A.N.: For BadWolf89 who reminded me that I like this story too!

Fantastic Beasts and How to Fight Them

03

Gretel's Breadcrumbs

Being sent home before seven p.m. was unusual for her; she celebrated by taking Chorizo, her mini Dachshund, for a walk around the block, and set up a hot date with a grocery list and her ironing board. She never noticed how often her job ate into her free time until she looked at the contents of her refrigerator, or at her ironing pile, and then dread would creep into the pit of her stomach.

To take her mind off Candice Goldman, and the memories this dead girl dredged up with Mary-Elizabeth Cassel – or maybe to help focus on the details she needed – she celebrated her early night by letting her animals run wild in the living-room as she set up her ironing board, brought out her DVD case and ordered Hawaiian takeout. Chorizo and Phoebe the hedgehog scurried around the living-room, best-friends, while the bunnies – Lilac, Holland, Dumbledore and Geronimo – hopped about, and Apricot and Uno the hamsters bumped around in their balls and she frowned, trying to remember what had happened to Chanice Kobolowski, her ginger tabby.

She had scratched Nicolette, for the first time ever.

Serenaded by the bagpipes of Brave and missing her mother and Aunt Marie, regretting some of the arguments and choices she had made as a teenager, she FaceTimed with Rosalee, having a boring night going through inventory of a late delivery at the Spice Shop. She spent the evening chatting with Rosalee, restocking her kitchen, cooking up a week's worth of meals, sandwiches, snacks and cakes, and making her way through a three-feet-high pile of ironing (rediscovering clothes she had forgotten she owned, including her two favourite pairs of socks), frowning every time she pulled a man's shirt out of the pile.

She bid Rosalee goodnight, the inherent cop in her telling her to be careful as she left the shop, and to text when she was home, put away all her freshly-ironed clothes, tidied up the kitchen, and groaned as she settled on the sofa in her pyjamas, a cocktail in one hand and the remote in the other, the quilt Phoebe Wurstner had made for her ages ago tucked over her legs.

"Guys – we are in for a good night," she assured Phoebe and Chorizo, cuddled up side by side in Chorizo's bed, as Lilac hopped past. She groaned and settled on the sofa, "I just wish you could spell, though. Bananagrams just isn't the same on your own." She eyed the coffee-table, a mess of sketchbooks and Bananagrams tiles. She hit Play on the remote, starting to align tiles, and frowned at the sketchbooks. Sipping her cocktail, she frowned, and picked one of them up, leafing through the pages, a niggling feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she should know more about the illustrations she had drawn, coloured so meticulously, down to the last detail. They were too detailed – some of them too gruesome, too disturbing, to have been made up even with her imagination.

Unconsciously, she reached for her drawing pencils – an expensive gift from someone, hundreds of high-quality coloured pencils encased in polished wood – and turned to the next clean page. Ever since she was a kid, she had seen things. Monsters hiding under people's skin. Glowing eyes, forked tongues – skeletal witches and shrieking hyenas lurking beneath cheerleader's perfectly beautiful veneers, bull-headed Varsity jocks, snakelike thugs and jaguar-like marathon-runners. Aunt Marie used to smile sadly at the sketches she found in all of Nicolette's school notebooks, turning the girls who bullied her and the boys she chased after into hideous monsters, or sweet Minotaurs worthy of fairytales. They weren't all bad; sometimes she had seen pandas beneath the kind face and glasses, or lions tackling the centre-forward on the soccer-field, the two Marines she had known since college, brave lions and stubborn, bull-like. The hyenas and shy lambs, the ribbon-winning hurdling bunny and the elegant Siamese cats of her adolescence had given way to scaly reptilian monsters, criminals, brutish coyotes and nasty ratlike sneaks, aggressive warthogs, predatory lizards that were obviously the by-product of too much Jurassic Park.

She twirled a pencil between her fingers, settled back in the sofa, and started to draw, Eloisa Goldman on her mind, annoyed by something she knew she should be remembering, saddened and upset by the discovery of another victim who had met the same brutal end as Mary-Elizabeth Cassel. She hadn't been a Detective long before Mary-Elizabeth had been discovered.

