"Lorenzo, quit your griping! There’s no room for discussion here. You need to be here December 31^st and January 1^st. That’s all there is to it. Am I making myself clear for the zillionth time here or what?" Captain Lispschitz snarled.

Chris’ face was locked in a scowl. The new millenium was only going to come once in his lifetime and he wanted to share it with his bride of nearly eleven months. He wanted her all to himself that night, as well as the first day of the new millenium. Well, he wanted her all to himself 365 days a year, twenty four hours a day, but New Years Eve was going to be something special for the two of them, at least the way he was planning it in his mind.

"Would you quit following me around Lorenzo. I’m not going to change my mind just because you’re annoying the hell out of me." Cap said, turning and giving Chris a royal stare.

"Cap, would you just listen please?" Chris begged, following Harry into his office.

Harry held up his arms as if to say he had already heard enough. He walked around the desk and sat down exhaustedly in the chair. Chris remained standing. "Alright, I’m listening, but I’m not changing my mind and that’s final."

"Cap, I wanted to do something special with Rita this New Years Eve. I mean it is our first official one together."

"I told you no and I’m not falling for that ‘first’ official excuse anymore, I’ve given you that latitude all year long."

"Cap, you’re not even giving me a chance here," Chris begged.

"You’re right Lorenzo, I’m not." Cap shuffled through some papers on his desk and pulled out a memo. "This is why, alright," he said, holding up an official looking document from the Chief. "It says in here that all veteran officers will be required to be on duty on December 31, 1999. It doesn’t say except for the Lorenzo’s. Besides, you’ve had every holiday off this year so far. I think I’ve been beyond fair as far as you’re concerned."

Chris let out a sigh. He knew Cap was right. "Does this mean Rita will be working that night too?"

"It says all, Lorenzo, not just the ones who gripe the most," Harry said sarcastically.

"I guess we’ll be together then anyway," Chris said with a half smile.

"We’ll all be together," Cap grumbled. "I’m on duty too. In fact I think the whole force is on duty that night. No one knows what to expect at all."

Just then, Rita walked into Cap’s office. "What to expect when?" she asked. Chris turned around pleasantly surprised to see her standing there.

"We don’t know what to expect for the new millenium. The closer it’s getting the crazier everyone seems to be getting," Harry explained.

Rita nodded her understanding and returned a caring smile in Chris’ direction.

"Looks like we’re both on duty that night Sam," Chris said.

"Ah," Rita paused and scrunched her face up momentarily. "I promised I’d work at the Outreach Center that night, Cap. We thought we might be in for a long evening there."

Cap had to laugh. "So much for your big plans kid!" Chris looked very disappointed.

"You made plans for us?" Rita asked him.

"Not exactly. Not yet. But I wanted too. I, at least thought we’d be able to work together."

"We’ll just have to celebrate the night before or the night after. It’s not that big of a deal."

"Yeah, you’re right. I’m sure there’ll be another millenium in our lifetime," Chris said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"Cap, will that be a problem if I’m not here?" Rita asked, hoping that she could work at the Outreach Center.

"I’ll have to do some begging, but given the fact that you’ll technically be doing some community service it should be a no-brainer for the powers that be," Cap explained.

"Let me know if there’s anything I can to do to make sure I can work down there. We’d like to get as many kids off the streets as possible," Rita added.

Chris had sat down in one of the chairs opposite Harry. His mind was a flurry of thought. "Hey maybe I could just help you out down at the center too, I mean you’ll probably need some extra help," Chris nearly pleaded.

Rita and Harry grinned at each other. They both knew right away what he was trying to do. "Chris, we’re fully staffed. We’ll be fine, but obviously the force is going to need all the help it can get that night," Rita said. "You’ll be a true leader to a lot of the young officers."

"Yeah Lorenzo, I think maybe I’ll assign you to Narco that night." Harry knew that Chris hated Narco. "There’s a ton of young blood down there just itching for some leadership."

"You do that and I’ll for sure find a reason not to be on duty that night," Chris said, rising from the chair and heading back to his desk.

"Rita," Harry began as she turned to follow Chris out of his office. "I wish I could give you guys the night off, you know that, don’t you?"

She nodded sincerely, "Yeah Harry, we both know that. He’ll get over it, he always does."

As Rita walked out of the office, she noticed Chris over by the coffee machine and she walked over to join him. She gave him a partial hug from behind, just to let him know that she felt the same way he did. "You didn’t have to be so hard on Harry, he’s done a lot for us," she whispered into his ear.

Chris nodded in agreement even as she spoke the words. "I know, I know. I just hate every moment that I can’t spend with you. And special days are the worst." He picked up his coffee and spun around to face her.

Rita let out a little giggle. "Now how would you even know that? We’ve been together for every holiday so far since we got married?"

Chris smiled and put his head down. She was right as always. "Ok, so maybe it’s just the thought of not spending a special day with you. I don’t know. I guess I gotta gripe about something right?"

Rita began to fill her own cup with coffee. "Oh no, do I hear another session with Daniel coming on here?"

"No, no you don’t. I’m just a typical, hot blooded, American male who is madly, deeply and passionately in love with my wife."

"Good answer," she said, reaching in to steal a quick kiss from him, before heading back to her own office.

Chris had court for the majority of that afternoon, so Rita finished up some paperwork and headed out at a comfortable five o’clock hour. It was already dark as she drove the familiar fifteen-minute drive home. Here it was December already, two years removed from that first Christmas they really spent together as a couple up in Wisconsin. Where did the time go? They were already moving toward their first anniversary as a married couple. She smiled as she drove, thinking about how truly wonderful everything between the two of them was.

She got home to the quiet house and decided it was about time to start putting up some Christmas decorations. They were going to wait until the upcoming weekend, but during the drive home, she had driven past so many houses that had all kinds of decorations and lights up already. She couldn’t blame the lack of trimming in and outside of her home on the weather. It had been so comfortable lately, highs in the low 80’s. It was just about perfect. It hardly seemed like Christmas weather. But aside from the two times now that they had spent outside of Florida, this kind of weather was all she and Chris knew for Christmas.

That was that, she made up her mind and went to the spare bedroom and opened up the closet to find box upon box full of Christmas decorations. She carried out a couple into the living room and set them down. Before she went back to bring out a few more, she paused at the stereo and picked out some Christmas CD’s and proceeded to drop a few into the player. She turned the music up loud so that it filled the whole house with the delightful, holiday sound.

Rita went overboard on just about every holiday, but she took Christmas to a level unmatched by any other. It wasn’t gaudy, but she went the distance to fill every sense with the holiday. The house now, and previously her apartment, always looked exquisite and the piney aroma filled every nook and cranny of the house. She even added little touches of the season to every room and she even spent extra time finding something to brighten up her office at work. She was queen of Christmas when it came to decorating.

She’d have to wait for Chris to get the tree. That was something he seemed to like to do and they always picked out a fresh tree together. They’d been doing that for nearly eight years now. Chris never decorated his loft much at all, but he always seemed to get a kick out of helping Rita spruce up her place. And he even bought her adorable ornaments and other holiday bobbles that she came to treasure year in and year out.

She decided to start making her special touches around the house. She started with one box at a time and carefully unwrapped the tissue paper that cradled each precious piece that she had. Then she dotted around the house looking for just the right place to display it. She was having the time of her life, singing and humming to the familiar, annual melodies. She never heard Chris pull up or even come into the house.

The piney fragrance hit him the minute he opened the sliding patio door and he let a grin wash over his face. He knew exactly what was happening here. That, along with a chorus of Silver Bells and pinecones lined up on the kitchen counter were a dead give away to Rita’s mood.

He spotted something sitting on the edge of the kitchen table and grabbed it as he went off in search of her. This was how easy she could change his mood around. He was on his way home to complain about the trial he was forced to be a part of, but now, her holiday spirit immediately lifted him up and he let all his cares fade away.

He stuck his head slowly into the living room and saw her hanging up some evergreen- lighted garland. Her back was to him and so he snuck up behind her and held up the small sprig of mistletoe, spun her around and gathered her into his arms and gave her an embrace worthy of any day, let alone a holiday.

Rita was a bit stunned and shocked at first, but she knew those lips and the feel of his arms as he wrapped them securely around her body. They held the kiss for an extended amount of time, neither wanting to give up the closeness with the other. Rita finally pulled away for a brief second to gather up some air, she quickly nuzzled back up against his skin.

"Looks like you’ve been busy," he murmured against the side of face as he brushed his lips over her cheek. "I thought we were going to do this over the weekend?"

"I couldn’t wait," she said out of breath.

They kissed each other for a few more minutes, swaying slowly to the beat of the Christmas music that was playing in the background.

"What do ya think so far?" she asked?

"Beautiful," he managed to say. "I love you."

"Not me silly, the decorations?" she gave him a playful slap.

He laughed and released her lips and glanced around the room. What she had done was already spectacular. "It’s wonderful, I love it too," he said. "You really know how to do Christmas, Sam."

She smiled. She knew his comment wasn’t condescending. It was sincere. And it meant so much to her that he liked what she did. "I know I should have waited, but I was driving home and I started looking at all the houses that were already decorated. I guess it just got me into the spirit of things."

"Mmm," Chris said, nodding his understanding. "I thought maybe it was just an excuse for you to hang up the mistletoe a little ahead of schedule."

She smiled at him warmly. "Well, if was up to me, I’d leave up the mistletoe year round."

He grinned back at her and gave her another tender kiss.

"Now that you’re here, you can help. I want to string this all around the living room this year. I measured out the length and we’ve got plenty, but I need to come up with an easy way to get it to hang up there. Got any ideas?" She held up some evergreen garland.

Chris looked around the room and crinkled up his face. "Let me think here, there’s got to be an easy way to do this."

"Do you remember we did it at my apartment the one year. But I completely forgot how you made it work?"

Chris loosened up his tie and took off his suit coat. "Let me get a ladder and some tools, I think I recall exactly what I did. Maybe it’ll work in here too."

________________________________________________________________________

Chris was busy rigging up a way to display the garland all around the ceiling of the room. He stood at the top of the ladder reaching and pushing the raw materials into place. Rita continued to open up her little treasures and place them around the house. They both hummed and sang along to the Christmas tunes that blared from the CD player.

The phone started to ring. Chris groaned. "I’m not getting that," he shouted. Rita came walking down the hall and gave him a glare as the phone entered its third ring.

"You’re five feet away from it," she stated loudly, as she pick up the handset.

"Yeah but if it’s a DB, which ever one of us answers it will have to go out."

"Don’t forget, I’m the supervisor around here, I can assign whomever I choose," she said to him as she began to talk into the receiver. "Hi, this is Rita."

"Pulling rank as usual," Chris said, pausing on the top of the ladder while she listened to the person on the other line. She walked over to the CD player and turned down the sound.

"Hi Dad," she said happily, glancing at Chris, to acknowledge that Benny was on the line. "How are you? Great." She laughed at little at whatever Benny was telling her.

Chris came down off the ladder and waited patiently for Rita to end her conversation with him, so that he could see how his Dad was doing.

"No, he’s right here. Yep, we’re actually both home tonight, rather early. No, we’re not doing that, we’re putting up the Christmas decorations." She laughed again. Chris could only imagine what Benny was saying to his wife. "That’s wonderful. Perfect! No, don’t even think about doing that. We have plenty of room, you know that. No, I will not accept that. Let me let you talk to Chris. I know, I love you too, I can’t wait to see you. Here he is," she said, handing the phone to Chris.

