Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had been five years since Tim Bradford had seen Lucy Chen, but it didn't stop him from thinking about her all the time. Little things like when he got coffee from that place she liked by Mid-Wilshire and the drive thru lady asked if he wanted to try their new overly-complicated drink. When he took Kojo hiking anywhere. Hell, even turning on the A/C in his shop reminded him of her. 

One day she'd been there and then she just...wasn't. It was like Isabelle but worse. They'd barely made a start, hadn't even defined anything yet. Lucy had gone into the UC program as soon as she was eligible. Tim was, understandably, upset. He'd lost his wife to it, and, even though his brain reminded him that it wasn't true, that he'd lost Isabelle to her addiction, he couldn't help but be scared he was going to lose Lucy because of undercover work too. He knew she was competent - hell she was the best rookie that he ever trained, though he hated to admit it to her- but it didn't quell the fear when she walked out the door. 

But that was nothing compared to the terror he felt when she didn't walk back through it. Tim could remember that day like it was yesterday. September 23, 2021. Lucy had been on a UC mission down in San Diego, working to bust a drug ring that was smuggling cocaine in through Tijuana and up to Los Angeles. She was scheduled to be back the evening before, but he knew that sometimes things went awry, so he pushed down his panic and went about patrol like usual. He'd finally gotten a new boot, after Barnes' premature departure, and if he was a little too tough on the guy that day the boot wouldn't know the difference. The kid was green as an unripe banana, and Tim frequently worried he'd get them both killed. 

But when she still hadn't shown up two days later, Tim was legitimately worried. He knew he couldn't contact her, that doing so could get her hurt or worse.

So he'd gone to Grey. He'd sat in his office for twenty minutes, arguing that Wade needed to reach out to Lucy's handler, find out if something was wrong. But Grey looked at him with a grave face and told him he didn't need to do that. Chen had gone missing the week before. They were still looking, but at this point she was presumed dead. Tim sobbed in the Sergeant's office. 

And that was 5 years ago tomorrow. It took over a year before Kujo stopped laying by the door, waiting for Lucy to come home. It took longer for Tim to even feel some semblance of balance again.

The Department, the DEA and the FBI spent a scant six months tracking leads, all of which eventually led nowhere. After they shelved it, Tim scoured every case file backwards and forwards trying to find something they’d missed. He’d looked for Lucy for far longer than was healthy, refusing to listen that she just wasn’t coming back. It took Angela staging an intervention, insisting that Chen wouldn’t want him to throw away his career, his life, for him to drop it.

It didn't stop Tim from thinking he saw her everywhere he went. It was worse this time of year, the anniversary subliminally bringing back the wound and picking the almost healed scab right back off. At least he'd stopped accosting women (and at least one man, who'd been understandably confused when Tim had shaken his shoulder in Trader Joe’s) who he thought were Lucy. Nowadays he saw them, acknowledged it was his subconscious missing her, and moved on with his day. So as he walked up the steps to his office and glanced over at the Mid Wilshire reception area, Tim didn't think anything of the girl, other than "damn, she looks like a baby Chen."

And then 15 minutes later, he was paged to the front desk.

Chapter Text

He heard her voice before he saw her again. Tim came around the corner into reception to see why the boot manning the front desk had paged him downstairs. The young man was leaning back in the chair, his feet casually propped up on the corner of the desk. Fuck, this crop of boots was terrible.

“Leland. You want to run behind your shop for the next three shifts? Get your feet off the damn desk.” Tim shoved his feet to the floor and crossed his arms over his chest. Boot better have a good reason for dragging him down here. “You paged?”

“Yeah, Sarge. Kid here,” he gestured his thumb to the other side of the desk, “keeps asking for you. Doesn’t know you're a Sargent. Won’t tell me what it’s about.” 

“I tolds you what my mommy said. I’m s’posed to ask for Tim Bradford. He’s a police officer here.” Tim leaned forward in the direction of the voice, finding a little girl, no older than four or five, peering up at them from in front of the desk. He could see her little fingers gripping the countertop to pull herself up. Leland needed some fucking customer service training too. He hadn’t even bothered to get up from behind the desk to help a little kid.

He glared at Leland, making a mental note to tell his TO he really ought to get a refresher on the DEAR method next shift. Stepping around the desk, Tim crouched down in front of the little girl. It was the same girl who had caused him to do a double take when he'd walked through reception earlier.

She let go of the desk and lowered down from her tiptoes, pivoting to look at him. The green backpack that was way too big for her small body pulled her backwards as she moved. Tim grabbed her elbow to steady her.

She squinted at the name badge on his uniform, pointing at it as she sounded out his name. “Buh-rah-duh. And Ford, like the car ! I remember that part! Are you who mommy told me to find?"

“Yep, that's my name. Who’s your mommy? Do you know where she is?”

“She’s my mommy,” the little girl told him, giving him a “duh” look. Reuniting the pair would be remarkably difficult if the kid couldn't give them anything to go on.

“Gotcha, your mommy. Do you have anything from her? Like a letter or something? Do you know your address?”

“We lived at our house, but then Mommy said we had to go. Before the bad people came back,” she said, her voice getting small and scared. She clutched a stuffed dog to her chest. "She said she had to go to work, and I needed to come here 'cause it was safer."

“Well you found me, and you’re safe here,” Tim told her.

“Do you want me to help watch her, Sarge?”

“No, you need to man the front desk like you were assigned today, Leland. I’ll take her to my office until DCFS gets here. You can make that call, can’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” he nodded sharply, reaching for the phone. 

"Alright, we're going to go hang out in my office for a little while. Is that okay?" 

The little girl shrughed. “Ok.” Tim started walking away from reception and towards the bullpen, checking over his shoulder to see if she was following him. 

Tim realized he was alone on the stairs and turned around to find her standing at the bottom, her eyes wide in fear as she looked at the stairs.

“C’mon, kid,” Tim encouraged. She shook her head vehemently. He sighed. This was really taking away from his paperwork time. if he had to play babysitter, he was going to have to stay a couple extra hours at least. Tim made a mental note to see if someone could let the dog out. He walked back down the steps and crouched back down to her eye level.

“What? You don’t do stairs?”

She shook her head again and pointed at the backless stairs that bifurcated the room. “But they’re scary stairs.” 

“Oh gee z .  All right. How about I carry you up them, huh?” She gave a small nod and reached her arms up to him, the floppy dog still clutched in her right hand. Tim hoisted her onto his hip and wrapped an arm around her back to hold her steady as he climbed. Her backpack laid heavy on his arm and he wondered what all she had in it.

“Looking good there, Dadford !” The heckle c ame from somewhere down in the bullpen. Tim rolled his eyes and he refused to rise to it. He carried the girl all the way into his office before he set her down on the floor. Tim pointed to the small loveseat that sat against the wall and snagged a legal pad off his desk. 

"Okay, I'm going to ask you a few more questions to see if we can help find your mommy, okay?" The little girl nodded solemnly.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Delilah. You're Tim Bradford."

"That's right, good job. Do you know your last name?"

"L-I-M. Mommy just taught me how to spell it," she said proudly. Tim scratched her answers down on the pad. Definitely something to go on. And proof he was having another bad day and projecting when he thought this kid looked like Chen.

“How did you get to the police station?”

“I tooked the bus. Mommy gave me three whole dollars, and a note to give to the bus driver. I think it said something about how to get here,” she shrugged, “but I just started to read, so I don’t know.” That was a possible lead. Four different bus lines stopped in front of Mid-Wilshire, so maybe the kid was from near one of them. On the other hand, her mom could have driven to a bus line and dropped her off.

“That’s very brave. You came all the way here by yourself. I've got one more for now. Do you remember anything else about where you live? Did you and your mommy walk to the bus or drive?”

"That's two questions. You said only one more." Delilah fixed him with a look. Tim laughed. What a smart kid.

"You're right. That is two questions. But it would be super helpful if you could answer them both." 

She scrunched her face up in concentration before nodding. "We walked to the bus. I remember there was a biiiig sign." She stretched her arms out wide, clearly to demonstrate how large she thought the sign was. "For the burger place."

"The burger place?"

"The one with the crazy fries! Do you have snacks? I'm hungry." Maybe she meant animal fries at In-and-Out? There were probably tons in the whole county area, but at least they could maybe check pod footage. 

"I can definitely go find us some snacks." How else could he occupy her until DCFS came? He dug through his top desk drawer and pulled out a few colored highlighters and a red sharpie. It would probably be hard to color on the soft couch, so he glanced around the room and spotted the lid from the paper carton. Maybe that would work as a lap desk. Grabbing a few sheets of copy paper out of his printer, he offered it all to her. She instantly took the cap off the pink marker and started scribbling on the paper. Ok, success.

"You alright coloring for a few minutes, kid? I gotta go downstairs to look for...our snacks." Tim needed to pass along the further details she'd provided, but didn't want to share in front of her.

The girl barely looked up from his highlighters.

"I guess that's a yes then." At the last second, he pulled the blinds closed. He didn't need anyone seeing her in his office and heckling him more than they already would. 

Downstairs, Tim used one of the desks in the bullpen to call over to LA CLEAR to start a check on the pod footage outside the station and at bus stops adjacent to In-and-Out Burgers, then stood in front of the snack machine pondering what kind of snacks four year olds eat. He vaguely remembered Ang's kid eating cheese crackers the other day, or maybe he ate anything besides cheese crackers? He racked his brain trying to remember.

"I'd say go with the fruit snacks. Can't ever go wrong with fruit snacks. "

Tim turned and Nyla was leaning against the pop machine next to him, her eyebrows raised and her usual smirk on her face. Tim pressed B14, and they both watched the snack fall down to the bottom.

"Thanks. I'm a little in over my head upstairs."

"Tough Tim Bradford. Can handle hostage standoffs, but can't handle a little kid."

"Whatever. I have practice with those. This is out of my wheelhouse."

"You'll get the hang of it."

"Hopefully not. DCFS is supposed to be here soon to get her."

Nyla snorted. "Good luck with that. Last week when I picked up a second shift, we had a kid that had to wait 18 hours to get a placement. Damn near took her home myself." Tim imagined the tiny foster kid he'd heard about last week - 7 months old, left behind by both her tweaker parents when they left to score coke - and imagined Nyla with a baby. As long as he'd known her, Nyla had been a mom, but she'd been the mom of a relatively big kid. Tim had once imagined having a child so small, but all those hopes vanished long ago. 

"You're heading back out? You sure you don't want to babysit?"

"I have to do that enough with the drunk and disorderlies."

"That you do."

Tim tossed the bag of fruit snacks up in the air and caught them, turning back to the machine to get a snack for himself. He tapped his credit card against the glass as he thought over the options. If he was going to have to deal with a kid for the rest of shift, and probably longer, he deserved a reward.

Deciding on a bag of cheese crackers for himself, Tim quickly swiped the car and punched in the correct numbers. He'd probably left the kid alone long enough. With his luck she was probably coloring all over his daily reports

He made quick work of the stairs, taking them two at a time. But the sight he arrived to made him freeze in place. The little girl - Delilah, he reminded himself - who had been clean just minutes before, was now a rainbow of neon highlighter and red permanent marker. 

Shit. 

Noticing him in the doorway, she smiled brightly up at him. "Hi Mr. Tim! I drawed myself tattoos!" She said, proudly. 

Tim's eyebrows raised towards his hairline as he pretended to be impressed. "I see that. They're very...colorful. How about we keep the markers on the paper, okay?"

He was just about to pick up the phone to call Angela and ask what to do with a marker-covered kid when the intercom on his desk buzzed.

"Hey, Sarge?" A peek back across his desk showed Delilah had thankfully resumed drawing on paper instead of her arms.

"WHAT?" Tim barked into the intercom. 

"Uh...I have DCFS on the phone for you?"

"Is that a question?"

"No, Sir. DCFS is on park 3 for you." 

"Thank goodness," Tim mumbled under his breath as he pressed the blinking line. 

"This is Sergeant Bradford."

"Sergeant, this is Eliza Doolin from DCFS. How are you this afternoon?"

"I'm peachy," he felt himself rolling his eyes. "What's the word on our unaccompanied minor? She's no longer a Jane Doe. She told us her name is Delilah Lim."

"Yes, your officer relayed that to me earlier. Unfortunately I have some bad news. We've been unable to locate a foster placement on this short of notice. If you'll just keep her there until morning, we should be able to have a placement for her."

"You want a four year old to stay at a police station? Overnight? What? You want me to put her in the drunk tank for the night?"

"Obviously not, Sergeant, but I'm afraid we don't have any other options than for her to stay at the station."

"Yes you do. It's been a while, but I'm still registered as a foster parent with Los Angeles County. I'll take her home." 

"We prefer to not leave minors in the care of single male adults."

"Yeah, I remember that preference well. Except it's in the best interest of this child to go have a nice warm dinner, instead of vending machine food, and a bed to sleep on, rather than on a bench."

"We'll allow it, just this once. I'll be in touch tomorrow, if we identify family members or once we establish a placement for her. Thank you for your help on this matter, Sergeant Bradford," the social worker said before ending the call. 

"Damnit." Tim muttered under his breath as he hung up the phone. 

"That's a bad word. You're not s'posed to say bad words."

"Sorry, kid.” How could they be so slammed that they couldn't find room for one tiny four year old. He still couldn't believe she'd had the gall to suggest they keep her at the station until an emergency foster family could be found. 

"I guess you're coming home with me tonight."

Chapter Text

Given her earlier freak out, Tim picked the kid up and carried her down the staircase. Unfortunately at the bottom, she wouldn't let go, so he started trudging to his car with her in his arms, skipping changing out in the locker room altogether. He was nearly to the car when he realized that he didn't have a car seat or any other kid stuff he might need. If he was taking her home, he at least needed to make sure she was safe in the car. 

Tim left the garage and swung by the station's small impound lot. A portly second watch officer by the name of Martinez was manning the post.

"Hey, Eric," he greeted him, hiking Delilah back up onto his hip. "Do we got any car seats you can spare?" He nodded his head towards her.

"Sure, Sarge. Some minivan actually got towed in here this afternoon. It's evidence, but, I, uh, know you need to review it fo r the case," Martinez stressed the words, handing Tim a clipboard to sign the evidence out of holding. He leaned in to whisper, "Heard all about your day, Dad. You'll bring it back, yeah?"

Tim nodded. He knew he wasn't supposed to take things out of holding, but how else was he supposed to get this kid home? It's not as if she was staying long anyway - he'd get the car seat back before any red flags were raised. 

Of course, that meant he couldn't ask for help installing the damn thing. Delilah stood on the concrete next to his truck as he tried to install the car seat in the backseat. The little girl was definitely judging him for the terrible job he was doing. 

"Are you sure you're doing it right?" No, he was not sure he was doing it right.

"That's not how Mommy puts it in our car."

"Oh yeah?" After missing his lunch and only having those cheese crackers, Tim was frustrated and didn't particularly need a four year old telling him how to do something. 

"Yeah, she does it like…" Suddenly the little girl climbed up into the backseat, muscled past him, and started bossing him around.

“You put this part there,” Tim moved the base how she directed. “No, there.” He moved it again. “And then this part goes like this.” He knew she was referring to the seatbelt, but she moved her arms in a waving motion that he could not hope to interpret. When he stood there staring dumbly at her, she gave an exasperated sigh and took the buckle out of his hands. She weaved the seatbelt through the car seat, but couldn’t get the buckle to close.

Tim reached over the car seat and used one hand to click it together. “Thanks, kid.”

Their ride to his house was brief, and he helped Delilah down from the truck once they arrived.

Kojo barked excitedly as they walked in the door, thrilled to see Tim after the long day. Thankfully he had been able to get someone to let him out, but Kojo was still jumping up and down at the sight of his owner. His enthusiasm always brought Tim joy too. 

Delilah plastered herself to the back of Tim's leg as soon as she saw the dog. He could feel her little fingers gripping the stiff material of his uniform pants.

"Kojo, sit." The dog immediately parked himself in front of Tim. He took a large step back, something made considerably difficult by the child clinging to his leg. 

Tim squatted down next to her and stuck his hand out towards the dog.

"This is my dog. Kojo, release," he commanded and the dog scampered over to the two humans to say hello, much more calm than he'd been than when they'd originally walked through the door. He scratched behind the dog's ears and Kojo's tail started wagging.

"Do you want to give him a pet too? I promise he's nice." She gave an almost imperceptible nod and tentatively lifted her hand towards the dog's head. As her fingers made contact, Kojo turned and licked the side of her face in excitement. Delilah giggled.

"See, he likes you!"

"What's his name?"

"This is Kojo." Tim heard her whisper the dog's name to herself quietly. "Do you want to play fetch with him while I get changed?"

She looked hesitant, so Tim tossed the ball a few times, demonstrating how to play. Eventually she got it, though her throws were significantly shorter than his own. Kojo didn't care, energetically chasing after the tennis ball again and again. Tim slipped away to his bedroom and changed into a t-shirt and jeans, listening to her giggles mixing with the dog’s short barks of excitement. 

Tim was washing up in the hallway bathroom when he felt a tug on the leg of his jeans and looked down.

"I'm hungry," the girl announced. 

“Okay, what do you want to eat for dinner?”

“I dunno.” Tim walked down the hall and opened his fridge to survey their choices. He had been planning to grill this weekend, so he had a couple steaks and portobello mushrooms. Besides two six-packs of craft beer, a couple of slices of American cheese in the drawer, and a door full of condiments, the fridge was otherwise empty. The freezer was similarly bare, save for what looked like a freezer burned loaf of bread, a half-full bottle of vodka, and some physical therapy ice packs. 

"Steak it is," he muttered to himself. “How about steak? I'll, uh, cut it up into little pieces for you." He figured little kids were picky and she wouldn't eat the mushrooms, but he'd make them for himself at least.

"I don't think I've ever had dat, but okay." She shrugged her shoulders. 

Tim got her set up in front of the tv while he started their dinner. Some cartoon he’d never heard of, but she seemed riveted by. He quickly realized he'd not yet bought a new propane tank, so instead he went about heating up his cast iron pan to sear the meat. 

Once everything was done, he got Delilah set up at the table. She was short enough that Tim had to macgyver a booster seat for her out of couch pillows duct taped to the chair. 

"Is that meat? My mommy says we don't eat meat." Delilah poked at her plate with the fork. Oh lord. What in the world was he going to feed her if she refused to eat the steak?

"But what are those?" She asked, eyeing the mushrooms Tim had placed on his own plate. "Those smell yummy!"

While the little girl happily chomped away on all of Tim's mushrooms, he slipped into the living room to call the first person he could think that might help.

“Lopez, thank god," he said when the call connected and Angela picked up. "I don’t know what I’m doing.” He held the phone to his ear.

"Hello to you too, Tim. Is this about your new kiddo?"

"Not my kid. DCFS just couldn't get their shit together in time to place her tonight and they wanted us to keep her in the station overnight."

"Tim Bradford to the rescue. Just can't help but save pretty Asian ladies in distress." The teasing in her voice was evident. He knew she was referencing Lucy, but he couldn't take the reminder that he had ultimately failed her. Five years had gone by, but it was still too fresh.

"Not funny. How the hell did you know I had her, let alone the fact the kid is Asian, anyways?" He knew she couldn't see him, but he used his best TO voice to try to bring her back on track. Angela had the day off today, so he had no idea how she knew about the kid.

"Oh, you know. Telegraph, telephone, tell a city worker. I heard all about Sergeant Dadford from Nyla."

"I don't know why everyone is making this into a huge deal. I'm just keeping her from being stuck at the station. DCFS will get her tomorrow. It's like when I took in Tamara."

"You took in Tamara for a week and it turned into a permanent placement. And she was basically already grown. Situations are vastly different."

"Fine. Agree to disagree. I've figured out how to feed her. Angela, what do I do now with this kid?"

“Jesus, you're just feeding her now? It's almost ten.” There was a long pause, and Angela sighed. “It’s called being a parent, Tim. Spoiler alert, none of us know what we’re doing.”

“We waited for DCFS for a ridiculous amount of time before I was able to convince them to let me take her home. Seriously, Ang, you gotta help me out here.”

“Tim, you’ve babysat for me before. You’re not incompetent.”

“That was only twice, and I didn’t have to do any of this feeding or bathing. She's covered in marker. And you have a boy ! Wh at do I do with a girl?”

“You want girl advice? Call Nyla. You’ll figure it out. Every parent does, foster or otherwise. Bathe her, or don't. Her new foster will do it tomorrow if you don't." For some reason something inside Tim chafed at the thought that she would likely move to a different placement tomorrow.

"Now I'm going back to bed, because Wes has court at 7:45 and I have a five year old who doesn't understand the concept of sleeping in. You should go to sleep too, because I doubt your new four year old does either.”

"She's not my…"

The call disconnected before he could finish his sentence and Tim stood staring at his phone. A small voice from the kitchen pulled him back to the present.

"Mr. Tim? My hands are sticky!"

Her hands and face were somehow covered in the buttery glaze, even though he knew he'd given her silverware. With a sigh, he shuffled her off to the bathroom and helped her wash her face and hands, before tucking her and the ratty stuffed dog into his guest bed. He prayed the marker she was still covered in wouldn't stain his sheets. 

Deciding to heed Angela's advice, he let Kojo out once more, and headed to bed himself, hoping it wouldn't be as early of a morning as she suggested.

Chapter Text

Tim couldn't initially say what ripped him from sleep. It took him a minute to realize that something was wrong with the kid. Her incessant cries had woken the dog, whose sharp, panicked barks were something Tim had never heard in the nearly 7 years he'd owned him. 

