“Damnit, Michael, get the hell back here!”  Cassidy said in a voice of desperation.  She’d completely given up keeping track of Ella and Kayla, though she was fairly sure Ivy was watching Garrett… somewhere.  But she’d be damned if she could find any of them.  “Michael, you are in more trouble than you thought existed!”  She headed for the kitchen but tripped over Kayla’s little Barbie car and wound up on the floor. 

 

The past month had become progressively harder for Cassidy as Holly withdrew into her room, not even having her friends over anymore.  Garrett wasn’t any help; he spent most of the time barking at her because the kids had interrupted him.  That being, of course, when he was sober. 

 

The kids, upon realizing that Grandpa and Daddy weren’t around to yell at them for giving her a hard time, had gone from mischievous to unruly to absolute little monsters in nothing flat.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept more than six hours and she had begun to wonder if Garrett hadn’t been right when he’d said she was going to kill herself.  Nevermind being the perfect little mother, at the moment she’d settle for competent.  “MICHAEL DEREK SPENCER, YOU GET YOUR BRATTY LITTLE ASS BACK HERE!”  She screamed, not bothering to pick herself up off the floor.

 

“I’m on the phone!”  Garrett bellowed from the office. 

 

“Maybe if you got your ass off the phone I wouldn’t be screaming at your little monsters!”  Cassidy screeched back at him. 

 

Ivy suddenly appeared, covered in what seemed to be chocolate pudding.  “Mommy, Garrett made a mess…”

 

“Mommy Ivy wouldn’t let me have a cookie!”  Her son’s voice drifted to her. 

 

“Mommy, we played with your makeup!” Kayla called out.

 

“Mommy my frog didn’t like the bathtub very much…” Ella said suddenly.

 

Michael crawled in suddenly.  “Mommy I have to go to the bathroom…” he wailed.

 

“Shut up, shut up!”  Cassidy yelled, getting to her feet.  “All of you, SHUT THE HELL UP!” 

 

There was absolute silence. 

 

Cassidy wondered for a moment if she’d gone crazy as she stormed into Garrett’s office and ripped his phone out of the wall.  He appeared to be well into his first drink of the day, and he stared at her blankly for a moment. 

 

“I’m not doing this!”  She yelled at him.  “I’m trying, God knows I’m trying, but I can’t do it and I shouldn’t have to!”

 

“What the fuck has gotten into you? That was an important phone call!!” He cried incredulously.

 

“I don’t give a flying fuck if you were talking to Satan, maybe you could convince him to stop possessing your kids!”  She shrieked.  “You have to help me with this!”

 

“I am helping you! I have to work, I have people who depend on me, I have a fucking organization to run!”

 

“Well *I* CAN’T DEPEND ON YOU!  Not anymore!  All you do is talk on the phone and drink yourself into a fucking coma every night before you come upstairs!  I’m trying to keep five kids in some semblance of order and you keep insisting I handle all your social shit and I can’t do it!  I can’t remember the last time I slept, I don’t even know when the last time I ate was, and I’m about ready to leave you with the kids and see how long *you* can take it before you crack up!”

 

Garrett slammed his drink down on the desk, causing most of it to splash out.  “*YOU* can’t remember the last time you’ve slept??? I’ve been up until at least 3 in the morning trying to figure out a way to keep your sorry asses out of danger.”

 

“Whatever you did to the man I married, I want him the fuck back.  Nevermind loving you, I don’t think I even *know* you.  You’re a sorry excuse for what you were, Garrett Spencer,” she said darkly.

 

He didn’t know why, but the way she had said that just made him lose whatever semblance of self control he had left.  He slapped her across the face.  “Don’t even say that.  I’m still the same man you married.”

She had backed away from him as if he’d burned her.  “I wasn’t afraid of the man I married,” she said before turning and running off up the stairs.

 

~*~*~*~

 

“I’m going to get you some soup, okay bud?” Grace placed her hand on Nathan’s forehead again.  He was still burning up.  “Holler if you need me.” She went into the kitchen and put the water on the stove.

 

Grace stopped and listened for a second.  She thought she’d heard the front door close…but Gavin wouldn’t be home this early, and Chelsea wasn’t due home from school for a couple hours.  She went back to finishing the soup for Nathan.