"When you coming down Pop?" Chris asked. "No, you heard Rita. It’s absolutely no problem at all. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Pop, do we have to go through this every time you want to come down here? You’re staying here, period," Chris looked at Rita and rolled his eyes. He covered his hand over the receiver and whispered, "he goes through this routine whenever he wants to come down here." Rita smiled and nodded. "No, look Pop, just tell me what day you’re coming. We’ll pick you up at the airport and that’s that. So how you doing otherwise? Did you have your checkup last week? You never called. Was everything alright? Good. And the blood work? Hmmm, well what did the Doctor say about that? If you say so? Work? It’s going ok, I can’t complain, though my boss is a slave driver," Chris grinned at Rita. "No, I haven’t heard of that case. Sounds pretty interesting though. How long will the trial take?" Chris held his hand over the receiver and whispered to Rita, "he’s doing a corporate tax raid thing. It’s going into the 7^th week now." Rita shook her head at the length. "I’m glad it’s you Pop and not me. I was in court this afternoon and I hated it. It’s gotta be the worst part of my job. No offense to you. Yeah, I know, I’m looking at it from a different perspective. I don’t know if I’d like it any better if I was a lawyer. Hey, what’s with all the questions anyway?"

Rita walked over closer to Chris and leaned into the handset and said, "Benny, you’re starting to get to him now."

Benny laughed in Chris’ ear. "Maybe you two would like to chat to one another again. It always comes back to picking on me, doesn’t it?" Chris said referring to Benny and Rita.

Rita and Benny responded at the same time, "It’s cuz it’s so easy and so much fun to do." Rita reached out and gave the side of his stomach a little squeeze.

"Very funny," Chris said, shaking his head. "Yeah Pop, I love you too. We’ll see ya soon, yep, I will, bye bye." Chris clicked off the call and threw the phone onto the sofa and grabbed Rita as she walked by and pulled her aggressively into a hard embrace.

"Mmm, what’s that for?" she asked playfully.

"It’s for making me totally crazy."

"That’s not that hard to do," she giggled against his lips.

"That’s very true," he said pressing his own lips against hers. And just as quickly as he had her melting under his powerful spell, he pulled away. "Hey, how ‘bout if we go pick out a tree?"

"Right now?" she asked surprised.

"Yeah, right now. It’s not that late and I know you’re in the holiday spirit."

She smiled and nodded. "Yeah, ok, let’s do it, let’s get one now."

They jumped into the Jeep and drove off in search of the ‘parfait’ Christmas tree. Chris had even managed to forget all about the trial that he had been a part of that afternoon. Forget, that is, until Rita brought it up during the drive.

"How was court?"

Chris glanced over to her and then stared back out the window, acting as if he was concentrating on his driving. For the moment he ignored her question.

"Well?" she questioned him again.

"It went alright. It’s gonna be a long case," he answered shortly.

Rita had no clue what case he was working on. "Fill me in. I know this is one of the cases you worked on while I was up in Orlando this summer, right?"

Chris mind raced to think of what he could tell her. This particular case involved kids. He purposely avoided discussing it with her for nearly six months now. She had read about it in the Orlando newspaper, but never had put two and two together, that Chris was involved in it. She did have strong opinions as to the guilt or innocence of the alleged suspects. They had briefly discussed it upon her return from the Orlando conference this summer. Chris listened intently to her objections to the handling of the case, but never let on to her that he had been the arresting officer of record, due to the undercover work that he actually was still on at that time. Apparently she hadn’t taken the time to read his particulars on the case since then. Chris figured that she had passed his reports off to Harry.

"Did George have you take a vow of silence or something?"

Chris let out a ‘ha.’ "No, nothing that drastic. It’s just pretty involved. There are nine defendants." Chris continued his vague explanation.

"Hmm, I don’t remember this case at all. Tell me more about it. I must have read the abridged version in your reports."

He looked over at her again. He knew once he told her the name of the gang, she’d put all the pieces together. The crime had been detailed in the paper. Chris’ name had been left out since he had gone undercover at the time, so Rita probably didn’t realize that Chris had been the officer that caught these kids. "It’s the RB’s case."

Chris could feel the glare and shocked look of Rita’s reaction. It was nearly piercing his heart. "You’re part of that case?" she asked stunned.

He nodded. "I was undercover. I made the bust." Chris braced himself for her oncoming outburst. "You never read my reports?" he asked offhandedly.

"You saw two kids commit that murder and now you’re gonna try to put all nine of them away?" she asked, not believing he was a part of this. She ignored the question he asked.

Chris was ready to go toe to toe with her. "Rita this so called group of nice, young men brutally executed five people. They’re a gang."

"That’s not for you to decide. You saw two of them attempt to kill one person."

"The MO on all five victims is exactly the same."

"It’s circumstantial Chris. And how can you even try to pin it on nine people?"

"Rita, they all run in the same group. The RB’s. I mean, come on, even the name they gave themselves. The Rich Bastard’s. What does that tell you? These kids are bad news, they’re out of control. They arrested and convicted all the Manson’s too, remember?"

"All it tells me that they have an attitude. But that doesn’t mean they’re all murderer’s. And it’s not up to you to decide how they should be punished. They’re just kids, how can you compare them to the Manson’s? Some of them are only twelve or thirteen years old. And in case you forgot, you’re the cop here, not the judge and jury."

"A fact that I am well aware of," he answered, giving her a short glare of his own. "You weren’t there Rita, there’s a whole lot more to this than what was in the newspapers." He stopped and waited for her to give her some kind of reply. When none came he continued, "Look, can we change the subject here, we’re never gonna come to any agreement on this, so it’s pointless to try," he paused. "I just want to have a nice evening."

"Fine," she said curtly.

He let out a little sigh and knew he was in for a long evening.

Sometimes it was really hard to be married to someone who basically had the same job that you did. That’s what they both were thinking as Chris continued the drive over to the Christmas tree lot. Especially when it found them on opposite sides of opinions. Even though those differences helped shape them into one of the best homicide teams, they found that it caused a real problem in their married life. It was hard to separate ‘the job’ from ‘the personal life.’

As Chris parked the Jeep in the Christmas Tree lot, he decided to try to break the ice again. "Listen Sam, I’m sorry. I know we should have talked about this case before now. I just know how you feel about kids, and you made it pretty clear to me how you felt about it back in August. I guess I didn’t want to get into it with you after that." He dipped his head a little, almost begging for forgiveness. "Can we discuss work at work and just have some fun right now?" he proposed. "I mean we’re here to pick out a Christmas Tree for crying out loud."

She finally made eye contact with him and gave him a smile. "Yeah, we can have some fun right now, but we haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg on that case yet. Be in my office at 8:10am tomorrow morning and we’ll pick it up from where we left off."

Chris grinned and opened up his car door and walked around to the other side. He knew she wouldn’t forget. That was just one of the reasons he loved her so much. As she got out of the car he wrapped one of his arms around his shoulder. "I’m thinking let’s get an 10 footer this year."

Rita giggled, "That’s not gonna fit in the Jeep, let alone in the house. Bigger is not always better."

"Says who?" Chris retorted, with a smile bright enough to light up the entire lot. Rita shook her head with happiness.

The next morning came way too early for Chris. He dreaded it from the moment she said she wanted to continue discussing it the night before. He knew every detail about this case. He knew Rita didn’t. She knew that kids were involved and to her that meant that there was always a chance for innocence.

When he strolled into the office at 8:18am, Rita was over at the coffee machine pouring herself a cup. "You’re late," she said as he walked over to get a cup for himself.

"Yeah, someone turned off the alarm this morning, before I was fully awake. You know I always hit the snooze."

She practically ignored his comment. "Come on in to my office and let’s discuss this case," she held a file in her hand and waved it in his face. Then she spun around and went into her office.

Geoff and Tre were situated at their desks and watched in fear at the scene before them. They knew Rita could be tough, but they also knew about the case, having served as back-up’s to Chris. Chris poured his coffee and shook his head and rolled his eyes at Geoff and Tre. Tre gave him the thumbs up sign for luck as he headed in.

"My money’s on Rita," Geoff mumbled to Tre as the door closed.

Chris opted to start with humor this morning. "Good morning Lieutenant, I apologize for being late. My wife turned off the alarm on me. She knows I always use the snooze button. I overslept. It won’t happen again, she’s assured me of that."

Rita face showed the faint trace of a smile. "Glad to hear that Sergeant, please sit down."

Chris pulled out a chair and sat down comfortably. "Rita do you really want me to rehash this whole thing for you? It’s all in the file."

"I know, I read it this morning."

Chris laughed a little. "That’s why you got here so early."

"I can’t believe you never let on that you were a part of this," she said in disbelief. "And not just ‘a part,’ you were the primary. How could you not tell me about this?"

"Well, when it was happening, you were out of town. Everything happened really fast. Like I said, I was undercover. Five people were already dead. We were in the midst of a serial on our hands. By the time you got back from Orlando, we had made the bust."

"You still could have told me."

Chris nodded. "Sam, I know how you are about kids. And with the trial being pushed back till now to gather more evidence, well, both sides wanted to maintain a low profile."

"I am your wife too."

"I’m aware of that. But you do have access to the files. You could have read about it any time you wanted to. Every report I wrote went across your desk. Everything you wanted to know was in there. You’re not just supposed to sign off on them and pass them off to Cap. I believe the manual says that you’re supposed to read them first."

Now it was Rita’s turn to shake her head and smile. She knew he had her on that one. "Touché," she said. Rita had done her share of pencil whipping in the short time she had been Lieutenant. It was part of the job. She just didn’t have the time to devote to everything she always wanted to. "I know, I was swamped back in August. I did pass a bunch of paperwork off on Cap."

"Listen Sam, I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. I assumed you read the report and you didn’t want to talk about it. I think it’s disgusting what those kids did to those victims. It makes me sick to my stomach to even remember what I saw that night. I’ve been dreading this case for months. The last thing I want to do is to come home at night and talk about it."

It started to sink into her what Chris had been going through. "What time do you have to be in court?"

He lifted his head up, "I have to be there by 10. Donovan makes his opening remarks today."

"Maybe I’ll be there too. I think I’d like to find out more about this case."

The RB’s surfaced in Palm Beach nearly a year earlier. At first they were a group of privileged kids who were into petty crimes like shoplifting and vandalism. But the older the group got, the more defiant and gruesome the group became. One of their first despicable acts was the torture and murder of an entire neighborhood’s group of pets. They went from house to house stealing cats, dogs and even fish and hamsters, demanding ransoms. At the end of the week however, they disregarded the ransom money they had received and ended up tying all the animals together and setting them ablaze in the middle of the neighborhood’s road at midnight. They signed their trademark RB in the street in silver dollars. At the time, the cops didn’t know what it meant. They’d soon find out.

The gang task force at the Palm Beach Police Department began to keep track of their activities. Piece by piece they began to identify possible gang members and establish a gang profile of the group.

In late January of 1999, the RB’s graduated to their first of five homicides. Their MO was fairly simple. They targeted the homeless, the unknowns of the community. It was all a game for the RB’s. They’d torment the person, follow them, pick and prod at them, beat them up, leave them alone for a few days and begin the process all over again. It was a systematic torture that eventually lead to death. They saw it as a contest, even at times an initiation of sorts, for new members to the RB’s. Sometimes all members would participate in the torment, while other times it was one of the RB’s vs. the homeless victim. In any event it was the sickest of minds that dreamed up this wicked pastime.

The so-called, self-proclaimed leader of the RB’s was a 19-year old by the name of Hennings VanCleef. Hennings ran the gang from his Father’s beach house. Mr. and Mrs. VanCleef were living in Denver most of the time and had no idea what their son was up to.

Hennings recruited many of his friends, all from the same lifestyle. They ranged in age from 13 to 20. All were from wealthy, billionaire families, where the children had too much time on their hands. Their petty crimes were initially bought off by disbelieving parents and the kids were let free without having to pay any price. The animal crime for instance resulted in one of the gang, 20 year old Lucas Sheffield, to have an animal abuse charge added to his otherwise spotless record. Sheffield was Hennings right hand man. The seven other remaining gang members were 17 year old Mick Wilkie, 16 year old Mitchell Holt, 15 year olds Bobby and Bart Robertson, 15 year old Justin Winston, 13 year old Brendan Andrews and 13 year old Alex Malis.

