Hello, and Merry Christmas! (Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish readers, Kwanzaa to my... Kwanzaa-celebrating readers (trying not to insult anyone) and Happy Holidays and New Years to all my athiests and everyone else whose holidays I don't know about.) I I'd get one last update in for 2011, so here it is!

This chapter has been beta'ed by three different people: Jade_Nolan, Ballettmaus, and lilly moonlight, so a big thanks to each of them: I couldn't have done it to this degree without you guys!

This chapter will, unfortunately, be the last for awhile. I have some major issues with the next chapter running away to join the circus and refusing to cooperate with the local authorities, so while I fight it out in court for its release into my care, you all will just have to be patient.

Well, just thought you all might want to know, I have a good deal of stories waiting to be finished and posted, so when we talk again, it will probably be with those guys.

Ciao till then,

Brii

Mac swallowed hard. He took a step backwards and sank slowly into his chair, looking at the letter in his hands. He reread the letter again, forcing himself to look at it analytically. The effort made his head pound again. He needed to keep his head clear, even in the aftermath of Stella's kidnapping. The pounding in his head increased, and he shook his head. Maybe he should have taken the ER doctors up on that night of observation.

Now is not the time for weakness, he growled to himself. Stella doesn't need you to be weak right now. She needs you. You have to focus.

Just then, Adam opened the door to his office. Mac waved him in.

"Mac, you need to hear this," Adam said. "I got something, and while it may not be big, it's—it's something. And it might help."

"What?" Mac asked warily. Adam held up a remote.

"In the A/V Lab," he said, turning on his heel and walking out of the office. He got to his feet and followed the young lab tech to the audiovisual analysis lab.

"So when we processed your apartment, we took Stella's phone. I was processing it, and I found a worm," Adam said seriously.

"A worm?" Mac asked.

"Yeah. It's a malware program that uses a network to send copies of itself to other nodes, a computer, or in this case, a cell phone, on the network. Once it's on there, it'll do anything from taking up bandwitdth to providing a sort of backdoor into your cell phone for spam and other things to get in, okay, but this worm in particular wasn't just your ordinary everyday spam worm. This worm's payload—"

"It's what?"

"Oh, uh, payload. That's the, uh, the part of the code designed to do more than just pass itself on. It might, uh, delete files, or download email addresses from your contacts, download a picture of the O RLY? owl—"

"The what?" Mac asked.

"Uh, it's a macro image, of an owl with its head to the side, and it's face like—" Adam tilted his head to the side, making what looked like a slightly obscene face for a second, caught the look on Mac's face, and quickly straightened "—ah, never mind. The worm would download it to your printer queue and print it over and over and over and—"

"Adam!" Mac said testily. Adam flushed.

"Sorry, boss. Anyway, this worm's payload was designed to hack into a smart phone's GPS and send the coordinates back to the writer's computer. So all he had to do was get on a secure network for about a few minutes, long enough to put a worm on her phone, and then all they had to do was just sit back and wait."

"Okay," Mac said. "How can we use that?"

"I can try to reverse the worm and try to get a location on her attacker. It might take some time, though, and it might not—I mean, just because we find the computer doesn't exactly guarantee…" he trailed off at the withering look Mac gave him and quickly changed tact. "I mean, I-I-I'll find her." And at that, he left the room, his face red.

Mac continued to glower long after Adam left. This guy, this serial killer, was becoming more and more complex the longer they chased him. What was it about him? What did he want, why was he killing?

On a sudden, vague inspiration, he decided to look into Stella's past cases, both here and in New Orleans. A few keystrokes and he had done it. Stella's cases from her time at the NYPD were in front of him. He began to click through them manually, looking at each face, scrutinizing it: was this the man that had taken Stella? Was this whole mess somehow related to one of her cases?

Several hours and no hits later, Mac was beginning to get frustrated. He had looked through every open and closed case, right up until Stella had left for New Orleans. He had called her lab, explained the situation to her boss, and while her boss had not been happy, he had agreed to send—and had sent—her files to him. He had looked through those, too, but other than Dawson Jones, none of the faces looked even remotely familiar.