There were cases in any police-officer's life – any emergency-service responder, actually – that tested them, stuck with them, branded to their souls. Some people discovered they weren't truly ready to see the world in such intimately brutal ways. Others thrived on the hunt, carving out the evil in the world. Nicolette was the latter. She had never tolerated bullies, after being treated so badly herself by Mean Girls. She had been a pretty, outgoing girl, athletic and naturally clever – she had loved boys and thrills, and because she moved so often had learned to put herself out there; she hadn't been afraid to walk up to the boy she thought was cute and kiss him on the lips, just to know what it would be like.

She was as tenacious in her detective work as she had always been in everything in her life; her anger that Mary-Elizabeth Cassel had never had any justice still drove her, though she had learned not to take too much of the job home with her. When she got to the porch step, she shed the Detective, ready to put on her sloth-patterned socks, make herself a Moscow Mule, blast her favourite music and bake, or dance at her ironing-board, chat with her friends on the phone or her take her godson to the sports-park to hit whiffle-balls with Chorizo, take ballroom and Latin dance lessons, practice her piano, meet friends for dinner or spend a chill evening with her sketchbooks to exorcise her imaginary demons.

Without really paying attention to what she was drawing, she sketched Eloisa Goldman, the woman, and her woge – she didn't know where she had come up with the name, maybe it was the side-effects of her ongoing German language-lessons, but that was how she had come to describe the way her face changed, showing the pretty amber-eyed fox beneath. Shading the eyes was the most difficult part, they weren't just yellow – they were alive; she saw down into the depths of Eloisa Goldman's soul, steady and vibrant and calm, gentle. She thought of Rosalee, for some reason, associating with her eyes the clear sparkle of hard cider, the vibrancy of amber, the tangy, sweet warmth of marmalade, the warmth and danger of fire. She frowned to herself, thinking – that wasn't right: Rosalee had dark eyes. She bit her lip, thinking of Rosalee, wondering why she associated her brown eyes with fire, and chose colours that reminded her of honey and yams and red-gold, trying to get the warmth and sorrow and serenity of Eloisa Goldman's grieving amber eyes, thinking of Candice Goldman and her missing infant, of Tiffany Valente and the pregnancy that was her death-sentence, of Mary-Elizabeth Cassel.

Why those girls. Why force pregnancy on them, only to kill them?

She glanced down at her foot as Chorizo tried to nibble on her toe, then frowned at her sketchbook. She set it aside and reached down to rub Chorizo's tummy. "When I check into the nut-house I'll make sure they have therapy animals," she promised, "I wouldn't want to leave you without a mommy. I love you."

Chorizo sneezed.

And she gazed down at Chorizo, at her bunnies cuddled up, at Phoebe waddling about, at the hamsters bumping gently against the refrigerator-door. Her children.

Tiffany Valente, dead of eclampsia, her body dumped; Alyssa Grover's miscarriages; Candice Goldman's missing infant.

It was all about the babies.

They might bring justice to their mothers.

Nicolette turned off her TV, put her babies to bed, glanced one last time at her sketchbook with a smile, and made her way up to bed.

She knew things were missing from her memory, but she was still a damned good detective.

The children, she thought, the children were the bread-crumbs…like Hansel and Gretel… She turned her light out, and slept.

She stood at the board, pins between her teeth, arms full of photographs and documents and pieces of coloured string. The office was quieter than usual, late in the week with several other calls taking her fellow detectives and sergeants all over the city; after a little walk with Chorizo, a fierce workout and a cool shower, a lovely breakfast of Eggs Royale (sadly sans mimosas, on account of the badge at her hip) with her long-time friend Cecelia, the mother of her godson, she was refreshed and ready to take on the world. Or, at least the dregs of Portland. Baby-steps.

It was her first new case since waking from the coma and dreams of Mary-Elizabeth Cassel kept haunting her, even driving away her nightmares. She had slept better than she had in a while, maybe it was something to do with the fierce drive to find the scum who had done this to not one, not two but four girls – and the babies. But she couldn't keep going on fumes, and no amount of coffee in the world could make up for a decent night's sleep. Her mind knew what her body needed and had shut off; she had slept, packing in a few good solid hours of REM before gently being woken by Chorizo pining at the bottom of the stairs.

Nick heard someone sigh. "Nicolette… First in again. I hope you went home last night." She glanced over her shoulder, saw the Captain giving her a wry look, standing there, all tall, dark and handsome in his custom-tailored shirt with those doorframe-wrecking shoulders. She flicked her eyes over him, wondering why it was that she had suddenly noticed his pretty eyes, unsettled but titillated by the flutter in her stomach at the thought of how firm his lips were. She shouldn't have those thoughts about her Captain…but it was absurd that she hadn't. She had two eyes and brains in her head; she would be an idiot not to notice him.

