it had come to point where he really didn't care about what happened to him, Louisa would have to sink or swim on her own because he wasn't going to bail her out. She would still have been sitting in a cell if Freddie hadn't bailed her out. His marriage to Louisa hadn't been right for a long time, and she'd always been a lot more interested in climbing the power ladder than he had. Perhaps if he had been a stronger person things would have been very different, but he hadn't been and what better way of hiding than to place himself in the middle of his enemies. Not once during all the years that he had been involved in the Cause had anyone even suspected that he wasn't what he claimed to be, but then he hadn't given anyone reason to think that.

He was well aware of the fact that everyone was watching him as he entered the Bullpen. The knew who he was, but not why he was here. Well, they were going to be surprised to learn that he was here to hand them Timothy Mackenna and the leadership of the Cause. His files contained enough information to make sure that a lot of people spent the rest of their lives in jail. He would no doubt be disbarred for breaking client confidentiality, but for the first time in his life he would be doing the right thing. When he'd left home all those years ago it had been so that he could make a better life for himself. He had, only he'd ended up paying a very high price for it. Countless lives had been destroyed because of his turning a blind eye to what had been going on. Right now, his parents were probably spinning in their graves at what he'd done. If there was any way for him to go back and change things he would have done it. Hopefully he would be able to apologise to them when he died. Although, he was expecting to go straight to hell for what he'd done and he wouldn't be the only member of his family going there.

All these women were Timothy Mackenna's victims, Hope thought, looking around the room that she was in, the children that he had raped and their children. Now it was starting to become all too clear what was going to happen to these people, he was going to kill them so that the truth of what he'd done wouldn't come out. Surely, he wasn't stupid enough to think that no one would connect him with all the disappearances that had taken place, especially when the bodies started turning up. This was what all those phone calls James had received had been about. She was in serious trouble and she couldn't see any way of not only getting herself out of it but everyone else as well. If the people who'd grabbed her thought that she was just going to roll over and die then they were going to be very disappointed, because she was going to put up one hell of a fight. However, she suspected that none of the others here was capable of doing that, not even if it meant them protecting their children. There were so many of them, more than she'd imagined that there would be from the rumors she'd heard. Judging from the children's ages Mackenna had to have been committing this dreadful crimes for years, but there seemed to be a lot of children under five.

Admittedly the Cause did have a lot of powerful followers, but that still didn't explain how he had been able to get away with it for so long without anyone asking questions, or perhaps someone had asked questions and he'd had them killed just like he had had her father killed. No matter what Mackenna and his followers did to her James wouldn't stop until he'd gotten to the truth and the people who'd hurt her had been brought to justice. It was sad to think that James was the only person who would miss her if she died, but it wasn't easy to make friends when you were constantly on the move. As for dating it had been a long while since she'd last been on one. Even guys who were in the same line of work didn't always understand that they weren't going to come first all the time, and they certainly didn't understand her relationship with James. Since her father had been murdered James had taken care of her and anyone that she got involved with was going to have to accept that fact. Not that she would ever be involved with anyone again if she was killed.

"Let me get this straight," Simon said, "you want to help us arrest Timothy Mackenna." The man sitting opposite him had to have an ulterior motive and he wanted to know what it was. "Why?" he added.

"Because he's going to kill children," Frederick replied, "I can tell you where to find him and how many men he has with him."

"You'll understand if I don't believe what you're saying without checking it out first," he said. For all he knew this could turn out to be some sort of set up and he wasn't going to risk any of his people's lives until he was confident that it wasn't.

"Timothy has broken just about every rule that the Cause has," Frederick said, "someone has to stop him."

"You could do that yourself," Simon said.

"He doesn't trust me anymore," Frederick admitted, "Elizabeth has evidence that could send him straight to the electric chair. She said that I had to talk to you before she would even consider helping me."

"I wonder why that was," he said. After hearing her give her statement he could why she would be reluctant to help anyone connected with Timothy Mackenna, including her own father.

