6228 NW Lindale Street was just another medium value home on a street of five, with green paint that could use some freshening. There was an aluminum lamp post by the sidewalk which caught bugs very well on the inside and burned out one bulb a month. The husband and wife, Jess and Darcy Keeney, worked full-time and drank a little in the evenings. Their two boys were in Middle school and High school, respectively.

There was nothing unusual about the family on Lindale.

Except for the 154,000 pictures of child pornography hidden behind encryption on Mr. Keeney’s computer.

&^^&^^&^^&^^&^^

The briefing was short, succinct, and graphic. Mary Shannon watched every slide, studied every mug shot, and listened carefully to the profiles. She did not ask any questions of any speaker and she did not argue with their information, no matter her own opinion of the matter.

Marshall stared at the floor mostly. During the two films that were shown, his arms were crossed tightly as if he was in pain.

She knew he was and sidled closer until her body heat encountered his. He watched her jot notes in her cryptic style on a Steno notepad. When the meeting adjourned, he was the first one out the door and Mary followed right behind. She let him lead and did not worry about where he was going.

Fifth floor, second door to the left down the hallway. The men’s bathroom. She gave him eleven minutes before she shoved the door open and found him leaning on the porcelain sink with both hands. His hair was damp. His shirt collar was spotted with a few droplets that had soaked in. He stared moodily into the mirror at her and she returned that look.

“His days are numbered.”

“I don’t like these. I don’t want to participate and I don’t want to see things about them,” he said darkly. “Everyone else can go—just leave me out of it.”

She slid one hand up the slope of his back, curled fingers around the sharp edge of his shoulder. He tensed all over as if she’d hurt him.

“Just me,” she said soothingly, “and I know you don’t want to do this. And I know why you don’t want to do this.”

“Let me guess,” he muttered. “You think I should go precisely because I don’t want to? Trying to make me tougher, Mer?”

She smiled, leaned her butt against the sink so she could face him, and folded her arms. Her pose was still not as painful as Marshall’s was a few moments ago.

“I don’t need you to be tough,” she said simply. “I just need you to be you.”

He sighed. Looked away from her.

“As long as you’ll be you,” he returned grudgingly.

“Deal. Let’s go hunt some vermin.”

&^^&^^&^^&^^&^^

Marshall usually slept on flights when he didn’t have a window to look out of the whole way. He had a window this flight, but didn’t look out of it more than a few glances. His stomach was unsettled and Marshall was part goat—his stomach could handle anything.

Mary noticed he had the airsickness bag crammed down the side of his seat within twenty-five minutes, so she played a mindless game involving a sheet of graph paper, two pens, and lots of time to kill with him. When the plane landed, neither was sure who won, but Marshall was perplexed that three hours had passed in a blink.

“I owe you,” he said.

“Yes. You do.” She always kept score.

The incursion had been accomplished so stealthily that no one involved even knew they had been raided. It was a cyber attack that left no trace, caused no computer malfunction, never triggered any suspicions. It netted nearly three million images, low pixel grade because that was all that was necessary, and close to twelve thousand recipient ISP addresses.

There was an entire department devoted to cleaning up the images and four counselors to support that team. Seven computers crunched ISP numbers and disgorged physical addresses … but there really was only one they were after today. Five separate team leaders circulated just to refocus and remind various squads that they were after a single target, not the thousands they were confronted with.

Four people went home by 11 am, physically ill from the work. Counseling services broke each team into three hours shifts and increased their manpower support by five.

Into this subdued atmosphere came the USMS, Child Protective Services, the Federal Task Force for Missing and Exploited Children, and various other agencies associated with crimes against children. Police Departments across the state tapped extra manpower, preparing to launch a massive search for one five-year-old girl who was being raped repeatedly and the video of her assault streamed on the Internet for a fee. Older files recovered from various other computers indicated that this had been going on since she was somewhere around age two or two-and-a-half.

She was very popular. There were over five million hits every two weeks when a new video became available. The men and women trying to find her dubbed her ‘Angel’ because only an angel could have helped her survive all this time.

Marshall did not watch any computers running in the spacious room. He watched Mary.

She was wearing layers in northern chill: a tank, then a long sleeve red shirt that clung to her curves beneath her striped suit jacket. He suspected that she was wearing a bra designed to accent her bust line and every man in the room also noticed. He did not mind them staring at his partner—she could take off a man’s fingers to the elbow if she so chose.

“It’s pretty ass-backwards when we know approximately where she might be held and we can’t get a search warrant for probable cause because we don’t have the exact house,” grumbled Mary. “We’re the law and she’s five. Who the hell will complain if we go door to door and search?”

“The same people who enacted privacy laws to prevent sweep searches.” Marshall's voice was monotone. She swiveled to look at him. “Some were probably criminals covering their asses, but some were just ordinary citizens who did not want the police to have ultimate power over everyone, any time of the day.”

“I don’t need reminders that there are bad guys amongst the cops, too.”

He did not apologize. She did not need one anyway. They’d been partners too long for petty stuff to disrupt them.

Lunch was provided, but Marshall picked. Mary chatted amicably with seatmates, but watched him surreptitiously. She enticed him into French fries from McDonald’s at two pm. He had a headache and Tylenol did not touch it. The setting sun made him falter on the steps out of the building and she took just the tips of his fingers in hers, towed him along like a boat on a string.

USMS paid for two rooms, but she keyed them both into one. Marshall stood in the shower overly long and she let him. The traffic was noisy outside and she flipped channels in their room with the sound off.