Tim careened from his room into the guest bedroom and found Delilah clutching her stuffed animal and sobbing, Kojo anxiously looking on from the foot of the bed.

"Hey kiddo, what's wrong?' Tim leaned awkwardly on the edge of the bed, not sure how to console her. 

"I was dreaming that I was on a, a, a roller thing with Mommy, and den it was on fire. And she helped me get out of my seatbelt. But then we were at our house, and it was on fire too. And Mommy told me to get my stuff, but I couldn't find Dax, and den I woke up." 

"It was so scary," he suddenly had an armful of kid, Her little body shaking against his chest with her cries. 

He wasn't sure that anything he said would comfort her, so he simply rocked them back and forth, humming a mindless tune. Eventually she fell asleep, and Tim eased Delilah back to bed. Kojo curled back up on the foot of the bed.

Wide awake, Tim walked back to the kitchen, grabbed a beer from the fridge and popped it open. He took a long swig and surveyed his house.

Somehow this small person had totally trashed his living room. Most of the cushions were off his couch, every single dog toy strewn about the floor, and the meager contents of her backpack spilled all over the coffee table. How someone so small could leave so much debris behind was beyond him. 

Gripping the neck of the beer, Tim slowly began to put the room in order again, lifting couch cushions back into place one handed as he took pulls from the brown bottle. 

Tim grabbed the small backpack and started reloading it with the few shirts, pants, and toys she came with when he felt something at the bottom of the bag. 

He pulled the t-shirts he'd just folded back out and looked in the empty bag. Frowning, he massaged the bottom, feeling something flat and crinkly inside, almost like the filling of one of Kojo’s dog toys and something small and firm, like a rock stuck inside. Maybe the backpack was just crappily made? Another check inside proved it empty, but the idea that something wasn’t right irked him. Like a hangnail that he couldn’t help but pick.

Flipping over the bag, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Looking inside again, he barely noticed a loose thread the color of which didn’t quite match the backpack. Pulling at it, the thread began to unravel, revealing a hidden compartment sewn into the bottom of her backpack. 

Had whoever put the little girl on that bus had purposefully hid something in the bottom of her bag? Maybe it held clues to Delilah's family? He could only hope. 

The person who added this false lining to Delilah’s backpack had been very skilled. The stitches, except for that loose one, looked basically identical to the rest of the stitches in the bag. If not for the kid causing a ruckus in his living room, he might not have found any more clues on her situation.

Inside the bag bottom there were a couple of loose papers. Opening the bag further, what he thought was a rock proved to be a small flash drive. He flipped through the documents, praying he’d find something that would help. After nearly two decades of police work, he’d known better than to jinx himself. And yet he still hoped for an easy lead.

The first paper was Delilah's birth certificate, listing her DOB ( December 1, 2022), her parents (an Elizabeth Wong and a Nathan Lim), and her birthplace (Seattle, Washington). Okay, this was something to go on!

He flipped to the next file, another copy of her birth certificate, and felt his eyes grow as wide as saucers. 

With the papers in his left hand, Tim used his other to rub his temple, feeling a headache coming on. The things he read...they couldn't be real, could they? He wanted to call someone - Angela, Grey, he didn't know who - but it was 2 AM. Resigning himself to reaching out first thing in the morning, he folded the papers back up. He pocketed the flash drive, planning to investigate its contents when he'd had more sleep.

He peeked back into the guest bedroom, staring at Delilah and Kojo for a few minutes, both now sleeping peacefully, before he made his way back to his bedroom. It took a long time for sleep to come.

Tim stretched languidly in bed when he woke up the next morning. He lived for lazy mornings in bed, something few and far between with Kojo usually wanting to go out promptly. Especially when they coincided with his days off. And then his brain woke up enough that he remembered bringing Delilah home last night.

He darted out of bed and down the hall, scared that the silence he heard meant something was terribly wrong. The scene he found instead was Delilah eating cereal from the box, hand feeding Kojo in between her own bites.

Before he could correct her for slowly unraveling all of his dog’s training, the phone in his hand rang, pulling his attention away from the kid. He shook his head.

The number wasn’t one Tim recognized, but it was a 213 number. He swiped to answer it.

“This is Tim.”

“Mr. Bradford, this is Eliza Doolin from DCFS. How did last night go?”

If there was one thing that Tim had learned, it was to not show weakness, not to his dad, not to insurgents, not to criminals, not even to basketball opponents. And apparently now social workers. He chose to give her the barest bones summary of their evening. “It was fine.” After all, the kid was alive, fed, and happily throwing pieces of cereal to the dog. Just because she woke up with a night terror and was covered in Sharpie, it didn't mean he was failing. At least she was safe. 

“Glad to hear it. Listen, we’ve just about found a placement for her…”

Tim cut off the social worker. “I’ll keep her.”

The frustration was evident in Doolin’s voice. “Mr. Bradford, you haven’t accepted an active foster case since 2022. And after reading your file, I hardly think these cases are equivalent enough that you have the skills to succeed here.”

“Look, I know I'm an unorthodox placement."

“And I agree, which is exactly why…”

He knew she was just doing her job but he knew he needed to do right by Delilah. He had to convince her. He interrupted again, "Listen, she’s a good kid. She doesn’t deserve to be bounced around."

Her sigh and long pause left Tim anxiously awaiting her next words. What would he do if she turned him down? 

"Alright, you can serve as an emergency placement, pending our search for a permanent solution."

A few more minutes and he'd coordinated for the social worker to come out for a site visit on tomorrow. He'd definitely have to do some shopping, but in the meantime Tim realized needed some major help. 

Tim loaded Delilah into the car seat after breakfast. He needed to talk to someone about this whole situation, and it couldn't be over the phone. 

He drove to Angela and Wes's house on autopilot, peeking at Delilah in the rearview mirror every few minutes. He really needed to buy a real car seat if he was going to be keeping her for a while. Their house was in a far more upscale neighborhood than Tim's small bungalow. Delilah commented on all the arrogant opulence as they drove past, though her tone held far more wonder than Tim's thoughts ever had since he'd first visited their new house almost four years ago. He wondered the kind of place that she grew up in.

From her vantage point in the backseat of the truck, she was high enough to see into most people's backyards, and seemed very enamored with the expensive toys people had.

"Woah, that one has the most biggest swimming pool! Did you see it?" She exclaimed. Tim glanced back at her in the rear view mirror and saw her face and little palms pressed up against the glass. 

"Sure did, kiddo. You ever go swimming with your mom?" He tried to make his questioning nonchalant. Any more information he could get out of her could be a lead towards finding where she came from.

"We went to the beach sometimes. I don't like the cold water. Mommy said I was s'posed to take swimming lessons soon, but then we had to run from the bad guys."

"Oh yeah? Was the beach close to your house?"

"No it was far. We had to sit in the car forever ," she emphasized with an exasperated sigh. Tim's brow furrowed as he contemplated that as a possible lead. Forever to a four year old could be ten minutes or an hour. At least it could hopefully rule out places like Long Beach or Santa Monica.

"A car, huh? Was it a big truck like this one?" The girl had been in awe of how large his truck was when she first saw it, so he doubted it.

"No, it was little. And blue! Blue is my favorite color! What's your favorite color?" That didn't narrow things down much, but it was a lead. 

"Mine is red."

Delilah had already unbuckled herself and was patiently waiting for Tim to open the door. He was pretty impressed by how self-sufficient she was. Either whoever had been raising her had taught her well or she'd been forced to learn independence out of necessity. Tim hoped it wasn't the latter.

"Whose house is dis? It's way fancier than yours." He chuckled at her bluntness as he lifted her down to the ground. Their house was a good bit larger than his own, but smaller than it could have been, in light of Wes's upbringing.

"This is my best friend's house. Do you have a best friend?" Maybe finding someone who knew the duo would help in finding them.

"Mommy's my best friend. And now JoJo."

"Kojo," Tim gently corrected. Okay, so that was a dead end, but it was pretty cute that she considered his dog, who she'd met not 12 hours before, her new best friend.

"Kojo," she whispered to herself, slipping her small hand into Tim's on the walk up the driveway. He smiled down at her as he pressed the doorbell.

"Wasn't I just talking to you?" was Angela’s snarky greeting as she answered her front door. "Didn't get enough top parenting tips?"

Though they'd walked in side by side, Delilah suddenly became very shy, hiding her face in the side of Tim's leg. 

"Delilah, you want to say hi?" He felt his leg shake ever so slightly as she shook her head no. He cataloged the behavior in his mind. She'd been rather brave at Midwilshire, giving that boot a good bit of attitude, and very outgoing towards him. But uncertainty clearly made her nervous. 

Tim reached down and lifted her onto his hip. 

"Angela, I'd like you to meet Delilah Lim. Delilah, this is my best friend, Angela Lopez. She works at the police station with me." 

"Hi there," Angela's soft smile melted even the toughest witnesses into submission, and it worked on Delilah too. “Delilah’s a big name! Can I call you Dee?”

"Hi," the little girl breathed softly as she nodded into Tim’s shoulder. “My mommy calls me that sometimes.”

"Well it's nice to meet you. I've heard a lot about you! I swear, you look just like…" Tim cut her off before she could continue.

"Lopez," the use of her surname snapped her attention to Tim and made her suddenly serious. He shook his head twice and Angela thankfully ceased that train of thought. She leaned on Tim's opposite shoulder from Dee, turning the girl's attention to the Evers' cat Snowball, who was sunning herself in the front window.

"I heard you like dogs. Do you like cats too? My kitty is over there in the window and she's super fluffy and nice, if you want to go and pet her." The child nodded and Tim lowered her down so she could run off to pet the cat.

Angela waited until she was out of earshot before speaking. "Jesus, that kid looks like Chen."

Tim shot her a look. 

"What? I can't even say her name now? You told me you've been working on moving on with your therapist. Tim, I don't want you going down that black hole again. It's not like she's actually Chen's kid," she said, flippantly. Tim stared straight at her. 

"You're kidding me. You're saying that you think that little girl belongs to Lucy Chen? Who died five years ago?"

"I don't know what to tell you, Angela. I'm not even sure I believe it myself, but it seems like it's true." 

"What evidence do you have, other than she looks kind of like her? Though the resemblance is kinda spooky. My mom always does says, ‘ Todo el mundo tiene un gemelo,’ but she doesn’t mean that so literally…”

He raised a hand to silence his friend’s rambling, slipping his hand into his back pocket and pulling out the piece of paper he’d brought from home. He looked over his shoulder at Dee- who was busy petting Lopez’s cat in the living room - before placing the paper on the entryway table and sliding it towards Angela. He nodded at it, indicating that she should pick it up.

"Holy shit, Tim. Is this what I think this is?" Angela was holding a Los Angeles County birth certificate, dated March 19, 2022 documenting the birth of one Delilah Chen. It clearly listed both her parents - Lucille Chen and Timothy Bradford.

"I don't know. I found it in her backpack last night, alongside the other one." 

“The other one?”

“Yep there were two. I really don’t know what to think.” Angela flipped to the other birth certificate and inspected it. 

He slipped his hand into his front pocket and pulled out the flash drive, thumbing it.  "I also found this." He raised his hand up between them, drawing attention to the small plastic contraption.

"A flash drive? What's on it?"

"I haven't looked yet. The only papers in the false lining were her two birth certificates, so maybe it's some other paperwork that has to do with Dee? I was planning to look at it today."

"Look, this is huge. But I don't want you to get your hopes up. There's always the possibility that these are forged, or that they were planted. Say she's yours, there's nothing to say that Chen is still alive."

Delilah was the first shred of hope he had about Lucy in almost three years. He owed it to himself, to that little girl, to keep looking.

"I've got to at least try, okay? We didn’t stop looking when she was in the ground, did we?”

“Tim, this is different, and you know it.”

"What if this is real, Ang? And she's alive and she's in trouble. I've got to try."

"Then I'll help. We'll all help. Me, John, Nyla. You're not alone, Tim," she said, laying a hand on his forearm. 

“I need to go visit Grey. Can you watch her for a little while?" He knew that his former boss, while out of the force, knew just as much as he did about Lucy and her disappearance. He also had the time to kill and the skill to look into this off the record. 

"Of course. C'mon, Chiquita. Jack's in the backyard. We'll go play." Dee scampered into the entryway, instinctively understanding Angela’s nickname for her.

"Jax? Dat's the name of my puppy!" She exclaimed, lifting up the well-loved toy by the scruff of his neck. 

"I thought you said your dog was Dax." Tim could swear that's what she'd told him the night before.

Delilah looked up at Angela, as if to connect with the older woman. The exasperated roll of her eyes clearly said, Can you believe this guy ? 

"Mommy helped me name him. She said Jax was after the bravest person she ever knowed." Angela turned to Tim, her eyes widening in recognition and they shared a look over her head. Despite her son being named to honor her lost boot, they rarely spoke of his namesake anymore. They'd survived as a group through his funeral, but as time passed, and especially after Lucy's disappearance, they'd been distracted by other things. 

The reference, along with the blatant mannerisms that were all Lucy, made Tim realize then that there was no way these papers were faked. 

That little girl was his. 

Angela nodded sharply to him before smiling down at his daughter. 

"Tim and I knew Jax too, and your momma was right. He was the best. And you know what he loved so much?"

"What?"

"He loved playing in the backyard and eating ice cream. You want to go play in the backyard and have a popsicle with my son Jack while your," Tim gave her a sharp look as she caught herself, "while Tim has to run an errand?"

Delilah looked up at him for permission. He nodded. Angela reached out her hand and Delilah immediately took it. The pair disappeared through the kitchen and Tim stood still as he listened to Delilah chattering to his friend. 

Tim ran a hand down his face before heading out to the car. 

“Wow.”

Tim had shown up at his former commanding officer’s home and just dropped the bombshell that not only was Lucy Chen plausibly still alive, but he was, in all likelihood, a father to a four-year-old girl. 

“Yep.”

“I think I’m gonna need a drink for this. You want one?” His former mentor wandered over to the bar cart in the corner of the room and poured himself a few fingers of Glenfiddich. 

"Sure." Tim dropped onto the Greys' sofa and welcomed the tumbler of scotch when Wade pushed it into his hand. “Retirement’s got you all fancy now,” he said as he raised his glass towards the older man, before bringing it to his lips. The liquid burned a path down his throat and Tim welcomed the feeling. It distracted him from the waring parts of his brain - half elated that he was a father and at the possibility that Lucy might be alive, half terrified of the fallout his emotions would experience if this all proved to be untrue.

"I just don't know how I could have missed this. We spent months combing through her case." Tim had been racking his brain since zero dark thirty, trying to think through how it was even possible that Lucy might still be alive. He'd done the math and knew that it was absolutely plausible that Delilah was his daughter. 

“Honestly, nothing seemed suspicious at the time. We’ve had UCs go dark, but no one for as long as Chen. The evidence from her apartment was legit. I had no reason to suspect she was still alive.”

“Still, I should have felt that something wasn't right. I gave up too soon.” 

“Tim, you can't beat yourself up over this. You were falling into a black hole and Angela did the right thing by pulling you out of it. You can't change the past, but we can work together to find out what really happened. What've you got so far?"

Tim explained how he'd found the false bottom in Delilah's backpack, opening it to find not one but two birth certificates. That there'd been a flash drive, but Tim hadn't yet explored it. 

"You haven't looked at it yet?"

"No, I wanted to come to you because I trust where your interest lies in this case. If she really is my kid, and she’s in danger, I don’t want to show my hand too soon.”

“Tim, you know it pained me not to be able to bring Chen back. Especially after West.” Tim nodded, appreciating the sentiment. Silence sat between them, and Tim thought of how hard the immediate days and weeks after Chen’s supposed death felt to him, how his grief mirrored what he'd seen in Lucy and Angela only months before.

“Alright, let’s take a look,” the older man eventually said, leading Tim from the family room into his study.

Grey sat down in front of an older looking desktop computer. Tim crossed his arms and anxiously tapped his bicep as they waited for it to log in.

"Jesus, could this thing be any slower? Does it use carrier pigeons to send your emails?"

Wade shot an annoyed look his way, undoubtedly chafing at the suggestion he, or in this case his computer, was old. "Please. Like you're so tech savvy. I remember how old the computers at the station were."

The computer finally loaded and Grey plugged the flash drive in. There before them were hundreds of files, each detailed with year, month and date. Tim pointed at the screen and Grey clicked the first one. Tim nearly lost his breath. It was a snapshot of a handwritten note, meticulously written out of the back of what looked to be a receipt. 

After 13 months of seeing it on forms and reports he would recognize Lucy Chen's handwriting anywhere. 

The first files were dated before her disappearance and they spanned over a year before they stopped.

"These look like her case notes. Did she not turn these into her handler?" Grey questioned. Tim clicked through a few more at random, seeing similar images.

“If it’d help, I can take a first look through all these files. Report back anything valuable.” 

Tim’s stomach sank. His immediate thought was to rip the flash drive out of the computer and run home. The urge to pour over Lucy’s words, even if they were just case notes, was intense. 

"I’d rather…It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just...”

“I know. It’s Lucy. Just don’t get yourself in that black hole again.”

“It’s different this time.”

"Maybe it is. But, Tim, there could be any number of reasons she vanished. She was held hostage, witness protection. Hell she could have amnesia.”

"That's ridiculous. We are not living in a television drama. And besides, she told the kid to ask for me. She hasn't forgotten us."

"There's also a chance that it wasn't even her that dropped the girl off. I hate to say it, but she might very well be dead. But if she's really alive and in danger, a hasty choice could get her killed for real."

“I already called LA Clear this morning to see if they could search pod cameras for when Dee was dropped off. It’s a needle in a haystack, but the kid says she came on one bus to the station, and she boarded by a burger place? Or at least a billboard for one. I’m thinking it’s probably In-and-Out.”

“Tim, she’s, what? Four? Chances are she’s not a credible witness.”

“It’s the best lead I’ve got right now.”

“I’m not saying it’s not, but…”

Tim interrupted him. “Everything in me says we’ve got to follow this lead, Sarge.”

“Tim, I’m just trying to manage your expectations here.You need to wait for the footage before making any rash decisions. And do things by the book. No going rogue just to follow some crazy lead. You've got Delilah now. You've got to think of her.“ Grey was right - they'd both seen first hand how recklessly following leads in service of a personal agenda could ruin someone for good. 

Tim knew his former boss and mentor had a point. Even though he wanted to run in, guns blazing, and rescue Lucy, he didn't know the situation, nor did he even really know where she was.

“Tim Bradford, a dad, huh?”

“Fuck, you should see her mannerisms. She looks just like a baby Chen. Remember when she’d sass me back when she was a boot? Kid looked just like her yesterday when she was bossing me around, putting the car seat in.”

“Kids really are something. When she was little, Dominique decided she wanted to go live in the woods. When Luna asked her what she was doing, she offered for us to join her. Kid didn’t want to escape us, just wanted to live in a tree.”

The pair chatted for a few minutes, the older man offering Tim some advice regarding raising a preschooler. Besides stuff about language, his advice mostly consisted of keeping an eye on her, which Tim had already learned the hard way.

"You get back to your kid. Give me a shout if you want help with the files. I've got the time.”

Tim drove back to his friend's house with little clarity. He had a daughter, hundreds of files to look through and a potential missing persons case to solve, all of which he needed to keep under the radar. Not how he expected his weekend to turn out. 

Angela answered the door with a raised finger to her lips, indicating he should be quiet.

"She might look like Lucy. But when she's tired and cranky, she's 100% you. I put her and Jackson down for a nap about an hour ago."

"What’re you saying, lopez?" He crossed his arms, daring her to say whatever she was alluding to. He was pretty sure he'd been thinking the same thing, but part of him just thought his brain was still playing tricks on him.

"I'm saying you're a cranky old man, and that blue-eyed little girl has your mannerisms whens he’s tired." Tim sighed. 

"Alright, say you're right.” He still believed what he’d read, but his talk with Grey reminded him he needed to guard his emotions. That he’d seen too much for this to be a happy ending.

"I am right. Tim, she's definitely yours. I don't know what happened, or how she got here, but you're all she's got now." She laid a hand on his arm. "I know it hurts, the reminder of her. But doesn't the idea of having a little part of her seem better than the alternative?" Damn. Tim was reminded time and time again why he was lucky to have become best friends with Angela 

"Okay, kid," he said, gently shaking the girl's shoulder. She grumbled awake, and Tim had flashbacks to his childhood self. Yeah, no way she wasn't his. He reached down and picked her up, settling her in his arms before turning back to Angela.

"Thanks for watching her, Ang," he told her earnestly.

"It was no problem. She was a peach and she and Jack got along great. We'll cash in on your babysitting services sometime later. In the meantime, you should probably get some kid food and give this stinky one," she tickled Delilah's sides until the girl laughed, "a bath! Bye, Chiquita. We had fun playing with you!"

His daughter gave a sleepy wave over his shoulder at Angela as he carried her to the truck.

Chapter Text

Tim was antsy. Normally on a day off, he worked out or maybe grabbed a beer with friends. Now he had a four year old and nothing to do but wait until LA Clear got back the visuals he requested.

He precariously transferred a sleeping Delilah from his truck to the guest bed, where she napped for over an hour. Once she woke up, he decided they ought to pick up kid stuff from the store. Except he had no idea what “kid stuff” was. The stubborn part of him wanted to refuse to ask Angela for help, but he was so clueless where to start that he gave in and texted her from a stop light en route.

“You want to sit in the cart while we shop?” He gestured to the seat in the front of the cart as they stood in the entryway of the big box store closest to his house. 

“No, that’s for babies.”