When the RB’s changed over from vandalism of buildings and pets to people, they immediately targeted the homeless. Police psychologists determined it was the group’s way of exerting power. They picked on those they knew they could easily destroy. Initially, they would take their victims to the edge of killing them and then they would back off and move onto another victim. This went on for a few months and most homeless people didn’t even bother to report the incidents. 23 year old Paul David Meersma was the first victim with a name who turned up dead. From what the gang diversion task force could piece together, this first homicide was probably a scare tactic gone bad. They concluded that the RB’s hadn’t intended on killing Meersma, rather that they merely wanted to take him to the edge. The scare didn’t work. They literally pushed Meersma to the edge of a beach cliff and while taunting him and throwing rocks at him, Meersma may have slipped and fell the 35 feet to his death. The death was ruled accidental. One of the gang members had carelessly left a silver dollar at the edge of the cliff.

When the second homeless victim turned up dead, homicide was finally called. Upon examination of the victim, the gang diversion task force was called when a single silver dollar etched with a script RB on it was found in the victims coat pocket. This became the calling card on every dead victim. The RB’s had escalated their heinous crimes from minor to major. Nothing was accidental any longer. And the entire Palm Beach Police Force banded together to stop this new maniacal threat.

Without witnesses to come forward to point the finger at the RB’s, the gang continued on with murder after murder. Their targets weren’t sixty-year old men or helpless women, rather, they were young victims themselves. Only one victim was over 30. All others were generally in their twenties, all were male and one was a teenage runaway, who remained unidentified.

Each murder got more horrific than the previous. The RB’s discovered and planned vicious ways to torture their victims. The gang diversion report noted that this was part of the gang’s membership code, seeing how one murder could possible top the previous one.

After one week passed and three victims were dead, Captain Lipschitz decided that Chris would go undercover with Sergeant Rey Moreno of the gang diversion task force. Rita had gone to Orlando for a three-week seminar on the use of computers within homicide investigations. The seminar boasted the attendance of the nation’s top ranking homicide investigators and commanders. Rita was oblivious to the serial murders going on in her hometown during the short span of time. And by the time she returned home, the RB’s had been caught and were awaiting their trial. In her haste to get through 3 weeks worth of paper that was stacking up on her desk, she merely penned her signature on the homicide files written by Chris, Geoff and Tre or in this case, handed them off directly to Cap who had offered to help.

Sergeant Moreno and Chris went undercover and underground as two homeless people. For the better part of two weeks they lived on the streets of Palm Beach. They moved independently of one another, but maintained a ‘third’ eye on each other while they went about from alley to alley.

On the fourth day of the undercover gig, the RB’s targeted Rey. His Hispanic background made him a likely candidate. The RB’s gravitated to opposites. One victim had been Black while another was Cuban. Chris was forced to watch in horror as they mercilessly beat the life out of Rey the first time they chased him. Two days later, another horrific beating left Rey nearly dead. Chris was under strict orders not to stop them until they attempted to murder Rey. That came three days later. Chris trailed Rey and spotted two RB’s, Mitchell Holt and Justin Winston as they clubbed Rey from behind and began to tie him up to the back of a pick up truck. They used a baseball bat to continue to beat on him. Justin took our a silver dollar and stuck it in Rey’s coat and just as they were going to get into the truck and drive down the alley ways with Rey being tied to the back, Chris radioed for backup and grabbed Mitchell Holt just as he was about to get into the pick-up and begin to drive. Justin Winston had no where to run. They were booked with attempted murder of a police officer. Chris had seen more than enough. The coin was his signal to arrest. Rey miraculously survived with no permanent scars or reminders of the three beatings that he had taken. Rey and Chris were eager to take this gang to trial and get them off the streets.

The DA’s office had other ideas. They didn’t think the case, as presented, would stand up in court, at least not to convict all nine members of the gang. That’s why it was now, nearly six months later, as boxes and boxes of evidence and testimony were gathered, that George Donovan and his assistants felt they were ready to win the case in court.

Donovan’s opening statement was pushed back to 2pm that afternoon. Following his brief explanation of what he intended to prove in the course of the trial, the Judge dismissed the case for the rest of the day. Chris got up from his seat near the front of the courtroom and turned to see Rita sitting in the back. He gave her a bit of a smile and walked back to meet up with her.

"Keeping tabs on me Lieutenant?"

She gave him a condescending smile and replied, "Yep, I’m getting ready to write your annual review and I have no idea what you do all day."

"Well, if you’re grading me on this, I know I’m in trouble."

George walked up to greet them. "Hopefully we’ll get this thing started tomorrow. I guess the Judge had something personal to attend to today."

"I don’t know how you stand this George. All this waiting would drive me crazy," Chris said.

"It’s the end result, that’s what keeps me in it," George said.

"Yeah, I like the paycheck too," Chris added sarcastically. Rita gave him a small punch as they all shared a laugh.

"I’m surprised to see you here Rita, how’s everything?"

"Everything’s great George. And I’m just interested in this case that’s all. I was out of town when everything happened this summer, so I’m just trying to get caught up."

"Chris and Rey did a great job. Now it’s up to me."

"I’m sure you’ll do fine. You always do!"

They all walked out of court together. George headed off to his office and Chris and Rita walked back across the street to the Police Department.

"Listen Sam, I didn’t mean to exclude you from any of this," Chris began.

"I know. It’s ok," she put her arm around his shoulder. "Sometimes we just get so wrapped up in our own little worlds, that we nearly shut each other out. I do it too."

"I think it was different when we were actually partners, you know?"

"Yeah, I agree. There were times, well, there are still times when I think that you and I are one. We just have to get used to this two people, two minds thing."

Chris nodded. "Listen, how ‘bout a soda? My treat," he nodded to the roach coach across the street.

"Sure, that sounds good."

They walked over to the portable eatery and ordered.

"Listen Chris," Rita began, "I’m going to work at the outreach center tonight, so I won’t be home till late."

"No problem, I was gonna play some ball with Daniel anyway, if you don’t mind?"

"I think this two people, two minds thing is working already."

It was shortly after 10pm when Chris got home from the pick-up game with Daniel. Exhaustedly he collapsed on the sofa and clicked on the remote of the TV. Before long he fell asleep.

Rita came home just after midnight. She came in the back way, through the sliding patio doors off the kitchen and as she entered, she could see the light from the TV flickering in the living room. She shook her head a little. There was Chris waiting up for her again. She smiled though, because it was nice to know he cared for her that much. She deposited her purse on the kitchen counter and left her raincoat draped over a chair as she headed into the living room.

She reached over and placed a small kiss on Chris’ forehead. "Hey, sleeping beauty, I’m home, you can stop worrying now," she said softly, running her fingers through his hair.

He woke up slowly and gave her a little smile. "I must have fallen to sleep, hmmm, it’s after 2 already?" he questioned.

"Nope, I came home early," she answered as she shut off the TV and began to walk down the hall.

He sat up quickly and rubbed his eyes for a minute and followed along after her. As he reached the bedroom, he saw that she had already begun to change into her nightclothes. He sat down on the bed, figuring she must be tired. He pulled off the T-shirt he wore and tossed it onto the floor. The he fell back against the pillow and nearly fell to sleep on the spot. Something about her quiet mood had him puzzled though. "Sam, what’s up? Is something wrong?" he asked.

"I’m just tired, that’s all," she answered shortly again.

"Are you catching a cold or something?" he said sitting up, now more wide-awake.

"I feel fine." Something was wrong, but she wasn’t talking.

Chris held out his hands in front of him, "ok, sorry I asked." He lay back down and started to pull the sheet over his body. It seemed like forever before she came into the bed. Chris realized he had fallen asleep and when he awoke, the room was dark and as he turned over, he reached for her and she wasn’t lying beside him. He sat up quickly, willing his eyes to quickly adjust to the darkness. He saw her silhouette standing near the bedroom window. "Rita, what’s the matter?"

He could see her turn toward him. She let the curtain fall, blocking out any incoming light. "I’m sorry Sam. I didn’t mean to wake you, go back to sleep."

Chris pushed off the covers and went to her side. He slowly let his arms encircle her. She closed her eyes as his still, warm, sleepy skin came in contact with her. At first she felt a chill. Then she began to warm up, from being wrapped in his strength.

"You’re freezing, are you alright?" he asked again.

After a moment or two of quiet, she finally answered him. "It’s not me. I guess I’m just upset that’s all."

He held her closely and felt her cheek next to his own. "What’s going on? Tell me? Did something happen at the center? Did someone hurt you?"

He could feel her nod no against his face. She pulled back the curtain again and watched as the cool rain of December tap against the window. "The center is going to close Chris. They’re shutting it down."

"What? Since when?"

"Since tonight. At least that’s what they told all of us. They can’t get the funding they need to keep it open."

"That’s ridiculous. We just had that fund raiser last month."

"The bowl-a-thon only made $800. That’s not even enough money to buy food for a couple of weeks.

"So maybe they need a sugar daddy, or some big corporate sponsor of some type."

"Yeah, but finding one isn’t that easy. I guess they’ve been looking for months now. They been postponing the inevitable for quite awhile now."

"I’m sorry Sam," he said, softly kissing her cheek. Her skin tasted salty, she must have been crying. "How long you been up for?"

"I haven’t gone to bed yet. I’m trying to think of something, something I can do" she said breathing in deeply.

"Well, worrying and crying isn’t going to help find an answer. You need to get some sleep, and some rest. We’ll figure something out in the morning," Chris suggested.

She stared out the window a while longer. "It’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow too," she said, dropping the curtain.

"If we didn’t have the rain, we wouldn’t appreciate the sun," he replied prophetically, dragging her back to their bed. She reluctantly let him lead her to the bed. He fell back to sleep holding her in his arms, while she remained awake for most of the early morning hours, thinking of what she could do to keep the center open.

The next few weeks zipped by both of them in a blur. It was turning out to be a miserable holiday for both of them. Rita spent any waking, non-working moment in meetings or on phone calls, looking for someone or some company to take the Outreach Center under their wing. There had been no takers. Even though the center had a positive success rate in the work it was doing, the end of the year budgets of corporate America were not being generous towards a worthy cause. It didn’t feel much like Christmas.

The RB’s trial dragged into its third week. There were so many cancellations and continuations on both sides that it didn’t seem like the trial would ever end. Each side found new evidence or witnesses to bring forward. Chris was just plain irritated. The lawyers of the nine youngsters that made up the group were merely wasting time, using the wealthy family funds to postpone the trial until everyone would tire of it. The thought sickened Chris, thinking that these ‘hoodlums’ would get off merely because they had money. They had hardly spent any time in jail or detention during this process. Most of the time they were running free on the streets. Chris thought it was crazy that such large sums of money were going to waste protecting murderers, when it could be used to fund the center.

He tried to explain his feelings to Rita after one particularly long day. They ran into each other at home that evening and decided to share a pizza together.

"It’s just such a waste Sam, I don’t get it. I’d like to get up in front of that judge and just speak my mind. I feel so helpless," Chris began.

Rita was a bit preoccupied with her own plight. "I guess you just have to let the wheels of justice turn." Chris stopped chewing and stared at her. She finally looked up and saw his stare. "What?" she asked, shrugging her shoulders?

"I guess I just would think that you would think that this trial is not only an waste of time, but it’s a waste of money too. Money that could probably fund a center like yours for years." He shook his head in disgust, dropped the piece of pizza he was eating and let it fall onto the plate. He lost his appetite.