“There’s never anything on TV anymore,” she said when he got into the bed behind her. “Reality shows, Survivor shows.”

She crawled into bed with him after her shower in nothing but panties and a tank top. He held her because she wanted him to, breasts pressed against his chest. He remembered her cleavage that the men had stolen glances at all day. The younger officers were blatant, the older men more discrete.

“The men enjoyed having you around today,” he said to her damp hair.

“Did you?”

“I always enjoy having you around. You didn’t need to flaunt on my behalf.”

“You think I was flaunting?” She leaned over him on an elbow, felt his hand drift to her hip and catch itself before curling around her buttock on autopilot. “I wasn’t flaunting for them.”

“I don’t need you to flaunt for me.”

“Of course you don’t,” she said wryly. “You’d rather watch the filth on all of those monitors and help pick apart the details for a location.”

He did not contest her statement, but he resisted her hand that urged his left around her buttock. She was mildly exasperated at his unwillingness, but put her head down on his collarbone. He smelled like hotel soap and shampoo. By morning he would have all the little bars and bottles in his bag, including the shower cap for no rational reason. She imagined he had a drawer at home full of hotel shower caps. What’s one more?

“I don’t need this,” he whispered.

She did not refute him. She waited, because she was good at being the cat in cat and mouse games. Marshall seemed to always be the mouse; slightly terrified, always running, quick on the turns and capable of squeezing through an aperture only an inch wide.

“I don’t want this,” he carefully explained. “I didn’t want to come on this assignment. I asked to be left out of it.”

“I know,” she said softly. She took his hand in hers, moved it from her hip to her breast and held it loosely. “You wanted out of this one just like you wanted out of the last one and the one before that.”

“No one listens to me,” he said thinly.

“I always, always listen to you.”

“But you didn’t intercede on my behalf.” He was mildly accusatory.

“I came down on the side of a five-year-old girl who has been crying for three years for someone to help her.”

“She doesn’t cry anymore.” His tone was low and perfectly even. “I noticed.”

Mary was very careful, chose her words precisely.

“Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again with the same result. She copes with torment in other ways now. She survives.”

“Damaged, at best.”

“Stop, Marshall.” She did not quite make it an order, but he heard it anyway.

“Help me,” he whispered. “You have to help me.”

Help me survive this. Help me come back from the atrocities playing out on video. Help me master everything I am feeling. Help me to not throw up the entire flight into hell. Help me.

She heard every sentence individually.

“You have to let me, even if it hurts,” she reminded him. She knew he heard her. She also knew he would go his own direction and refuse her help exactly the same way that she had heard his refusal to take this assignment and yet signed them up for it in the same day. “Even if it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do. This is the way this has to go down.”

He turned his hand over to cradle her breast, searched the curve until he found the nipple. She shivered involuntarily despite the edginess of the conversation, the moodiness in him. He traced with fingernails first, then pads as her nipple reacted. When it was erect, he searched for the other breast and she turned with a soft sigh to let him.

Four minutes later, he was scooting her tank top up under her arms and had his mouth in play, teasing first one breast and then the other. She was hot and tingling, kicking covers off, muttering a combination of lust and encouragement in each breath. By the time Marshall slid his long fingers beneath her panties, through the curl of pubic hair, and into her folds, she was pulling him instinctively over her.

It was too awkward to touch her and be orally attentive to her breasts while lying on her, however, and Marshall resisted her compulsion.

“Wait,” he said.

“Murder,” she replied. Her voice sounded strange even to her ears. “Murder, murder, murder.”

He suckled gently at her breasts, felt the urgency gathering to one place in her. She was slick and swollen, as if she’d been waiting for hours. He left his thumb on her clit, penetrated very slowly with his index finger and then withdrew. She did not buck herself onto him—she let him run the show. He could tell by the way she breathed just how much effort the control took to lie back and let him.

He fingered her slowly, methodically, increased the pace and depth in measured increments. He knew she was close when she pried him from her right breast to her mouth, took him with a ravenous kiss. He pressed his finger deep, rubbed the second knuckle over the urethral opening, groaned encouragingly just once into her mouth … and all her straining muscles seized at once. She broke from the kiss, lost, and he continued to fuck her until he felt her begin to twitch when he stroked over the erect nub at the apex, over-sensitive and coming back down.

He remembered the first time, the first taste of her. He remembered the press of her heels on his back and the engorgement of her tissues. He remembered her hands in his hair to stop him at the end because he didn’t have any brakes with cunnilingus with her the first time. He had to learn a lot in a hurry, but she was a very direct teacher and mistakes were corrected promptly.

“Marshall,” she said, sounding distant from inches away. She had a hand against his pajamas where his cock strained.

“No,” he said. “Leave it be.”

She stroked him once, because she was Mary and defiant, and he thrust-shivered before catching himself. He kissed each breast goodbye and she watched him, irritable with the gesture.

“I don’t understand you sometimes,” she said pointedly.

“I don’t understand me either, sometimes.” He sounded resigned. “All I know is how to survive.”

“Damaged, at best.” She caught his face, dug in her nails when he moved as if to evade her and he subsided, let her kiss him. “Damaged … and you won’t let me help you even though not fifteen minutes ago, you told me to help you.”

“Not yet.”

“Fine.”

She was angry for the next ten minutes. He could tell by her body language, the way she flipped the pillow and jammed it beneath her head. She turned away and stared at the opposite wall. He lay on his back and let his eyes and erection stare at the ceiling. One of the two eventually gave up and he felt better.