“Ookay, then. Well, we’ve got a long list,” Tim gestured to the phone in his left hand, “so you gotta stick with me okay? No wandering off.”

He glanced down at the list on his phone. The list Angela had given him was filled with everything under the sun, plus her own editorializing: 

• Car seat

• Bed railing (unless you’re buying a kiddo bed?)

• Plastic bedsheet

• a coloring book and "washable" markers (heard around your incident 🤣) 

• Kid food (i.e. mac and cheese, string cheese, bunny crackers, Gogurt, juice boxes)

• baby wipes

• Baby sunscreen

• Hand sanitizer

• Hairbrush 

• Hair ties (YouTube how to do her hair, so she doesn't look like a trainwreck, k?)

• Kids toothbrush and paste

• Extra underwear

• Pajamas

• Get her more clothes!!!

The list went on and on, Tim scrolling through it while trying to make sense of everything she instructed him to buy. He’d knocked out major stuff like a car seat and railing before moving to the grocery items, where they were currently wandering the dry goods section.

“Can we get these?” Delilah asked. Tim could see her out of the corner of his eye, pulling something large off one of the lower shelves.

They’d been doing this song and dance through all of the grocery aisles, and honestly most of the rest of the store. He’d given in to her requested impulse purchases when they were in the produce aisle, because frankly he wasn’t sure what a vegetarian four year old ate. It was looking like this was going to be his most expensive grocery shopping trip in forever, and that was saying something since he regularly fed Kojo human food. He was sure half of it would spoil before they’d use it, but at least she seemed more excited about the cart full of veggie hot pockets, frozen veggies, and garlic bread than she did about his attempt at dinner yesterday. 

He went into the clothing section just about as blind. What did a four year old wear? He vaguely remembered what he wore as a kid (almost always baseball tees and blue jeans), and he guessed he saw Jack’s clothing, not that he normally paid what the kid was wearing any mind. And he’d certainly never been or dressed a four-year-old girl.

Thankfully, Delilah was just as opinionated when it came to clothes as she was while they shopped in the grocery section. 

He held up another pink t-shirt that read, “Cutie” with a slice of pie next to it. “What about this one?”

Delilah looked at him with disgust. “Why can’t I have the cool shirts?” He looked to where she was pointing. Over in the boys section was a rack of t-shirts emblazoned with animals and airplanes, while all the girls' clothes were cutesy, pastel things. He could hear an imaginary Lucy Chen monologue about gender-inclusivity when it came to clothes.

“Whatever shirts you want to get, kiddo.”  That was how Tim ended up with a pile of “cool shirts,” including a royal blue one with with astronaut playing soccer, a dark green one with a dinosaur skeleton (he was pretty sure that one was glow-in-the-dark), and orange shirt with a pizza made to look like a clock that read, “Pizza time is ALL the time.” She paired that with two pairs of leggings (one black, one with rainbows), a pair of purple khaki shorts, plus a swingy blue skirt with hearts all over it. It looked like chaos, but somehow all worked. Kid clearly didn't get fashion sense from him.

Twenty five minutes later, Tim's wallet was $400 lighter, and he pushed his cart out of the store. How could all this kids' crap be so expensive? 

One glance down at his receipt and Dee was somehow gone. He frantically glanced side to side and saw her walking confidently in the direction of where he had parked the truck.  Despite his annoyance that she had walked off without him, he felt pretty proud that the little girl remembered that detail. He started jogging towards her.

That was until, out of the corner of his eye, Tim was nearly paralyzed by a silver SUV that was cruising through the parking lot at a speed far too fast. 

Without a thought to his own safety, he took off running, snatching Delilah out of the path of the vehicle by what felt like only inches. Holding her tight to his chest, Tim slammed his hand into the hood of the SUV. The driver looked like he couldn’t be any older than a teenager. Stupid, stoner kid!

“You should fucking look where you’re going next time. Maybe you need a ticket to remind you how to drive?” He reached down to his waistband and flashed his badge. It was exactly the kind of thing that Wade had just reminded him not to do, but honestly his pulse felt like it was in his throat. How was it that he could keep his cool while chasing a suspect during a shoot out, but dealing with his own kid sent his blood pressure skyrocketing?

The kid frantically shook his head. "Sorry, man. I really didn't see her."

He looked down at Delilah, who seemed entirely nonplussed by the entire thing. Tim took a deep breath into his nose and pushed the air out of his mouth as hard as he could. Fuck that was terrifying.  

“Kiddo, you gotta stay with me in parking lots. It’s the same as inside. I can’t have you just wander off.” He tried for calm, but wasn’t sure he was pulling it off.

"Okay. Can we have Mac n Cheese for dinner?"

“Sure.” He was almost jealous of the relaxed question. It was as if she was entirely unphased by the whole incident. Honestly, after the stress of work and now finding Delilah, he could do with a little more childlike naivety in his life. 

They made it to the car quickly after that. Tim was pretty confident he was getting better at strapping her into the carseat, this time getting the buckle on only his second try. But for some reason, Delilah immediately started wailing.

“Oooow.”

“What? What’s wrong?!”

“Youuuuu got my leggg,” she sobbed, pointing down towards the clasp.

“Oh shit,” he muttered under his breath, releasing the buckle. “I’m sorry, kiddo.” He pulled her leg to the side to see a reddening welt on her thigh. He rubbed his thumb over it. Jesus, he was such a fuck up. First her almost getting creamed by traffic, now this.

“Here. Let’s buckle you back in extra careful and then we can put,” he leaned across her to rummage through the grocery bags, “we can put the dinosaurs on your leg to make it feel better, okay?” He held up a bag of faux chicken nuggets in the shape of dinosaurs. Dee nodded through her tears. 

“Can we listen to music?” she asked, her voice soggy. He agreed immediately, anything to make her stop crying. Sliding into the driver’s seat he turned the truck on and turned on the radio. He wasn’t sure what kind of music counted as kid appropriate, but he prayed that she’d tolerate real music and not want some Kidzbop garbage. He froze when he realized what he’d last been listening to.

Coming out of the stereo wasn’t music, but an audiobook. The one narrated by Lucy, way back when she was a boot. He was embarrassed to say he still listened to it occasionally, when he really missed her. It wasn’t something he was proud of, which is why it was hidden in his car - he didn’t need another intervention from Angela about how he refused to let go - but hearing her voice, even reading him something as dry as the study book from his sergeants' exam, brought him comfort. Tim’s hand flew to the radio buttons - not sure whether to turn it off, or flip to a different channel.

All the sniffling from the backseat had stopped, and Tim looked in the mirror to make sure she was still there. He found her staring at the stereo, her mouth wide in confusion.

“Dat lady on the speakers sounds like my mommy,” Dee announced. Tim huffed out a laugh. 

"Actually, that is your mom."

“Do you know my mommy?!” Dee said excitedly.

“Your mommy and I were friends a bunch of years ago. She made me this audiobook when I was studying for a big test.”

 Leave it to his kid to be that smart. 

He remembered his own family's attempts at sit down dinners with vague fondness. His mom would grill him and Genny about what they learned in school. His dad would sit silently with his beer, eventually grumbling out some question about Tim's football practice when his mom kicked him under the table. It was one time when they honest to god got along, or whatever passed for that at the Bradford house.  Of course, they'd stopped abruptly when his mom died. 

He'd only spent a handful of meals with Delilah so far, but he gave his mom retroactive props for keeping it all together. He fed himself all the time, but he clearly underestimated how hard it was to feed oneself while also feeding another human. Feeding Kojo didn't come close to the chaos that was feeding Dee.

"Kid, you gotta stop feeding the dog from your plate. He's got his own food." Dee was repeating exactly what Tim found her doing this morning, one bite for her, one for Kojo. The dog looked worshipfully up at his new friend. Tim really didn't want him to backslide, but he had to admit it was pretty cute, their new friendship. 

Snapping his fingers, Kojo looked forlornly at Delilah before coming to Tim's side. 

"Bed," he commanded the dog, who immediately scampered off without complaint. 

"But I'm not done with my nuggets!" Delilah objected. Tim eyed the vegan "chicken" nuggets that still dotted her plate. He remembered Lucy's penchant for veggie burgers - extra pickle - and reminded himself he got used to her vegetarian choices, and he'd soon do the same for Dee. Even if these sad nuggets looked like regular chicken nuggets had been forgotten out in the sun.

"Sorry, Dee, not you. I was talking to Kojo," he pointed out the boy, now curled up in his bed in the corner of the living room. "But let's finish up soon, okay?"

He hustled her through the rest of the meal, nodding along at her story, even though his brain was anxiously awaiting the chance to dive into the computer files they found.

After dinner Tim finally accepted the fact that he could no longer put off bath time. Delilah was still covered in sharpie - at least the highlighter had sort of faded off - and Angela was right - she was kind of starting to smell.

“Okay, kiddo. It’s time for a bath.” Dee looked up from her new coloring book (and, thankfully, crayons, instead of markers) at his announcement. She had an obstinate look on her face that he remembered well from Chen, and he braced himself for the fight he was sure was coming. She considered him for a minute, her blue eyes squinting up at him. 

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Knowing her mom, the kid was just biding her time, or maybe she’d prioritized some other objective over fighting bathtime. But Tim would take his wins when he could. 

They walked to the bathroom and Tim started fiddling with the taps.

“How much water am I supposed to put in here?” he muttered to himself. As the tub began filling, Delilah spoke again. 

“Do we have bubbles?”

“Sorry, kiddo, we don’t. But we can get some the next time we go to the store.” Once the tub was a scant half full, Tim twisted the taps closed and turned to Dee, who sat on the closed toilet lid, her feet dangling in the air as she kicked her heels back against the bowl. 

“You gonna get in?” She shot the same “ Duh ” look at him as she had at Angela’s house. She began to undress herself, first shoes, then socks, her pants. He turned to check on Kojo, who had taken up residence in the doorway, but quickly turned back when he heard a muffled,"Help!"

Delilah was stuck inside her long sleeve shirt, her torso free, but her arms and head still trapped inside. He started to laugh at the image she presented, but then noticed a necklace she was wearing. Had she been wearing that yesterday? If she was, he hadn't noticed. It was a longer chain, or at least it was on a four year old, dangling down to the middle of her chest. But what was notable was the item hanging from the center of it - Lucy's moonstone ring. The same one she'd thrown to save herself that day in the desert. Just when Tim thought he couldn't be more thunderstruck by this whole situation…

"Can you help me, please?" Her still-muffled voice, her question tinged with frustration, spurred him from his paralysis. He reached forward and eased her out of the t-shirt, taking extra care near her head and collar, so he wouldn't break the necklace.

"That's a pretty necklace," he commented.

Her little hand reached for it, a miniature version of any woman he'd ever seen given a similar compliment. "Mommy gave dis to me. She said it would keep me safe." He breathed out a little surprised huff. Even after all this time, of course Chen would still hold the object dear. It wasn't really that surprising, since he remembered the exact moment he tossed it back to her in the gym. It had left an indelible impression on them both.

“You’re right. That’s your mommy’s ring.” A familiar tightness began growing in his chest. The edges of his vision were just starting to get blurry. More and more was indicating that Lucy could be alive and he couldn't believe it. 

"Okay, hop into the bath. I'll be right back." Tim knew that if he didn't get out of there soon he was going to lose it in front of his kid. The last thing she needed, when she was already in this stressful situation, was him having a full-blown panic attack in front of her. 

"You're not supposed to leave me alone in the bathtub," she protested at his retreating form. He'd only babysat twice, but of course he knew that. But Kojo laid guard, sprawled languidly across the tile, so Tim was pretty confident he could step away, at least for a minute. 

"I'll be right back. Keep your head away from the water."

He made it out to the hall with no more than a second to spare. Sliding to the ground, he leaned his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Not quite to the point of gasping for breath, but he struggled to get a full, deep breath. When he closed his eyes, all he could imagine was how bad it must have gotten, for Lucy to send their daughter away, armed with only that ring, her backpack, and his name. 

He thought back to what his therapist had taught him, when he’d gone a year or so after Lucy’s disappearance. He concentrated on breathing in a wave. His belly expanded, then his chest, then his shoulders, before he reversed the motion. Suddenly, something wet brushed up against him - Tim’s eyes flew open - it was Kojo’s nose. Tim came a little more back to himself. He heard Delilah singing quietly to herself, a beautiful, clear tone. He smiled to himself at the memory of Lucy singing in that same bathroom. 

 The dog nudged him again, and he finally stood up. “Okay, okay,” he muttered at Kojo, before plastering on a more upbeat voice and turning the corner into the bathroom. “Let’s figure out how to get some of that marker off, huh?”

Twenty minutes and three youtube videos on how to remove permanent marker later, Delilah was mostly free of marker scribbles. It felt ridiculous, but he covered her appendages in sunscreen, the lotion lifting the ink enough that he could wash her off. Bedtime had been a relative breeze, after he figured out how to raise and lower the bed rail. Once tucked in, Delilah immediately crashed. She’d had a hectic two days, so he didn’t blame her for being exhausted. He assumed that she had a routine back at home, and he was sure staying up late yesterday before running around everywhere today didn’t help.

Quietly turning off the light in the guest bedroom, Tim made his way back to the living room, where he grabbed his laptop and powered it up. He gave up a silent prayer of thanks that his own computer was lightyears faster than Grey’s sluggish desktop. Tapped in his password, then reached into his pocket, fishing out the flash drive. He flipped it over between his thumb and forefinger numerous times, running his thumb reverently over the hard plastic that Lucy had once touched.  

He almost couldn’t believe this was happening. After so long believing that she was really gone, to find any clue, let alone an entire flash drive of them, was shocking. Inserting the drive, Tim navigated to the file explorer. When it opened, his breath caught, just as much as when he saw Lucy’s ring. 

There, lined up in the same perfect rows, were hundreds of files that Lucy painstakingly organized. For what purpose he didn’t know. Had she still been communicating with her handlers at the Feds? He knew she wasn’t at a local level - or at least that’s what he’d been told. And why did the files suddenly stop? After daily entries over a year and a half, the last was dated in early 2023. It was clear that something occurred to make her stop. What that was, he needed to find out. 

He started pouring over the files, taking detailed notes of trends that he noticed, details that might be valuable in locating her, or at least where they had lived before Lucy dropped Dee off at the bus stop. For three solid months, she mentioned the sound of the freeway outside her bedroom window, how it had become her own personal white noise machine. Who knew if they’d moved around since then, but at least it was something to go on. 

But for the most part, the notes were mundane. Lucy mentioned things like regularly visiting the same coffee shop, a little rundown place in their neighborhood run by an abuela. It seemed like the exact type of place she would frequent. She wrote on various types of paper, receipts, notebook paper, the backs of flyers, the edges of takeout menus. Some days were brief, only a sentence or two, sometimes even just a handful of words, the phrasing weird in a way that felt like she had rushed.

Other days she wrote full letters. There weren’t addressed to anyone, but they still felt like she was writing right to him. 

Throughout, Tim got snippets of Lucy's pregnancy and the early days of Delilah's life, and he relished it. She had horrible morning sickness that lingered after her first trimester ended. He learned that Dee had been a quiet baby, watchful and calm, until she started talking, and then she wouldn't shut up. How Lucy'd struggled to make ends meet, and how thankful she was for her next door neighbor, a sweet older woman named Roseanne who watched the baby while Lucy went to work at a nearby diner. 

There must have been a reason she documented everything this way, photographing them and organizing their files. Had she destroyed each note after writing it? He imagined her striking a match and burning each paper in her kitchen sink. 

His eyes felt heavy by the time he made it through all the files, and yet he didn't feel any closer to finding out what happened to her. Not a single one of the notes mentioned her case, and there wasn't even a distinct shift when she "died." This was evidence she was alive until at least 3 years ago, and he knew in his gut she must still be. 

At this point, Tim honestly questioned everything he knew about her case. He ran a hand over his face, exhausted. A glance at his watch showed it was 2 AM, and he knew tomorrow would be here too soon. He needed to put his best foot forward tomorrow with the social worker. 

Sighing, Tim closed the laptop and went to bed. 

“Mommy!” Delilah’s cries from down the hall woke him from sleep not an hour later. He waited a moment to see if she would calm down, but when her cries didn’t cease, he pulled himself out of bed.

“Hey, Dee. What’s up?” Tim yawned as he leaned his hip against the bed. She was sitting up in bed, her legs pulled up into her chest. 

Delilah sniffled. “I wet the bed,” she said, before resuming crying.

Tim pulled her into a side hug. “Oh, shit. Um, that’s okay. We’ll get you all cleaned up.” He remembered his own father’s cruelty about a young Tim’s bed wetting. Tom Bradfor was a lot of things, and understanding and sympathetic wasn’t one of them. He helped Delilah stand up on the bed, and climb around a large yellow stain in the middle of white sheets. He made a mental note to google how to clean a mattress.

“Let’s go hop in the shower.”

“I don’t know how to shower,” Dee whined, the tiredness seeping into her voice.

“We’re basically gonna rinse you off. It’s like, uh, taking a bath in a waterfall.” They made quick work of rinsing Delilah off, and Tim helped her into fresh pajamas. He started to walk her back to her room, when he realized that he’d have to change all the linens in order for her to sleep there. In no universe did he have the energy for that. 

Instead, Tim placed a hand on her shoulder to guide her towards his bedroom, hoisting her up onto the high king-sized bed. She immediately flopped onto his side of the bed.

“You’re gonna sleep in here with me tonight, okay? Just no more peeing the bed.” She sleepily nodded, her damp hair splayed across his favorite pillow. “Jax?” She asked, as she nodded off. Right, the stuffed dog. Tim jogged across the hall to get it.

He tucked it under her arm, before climbing in the opposite side of the bed. As he tried to get comfortable, her tiny voice whispered, “Are you gonna save mommy from the bad guys?”

He had no idea how to respond, but, thankfully, when he looked over at her, she was already fast asleep.

Chapter Text

“Are you sure it’s okay that I asked you to babysit? This isn’t, I don’t know, getting in the way of school or something?” 

After calling around to a handful of local daycares that Lopez recommended and finding mile-long waiting lists - seriously, were you supposed to register your kid for daycare when they were a zygote? - Tim called the one person he hoped might be able to pitch in and watch Delilah while he was on shift. 

"Seriously, it's fine, Dadford. My classes are light this semester, so I can totally help out. Go save the city or whatever."

"Thanks so much, T.  I owe you big time. I'll swing back at lunch time. Text me what you want." He shot her a grateful look. 

"You really don't owe me, and you know it." 

“Don’t feed her crap all day! And I'm going to arm the house. Don't forget to disarm it if you go out in the backyard!” Tim hollered over his shoulder as he walked towards the front door. 

"Yeah yeah, Kojo's birthday, blah blah blah!" He shook his head at her blatant dismissal. "C'mon, kiddo. I know where your dad keeps all the candy!" Tamara stage whispered to Delilah. He listened to Dee chatter about her favorite kinds of candy as he locked the front door behind him. 

An astonishing thought occurred to him as he was climbing into his truck - they were both his daughters. Tim made a habit of checking in on Lucy’s old “puppy” after her disappearance. Quickly he sussed out that Tamara could no longer afford rent on her own, and he’d offered to let her stay with him for a few weeks while she figured out her options. 

A few weeks turned into months, after he learned Lucy had actually become Tamara’s foster parent. Tim refused to let her be dumped into some group home, or worse go back to her shitty cousin's house, so he'd researched and applied to be her foster parent. LA county didn’t look favorably on "a random man selecting a charge like he was shopping at the girlfriend store" (his former case worker's charming words). But he and Tamara had convinced her of their existing relationship, and he was eventually approved. 

Like Doolin mentioned on the phone, he hadn't taken a single foster case after Tamara aged out of the system. It wasn't that he didn't want to help, but his house didn't really have the space with her and the dog. Tamara technically moved into the UCLA dorms, but she popped up every other weekend, wanting to do laundry. He was 80% sure she was just checking up on him, but it was nice to order a pizza and watch a movie together every once in a while. 

The rest of his drive flew by as he thought about the time they'd spent together over the past five years.

"Jesus," Tim jumped, placing a hand on his sternum as he walked into his office. Traffic had been extra brutal this morning, and he got there in just enough time to drop his stuff and head downstairs to roll call. Instead Nyla was lounging on his couch in uniform, clearly lying in wait for him to arrive.  

"How's it going with the kid?" his friend asked.

Tim sighed. He knew, like Angela, he couldn't sneak anything by Harper. "I'm exhausted. She woke up in the middle of the night last night. Pissed her bed. I thought kids grew out of that by her age."

"Eh, it can be a regression thing. When they get stressed about something. Mine did it when Donovan and I were getting divorced. Y’know what worked with Lila? Having something calming to listen to. Helped her go right back to sleep.”

Tim sighed. “I have just the thing.” At Nyla’s furrowed brow, he continued. “Chen may have recorded me an audiobook, back when I was studying for sergeant. I found it in the car while Delilah and I were driving yesterday.”

She tilted her head and pursed her lip, giving him a skeptical look. “I know,” he threw his hands up in the air. He regretted letting these pushy women into his life. “But don’t tell Angela that I was listening to it again. I don’t need another intervention.”

“She’s not going to give you one now.” She gave him a pointed look that said she knew everything that was going on. 

“You’re supposed to be the one that’s not all up in my business. C'mon, we gotta roll.” He stuck a finger out perpendicularly and spun it around, trying to hustle her out the door.

She shrugged. “I come by it honestly…” She said as he followed her downstairs.

Roll call was a necessary evil in Tim's routine. He'd much rather be out on the streets, making a positive impact on the residents of LA - not that he saw much action any more as a commanding officer - instead of lecturing his officers. But it was an important part of their day, learning updates and new protocols. 