"That’s not how the system works Chris," she said, now becoming interested in the discussion he had begun. "You don’t know that they’re all murderers. It’s in all there in your reports. There are three of those kids that aren’t tied to any of the murders. I think the DA should have gone after them as individuals. My gut tells me that they’ll all get off because of that. You can see it in the eyes of the jury."

"Whose side are you on here? You’re busting your butt to try to find funds to keep your kids off the streets instead of having them killed by the RB’s."

"It’s not about sides Chris, you’re innocent until you’re proven guilty you know."

"I disagree, all nine of those kids had something to do with all of these murders. These kids need to pay. You didn’t see Rey. They all played some part in this. That I know is a fact."

Rita got up and poured herself a glass of wine. "You’re thinking with your heart Chris, and I understand that. I can’t imagine what it was like for you to see Rey go through that, but those kids shouldn’t all be on trial together. That’s a mistake. You can’t convict someone of a crime they didn’t commit. I’m just afraid that you won’t get any convictions. They should be tried separately. They are just kids and kids make mistakes when they don’t have any guidance. It’s just like the runaways. And my kids’ not having a center is also separate from this trial. That’s not what it’s about. These situations are independent of each other. I’m not going to hold the center closing against the RB’s. I know justice will be served. You’re gonna have to face the facts sooner or later."

"Hopefully it will be much later," Chris said, shaking his head and going off into the living room.

_______________________________________________________________________

Christmas went by in a blur. Benny had gotten tied up, up in Philadelphia, on the trial he was working on and he’d try to make it down before New Years. Anna called from Germany, where she was making a film for foreign distribution. And Chris and Rita worked tirelessly on the RB trial and the Outreach Center respectively. They took a break on Christmas Day just to share it with each other. It was quiet and peaceful. They both declared a truce from even letting a thought about work enter either of their minds. They spent the day dotting on each other, lavishing each other with surprise gifts and inviting Cap and Franny over for a quiet, home-like, dinner celebration.

Cap and Franny were in fine form on Christmas. They had decided together that they would purchase for themselves a personal home computer. The latest and greatest they could find. Even they weren’t even Christian’s, they always bought Christmas presents for others as well as themselves. Cap explained to Rita once that you really didn’t need a specific holiday to let someone know you love them. Most of their day had been spent setting it up their new PC. Chris and Rita laughed riotously as the two of them related the comic happenings.

"She thinks she knows all about it you know?" Cap said as Franny gave him a loving tap. "I’m trying to follow directions and she’s pulling stuff out of boxes right and left. I can’t find anything I need to find."

"That’s not true Heschy, you exaggerate so much," Franny said, smiling herself, "he’s telling you kids a fib, that’s all there is to it. I was way ahead of him. I mean how hard can it be to hook it up, all the connections are color coordinated. He tried to plug in the green end to the blue end."

Cap looked embarrassed from her explanation. "Those colors were almost identical, that’s all, and the plugs were almost the same."

Franny knew her way around the computer. "No, they weren’t, one was a nine pin and one was a 15-pin. That’s not alike at all!"

"Well, it still isn’t working," he defended himself.

"We just need to install some software, that’s all."

"She wants to get hooked up to email and we can’t even get on line yet," Cap explained.

"I’ll get it working later tonight, you’ll see," Franny said.

"Yeah, we should get going. It’s time for us to leave these kids alone, we’ve been here long enough today," Cap said rising from the couch.

"You guys don’t have to go," Rita said.

"Yeah, it’s early," Chris added.

"No, we’ve been here long enough. Dinner was wonderful and the house looks absolutely adorable," Fran said, "Next year we’ll have you over at our place."

They walked Fran and Harry out to their car and watched as they drove away. They walked back inside arm in arm and as Chris closed the front door behind them, they stood in the small entryway, under the mistletoe. He brought her close to his body and using his hands he cupped her face and dove in for a tender kiss. His gaze turned hot as he stepped back for a minute and looked at her. "Merry Christmas, Sam," he said.

"I love you so much Chris," she answered and gave him a kiss of her own. When she pulled away, she let her nose collide with his for a tender nuzzle. Chris ran his arms up and down along hers.

"I think I still have another present or two for you," he said with a grin, and dropping his voice to a low, seductive tone.

"Mmm, I was thinking the same thing," she said diving in for another kiss from his lips. Together they headed back towards their bedroom.

_______________________________________________________________________

On Monday, things were back in full swing. The RB trial was now into its third week and Chris was becoming more and more frustrated with it. Each one of the nine RB’s now had their own attorney and the trial was turning into a circus.

Rita, in the meantime, had taken a few personal days to attempt to find someone who could help keep the center open. It was slated to close on the night before New Years Eve. She was desperate.

Thursday December 30th was upon them. The RB trial was slated to begin at 9am and would probably last only half the day, due to the approaching holiday. Chris was slated to begin his testimony this day. It was shortly after 11am when they finally called him to the stand.

George questioned him about the all the things he witnessed leading up to the near fatal beating of Rey Moreno. Chris patiently told his story to the jury. Then each of the nine attorney’s for the RB’s began to take their turns with his testimony. George objected several times on behalf of Chris, as they tried to disregard his testimony and to put words in his mouth. When one suggested that Chris made up what he had seen, Chris nearly lost it right there in the courtroom. He refused to back down from the attorney and the two of them began to shout at each other, while George rose to voice his objection and the Judge banged his gavel to bring silence to the courtroom. When silence came, Chris angrily added his own opinion about the guilt of all nine victims. The judge put him in contempt and called for the end to the trial for the day.

One of the court guards came and led Chris out through the back of the court. Harry, who had been sitting in court that morning, followed behind, as well as George. The guard led them to the judge’s chambers. The guard opened the door and allowed the three men to enter. The guard closed the door and waited outside. The judge finally entered from another side door and hastily began to take off his robe.

"Sergeant Lorenzo I am amazed that you’d want to spend the new millenium in jail."

"If you think that I’m going to let some attorney call me a liar, then yes Judge, I am willing to pay that price. Maybe all nine of them didn’t attempt to murder Rey Moreno, but two of them did and I saw it."

Cap grabbed Chris’ arm and squeezed it hard as if to tell him to back off.

"I didn’t put you in contempt for the outburst. It was your opinionated histrionics that landed you in jail." Chris didn’t comment. "How long have you been on the force Sergeant?"

"About twelve years your honor," Chris replied.

"And don’t you know how to behave yourself in a courtroom by now?"

"This case is getting to me Judge, I’m tired of it," he said with a bit of an attitude.

"That’s no excuse, we all have to deal with injustice every day. That’s why we have police officers and judges and juries. It all works out in the end."

"I don’t think it always works out."

"Well, it’s not for you to decide and it’s certainly not up to you to attempt to influence a jury with your opinions."

"Your honor, if I may," George began to interrupt on behalf of Chris.

"I’m not finished yet," the Judge cut George off. "Do you understand what I’m saying to you Sergeant?"

"Yes sir, I do, and I’m willing to spend the night in jail, but I will not apologize for my outbursts."

The Judge gave him a smile. "Captain Lipschitz, I understand the entire force is on call or on duty tomorrow, because of Y2K is that correct?"

"Yes it is your honor," Harry replied.

"And I suppose if I jail Sergeant Lorenzo here, you’ll be forced to call upon someone else to take his place?" Harry nodded. "Well, I won’t do that," the Judge continued. Chris let out a bit of a sigh, and Harry thanked the judge. "But I do have a suitable punishment for Sergeant Lorenzo."

Harry and Chris looked at each other and wondered what the request would be. "What exactly do you have in mind Judge?" Chris asked.

"I’ve got seven defendants that I can’t hold in jail, only two have been linked to the attempted murder. I have to release them to their parents or legal guardians. The motion from their attorney’s came across my desk this morning. The testimony that I’ve heard and read for myself indicates the same thing."

"What are you saying Judge?" George asked.

"When this trial begins again after the New Year, there will only be two defendants. I’m declaring a mistrial up to now. Six of the boys will be turned over to their parents today. Alex Malis’ parents are in China right now. He has no other relatives. I’m granting temporary guardianship to Sergeant Lorenzo for this weekend."

Chris stood by shaking his head no furiously. "There’s got to be something else, he could stay with a foster family or in a home somewhere."

"Yes, he could, but that’s not what I’m granting. I think it will be in the best interest of both of you," the judge paused. "Captain Lipschitz, I’ll need you to place Sergeant Lorenzo on call for tomorrow. I think he’ll have his hands full with Mr. Malis."

Harry agreed. Chris still couldn’t believe his ears. "Judge, please, I’d really rather spend the time in jail."

"The jails are full. This is a much more humane resolution. I’ve made up my mind and that’s all. You can pick up Mr. Malis on your way out. Perhaps you’ll learn something this weekend Sergeant. I certainly hope you do."

Chris wanted to protest again, but both Harry and George led him outside quickly.

"Way to go Lorenzo," Cap said as they stepped outside the judge’s chambers. "You’d do anything to get off duty tomorrow huh?"

"And you didn’t help out our case any either," George added.

"Do either one of you think I’m thrilled by all this?" Chris said. "I better go get this kid and go home. Rita’s gonna kill me," he added.

"She may not be the only one, Lorenzo " Cap called out after him.

On the other side of town, Rita was striking out herself. She had appointments with three different CEO’s and they all told her the same thing. They couldn’t help the center. It wasn’t in their budget. The fourth CEO she had an appointment with had cancelled their meeting. Seems he had to head out to Australia for the New Year Celebration. She headed back over to the Outreach Center to see if anyone else had any luck.

"It’s over, at least it’s over for right now," the director said to her.

The small center was being boxed up piece by piece. A handful of runaways worked in the other room. "I still can’t believe this is happening," Rita muttered.

"Me either," the director said, "it’s bad enough that these kids aren’t going to have a place to go, but I’m out of a job too. I haven’t taken a salary in five months now. I don’t know what to tell my wife."

"Oh, Lawrence, I’m sorry, here I’m going on and on and I’m not even thinking of you and what you’ve been going through. I apologize," Rita said taking him into a hug.

"Yeah, I feel like a total failure. I hate letting these kids down."

"You’re not a failure, you’ve done so much. We’ll get this thing going again and we’ll even get you back pay. I promise," Rita said.

"I won’t hold my breath, but thanks for thinking of me," Lawrence said. "Listen, maybe you could do us a favor though?"

"Sure, name it?"

"Well, I found spots for Maria, Jamie and Rueben, but Wade still doesn’t have anywhere to go. I was gonna turn him over to Juvy Hall, but those kids in there would eat him alive. He’s such a small fry, I don’t know how he manages to make it out on the streets alone. He really needs to be in a home somewhere, you know?" Lawrence pleaded.

"You want me to take him home over the holiday?" Rita asked, her face breaking out into a smile. "Lawrence, I’d take them all, you know that. Of course Wade can come and stay with us. You don’t even have to ask."

"It’s just for the weekend you know, I think we’ll find him a foster home next week, but if you could take him today, then I’d be able to sleep a little better tonight."

"You better start counting your sheep Lawrence, Chris and I will be glad to have him," Rita gave Lawrence another hug.

"I just don’t know what I’ll do without all your help Rita, you’ve been great. These kids are lucky that you’ve been here for them."

"I feel lucky to Lawrence, to have been able to be a part of this. But I’m not ready for it to end yet. The New Year will be good to us, I can tell."

"I hope so, I sure hope so, someone has to care besides you and me."

Chris spent another hour going through all the paperwork he needed to fill out and sign in order to take Alex Malis out of the jail. Finally an officer of the court brought him out and turned him over to Chris. As the two of them left the courthouse in silence, Chris noticed the Judge standing in a doorway, smiling and nodding at Chris. Chris gave him a sarcastic grin and wave in return and led the boy outside.