"So my daughter hates me," Frederick said, "I hate myself, but I want to do the right thing now. As soon as I've done it I'll be out of her and her son's lives unless she decides otherwise."

"I sat and listened while she gave a statement," Simon said, "and I can't think of a single reason not to arrest you right now."

"Go ahead, I'll still co operate," Frederick said, "just by coming here I'm a dead man, so there's not a great deal else that you can do to me, and we really don't have time to waste. I persuaded Timothy to wait until I'd gotten the evidence from Elizabeth, but there's no guarantee that he will."

"I see," Simon said, "you do realize that by co operating it doesn't mean that you'll be able to cut a deal with the DA" He didn't want Curtis thinking that was going to happen, because it wasn't.

"Captain Banks, I know how the system works," Frederick said, "I'm willing to put in writing that I'm not expecting a deal out of this."

"Before I do anything I'm going to need to make a few phone calls," he said.

"A word of advice," Frederick said, standing up, "be very careful who you trust. The Cause has a lot of followers in the police department. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you before you've had a chance to arrest Timothy."

"Don't worry about me, I can take care of myself," he said. As if he would be willing to take any advice from a man like Frederick Curtis. However, he would be careful and make sure that none of his detectives were put at risk by bad information.

"You've got the address, check it out," Frederick said, tossing a piece of paper at Simon. He then left the office.

"Mom, you shouldn't go wandering off," Henri said, "because your father is here."

"I know," Anne replied, "that's why I took the stairs instead of the lift, but let's not talk about him."

"So what do you want to talk about?" he asked. Now would probably be a good time to suggest that she went into a safe house.

"You calling your uncle's assistant and asking her out to dinner," she replied.

"She seemed more interested in talking to you than me," Henri said. There had to be a reason why his mom was so interested in his social life all of a sudden and he wanted to know what it was.

"Call her, she's interested, and I think that she would be perfect for you," Anne said.

"Okay, what's going on?" he asked.

"Nothing," she replied, "she's very nice and it's about time that you thought about settling down."

"I'm only thirty," he protested, "are you sick?" he added.

"Honey bear, I'm not sick," Anne assured him, "and I have no intention of working undercover again at the moment, but I might in the future."

"Then what..." he began.

"Joel's asked me to move in with him," she replied, "and I'm going to."

"You're moving in with Joel!" he exclaimed, "are you sure that's a good idea?" He knew that his mom was going to marry Joel, but he hadn't given a great deal of thought about the living arrangements. "I thought that you would be getting your own place first."

"There's not a lot of point in my renting somewhere when Joel has plenty of space at his place," Anne said, "but it's going to be a few days before I move in and we'll still be able to spend plenty of time together."

"I'm still getting used to the fact that you're getting married," Henri admitted, "now you're going to be moving in with him."

"Try to be happy for me," Anne said, "you don't need me all the time. Now it's my turn to have a life, I'm sorry if you think that I'm being selfish, but this is something that I have to do for me."

"Does this mean that you're going to start acting your age?" he asked.

"Afraid not," she replied, "I intend to grow old very disgracefully."

If you wanted something doing properly then you have to do it yourself, Timothy thought, because if you left it up to other people they would either screw things up or betray you. He'd given Frederick more than enough time to get the evidence from Elizabeth, but it was now perfectly clear that his friend had no intention of doing that. Once again the man who he had considered to be his best friend and strongest ally had betrayed him. He had given Frederick more chances than anyone else to prove his loyalty to him, and he hadn't. Because of his friendship with Frederick, he had stayed away from Elizabeth and her son when he could have destroyed them as she posed a huge threat to him. For a long time he had been able to avoid detection, then a long had come D.N.A testing, now all it needed was a simple blood test and he would be exposed. Not even his most fanatical followers would believe that he had done it to ensure that those girls couldn't tempt anyone else the way that they had tempted him. They had all brought their fate on themselves by being there when his needs had needed fulfilling, and none of them had fought to stop him from doing what he'd wanted with them. Now they would go to their deaths passively. There was only one of them who had ant fight in her and she wasn't going to be a problem. When he had finished his work her he would take care of Elizabeth himself to make sure that she really died. If he had to make a hasty exit from the country then that wasn't going to be a problem because he had money hidden away, more than enough for him to live a pretty lavish lifestyle for some years to come. There were plenty of places that didn't have extradition treaties with the US, once he was somewhere like that there was very little that the authorities would be able to do to get him back into the country. Naturally, some people would be shocked when they discovered that he had been helping himself to the Cause's money for decades. It had been simple enough to do, besides, the Cause owed him everything. He's spent his entire life devoted to it, had married a woman that he didn't love in order to run it. Still, there would be other organisations that he could take over and run, ones with more money that he could help himself to. With enough money anything was possible, he could reinvent himself and never have to worry about being arrested for something that he had done in the past. The only thing that he was going to regret was not being there when the bodies were found, because he would be going down in history, but for the wrong reasons. Yet no one would forget his name in a hurry.