So far this morning he'd only given super routine information - reminding officers of planned vehicle maintenance and new protocols for HR paperwork. He usually saved the most important information for the end of his presentation, so it would be fresh in their minds when they hit the streets. 

"Okay, there's been a rise in narcotic thefts across the city. This hasn't presented itself in our precinct so far, but it's only a matter of time. Keep your eyes open.

“Lastly, as you undoubtedly know by now, today is Smitty's birthday." Tim looked down at the preprinted card the officer had asked him to read. "What, Smitty, I'm not reading this!"

"But, Sarge, it's my birthday," Smitty said coyly, batting his eyes in Tim's direction. Tim rolled his eyes at his antics. 

"Fine," he cleared his throat and sighed before reading. "'Smitty would be delighted if you would honor him with your presence at his most favorite of watering holes, Los Torres, beginning at 7 post meridian. Your presence is your present.' Look, show up, or don't, I don't care."

"Sarge, that wasn't on the paper," Smitty protested.

Tim pretended not to hear him. "That's all I've got this morning. Stay safe out there."

Officers began filing out of the room. Nolan, his rookie trailing behind him, gave Tim a nod as he walked down the glass hallway towards the gear room. Honestly Tim was shocked that the older officer hadn’t yet inserted himself into his whole situation.

He straightened his notes on the podium, looking up when someone knocked on the open glass door. Lopez stood leaning against the door frame. 

"Great performance there, Sarge. I felt very compelled to attend Smitty's party." The mirth in her eyes was evident as she very clearly teased him.

"You're coming to this stupid thing, right? If I have to go, I'm not going alone."

"Of course, you couldn't keep me away from the dumpster fire that Smitty's birthday always turns into. I'm pretty sure Harper and Nolan are coming too."

"Oh shit, I have Delilah though. Tamara's there now, but I don't feel right asking her to stay this evening."

"First of all, I doubt she'd mind. You've given that kid so much."

"That's what she said when she basically dismissed me this morning."

"Second, if she's got plans and can't stay, just bring her over to mine. Wes isn't coming to the bar because he's got court early tomorrow morning. She and Jack can have a sleepover."

Tim considered it for a moment. 

"But since we're on the subject…" Angela started before he could say anything and then let her sentence trail off. She had that look where Tim knew she wanted to tell him something, but wanted to build suspense first. It was irritating, and he had places to be. 

"On with it, Ang. I've got paperwork to do." He gestured for her to get a move on. 

"I called WITSEC and they won't confirm anything, naturally. But Tim, you won't believe this. The Aguilar case was supposed to be finally going to trial this week, but it's being postponed."

"Wait, wasn't that the…" he trails off

"Yepppp,” Angela nods, popping the p at the end of her word hard, "that was Lucy's UC assignment, infiltrating their crime family."

"Wait, so it's possible that she really could have been in witness protection?"

“Absolutely possible.” She laid a hand on his arm.  “Tim, I know this is nuts, but we're gonna figure this out, okay?”

He gave her a curt nod, not trusting himself to speak. They were getting closer and closer to finding out what happened to Lucy, but the answers always felt just out of reach. 

"I've got to, uh, I've got to get to my paperwork."

She gave him an understanding look. Besides Lucy, Angela was the only other person who could always read him really well. "Of course. I'll see you later for drinks." He made his way up the stairs and got to work.

Two hours of deeply unsatisfying paperwork later, Tim was climbing into his shop to join patrol when the radio in the SUV squawked to life. 

“7 Adam 9, 7 Adam 100.” 

“7 Adam 100,” Tim answers. 

“Uh, Sarge, can you go to channel 3?” Tim reached over and spun the dial until he was on the correct channel. “Sarge? You’re gonna wanna see this. I’m at Van Nuys and the 101.”

“Nolan, if you’re making me drive halfway across the district for show and tell…” He sighed. Nolan, unsurprisingly, let him sit with his annoyance, and Tim quickly folded. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’ve you got?”

“You heard that chase that Northridge Precinct lost earlier today?”

“The ambulance that got stolen on LAFD’s watch and then Northridge lost contact? Uh, yeah, I’ve heard of it.” It had been the talk of the bullpen before he left the station. The local tv station had picked it up. Tim would hate to be the officers who lost sight of the ambo.

“Well, you’re gonna wanna see this.“ 

He navigated around a nearby traffic accident, the intersection surrounded by multiple fire trucks who were trying to get the blaze under control. He lifted two fingers to wave to a couple of the officers who were helping with traffic control. He didn’t look forward to reading that paperwork later. 

Pulling to the side of the road next to Nolan's shop, he climbed out and walked to the corner of an alley where he saw Nolan and his rookie Foster standing.

"Alright, what've you got?"

"Well, we found that ambulance."

"You found the ambulance that Northridge lost?"

"Yes, sir. We were grabbing a coffee, and Foster saw something out of the corner of his eye. We walked down the alley and there it was. "

The ambulance in question was rammed into a brick wall, its hood crumpled, but thankfully in no

"Why did no one notice this crash? It would've made a hell of a noise"

"Probably because it occurred right about when that crash a couple blocks away happened."

"So you're saying they created a diversion, just to destroy an ambulance? What's the point?"

Nolan's soft spoken rookie chimed in. "I think the better question, Sarge, is what's missing?" Tim's head swiveled to bring his attention to the young man. 

"What do you mean, Boot?"

"The ambulance is basically totaled, right? But nothing is missing. Except they broke into the drug cabinets." He gestured towards the rear of the rig, where everything looked pristine, minus a few doors left ajar. 

"Let me guess what's missing. All the narcotics. So you think this is all a ploy to steal narcotics?" He looked at Nolan to gauge his thoughts on the matter. "Seems like a lot to go through just for a handful of vials of morphine or ketamine?" 

"I think so too, but that's the only thing that's missing," Nolan confirmed.

"Alright. You call it in to dispatch  so LAFD can get what's left of their rig back. Let's just hope this is an isolated incident."

Tim regretted voicing his hope to Nolan and Foster. He knew better too - nearly 20 years as a cop (Jesus, he felt old even thinking that stat) and it was like saying the word "quiet" or "bored" out loud on a shift. It only got you in trouble. 

The rest of his morning and early afternoon was filled with multiple reports from LAFD - of ambulances being robbed when paramedics turned their backs, of one unlucky medic being stabbed for her jump bag (thankfully in stable condition at Shaw), of an ambulance facing terrible road rage to the point of their back window being shot out. 

There was no proof that the incidents were related, but the timing seemed too convenient for them not to be. He'd have to talk with Lopez about his suspicions when he got back to the station. 

Shit. Shit shit shit. Tim caught a glimpse of his watch, realizing that he’d basically missed what would have been Delilah’s lunchtime. His day was still chaos, so there was no way he could leave yet. Reaching into his pocket, he grabbed his phone to shoot a quick text to Tamara. 

Shit. I got stuck at a scene. I can grubhub you lunch?

NP, we got bored and made homemade pizza for lunch (: 

He imagined the destroyed kitchen he’d return home to, but smiled at the idea of the girls doing a fun project like that.  

Okay, I’m sorry

Seriously, it’s ok. Kiddo fell asleep while we were watching that new Pixar movie! We’ll see you soon?

Should be home just before 4

Tim hustled home after he briefed the second shift Watch Commander. The social worker was supposed to come at 4 o'clock. Nothing so far today had gone according to plan, and he really needed this meeting to go well.  

The clock on the dash told him he was cutting it close. Turning onto his street, he saw an unknown car parked in his driveway behind Tamara's little Toyota.  Shit. He realized he’d forgotten to let her know about the social worker’s visit. 

The other car was empty, so Doolin must already be inside. He jiggled his leg anxiously as the ancient garage door made its way to the ceiling, too slowly for his liking. 

He pulled his truck inside and cut the engine. He stepped down from the cab, leaving his duffle to grab later. The door from the garage to the house was unlocked - he'd have to remember to lecture Tamara later - and he let himself inside. 

"Oh, look! There's Tim. He's home now!" He heard Tamara loudly announce.

"Hi, Mr. Tim!" Dee skidded to a stop in front of him. "Camera and I made pizza for lunch!"

The mispronunciation made him chuckle. For a split second he imagined T telling it as an embarrassing story at Delilah's graduation or wedding. Too far ahead, Bradford, he thought to himself. Let's get through this home visit first. 

He smiled down at her, raising his eyebrows in faked excitement, "I heard! Were they delicious?" 

"They were yummy! I put pickles on mine! Camera said that's yucky, but I made her tried it, and then she said it was good!"

"Pickles on pizza?!" He made an exaggerated face of disgust. Dee giggled at his reaction.

Father and daughter both quieted immediately as Tamara and the social worker joined them in the kitchen. Tim glanced down at Dee, who seemed to sense the shift in mood. She looked up at him nervously, chewing her lip. He bent down to hoist her up onto his hip, one arm wrapping around her small torso. She immediately wrapped her arms around his neck, snuggling her face into it. 

"You're pretty fast there, Miss Delilah. Hello, Mr. Bradford."

"Hi, Miss Doolin. Sorry, I was running late."

The woman glanced down at her wrist and back up at him. "No, no. I was early. It looks like you've got a pretty big fan there," she said, gesturing to Dee in his arms. 

"We've been getting on pretty well so far, huh, Dee?"

"And you're his…" Doolin probed, looking between Tim and Tamara.

"She's my…" How did he explain their relationship?

"I'm his nanny," Tamara supplied, attempting to save Tim from his likely bumbling. But she was certainly more than that, and he knew he had to be as honest as he could with DCFS if he stood a chance of keeping Dee. 

"Actually, Tamara was my foster daughter, the one we discussed that I had back in 2022."

She looked surprised. "Do you still live here?"

"On and off. I got to UCLA, so I have an apartment over there, but, with the family I have, and my mom gone, Tim's is home, so…" she shrugged. It warmed his heart that she thought of his house as home. They'd come so far in five years. 

"I don't remember reading anything about your mother being in the picture recently."

"Oh. Uh, no. I don't mean my birth mom. My parent's OD'd when I was 10." Her eyes darted back at Tim, almost cautious. "I meant, well, I meant Lucy Chen. She was my foster mom before Tim. Obviously not really my mom, but the closest thing I'd had to one in forever. But, uh, then…" Tamara's voice trailed off. 

Tim set Delilah down and gave her a small push towards what he'd started to consider her room. "Dee, why don't you go play in your room, while T and I talk to Miss Doolin, and then we can make dinner, ok?"

"Can we have nuggets again?"

"You bet, bud."

"Sorry, we should probably talk about this, but I don't want her listening, and we need to discuss how to keep it quiet."

"I'm sorry, I don't follow, Mr. Bradford."

He glanced down the hallway to make sure Dee had made it to her room before gesturing towards the living room. "Why don't we sit down in the other room? Can I get you something to drink?"

"No, I'm alright, thank you."

Tim cleared his throat. 

"I'm, uh, relatively sure that Delilah is actually my daughter."

He could hear T mutter, "Well I could have told you that. Have you SEEN her?"

"We were able to find her birth certificate from the information you originally provided for Miss Lim. It doesn't list you as a parent."

"I know. Look, I wish I could tell you more, but I can't. What I can tell you is I have a team working on it, and I hope to know more soon."

"Mr Bradford if that's true, that certainly changes things."

"I know, but I also need to keep it quiet. We have reason to believe that her mother is in danger and, if that's the case, so is Dee's. I need Delilah to stay safe."

"I'm not sure if I can bring you before a judge for custody if you can't share any more information."

"I understand. But please understand why I'd like to keep temporary custody as her foster parent. We can deal with all the big legal stuff later."

"That I can do. She seems happy here with you, and Ms. Colin's was kind enough to give me a quick tour before you arrived. It looks like you're well prepared and you have a solid support system." She stood and reached out to shake Tim's hand. 

"Thank you, I appreciate that." He followed her to the front door, where she lifted a large tote onto her shoulder. 

"When you know more from your investigation and are ready to move forward, let me know. I'll keep this all out of my report. In the meantime, I'll be in touch periodically to supervise you as a foster parent. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out."

"I will. Thank you, I really appreciate your help." He smiled and gave a polite wave as she pulled out of the driveway. She had just reversed onto the street when he felt a hard smack to his bicep. 

"Dadford. What the hell? You didn't tell me!"

"I just found out about it yesterday. Cut an old man some slack. And what is this about you figuring it out?"

"You're not that old, Tim. And, duh. I mean, I didn't know . But that kid looks like a baby Lucy, except when she's concentrating and then she's all you with the furrowed brows," she said, waving a hand in a circle in front of his face. 

"You wanna stay for dinner? Apparently I make a mean vegan dino nugget." 

Tamara pulled a face. "Do you have any real food?"

He shook his head at her. "They actually taste fine. But yes, I have pepperoni pizza in the freezer. How's that?"

"Perfect!"

After dinner (filled with Dee picking pepperonis off pizza and totally ignoring her requested nuggets) and Tamara's promises that she would happily stay and babysit ("Dude, of course I'm staying. You just told me I have a little sister."), Tim tucked Dee into what he'd started to think of as her bed. She looped her arm around her stuffed animal, the poor thing practically squished in her elbow.

Once upon a time, he and Isabel had bought this house with the intent of having children, though that had quickly flown out the window once his wife had taken off and descended into the world of drugs. Once he and Lucy started dating, he felt a glimmer of hope return. But after her disappearance, he thought the possibility had passed him by again. He'd never thought in a million years that he'd be sitting on the edge of his guest bed, tucking their daughter in for bed, a young adult daughter down the hall engrossed in college textbooks. 

He made to stand up from the bed. "I'm going to go see Miss Angela, but Tamara's in the living room, and I'll be back before you wake up, okay?"

Delilah looked up at him, sleepily. "Can you tell me a story before bed? Momma always does."

Tim had started to love when she said those words, or something similar. It was a glimpse of Lucy, of the experiences he'd missed out on during Delilah's first years. 

"Sure, bud," he sat back down on the bed, crossing his legs at his ankles. Delilah snuggled into his side.  "What kind of story do you want me to tell you?"

"Can you tell me one about Momma?"

"I…sure, I can tell you a story about your mommy. Let's see…" he drummed his fingers on his lower lip as he thought about a story that was fit to tell a four year old. 

"Okay, I got one. A long time ago, before you were born, your mom and I worked together. I was her boss, and it was my job to teach her how to be a police officer."

"Mommy was a police officer?"

"She was. And she was a really good one too. But anyway, I was her boss and we were driving around in our shop -"

"How can you drive a grocery store?" Delilah interrupted. 

Tim chuckled. "No, that's a special name we call our police car.

"Anyway, we were called to go help someone at a petting zoo. We helped them, and then somehow a goat got into our shop!"

"Goats can't drive cars!" She exclaimed.

"I know!" Tim raised his eyebrows to match her enthusiasm. 

"What happened next?"

"Your mom, she was always really good at her job. She was really good at helping people, no matter what kind of trouble they had. So she thought she would be good at getting the goat out of the car.

"She wasn't though. She pulled and pulled and that goat wouldn't budge. Your mom even tried making goat noises at it!" 

Delilah nodded, sagely. "She's really good at singing ol' McDonald!" 

"I bet she is. But it didn't help her here. The goat still didn't move, but your mom looked really silly." 

Dee sighed wistfully, sounding much older than her four years. "I miss mommy." 

Tim's heart broke a little, and he vowed to double down his efforts to find Lucy. "We actually do have it on camera. I know it's not the same as mommy being here, but you want me to bring a copy home tomorrow?" 

Their body camera footage was only saved for two years, unless a crime was involved, but Tim had promptly downloaded a copy of his video. At the time it had been perfect to have in his back pocket for jokes. It was shoved in a back folder on his work desktop, but he was glad he saved it. 

He felt Dee's face nod, pressed against his bicep. 

"Okay, deal. I'll bring home the goat video, and how about we go get animal fries from In-and-Out?"

"Crazy fries!" Well that solved his initial question of whether she was talking about the burger chain. He'd mention it tomorrow when he stopped by LA Clear. 

"Okay, sounds like we've got a date. But that means you've got to get to bed, missy. I'll see you in the morning, okay?" He leaned down to buss her forehead. 

"Okay." She smiled as she slid down into bed, curling around Jax. Tim lingered in the doorway and watched her drift to sleep. 

"Tim, seriously, go. I've got her." Tamara had willingly volunteered to watch her and was basically shooing him out the door after dinner. 

He didn't know why he was so nervous. This wasn't the first time he was leaving Delilah, not even the first time he was leaving her with Tamara today. 

"Okay, but if you need anything, you have my phone number."

"Yeah Dad , We'll be fine." Her eye roll was dramatic, and Tim was thankful Dee was asleep in the other room. She'd probably pick up their mannerisms anyway, but his four year old didn't need any more attitude. 

It felt like ages since he'd been at Los Torres, even though he and Grey had watched the Rams game there three weeks ago. Tim walked in the door and spotted Angela and Harper already at a table in the back.

"Hi Dad ," Nyla grinned at him as he sat down. "How's it going?"

"You two are gonna be like this all night, aren't you?" He gave her a deadpan look. 

She held her hands up in defense, "Hey, you're the one who wanted advice about the kid. You really thought we weren't gonna give you a hard time?"

“Anyone said hi to the birthday boy yet?” Tim asked.

“I’ll pass on that, thank you,” Nyla said snarkily, tipping both her head and her pint glass towards where Smitty was holding court. The older officer was already drunk, talking dramatically with his arms. Tim gave it ten minutes before a drink was knocked over and someone (Smitty) started a fight.

“Go on over, Sarge. I’m sure Smitty’ll be thrilled to see you.”

“Don’t ‘Sarge’ me. You know I’m here under duress.”

“Aren't we all. Seriously though, how’s it going with my new friend, Delilah?” Angela asked.

“She’s good. I feel totally in over my head though. How do you guys handle it?"

“Handle what?” Nolan asked as he walked up from the bar, two beers and a tumbler of whiskey balanced precariously between his stretched fingers. He doled out drinks, an amber-colored beer for himself, a hazy-looking one for Angela. The older man handed the rocks glass to Tim, who nodded his thanks.

“Parenthood,” Nyla supplied.

“Ah, gotcha.” He paused what felt like comically long to think about it before finally saying, “You’re going to love it.” Tim bit back his natural reaction of snark to anything Nolan said. He didn’t want to be a total curmudgeon around his kid, so he needed to at least try to knock it off.

"Honestly it's like having part of your heart outside your body,” Angela chimed in. Everything that she’d been through with Jack, hell, even before her pregnancy, Tim had seen it secondhand. He’d never really thought of it that way, but everything in his best friend’s actions showed how much she loved her boy. In the short two days that he’d had Delilah, it absolutely matched his feelings. 

"That's exactly how I felt when we were at the store and Delilah wandered off into traffic. My heart went into my fucking throat. Does it ever get easier?" He glanced between his friends, landing first on Lopez. 

"Don't look at me. Mines the same age as yours, basically, and he's a peach, except when he's scaring the hell out of me. It's easier than when I was constantly afraid he was going to choke on any tiny thing, but not by much."

Nolan and Harper shared a look. "It only gets harder as they get older. Teenage years are an adventure, but you have a few years before then,” Nolan said, clapping him on the back. 

A commotion pulled the group’s attention towards the back of the room. Heckling the officer who was heading up to the karaoke mic, Smitty wobbled as he stood up from his barstool. Tim hoped he wouldn’t have to put him in the tank to sober up at the end of tonight. 

“Woooo, Jerry!” Smitty called, clapping so loudly he almost fell off his stool. He tried to whistle with two fingers and they could see his spit fly across their table from here.

“C’mon, Quig. Not doing this one without you!” Jerry McGrady called from on the small stage. Tim was used to seeing cops around after retirement - after all, it was often hard to be friends with people who didn’t understand your experiences - but it never got less awkward running into the father of his ex-girlfriend. He didn’t see him much anymore, probably only a handful of times since Lucy’s death in 2021. Tim expected a sour reaction, based on how he and Ashley ended, but Jerry always offered him a kind word. 

“It is our song,” Smitty humblebragged to the couple who had the misfortune of sitting next to the stage. Tim had no idea Jerry and Smitty had a song and the next three minutes of the pair serenading each other was both fascinating and painful. Like a car crash, he just couldn’t look away.

As the song wound down, Jerry and Smitty took a dramatic bow, Jerry grabbing Smitty’s waist to keep him from toppling off the stage. Everyone’s attention turned back towards their own table and all of Tim’s friends were varying levels of bewildered.

“Honestly, Smitty and Jerry McGrady singing Sonny and Cher was not a thing I had on my bingo card tonight,” Angela said finally.

“Cheers to being off-duty,” Nyla proposed, raising her wine glass. The rest of the group raised their glasses when she continued, “And to Dadford over here finally joining our ranks!”

Chapter Text

In the morning, Tim felt a little better about his abrupt parenthood. When they weren’t dodging Smitty’s drunken attempts at storytelling, they spent the night regaling him with their own funny stories about their own kids - the one time John’s son ate a battery; when Jack, tardy to class, announced to his entire preschool that he was late because Angela had diarrhea; when Lila cut Nyla’s hair in her sleep. Their parenting foibles made Tim feel like his perceived ineptness wasn’t a death sentence. 

By the time he made it home, he’d been too tired to read more of Lucy’s journals and fallen into bed. Delilah would be up in just a few hours and he was sure the day would bring him no rest either. 

"What've you got?" Shortly after roll call, Tim parked himself behind one of the tech support officers to review the findings of his pod camera footage request.