Mary turned to him once she cooled off. Sex had a way of not letting her hold onto her fury for as long as she wanted. She would keep score of that, too.

“I’m here,” she told him. “I’m here for Angel and I’m here for you. Just tell me what you need, when you need it.”

She turned him on his left side, curled around his back protectively. He dreamed about sex all night and woke restless and hard, exactly as he intended to be.

&^^&^^&^^&^^&^^

Nothing in the backdrop of the high resolution films gave forensics a clue as to where this sexual predator was holding his captive. He used a variety of drop backgrounds like a professional photographer would use and the lighting was artificial. His favorite was a flowered meadow and some of his more tormenting videos were shot in front of it. Sometimes it was obvious that he drugged the child just so he could pose her for long periods for the eye of the camera.

When she was older and coercion had been used for years, he did not need drugs anymore. He could pose her lasciviously and she would remain just as he asked so he could set up cameras before the assault.

“No windows in this room,” said one of the video experts. He looked haggard from lack of sleep. Perhaps the subject matter. He sat with his back to the screen while he talked. “We can’t get him based on the flicks—we have to find photos of this girl in other places and narrow down the location. Then we have to find her and find this room.”

“The room might not even be at his house. He might be transporting her to a secondary location for the filming.” The FBI agent was calm and direct, but there was a well-chewed pencil in his left hand. “If you spot her, you have to hang back and watch where he takes her. You can not step in and remove her immediately from her attacker.”

“So Angel gets assaulted off camera a few times more while we play spy?” said an observer. “Doesn’t that matter?”

“It matters if we don’t convict this ass-wipe,” said Mary beneath her breath. “It matters if we fuck up the catch and he ends up walking on a technicality.”

The FBI agent said as much, only without the bad words. Mary supposed his black tie had something to do with the inability to swear at horror. She’d never known an FBI agent to be human.

Marshall had a pinched look to his features en route to the first location of interest. Five members of the blue team unloaded quietly and scattered to canvass. Nothing. They moved to the next location. Then the next. The day was full of endless questions and innocent people who looked at a photo of the little girl and shrugged.

“Blue team,” crackled a voice on the radio in the truck and every person went still. “FBI got an anonymous tip from an ex-girlfriend. Go pick up Curtis Climer at 456 Harrington, apartment 328. Is Marshall Mann in the ride?”

“I’m here,” said Marshall. He didn’t have his hand on the radio—it was the man sitting shotgun who held down the talk button for him. “What do you need?”

“Your background says you have some technological skills. Try to get a hold of his computer before he purges it.”

“How badly do you want it?”

Silence. The radio crackled static like it was worth only a ten-dollar bill.

“Badly,” affirmed the disembodied voice. Then it warned, “Don’t leave any marks.”

“Roger that.”

Everyone in the truck was amused at the ‘roger that’ comment. No one said word, however, because Mary fixed them with a look that was unmistakable.

“What kind of entry are we taking?” inquired Marshall. “If he’s a rabbit, he’ll have a single key to press to delete the drive. We have to have him down before he reaches it.”

“Get the ram,” said the team leader, Trobish. “We’ll see if Shannon can charm him into opening the door, but I want access quickly if he stalls more than reasonable.”

Curtis Climer opened the door readily because Mary offered a UPS package she conveniently swiped from two floors down on her way up. She did not waste any time flushing out his true colors.

“Hello, short-eyes,” she said cheerfully—and he ran.

Mary wasn’t a sprinter, but she went over the couch after him and received a rug burn on one knee clear through the denim. Two more from the team were on him next and Marshall walked around the whole mess to the bedroom and found a laptop sitting idle. He studied it for a moment without touching a key, then hit CTL-ALT-DEL to get into the Task Manager, then Users, then back out to the Process Tree.

“Trouble?” asked the team leader. His rifle was over a shoulder at rest and he was careful to stand clear of objects in the room. “Tell me what you need and we’ll get it.”

“I need Mr. Climer to play along for a moment.” He did not turn. “Bring him in here with Shannon.”

They brought him and he initially glared at Marshall standing over his laptop, then smiled smugly.

“You won’t find anything on there,” he said.

“Of course not,” said Marshall smoothly. “I brought you in here to play a game.”

“I love games,” said Mary. She looked at Marshall, expectantly. “What are we playing?”

“Ball, of course.” He didn’t turn from his study of the multiple processes running on the laptop. “Get him out.”

Climer protested stridently, horrified, but Mary was as adept at getting a sexual pervert’s privates out of his pants as she was getting an eager boyfriend out of his pants. Once she had them out, she zipped the zipper snug behind his testicles until he was twitching on his toes anxiously.

“Hmm,” she said, to the amusement of the men on the blue team, “I can see why you like children, short-eyes. Your dick couldn’t handle a woman who goes deep.”

“Now, now,” cajoled Marshall. He flicked a glance at her, then back to the computer. “There are rules when you play ball; nothing out of bounds and you can’t use your feet.” He addressed Climer next. “I’m going to run through the alphabet, one letter at a time, and she’s going to give you a little tap on the nuts for each letter. Let me know when we’re at the right letter and I’ll enter that one into the password slot.”

“Wait—what?!” he demanded, incredulous. “Why don’t you just demand the damn password?”

Marshall looked at him, finally, and studied his exposed genitals for an instant.

“Because we’re the law and we have our sexual kinks. Thumping a suspect’s balls is high on the list of things we most enjoy doing.” He shrugged. “It’s her turn, so I’d be happy if I was you. If Thompson was up next, your balls would be the size of cantaloupes by the time he got his rocks off—he’s older and kind of slow.” There was no one named Thompson in blue team, or on any team. “Ready? Letter ‘A’.”