He couldn't help himself, he just had to say something, James thought, but it was going to take a great deal of strength not to gloat over the misfortune that had befallen his old family.

"How can you live with yourself after what you've done?" he asked, "With what she did to Bethie?" He was very interested in what his father's answer would be. "You don't even recognise me, do you?" he added.

"No," Frederick admitted, "and you have no right to judge me."

"I have every right and so does Bethie," James replied, "I'm just surprised that she can stand to be in the same room as you." His sister was obviously a very strong person to have fought the urge to take out her gun and shoot their father. "You should be sitting in a cell for what you've done," he added, "maybe they'll give you one next to Louisa and Freddie."

"I know what they did," Frederick said, "but I didn't tell them to do it and I would never do anything to hurt Elizabeth."

"You hurt her when you beat her, when you called her a liar and a whore," he snapped. "then you allowed that man to keep coming to the house." If their father had cared for Elizabeth at all he would have done more to protect her.

"You're attracting attention to yourself," Frederick said, "and I'm sure that Elizabeth doesn't want everyone to know her personal business."

"I don't see her trying to stop me," James replied,. He'd told her that he wouldn't say anything about Henri's father, but he wasn't going to be able to stop himself. "and don't tell me that you didn't know what he did to her or about his other victims because I won't believe you." His father had been best friends with that man, so he had to have had some idea of what he was doing. "Unlike you I've never done anything to hurt her." If anything he had tried to protect Bethie from the worst of their parents anger while they'd been growing up.

"I'm here to help," Frederick said, "to stop Timothy from doing something even more terrible."

"The time to stop him was years ago, but you didn't," he said, "you are just as guilty as he is. The blood on his hands is on yours as well."

"I have never done the things that he has," Frederick protested.

"No," James asked, "I saw the look on your face when Peter Mead was murdered, it wasn't horror or disgust." His father might not think that he was guilty, but he was, surely as if he had put the noose around the man's neck himself.

"I regret that," Frederick admitted, "and I'm not proud of some of the things that I've done, but you had all the advantages that I never had, but you chose to turn your back on all that. Just like Elizabeth did, she could have gone onto great things if..."

"If she'd given her son up," he said, finishing his sentence for him. Why couldn't you have been the one to make sacrifices, why did it always have to be her?"

"She had a choice and she made it," Frederick replied, "if you don't want my help...."

"It's too late for you to help anyone, even yourself," James said, And you can't deny that you would rather Elizabeth had died a long time ago with her son rather than have them come back to haunt you. You certainly tried hard enough to kill them when she was pregnant."

"She brought disgrace on the family," Frederick snapped, "she had to be punished."

"You punished her for his crime," he said, "and I knew that it would only be a matter of time before you showed your true colors again." Now everyone could see the sort of man that they were dealing with, someone who wouldn't do the right thing unless it was to try and save his own neck. "If you had any decency at all you would have killed yourself a long time ago, the fact that you're still alive just proves that you don't have a decent bone in your body." he added.

"Suicide is a sin," Frederick said.

"So is raping children," James said.