"Well, there was nothing on our pods, but we got back footage from LA CLEAR. The CLEAR footage is grainy because it's early morning, but it looks like it could be Officer Chen."

“Where’s it from?”

“Huntington Park.” That was a solidly working class area, so maybe a good place to infiltrate the Aguillars or alternatively to hide out.

“Okay, what’s in the video?”

“Just like you’d thought, it’s a bus stop in front of an In-and-Out. An asian woman is dropping a child off and waits for her to get on the bus before walking away.”

“Let me see,” Tim demands, pushing his rolling chair out of the way and standing before the computer, his arms crossed. There, before his eyes, he watches Lucy, holding hands with Delilah, walk up to a bus stop and sit on the bench. This Lucy looks different than Tim remembers her. A little thinner, like she no longer gets quite enough to eat. Instead of her long brown hair, she has a short blond bob. Despite the differences, Tim would know her anywhere.

She speaks to Dee for a few moments before hugging her fiercely. Their daughter stands up on the bus bench, craning her neck to see if the bus is coming, and it soon does. Lucy stands up and helps Delilah down from the bench, then quickly backs away as the bus approaches. 

Tim imagined how hard it must’ve been for Lucy to put her daughter, their daughter on a bus all by herself. How bad things must’ve gotten for her to have to make that choice. He vowed to get to the bottom of it.

“Thanks, Marshall,” Tim told the Officer, starting to walk back upstairs to his office.

“Um, that’s not the only thing. CLEAR also sent another video. It shows her being snatched into a van a few minutes later.”

“Fuck, seriously?” The tech nodded grimly and clicked a file. It brought up a video that showed a figure in all black jumping out of an unmarked van and grabbing Lucy by the hair before violently shoving her into the vehicle. It dug up memories Tim was convinced he’d buried. He pictured a grainy video of Caleb shoving Lucy in a trunk, another of Jackson being shot point blank. 

He ran a hand over his face and took a deep breath. “Jesus. Okay, email them both to me and Detective Lopez, would you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And find that bus driver, I want to question whether he saw anything else.”

“Yes, sir.” 

The rest of the day goes by in such a blur that he’s not able to spend any time looking into Lucy’s case like he’d hoped to. His patrol Sergeant’s out sick and Tim’s pulled from one scene to the next. It’s exhausting. It’s not until after he gets called to one, but three more calls involving both drug theft and ambulances that he knows he has to raise the issue to Commander Cabrera and shit probably the DEA. It’s too many instances to be coincidence.

The last of the three is a gruesome call in which the attackers tried to carjack an ambulance.  

“What’ve we got?” Tim asked as he arrived on scene and marched up to Harper. She lifted the line tape and led him towards the ambulance. The windshield is riddled with bullet holes. Both the front doors are wide open, the driver’s side had a large smear of blood across the window. It was clear the medic driving had tried to escape or get help after their being shot. The passenger seat was covered in blood and bullet holes. He could see the medical examiner pushing that body towards their transport vehicles.

He glanced in the back of the rig and saw that the locked medication cabinets had been shot out. Certainly the most efficient way of getting them open, if the paramedics wouldn’t unlock them, but not a great way to keep all the product intact. In fact, there were a few broken vials, their contents puddled on the floor. The rest of the cabinet was empty.

“One DOA, one GSW to the chest being transported to Shaw. Critical condition. They were on their way back to quarters after a call and fought back against an attempted carjacking. From the rig camera footage, it looks like the robbery crew stopped in front of them at a light and wouldn’t move. Tried to get them to open up the back and when they wouldn’t, tried to carjack them. When they wouldn’t give in, someone started shooting out of the back of the SUV.” 

“Did we call in the vehicle they were shooting from?”

“Yeah, already did it, but plates came back as stolen two weeks ago.”

“I really don’t get it. It’s not like they carry a huge amount of drugs. Are these people just that desperate?” 

“I mean, with how much crackdown there’s been lately on illegal suppliers, maybe this is the best they can get? They’re getting more and more brazen.” Nyla commented. Tim nodded. This was the first fatal incident in this string of cases and he feared that if they didn’t get a lead soon, more first responders might be hurt. 

“Alright, I’ll go back to the station and brief the higher ups. Can you go to the hospital and wait? Hopefully the medic pulls through and we can interview them.” 

“Of course.”

When Tim finally makes it back to the station, all he wants is a sandwich and five minutes without his radio going off. Instead his first stop has to be the Commander’s office. Throwing his shop in park he scrubbed a hand across his face before climbing out and heading inside.

Angela intercepted him as he neared the stairs. 

“Can this wait, Lopez? There’s a pattern with cases the last couple days and I need to call Narcotics and talk to Cabrera.”

“Yeah, I heard about that from Caradine. But I wanted to let you know that we found the bus driver.”

“Shit. You did?”

“Yeah, he’s in Interview Three.” 

“Ah, shit. I really need to kick this case upstairs. Can he wait?”

She shook her head no. “He’s already been waiting twenty minutes and I feel bad making him wait more. Honestly, you probably shouldn’t be involved. With Delilah, you’re too close to the situation.”

“I’m not,”

“I know, blah blah blah, you’re impartial. Tim, I’ve seen you lose your shit when Lucy goes missing. This is just a bystander interview. I’ve got this.” She shooed him towards the stairs.

He shot her a grateful look. 

He made quick work of the stairs, taking them two at a time. 

Cabrera had been named Commander last year, and so far Tim’s been okay with the man. His leadership style is more brusque than Tim is used to, which is saying something for the LAPD, though unsurprising given that Grey was his last Lieutenant. But Cabrera trusts his subordinates and it shows. Morale in Mid Wilshire hasn’t been this high in a decade and new programs he’d supported - like Nolan’s social services program - had helped reestablish trust between the Department and the community.

“You can go in,” Cabrera’s secretary, a kind, older woman who reminded Tim of his grandma, smiled at him.

“Bradford. What’ve you got?”

“Hi, sir. I wanted to update you on the rash of thefts related to LAFD.”

“Yes, I’d read something about your case yesterday. I’ve called Narcotics up here. She should be here…” his phone rang, interrupting his sentence. He picked up the phone, “Okay, send her in.

“Detective Waller, come in, come in.” Commander waved the Latine woman into the sunny office. She sat down in one of Cabrera’s warm leather armchairs and turned to look at Tim.

He began a lengthy explanation of the cases they’d had the last two days, informing them about both the facts and his suspicions. 

“I’ll call the DEA and let them know what’s going on. For now, it’s still our jurisdiction, but who knows when that will change, so solve this fast. Waller, your team runs point, and Bradford, you support them however they need. Keep me in the loop. That’s all.” With that, they were dismissed.

“Yes, sir,” they both parroted back at him.

Tim gestured for Waller to exit first, and he followed her out of Cabrera’s office suite and down the catwalk towards Tim’s own office. Muscle memory made him ghost a hand over her lower back as he walked a half step behind her. She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes roaming his face until she landed on his lips. 

She was a beautiful woman. They’d gone on a handful dates a couple years ago when he had finally tried to move on from Lucy. He’d not been as into it as he wanted to be, and tried to let her down easily. They’d parted as amicably as he could have hoped, but he still felt her eyes on him from time to time around the station.

“Being a dad suits you,” she purred at him. 

“ Foster dad,” he instinctively corrected her. He knew it would quickly become common knowledge that Delilah was his real daughter, especially once word of them reopening Lucy’s disappearance got around. But he couldn’t help but feel protective of his little girl.

He reached around her to open his office door and she walked in, running a hand across his torso. Tim couldn’t help but shudder from the contact, but it wasn’t what he wanted. Honestly in a different world, she’d absolutely be his type, but she wasn’t who he wanted. Even if he never got Lucy back, he knew there was no one else he wanted to be with. Defensively, Tim crossed his arms over his chest.

She perched on a corner of his desk, her long legs stretched out in front of her. 

“Nadia…”

“Relax, Tim. I’ve got a plan for this. You can stop worrying that I’m going to stick a hand down your pants. Unless you want me to?” She cocked her head to the side and grinned at him.

He rolled his eyes at her and moved to sit down at his desk. “Fine, what’ve you got?” 

She pivoted towards him and detailed her plan to catch the crew attacking ambulances. Against Tim’s better judgment, he relented, agreeing to recruit staff from his team and set everything in motion tomorrow. 

“Tim?” She leaned her torso back into his office a moment after she left.

“Yeah?” He looked up from the paperwork on his desk.

“It is good to see you. You look happy.”

“Thanks. Not sure I am yet, but definitely on my way there.”

She drummed her fingers on his door frame. “Okay, see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Tim turned back to his paperwork, but then saw Angela escorting an older Black man towards the lobby. They were chatting amicably, and he could only assume that this was the bus driver. He hustled down the stairs to catch them.

“...and honestly, it’ll be great for your cat. She’ll love it,” the older man finished saying as Tim approached.

“Thanks for the tip! I’m sure she will. Oh, hey, Bradford,” she noticed Tim as he neared them. “Mr. Davis, this is Sergeant Bradford. He was the one who received Ms. Lim when she arrived at the station after she got off your bus.”

“Nice to meet you, Sergeant.” He stuck out his hand to shake Tim’s. Tim was overcome by gratitude. He didn’t know this man, but he had kept his daughter safe on what was, unknowingly, one of the most dangerous days of her life.

“She’s…she’s actually my daughter. Thank you. Thank you for keeping her safe.” Tim looked at him earnestly, bringing his other hand up to clasp both of the man’s hands at once.

“Happy I could help. You’ve got a spunky little girl, Sergeant. I was really impressed by her independence. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell your Detective here much more about her mother.”

“Tim, Mr. Davis was telling me that he only peripherally saw the woman who dropped Delilah off at the bus stop. He didn’t make contact and he didn’t notice anything else unusual on his route, minus having a four-year-old for a passenger.”

“I can’t say it’s every day that I got kiddos on my bus like that. But as I said, she was a good one, your girl. Well behaved the whole time. She told me when she got on where she needed to go, and I made sure she got off at the right stop. But she still counted the stops like somebody’d taught her to or something. A real smart cookie. I really wish I coulda helped you more.”

“We appreciate you coming down, Mr. Davis.” Angela smiled and waved to him as he exited through the lobby.

“So, really nothing?” Tim asked when the man was out of earshot.

“Yeah, nothing. But I’m going to look into the other footage you had Marshall send me, of her being kidnapped. I’ll see if we can’t get something from that.”

“Okay.” His response was terse, and he is thankful for Angela, who can’t help but read through the lines to see how scared he was at the thought of her being taken again. She laid a hand on Tim’s forearm and gave it a slight squeeze as she spoke,

“I promise I will do my damndest to get to the bottom of this, Tim. You know I will.”  He gave her a brief nod before she spoke again. “Go do all the paperwork I know you have to do, so you can go home to your little girl.” A swift shove from her sent him, chuckling, back up the stairs to his office.

By the time Tim was able to change out and head home he felt exhausted. He’d been a Sergeant for five years, and watch commander for three, and never had a week as draining as this one. It was a perfect storm - a tough case that demanded all his attention and roped in an ex he wished he could avoid, multiple new leads on Lucy’s disappearance, and the arrival of Delilah, dredging up every emotion about Lucy he thought he’d buried over the last five years. 

His emotions were swirling and he was sure it was only going to get worse before it got better. He made a mental note to schedule an appointment with his therapist when this week was over.

His phone rang as he climbed into his truck, and Tim tapped his watch to answer it.

“Bradford.”

“Hey Tim, it’s Wade. I was just curious if you’d taken a look at the journal entries you found yet.”

“I mean to call you yesterday, but this week has turned into a shit show.”

“Yeah, how was Smitty’s birthday party?” Grey laughed. Tim let out a huff of a laugh, closing his eyes and remembering the antics of the previous night.

“Honestly I wish I could retire too, just to avoid having to go to one of his birthday parties ever again. I had to pour him AND Jerry into an Uber after their fourth karaoke song. Imagine the two of them taking a deep dive into the ABBA catalog.”

“I’ll pass, but thanks.”

“Anyway, I’ve started reading the notes in the files. There’s got to be something there. She’s too smart to not leave a trail, but I was too damn tired to figure it out.”

“Yeah, having a four year old will do that to you. Send it over and I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Okay, I’ll shoot them to you as soon as I get home.”

“Sounds good. Everything else good? How’s Delilah?”

He chatted with Grey about the adventure that was supervising a four-year-old girl the rest of his way home.

“Thanks for meeting me here.” The dog park was nearly empty on a Tuesday evening, and Tim was thankful. He’d been home about an hour when Angela called him and asked to meet. Tamara had a night class and couldn’t watch Dee, so he suggested they meet up at Kojo’s favorite dog park. It was about halfway between Angela’s house and his. He figured Angela had asked him here to talk about Lucy’s case, and the large fenced-in field meant that Delilah and Kojo could run free without Tim fearing for them.

“No problem. It’s nice to get out of the house with these two. Clearly they hate it here.” Tim rolled his eyes. Dee was currently chasing the dog in circles around a large oak tree, giggling at every near miss when she tried to swipe his tail.

He and Angela were seated on a park bench near the entrance to the enclosure. 

“Okay, out with it. You didn’t drag me all the way out here just to chat about the weather. What did you find out?”

“So I found out from a friend of mine over at CDCA why the Aguillar case is being pushed.”

Tim looks at her annoyed for burying the lede and motions for her to be get on with it

“One of their key witnesses showed up murdered this morning.”

Tim turned toward Angela in horror. “You’re not saying…”

“I’m not saying it was her, Tim. But there is the possibility it was.” He found his legs couldn’t stand any longer. Collapsing to the ground he brought his head between his knees and tried to breath. 

Just the thought it might be Lucy…Tim’s body started shaking, his body heaving with the sobs that poured out of him. He thought of all the times he’d hoped she wasn’t dead - in the barrel, while on her first undercover mission, when Delilah showed up at Mid Wilshire. Each and every time his hope had proved fruitful and they found her. It was inevitable that one time he wouldn’t be so lucky, but it still hurt so badly.

Angela eased herself down to the ground next to him and laid a hand on his thigh. It helped ground him a bit, but he still struggled to pull air in.

One small victory was that Delilah was busy chasing Kojo and hopefully wouldn’t notice his total breakdown. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the tools his therapist had told him to use when Tim was having a really bad day.  It had been a while since he’d foundered quite like this.

Suddenly a small voice appeared. Delilah. She sounded nervous. “Is he okay?” she asked Angela.

“Not right now. He just got some bad news, but you know what helps sometimes when people get bad news?” Angela answered softly.

“What?”

“A hug. You think you might want to offer Tim a hug?” He heard her shuffle towards him.

“Mr. Tim? Do you want a hug? My mommy says the best medicine in the world is a hug.”

He couldn’t bring himself to speak, but he raised his head, gave a brief nod and suddenly had his arms full. Dee leaned down and wrapped her arms around his neck. A small part of his brain told him this was the first time he was ever getting a hug from his daughter. Sure, he’d hugged her to console her after her nightmare, but this was the first time she’d hugged him. His heart hurt for all the moments that he’d lost with her, with Lucy.  He had missed so much.

For a moment he regretted ever going into law enforcement. If he hadn’t, then maybe Lucy wouldn’t have gone into undercover, and she’d be alive today. But then again, he’d likely never have had Delilah, and now that he knew this kind hearted, spirited little girl, he didn’t want to let her go.

Tim pulled up the sleeve of his t-shirt to dry his eyes. He’d just have to wait tenterhooks for the results of the trial. If Lucy was really gone, then at least seeing these awful people behind bars would offer him some semblance of justice.

Chapter Text

“Why can't I come color with you at work?”

“Sorry, bud. I wish you could. But I’ve got a big project that I have to work on today,” the look on Delilah's face made Tim want to call in and tell Waller she could solve this ambulance thing by herself.

“But I could help. Like the pancakes! I’m a good helper,” she pouted. They'd had a good night, both Tim and Delilah sleeping straight through to morning. When they woke up, Dee had been craving pancakes and so he whipped out some mix and dragged a chair to the counter. She helped stir the batter - a messy proposition as half the powder ended up in her hair, rather than mixed in the bowl - and Tim let her very carefully pour it onto the hot griddle. Tamara had walked in the door just as he was flipping the last pancake, and the trio enjoyed breakfast together, Dee chattering away to them both.  

 “Oh, bud. You are a good helper,” Tim bent down and lifted her into a hug. “But it’s not a project that you can help on. I'll miss you though.” Her arms and legs tightened around him at his last sentence. He shot an anguished look towards Tamara. 

"What am I supposed to do? I've really got to go."

“From what I've learned in my child psychology class, this is normal. She’s gotten attached to you. C'mon, sis. You're gonna get syrup on Tim's uniform."

Tamara reached for Delilah and grasped under her armpits, pulling the little girl off Tim. Spinning Dee in her arms, she hoisted her onto her hip. 

"We can wave 'bye' to Tim from the front window, and then I've got extra special bubble bath hidden away from when I used to live here, and we'll get you all cleaned up, mmkay?" She tussled Dee's hair and pancake mix rained down from it. He saw his daughter's eyes light up at the mention of bubbles. He still hadn't had a chance to pick up any, and he mentally added it back to his list. 

"Thanks, T. I really appreciate it."

"Of course. Go save the city or whatever," she waved her hand flippantly. He headed out to the garage, started his truck and reversed out. Looking back at the house, he saw Tamara and Dee behind the glass, waving to him. Tim waved back and honked the horn twice before driving away. 

"Okay, you guys look the part. You've got comms just like they would, so use that radio to keep up the pretense. But you've also got pin cams embedded in the LAFD logo, and that has audio. You won't be able to hear us through it, but we can always hear you. You got it?" Nadia was all business this morning as she prepped Tim and Nyla for their undercover mission today. 

The plan was for them to pose as paramedics, dispatch sending them on a number of fake calls to try to lure any would-be robbers. If they hadn't gotten any bites after a couple, they would become increasingly lax about security to better entice the robbery crew. 

"Let's get this over with," Tim groused, all business. The sooner this was over, the better. Undercover missions still made him chafe and he wished he could have sent someone in his place. He'd much rather be on patrol or riding his desk, especially now with Delilah at home. Even though he knew UC wasn't a death sentence - Nyla sitting next to him was proof enough of that - he couldn't help but think about how the last two women he loved didn't come home from undercover operations. 

Waller's eyes dimmed at his attitude, though he didn't notice. 

"Okay, let's go. Remember the first call is Nolan and Foster. We'll be in surveillance vans near every call." She held the ambulance keys out to Nyla. "You guys stay safe."

Nyla took them, giving her a curt nod and turning to Tim. 

"You can drive," Nyla tossed the keys to him. He opened the driver's side door and slid in. 

Their first stop after driving away from the firehouse was a coffee shop a few blocks away. This was supposed to be the easiest opportunity for a smash and grab. They'd both get out to grab coffee, leaving the ambulance seemingly unattended.

Tim pulled the rig into a spot behind what he knew was a surveillance van. He left the doors unlocked and followed Nyla into the front door of the shop.

He tapped his foot as they stood in line. Nyla pressed the toe of her boot against his, causing his movement to cease. "Stop being so anxious. I can definitely see why you didn't go into undercover work."

His eyes darted back towards the door. He could see the front bumper of the ambulance and wished he could see the rear door from the line. He leaned back on his heels, craning his head to look. No luck.

"And stop that too. We want something to happen. And there's half a dozen officers in that DWP  truck, and the whole patio is officers too. If we're lucky, this will be over in ten and I can go back to patrol for the afternoon."

"I just don't know how you can be so calm about this."

"It's easy. We're pretending to be first responders. Which we literally are. You try spending two years playing a tweaker. I'd take this every day and twice on Sundays."

The line inched forward and they ordered. They scooted down to the end of the counter to wait for their drinks. Tim's black coffee came quickly and he blew on it as he waited for Nyla's overly complicated half-caf two pumps of whatever latte. It reminded him of Lucy and Nevin's, and he longed to argue with her over her ridiculous order even once more. 

"You got enough stuff in there?" He questioned once she'd received her beverage and then proceeded to doctor it up even more. 

"I've.." she opened her mouth to snark back when the radios on both their shoulders came to life. 

"Main to Ambulance 42. Car accident. Burnside and Olympic."

"Copy 42 to Main. Show us en route." They jogged to the ambulance, Tim swearing under his breath as coffee sloshed over his left hand. 

He threw the rig in gear with right and lifted his burnt hand to his lips, sucking off the remaining coffee. The Burn didn't seem too bad, but it would definitely sting later. 

“Sir, we’re going to need you to have a seat. You were just in a pretty decent car accident, and we need to check you out. Make sure you don’t have any injuries.”

Nolan stood woozily from the drivers’ side of a forest green, rusted Ford Explorer. He nodded quietly and allowed Tim to lead him away from the vehicle. 

Nyla attempted to see to their other victim, whose shiny Dodge Charger had plowed into the side of Nolan’s SUV. Their plot was that Nolan was an older, more rule-following driver, and his boot a speeding hot shot.

“Jesus Christ, Old Man. Now I’m going to fucking be late to work. Are you happy?” Foster snapped at Nolan, who looked up at him from the stair chair. The younger man had a small stream of blood trailing down his forehead, presumably from hitting his head when they crashed.

He and Nyla shared a look - surprisingly the kid had good acting chops - as Tim velcroed a C-collar around Nolan’s neck. Their fake cases were all to be mild today. They both had basic first aid training, a yearly requirement from the Department, but they weren’t qualified to treat any more serious injuries. Waller also wanted to see how far the thieves would go - likely breaking into locked narcotics storage was nothing after you’d tried to shoot paramedics off the road, but any additional evidence would help in the case against them. 