"Mac," Flack said by way of greeting, strolling into his office unannounced. Mac looked up from a file, irritated.

"What?"

"What are you doing?" Flack asked. Mac looked back at the file on his computer.

"Going through Stella's old cases."

"You didn't find anything, did you?" Flack asked. Mac shook his head.

"Yeah, I looked while you were getting your scan. I couldn't call New Orleans, though. Did you find a guy there?"

Mac exhaled noisily. "No," he admitted, glowering at the computer screen as if he expected it to help.

"Well, I got something that may make the next forty-five minutes," Flack said with an unusually cheeky grin.

"Why only the next forty-five minutes?" Mac asked wearily. Flack faltered.

"Because that's all you have left in the day, Mac," he said. "It's 11:15, Mac."

Mac looked down at his watch. Had the day really gone by so quickly?

"Well," Mac said lightly, smoothly concealing his surprise and slight trepidation—was this a result of hard work or a concussion symptom? He couldn't tell— "What do you got?"

"A house," Flack said with a grin. Adam chose that moment to walk in, and apparently had heard Flack, because he entered the room talking.

"Not technically, it's a condo, and it's been abandoned for years, but yes, that's where the computer is," he agreed with Flack. "I just got a hit off the worm."

"Good," Mac told both of them. "Where does this put us?"

"I can get a warrant soon, but we have to wait for FBI before we move," Flack said. "They're coming in from DC, the best team they have, it'll be a few hours. I got the call a few minutes ago, We'll be working with a Special Agent Anthony… Wilkins… What?" he asked, for Mac had stared, dumbstruck, at Flack.

"Why did no one tell me?" he demanded. "Why didn't anyone tell me FBI was coming in?"

"S.O.P., Mac," Flack said slowly. "And if I got the call, you must have, too. Check your phone."

Mac pulled open the desk drawer he had thrown his phone into—he didn't want to be distracted—and checked. Indeed, he had three missed calls, one of them from an unknown DC number. The other two were from Flack.

"Son of a bitch," Mac said quietly, emphasizing each word. "When will they be here?"

"Soon, that's why I called. They just landed and they're coming to the lab in a half an hour. They want to interview you, and—"

"We're taking point," Mac said.

"We can't, Mac," Flack said.

"Yes we can," Mac said defiantly. "She's gone because of me, and if the FBI thinks they can take getting her back away from me, they can just forget it."

"It's not going to work like—"

"It will," Mac said irritably. "I don't care what bureaucratic red tape I have to go around—"

"Oh, come on, Mac," Flack said firmly. "I don't like this any more than you do, but we have to follow protocol. Now stop talking like this. Take a breath, will ya? We can't help this, and you have to admit they'll help, right? They know what they're doing."

Mac just glared. Flack lost his patience.

"Oh, for the love of—stop glaring at me like that!" he exploded. "It's not my fault she's gone, it's not my fault it took so long to find this guy, it's not my fault you were powerless to stop him, and it's not my fault she ever left in the first place. Now, I don't know what's going on between you and her, but if she hadn't figured it out yet and you didn't tell her, well, that's not my fault, either. It's yours."

Mac looked down at the floor, the fight visibly leaving him. He sighed and turned away, covering his eyes with his hand.

"I know," he said wearily. He slowly made his way to his desk and sat down heavily, the weight of the world on his shoulders. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"Mac, I'm sorry," Flack said. "That was out of line."

"No, you're right," Mac said. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and middle finger, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "You're right." The admission made him look suddenly years older, and he rubbed his face dejectedly. "I should have told her. I had a chance to, but I didn't, and now, I might not get a chance."

"Mac, don't talk like that," Flack said gravely. "We'll find her. We'll find her, in just a few hours."

Mac shook his head, a defeated, disgusted look on his face that hinted at what his next words were: "Yeah, but will we find her in time to save her?"

Flack found that he had no answer, but he looked at Mac soberly.

"Don't blame yourself, Mac," he said quietly.

Mac didn't answer, just waved him away. Flack knew Mac well enough not to take it personally, and quietly left, shutting the door of the office behind him.