Well, this wasn't how she had intended her son to find out, Anne thought, but it felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Even now she probably would never have had the courage to say some of those things to her father. Henri was going to have a lot of questions that he would want answering, but hopefully he would come to understand that she had chosen him over all the opposition that she had faced. During her pregnancy there had been times when she had thought that she would be killed. All she had ever wanted was for her parents to love her, but they never had and she had never been able to understand why that had been the case. She certainly hadn't been any worse behaved than her brothers, yet she'd been singled out time and time again for punishment,. It was also what had made her vow that she would never hit her child, she hadn't but there had been times when she had come close. She supposed that was the difference between her and her parents, she knew right from wrong. There was no way that she would ever have been able to use her son in order to get something that she wanted. Maybe now she would stop having the nightmares that had haunted her for so long. The first time that she had shared a bed with Joel had had woken up screaming in the middle of the night. He'd assumed that it had due to some case that she had been working on and it had been a lot easier to let him think that than tell him the truth. She'd been afraid that Joel knowing the truth would change the way that he felt about her, but it hadn't. To him she was still the same person that he had fallen in love with. However, some people were bound to wonder if she had done anything to lead Timothy on, she hadn't but she knew how people thought. Those same people were going to include cops, but there was no way that she was going to let them make her start guessing herself. For the past thirty years she had gone over everything that she had said and done that night at least a thousand times over to see if there had been anything that could have led Timothy to think that she had wanted him to do that. She hadn't done anything to prompt his actions towards her, and all of Timothy's other victims hadn't even known him so there was no way that they could be blamed for what had happened to them. Sometimes making a pact with the devil was the only option you had and as distasteful as it was she couldn't see any other way of saving Timothy's other victims.

"Where is he holding them?" she asked.

"Just outside of the city," Frederick replied, "Captain Banks has the address, but he's reluctant to act solely on my word."

"Can't say that I blame him," she said.

"Elizabeth, you have to convince him that I'm telling the truth," Frederick said.

"Before I do that there are a few things that I want from you first," Anne said.

"Anything you want," Frederick said, "what's mine you can have."

"Good, because I want it all," she smiled, "the house, the money, the Cause's membership list, and the current address of Henri, because I know that he's not dead."

"I don't know where he is," Frederick admitted, "the only person who is dead, but you can have everything else."

"Liar," she said, "you must know where he is, you knew where I was all this time, didn't you."

"That's different," he protested, "you were a threat..."

"A threat's probably one of the lesser things that I've been called over the years," Anne said, "so why don't you know where he is. After all, he is your son, your heir." She was going to get everything that she wanted from him, despite the fact that she was going to take down Timothy anyway.

"He was..." Frederick began.

"He was what?" she demanded, "why are you so afraid to say it. He was black."

"He wasn't," he protested, "there was a mix up at the hospital, he was adopted and they wouldn't tell me where he was."

"Really, well that should be easy enough to check up on," Anne smiled, "and I want it in writing that I get everything, try pulling a fast one and you'll be found dead in an alley." She didn't want the money and that for herself, for Timothy's other victims, and she was going to get a great deal of pleasure from seeing Louisa thrown out of her own home.

"You'll have it," he promised her.

"And what about Henri?" she asked, "he has a right to know where he comes from, but then you'll have yet another child who hates you."

"All I know is that he was adopted out of state, that his new family didn't know whose child he was. It was for their own safety," Frederick said.

"So we're not going to find any records?" she asked.

"No," he admitted.

"You know, it's so much easier to tell the truth than lie all the time," Anne said, "but lying a way of life for you isn't it?" Her father couldn't tell the truth even if it meant saving his own life.

So this was the supposedly great Timothy Mackenna, Hope thought, well, he didn't look all the great to her. If anything he looked like a coward and bully who tried to have other people backing him. It was a pity that she didn't have a gun, because she was more than willing to do the world a huge favor by killing him. James would say that fighting violence with violence was never a good idea, but sometimes you just didn't have any other choice. However, there was no need for her to lower herself to his level, because that was what he would be expecting. Still, no matter how low she sank, it would never be as low as him.