“Okay, sir, I’m gonna need you to calm down. Imma bet you weren’t following the rules of the road either.” She fixed him with a look that Tim figured had frequently kept teenage Lila in line. Foster cowered at the chastisement and sat on the bumper of the rig as Nyla tended to his “head wound.” 

Soon after, Foster caught an Uber, claiming his boss would kill him if he was late to work one more time, and Nolan refused treatment despite “exhibiting signs of a concussion.” They’d had no luck on their first call, so they were scheduled to drive back to quarters and await a second call.

The mood in the firehouse was tense. All the firefighters knew of the situation - word got around fast, especially when some of their own were being targeted. Tim took a sip of his now lukewarm coffee and tried to relax. It wasn’t ten minutes later they got their next call.

“Engine 16, Ambulance 42. Kitchen fire, 813 S. Mansfield.” 

They rolled up to a small, rundown single family home. Smoke was curling skyward out one of the rear windows. Nyla shot Tim a look and he immediately knew what she was thinking. This was supposed to be a small incident, the involvement of an engine giving the robbery crew a longer window to smash and grab. The fire was supposed to be "out" by the time they arrived. So what the hell was Smitty doing?

Since the structure was actively on fire, they weren't yet allowed to go in. They leaned on the tailgate of the rig, waiting for the radio all clear to go back inside, or for the firefighters to bring an injured Smitty out. At this rate, he might be injured, given how long they'd been inside dealing with the fire. 

A few minutes later, the smoke had mostly dissipated over the house and Bailey came out, a soot-covered Smitty leaning dramatically on her shoulder. Nyla got to work opening the back of the rig and getting Smitty seated on the stretcher, while Tim stood back and got an update from Bailey. 

"What happened?" They'd been told to keep up the pretense around all the firefighters, since they didn't know if anyone was in on it. 

"Guy really likes bacon. Literal pile of it on the kitchen table, and a small grease fire he tried to put out with water. He's got some burns, but it doesn't look too bad." Tim nodded, turning back towards his partner and their patient of the hour.

“Jesus, who let Smitty participate in this shit?” Nyla mumbled under her breath as he neared. He shook his head and stuck out the keys to her, a peace offering after having to deal with Smitty. She hopped down and As soon as the doors closed, Smitty turned to him with a grin on his face.

"Wanna see my SAG card, Sarge?"

"Your what?"

"My SAG card. Where do you think all this great acting came from?" He preened a bit, clearly seeking praise  At Tim's silence, he continued, "I got special effects from my friend down at Universal, so it was the little fire that you guys planned, but it looked much more exciting. And I got fake make-up from my cousin's dog walker's next door neighbor, who works at Warner Brothers. This burn? Totally fake." He picked at the burned skin on his arm, peeling it off to reveal totally healthy skin beneath. 

"Jesus, Smitty. Leave that on until we get to the hospital." He reached forward and started half heartedly wrapping his arm in gauze.

"I think the phrase you're looking for, Sarge, is 'thank you, Quigley.'" Tim rolled his eyes and silently willed Nyla to drive faster.

"Are we gonna talk about the cow eyes what's her face was throwing at you earlier?" They’d just dropped Smitty off at Shaw, to get “treatment” for his “burns.” Waller had decided it was suspicious if all of their patients declined service, and Tim agreed with her, though they'd still had no incidents that even suggested a robbery attempt on their ambulance today. 

"What's her face?" Tim asked feigning naivety as he shot her a look. There was only one woman they'd interacted with this shift besides Bailey and he knew Nyla knew he wasn't as dumb as he was playing. But did they have to do this during the operation? He was used to Nyla and Angela sticking their nose in his business, but he'd, rather successfully he thought, kept his relationship with Nadia from them. He'd done his best to be nothing but professional around her this morning, but clearly Nyla had noticed something. They’d also had the opportunity to call into main for a few minutes out of service to restock, hopefully signaling their criminals that soon would be a good time to rob them.

“Don't pretend like you don't know who I'm talking about. It's not cute.” 

Tim really didn't want to have this conversation here. While any would-be robbers couldn't hear them unless they used their radios, everyone in the surveillance vans certainly could. Things hadn't worked out with Nadia - as much for his own shit as for them not being right for each other - but he still respected her, both at work and as a person. 

He was saved from answering by Nyla, nudging his arm with her own. She gestured at her side mirror. “Look alive. I think we’ve got company.”

Sure enough, in his own side mirror, he could see a black sports car, similar to the reports they’d received from all the other paramedics, not so subtly tailing them. The car was swerving about three cars back, cutting off other vehicles as Tim made a few turns to confirm they were being followed.  He reached for the radio on his shoulder and called it in. 

“Ambulance 42 to Main. I’m pretty sure we’ve got a car tailing us. Can you please send PD to our location?” Dispatch confirmed they would send officers, and Tim and Nyla shared a look. They both knew, if anything was going to happen, it was going to happen now. He gripped the wheel tighter, steeling himself for whatever was coming.

They didn’t have to wait long, as the car quickly disappeared into their blindspot. 

“I lost them.”

“They must be right on our tail,” Nyla said at the exact same time. Seconds later, they felt a jolt - was the car trying to ram into them? How successful did they expect that to be when the ambo weighed at least five times as much as their car?

He heard the car swerve loudly and it suddenly appeared right next to him. Glancing over, Tim could see there were only two people in the car, both dressed in all black with ski masks on. He'd say a woman was driving, maybe 5'6", 5'7". A man sat shotgun, lanky and at least 6', probably a tweaker, and unfortunately pointing a gun straight at him. The man gestured for him to roll down his window. Tim complied, holding steady on the gas.

“Pull over,” he demanded.

Tim shook his head. “No way.” He could see the man speak to the driver, that his defiance had distracted them both. A plan started to come together in his head. He eyed the traffic light up ahead.

“Do it,” the man said, cocking the handgun. Tim looked to Nyla out of the corner of his eye, and tilted his head slightly towards the windshield. He saw her eyes dart to the traffic ahead of them and give an ever-so-slight nod. He turned his attention back to the sports car. 

“Fuck you. I know what you did to those other paramedics. You’re not getting shit from me.” He jammed his foot against the gas pedal, the ambulance lurching forward as it suddenly accelerated. They both instinctively ducked as they heard the distinct sound of gunfire hit the rear of the ambo.

If they were lucky, Tim had timed it just right. And like that, the light turned from yellow to red, Tim swerved around a slowing car, and the ambulance sped through the intersection. Both Tim and Nyla kept a firm eye on the sports car trying to catch up. They had just passed through the intersection when a sickening crunch sounded behind them. Tim spun the wheel to the left, bringing them to a stop perpendicular to the intersection.

The sports car had attempted to follow them through the intersection, but, just like Tim had hoped, had been t-boned by an oncoming car.

The vehicles were both totaled, the sports car's whole passenger side dented in, the tan Camry its hood smashed.

"Oh my God! I didn't even see them coming. Are they okay?" An older woman started to climb out of the sedan, concern evident on her face. 

"Ma'am, stay in your car." Tim waved her back into her car, reaching for his waistband and grasping his service weapon. 

"But they need help! Why aren't you helping them?" She insisted. 

"Ma'am, we're LAPD. I need you to get back in your vehicle. LAFD will be here in just a moment to assist you." Her eyes widened in recognition before doing what he asked. Tim was thankful neither car seemed to be emergent, other than the likely pin in. 

They approached the vehicle cautiously. The whole way towards them, he could hear them arguing. 

"Shit, Steven, I told you there was something fishy about this robbery!"

"I'm sorry - how is it my fault? You just kept seeing dollar signs."

Nyla loudly cleared her throat to announce their presence. "Scuse me, lovebirds. We're gonna need you to put your hands on the outside of the vehicle." 

"Drop the gun," Tim commanded as he got closer. Steven complied, the gun clattering to the asphalt. "Do you have any other weapons?"

Steven sighed. "I don't. But Jen does."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Jen shouted at him, her hands coming off the window frame to hit him. Nyla was immediately all business.

"Ma'am - this is the last time I'm going to tell you - hands on the outside of the vehicle."  Jen let out an exasperated sigh and did as told. 

It took far too long to extricate Steven from the car, book the pair and then complete all the necessary paperwork. Not only did Tim have to charge them on attempting to kill them and damaging LAFD property, their bickering cemented probable cause to search their apartment, where another team found all of the stolen narcotics. There had been a lot of finger pointing, and Tim honestly didn’t care who thought up the whole harebrained scheme. A judge could figure that out. By the time he and Nyla finished up, he was wiped, and all he wanted was to change out and get home.

"Great job today, you guys." They turned at the voice coming from across the quiet bullpen. Everyone on third watch had already gone on patrol and nearly everyone from second had wrapped up for the day.

"Thanks, Waller. It felt pretty good to be back out there on UC, if only for a second." 

"You make it look easy, Nyla."

"Appreciate that." She thumbed over her shoulder towards the locker room. "Alright, I promised my kid I'd see her debate thing tonight, and they literally lock the doors if you're late."

"Bye, Harper. Thanks for today." Nyla nodded towards them both before escaping down the hallway. 

"So…you want to go grab a drink with me?" She asked him after Nyla started to walk away. 

"Nadia…I've gotta get home." Tim couldn’t wait to see his girls, but he wouldn't say it out loud. He didn't want to rub it in - he knew deep down that it was something that she wanted for herself. 

She smiled sadly at him. "In another life maybe. I'll see you around, Bradford."

Chapter Text

Tim was in the kitchen, puttering towards starting dinner when he heard a key in the lock and craned his neck to see who was at the front door. 

“Hi Chiquita," Angela called to Delilah in the living room as she walked in the door, laden with bags. "Jack, go say hi to Tim.” Tim heard tiny feet shuffle across his hardwood before he felt Jack's little body slam into his legs. A muffled, “Hi Timmy,” came from the vicinity of his knees. He reached down and mussed the boy’s hair.

“Hi Jacky. Dee's in the living room playing with Tamara, if you want to go play too.” Taking Tim's suggestion, he scampered off towards the living room. 

“Not that I don’t trust you to feed yourselves, but we didn’t have anything to do tonight, so I figured we’d come by.” Angela followed him into Tim’s kitchen, setting two brimming grocery bags on the counter. “I wanted to hear about your illustrious turn as a paramedic.”

They spent a few minutes catching up, Tim telling her about how different going undercover felt this time, how nervous he was to go. 

He heard Tamara take the kids outside and the house quieted. It was funny how quickly he'd become used to the noise of a four year old. About as easily as he'd become used to Kojo back when he took him in. 

“Where’s your husband, by the way?”

“Wes’s at his mom’s. Patrice needed him to sit down with her financial advisor or something."

“That sounds riveting,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. 

“Exactly. That’s why we decided to visit you guys instead.”

"Well you picked a good day, because Grey's coming over after dinner. I gave him the evidence I found in her bag. He's been helping me try to figure out what the hell Lucy was telling us."

"He figure anything out?" Tim shrugged. 

"I don't know. I can't make heads or tails of it myself. He stilled slicing vegetables as he felt a hand on his arm. 

"We're going to figure it out, Tim. Even if…"

Her sentence was cut off by Delilah running into the room, a tornado of mud and giggles, Jack and Kojo on her heels. 

"Is it time for dinner yet?" She asked with a slight whine in her voice. 

Tamara chased after them, an apologetic look on her face. 

"Sorry, I tried to keep them out there, but you know how she is when she's motivated towards something."

"That's okay. We're not quite done with dinner, but we'll bring it outside soon and we can have a picnic outside, okay?"

"Okay!" She answered enthusiastically, blowing back out the door. 

"Is it always like this?"

"What, parenthood? To be honest, usually worse. You should count your blessings. Jack's been terrorizing the cat lately. Which, let me tell you, not fun. Be thankful all of yours get along. And you only have mud in one room." Tim looked down and noticed the small muddy footprints they'd tracked through the room and sighed. He'd have to get the mop out after she went to bed. 

They settled into an easy routine, chatting amicably while Angela made a side salad and cut up fruit and Tim finished the vegetarian lasagna. It felt remarkably domestic, and Tim couldn’t help but wish a different woman was with him in the kitchen. What he wouldn’t give to have Lucy here with him. 

Three hours later, dinner had been demolished and the kids were finally free of mud, both nestled in Dee's bed. Tim and Angela had settled in on the couch and were waiting for Wade to arrive. 

The doorbell rang as Tamara was packing up to leave. One shoe in her hand, she leaned forward to open the door. 

"Hey, Tamara. How's school?" Grey's warm voice announced his arrival. Tim rose from the couch and moved towards the door to greet him. 

"It's good. Almost done - I graduate in December." She announced, slipping on her other shoe.

"Good for you!"

"Thanks." She smiled at the older man before turning towards Tim. "See you guys tomorrow?"

"Please. Thanks, T."

"Of course. Goodnight, guys." A trio of 'good nights' followed after her.

"Hey. C'mon in. Can I get you a beer?"

"Sure." Tim grabbed himself and Wade a beer, and grabbed the wine bottle off the counter for Angela. 

"I won't drag it out. I figured out how to break Chen's code."

Tim stared at him, anxious to learn more. He could see Angela out of the corner of his eye, set the wine bottle down and lean forward, as if to better hear whatever Wade's news was. He felt like his heart was in his throat. 

"She used a Caesar Cypher, but I couldn’t figure it out at first. But that’s because it’s also a book cipher. And you won’t believe what book is the cipher."

"You’re burying the lede here, Wade.” Tim crossed his arms over his chest while he waited for his former boss to answer.

"Tim, it’s Goodnight, Moon."

"Goodnight, Moon? That was in her backpack when she got to the station."

"Yep. I remember you mentioned that, so I ran out and picked up a copy. It took a while, but I decoded all of her messages. They're all notes and evidence against Johnny Aguilar and his crew. Everything. From locations of their stash houses to names of their border contacts. It sounds like they've got some guys on the inside at CBP. The whole thing, it's damning."

Shit. He'd expected as much, but hearing she'd left behind concrete evidence? He hoped it would mean she hadn't suffered in vain. 

"You need to take it to the US Attorney's office," he said to Wade insistently. 

"You found it. I just did the grunt work," Wade shrugged. 

"Tim, do you know what this could mean to the Aguilar case? This evidence could help seal their fate," Angela pressed. 

He looked between them both, his hesitance clear on his face. He wasn't sure why Wade was diminishing his contribution. The amount of work that must've gone into cracking the two ciphers must've been astronomical. Plus, experiencing everything Lucy went through, even second hand, seemed like something that could send him into a spiral. 

But someone had to turn the evidence in, and a small part of him relished the possibility that he could get justice for Lucy. When he didn't respond, Angela started speaking again. 

"I know it's awful, dredging all this back up for you, but I think you should do it. I think you should testify." He nodded, listening to her words. It was true he didn't want to dredge up the worst days in his life, but if it could bring the Aguilars to justice, he knew he had to do it. 

"Okay, I'm in."

The next morning Tim stared up at the New LA US Courthouse. It wasn't a particularly distinct building, just another shiny, glass skyscraper among many in the Civic Center. He'd testified hundreds of times in his career, and probably prepped for trial hundreds more, but this time felt intimidating for some reason. Which he guessed made sense - He'd never spoken on such a personal case before. 

Maybe it was also because The US District Court for the Central District of California felt more official than the LA County courts. He'd only had to testify for a handful of federal cases over the years, so it was a bit out of his wheelhouse. He went through the mundane work of signing into the building. After registering and going through security, he found himself in front of a large bank of elevators. 

Thanks to Angela, he knew the name of the lead attorney and generally where to find his office. Tim pressed the call button, and then selected floor seven in the elevator. He fiddled with his keys in his hands as the car rose. 

The doors opened on a sterile looking hallway, glass doors extending nearly as far as he could see. He checked the signboard next to the elevator and found directions to the office he needed. 

He walked in and up to an older woman who was staffing the reception desk. She smiled at him as he approached. 

"Hi, I'm here to see Darryl Matthews," he told the receptionist, flashing his badge. 

"Do you have an appointment?"

"I don't. I just really need to speak to him about one of my cases."

"Okay. He's just about out of a meeting, but you're welcome to wait for him. I'll leave him a note with your name, and if he has bandwidth, he'll be out."

"That would be great. Thank you so much."  

Tim sat in one of the modern-looking chairs in the waiting area. He rested the file folder he brought on his knee and drummed his fingers on top of it. What felt like hours later, the side door finally opened and a tall, dark man walked out. 

"Sergeant Bradford." Tim shot up from his chair, reaching out to offer his hand to shake. "Darryl Matthews. Someone mentioned your name recently, I believe."

"That's what I'm here about."

"Why don't we go back to my office," Matthews offered. He nodded, following the man through a set of frosted glass doors. They walked down the hallway for a bit, past multiple conference rooms and a handful of offices before Matthews entered an office next to the corner, patting the name plate next to the door as he walked in.

"This one is me. C'mon in and have a seat."

"Thanks."

"So, what brings you to my office, Sergeant?"

"I came across evidence that you should have for the Aguilar case."

"That case starts in two days. I can't just introduce new evidence, a new witness two days before trial."

"I know. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't important. Actually it's more than important, it's damning."

"Alright, you've got my interest piqued at least. What've you got?"

"I received coded messages from Lucy Chen that contain evidence detailing much of their operations."

Matthews stared at him, sighing deeply before responding. "You have evidence from Lucy Chen, who…" he paused, rather awkwardly, Tim noted. The man clearly knew something of her disappearance, though Tim knew it wasn't time to get into that. "...who died five years ago." 

"I do."

"And just how did you come to receive this information? I know you were involved in the case surrounding her disappearance, but I don't recall you serving as her handler when she was undercover." Tim really didn't want to delve into everything about Delilah, especially until he knew the Aguilars were behind bars and she would be safe. 

"It's a long story, but Chen was my trainee, when she first started in the department eight years ago. We worked well together and she trusted me. I think she trusted that I would make sure this information got into the right hands."

"Okay, let me see what you've got." Tim lifted the folder to the desktop and opened it, offering it to him. Matthews sat silently, flipping through the documents. The further he got, the more furrowed his brow became. 

"These are copies?"

"They are."

"And the originals?"

"They're safe."

Matthews sighed, scrubbing a hand across his face. "Just the amount of work we'll have to do to even get the judge to admit this as evidence at this last minute…Are you willing to testify to all this at trial?"

"Absolutely." There was no question on Tim's mind that he'd work to see justice served. 

Chapter Text

“Why can't I come with you?” His daughter whined. They'd just gotten out of the truck, and Dee had frozen in place, refusing to move. Tim kneeled down to Delilah's height and gave her a soft look. He'd prefer to bring her with too, but he didn't think the US Attorney would think highly of him bringing his four year old along during his testimony. 

“I'm sorry, Bud. I know it's a bummer when I have to work. After we can take Kojo to the beach, okay? You'll have more fun playing with the other kids, anyway.” 

“Okayyyy,” Dee glumly said. He stood back up and reached for hand, walking her through the parking lot, the security checkpoint, and to the daycare. 

The daycare center in the large courthouse was colorful, but quiet, with only one other little girl sitting at a low table in the corner, working on a puzzle. The case was scheduled to begin hearing testimony at 8:30, and they'd arrived an hour early so Tim could make sure he wasn't late. 

“Hi, I'm Miss Suzy. What's your name?” The kind woman who met them at the front entrance bent down to greet Delilah. 

Tim felt her stiffen slightly next to him, and he gave her small hand a little squeeze. “I'm Dee,” she quietly announced. 

“Nice to meet you, Dee! Why don't you go play while your-” Tim shook his head three quick times - “-while we get you signed in. Then I'll come over and tell you all about the fun stuff we can do while you're here.” Dee scampered off and Tim could faintly hear her introducing herself to the little girl on the other side of the room. 

“Thanks. I'm her…she doesn't…” he shook his head. “I'm, uh, I'm her foster parent,” Tim finally got out. He knew he was being silly, refusing to tell this absolute stranger that Dee was his daughter, but he'd barely come to terms with the news himself. After this case was over, he could finally figure everything out and figure out a way to explain it to Delilah. 

“Ah, gotcha. Well, I just need you to sign her in here," she directed. 

“No luck,” Angela said as she landed on the bench next to him, diagonally across the hallway from the courtroom. The stone hallway felt vaguely intimidating in a way Tim hadn't expected. He was thankful at least for the familiarity of the Spring Street courthouse instead of the new one he'd met Matthews at two days ago. Apparently the Feds had had such an influx of cases recently that they'd additionally had to resume using the old Moderne-style building. 

“You couldn't get in?”

“I even tried using my badge to muscle my way in there. Nothing. They've closed the courtroom and are only letting in one witness at a time.” 

“Thanks for trying.” Tim's leg jiggled as he waited to be called to testify. He understood the reasoning behind a closed courtroom, but he wished he could see the monsters that took Lucy away from him. At least he'd be able to testify, hopefully put them away for good. 

Tim was in his own head when a loud explosion sounded down the hall near the main staircase. A few seconds later a second explosion detonated nearer to them, throwing Tim to the ground.

Crumbling bits of ceiling rained down on them. Tim sat up and brushed plaster off himself. He pushed to a seat and looked around. There were giant fissures in the terrazzo floors and a huge mural had fallen off the wall bringing all the plaster behind it with it. The steel girder it left exposed was precariously bending. Where was Angela?

He first thought it had been an earthquake, but that definitely wasn't what this was. It had to have been a bomb.  This would go down in history, just like Oklahoma City. He can't yet prove it for certain, but he's sure the motives are different. It can't be a coincidence that a bomb exploded in a Federal courthouse the same day that the Aguilar trial was scheduled to start. In addition to the ache he feels in all of his muscles, Tim feels in his bones a certainty that they must be behind this.