That didn't mean that she hadn't been daydreaming about her time with him at the café, her mind going back to the tiny details he had told her about himself – raised in Vienna; educated in Switzerland; close with his mother but angry at his extended family. He was a very curious man. Those four things she had learned at the café were all she knew about the Captain's personal life. He was tall, dark and mysterious.

"Of course I did, I'm not a neglectful mother," she teased, smiling. "I've got babies at home who need me." She plucked the pins from her mouth and unhooked the Sharpie from the collar of her favourite red blouse, grabbing her ruler out of her pocket to connect the last two dots indicated with pins on the map of Portland. She glanced at the Captain's suit. "Looks like someone's meeting with the Mayor."

"It's necessary," Renard sighed, frowning mildly at the board.

"I hope it's not one of mine," Nicolette said. She always hated the politics side of the Police Department. She did her job to the best of her abilities; she had learned to take it on the chin when a verdict didn't go the way they wanted, when connections ensured someone walked, when politics got in the way of justice. The biggest scum-bags were the city's 'elite'. Renard was a great Captain for a lot of reasons, and one of those was his ability to navigate stormy political waters with grace. She didn't think she'd ever heard him raise his voice to anyone, made a point of not talking down to people or making them feel inferior.

"Thankfully, no," Renard smiled. "You've not caused much upset lately."

"Well, I was in a coma." Renard chuckled.

"What've you been working on?"

"Harper had Candice Goldman's autopsy report ready first-thing. I was cuddling with my menagerie last night and couldn't stop thinking about the babies," she said softly, wrapping a piece of green string between two pins. She had always used colour-coded string; Hank knew her system and couldn't remember working any other way. "Candice Goldman carried her last pregnancy to term, the child was healthy. But her delivery was difficult, and some of the placenta was still attached to her uterus when she was killed."

"So we have the child's DNA."

"We have her DNA. Candice gave birth to a daughter. Every child in the adoption system goes through basic genetic screening to check for existing medical conditions; if the little girl shows up, we'll know about it," Nicolette said, with some satisfaction, though it was fleeting. "Without proper medical attention, the placenta still attached to Candice Goldman's uterus would have caused all kinds of problems, would have ultimately led to her death anyway. That makes me think that whoever our perp's accomplice is, they aren't medically trained for midwifery. They're familiar with prenatal drugs to enhance fertility, perhaps an indication they've been struggling to get pregnant themselves, but they don't know that even without proper medical facilities and equipment, they could have removed the remaining placenta and saved Candice's life."

"They could? How?"

"By hand," Nicolette winced. "I'm not an expert, having not delivered children myself, but Harper confirms that…things were stretched far enough that…a woman with a delicate hand might've bene able to reach inside and remove the placenta."

The Captain blinked. "Right."

"So they either were not aware they could - or they were prevented from doing so," Renard said, and Nicolette nodded.

"Harper said Candice Goldman was killed within minutes of her delivery," she said. "I doubt they even knew something was wrong before they killed her."

"After being restrained so long…something about her delivery triggered a murderous response in our perp," Renard said, frowning at the board.

"Given how long she was held prisoner, this last may not have been Candice Goldman's only pregnancy," Nicolette said. "Harper's taking a closer look, but she said there's indication of at least one miscarriage."

"If these children are in the system, they'll lead us to our perp," Renard said, his eyes lighting up as he checked over the other documents she had pinned up.

"We're still talking hundreds of children, so I had Child Protective Services send over files on all of the children who entered the foster-system within a two-week period of our victims' bodies being found," Nicolette said, indicating the boxes piled on the spare desk. "I discounted all children born in the hospital, focusing on the infants left in safe havens, and came up with this pile."

"And the map?"

"Our guy was clever with the mothers, covering their tracks through sheer distance. Tiffany, Mary-Elizabeth, Alyssa and Candice were each abducted and dumped miles apart, across different county lines. But Candice Goldman hadn't been dead long when her body was dumped. Look at this – these pins indicate where newborns were abandoned in safe-havens in the first couple weeks after each victim was found."

"You can drop an infant off at a hospital or church or firehouse, no questions asked. Someone knows the State will take good care of the child," Renard said. "That's not the action of a man who brutally rapes and murders these girls. Someone cared about the babies, enough to ensure they would be looked after. They weren't left to die in a dumpster, or buried in the yard."