"Man, it’s hot today," Chris said as the sun hit him right between the eyes. He figured it was up to him to break the ice now. He was stuck with the kid for the next three days. He didn’t even know what he was going to say to Rita. He just tried to block it out of his mind. He hoped she wouldn’t overreact too much. Well, actually he was counting on her soft spot with kids to come in to play when he began his explanation to her.

"It’s always hot here," Alex was saying as he followed Chris to the Jeep. "If you don’t like it, you ought to move."

"What? And miss babysitting a kid like you? Forget about it," Chris said jokingly.

Alex wasn’t too impressed with his joke. "I don’t need no babysitter."

"You mean ‘a babysitter’ don’t you?"

"I don’t need no teacher either," he said smugly.

Chris laughed and opened the car door up for him. "Get in, let’s go Mr. Big Time."

Alex gave him a glare and got in and buckled his seat belt. When Chris came around the other side Alex began to talk some more. "I didn’t ask anyone to do this. I was cool staying in the cell, you know? I think my lawyer forced the judge into this."

"I think I got myself into it all by myself, ok?" Chris waited for a response from Alex and none came. "Besides you’ve been cleared, the judge declared a mistrial. You needed a place to stay this weekend because your parents aren’t in town."

"You got kids?" Alex began, "cuz I promise I won’t hurt them or anything."

Chris looked over at the young boy and really looked at him for the first time. This kid was only 13. He was just a kid himself. "No, my wife and I don’t have any children." He was slightly impressed by Alex’s honest admission.

"You’re married huh? What’s your wife gonna think about bringing home an accused murderer?"

"I imagine she’ll ask you what you want for dinner," Chris said with a smile.

"You’re gonna lie to her?"

"Lie to her? No, why would I do that?"

"You have to tell her that I’m an accused murderer," Alex said again.

"Relax Alex, my wife’s a cop too. She knows all about this case. Besides, you’re not the first accused murderer we’ve had in our home."

Alex looked at Chris wide-eyed. This 13-year old was not your typical murderer. Chris’ last comment struck some fear inside him. Chris chalked up a point for himself.

Rita and Wade left the Outreach Center as Lawrence locked the door for one last time behind them. "Have a Happy New Year, Lawrence alright?" Rita said.

"I’ll try. Then I’ll be ready to get back to business on Monday that’s for sure. You two have a good weekend alright?" He waved to them and headed off to his car.

Rita and Wade walked over to the LeBaron. "Do you mind if we stop at the grocery store before we head home Wade? I need to pick up a few things for supper."

"No, I don’t mind."

"Is there anything special you like food wise? Maybe we can pick it up," Rita said continuing with the conversation.

"I’ll eat just about anything, except for pork chops. I never did like those much."

"Well, we won’t get any pork chops then. How about spaghetti? Do you like that?" Wade shook his head and nodded yes. "Maybe Chris can make up a pot if we get all the ingredients that he likes to have."

"Who’s Chris?" Wade asked.

"I’m sorry, Chris is my husband."

"I didn’t know you were married," Wade said, "do you have children too?" he asked in hopes that they did.

"Not yet, Chris and I haven’t been married a year yet."

"I bet you’ll be a good Mother. You’re really a nice person," Wade said genuinely.

Rita looked over at him and smiled warmly, "Thanks Wade that’s very sweet of you to say."

_______________________________________________________________________

Rita and Wade arrived at home first. Rita talked him into taking a shower, while she began to fix up one of the spare rooms. In the meantime, Chris and Alex came in quietly through the patio.

They walked into the kitchen and then the living room and didn’t see anyone. Chris knew Rita was home, because the LeBaron was parked in the driveway. He decided to call out to her. "Sam, hey Sammy, I’m home."

"I’m back here Chris," she called out.

"Follow me," Chris said to Alex. Together they walked down the hallway, toward the sound of Rita’s voice. Chris spotted her in the spare room. "Uh, hi, news travels fast huh?"

"What?" Rita asked. "What are you talking about?"

"Let me guess, Cap called you and told you to make up an extra room huh?" Chris said. Alex stood behind him, out of Rita’s line of sight.

"No, Cap didn’t call me. The spare room is for Wade. What are you talking about?"

"Who’s Wade?" Chris asked, as Alex poked his head around Chris allowing Rita to see him.

"He’s from the center. Who’s that?" she asked pointing towards Alex.

"Oh boy, we’ve got a mix up going on here," Chris said as he quickly looked from Rita to Alex. Suddenly behind Alex, Wade appeared dressed in one of Chris’ T-shirts and a pair of jeans.

"Chris, this is Wade," Rita made the introduction.

"Hi everyone," Wade said with a smile, "I thought you guys didn’t have any kids," he added.

"We don’t," Chris chimed in. "This is Alex, he’s here for the weekend." Chris introduced him to Rita and Wade. He opted to not use Alex’s ‘accused murderer’ line. Alex managed to smile and nod at Wade and he turned to Rita and said hello.

"You’re a runaway too huh?" Wade wondered. "Maybe you two should become foster parents or something?" Wade wasn’t about to hold anything back.

"I’m not exactly a runaway," Alex interrupted.

"Alex, why don’t you go see what’s on TV ok?" Chris said.

Alex nodded and headed back down the hall. "Hey can I watch TV too?" Wade asked.

"Of course you can," Rita said.

"Cool, this is pretty cool," Wade said, "And I even cleaned out the shower too Rita, the towel’s hanging on the rack alright?"

"Thanks Wade," Rita said.

The two boys exited leaving Chris and Rita a chance to get caught up. "You didn’t tell me you were bringing home someone from the center?" Chris let his statement hang in the air like a question.

"No, I didn’t, it just sort of came up," Rita said, fluffing a pillow. "The center closed down and we found a place for everyone but Wade. Lawrence is working on a foster home, but with the holiday, there just wasn’t enough time. I didn’t think you’d mind," she paused. "And just who exactly is Alex?"

Chris plopped down on the newly made up bed and let out an exhausted breath. "You’re not gonna believe me when I tell you."

Rita was somewhat intrigued. "Try me, alright. I mean I’d like to have some background on who’s going to sleep in my house tonight."

"I opened my big mouth in court today," he glanced at Rita who stopped picking up around the room and who now stood with her hands on her hips waiting for his response. "The judge held me in contempt and then rather than letting me spend the night in jail, he sent me home with one of the members of the RB’s. Then he declared a mistrial. Alex is technically free."

Rita couldn’t believe what she was hearing. "What exactly did you say to set off the judge?"

"This one kid’s lawyer was hacking off on me and I got mad. He tried to call me a liar. I told the entire court what my opinion of these kids was, I was on the stand and I didn’t hold anything back," he said truthfully. "The judge had apparently heard a motion from the attorneys of the seven kids asking that they be let out for the holiday, due to inconclusive evidence. Six of them were placed in the custody of their parents, but Alex didn’t have anywhere to go. So rather than spend the night in some foster type home, the judge thought that maybe I’d learn something from all this."

"And have you?"

"Yeah, next time I’m gonna keep my opinions to myself."

"I can’t believe you did that," she said. Rita went and stood in the doorway and glanced down the hall. "Do you realize we have a runaway and an RB together in our house?"

Chris shot up off the bed, "Yeah, maybe I should go check on them?"

They both stood in the doorway and tried to see if anything was going on. They could hear the TV going in the background, but it didn’t sound as if either boy was talking.

"I’ll go see," Chris said again, walking down the hall toward the living room. Alex was sitting on the floor while Wade was stretched out on the sofa as they both listened to rap music on MTV.

Wade was definitely the more outgoing of the two. He rarely thought about what he was going to say, he merely blurted things out. "Hey Chris, this is awesome, you guys have a ton of channels." Alex’s eyes never left the screen.

"Yeah, I suppose we do, what amazes me even more is what some people call music," he said sarcastically, grabbing the remote and turning the sound down a little.

Wade laughed a little. "This is great stuff Chris, it’s Snoop Dog."

Chris rolled his eyes and asked them if they were hungry.

Alex finally turned and looked at Chris, "yeah, I’m starving. I haven’t had a good meal since they locked me up."

Wade got wide eyed and wondered to himself who exactly Alex was. It was one time he didn’t blurt something out. His silence didn’t last for long. "You were in jail Al?" Wade finally asked. Chris waited to hear what Alex’s answer would be.

"It’s Alex, not Al and yeah, I was accused of murder."

"Who’d ya kill?" Wade pressed on.

"I said, I was accused of murder. I never said I committed one," he said directly at Chris.

Chris had to grin. Either Alex was incredibly trained by his attorney, or he was an intelligent kid to begin with. Right now Chris gave the edge to the attorney, given the last few days in court.

"So are you on some sort of release program or what?"

"Something like that," Alex said, glaring at Chris. He was living up to his promise he made to Chris.

Rita came walking down the hall and heard the last part of the conversation. "Wade, I think that’s enough now ok?"

"Yeah, sure," he paused, "Sorry Alex," he added, "I didn’t mean to make you mad."

"Don’t worry about it," Alex replied and both boys turned their attention back to the videos.

"I guess I’ll start some dinner," Chris said, shaking his head and heading into the kitchen, followed by Rita.

________________________________________________________________________

The evening went by rather smoothly. Wade’s chatter was nearly nonstop. He wanted to know everything and just felt like talking all the time. Neither boy mentioned the RB’s or runaways, so for now Chris and Rita were safe with their secret. Rita knew that Wade was familiar with what was going on in town. The Center had hosted some workshops for the kids about sticking together on the streets to stay out of harms way.

After dinner Chris decided to work out on the heavy bag. He changed into some sweats and a T-shirt and passed through the kitchen on his way out to the garage. Wade was watching TV in the living room, while Alex helped Rita with cleaning up the kitchen.

"Time for therapy, huh?" Rita asked as Chris went by them.

He grinned at her and gave her a tiny kiss. "Something like that. Do you mind?"

"Not at all, hope you win," she giggled.

Chris exited outside and Alex glanced out the patio to see where he was going. "What’s he gonna do?" he asked Rita as he busily dried a plate.

"He’s got a heavy bag out in the garage, he likes to box," she said grabbing a pot to wash. "I’m sure he’d let you join in if you’d like." Alex stared out the patio and saw the light go on in the garage. "Alex? Go on if you want, I can finish these."

Alex turned away, "Nah, no thanks, I’m not much of a jock." He walked back over to the sink.

"Well, what kinds of things do you like to do Alex?"

He didn’t answer her at first, but then he said sarcastically, "you mean besides kill runaways like Wade?"

Rita stopped what she was doing and couldn’t believe what she had heard. She took a deep breath before she replied. "Look Alex, I am not the judge or the jury. I don’t know what your involvement was in those murders. But right now, you are living in my house and I will not allow you to talk like that. If you want to continue to do so, I will personally deliver you back to the judge and I guarantee he will lock you back up, do you understand?"

Alex nodded slowly. Rita knew she had scared and intimidated him that was her intent. She wanted to put an end to his heavy-handed sarcasm now, before something he said would hurt Wade. What she didn’t know was that Wade had heard what Alex had said from the other room. He was terrified.

"I like music and history," Alex was saying, trying to change the mood that hung in the air.

"Do you sing or play an instrument or anything?" Rita instantly changed her mood, to show him that she didn’t hold a grudge.

"Both, I usually get the lead roles in musicals we do and I play guitar, trumpet and a little piano."

"What’s your favorite type of music?"

"I like jazz," he said, "and rock, you know, just to fit in."

Wade came sulking into the kitchen. "Wade, are you hungry or anything?" Rita asked.

"No, I’m alright," he paused, "Where did Chris go?"

"He’s outside in the garage, he’s got a heavy bag out there for boxing. You can go out there if you’d like," Rita said.

A hint of a smile came to his face. "Cool, I think I will." Wade went to the door and walked outside.

"Do you think you’ll go to college for music?"

"I don’t know, maybe, my parents want me to be a doctor, I hate science."