“Holy shit,” Angela grumbled, rolling onto her side and blinking dust out of her eyelashes. A muddy gash on her forearm started streaming as she pushed herself to sitting. He gestured to it and she blotted the blood on her pant leg. Didn't really do much except smear everything around, and he made a mental note to force her to see a medic later. If they made it out of here. 

“Are you okay?” He needed to get up, to start taking stock of the scene, to start helping victims escape the building. But the ringing in his head wouldn't seem to go away. How hard did he hit it on the stone floor when the blast hit him?

“I think so?” The hallway was hazy, filled with enough smoke that it could only mean a fire had started somewhere due to the explosion. A fire alarm blared loudly, though Tim could almost miss it, given the volume of the noise in his head. 

“We need to help people get out of the building." Through the haze he could see people struggling to get the courtroom door open and someone who looked like the bailiff trying to escort people to safety. 

Tim knew it was probably his head injury, but he swore he saw Lucy. Her hair was short, like he'd seen in the security footage, but the woman wore a steeled look, much like he'd seen on Chen countless times when she was his boot. Another chunk of plaster crumbled down onto his head and by the time he blinked the debris out of his vision, the woman was gone. 

The thought of Lucy jogged his memory and he suddenly began to panic.  "Oh my god. Delilah! I need to get to her.”

“Go,” Angela insisted. “I've got it here. You go get our girl.”

Tim nodded and stood up, brushing the rest of the plaster off of his dress blues. He looked back and forth for a minute. With all the smoke and debris in the hallway he was quite disoriented. Which way was the daycare again? It was one floor up, wasn't it? 

Once orienting himself he started the slow work of heading down the hallway towards the staircase, which he hoped was still intact. Being in uniform he was stopped by multiple people on the way and he did his best to render aid. 

Finally he reached the end of the building and he began the arduous task of climbing to the next level. The rising smoke made it almost impossible to breathe, and he covered his mouth with the edge of his sleeve to try to breathe better. After a seemingly endless number of stairs - he'd forgotten how tall the courtrooms were that one floor was really three - he turned the corner towards the daycare and found the hallway filled with the same destruction he'd seen downstairs. He used his hands to scramble over jagged pieces of steel and large chunks of plaster. It was certainly hurting his hands, but he had to get to Delilah. 

At the end of the hall, he saw a security guard interacting with one of the teachers in the doorway. The younger woman was frantically gesturing with her hands wildly.

“What? What's wrong?” Tim asked as he joined them.

“At the noise, we went into lockdown protocol. We were far enough away that all we heard was a loud noise. I assumed that it was an active shooter but Steve says it was actually a bomb.” She points to the security guard.

“Two, I'm actually pretty sure. Okay, we need to evacuate. There is a fire in the second floor lobby and I’m not sure how badly the building’s structure has been damaged." Tim looked at her anxiously, waiting to see Delilah. “My daughter's in your classroom right now. Let me grab her and we'll get out of here."

“We only had two little girls here this morning,” the woman continued. Tim was confused why wasn't she just letting him in the room?

She sniffled loudly before continuing, pointing up the next staircase. “We shut the door and hid in the corner just like we're supposed to during a lockdown. But the door doesn't lock, and someone came in with a gun and threatened to shoot me if I didn't give them both girls.”

“What?! You just gave them to him? You're supposed to protect them! Why didn't you protect them?”

“I've always wanted to be a teacher, my whole life. I'm about to graduate from UCLA with a degree in education next winter. I would have given my life for those girls. But he sprayed something in the room and it knocked me out. When I woke up he was gone and so were both girls.”

“Fuck!” Tim slammed a hand into the door frame. The daycare teacher flinched. The security guard looked at him with sadness. "So we have no idea where they went."

“I'm so sorry,” she broke down, sobbing. “I wish I could give you more information about your daughter.” 

The guard looked contemplative. “My best guess is that they would have connected upstairs to get out," he said, gesturing towards the next staircase. "You could barely get through that hallway by yourself. I doubt he would have been able to get through it with two girls, especially if they were passed out.”

Tim gave a sharp nod and took off running. He needed to find his daughter. And when he did, he would make whoever took her pay. 

Chapter Text

Dee felt extra sleepy as she woke up. And her head hurt. The last thing she remembered was playing with the other little girl at the daycare. Mr. Tim had to work, but he promised her that they would go to the beach afterwards. She'd been excited about playing fetch with Kojo. And then the bad man came. She didn't remember anything after that. 

Something in her told her she should be extra quiet. The room she was in was pretty dark and really loud. It was really, really loud, like when Mommy accidentally burned the popcorn in the microwave, but Dee didn't see a window she could open to let all the smoke there was out, like Mommy did. 

She was sitting in the corner of a bathroom, but it looked different from their bathroom at home. It was really big and there were a bunch of showers. But the showers didn't have a bathtub, like at home or at Mr. Tim's. The other little girl, Ruby, was laying on the floor next to her asleep, but otherwise she was pretty sure they were alone. The angry man who had stormed into the daycare and started yelling at Miss Katie wasn't anywhere.  She wondered if he was one of the bad men that Mommy talked about. 

Delilah sat for a minute and tried to think. Her mommy had taught her about what to do if someone she didn't know tried to take her. She was supposed to flop like a jellyfish to make it extra hard to carry her, yell and scream 'fire' if she could see other people. She was supposed to poke at their eyes and kick their private parts if she thought she could get away, and bite really hard on any body part they tried to stick in her mouth, and remember as many things as possible. But Mommy hadn't said anything about what to do if she was alone and there wasn't a bad guy around. If only she could get away, then she could call Mommy to come get her. 

But then she remembered that she didn't know where Mommy was. And she didn't know where Mr. Tim was. And he hadn't taught her his phone number. Dee started to feel scared. 

She wondered for a second if, once she found her Mommy, Mr. Tim could be her Daddy. At first he wasn't very good at cooking things she liked to eat, but he had let her pick all kinds of food at the store that Mommy always said were too expensive and that was exciting. Plus, he was nice like she figured daddies should be, and he gave her good hugs when she was feeling sad. She really wanted a hug right now. 

She used her best listening ears to see if she heard anyone else nearby. All she heard was the really loud fire alarm. But she couldn't hear any people, so she slowly got up and snuck towards the corner. She really didn't want to leave Ruby in case the bad man came back, but if she could go find help, she could come back for her, and that would be better, right?

Peeking back towards Ruby, Delilah decided she needed to be brave for both herself and for her new friend. She looked around the corner and tried to figure out how to get out of the bathroom. She could see a bunch of bathroom stalls, so maybe the exit was over there?

That was the way she should go, she decided. But as soon as she walked around the corner, she heard a really squeaky door and somebody walked in. Dee froze in place, her eyes wide. Was the bad man back or was someone there to help her? 

Her hope for the second ended quickly once she realized the people - it sounded like two men - were arguing really badly. She slipped into one of the bathroom stalls and stood behind its door to hide. 

"I can't believe you fucked this up so badly," one man growled. She pulled a face. Didn't he know he wasn't supposed to swear in front of kids? She opened her mouth to say as much, but these sounded like bad men, so she immediately closed it. She knew Mommy wouldn't want the bad men to find her. She tried really hard to hear their conversation over the alarm that just kept going and going. 

"How the hell was I supposed to know, man?" The other shouted back. 

"It's not hard to know which one is Chen's kid. It's the Asian one, dumbass. Now you've gone and kidnapped a second kid, and we have to figure out how to get rid of her." Dee didn't know who Chen was, but she knew she was Asian and Ruby was white. So the bad people were after her. But, why? 

Dee leaned towards the wall to try to hear them better over the alarm, but her shoulder accidentally hit the stall door and it banged shut. Their arguing in the next room got quiet. Oh no! 

"Do you hear that, Marc? It sounds like we've got company. Is one of our little jailbirds awake and trying to make an escape? C'mere, little girl," the bad man, not named Marc, said. Dee's eyes widened even more and she squished her lips together in panic. Maybe if she didn't breathe they wouldn't find her. 

She didn't hear anything but the fire alarm for a minute. A hundred years went by, but then a bathroom stall behind her banged open. Delilah bit back a whimper. Smoke in the room was getting thicker, and in trying not to cry, she accidentally inhaled a whole bunch. She coughed really loudly. 

"Not this one. But you’re definitely here. Come out, come out, you little Chink," the bad man coaxed. Dee bit her lip so hard she thought it would leave marks. She didn't know what word he was using, but it didn't sound very nice. The next door slammed open. 

"Leon, are you sure you heard something?" The first man, Marc, said. 

"Definitely. Keep looking."

Her heart was beating really fast in her chest. Their boots stood just outside her stall door. She scooted backwards a tiny bit and held her breath. 

The stall door slammed open and a big hand reached around, grabbing her by the collar of her shirt. Dee tried so hard to hold onto the stall door but he was very strong. 

"Found you," he grinned down at her. It wasn't a nice smile like Mommy or Mr. Tim had. He looked like the mean character in one of her favorite cartoons. 

"Alright, we've got to do something with her," the man said. Based on his voice she decided he was the man called Marc, which meant the other one was Leon. Mommy always told her to remember as much as possible, so she tried to sneakily look at what they looked like and were wearing, in case it was important later.

Leon, who she could tell was Asian like her, but looked kind of different. He wore all black, from his boots to his leather jacket, but he had all white hair, which made him kind of look like Ursula from The Little Mermaid . Marc was definitely the man who took her and Ruby. He had greasy looking hair that went almost to his shoulders, and he had on a green and white flannel shirt.

“What about the other one?” Marc asked.

“Eh, let her burn. She's just collateral damage. Keep this one quiet so we can escape.” Marc did what Leon told him to, slapping his hand across Delilah’s mouth. His hand was damp and smelled yucky, bad enough that her stomach immediately felt bad. Her mouth opened a little bit and one of his fingers fell into her mouth. She knew that, if there was one, this was her chance to try and get away. Dee bit down on his finger with all her might, hard enough that he yelped really loud and pulled his hand away.  With only one arm around her and his attention on his hand, she flopped like a fish and right out of his grasp. He was too distracted by the blood on his hand to notice her, and Delilah took off. She hoped her mommy would be proud of her. 

Her freedom lasted a quick five seconds, before Leon noticed the other man’s howling - Marc looked very freaked out by the blood that was now covering his hand - and came back across the room to grab her. 

“You think you’re fucking tricky, huh? Nice try, kid. But your mom’s gotta pay for being a snitch, and the price is you.” She knew a snitch was from Harry Potter, but she didn’t understand why he thought her mom was one or why her mom had to pay for one. Delilah knew they were pretend, so why didn’t he? Leon’s arm dug into her stomach as he reached behind his back. She felt something metal against the side of her head. A gun? She tried to be brave and not to show him how scared she was. 

“Try to get away again, and I’ll fucking shoot your brains out.”

Chapter Text

The hallway was getting hazier by the minute as Tim searched the fourth floor and he tried his best not to cough from the smoke. He’d come up empty so far and was beginning to doubt his instincts to come up here in the first place. It had been nearly ten minutes since he left the daycare and he was trying to not become frantic. He knew he was running out of time.  If he didn’t find Delilah soon the smoke was going to force him to evacuate the building. He dreaded the thought of leaving her behind. How would he live with himself if he lost not only Lucy, but Delilah too?

Over the incessant fire alarm, Tim heard a loud shout. Bingo. There were gendered bathrooms ahead on the right, and he took a 50/50 guess, entering the women’s restroom. He was thankful the blaring alarm hid any noise the swinging door might’ve made, along with his footsteps. Inside it was more like a locker room, with an entryway that seemed to lead to the toilet area. 

“Jesus fucking Christ! What the fuck man? She fucking bit me!” A man yelled from further in the space.

“Stop being a baby.” Another voice growled back at him.

“ She’s a baby! Or at least I thought she was! She’s a baby fucking shark, is what she is!” Tim peeked around the row of lockers and saw a man dressed in flannel, clutching his hand as it dripped blood on the floor. For half a second, Tim preened in his head, proud that Delilah clearly attacked a man three times her size with such force that he was actively bleeding. But then his eyes shifted to the other man, Leon Aguilar. Who was holding a Glock to Dee’s head.

Fuck. With his brother on trial, it tracked that one of Johnny Aguilar’s good-for-nothing brothers could be behind both the explosion and Dee’s kidnapping. Tim shifted back behind the row of lockers and evaluated his options. He could ambush them, but he’d be outnumbered. The other man didn’t have a gun out, but he undoubtedly had one on his person. He swallowed down nausea as his mind took off, jumping to every worst case scenario that could play out. 

Tim could sneak to the next row of lockers, where he was pretty sure he’d have a better shot, but that might give Aguilar both the time and a pathway to escape. He could…Tim’s brainstorming quickly paused as Leon shouted back at the other man.

“If you don’t stop fucking whining about that little nick she gave you, I’m going to make you shut up.” The emphasis Leon put on his words was ominous, and Tim braced his hand on his gun and held his breath as he waited to see what happened next.

“A little nick?! A little nick?! I swear you’re…” Tim didn’t hear the end of the man’s sentence because a loud bang echoed in the room over the alarm. He chanced another look and saw that Aguilar had taken the gun away from Delilah’s temple and was pointing a smoking gun at the other man. The man quickly fell to the floor, unmoving, and Leon replaced the gun against Dee’s head. 

Well, at least that took care of him being outnumbered, Tim thought. He steeled himself before withdrawing his gun and in front of his chest, stepping out from behind the lockers.

“Freeze, Aguilar. It’s just you and me now. We know you planted the bombs and I’ve called for backup. Why don’t you let that kid go?” Aguilar pivoted away from the man on the floor, and towards the new voice. Tim was bluffing of course. He knew nothing for certain, and there was no chance in hell he’d get backup, but he hoped the younger man was stupid enough that wouldn't deduce either. 

“Interesting…the only people who might know the kid is missing is her mom, who we all know couldn't have known, and whoever dropped her off at daycare. Which must mean,” a wicked grin grew on Leon’s face, “ You’re the dad.” Fuck. Tim’s eyes darted to Delilah, who was staring back at him with tears in her eyes. 

“Drop your weapon, or I'll drop you," Tim ground out. 

“See…You can’t do that, Daddy . No matter how good a shot you are, you won’t take the risk that I might shoot your baby girl. Or that you might miss and shoot her yourself. What will your precious girlfriend think of you, when she finds out you killed your daughter, hmm?”

For the briefest moment Tim was distracted by the mention of Lucy. He spoke about her in the present tense. Did that mean…She was alive? After all this time, his hope hadn't been misplaced. Leon barked out a laugh. 

"That's right. She's alive. And she's gonna love hearing that I killed you both. And I'm gonna get so much joy from telling her myself before I go right back to raking in the dough from our ops." Leon slowly raised the gun away from Dee's temple and pointed it straight at Tim. The man was unhinged. There was no way that he could get away with three murders, as well as the bombings. 

Out of the corner of Tim's eye he saw a slight movement. The other man, who Tim had assumed dead, was reaching for something. A weapon? Shit. Tim forced his eyes to stay focused on Aguilar and prayed the man wasn’t aiming for him or Delilah. 

"You won't get away with it. Outside is already swarmed with first responders and there's a perimeter checkpoint, staffed with cops, and you'll need to clear it to escape." Again, Tim hadn’t seen either, but he’d staffed enough emergency events to know it was protocol, and therefore likely true. Either way Aguilar wouldn’t know he was bluffing. 

Leon chuckled darkly once more, a wide sneer appearing on his face, and Tim had never wished more for his body cam when the next words came out of his mouth. 

"As if there's not dirty cops on our payroll. You think me and Johnny can run a multimillion dollar drug cartel and not have dirty cops everywhere? I’m sure you'd love to know who - shame you'll be dead and won't get to find out."

Tim had clocked him as just his brother's idiot minion, but clearly he was way more involved in their operation than he'd thought. If only Tim could figure out a way to get out of here alive, they would have even more evidence against the brothers. 

Leon's near glee over possibly murdering Tim kept him distracted, to the point he didn't notice his colleague heaving himself up on his elbow and aiming a gun straight at him. Before Tim could even decide how to address the action, the man shot Aguilar straight through the back of his head. 

After that, everything moved incredibly quickly and Tim let his training take over. Leon crumpled to the floor, his body falling limp. Delilah, splattered in his blood, was trapped and fell to the floor too. It took everything Tim had to not go to her immediately. They’d hit the tile floor hard and he knew she must be terrified and in pain. 

But the other man was still moving, so Tim kicked both his and Aguilar's guns away, before holstering his own. 

"Stop moving," Tim ordered brusquely, flipping the man back onto his stomach and pulling his arms behind his back. The action clearly pulled on his shoulder wound because he immediately started whining. 

"Ow, man, that hurts." 

Tim said nothing, pressing his knee into the man's wrists to keep him restrained. He cursed that he was in his dress uniform and wasn’t carrying handcuffs. Which was crazy of course - how could he have predicted he’d end up here? 

There was nothing in the room he could use as makeshift handcuffs and he didn’t trust this moron not to make a break for it the minute Tim tried to walk him out without being properly restrained. Tim looked around the room again hoping to find something. His eyes caught on Delilah’s sneakers. His own wouldn’t be long enough, but he could use the shoelaces from her high top sneakers to tie him up!

“Baby, I need you to crawl out and come over to me.” At the sound of Tim’s voice, Dee stopped crying and turned her head to him. She was trapped under Aguilar’s limp body and could barely move. The man had been rather slight, but he still outweighed Delilah by at least 100 pounds. She gave a short nod and started wiggling. 

As Dee army crawled out from under Aguilar’s limp body, Tim murmured encouragement to her. “You got this. You’re strong, just like your momma.” It took longer than he’d like, given the state of the building, but soon she was free.

Tim lifted his right hand off the man’s back to wave Delilah over so naturally he took the opportunity to struggle back against Tim’s lightened grip.

“Jesus, would you just stay still? I’m trying to get us all out of here alive. You’re not going without being restrained.”  Tim wrapped his fingers back around the man’s wrists and pushed back down. He’d planned to untie Dee’s shoes himself, with the aim of getting them out of the building faster, but clearly they were going to have to go with plan b. 

“Okay, I need you to pull the laces out of your shoes for me. So I can tie his hands together.” Delilah nodded, reaching down to untie her shoes. In the few days he’d had her, Tim had been impressed at how good her fine motor skills seemed to be for a kid of her age. She'd known how to tie her shoes - something Lopez said was rare for a four year old - and could print her name. But now it was like watching a different child. 

Tim watched helplessly as she struggled to even get her shoes untied, an effort clearly made difficult by her left arm, which had baseball-sized welt swelling up around her wrist. She tried using both hands for a few moments, but each time she grimaced in pain. 

With a little coaching, she started pulling the laces out of her right shoe with her right hand alone. Tim knew it couldn’t be easy. She was still whimpering, but there was a look of focus and determination on her face that made him proud. Her face was triumphant when she pulled the string free.

“I did it!” she announced with a grin.

“Good job, bud. Now the other one.” After practicing the skill once, Delilah made quicker work of her left shoe and soon handed both shoelaces to Tim. 

With shaky fingers and a firm knee in the man's back, Tim fashioned handcuffs out of the shoe laces, tugging to make sure they were secure. Once he was confident they would hold, he slipped them over the man's wrists and tightened, placing him in the corner of the shower.

“Stay there,” he commanded. The man rolled his eyes, but didn’t move. Tim crossed the room to Aguilar. Two fingers pressed to his jugular confirmed that Leon was dead, and Tim sighed in relief. He took three steps towards Delilah and opened his arms. 

 “DADDY!” Delilah wailed, running straight at him.  Her voice calling his name was quite possibly the best sound he'd ever heard. Tim was confident he'd never been so scared in his whole life. Seeing the youngest Aguilar brother with a gun to Dee's head had his life flashing before his eyes more than either of his tours abroad ever did. 

“Hey, baby. I’ve got you. You’re okay.” He cradled her to his chest, her tears soaking his shirt. 

“I was so scared. I woke up and didn't know where we were. It was so loud, and then the bad men came. I was scared you left me like Mommy.”

"I would never leave you, bud, not by choice." He ran his hand soothingly up and down her back. 

"You’re my daddy, right? Marc called you my daddy." She wiped her eyes and smeared, along with the tears, a streak of blood across her cheek. Delilah asked the question with such innocence. She had no idea of their complicated history, nor of the turmoil and joy that was going through Tim at her question.

“Yeah baby, I am." Tim pulled back to look her in the eye. "Wait. Who’s Marc?”

“His name is Marc.” Delilah pulled out of his grasp and pointed to the man who sat tied up in the corner. Huh. Superb observational skills, no doubt taught to her by Lucy.  Tim pulled her back in and kissed Dee on the crown of his head.

“Good job, bud. I’m so proud of you. I’m gonna get us out of here, okay?” Tim stood up and situated Dee on his hip. 

Delilah nodded and Tim looked behind him. Aguilar was dead. He had one man in custody. Now he just had to figure out how to keep his word and get them out safely.

Chapter Text

The smoke was getting thicker by the minute, and Tim knew he had to figure out a way to get them all out of there. He had lots of problems, but the most emergent one - his daughter was squirming on his hip, for some reason clearly insistent on being put down. 

He complied and looked down at her, seeing a frantic look on her face. 

"We can't forget about Ruby!" Dee insisted. 

"Ruby? Who's Ruby?" He asked, confused.

"From daycare. She was with me in the shower," she said, pointing further into the locker room area. 