"There are more of us than there are of them," she said loudly. If she could somehow motivate the other women in the room then they all might stand some chance of getting out of this alive. She was willing to give it a try, but she couldn't do it on her own.

"Nobody gave you permission to talk," Timothy snapped.

"I don't need permission, especially off a criminal like you," Hope said, "by now people will know that I've gone missing." As soon as James realised that she was missing he would move heaven and earth to find her.

"Which is not going to do you a lot of good," he said, looking around the room, "because no one is ever going to see you again."

"The FBI are already looking for you," she liked, "You've left a trail of evidence a mile wide for them to follow." When it came down to it he hadn't been that smart at hiding his tracks.

"There won't be any evidence by the time that I've finished," Timothy boasted, "no evidence, no charges. So while I'm walking around a free man you'll be a rotting corpse."

"I don't think so," she said, "after all you can't have remembered very girl that you've raped, or have you?" There were probably so many of them that they had all blurred together over the years. All it would take was for one of his former victims to go to the police and he'd find himself sitting in a cell.

"I have never raped anyone," Timothy protested, "as a member of the superior race it's..."

"You're nothing more than a common criminal," she said. It looked as if she was starting to rattle him, he probably wasn't used to having people answer him back, least of all a woman. She might not be doing herself any favors, but she had never liked bullies. "You're going to jail like any other criminal," she added. He wouldn't serve that long thought, but at least he would be off the streets and he certainly wouldn't have an easy time of it when the other prisoners found out why he was in jail. If there was one thing that the majority of inmates hated it was someone who abused children, not even his Aryan buddies would want to have anything to do with him.

His father was, no he didn't have a father, Henri thought. It was better that he didn't have one rather than have to accept the fact that he had Timothy Mackenna's blood running through his veins. He supposed that he should say something to his mom, but he didn't know what. She'd been carrying around this terrible secret for thirty years in order to protect him. Did it really make all that much difference to the person he was knowing how he had been conceived. Probably not, he decided, because his mom had raised him to be a good and decent person. She was the major influence in his life not some man who had abused her. He couldn't even begin to imagine how scared she must have been that he would find her and hurt them both. A part of him could understand why she hadn't wanted him to know the truth, but he'd had a right to know before now.

There was a very real possibility that in the near future he could come face to face with Timothy Mackenna. He suspected that he might find it hard not to pull the trigger if the man made a move towards his mom. However, his mom wasn't the only victim of that man, the other deserved justice as well. Timothy Mackenna dying would bring them closure but very little else. People had no idea what the man was truly like and they needed to. He didn't want his mom to be hurt anymore though. She wasn't going to be happy if he tried to protect her thought, because she kept on insisting that she could take care of herself. Maybe she could, but this was something that he wanted to do for her. A lot of the things that she had done in the past suddenly made a lot of sense to him, the never talking about her past and making sure that no one could ever claim that she was a bad mother. There had certainly been a lot of people waiting for her to make a mistake so that they could take him away from her, but she had never given them reason to do that.

"Mom, you're the only parent I want," he said, hugging her. Anyone who tried to say something bad about her would soon learn that they weren't able to get away with it.

"I'm sorry that you had to find out this way," Anne said as he let go of her, "If you have any questions..."

"I don't," he replied. He did, but he suspected that asking them would just upset her and she'd already been through enough today.

"You have to promise me something," she said, "that you won't kill him. I don't want you going to jail is that clear."

"Yes mom," Henri said.

"He's not worth it," Anne said, "the important things is that he goes on trial for what he's done."

"What about him?" he asked, looking at Frederick.

"He's nobody," she replied, "I'm not going to waste another second thinking about him."

"If that's what you want," Henri said. Not that he could blame her, her father had done nothing but cause her pain so why would she want to have anything to do with him.

"It is," she smiled, "now we have some criminals to arrest."

"You don't have to go with us," he said. It would probably be a lot better if she didn't. Emotions were going to be running pretty high and there was nothing to stop Timothy Mackenna from trying to take advantage of the situation and kill her.