"My parents wanted me to be a teacher, do I look like a teacher?"

"But they let you become a cop?" he said, "that’s cool. I wish my parents would listen to me. The RB’s listen to me. Me and Brendan hang out all the time listening to music. He has a totally kick drum set. We like to jam and the other guys sit and listen to us."

Rita was sympathetic to what he was saying. "Alex, that’s wonderful. It’s terrific that you are discovering things you like to do. But you can’t use what you see as your parent’s lack of listening to do the wrong things. You’re old enough to know right from wrong. You’re old enough to know who you should choose as role models."

"I didn’t do anything," he suddenly burst out. "I didn’t, truthfully. I don’t think I could do anything like that ever. Me and Brendan, we faked our task. We didn’t do anything to anyone. We were scared."

Rita pulled him into a hug, she heard him softly crying. "It’s gonna be alright Alex, we’ll help you."

"My parents don’t believe me, they just don’t listen. They won’t even come home and help me," he started to sob against her chest.

"Shhh, calm down, we’ll take care of everything," she said, holding him as if he were her own child. "It’s ok, everything’s ok now."

Meanwhile, outside in the garage, Chris was going at the bag, when out of the corner of his eye he spotted Wade watching every move he made. He stopped and grabbed the bag to quell its movement. "Hey Wade, what’s up?"

"Nothing, there’s nothing on TV and Rita and Alex are talking about music. Do you mind if I watch?"

"Not at all, in fact, would you like to try it for yourself? I can show you some of the punches and stuff."

Wade’s face lit up brightly, "Yeah, that’d be great. I always wanted to learn how to box," he said enthusiastically. He walked in closer to Chris. Chris headed over to the bench and grabbed another set of gloves.

"Here, put these on, they should fit alright for now, then come on over to the bag." Chris demonstrated punch after punch to Wade and showed him how to dodge and move around the swaying heavy bag. Finally he let Wade at it all by himself. "Alright, there you go, see what you can do."

Chris went to his cooler and plucked a bottle of water out of it and stood outside of the garage in the cool evening air, while Wade worked on attacking the bag. He shouted out words of encouragement. "There ya go Wade, now you’re looking good, keep it up."

He leaned against the stockade fence watching as his neighbor, Web Webster came up the side of his own house to greet Chris.

"Hi there neighbor," Web said, holding out his hand for the customary handshake. Web was definitely old school, but Chris and Rita had come to love this gentle old man.

"Hey Web, how’s everything?"

"Couldn’t be better Christopher, couldn’t be better. Say who’s that in there?" he asked.

"That’s Wade, he’s staying with Rita and I for the weekend. He’s a friend of ours."

"The kid’s got a good looking jab."

"I just showed him how," Chris said proudly.

"Maybe you lost your calling Christopher, maybe you should coach huh?" Web laughed.

"In my next life maybe, huh? You want a beer or something Web, they’re cold."

"Sure, if it’s no trouble." Chris walked back into the garage and plucked out a bottle of beer and brought it back over to Web. Web took it from him and opened it up. "I read in the paper this morning that the entire police force is either on duty or on call for New Years Eve and Day huh?"

Chris nodded and smiled, "yeah, I still don’t exactly know what for, I think it’s just gonna be another day, but who I am to say?"

"I guess they think better safe than sorry," Web said, taking a nice long swallow of beer. "That kid is getting better and better, he’s pretty small though."

As they watched Wade do damage to the bag, Chris began to tell Web about the outreach center and that it was closing. He told Web that Wade was a runaway. Web listened sympathetically.

Wade shuffled around the bag as Chris had shown him and pounded his fists faster and faster in a flurry of motion. "Hey Wade, you don’t have to kill it, it won’t fight back ok?" Chris laughed. Wade slowed down for a second and forgot about the moving bag, which continued to weave and ended up crashing into him knocking him to the floor. Chris and Web both winced when they saw Wade sitting on his butt, looking slightly dazed. Chris set his bottle of water down and went over and helped Wade get to his feet. "We know you’ve got the moves, we just need you to use your head a little bit, you gotta think about what you’re doing Wade. Are you ok?" He helped the boy stand up. Chris put his arm around his shoulder.

"Yeah, I’m ok," he pushed Chris off him a little. Chris backed away. Web walked over and introduced himself to Wade.

"Young man, you look like you’ve got the right moves, maybe you should think about boxing as a career."

Wade’s ‘knockdown,’ along with what he had overheard Rita and Alex talking about, had put a bit of anger inside of him, he nearly snarled at Web. "Yeah, whatta you know?"

Web was stunned and Chris had heard enough. "Listen Wade, you need to apologize to Mr. Webster, that remark was way out of line. There’s no need to take out your anger on him." Wade stared at the floor. "Wade?" Chris asked again.

"I’m sorry," he mumbled. He tugged off the gloves he had on and went into the house.

"Web, I’m sorry," Chris began. "This is going to be an explosive weekend at our house no doubt."

"Don’t worry about it Chris," Web said, "Is there anything I can do?"

"Nah, we got two kids staying with us, The other kid is Alex, he was on trial for murder, and I got roped into bringing him home for the holiday weekend."

"He’s not one of those RB’s is he?"

Chris nodded, "I don’t think Wade’s made the connection yet, but he knows Alex is suspected of murder. And Alex doesn’t know Wade’s a runaway yet either. Hence the firework possibility."

"You and Rita sure like volatile situations, don’t you? Listen, I’m heading inside, but let me know if you two need any help, I’m usually fairly helpful when it comes to kids. Comes from years of coaching, you know?"

"Thanks Web, I appreciate that."

Web went back inside and Chris began to straighten up the garage before he would head inside himself. Before long Wade came back out.

"Chris?" he said softly.

Chris turned and saw Wade standing at the edge of the garage. "Yeah Wade?"

"I just wanted to apologize to you too, and I’ll go next door and apologize to Mr. Webster the right way too."

"I think that would be a good idea Wade," Chris said with a smile as he watched Wade head to the house next door. In a few minutes Wade came back around.

"Chris?" he asked again.

"That was a good thing you just did Wade, I’m proud of you," Chris said.

Wade nearly smiled, "Will you teach me how to defend myself?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Sure," the question was a little strange, Chris thought.

"Can we start now?"

Chris wondered why this was so important to Wade right this moment, but he didn’t have anything else to do, so he nodded and the two of them began.

Midway through the workout, Wade stopped. Chris thought he was exhausted, but Wade wanted to talk. "Is everything alright Wade?"

Wade wiped off some sweat that was dripping from his forehead. "I’m tired of being little and being picked on," he said, smashing his fist into the heavy bag.

"You’re still young, you’ve got more growing to do," Chris tried to be positive.

"You don’t know what it’s like, everywhere I go, I don’t fit in."

Chris wasn’t really prepared for this kind of outburst. He wished he had an easy answer for Wade. "Wade, what can Rita and I do to help you?" he thought maybe asking him for ideas would be a good way to start.

"I know who Alex is. He is part of that group that tortures runaways," he blurted out. "I heard him talking to Rita."

Chris hung his head down for a minute. "Yeah, yeah he is Wade. I don’t think Alex ever hurt anyone Wade, the Judge doesn’t either. But I promise you that I won’t let him hurt you in any way. Do you trust me?"

Wade nodded. "That’s why I want to learn how to do this," he said hitting the bag again. "I want to be able to take care of myself."

Chris walked closer to him and put his arm around his shoulder. "Sometimes Wade, you need to let others take care of you, understand?"

Wade nodded. It was comforting to him to know that Chris genuinely cared.

A peaceful, calmness settled over Chris and Rita’s house that night. Each boy slept in a separate room and no new fireworks had been set off. In fact they seemed to be getting along fine, pointing out how out of touch Chris and Rita were on a variety of topics. Chris scowled his face, while Rita was slightly amused by the banter. They both came to the same conclusion about the two boys; they both needed some love and some attention, something both were obviously lacking. They chose different roads; Alex sought out companionship and love from a group of troublemakers that he could call a family. Alex parents were business travelers. They spent their lives on the road, away from each other and away from their only son, Alex. Even as their son was accused of attempted murder, they stayed away, choosing to continue on with their own affairs, while ‘buying’ the best attorney they could find to represent their son.

Wade escaped from his own family and decided he’d be better off alone. He thought all families were like the one he came from. Wade wanted to learn how to defend himself, because his father was an alcoholic abuser. Wade suffered time and time again, as the youngest child in a family of six children. His mother often stood by and watched, and as his siblings left from the abuse, leaving Wade to fend for himself, the beatings got progressively worse. He refused to tell anyone where he was from. He never wanted to go back. He wasn’t about to let Alex hurt him either. He’d be ready.

Rita saw that both boys suffered the same fate and little by little on that quiet, peaceful evening, she could see that Chris began to believe the same thing, even through his skepticism. These boys needed to be loved.

Chris and Rita lay in bed and talked about their experiences with each of the boys that night. They wondered how many Wade’s and Alex’s there were in the world.

The silence of the quiet, peaceful evening was broken at about 2:30am. Chris and Rita both woke up instantly when they heard some noise coming from the kitchen. "Sam, did you hear that?" Rita whispered.

"Yeah, and I don’t think we have a dog or cat milling around do we?"

"No, but maybe it’s one of the boys?"

"Could be, let me go check," Chris said. He quietly got out of bed and grabbed his gun out of the locked drawer.

"You’re taking your gun?" Rita asked, rising up to follow him.

He turned around and rolled his eyes, "Yeah, I am a cop remember? Someone else could be in here."

"Let’s check on the boys first," Rita said, stopping at each door to peer inside. She clearly made out both heads in the two rooms. Someone else was in their house.

"This is why I took the gun ok?" Chris whispered as another sound came from the kitchen. "Just stay behind me," he said as they walked down the hall. They both hugged the wall as they made their way. Chris knew he could slip his hand carefully around the corner of the wall and flip a light switch on in the kitchen. That would be enough to scare whoever it was long enough for Chris to focus his gun sights on the intruder.

They stopped and waited near the doorway. Chris nodded to Rita and held up three fingers to count down. His head nodded three times and as the third nod came, on came the light and Chris trained his gun on the intruder. "Hold it right there," he said.

(HI READERS……YOU KNOW, I LOVE THESE KINDS OF SCENES, SEE, YOU’RE ALL WONDERING WHO OR WHAT OR WHY OR HOW SOMEONE COULD BREAK INTO THEIR HOUSE….AM I RIGHT? YEAH, I THINK I AM, AND THIS IS REALLY SO MUCH FUN TO KEEP YOU IN SUSPENSE IF ONLY FOR A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME. YOU KNOW, IF THIS WERE TRULY AN EPISODE, THE EDITORS OF THE PROGRAM WOULD PUT IN ONE OF THEIR LOVELY COMMERCIAL BREAKS RIGHT ABOUT HERE…AND THEN YOU’D BE WONDERING WHO COULD POSSIBLY BE BREAKING IN….IS IT SOME OF THE RB’S? IS IT ROD MCLEISH (NOPE….HE’S DEAD) IS IT ERIC? IS IT SOME OTHER FREAK CHARACTER I AM GOING TO INVENT RIGHT NOW? HMMMM, WELL, BREAK IS OVER, LETS GO FIND OUT, SHALL WE?)

"I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye Son, but shooting me isn’t the answer," Benny said with a grin as he fixed himself a sandwich.

Chris let the barrel of the gun drop and point toward the floor. He closed his eyes for a moment as he felt Rita’s hand touch his shoulder. She knew exactly what he was feeling. Once before, they had been inside a house when they both ended up drawing on each other. There’s that brief second when you feel your finger tense up against the trigger and your ready to detonate it. Then when it hits you, who it actually is you’re aiming at, you become numb and you are paralyzed with the fear of what might have been. It takes about three days to get your heart beating again, and your breathing regulates itself in about two weeks.