"And that just further reinforces my belief that we're dealing with more than one perp," Nicolette said grimly. "These girls were kept chained and were frequently raped, pregnancy after pregnancy forced on them, but they were also healthy, cared for."

"Could we be looking for a couple, perhaps, creating a family they can't conceive? Replacing a child they lost?" Renard pondered.

"I think, maybe. With the cocktail of fertility drugs in their system… We're looking for a man with a history of sexual violence, if he's married I wouldn't be surprised that his wife made frequent visits to the E.R., including for either a miscarriage, or maybe a stillbirth," Nicolette said, eyeing the profile she and Hank had been working on based on the evidence Candice Goldman's and the other girls' murders gave them. "That might explain why he has a willing partner. If he's a sexual sadist, he gets to brutalise these girls; the partner gets the children. But if they kept the children…"

"They didn't keep all of them," Renard said, thumbing through the pile of manila folders on top of Hank's keyboard. She had run out of any other space. "Nicolette, these infants you deduced to – have you looked at their files?"

"No, right now I'm focused on birth-dates and the safe-havens they were left at," Nicolette said, glancing away from her map. "Why?"

"You just uncovered another pattern."

"I did? Brilliant. Love it when I do that," Nicolette blinked, surprised. "What is it?"

"Caitlin, Grace, Erica, Ruby," Renard said, glancing up at her.

"They don't want daughters," she murmured, striding over to look through the files herself. She glanced up at the Captain, struck by just how tall he was, and she pushed 5'6 ½" without heels. She could smell his cologne, noticed how pretty his eyes were, and hid a blush as he appeared to gaze down at her. She cleared her throat. Digging through the files, she glanced back at her board, where Candice Goldman's photograph smiled back at her. Softly, she said, "Candice Goldman just gave birth to a little girl."

Renard's features hardened. "And they killed her because of it."

Nicolette flicked through the files she had organised, the Caucasian babies left within the two-week windows after the murders of Mary-Elizabeth Cassel and Alyssa Grover, and any other children abandoned at safe-havens in the last six years.

The sheer scope of their perp's operation seemed daunting; six years, how many girls? Had Tiffany Valente been the first?

And her heart sank, Mary-Elizabeth Cassel's autopsy-report catching her eye; she flicked through it, and grabbed Alyssa Grover's autopsy-report, speed-reading through the same section. She glanced up at Renard. "When Mary-Elizabeth Cassel and Alyssa Grover's bodies were found, they were tested for secondary DNA. They didn't find any belonging to our perp, but they didn't look for DNA belonging to infants."

Renard frowned, taking one of the autopsy reports from her. "Your first victim – "

"Tiffany Valente."

"—what about her?"

"Her child died in utero. A little boy. He was…still there."

"Paternal DNA would link our victims," Renard said softly. Nicolette glanced at him, her stomach sinking. He sighed, sharing her dark look.

"We're going to have to exhume the other girls," she said softly. Renard nodded.

"This will reopen up a lot of sore wounds. Everything these families have had taken from them…even the smallest shred of hope can be devastating," he said. "Have the paperwork organised, call families in."

"This is gonna suck," Nicolette groaned, rubbing her face. She had been in contact with Mr and Mrs Cassel for years, ever since their daughter was found murdered, discarded like trash. To ask their permission to dig up her body, cut open what remained of her – to discover whether her captor, rapist and murderer had left his DNA on her through that of the child he had forced on her, a child they had no idea had even survived.

"Given the circumstances, I'll meet the families with you," Renard said softly. "This will need to be handled delicately."

"Everything they know happened to their girls, we're just going to add more grief and horror," she sighed.

"But hopefully, we can finally give them some answers," Renard said. "Maybe they may find consolation in their grandchildren."

"Maybe… Maybe it'll drive the hurt deeper," she murmured.

"You're not your usual optimistic self, Nicolette," Renard said, glancing at her. He sat perched on the edge of her desk, arms crossed over his chest as he frowned at the board.

"Mary-Elizabeth Cassel was one of my very first cases. She was one of the ones that…made me second-guess whether I was really up for this," she admitted softly. "I…guess I let her too close."

"Close can be good," the Captain said, glancing at her. "Sometimes we need that reminder of why we put that badge on every morning."