"I have to go," Anne said, "but don't worry I'll be very careful."

Now what, Timothy thought on hearing sirens. He didn't have time to deal with anything else because Miss Mouth had caused a revolt amongst his captives, now he was going to have to kill them himself as his followers had turned out to be cowards when faced with opposition from women and children. Well, he wasn't afraid to pull the trigger.

"I have a gun and I'm not afraid to use it," he said when his office door was kicked in.

"So do I," Hope smiled, her face battered and bruised, "I strongly suggest that you put yours down before I pull the trigger, and believe me when I say that I really want to."

"You don't have the guts to," Timothy said. She was just a woman while he was a man, a very important one. Everyone knew that women were the weaker sex and that they should stay in their place.

"Don't I?" she asked, tightening her finger on the trigger, "I've shot better people than you in the past."

"That would be murder," he protested.

"After what you've done most people would think that it was self defense," Hope said, "in fact I would be doing the world a big favor by killing you."

"Maybe we could come to some sort of deal," he suggested. He was a very wealthy man and he was prepared to use that wealth to make sure that he didn't end up either in jail or six foot under in a pine box. "I have money..."

"You won't have by the time that all your victims have taken you to court for child support," she smiled, "and then there are the civil damages for rape, harassment. This is going to cost you and your precious cause a fortune, and just think about all the bad publicity. You know, you have some nerve suggesting that I might be willing to make some sort of deal with you."

"It was just a suggestion," Timothy said. As it had turned out a useless one, but that didn't mean that he had given up hope of getting out of this without him having to spend any time in a jail cell.

"Well, I have one for you," she smiled, "drop the gun, get on your knees and start praying that my finger doesn't slip."

"Anything you say, Sugar," he said, dropping his gun. Maybe it was time to start turning on the charm. Every woman liked to be flattered and she wasn't any different.

"Don't call me Sugar," Hope frowned, "I hate that name."

"How about Honey?" he asked.

"Just shut the fuck up because I didn't give you permission to speak," she snapped.

"I thought that you could use this," Joel said, hugging Anne, "you've always said that a hug could solve anything." Not in this case thought, Anne's secret had been revealed to everyone in the department. He couldn't even begin to imagine what it must be like for her.

"Thanks," she said, hugging him back ,"And I'll understand if you change your mind about wanting to marry me now that you know who he is."

"That is not going to happen," he assured her, "I'd be an idiot to throw away what we have because of something that happened a long time ago."

"If you're having second thoughts, that's okay," she said.

"Are you?" he asked.

"No," Anne replied, "but then I've had a lot longer to deal with this than you."

"I know what's in your heart, the sort of person you are," Joel said.

"We'd better catch up with the others," she said, letting go of him, "I don't want to miss any of the action."

"Promise me that you'll be careful," he said, releasing his hold on her. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

"Since when haven't I been careful?" she asked.

"Never," Joel admitted, but then he'd never seen

Anne on a raid before. Still, he was confident that everyone would watch her back.

"Well then," Anne smiled, "as soon as we've got this out of the way how about we go out to dinner and afterwards we can get a room."

"I think that we can do a lot better than a hotel room," he said, "but what are you going to tell Henri?"

"Anything I want to," she replied, "he's going to be too busy worrying about his own social life to worry about what I'm getting up to."

"Do I want to know what you're planning?" he asked. He'd learned that some times it was better not to know, because he might not approve.

"Joseph has this assistant, Hope, and she would be perfect for Henri," Anne replied, "he was already thinking of asking her out to dinner when I suggested it to him."

"Are you sure that it's a good idea to arrange his social life?" he asked. He could see there being problems if she did that.

"If I don't he won't," she replied, "as much as I love my Honey bear, he's not the sharpest pencil in the box when it comes to women."

"He doesn't seem to do too badly on his own," he said, "there are always women calling him."

"The wrong sort of women," Anne said.

Somewhere like this wasn't cheap to set up, Jim thought, but then the Cause had some pretty wealthy supporters.

"Chief, I want you to stay out here when we go in there," he said.