Mary flicked Climer’s scrotum with her index finger and either she must have been pissy and hit him hard, or he was just wimpy because he wailed like two dogs caught in a fence. Somewhere around letter ‘E’ he realized they genuinely intended to carry out their plan and he gave over the password in a hurry. Mary thumped him a few more times to be sure his story did not change and he was sick all over the carpet beside the bed.

Marshall typed the password, inserted a flash drive with a grab program and downloaded 8 gigs of information. He squatted over the prostrate Climer.

“We know where you are and we know what you like. Don’t think you’ve escaped.” He was coldly dispassionate. “We’re busy today and don’t have time to scoop up men like you—we’re after someone else.”

“I can help!” he pleaded. “Can I get a deal if I help? Tell me what you’re after—who’re you lookin’ for? I know everyone in the networks.”

Mary showed him a photo of Angel.

“Jesus, her? She’s … well hidden.” He glanced up, sycophantic. “Rumor has it that he’s about done with her; she’s getting too old for him. I don’t know where she’s at, but I have one early picture of her … when she was … little.”

“News flash, fuckhead—she’s still little.”

&^^&^^&^^&^^&^^

Facial recognition software had difficulty with children because of the softness of their facial features beneath childhood baby fat and the overall size of their facial bones. They ran Climer’s computer photos twice before getting three hits and then ran those five times with multi-layer software and came up with one photo.

“This is Angel,” confirmed the haggard video tech. “She’s about twenty months. This is before the first sexual assault was taped and we’re running it through Landmark Recognition software to ID the background. She might have been at a school playground or a park—I don’t know.”

“Just that information isn’t going to narrow down the city for us,” said the stoic FBI agent. “We need a tighter net.”

“I can’t do anything more from a single shot.”

“How about comparing the background with Angel against the backgrounds of other children in his collection. Maybe this was a favorite photo place for one of these perverts.”

“Already thought of that and the database is still filtering all the other photos. He had 30,000 or more images, you realize?” The tech looked forlornly at the monitor. “Climer was fixated on infants and toddlers. No child is over age two. How the hell do you find 30,000 pictures of naked babies?”

He shoved away from the desk abruptly—but the FBI agent stepped forward, corralled him in a hug that was partially support, partially restraint.

“Steady, California,” said the agent. He didn’t know the tech’s name, only from where they had pulled him. “Steady. For every predator we put our finger on today, we’ve saved over a hundred children. Even if we don’t save Angel … there are thousands more waiting for us to locate them. You have to hold it together—we need you. They need you.”

“Feds are human? Who knew,” soliloquized Mary to no one in particular.

“Learn something every day,” chuckled a man near her.

The tech went back to work after someone brought him a glass of water. The verbal support of the staff working in the hub increased incrementally. There was a sign on the door that read, “Have you hugged your technical support team today?” Someone had added in pencil, “Cookies welcome.”

Marshall was leaning against the wall in the hallway, hands jammed in his pockets. He was sweating though the temperature was chilly for the computer’s sakes.

“Hey.” She stood close enough to touch him without touching him.

“Babies. He preys on babies.”

She did not offer him platitudes like, ‘maybe he only looks at the photos.’ She knew perfectly well that looking at pictures was seldom where pedophiles left it. She said nothing for a moment or two.

“I had to talk to that pervert. I had to be in the same room with him.” He sounded horrified.

“I had to touch him,” she reminded. “And he’s not who I want to play ball with.”

On a pure lucky break, the technology crew found one photo of another infant with the same background. A composite gave them a wide shot of the surroundings and the computers went back to work on the larger view. By now, there were twenty people hovering around that section of the room and the action-response teams were being questioned by psych support for issues.

Only five needed to be broken out of their unit and put on standby. One man wouldn’t leave the room, but was ill from the combination of stress and graphic images. They moved a cot into the crowded bullpen for him.

“Counseling services are going to log lots of time to get everyone processed after this,” murmured Mary. “We’re going into eighty-seven hours on this manhunt.” She glanced at Marshall. He was doodling clouds and rain drops on her steno. “You want to take a walk or anything? Get some fries?”

“I want to bust this hump,” he said without inflection. He did not look up.

“Winfield Park, lower east side!” called a voice. “Ninety-seven percent accuracy.”

The FBI agent in charge laid a grid over the map of the city and gave each team their ground to cover. The blue team ended up in the park itself, questioning people and showing the photo of the little girl around for hits. They had worked the north side of the man-made lake and were walking on the bike path when Marshall halted.

“What is it?”

“She was here,” he said quietly, hoisting the montage photo a little higher. “She was right here, playing. Her life was happy and free of pain.”

Mary took his elbow, but did not try to force him onward. She did not remonstrate his train of thought, either. Marshall was her partner and she accepted all of his quirks, even the self-injurious ones. She let him breathe somewhat painfully for a full count to twenty … then he went on.

When the team converged at the end of the spacious park, they had two hits between them. One was shaky; the other actually had a name attached to it. The leader of the team was on his cell with the hub and came up with two addresses. They split up and were on doorsteps within the hour.

Nothing.

“His days are numbered,” Mary reminded everyone when they regrouped, disheartened, irritable with lack of sleep. “This is an incredible manhunt with a hard-hitting crew of badges. If it means we work in shifts to do it, we’ll get him.”