 

“Mommy!” Nathan yelled hoarsely.  “Mommy!”

 

“What is it—“ Grace came into the living room and stopped.  Standing in front of her was Dylan Kincaide and a small contingent of IMF agents, all heavily armed, and Dylan had Nathan by the arm.

 

“What are you doing? Let him go.” Grace told Dylan, approaching him.  “Leave him alone.”

 

“What’s the fun in that?” Dylan asked, pulling out his own gun and pointing it at Nathan’s head, who’d begun to cry. 

 

“He’s four years old…leave him alone.” Grace demanded.  “Dylan, please.” Grace pleaded.  “Don’t…”

 

“Don’t what?” He pulled the trigger and Nathan crumpled to the floor.  “Do that?”

 

Numbness set in.  She’d felt this way when Bryce had killed Dylan…or said he had…but this time, she had no gun, and couldn’t tear her eyes away from her son’s dead body, lying on the floor.  She didn’t move, didn’t struggle, even when one of the agents stabbed her with a tranquillizer dart and they carried her out into the waiting van.

 

 

 

 

 

“Mrs. Spencer?  An adult posing as a parent got into the school this morning and opened fire…” The school principal began. 

 

Cassidy wasn’t sure the words had all sunk in.  Someone had shot up her children’s elementary school?

 

“The children are perfectly fine, but rather shaken up, and we’re sending them home early… could you come get them?”

 

“Yes.  Yes, I’ll be right there.”  Cassidy hung up and dove for the car keys, charging out to her car.  Why had anyone had any desire to shoot elementary school children?  Did they know the girls and Garrett would be there?  They must have, it was her children, the parent was probably with the IMF and had been hired to kill off little Spencers… Callahan was still trying that, she’d have to tell Garrett, except that they weren’t speaking and she hadn’t seen him since he’d hit her… had she just fallen asleep?  She had to get there safely, she had to get the kids… there had been a fire, no, a shooting… She parked the car and got out, paying no attention to anything around her.  Had she been paying attention, she would have noticed the agents in time to pull her pistol out… as it was, she only had time to grab for her panic button, and it only went off because her finger happened to press it as she fumbled in her purse.

 

 

~*~*~*~

 

“Mommy! Look at the picture I made in school today!” Chelsea walked through the already opened front door.  Chelsea walked around through the dining room to the kitchen.  Maybe mommy was making something for Nathan…he’d been sick today.  Chelsea found the pan of chicken soup that had boiled over onto the floor.  “Mommy?” She called out again, going into the living room where she saw Nathan.  “Nathan? Where’s mommy?” She shook her brother, but he just wouldn’t wake up.  What was going on? Chelsea dropped her backpack and climbed up onto the couch to get the phone.  She pressed the first button on the speed dial like her parents taught her to.  “Daddy?”

 

“Hi honey, how are you?”  He asked, not even looking up from the paperwork.  Grace usually helped Chelsea call when she got home from school.

 

“Daddy, where is mommy?  She’s not here and she made a mess in the kitchen.”

 

Gavin dropped the file he was holding.  “What, Chelsea?  Did she and Nathan go out, maybe to the doctor for Nathan?”  But she would have called him… no, they were just stuck in traffic somewhere, Grace probably panicked that Chelsea wouldn’t be able to get into the house…

 

“I don’t think so…Nathan’s right here.”

 

“If your mommy’s not there, how did you get into the house?”

 

“The front door was open.”

 

Gavin was suddenly very glad he was on his cell phone as he charged out of his office and headed for the car.  “What about Nathan, how’s he doing?”

 

“Daddy, Nathan’s sleeping in a puddle of kool-aid and he won’t wake up.”

 

Gavin felt something in his insides go cold as he broke essentially every traffic law in the world.  “Don’t hang up until I get home, okay?  I need you to close the door, sweetie, and then I want you to grab Barbie and play in the bathroom.”

 

“Daddy!  You know I’m not a’pposed to play in the bathroom.” She told her father, although she did close the door and grab her Barbie doll.   “Where’s mommy?”

 

“Just play in the bathroom, or in the hallway.  Don’t go near the windows.”

 

“Daddy, I’m scared, why won’t Nathan wake up?”