"But..." Blair began.

"I mean it, Chief," he said, "it's going to be pretty dangerous in there and I don't want anything happening to you."

"Anne's going in," Blair said, "it's not too dangerous for her."

"She's done this sort of thing before," he replied. At least, he was assuming that she had. Besides, they didn't know what they would find inside that building, Blair still took it pretty hard when he was faced with a dead body, and it was going to be ten times worse for his friend to deal with if there were dead kids. "The survivors are going to need someone to help them."

"Always assuming that there are any survivors," Blair said.

"Let's hope that there are," Jim said. He could hear multiple heartbeats, but there was no guarantee that their owners would still be alive by the time that he went into the building. "And don't worry I'm not going to let anything happen to Anne," he added.

"Both Joel and Henri would kill you if you did," Blair grinned.

"You know, Chief, she reminds me of you," he said, "trying to do the right thing no matter how painful it might be for her personally."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Blair said.

"I meant it as one," Jim said.

Nobody had told him that he couldn't tag along, James thought, so he had. He wouldn't have missed this for the world. Finally Bethie and all of Timothy's other victims were going to see justice being done. Hope would have loved to have been here, but she was a lot safer at home. If things got rough like he expected they would then he would be glad that she wouldn't see him using any violence. Not being able to protect Bethie all those years ago made him very protective of Hope, anyone who wanted to date her would have to be vetted by him first. He'd promised her father that he would always look after her and he intended to do that for as long as he was able to. At times though, he felt guilty that Hope's life was spent taking care of him and helping him with his work. She hadn't taken a vacation in a long time, so he would make her take one soon. However, once the Cause had been taken down his work wouldn't stop, Someone else would come along and take their place and then he would have to try and shut them down. There where times when it felt like a never ending job, but it was what he had devoted his life to.

One thing had happened though, that he hadn't been expecting at all, Bethie had gotten Frederick Curtis to admit that Henri hadn't died. How Bethie had known that before she'd asked he didn't know, but then he'd always had the feeling that she wasn't dead no matter when official records said. It looked as if they were going to have to try and find their baby brother. He could only hope that he'd had a lot better childhood than he and Bethie had had. Still, not being raise by Louisa and Frederick Curtis had to be a big bonus in anyone's favor. There was one problem though, he'd seen the body in Henri's coffin so who had been buried instead of their brother. Was it possible that their father had gone so far as to kill an innocent child in order to cover up the fact that he had given away his youngest son?

"Don't worry I know where the law ends and vigilantism starts," Anne said, double checking to make sure that her gun was loaded, "I have every intention of making sure that SOB sees the inside of a courtroom."

"Good," Simon said. He didn't want anyone claiming that Timothy Mackenna had been killed by someone who had gone over the top.

"If I was going to kill him I would have done it along time ago," she said, "public humiliation is a lot better way of destroying both him and the Cause."

"Let's hope that you're right about that," he said. The world could certainly use one less hate group in it.

"Trust me, I'm rarely wrong about anything," Anne said, "both Henri and Joel will tell you that."

"I believe you," Simon said. She would have made a fine addition to his department, unfortunately regulations prevented her from working with her son. "So what are you going to do when this is over?" he added.

"I'm going to apply to the Sex Crimes unit," Anne replied, "I've worked it before and I'm not ready for a desk job just yet no matter when Henri thinks. According to him I'm too old to be doing anything other than wait to be buried."

"You are a little..." he began, wondering how to put it without offending her. "Colourful."

"Colourful is probably one of the nicest words to describe me," she said, "you know, I decided a long time ago that I would always wear what made me feel good about myself, and you have to admit that I do stand out in a crowd."

"A little too much," he said.

If he slipped away now non one would notice Frederick thought, after all, it wasn't as if he had been charged with anything yet. However, if he left it would just be reinforcing the image that his children had of him, that he was a coward. He knew that it was far too late for him to be able to change the way that they saw him, but he could certainly try and change the way that he saw himself. Besides, if he left, where would he go? Everything that he owned he had signed over to Elizabeth and he was probably going to be needed as a witness when Timothy was brought to trial. There was a great deal that he could tell about the man who had been his best friend for so long.