"Good God Pop, what the hell are you doing here?" Chris asked, his throat quivering as he fumbled with putting the safety back on his gun.

"I told you I was coming down for the holidays. That trial just seemed to drag on forever. We just finished it up today, so I caught a plane and here I am," he said, holding out his arms waiting for a hug.

Chris shook his head, "you’ll have to hug him," he said to Rita, "I don’t think I’m quite up for that just yet."

Rita walked over and put her arms around Benny, "you should have called us," she said.

"At 2 o’clock in the morning? I couldn’t do that to you guys. I took a cab," he said proudly.

"No, you’d rather have your son shoot you because he thought you were an intruder right?" Chris said sarcastically.

"I knew you were trained to look first, ha," he laughed just like Chris, "you’re the best damn cop I know, compared to her, that is," Benny said, giving Rita a kiss.

While Rita was slightly amused by Benny’s last comment she made one final attempt at making Benny understand, "Dad, please, next time, just call first, no matter what time, someone could have been hurt here."

"For you darling, anything," he said. "Now can your old man get that hug?" he said to Chris.

Chris still shook his head, but he managed to smile and walk into Benny’s embrace. "I don’t think shooting you would have taught you a lesson," he said into his ear.

Benny laughed and hugged him closer, just as Alex and Wade peeked around their heads to see what was happening in the kitchen. Benny noticed them and said. "What’s this, grandkids? You two never told me?"

Chris released himself from Benny’s grasp. "Not exactly Pop, this is Alex and Wade, they’re staying with us for the weekend. Guys, this is my Father, Benjamin Lorenzo."

They both nodded their hello’s over to Benny. "A house-full huh? Maybe I’ll just go find a hotel then. I guess I should have called," he said looking to Rita.

"Nonsense, the boys can sleep together in one room and you can take the other, right fellas?" she said, more than asked.

"Sure," Alex said while Wade reluctantly agreed.

"Trust me, problem solved," Chris said, picking his gun up off the counter while giving Wade a wink, just to let him know he didn’t have anything to worry about.

New Year’s Eve day started out early and it wasn’t about to get any shorter. The only good thing was that Alex and Wade somewhere along the way had started to get along. Chris and Rita had taken Benny aside and told them about the whole situation. The only thing he wondered about was why a judge had waited so many years to do something like this to Chris. He joked by telling Chris he thought he’d deserved a contemptual punishment a lot sooner. They also explained to him about the runaway shelter and that Rita had searched high and low for someone or some group to help. Benny listened intently.

It was shortly after noon when Harry called from the police department. Chris answered the phone. "Yeah Lorenzo, I know you got the two kids, but I need one of ya on duty. Things are getting a little out of control and we need some of our veteran officers to supervise. Can one of you get down here right away?"

"Ah, yeah, sure Cap," Chris said, glancing around the kitchen. Benny was teaching Alex and Wade how to cook, while Rita sat at the table reading a book. "How’d you like us both?"

"What? What about the kids Lorenzo? You can’t bring them here," Harry said.

"Well, my Pop showed up early this morning. I mean, he’s here, he can watch them. It’s not like he’s going anywhere."

"If you think that will work, then yes, I’d love to have both of you, you can run things from here, kind of a control central. How soon can you be here?"

"Give us about twenty minutes," he said hanging up the phone. He explained to everyone what was going on and then he and Rita headed in to work.

There were no widespread problems in Palm Beach on New Years Eve, just an unusually high amount of crazy incidents and fanatic people. These elements combined meant chaos was erupting at different parts in the city and the police were ready in numbers to head into any given area and quell the outbursts.

Chris and Rita were given a relatively easy assignment. They were each overseeing 200 officers scattered in teams throughout the city. They tracked their movements and coordinated the deployment of teams into certain areas. Palm Beach PD had been preparing for this day, all year long, just like every other community across the country.

As night drew on, the need for police grew even greater. Some citizens let themselves get caught up in the frenzy of the end of the millenium and that was where the trouble began.

Rita took a break about 6pm and called home to see how everything was going there. There was no answer. She didn’t think much of it, thinking maybe Benny took the boys out to dinner or to a movie. She just left a simple message on the answering machine. She mentioned it to Chris who was busy mobilizing a team of officers at a downtown restaurant. He nodded his understanding and when he took a break an hour or so later, he called the house again. He got the same result. He thought about it some more and realized that dinner and a movie can take a few hours. He left another message. Then he let Rita know there was still no answer.

By 10pm they were both clearly worried. There was still no answer at their house and they even tried calling Web to have him go over and check on Benny and the boys but he was not at home either. Things were under control at the station and around town, even though midnight was still two hours away. Harry reluctantly agreed to release Rita, after being assured that she would have her beeper, her cell phone and would call in every half-hour to check in.

The house was quiet when she arrived. There were no lights on, except for the Christmas Tree and the house was dramatically clean, for having three guests staying there. She walked from room to room and found nothing. Nothing was out of place, nothing was touched, and everything was in perfect order. There was no note around either and all of her and Chris’ messages remained on the answering machine.

She called back to the department and got Chris. She told him about the house and said she was going to start looking. She also suggested that Chris put an APB out on Benny, Alex and Wade. Chris agreed and hung up and went to tell Cap what was going on.

Thoughts raced through both their heads. Were the RB’s involved? Was Benny out joyriding with the boys? Had there been an accident? They needed to find out. Chris continued on with his shift while Rita combed the city, looking for the three of them.

Midnight came and went with no real major problems. The police force of Palm Beach saw only a slight increase in crimes, nothing Y2K related. At about 2:30am, Harry released Chris from his shift and told him he’d join him in the search in about another hour.

More hours passed. Chris and Rita and Harry split up and kept in contact via cell phones. They checked out every RB hangout, every runaway hiding place and every elegant restaurant searching for Benny, Alex and Wade. They came up empty.

It was nearing 3:30pm on New Years Day, when a call came into the police dispatchers that something strange was happening at an abandoned mansion near downtown Palm Beach. When foot officers arrived on the scene to remove the group from the location, an older gentleman approached them and told the officers to call Detectives Lance and Lorenzo. The call was placed.

Chris and Rita got the page about the same time and immediately headed over to the dilapidated mansion that had been boarded up for years. Rita arrived first. Besides a group of about six officers, she noticed a small contingent of youths, many she recognized as runaways from the outreach center. Some of them even called out her name and greeted her. The kids were busy cleaning and fixing up the mansion. The officers were trying to ascertain what these kids were doing to this property and who the two older gentlemen were that seemed to be leading the way. The old guys didn’t want to tell them anything until Lance and Lorenzo arrived.

Rita noticed Benny right away. "Benny," she called out as she approached the house, "what’s going on? Where have you been? Are Alex and Wade with you?"

"Yeah, the boys are here." Benny gave her a wave and met her halfway, "Isn’t this a great place darlin’?" he asked her, giving her a hug.

"Yes, it’s a lovely house, but what exactly is going on?"

Just then Wade came out of the house carrying two buckets of dirty water, he tossed them onto the grass. "Oh, hey Rita, how’s everything going?"

"Wade, come here right now," she said. Wade walked toward her.

"Now Rita, the boy’s got some work to do. Get back to it Wade. I’ll take care of this."

"Benny, what are you up to?" Rita asked him again. Chris came tearing around the corner in his car and stopped in the middle of the street. He spotted Rita with Benny right away and got out and ran toward them.

"Great, I’ll only have to tell you both this once," Benny said.

Rita waited patiently for an explanation.

"Pop, you alright? You ok?" Chris asked, placing his hand on Benny’s shoulder. "What happened, what did the kids do to you?" Benny nodded that he was fine.

"You both need to relax, everything’s just fine," Benny said.

Just then Web came walking out of the front door. He gave a glancing Rita a wave and strolled over to meet them.

"Web, what are you doing here?" Rita said as Web got closer.

"Wade told me that you had arrived, I thought I better get out here and help Ben here out with the explanation."

Chris was totally in the dark. "Someone better start explaining something."

"Always the impatient one aren’t you son?" Benny said, putting his arm around Chris’ shoulder. "Web and I got to talking yesterday about Wade and Alex. You know these kids need some love and attention that’s all. It’s a shame about the outreach center. We decided we weren’t gonna sit around and not do anything. I’ve got the know how on how we can make this work and Web’s a great coach, you know?"

"Benny, you can’t just pick out an abandoned mansion and decide to move runaways in," Rita said. The police were standing by to clear off the premises, after calls from surrounding neighbors began to pour in. "There’s laws and policies and procedures you have to follow."

"I’m well aware of that darlin’, I’m a lawyer remember? Cutting red tape is one of the joys of my career."

"So what did you do Pop?" Chris asked.

"That’s where I come in," Web began, "This was my wife’s family home, I haven’t been here since she died. I didn’t think I could ever come back here. But like Benny said, he and I got to talking and I just couldn’t stand by and let these kids fall into the gutter, or any of these kids," he motioned to the flurry of activity around him. "We may not be able to take care of every homeless child, but by golly, we’re gonna try. I’ve got so much time to spend with these kids, I should have done this years ago. You know there’s even a basketball court out back Chris?" Chris was in awe.

"But still Web, the zoning on the house? The permits?" Rita wondered.

"We’re working on it," Benny said. "I’ve got a friend who’s a Judge here in Palm Beach." Judge Walters, the Judge on the RB case came out of the house, carrying some paint.

"Sergeant Lorenzo, good to see you, didn’t I tell you that you’d learn something this weekend?" the Judge said.

Chris and Rita were amazed. The final part of the picture was complete when Lawrence pulled up with pizza and soda for the crowd. Benny informed them that Lawrence was being hired to run the all-new Y2Care Home. Rita started to cry and Chris grabbed her and held her in a warm embrace.

"The house is a gift and I guarantee you’re not gonna lose it. We’ve also got over $200,000 in pledges already, with more to come. We’re gonna make this work Rita, I promise, we’ll make it work," Web said.

"This is a great way to start the New Year Web, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank you enough," Rita said smiling through her tears of joy.

"I should have thought about this long before now," Web said. "But you two are a great inspiration to me," he chuckled.

Benny laughed too, "That and Spencer Tracey."

Chris was confused, "What? Where does he fit in to all this?"

"We started watching Boys Town with Alex and Wade and we came up with the idea. The rest is history," Benny said.

"You know you could have called," Chris said.

"Don’t have phone service hooked up in there yet, it is a holiday you know?" Benny replied. "The phone companies got emergencies to take care of."

"A cell phone?"

"Didn’t bring one with."

"The phone over there on the corner?"

"Don’t have a quarter," Benny laughed.

"You got an excuse for everything don’t you Pop?"

"That’s a lawyers job son, that’s a lawyers job."

Wade and Alex walked out of the house and came over to the group holding up a hand painted sign with the letters Y2Care Home painted on it. "Me and Alex came up with the name," Wade said.

"You mean Alex and I," Rita corrected him.

Wade grinned and nodded. "Whatta ya think of it?"

"I think it’s a wonderful name Wade," she said.

"I do too," Chris added. "I think it’s parfait."

"It’s nice to know that someone cares," Wade added, looking at Chris, and playfully punching Alex in the arm.

"And it’s nice to know that I have a new family," Alex added, glancing over to Rita, putting his arm around Wade’s shoulder.

Rita pulled both boys into a hug, while Chris patted them on the back, shook hand with Web and went to give Benny a hug and a lecture.

The next day and a half were spent continuing to fix up the old mansion. The police, the runaways, even three other RB’s, besides Alex, all pitched in to clean up the place. On January 4^th, Web cut the ribbon and officially opened up the Y2Care Home. It was quite the event.

Exhausted, sleep deprived and beyond any kind of rational thought, the two of them shuffled tiredly through the house and collapsed on their bed, drained by the last few days’ events. Even though it was mid-afternoon, they both fell to sleep instantly with barely a word spoken or a kiss spent between them.