Shit. Tim had forgotten about the other little girl who had been kidnapped. How was he supposed to get himself, this Marc guy, and now not only one kid, but two, out of the building safely?

He followed Delilah into the shower area to find a blonde little girl, a little bit older than Dee, slumped in the corner against the tiled wall. He squatted down in front of her.

"Ruby? Can you hear me?" He asked, snapping his fingers in front of her. No response. Shit . 

Grasping her shoulder, he gave her a small shake. She barely stirred, her only response a muted grumble . Of course . 

Tim lifted the little girl into his arms, adjusting her so her head rested on his shoulder. Her arms flopped down at her sides. Great , she weighed more than Dee and was totally out of it. Without her holding on, Tim knew it was going to take a significant effort to get them all out of here. 

He looked down at Dee. "I'm sorry I can't carry you both. You gotta walk, Bud," he said. Delilah nodded solemnly. "Be careful of your arm, ok? I know it hurts. We'll get someone to look at it when we get outside." She nodded again. 

Walking back into the other room, he cocked his head at Marc, who had dozed off on the floor. The blood loss from his shoulder and hand -Tim again internally preened that his daughter was smart enough to enact such damage - was undoubtedly starting to get to him. There was a small pool of blood puddled beneath him, and Tim really hoped the man could make it out of the building on his own power. 

Tim leaned his head over his other shoulder and coughed. "Alright man, it's time to get out of here before we burn to a crisp. Get up," he instructed Marc, nudging him with the toe of his shoe. Marc opened his eyes, blinking lazily back at him. Tim shifted Ruby up on his right hip and held tight to her with the same arm. With his opposite arm he reached down and grabbed the collar of Marc's flannel, cringing at the squish of fresh blood that the action milked from the fabric. He made a mental note to get tested for bloodborne pathogens once they got out. If they ever got out.. 

It took Tim a ton of energy to lift him up, but thankfully the action seemed to rouse the man a bit. He'd been thinking he could frog march Marc out of the building, but that clearly wasn't in the cards. Tim was going to have to shoulder much of his weight too. He slipped his left arm between the man's back and his handcuffed arms, pushing upward to keep him vertical. 

Tim led the group out of the locker room. The hallway immediately outside was mostly clear of debris, but the second highest floor in this part of the building was full of smoke, much more so than when Tim had arrived. 

With Marc leaning heavily on him and Ruby on his hip, progress was slow. Delilah kept pace with them, holding her left arm to her chest as they walked towards the stairs. Tim paused at the top of the staircase. The hall intersected with another or there was the staircase down. Which way had he come from? His throbbing head made it difficult to remember.

The hallway, Tim decided, starting to lead the group that way.

The further they got, Tim began to see more and more damage - lights dangling precariously, large chunks of the plaster ceiling crumbled on the floor. Dee coughed into her arm, the smoke, undoubtedly combined with the copious amount of dust, starting to impact her. 

“I know it's hard to breathe, baby. If you can, pull your T-shirt up over your nose and try to breathe through it,” he mimed, unable to demonstrate with all the weight he was carrying. 

Dee pulled a face before letting go of her injured wrist and pulling the collar of her shirt up. 

"Are you sure this is the right way? Aren’t we s’posed to go down to get out?" She asked.

Tim squinted his eyes closed and willed his headache away. He really wanted to rub his forehead, but keeping one arm under Marc for support and his other tight around Ruby didn't afford him the opportunity. 

A groan sounded to his left. "The kid's right. I think it's down the stairs."

“Did I ask for your input?” Tim snarked back at him.

Marc hacked a cough before shrugging. “Whatever, man. I’d just rather hang out with my cousin in Lompoc than burn to death here.” Tim rolled his eyes at the logic, but agreed he’d rather make it outside too.

“Fine. Let’s go.” Tim adjusted Ruby on his hip before turning the group around. 

Navigating down the stairs was an even harder task. Marc’s feet moved what felt like glacially down each stair, taking them one at a time. A glance down showed Tim's sleeve darkened, undoubtedly a product of Marc's continued blood loss. Would they even make it out before Marc succumbed to it? Tim wondered.

The distracting thought caused Tim’s foot to only land half on the next marble step, the uneven landing of their weight nearly causing them to trip. Thankfully he caught his balance before they tumbled to the next landing. Shit, a tumble like that would have been bad. Tim paused to take a breath and steady himself, only to start coughing. 

Dee looked back up at them from a few stairs below on the landing.

“Daddy, are you ok?” She asked. That little voice calling him Daddy was everything he never knew he wanted. 

He nodded. He needed to be strong for her and the group, he thought, willing himself to get moving again. 

“If you untie me, at least I can hold onto the railing, instead of you holding onto me,” Marc slowly reasoned, cocking his head towards the large wooden banister. 

Tim wared with the idea. If he cut the man loose, he could try to make a run for it, but the lessened weight would allow them to move faster if Marc could keep up. 

“If we keep going at this slow ass pace, I'm going to bleed to death. Hell I probably will even if you cut me loose. S’not I've got the strength to make a run for it, man.” 

Tim knew he was right. Together they sidestepped towards the banister and Tim helped Marc lean his full weight against it. Tim set a still limp Ruby down and reached back in his pocket for his knife. With a quick flip and two strong saws back and forth, the lace snapped and Marc was free. He sluggishly reached his left hand to his right wrist, rubbing the skin. 

“Damn, you couldn't have made it any tighter, huh? My skin’s fucking raw, man.”

Tim rolled his eyes at the complaints. “Let's go,” he said, pushing the tips of his fingers against the man's spine. He bent down to pick Ruby back up, using his now free arm to pull Ruby’s t-shirt over her nose and mouth. It wouldn’t help much against the acrid smoke, but it was better than nothing. 

“Don't gotta tell me twice,” Marc muttered, using his good arm to pull part of his flannel over his nose and mouth. The man moved slowly, but the lessened weight was a huge relief to Tim's aching muscles. 

Tim still had to reach out multiple times to guide Marc over or around obstacles. The air was a bit clearer with each flight the group made it down, but the building itself was in shambles. 

Despite him having visited this building a number of times during his career before they originally shuddered it, Tim was confused. They had to stop multiple times because Tim was turned around about which way to go.

He tried to focus, the pain in his head echoing against the ongoing blare of the fire alarm. As they neared the lower floors they passed firefighters connecting a hose to a standpipe. Thank God, people, Tim thought. 

The foursome's presence in the stairwell was immediately noticed, one of the firefighters rushing to their side. He reached out, shouldering Marc’s weight like it was nothing.

“Woahhh,” he said, his voice muffled through his face mask. “Let's get you folks out of here.” He turned and nodded back to his team, who resumed their work, before grabbing Marc's arm and pulling it over his shoulder. 

“Please, thanks.” Tim coughed violently into his elbow. “Are you all still clearing floors? When you clear the top floor there's one DOA in the women's locker room. GSW to the head. We didn't see anyone else up there.” The firefighter’s eyes widened ever so briefly before he gave a crisp nod and used his free hand to reach for the radio on his shoulder, conveying Tim's intel. 

The lobby was clear of civilians as they worked through it, and Tim wondered absently about the toll Aguilar and his family had caused. The damage was worse here since, he assumed, it was closer to the initial blasts. It took forever to navigate around large slabs of marble, charred furniture and other rubble. It was a blessing that whatever side of the courthouse they were on was still standing.

But after what felt like ages, they walked out the large bronze entrance doors and were finally - finally - outside. Tim gulped fresh air as his eyes scanned the scene. Beyond the once beautiful art deco adornments on the front of the building that were now shrapnel littering the grass, trees that previously stood stories tall were splintered. All of Spring Street was covered in debris.

He looked back at the building in horror. There was a gaping hole where the north side of the stone building had been, smoke billowing out towards the sky. Tim sent up a prayer of thanks that the tower part of the building was still standing. 

He shifted Ruby to his other hip and the little girl groaned. He peeked at her to see if she might be coming to, but her eyes were still closed. 

“C'mon, bud,” he said, offering his hand to Dee. She took it and her hand felt so small in Tim's. 

They followed the firefighter down one block and then another, debris waning as they got further away. He knew from his years on the force that triage would set up far enough in case the building deteriorated further, but fatigue was setting in and all Tim wanted to do was sit down. 

The group made it to the corner of Temple and Grand , where a group of squad cars were stationed and assisting LAFD with triage. Tim nodded his head towards the Officers as they neared and tipped his head towards Marc. 

“Sergeant?” A young female officer covered in soot asked him. 

"Can you radio someone to take custody of this moron," Tim wearily asked her, he gestured with his and Dee's joined hands towards the firefighter who was now shouldering almost all of Marc's weight. "He needs medical attention ASAP, but also get some cuffs on him and don't let him out of your sight."

"Yessir," the young woman nodded briefly and waved the firefighter towards a row of ambulances parked in front of the Los Angeles Cathedral. 

As the trio walked away, Tim shouted out to the firefighter whose name he'd probably never know. “Thanks for your help getting us out.” 

“Glad we could help get you out of there. A lot of other folks weren't so lucky.” The man nodded towards a line of black tarps indicating the mortally wounded. Tim closed his eyes for a minute, imagining all the horrible outcomes that could have happened, that still could happen.

He was pulled from his moment of catastrophizing by a loud yell. 

"Oh my God, Ruby," Tim opened his eyes and saw a woman to his left shrieking. The woman, who looked like a carbon copy of the little girl, albeit older, stood up from the tailgate of an ambulance and started running towards Tim. 

“Momma?” Ruby questioned blearily, for the first time lifting her head off of Tim's shoulder. 

"Sweetheart. Oh I thought we'd lost you. When they evacuated us and we couldn't get back upstairs…" she trailed off. The woman reached for Ruby and Tim gently transferred her into her arms. 

A paramedic chased after her. “Ma'am, you need to stay put so we can get your oxygen started,” she said, turning her attention to Tim. “Her daughter?” She asked, looking at Tim with the question. 

"Yes. Other than being covered in soot, there's not a scratch on her. She probably needs breathing treatments though. It was getting pretty smoky in there. Oh, and she was given some kind of drug to knock her out. She just now came to," Tim said, mostly for the benefit of the paramedic. The mom was still fawning over Ruby. 

The same obviously couldn't be said for the rest of them - Tim was becoming more and more certain he had a concussion and Dee's arm looked heavily swollen.

Across the way he could see Marc being loaded into an ambulance. The officer Tim handed him off to jumped in the back and the paramedic slammed the doors shut before heading for the driver's side. He shifted his attention back to Ruby's mother in front of him. 

"This is miraculous. I was so scared. I don't know how I can ever thank you for bringing her back to me."

“No thanks needed. I was just doing my job.”

"Ma'am. Why don't we go back to the ambulance, and you let me take a look at her too?" The paramedic suggested. Ruby's mother nodded and followed the paramedic away. 

Tim tugged gently on their joined hands and looked down at Dee. "Okay, bud. Let's find someone else to help your arm feel better, ok?" She nodded and he reached to pick up Delilah with his cleaner arm.  

"Tim!" The shout came from behind him. He turned them around and saw Angela jogging towards them from down the block. He sighed in relief at the sight of this best friend.  When she reached them, she stopped short, eyeing them both from head to toe, checking for injuries. He knew he looked like a disaster, covered in as much of Marc's blood as he was. 

“Not my blood,” he said, answering the question he knew she was wondering.

"Thank God. You're both mostly ok? What happened?” She questioned. He knew they probably looked awful, both covered in dust, one whole side of him covered in blood. 

“I…” he reached up and massaged his temple. His hand felt disgusting against his skin. It had just happened. Why was he struggling to remember?

“C'mere, Chiquita,” she said, reaching to take Delilah out of Tim's arms. He watched as she settled the girl on her hip and gestured to her swollen arm. “That looks like it doesn't feel very good.” Dee nodded solemnly. 

“You’re a pretty tough cookie though, just like your mama. Let's go get somebody to look at Tim's headache, and they can give you some medicine to make this feel better. And then they'll probably get you a cool cast for your arm, huh? What's your favorite color?”

Dee quietly chattered about the various colors she might pick as Angela led them towards an open ambulance, one hand pushing gently on Tim's mid back. 

The moment he plopped on a gurney he felt the rest of his energy quickly drain out of him. As the paramedic started an IV and placed an oxygen mask over his face, he felt his eyes slowly close. They were finally safe and he could rest. 

Chapter Text

Tim opened his eyes with a start. Where was he? It looked like he was in a hospital room. But why? His head felt fuzzy.

He had an oxygen cannula in his nose and a handful of other wires attached to him in various places, particularly his head. He looked left and saw someone walk into the room. Wait, he knew that person. 

Nyla leaned on the doorframe and crossed her arms. 

“Well lookit who decided to grace us with his presence. Glad to have you join us, Tim.”

“Do you have to snark me, Harper? It's making my head hurt.”

“I think that's probably actually your head injury, but whatever helps you sleep at night, Dadford.” At her comment, things came quickly back to him. His daughter! He had a daughter!

“Dadfo…wait, where's Delilah?” His eyes frantically scanned the room. Nyla moved out of the way for a woman to enter. She looked like a nurse and introduced herself as Sandra before holding onto his wrist and checking his pulse. 

“Hi hon. Your heart rate is pretty elevated. Did something startle you awake?”

“Maybe? I don't know what though.”

She nodded. “That is pretty common with brain injuries. You've been admitted to UCLA Medical Center. From what the paramedics said, you suffered a blow to the head during an explosion and had significant smoke inhalation. Can you tell me what you remember?”

Tim shook his head, the action causing pain to ricochet through his skull. He raised a hand to his forehead. He'd had concussions before, but never anything this painful. 

“I know it hurts, hon. We can't give you too much because you're about to go to CT. I just need to check your oxygen and then I'll get the orderly to take you up.”

Sandra lifted his hand off his forehead and reattached a pulse oximeter to his middle finger. As he watched the numbers on the monitor blink, Nyla circled back. 

“Don't worry, Delilah got her cast and immediately made me sign it. She's downstairs in peds getting breathing treatments now. Tamara’s gonna get her a change of clothes and some In-n-Out, and then they'll come up to visit.” 

“Wait. I have to stay here?” Tim asked, disoriented. He needed to go find Delilah.

Sandra placed a hand on his arm. “Tim, with your TBI, you're stuck with us for a bit, and it sounds like your daughter might be too. I'll call down to their nurses station and see what I can find out. If she is able to be discharged, do you have someone to take her?”

“I’m Tim's power of attorney. I can take her.” He turned towards the voice in the far corner, just realizing Angela was in the room too. “Dee will just get to sleepover with Jack until you're back up and going. They'll love it.” 

“Okay, sit up and give me a few deep breaths,” the nurse said, pressing some buttons on the bed to help Tim move to a more upright position. 

The movement caused Tim to start coughing. Sandra placed her stethoscope to his chest and started listening.

“Wait, what about Johnny Aquilar?” Tim finally remembered, turning to look at Nyla as the nurse's stethoscope pulled away from his back and she helped him lie back. Pain radiated through his forehead with the movement. 

"Oh, don't worry. His dumbass is still in custody. He didn't get five steps away before the bailiff caught his sorry ass," she paused and raised her eyebrows. "And on top of that, he confessed to his drug charges and conspiracy to commit murder, though he claims that was an accident and tried to take it back." 

“Ok Tim, I'm going to need you to follow this light.” The nurse clicked on a penlight and shined it in Tim's eyes. 

Tim struggled to follow her commands and Nyla's story at the same time. But he wanted to tell her everything he remembered before he inevitably fell asleep again. 

"His brother's not much smarter. Leon confessed not only to the drug ring, but also to having dirty cops on their payroll," he said drowsily. "He’s dead, though I didn’t do it. I'm gonna have to testify again, aren't I?" He asked.

"Let's just get you guys better, and we'll worry about that when the time comes, okay?” Angela said, patting his hand. She nodded towards the orderly that had just walked in the door. 

“They're going to take you for a CT. I'll be here when you get back, okay?”

Tim murmured his assent as the bed started rolling and his eyes slid closed. 

Angela was still there as promised when the orderly wheeled Tim back into his room. Camped out in the corner, she was flipping idly through a People magazine, her feet propped up on the windowsill. 

“Wait - I just remembered something. I can’t believe I forgot!”

She snorted, “Yeah, a concussion’ll do that to ya.” 

Tim shot her a deadpan look. 

“Fine, what did you remember?”

“Lucy was alive. Or at least she was as of when we were at the courthouse. Aguilar taunted me with it as he threatened to kill me!”

“That makes so much sense. All her evidence, the security footage we saw, the closed courtroom. And I swear I saw her after the explosion.”

“I thought so too.”

“Okay, I will see what I can find out. You rest up, ok? Maybe catch up on your Real Housewives or something.” She laughed at her own joke. “I'll be back tomorrow either way after I snuggle my own baby.” Angela stood to leave.

“Like I could get rid of you.” Tim rolled his eyes. 

“Like you ever want to!” She said back as she walked out the door. 

///

One nap later, Tamara wheeled in Dee, who wore Frozen pajamas and had a bright cast on her left arm. 

“Hi Daddy,” Delilah said with a whine in her voice. “Are you hurt too? They made me wear this bracelet and poked me with needles.” she said with a grimace on her face, holding up the hospital bracelet on her opposite arm. 

“Yeah, Baby, I am.”

“I'm sorry. D’you want a hug?”

“I would love a hug, sweetheart.”

“Hey sissy, you gotta be gentle ok? Your dad's got a bad headache,” Tamara said as she stepped around the wheelchair to help Dee up onto the bed. 

Delilah snuggled into his side with a small cough. He leaned down and placed a kiss on the top of her head. 

“Hi baby. How're you feeling?”

“I’m ok. I gotta purple cast,” she lifted the cast up and dropped it down on his stomach. Tim coughed. Her voice definitely lacked the general enthusiasm he’d gotten used to. “And they gave me a popsicle. It was yummy.”

“Aw I'm so glad, bud.”

“When do we get to go home? I want Jax and Kojo.”

“Hopefully soon, Dee. Hopefully soon.”

“Okay,” she whispered and curled further into his side, her eyes drifting closed. 

He turned to look at his older daughter. He couldn't even open his mouth before Tamara started in on him.

“I know you’re hurt, but you scared the shit out of me. I knew you were testifying today and someone at school saw about the explosion online. I tried to go down to the courthouse, but they wouldn't let me past the perimeter. They sent me to some stupid family reunification center, some help that was. I was finally able to get through to Angela.” She looked up at him with her big brown eyes.  “I was so scared. I can’t lose you too!”

“You didn't lose me though. C’mere.” He motioned for her to come closer. 

“Your wires,” she objected. “I don't want to hurt you.”

“You won't. C'mon,” he insisted. With much effort, he scooted himself and Dee over. Lifting his other arm, he invited Tamara to join them. She toed off her shoes and climbed onto the bed. She laid her head gently on Tim's shoulder. 

“It's gonna be fine.” Tim murmured into her hair. “We're all fine.”

The next day Tim woke up feeling more like himself. Well, a version of himself with an awful headache and lungs that feel like garbage, but an improvement over yesterday certainly. 

Shortly after breakfast, Angela and a man whose face Tim vaguely remembered walked into the room. Angela dragged the same chair she'd been using yesterday to Tim's bedside and sat down. The man stood at the foot of the bed.

“Tim, this is Detective O’Keeffe. He was Lucy's handler while she was undercover.”

“Hi Sergeant Bradford. It's nice to finally meet you.” Tim returned the pleasantries, wishing the man would just get on with it. 

“As you know, yesterday was the first trial scheduled for a member of the Aguilar crime family. I wish my coming to see you was under better circumstances, but…” 

Angela rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Evan, you're really bad at telling good news. Lucy's still alive, Tim, and her evidence and both of your testimony will help put Johnny away for good this time.”

O’Keeffe cleared his throat and Tim turned his attention back to him. “Yes, as I was saying, we tried to get Aguilar yesterday, but y'know how that went.” He made a fist and then made it explode. 

“I was Lucy's point of contact up until she ‘went missing.’ After that the Feds handled her. I honestly didn't know whether she was still alive until last week when they rescheduled his trial and we were both named as witnesses.” He shook his head, as if remembering.

“After things escalated during her UC operation, it was necessary to place her and her daughter, I'm sorry your daughter, into witness protection. The Aguilars didn't take well to her sudden disappearance and burned her UC apartment building to the ground. It was the Walnut Park fire, I'm sure you remember. Really devastating.”

“Shit, yeah, I remember that. It was all over the news. That was where Lucy and Delilah were living?”

“Yes. They got out unscathed, but yes. In any case, this info you provided will be remarkably valuable when the trial is rescheduled.”

“That was all Lucy. She encoded everything, documented everything.”

“Be that as it may, you knew how to get it into the right hands, and it'll help put Aguilar and his operation behind bars for a long time. So thank you.”

Tim nodded, regretting the movement immediately. Seeing his pain, he saw Angela press the nurse call button out of the corner of his eye, and O’Keeffe lifted his hand in a wave. 

“I don't want to take up too much of your time. I just wanted to give you the good news and say thanks. I'm sure the DA will be in touch.”

Tim lifted his hand to wave back and it felt like the action took all of his energy. 

Evan walked out of the door and Angela pushed to stand. “I'll let you rest too. They told me Lucy still has about a week of briefings before she can reintegrate. Until you're out of here, I can handle the kiddo. Dee is ready to be discharged today, so they're gonna bring you the paperwork to sign.”

“Thanks for everything, Ang.”

“Of course. You know I’ve got you.”

She left and Tim closed his eyes, willing the rest of his hospital stay to be over soon.