His family probably wouldn't have been torn apart if he had been more of a man and had stood up to Louisa when she'd started to treat Elizabeth badly. He had to admit that he had never understood why Louis had made Elizabeth the scapegoat of the family, it wasn't as if Elizabeth had been more badly behaved when her brothers. Still, no matter when Louisa had done to her Elizabeth's spirit hadn't been broken. It was obvious to see that she had done very well for herself despite the fact that she had been held back by having a child do young. Without a child she could have gone on to do bigger and better things. Yet she had turned her back on her chance to have a normal life thirty years ago. A part of him had been expecting her to come crawling home during the first year, if only so that he could have said 'I told you so'. He'd wanted to believe that she couldn't make it on her own, but she had and she was happy which was more than he could say about himself.

She might have said that she wanted to see Timothy in court, Anne thought, kicking in the door in front of her, but that didn't mean that she wouldn't shoot him in self defence if she had to. So far she hadn't heard any gunfire so that probably meant that Timothy's minions had fled as soon as they'd heard police sirens. Still, that didn't matter because they would be picked up later on, or the FBI would get them.

"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you," she said, when she saw the faces of several terrified children looking at her, "I'm one of you, a police officer." Probably not the best thing to say under the circumstances. "The way out is back there, there is help for you." If they decided that it was safer to stay here for the time being she certainly wouldn't blame them and she could always send Henri to persuade them that it really was safe to come out. When no one took up her offer she went through the room and the door at the other end of it. She was determined to be the one who arrested Timothy, if only because it would give her a great deal of pleasure to see him begging her not to arrest him. However, there was nothing that he could say or do that would make her change her mind. He was going to jail and she was going to be the one who put him there. She really wished that she had a camera with her so that she could take a photo of the look on his face when he realised who was there to arrest him, because it would be worth a million dollars. No doubt, Timothy would try putting up some sort of fight when she arrested him, but she was prepared for that. Over the past year she had been well trained in unarmed combat by people that the Cause had hired to prepare it's members for when the struggle became a revolution. It really was ironic that she could end up using the skills that the Cause had taught her against it's leader. He didn't stand a chance, because not only did she have right on her side, but he was a coward.

He'd been expecting the place to be crawling with Aryans, Henri thought, but he hadn't come across anyone yet. Still, he wasn't about to let his guard drop, because that was when something was likely to happen. Carefully opening the door in front of him he came across something that he hadn't been expecting to see at all, Timothy Mackenna was being held at gun point by a the young woman he'd spoken to earlier.

"You need some help?" he asked. She seemed to have everything under control but he thought that he should ask just in case.

"You could read him his rights," Hope replied, "and handcuff him, because my finger is getting really tired now."

"That's not a problem," Henri said, lowering his weapon while he took out his handcuffs.

"If you're wondering where all his followers are they ran away," she said, "and they didn't get a chance to hurt anyone, I made sure of that."

"I was wondering what had happened to your face," he admitted.

"You'd better read him his rights now or his lawyer will try and claim that you violated them and we wouldn't want that to happen," she said.

"I know my rights," Timothy said as he was handcuffed, "I also know that no one will testify against me."

"He's not very smart, is he?" Henri said.

"Bullies rarely are," she replied, "and I've met a lot of them working with James."

"You can put the gun down now," he said. For obvious reason he didn't like guns being pointed at him.

"It's okay, its not loaded," Hope said, pointing it up to the ceiling and pulling the trigger. There was a loud bang and some of the ceiling came down. "OOPS," she added.

"You went up against him with what you thought was an unloaded gun?" Henri asked, "what would you have done if he'd fought back?"

"Hit him with it," Hope replied, "I do know how to take care of myself."

"That's something that my mom says alot," he said, "she probably would have tried hitting him with the gun as well."

"Your mother strikes me as being a very smart woman," he said.

"I happen to share a lot of her qualities," he smiled.