"I just…hate that it took three other girls to be brutalised the same way for us to do anything about him," Nicolette said sadly. "The world should not work this way."

"'Thus has it always been, and thus shall it ever be'," Renard quoted grimly.

"That's not inspiring."

"Not without people like you, who puts on her badge every day and comes to work in spite of every brutal thing you've seen," Renard said.

Nicolette caught his eye and smiled. "Better."

"You okay?" Hank asked, and Nicolette glanced up, fidgeting with her pen. She drained her coffee, then regretted it, the lukewarm gritty dregs of her drink curdling in her stomach, along with the dread.

She had made the phone-calls, Mr and Mrs Cassel and Mr Grover, asking them to come by the Precinct. They had already met with Mr Grover, who had signed the release form but didn't want to know about any children forced upon his daughter. Mr and Mrs Cassel…they were on their way.

"I'm okay, I just…am not looking forward to this conversation," she admitted. "The Cassels are really nice people, and they're…just coming out of a very dark place… I worry that we're going to upset them again, for no reason."

"What's your gut tell you?"

"They still love their daughter," Nicolette said quietly. "Even after everything she put them through, everything they know happened to her… They still love her, and they miss her. They regret the choices they made."

"You said you see them occasionally," Hank said. "Are you gonna be okay on this?"

"I want to make sure she's looked after, Hank," Nicolette said softly, glancing at her partner. "These girls deserve that."

They were just as she remembered, since the last time she had seen the both of them together, meeting them for a steak breakfast after Mrs Cassel's one-hundred kilometre charity-walk. Nicolette had circulated the fundraising appeal around the Precinct. Jed Cassel, grey-haired and sad-eyed, and Evelyn Cassel, warm, kind, in her late-fifties and…hopeful. Knowing what she did of them, Nicolette couldn't imagine why their daughter had ever fled her home, and when her body was first discovered, Nicolette had found herself angry at Mary-Elizabeth for taking her family for granted. The more she got to know Evelyn and Jed, the angrier she had become; she had lost her own wonderful parents; Mary-Elizabeth had rejected hers.

"Mr and Mrs Cassel…thank you for coming in," the Captain said gently.

"Nicolette said you – you're looking back into Mary-Elizabeth's death again?" Mr Cassel said, glancing from Nicolette to Hank to the Captain.

"Why don't you take a seat?" the Captain suggested. "A young-woman was found dead earlier last week. She may have been killed by the same man as your daughter. With the discoveries our detectives have made from the most recent victim…we would like to ask your permission to exhume Mary-Elizabeth's body."

"You – you want to dig up our daughter?" Mrs Cassel said, her face falling, calm horror settling in her eyes, and she glanced with gentle reproach at Nicolette.

"We think whoever killed Mary-Elizabeth may have left DNA on her," Nicolette said gently. "His other victims…had DNA that links to him, and to Mary-Elizabeth."

"Back when you first found her, you said they didn't find his DNA," Mr Cassel said.

"It's…not his DNA we're looking for," Hank said softly.

"We suspect your daughter may have given birth while she was captive," the Captain said quietly. Mr and Mrs Cassel glanced from the Captain, looking horror-struck, to Nicolette.

"What?" Mr Cassel's face went stark, and Nicolette gulped as his face shimmered, hair sprouting all over, greyish auburn and white, his eyes glowing amber. Nicolette's heart sped up, but she no longer feared what she thought she saw; she had seen this before. She had seen Mr and Mrs Cassel's faces flicker into foxes – finding out your daughter had been abducted, raped and murdered would bring out the emotion in a person, and Nicolette saw the monsters that lived underneath people's skin when they were emotional.

"The girl who was found last week had given birth within hours of her death," Nicolette said quietly. "Whoever did this to her, and to Mary-Elizabeth, may be putting the babies into the adoption system."

"The baby's alive?" Mrs Cassel whispered, and Nicolette started, glancing quickly away, as her face changed, shimmering, auburn fur sprouting everywhere, her ears sharpening, amber eyes glowing, brimming with emotion.

"It's possible," the Captain said, "but we don't want to fill you with false-hope."

"If there are traces of placental tissue on Mary-Elizabeth, we can test the DNA against the State's records," Nicolette said softly. "Maybe find any children she bore."

"We're hopeful that we can link all of the victims, including Mary-Elizabeth, through their children," Hank said.

"And they may lead us to whoever did this to your daughter," Nicolette said.