“Give that woman a bullhorn,” said Trobish.

“You don’t want to do that,” said Marshall. “She’s just as likely to yell profanity as encouragement.”

The radio crackled to life and everyone paused.

“Blue team, are you still in the vicinity of Winfield Park?”

“No, we’re six blocks north on St. Paul Street. Where do you need us?” said Trobish.

“Green team picked up a cold lead about a photography student living above a children’s clothing store on St. Reynolds Way West who took pictures of children for pocket change and sometimes used the back of the store after hours for more formal shots with families with small children?”

“How long ago?”

“Over a year, but the individual who gave us this lead had a bunch of trivia to add … one of which was the fact that this student really could turn on the charm for toddlers. As in, it didn’t matter if they were crying and cranky, he could eventually get them smiling and performing for his camera.”

“Got a name?”

“Rose. John Rose.”

“Let’s go rattle the door of the clothing shop.”

No, the new owners did not know of anyone by the name of John Rose living in the apartment upstairs. They had purchased it from the previous owners over 17 months previously. Mary wandered through the store somewhat astonished by the pricing on the clothing.

“What?” said Marshall at her shoulder.

“This.” She held up some tiny leather shoes. “Forty-five dollars. Who the hell puts these things on a baby this little?”

“People who are nuts about their new baby and can’t wait to lavish things on them.”

“I don’t get kids.”

“Which is why you shoe-horned us into this little pedophilia operation to begin with?”

“Just because I don’t ‘get’ babies and kids, doesn’t mean I don’t think men who have a go at them ought to have their peckers chopped off,” she said dryly. “You want kids someday?”

He did not answer readily. She turned her head just enough to look at him. He was studying a rack of pastel newborn booties. One would hardly fit on one of his thumbs and they certainly could not cost $12.50 to make.

“I used to…” he said hesitantly, “but I don’t think so anymore. The world has too much evil in it for me to risk my daughter. My son.” He turned away from the booties, glanced toward the storefront. “I’m not going to have any children.”

That was more wounding than anything said that day. She was still bloodthirsty and dangerous when she went past the back storeroom and noticed a large bulletin board with hundreds of notes and messages posted. Day care, babysitting, laundry help, wet nurses, night nurses, used clothing, baby furniture, hand made toys, earth friendly diapers, playgroups—and five notations about children’s photography. One had a familiar name, but beyond that … a very familiar background canvass.

“Trobish,” she called to the team leader.

“What have you got, Shannon?” he asked a moment later. “Son-of-a-bitch!” He was jerking his phone out of the holder as he turned to look at her. “Good girl.”

She let that comment slide. Marshall coasted up, tall enough to look over her head, and stood close enough that their body heat collided. She did not lean back against him.

“Wheels,” ordered Trobish. “We need eyes on this place for at bit before we make a move.”

115 South James Street ended with a cul-de-sac and John Rose’s house was in the bottom of it. The team parked one block out and put away every accouterment that smacked of law enforcement. One team member became a phone repairman, tool belt and all. Another was a meter reader. Trobish chafed, but stayed with the truck as the relay to the main hub.

“Put all your Nextel’s on ‘talkie’ mode and lock them down. Everyone’s going to hear everyone.”

“Showtime,” said Marshall. He looked at Mary. “Want to neck like a horny teenager with me? We can distract anyone watching and get a man down the side yard to put some ears on Johnny’s house.”

“You’re going too fast,” she remarked dryly, “I’m still back with horny.”

“Don’t be telling obscene jokes the whole time or the blue team will be green when we get back.”

“With big blue balls,” laughed another man.

Mary walked with Marshall and held his hand, meandering like a couple out on a stroll. They stopped to canoodle in front of the house to the left of the target and garnered interest from both the neighbor and whoever parted the heavy front curtain at Rose’s to eye them. One man quick-footed the distance down the side yard and planted a high-powered microphone beside the picture window. The meter man walked down between every house and went down the other side yard, planted a secondary set of ears on another window casement.

“I’m sad to hear you don’t want children anymore,” she said to Marshall.

“You know every Tom and Jerry is listening to you?” he murmured to her neck.

“Don’t mind, don’t care, fucking don’t give a damn.” She smoothed her hands up his back to his shoulders. “It’s depressing to hear that the people who genuinely care about children don’t think it’s worth the risk to have them because of the perverts out there who prey on them.”

“If the whole world saw the things we’ve seen in the last three days, no one would be having children.”

She kissed him to halt the agony in his voice, softened the next kiss so it pulled at his attention. It was another two before he genuinely kissed her back. Number four garnered a deeper breath and he was playing with her lower teeth with his tongue, which made her chuckle.

“Slobbery,” she reprimanded.

Shrug. “Wet is wet.”

“Get in the house,” barked Trobish over both their phones simultaneously. “One of the freaks spooked by a team today just put a warning on the perv board. He knows we’re hunting him!”

“We need the ram-” said Mary—and then she broke off and was sprinting toward the house because it was already too late for the ram for the door. Marshall had galvanized into motion by the word ‘warning.’

He hit the door at a run, shoulder low where the dead bolt pierced the frame. The bolt did its job, but the framework of the door did not. The wood splintered and ripped away and Marshall crashed headlong into the house and was clipped off at knee level by a low coffee table.

Mary came in right behind him in a modified police entry because she was doing it fast for interception. She scrambled after the man who darted out of view in the adjacent room.

“Marshals!” she shouted. “Freeze, Rose, or I’ll shoot!”

He froze. A medium build man with brown hair, just like the one in the streaming video who always wore a zorro mask.

