Lucas dozed off while Jerry quickly tooled around the memory of his computer and that of the WSB computer. With his children sleeping on either side of him, Jerry briefly felt the first genuine gladness he could recall in a long while. A shadow fell across his bed. Expecting the nurse with his medication, Jerry barely looked up. He continued pressing keys on his keyboard. He expected several scoldings from the nurse on duty. The children in his care, the unbandaged hands, the computer. When the admonitions didn't come from the white clad figure in his peripheral vision, he looked up. What he saw was not at all what he wanted to see.

          A man dressed as an orderly grabbed Candace in her car seat. Then he moved around the high bed to grab Lucas as well. Before Jerry could think, he had pushed the computer aside and was on top of the man. Although he still had his considerable height, his weight and muscle tone had been diminished by his time in the hospital, so he had only the element of surprise to aid him. Obviously the intruder underestimated Jerry's ability to react or fight back. They crashed to the floor together. The fake orderly hit his head on the wheel and brake of the stroller frame. As he fell, he dropped Candace's car seat with a thud and it slid across the polished tile floor. The baby woke and began to wail. With a quickness born of playing baseball and reflexes developed from playing video games, Lucas grabbed the nearest heavy object, in this case a vase of wilting flowers, and hit the impostor on the head as Jerry pushed himself out of the way.

          "Good show, Lucas!"

          "Are you okay Dad?"

          "Yes. Fine." Although Jerry was weak and actually far less than fine, he had been able to protect his children. The feeling made him realize he would recover and continue to protect them from harm, but he also realized he would just as gladly die for them. "Lucas, grab that cord over there." He pointed in the direction of a long orange extension cord unused since his respirator had been taken away, yet left behind for other purposes. Jerry thought that this definitely qualified as an "other purpose."

          "Ok, here it is," Lucas said in an excited voice.

          "Do you remember the knot I showed you to attach a rig to your fishing line?"

          "Sure, I caught a huge fish in New Zealand...I tied the hook, I mean rig, just like you showed me. Grandpa made me throw it back. He said it was engaged."

          Jerry smiled indulgently. "You mean endangered?"

          "Yes."

          "Ok, now take the cord and tie the knot around his hands the same way you tie the rig. Think you can?"

          "Sure!"

          Lucas worked quickly and efficiently, just the way Jerry had taught him. A minimum of energy expended for the best possible result.

          "Now help me push him over here." Together, father and son grunted and groaned as they pushed the heavily muscled man towards Jerry's bed. With Lucas following Jerry's instructions, they managed to lash him to the side of the bed in a way reminiscent of the fish to the boat in The Old Man and The Sea.

          Luke was headed towards Jerry's room when he heard Candace crying pitifully. He rushed in and assessed the situation. He looked down to find the baby at his feet by the door, his nephew under Jerry's bed and Jerry himself on the floor, unable to help himself up. Lastly, he saw a hospital worker tied to the frame of the bed.

          "Jeez!" Luke said with exasperation. "I leave, and you three have all the fun." With practiced ease, he settled Candace's car seat into the stroller frame with a loud "click." He pulled Lucas out from under the bed and made sure the knots were secure in the orderly's restraints. Finally he stood and went around the bed to help Jerry up.

          Jerry had struggled to a sitting position himself, taking care not to use his hands to push up. He accepted Luke's aid as Jax came careening into the room. Jax looked around in dismay. The space had gone from having the look of a war room to looking like the war had actually occurred right there and then. Broken glass, flowers and other unidentifiable items were scattered about the floor.

          "What happened?" Jax asked as Jerry began to breathe more easily under in the protective care of the oxygen mask by his bedside. He was bleeding from a wound near his stomach. The blood was from the incision where he accidentally wrenched out his feeding tube as he flew off of the bed.

          Jerry took a moment to compose his thoughts and catch his breath. When he started to open his mouth Lucas said, "I'll tell them, Dad! The man down there," he pointed the orderly out to Jax, "tried to take Candace... and me too." Jax frowned and looked at Luke as if to say, how dumb were we to leave him alone?

          "Anyway," Lucas continued, "Dad jumped him and they rolled on the floor. The guy hit his head on Candy's stroller, but then I hit him with a vase. Just to make sure."

          "Make sure of what, tiger?" Luke asked his nephew with a bemused expression on his face.

          "That he wouldn't wake up until someone came in to help us!"

          Jerry grinned proudly, and Luke and Jax smiled in disbelief. Obviously nurture had it hands down over nature in Lucas' case. The kid was born, like his sister, to be half Jacks, half Spencer. A low moan from somewhere beneath the bed had Jax, Luke and Jerry look at one another in anticipation. Jerry would have rubbed his hands together if he'd been able. Obviously, Bobbie had not been in the hospital or she'd have come in with Luke or Jax. So now the interrogation would begin. Jane and John rushed in and stopped short as they saw what was going on in their son's hospital room. John looked pointedly at Jane and she grabbed Lucas by the hand and Candace's stroller and was out the door before anyone could say a word.

          John followed and called after her, "Stay in the cafeteria - amongst a crowd of people. Don't leave until one of us comes for you, love." Jane nodded as she and the children got on the waiting elevator.