It was sometime after 11am the following morning when Rita’s eyes fluttered open to the tiny line of sunlight that cast itself along her still tired body from the nearby window. She lay there still, almost willing herself to fall back asleep. Neither her body nor her mind was ready to arise and face another day. She lay on her left side. Behind her, against her back she felt an incredible warmth. It was Chris, spooned in tightly against her body. The heat from his own body radiated against hers. It was a calming feeling that left her at immense peace. This perhaps was the single most, best place to be in all of the world.

Rita had ended up sleeping in her bra and panties. She didn’t recall taking off any of her clothes or Chris taking his off either. Yesterday afternoon had become a blur. But now she could feel the bare skin of his chest press against her nearly naked body. Neither of them had moved from this position since falling asleep.

As her mind began to focus, she felt Chris’ large right hand draped over her bare stomach, his thumb rested on her navel. His knees curved along the backside of her legs. Just thinking of his curly-haired legs against her smooth skin, gave her goose bumps on her thighs and calves. She nearly shivered, but managed to control herself, as she felt his arousal pressed against her backside. She breathed in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

Her husband’s wonderful face was buried tightly against her neck. She listened for endless minutes as his warm breath softly swept over her shoulders and neck. As badly as she longed to touch him in return, to roll over and put her lips to his and bring him to life, she held back. His mere presence alone, against her, pressed to her, breathing on her, heat radiating against her, was highly sensual and erotic. She felt the heat grow from deep within her.

She didn’t move. In fact, she felt herself falling hopelessly into a dreamlike state, not sleeping, but not yet awake. Her mind thought only of him, with her, together, with no boundaries, no beginning and no ending. It was the two of them for all of eternity. The warmth and love oozed from him to her and back again.

What time it was when Chris began to awaken was unknown. Rita still floated through her fantasy dream as Chris awoke in much the same manner that Rita had. He didn’t even open his eyes. His mind woke up first, but his body remained subdued. He felt his wife’s body pushed against his own. His own hand contoured around the shape of her stomach.

The first thing he moved was his right thumb. It was almost a twitch as he let it graze along the tender skin of her navel in the time span of a millisecond. The move was almost reflexive, but Chris’ mind knew exactly what he was up to. There was no reaction from Rita. He wondered if she was still asleep.

The warmth, softness that was pressed along side of him was comforting and restful. This sensation actually lulled him back to sleep for a few minutes. When he awoke again and sensed the exact same feelings, his mind sharpened further, his body awakened further, and this time he began to lose control. He knew the tiny flaming ember deep inside his body was beginning to rekindle itself and it wouldn’t take long for the familiar fire to envelop him.

The last thing he wanted to do was disrupt his peaceful sleeping wife, yet he longed for her so deeply. Little did he know she was feeling the exact same way.

His only thought was to awaken her slowly using the most tender and soft things he could think of. He decided to awaken her, as he himself would awaken. Like the gentle dew that touches the morning petals of a glorious rose, he would touch her and refresh her. And just as the rose felt the life of a brand new day as the sun sought to dry up the refreshing dew, so too, would Chris awaken his sleeping rose to the day ahead.

Ever so lightly his eyelashes fluttered open. Softly they danced on the tender skin of her neck and shoulders. He felt her take a deeper breath. Just a slight twitch of an arm muscle was enough movement to cause the sheet, which covered them to waver and send a shiver over both of them. Consciously now he guided his body, one small spot at a time. He commanded his foot to brush along her toes and the sensitive spot on the bottom of her feet. He paused before continuing on to the next spot, behind her knees and so on up and down her soft, luscious body. Barely moving himself, he instructed various parts of his body, knees, breath, nose, toes, stomach, and fingertips to quietly apply tender loving touches to assault his rose, his sunshine to life.

Rita now began to leave her dreamlike fantasy as she felt Chris coaxing his own body to awareness against her own. Without saying a word, they played out this little game back and forth for an unknown amount of time. Neither of them was in a hurry.

Rita was first to make a bold move, she reached down with her own hand and made contact with his and led it slowly upward over her body, over her breasts, leading it to her lips where she tenderly kissed and nibbled on each of his fingertips. She felt his head drop down tightly against her shoulder in reply. His moist lips placed gentle kisses all along her warm, soft skin. He followed along the same path leading with his nose, nuzzling in the same way, followed by nibbling kisses. His right hand now released from her lips continued upward, cupping her cheek, turning her face toward his. "Good morning Sunshine," he said in a drowsy whisper.

She smiled in return and softly pressed her lips into his, and added a gratifying "mmmm" as they kissed. "Good morning Sam."

"I think we’ve been asleep for days," he said cradling her close.

"It doesn’t matter remember? Harry gave us the rest of the week off." She slowly turned in arms.

He nodded. "Yep, and I intend on using it to the fullest."

"Ah, and just what did you have in mind?" she asked running lazy circles over his chest with her index finger. They were face to face.

"I think the same thing you have in mind," he answered raising an eyebrow. "I think we need to reacquaint ourselves with each other." Chris turned in the bed a little to get a better look at his wife. Rita could see the hunger and fire in his eyes. "I love you."

His eyes focused on the bare skin of her shoulders that was visible to him. The rest was covered by the sheet. He began to lavish her skin with tiny, tender kisses. Rita sank into the bed, excited by the prospects of what was ahead.

She closed her eyes in anxious anticipation and bit her bottom lip as Chris’ gentleness began to sweep over her.

Chris felt his heart beating thunderously inside his chest. He finally had his wife to himself for the first time in the year 2000. How he managed to contain himself from ravaging himself on her was beyond him. He just knew he wanted their precious time together to seem like it would never end. He wanted to take it all slowly and enjoy each moment. He pulled up from kissing her and steadily pulled the covers away from her body as well as his own. They wouldn’t need them any more. He paused for a moment to gaze at her beautiful body. Her pale skin, her wonderful breasts, her hair fanned out against the pillow. The sexy way she lay there waiting for him with that playful smile on her face. He wanted to devour every inch of her and when he was done, he’d start all over again. She was a buffet he’d never get a fill from. He took his own hand and ran it along his chin, he felt the stubble from a good days growth of beard. He knew he’d have to be a bit gentle when he kissed her skin as his eyes focused on the tender, tempting area of her navel.

Rita watched him hungrily and reached up a hand to his, which he gladly accepted. Together they headed in the direction of her breasts, where he immediately began to fondle them through the bra she wore. He turned her over slowly and carefully undid the clasp and rolled her back over where his hands continued to softly knead them. They were perfect, nearly shimmering with delicate pinkness and deep rosy nipples. He let each of his hands explore them, his mouth wanting desperately to reach down and take them into his mouth to suck on her and listen for how it pleasured her. He took his time, working her nipples into tight tips, while his eyes roamed over the rest of her body. Every part of her pleased him and as he refocused on her face, he couldn’t resist the urge to meld their lips together. The time had come, the starters gun had gone off.

His hands began to touch her everywhere, up and down the length of her arm, onto to her stomach and rib cage. Chris smoothed his hands over her skin, down the length of her and then back up again. He had her roll over and started the same touching sensation along her back and spine, down to her behind and even trailed down the back of her legs. He leaned his head down and began to skim the tasty skin with his lips and tongue. Pleasure upon pleasure shot through Rita. Chris inhaled deeply, he loved how she smelled. He gave extra time to sweeping over all the sensitive places on her body, behind her knees and across the back of her shoulders, pushing her hair out of the way, down her center spine. Rita tingled from head to toe. His touch was overpoweringly gentle. He rolled her back over and dove in for her tender, swollen lips.

She devoured his mouth immediately within her own. Her hands reached up and cupped his face, as they searched each other’s mouths, deeper and deeper against each other. Playfully battling with their tongues, each taking a turn sucking on the others. Rita’s hands moved from his face to his back, where she dug her nails in and pulled him as close to her as she possibly could. The small stings from her nails against the muscles in his back helped keep him in control as he felt himself already heading toward coming apart.

Rita broke off from his mouth and trailed her kisses over his mouth, his chin and onto his shoulder, leaving nibbling teeth marks all along the way. His hands continued to meander over and around her breasts again and again. His touch was burning hot. She led him to roll over, where she was now delivering the tender, loving passion on to him. She started at his lips again and moved along the side of his neck, nuzzling, while pressing her teasingly light kisses against the column of his throat. Chris let out a deep growl of pleasure. She traced the outline of his ear with the tip of her tongue. She followed up the cool, slippery, wetness of her tongue with the nipping of her teeth all along the same areas. She felt Chris hands slide up and down her hips.

Chris was going crazy. He brought her face back up to meet his own and as their lips joined, he pulled her close and rolled back over on top of her. His arousal wedged in intimately against her thighs. He could feel her soft, tender wetness. She pushed her hips against him and mumbled something incoherent against his lips, but he was far too gone to stop and try to figure out what she had said. He went to suckle on her breasts and heard her release a soft moan. Pleasuring her and taking her to the edge became his goal. He not only wanted her; he wanted her body, heart and soul. He used his tongue like a glorious tool, teasing, tempting and nearly driving her over the edge. His fingers and hands became his clever and willing accomplices. She grabbed at the sheets and pulled them into her taut fists. Her thoughts and heart raced as he pushed into her with one long, deep, hard thrust. She welcomed he fully, reaching up to kiss him, to cling to him. Their movements matched as Chris cupped her bottom in the palms of his hands and he lifted her and pushed in so deep inside her. Their bodies collided passionately, stroke for stroke, with growing urgency, Chris driving deep inside of her, taking her to the edge until she fell over the edge, completely satisfied, she cried out his name in ecstasy.

The serene calmness of a January afternoon was upon them again as they lay together, still intimately joined, softly kissing each other, their heartbeats returning to normal. Chris pulled up to his elbows and looked deeply into her arms. Reaching down, he kissed her long and slow, nearly pouring every ounce of love he could into her. She returned the kiss in the exact way.

"Happy New Year Rita, my love," he whispered, nuzzling nose to nose.

"Happy New Year Chris, I love you too."

The End

December 1999

And Happy 2000 to all of you as well!

This story actually started out in a completely different direction and that version ended up dying along with my hard drive. So I had to rethink some things and this is what ended up coming out. Hence the delay in getting the last couple of stories out…it’s hard to do without a computer!

Chris, Rita, Harry, Franny, Benny, Anna and George all belong to Stu, Stephen and USA. I just like to keep borrowing them….and I’d be glad to return them if Stu, Stephen and USA would bring them back for us.

The rest of the characters…Daniel, Geoff, Tre, Hennings Van Cleef, Mr. and Mrs. Van Cleef, Lucas Sheffield, Mick Wilkie, Mitchell Holt, Bobby and Bart Robertson, Justin Winston, Brendan Andrews, Alex Malis, Paul David Meersma, Rey Moreno, Web Webster, Lawrence, Maria, Jamie, Rueben, Wade and Judge Walters all were conceived by me.

He Ain’t Heavy…He’s My Brother was written by Bob Russell and Bobby Scott. And thanks to the movie Boys Town and Father Flannigan for the tiny bit of inspiration. (Sappy I know, but that’s just me!)

Thanks to Linda and Lisa for allowing me to post on their most excellent Silk page…it’s good to know that I’m not the only one who still needs a classic fix every now and again!

Also thanks to Judy, who normally edits….I gave her this story off…so typos, grammaticals and all that other English stuff that’s wrong is all my fault! (That sentence is a perfect example of what I’m talking about!) These stories are so much better when she lays her hands over them! We’ll reunite on the next episode.

Most of all thanks to all who read and take the time to comment. It’s great to hear from all of you! I am very honored by the things you say!

If you’d like to share your comments with me….drop me a line at tuna.dc@excite.com