“What? Marshals? You scared the piss out of me!” he protested as she spun him in place and snapped the cuffs on him. “What am I being arrested for?”

Marshall was in the room, recovering from a limp as she watched. He held a photo of Angel in front of his face.

“Ring any bells, Johnny?” he said.

“It’s not ‘Johnny,’ it’s John. And I’ve never seen that girl in my life,” he retorted.

“Your photography business card. Your background. It’s the same background featured in some of the movies with this little girl.”

“That background is called ‘meadowlands’ and every photographer has one of them,” he replied. “Families might be grouchy at getting their pictures taken, but the flowery meadow is supposed to make them look like a loving family.”

“Yours must not have been, wise-ass,” interjected Mary. “You like little girls who can’t fight back. Can’t handle a real woman? Ever even had a real woman?”

“What the hell? You have me mistaken,” he said grimly. “Look through my house. Go look at my computer—I’ve got a shed in the back with garden tools. Go check that, too! There’s no girl, no pictures of whatever you’re saying I did … nothing!”

There were voices on the perimeter as the rest of the blue team surrounded and then entered the house. They searched every room, every closet, flipped back every rug and looked in the outside shed. Rose gave Marshall the password to his computer without a pause and Marshall scanned through every partition as well as downloaded it to the flash drive.

Nothing.

They let him out of handcuffs reluctantly.

“Get out of my house,” Rose ordered.

“I would like you to come down to the Police Department for some questions,” said Trobish. “Just questions.”

“Unless you have probable cause other than that I’m a photographer, then no. You get a Judge to okay this gross impingement of my civil rights and order me detained, then, yes.” He glared at them, especially Mary and Marshall. “I know my rights. You can expect a lawsuit.”

The team morosely departed. Mary was last and glanced around the room as if one more clue would present itself.

“Marshall,” she said. He turned just past the front door. “Did you move the dishwasher?”

“The dishw—no, I didn’t move the dishwasher,” he said solemnly back. “Does it move?”

“It’s a built in, I thought, but from here, it doesn’t look like a built in.” She was studying it from the foyer. “From here, it looks like a tight fit.”

“Trobish—wait!” called Marshall after the team.

Rose protested the continued search. Stridently. He quoted his civil liberties, his right to privacy, to not be the victim of a search and seizure based on his occupation. He said all the correct words—and then Mary tugged the reluctant dishwasher out of its tight-fitting custom cabinet and there was a trap door beneath it.

Rose looked at it rather puzzled.

“What the hell is that?” he demanded. “I’ve never seen that before.”

“Ri-ight,” said Marshall. “Sit your ass in that kitchen chair before I sit it there for you.”

Blue team went below, where they found cameras and lights, an assortment of harnesses and restraints. One bed. One very small body. The background was a meadow full of flowers and the camera feed was still running. He had killed her before a live audience.

Marshall knew as soon as Mary’s head cleared the trap door—he could tell by the look on her face.

“You Goddamn pervert!” He had Rose grabbed in a control hold before she cleared the kitchen counter. “I’ll kill you right here!”

“Marshall!” she hissed warningly.

She kicked the trap door spring; let it slam on the rest of the blue team who were surveying the torture room below. Rose was laughing, unresisting in Marshall’s grip. Marshall didn’t reach for his gun; he pulled the switchblade knife he always carried. She heard that telltale snap from seven feet away.

“Rose is putting up a fight,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t you see him resisting arrest?”

“Wait,” she said.

“Murder,” he replied, his voice strange to his own ears. “Murder, murder, murder. He murdered her every day since she was two. Over and over again. Crying and pleading and begging for him not to hurt her anymore. Killing her was a release after three years of murdering her soul!”

“Marshall.” One step. Two. She couldn’t outrun the speed of that wicked blade that had Rose on his toes. “We needed your technical know-how. That was your job here—not this.”

“You’re telling me he doesn’t deserve to die?” he demanded. He had control over his target; he was a U.S. Marshal—he knew exactly how to put a finger-wrist hold on a suspect so acutely that they dared not struggle. And Rose did not struggle. “Tell me that he should live, Mary. Look me in the eyes and tell me!”

“I brought you for me!” she replied. “Another man could have done the computers, Marshall, but I wanted you with me. I needed you to be you, so I could be me.”

The trap door behind her thumped. She heard the team leader’s questioning shout.

“Let him go,” she said softly. “I’ll take him. Just let him go.”

“No.” Dark. Certain. “I can’t let this one go. The last one got away.”

Marton Hurst. He was freed on a technicality and was rearrested three years later. He was accused of forty-six counts of sexual assaults perpetrated on twenty-three small children during that same period of freedom.

“I need to be me now,” she insisted, taking another step. “And I can’t let you do this. Let me have him, Marshall.”

“He’s inside my head, with his … filth…” he was staring at Rose.

“Marshall,” she said more strongly, orienting him back to her, “I haven’t forgotten my way. Please, let me have him.”

The trap door was being tapped methodically, determinedly.

“Hold!” Mary shouted authoritatively and the thumping ceased.

“Just walk away, Mer,” he whispered. “Two minutes. Walk the house once and it will be over. That’s quicker and more merciful than what Angel was given.”

“I can’t let you do this,” she whispered back. “You’re the only man I’ve ever contemplating having a child with. We’re smart and watchful and have nine guns between us—I’d feel safe enough to risk a baby in this fucked-up world if it’s yours. But if you do this … that will never happen.”

Marshall blinked at her.