          Jax was still marveling that his brother had been able to stop the intruder so effectively. "But how did you manage?"

          Jerry answered with what had become a joke between them, "It's called 'tripping with style.'" They grinned at each other and turned towards Luke who had untied the trespasser from the bed and then bound him in a chair so that Jerry could watch the proceedings. John was blocking the door with a dresser and another chair retrieved from the closet.

          Luke splashed the stranger with cold water and then looked from the fax in his hands to the face of the intruder. It was clearly the same guy. Same shape of the head, same ears. He dropped the papers on Jerry's lap and went to grab the "orderly" by his militarily precise haircut. Luke pounded him verbally with question upon question about the location of a man known only as the Keeper, the dungeon, and the number of people they were holding. His questions were all met with silence. The man had been trained to withstand much worse torture than Luke could inflict in a hospital room, and still not answer enemy interrogation. Just then John had a thought.

          "Let's just call the army. They want him anyway. Maybe they can make him talk." Although none of the men wanted to relinquish "custody" of the man, they agreed with John. Jax hastily made a call to V and Mac, trying to find out who the best person to contact in New Mexico from the army.

          Meanwhile Luke looked at the orderly's fake ID badge and other papers in his wallet. No addresses, no incriminating information. But there was a paper with written instructions in a sloping handwriting that made Luke pause. The handwriting was familiar. Luke shivered as if someone had walked across his grave. He looked over to Jerry, who was looking back at him with an unreadable expression.

          Luke looked further through the wallet and found an army discharge card, a photo of a lovely blonde woman and a very old photo of their intruder and a few friends from what looked like the tropics. All of the men were shirtless and wearing army fatigue pants. They were lined up against a barbed wire enclosure that stood empty behind them. One man in particular captured Luke's attention. A man with a scar on his shoulder looked back at him. A scar from a murder attempt. A man who smiled an awful smile yet whose youthful face was a mirror of Luke's own face of years past. The picture and the handwriting. Could it actually be? Luke thought to himself. He walked towards Jerry and pointed to the picture.

          Jerry's worst fears and suspicions were confirmed in that brief flash of Luke's eyes on his. Lorenzo Spencer had not died in Vietnam at enemy hands. He was alive and well and living in New Mexico. Jerry sat quietly stoic. Now their problems could only grow worse. Sometimes it is the known enemy that makes an easier target. One understands the motivation and the determination driving the madness. In this case, it would help them to know the enemy, but by the same token it made things immeasurably worse. For this was an enemy with a personal axe to grind, and nothing to lose. People who have nothing to lose do desperate, daring and crazy things. Things that made them all the more sinister and dangerous. Jerry hoped the desperation for revenge would be enough to cause this man to trip up and make a mistake.

          John was bored trying to get through to the former Green Beret, and walked towards Luke. He too looked at the picture closely. And the sight of one person amazed him in particular. A man with a mean smile and a lightening shaped scar on his right shoulder. A scar like that was not easy to forget. John looked up at Luke, puzzled by his connection to the picture. Turning to Jerry, John said, "Jerry, isn't this Liam Lyons? The guy who headed up the Alaska drilling projects? The guy from Perth who was robbing us blind until you caught him with his hand in the till? I thought he was Australian, why is he in a picture with men in the US Army?"

          Jerry swallowed hard as Jax came to stand with the others and said, "Let me see that, Dad."

          Jerry said, "Yes dad, it is that man. And it isn't. Luke?" Luke took the picture back from Jax and stared hard at it for a moment, then looked at the ceiling. He took a deep breath before he spoke.

          "Well gentlemen, I'd like to say this with pride, but it's a little late for familial loyalty at this point. I'd like to formally introduce you to my father. Lorenzo Spencer." He turned the photo towards them and pointed.

          The silence was as ominous as the stillness in the eye of a hurricane. Jerry said into the void, "I wish I could tell you all otherwise, but that was my worst suspicion. And now I know it's true." He paused and looked up at the ceiling in anguish.

          "Knowing about the physical and mental abuse he inflicted on Bobbie when she was a small child only makes me want finish the job Luke started thirty years ago." Luke looked up in surprise, amazed that Bobbie had shared everything about her past, and the horror of life with Lorenzo Spencer with this man she had married. Jerry clearly knew Luke had tried to kill his own father, yet he had never mentioned it before this moment. It always amazed Luke that a relationship could have no secrets and still survive. No more than it amazed his brother-in-law at first, but Jerry was beyond the need to keep secrets from Bobbie. And Bobbie was never more honest with a living person than she was with her husband.

          John said, "Thus the scar?"

          "Yes." Luke said shortly.

          "Good God," Jax muttered and ran a hand through his hair impatiently.

          Luke thought a moment. "So this is his revenge. Payback after thirty years?"

          Jerry nodded. "I'm pretty sure no permanent harm has come to Lucky, Brenda, Chloe or Tony. But I'm quite concerned about what his madness will drive him to do to Bobbie. He's had thirty years to plan and dream and lust for revenge. The others are peripheral - even Lucky - he was only to hurt you, Luke. He wants Bobbie and he wants you. Dead."

          From the far corner of the room their "guest" said, "And he will get what he wants. He always does." With that, Luke crossed the room towards him and walloped their visitor across the face, causing him to pass out again.