Mrs Cassel caught Nicolette's eye, her face normal again, sparkling with tears, and she said softly, without a tremor in her voice, "Give us the release."

Nicolette caught the Captain's eye as Mr and Mrs Cassel signed the paperwork. His smile was sad and knowing; she had known they would agree to exhume Mary-Elizabeth. How could they not? That spark of hope… The possibility - the what if…it was irresistible. Empires had fallen because of the possibility of what if…

They would catch this animal, because bereft parents were willing to stake on what if…

And Nick's stomach churned with anxiety, realising that in putting so much faith in the lost babies, they had given the parents hope. The hope that after all this tragedy, they might get something good… Grandchildren. Life continuing after their daughters' deaths. But to bring the babies into it, to tell Mr and Mrs Cassel that there was possibility… What did that mean for the babies that had been adopted out of the system, had families, and parents who loved them, would fight to protect them - even from their own biological family?

Hours later, Nicolette frowned, squatting down to brush wet leaves and debris from a new granite grave-marker, placing vibrant orange chrysanthemums in the buried vase. Aunt Marie's gravesite. She was the only person who would ever visit, she knew. It was a small plaque, the sum of her aunt's life summed up in a few phrases and a date. Her life, reduced to a hyphen. Her sacrifices, untold. She had been asked to be cremated, and after everything she had done for Nicolette, who was she to ignore her wishes? Even if the idea of cremation made Nicolette cringe.

Aunt Marie had given up her life, her fiancé, the future she had wanted, to raise Nicolette. She would have done anything - had killed to protect Nick. What wouldn't Mr and Mrs Cassel do for their grandchildren?

She sat at her desk, waiting for emails and phone-calls to bombard her, staring at the board and ruminating on the details they had - and the information they were missing, which was far too much. They had the girls, and Harper was putting the examinations of the exhumed bodies on priority, but waiting was always the worst part. It gave her far too much time to think, and with the stacks of files she had been going through from Child Protective Services she couldn't stop thinking about the babies. They were waiting for the DNA of Candice Goldman's daughter to come back with any matches in the system; but if their guy hadn't dumped the child yet…

"What're you thinking about?" a voice asked.

"Voodoo Donuts," Nicolette lied, then glanced up at the Captain with a humourless smile. She sighed, gesturing at the open files in front of her. The babies. "What'll happen, if we find them? The children who were given away?" Renard sighed heavily, sinking into Hank's empty chair.

"If something illegal transpired during the adoption process, the court will nullify it," Renard said, taking the nearest file and examining the photographs of a little girl with angelic curls beaming with her foster-parents. "The child gets returned to the closest blood relative." Nicolette grimaced, shaking her head.

"But - it's not the adoptive parents' fault no-one knew these babies have this history," Nicolette winced. "How can we then turn around and say they have no right to the babies? They've homed them, cared for them, loved them… They have families. Parents – if these children are with wonderful people who adore them, want to give them the best life…surely they have as much right to these kids as anyone else?"

"What's got you thinking about this?"

Nick glanced at the Captain. It would be in her files, anyway, so he most likely knew, but… "When my parents died, I was in the foster-system for a little while, until Aunt Marie came to claim me… It was a long time before I forgave her for that. The family I was placed with were wonderful, they were stable and supportive… But Aunt Marie was blood, it was written in my parents' will that they wanted her to take custody of me, so…that was that. Marie was wonderful, and supportive, but we moved around a lot… Part of me is worried that the parents of the murdered girls…won't necessarily do what they think is best for the children, but…want to take the children because their own were stolen from them."

Renard nodded slowly, his eyes on the girls on their board. "If Eloisa Goldman had been granted custody of her niece, Candice's life would've turned out very differently."

"But – what if the children have been adopted, and…we rip the kids away…?" Nicolette asked, getting agitated, memories of her brief stay with the foster-family she had adored, had gotten her through the worst of it, coming to the fore.

"What if we're doing more harm than good?" Renard said softly, and Nicolette nodded.

"Yeah."

"Time will tell. But you've always trusted your gut-instinct," Renard said. "It's part of what makes you invaluable to our team here… And the Cassels, at least, seem like good people. What do you think?"

"I think they'd do what was best for the children, no matter how painful it is," Nicolette said, eyes on the photograph of Mary-Elizabeth Cassel.

"Then you're doing the right thing."

A.N.: I know, you're still in shock from receiving an update! It was only in April I updated last!