“I’m here to save you from this,” she said very softly. “I’m here to be me.”

She slid two steps without breaking eye contact, put her hand beneath the blade. He let her take it, but she wasn’t familiar with how to close it. She dropped it point down on the floor and it struck fast. She put Rose in handcuffs and sat him in the kitchen chair. Marshall stood and watched somewhat dully.

“Babies,” said Rose suggestively. “I like them better about age two. Maybe I’ll meet yours someda-”

She slapped him, hard, directly across the throat. The blow made him gag and choke, unable to draw a breath. He kicked, desperate for air and she watched him struggle without a word.

“Here’s the thing about child molesters,” she said, leaning her hands on her knees when the paroxysm passed. “We can drop the word to the convicts not only of what you are … but that we’d really, really like you to live a good … long … time … in prison. They like having quazi-permission by those in authority to have a personal fuckwhore—they’ll cotton to the idea immediately. They’ll also know that rape is your special vice and be sure you get lots of it.” She straightened, regarded Marshall. “He doesn’t get the easy way out of this. He gets to scream.”

&^^&^^&^^&^^&^^

Angel, aka Juliana Laschalt, was carried tenderly out from beneath the house where she had been held for three years. John Rose was not permitted another look at her, though he asked. The live feed of his last assault and the murder of the girl were downloaded 2.7 million times before the site it was attached to was found and shut down. No one could erase all the copies that had been disseminated, however. Angel would be murdered over and over forever, because that was the law of the Internet.

There were questions about what happened during his apprehension, which Mary answered dutifully, thoroughly, and without hesitation. Rose resisted arrest and there was one blow to the throat used to subdue him in the struggle. A thumb-wrist hold was appropriately applied and only applied long enough to regain control of the suspect.

Marshall reiterated the same chain of events, though Rose insisted that both of them had it backwards. He was not believed; he was a child killer looking for an excuse to escape his fate on a technicality and law enforcement was having none of that.

Blue team passed off the transport of the prisoner to another team. They had seen enough of John Rose for a lifetime. Trobish shook Mary and Marshall’s hands at the airport and put them on a flight. Marshall slept the entire way, exhausted. Mary doodled on the Steno and added whales frolicking in his rainstorm with little yellow rain hats.

She took him to his house, let him wander like a stranger to himself for an hour. She took a shower and took his fingers, led him to bed. He was sluggish, stunned, emotionally beaten. Damaged, at best.

She told him as much, petting his hair back from his temples. He grieved, finally, for Angel, for thousands like her of all races, for parents who blithely put photos of their children on the Internet for predators to enjoy, for the evil in men’s souls. He was gasping just like John Rose by the end, but she said nothing of the sort to him.

“I love you,” was what she said. “I’m terrified … but I want to have a baby with you.”

“What is it that you’re terrified about?” he managed to whisper.

“That I’ll be like my mother. That I can’t handle the responsibility. That I’ll be … bad at being a parent.”

He leaned over her, one hand on her belly, low where she liked to be teased.

“First, you’re not your mother. Second, you’re responsible for the lives of seventeen witnesses right now and three hundred or more have passed safely through your care. Being a bad parent? Maybe.” He paused. “But if you love them and tell them a lot, they get the picture.”

“And you’ll be there and you’ll be you, with your intuition and sensitivity. Those things that I lack.”

He kissed her, soft and slow.

“You’ll be determined and driven, full of life and energy. Your kids will be little monsters and you’ll fit right in with them.” He was very serious. “Just be you and it will be fine.”

“Damaged, at best.” She grinned. “Together, we’re invincible.”

She handled him carefully. She took her time, because he had been stressed for too long, forced to a task he objected to. Memory was hard to dispel and there was no direct route.

She laid his body out and touched him all over, let him shift and sigh and wipe his eyes. She remembered every graphic image of molestation they had been forced to watch and repeated none of them. She knew he was thumbing through them like a man with a deck of cards, helplessly injured by the case they had chased and the thousands more they had uncovered.

He was restless and unfocused. Troubled so deeply that his body refused overtures. She dug beneath his bed for the toybox and he objected thinly.

“Leave me be,” he whispered. “I can’t yet.”

“What right do you have for bliss when all they ever knew and are knowing in their young lives is pain? And misery? And torment? How can you enjoy sexual pleasure while the ones we unearthed, but haven’t found yet, are screaming tonight?”

She knew all of his torturous thoughts. He denied nothing, merely stared back at her.

“Let me help you, even though it hurts. This is the way it has to be.” She unsnapped the leather cock ring, kissed him encouragingly. “You need to break free and I need to not have to tap dance to do it.” Mary had never tap danced in her life.

She snugged the leather strap behind his scrotum and drew it up deliberately too tight around the base of his penis. The bead on the strap rested against his perineum squarely. She nibbled across his trapped genitals, kissed each testicle hello. He twitched beneath her mouth, still far away and ensnared by the suffering of others.

Lube, cool and slick. She smoothed around his rectum exactly three times before pressing one finger inside. Marshall tensed, writhed nearly without motion, speared by discomfort. She did not draw back or falter; Marshall always initially resisted this. She knew he was remembering the thin wail on a video, unable to purge it, unable to refuse ownership of it even though his rational mind knew he was not at fault. Pain staked him directly, imperiously, forced his attention. She searched with the pad of her finger while he lay rigidly tense until she located the small nub of his prostate. He jerked when she found it, shivered pain-pleasure.

“Help me,” he stuttered. “Help me…”

“Shhh,” she soothed. “Breathe. Try to relax.”