 

“It’s okay, little girl, I’m home now.”  Gavin went inside and picked her up, only then hanging up the phone.  Nathan, as he’d feared, had been dead for at least a few hours… and Grace was nowhere to be found.  “We’re going to go play with Auntie Cass and Uncle Garrett and your cousins for a little bit,” he said, going to his and Grace’s bedroom and grabbing the packed bags for himself and his daughter from the closet.  Despite everything, some little things from the long years of conditioning under his parents died hard.  Still carrying his daughter, he headed out to the car and buckled her in.

 

“I wanna play with mommy!” Chelsea began to wail.

 

“I know you do, baby girl…” He picked up his phone and called the very last person in the world he wanted to.  “Garrett?”

 

“Uh.” Came the response.  Feeling guilty after hitting Cassidy and especially after what she’d said to him right after, Garrett had ignored all of his work and proceeded to drink every last ounce of alcohol in his office.

 

Gavin wondered for a minute if his brother was even breathing.  “Garrett, Grace has been kidnapped.  Chelsea came home and found Nathan dead, and Grace is missing.”

 

Garrett opened his mouth to say something when something started beeping.  Garrett groaned and stood up.  Realizing what it was he pressed another button that sent the team to the source of the signal.  “Well I guess that’s not my problem anymore, is it? I’ve got my own problems to deal with.” He hung up the phone.

 

Gavin simply drove all the faster.  Garrett couldn’t exactly hang up when Gavin was standing in his office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gavin pushed open the door after leaving Chelsea with her cousins – he’d hardly recognized them, Cassidy had always been so careful about the kids and keeping them neat and clean, but at the moment it seemed Michael’s potty training wasn’t going well and Ivy’d told him to go to hell.  And to top it all off, Garrett was drunk out of his mind. 

 

“What the hell do you want?” Garrett demanded, his words slurring a bit.  “I told you I got problems, leave me the hell alone.”

 

“Got problems?  Your kids look like you’ve picked ‘em up off the street and if I had to bet, the teams didn’t find a trace of Cassidy when they went out.  Which means clearly you’ve got IMF problems in addition to family problems, and to top *that* off I’m not even sure you’re conscious.”

 

“Of course I am…I’ve got to find Cass before they do anything to her again…” Garrett couldn’t help but think of what happened the last time.  “Not my problem they took yours.”

 

“Except that they couldn’t be more connected!  And if you hadn’t gotten plastered out of your mind, you’d see that!  They can afford to kill her this time – you’ve already got kids.  You really want her dead because you can’t even see straight?”

 

“Don’t say that. DON’T FUCKING SAY THAT!” Garrett bellowed.  “I’m going to find her, and then I’m going to kill Callahan for even *thinking* he could take her again.”

 

“She’s probably already dead,” Gavin said coldly, not caring that he was baiting his brother. 

 

“No, she’s not.  I’ll bring her back and I’ll make it up to her…I’ll apologize and I’ll even stop drinking…”

 

So the kidnapping wasn’t the only reason Garrett was probably seeing two of him right now.  “What’d you do to her?”

 

“I hit her.” He said.  “I…I lost it…she just wouldn’t shut up, and I lost it.  But I’ll make it up to her…”

 

For a moment, Gavin almost felt sorry for his brother; but then again, it *was* Garrett’s fault.  “Have you even seen your kids in the past month and a half?”

 

“Yes.” Garrett snapped.  “I think so…”

 

“I don’t think you have.  I think Cassidy wouldn’t shut up because she was so damn stressed out she lost it herself… I think that’s why she didn’t spot the agents… and Grace didn’t because they killed Nathan in front of her, she was numb…”  Gavin was piecing it together, but doing so out loud would not only help him think but make Garrett think it had all been his own doing.

 

“You know what? It’s not my fucking fault your brat died.  I couldn’t care less, actually!  All that really matters is getting Cassidy back.”

 

“Well you know something?  I’m not helping you unless you try to help Grace.  You’ve got the resources, but you sure as hell won’t figure anything out without me.”

 

“And now you’re saying I’m stupid.  I don’t need this shit from you right now.”

 

“Well you know something?  You are stupid, and I don’t care if you don’t like hearing it.  Get your ass in gear.  I for one don’t want to find my wife dead.”

 

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