She knew he would not relax.

She looked at the clock, then set a leisurely pace of rubbing circles internally. Tension kept him in pain and she knew he held onto it tightly but pleasure was at war within five minutes. He was starting to sweat, to twist incrementally with each orbit within. She laved his testis, bit very gently up the shaft as arousal began. His foreskin retracted just enough to peek the slit through and she tongued the aperture, probing, felt the strength of the battle shift sides. She mouthed him as his erection filled, listening to a thousand laments hidden in his tone.

“Pain?” she asked when he was finally engorged.

“Yes.” He was clear enough to answer that simple question.

She loosened the cock ring by a single snap. His breaths were heavy as if he wrestled something she could not see. She considered that he probably was and drew figure eights on his prostate. He groaned, finally responsive, giving over to pleasure. She imagined the thousands of pictures he held mentally were catching fire at the edges, crisping, curling.

Three minutes passed. Marshall had picked up the rhythm between her finger and her mouth and his hips jerked between them. When she broke from fellatio to be attentive to his testicles, he spread his knees wide, overwhelmed with urgency. She gave him just enough stimulation to spiral his intensity tighter and tighter, but not enough to tip him into climax.

Eventually, the pictures themselves were alight. Photos of infants wailing, toddlers grappling for purchase to escape, and empty-eyed three-year-olds tied over a chair. Despondent four-year-olds who did as they were instructed. Lifeless Angel, a tiny body on an adult stretcher.

She kept him hung in ecstasy until every memory burned. Until he gave up ownership of things that did not belong to him, responsibility for things outside his control. Until there was nothing left, but thrilling pressure within and the heat of her mouth. She let him transition from miserable silence, to murmuring, to babbling, and then back to silence—pushed to extremis by the time another seven minutes had passed.

And when he finally was silent again, burned away and distilled to just himself, she gently withdrew from his body. He huffed a breath as if regretful and she swirled her tongue around the mushroom head of his cock to distractingly comfort him. She tasted the few droplets of his semen, found them odd but not unpleasant.

She remembered the first time she had done this to Marshall. He wasn’t used to fellatio to begin with and had never had a woman get a finger on his prostate before. He was troubled and anxious, intellectually struggling with submission issues and she let him wrestle them. That was a bad case involving a child as well and she recalled every jerk of his hips and frantic muttering. It took nearly forty minutes to break him down out of his illogical guilt about the case and into freedom.

Damaged, for sure, but she was used to it.

She loosened the cock ring another notch to let him climax more easily, slid up and settled onto his hardness. He jackknifed and stabbed deep, hands on her hips. She knew the exact rhythm he liked, but had to calm his frantic instincts down with kisses to get to it. The slow tempo lured her body. He suckled at her breasts, and she encouraged, offering first one and then the other.

“I’m close,” he warned, responsive to her methodical grinding. “It’s been too long and I’m … I can’t…”

She kissed him to silence, explored his teeth with her tongue, sucked his in suggestively. He snapped his hips harder, enticed; building quickly to the threshold he could not turn back from. He stuttered low groans as he climaxed, knees wide, pressing deep; a longer and more profound orgasm because of the preceding prostate massage. She kept the same steady roll with her hips, but knew his ecstasy was not enough to drag her along with him. She would go without release this encounter.

She kept score. He owed her. She made sure he knew he owed her when she unsnapped the cock ring and tossed it aside.

“Sleep first,” he said, “then you can make me pay.”

“I have enough evidence to make you pay for the next thirty years, Marshall,” she said thoughtfully.

“I suppose I’d better get to it, then.”

She leaned over his face, said very gently, “Don’t ever stop being you. Your tenderness, your ability to care, your ownership of other people’s pain. On the day you’re indifferent to all of that—you need to put down this badge and walk away.” She watched his eyes and saw the tears, but knew the misery had been purged out of him. He might still weep—but there was no arsenal to fuel it for long anymore. “Don’t ever change from the emotionally sensitive man that you are.”

“It hurts me,” he whispered. “These assignments hurt me so badly. How can you not agonize over them like I do?”

“Because,” fingers on his face, “you agonize enough for both of us. When you can’t care anymore, then we both have to quit.” Very serious. “I can be me if you can be you.”

He watched her face, said slowly, “You know I’ll always help you. Even when you make me go where I don’t want to go just because you want me there.”

“I know.” She was very calm. “Which is why I can have a baby and do the one thing I’m too scared to do without you.”

He laid a palm over her lower belly.

“Does this mean we’re done with being part-time lovers, this every once in a while stuff? Can we … sleep together all the time?”

“Yes. Stan will knuckle our heads and we’ll have to negotiate like crazy to stay partners, but we’re done with sidling around with sex.” She smiled. “The clock is ticking on having child and everything else will just have to adjust to what we want.”

He slid his fingers downward, felt tenderly through her tissues to the slick of his seed.

“A baby,” he whispered. “I’m going to be rabid after you until you’re pregnant you know, just like a stallion at stud.”

She sniggered and stretched, eyed him roguishly.

“Counting on that. I’ve kept score.”

~finis~

Information that I didn't want to look up, but was forced to because of Marshall's need to be accurate: There are approximately 150 kids molested in a lifetime by a pedophile. That number reduces to 65, if they are caught and incarcerated. By the time of entry to treatment, nonincestuous pedophiles who molest boys have committed an average of 282 offenses against 150 different victims.

Done, thank God!
*vacuums brain*
*washes with bleach*
*sets up new furniture*