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The house was quiet when Corbett opened the door and walked in. He was used to coming home late and having his wife already in bed asleep when he got home. He specifically called and asked for her to wait up for him this evening, though, so the eerie quiet of the house made his heart jump into his throat when he opened the door.

The lights were off in the house except for the one light that she always left on for him, to light his way to the rest of the house. He followed his usual path, passing the table in the hallway where he usually laid his service weapon and he didn't stop like he usually did, wanting to keep the weapon with him while he looked through the house for his wife.

He could see a light on at the top of the stairs in the room that they shared, and he started up that way. He didn't draw his weapon just yet, just kept his hand on the butt, ready to draw it and use it if needed, but if it was just his wife in the room, the last thing she needed was for him to burst in with his gun drawn and looking for something to shoot. She'd be well within her rights to make him sleep out in the yard if he did that.

Slowly, he crept closer to the open door and as he did, he looked inside. There was no movement, and he couldn't see the bed, but he could hear someone moving around behind the partially closed door. He carefully reached out and opened the door to step inside.

His wife sat on the bed with her back to him combing her long blonde hair, not having heard him come in, and he took a moment to look around the rest of the room before he breathed a sigh of relief that there was no one else there. He relaxed and scolded himself for his paranoia, but then he remembered the view from Lewis' camera into their bedroom. There was a feeling of being watched, and it was justified now, since he knew without a doubt that they were being watched.

"You're beautiful as always, Jennifer," he said as he walked into the room. He leaned as nonchalantly as possible in the doorway while he watched her react to his presence. She wasn't wearing any clothing, ready to climb into bed and it burned Corbett to know that Lewis or one of his goons had been watching her through the camera that they had hidden in the house.

His wife turned and looked at him with a smile that reached all the way up to her green eyes. The little wrinkles at the sides of them made him feel all the more angry. It was a smile that she reserved only for him, and now someone else was seeing it and probably getting off to it. But he couldn't let himself think that way right now. There was too much at stake and too much that still had to happen before he completely tipped his hand.

A quick check of the watch told him that as long as Sylvester had gotten home and to his computer on time, the camera would now be playing a computer-generated image of his wife getting ready for bed, and he would have a little bit of a window to do what needed to be done.

Jennifer saw the look in her husband's eyes and she frowned. "Bad day at work?" she asked, reaching out to invite her husband into a hug.

Corbett stood up and walked to the bed but not into her arms. That only made her frown much worse and she looked up at him curiously.

"What is it, Richard?"

Corbett sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled the tablet out from its holster.

"It's the case I'm working on Jennifer," Corbett said as he turned the tablet on. "It's gotten a little out of hand."

Jennifer looked at him with curiosity and a little sympathy in her eyes. "Well what's going on?"

He didn't have to explain the case to her, she'd seen the news and she was excited for him that he pulled the inspector spot for the case. It was a real career maker, getting the conviction of someone accused of seven murders. She'd been there while he investigated and she'd watched as he went through all of the evidence over the last two nights. Now he had to figure out how to tell her what he'd done.

"Jennifer, Kincaid is innocent," he said as he let his head hang to his chest. "But things have gone wrong."

"Well if she's innocent, then they'll let her go, right?" Jennifer asked.

Corbett shook his head. "No, they won't. Because I signed off on the evidence that tells the magistrate she's guilty."

Jennifer frowned even deeper, "You have evidence, and you still think she didn't do it?"

Corbett nodded, not wanting to continue, but knowing that he had to finish. "I know she's not guilty, Jennifer, because I'm fairly certain who is."

He started to tell her about what happened at the station and the abandoned house. He told her about the video cameras and the threats that Lewis had made against her. Finally, he told her about the threats Lewis had made against Angela, and he looked up at her face while he did, not sure if he could bear the look, but when he did, he was met with a very hard stare.

"You need to stand by that report, Richard," she said firmly. "Angela is just a girl. You can't let Lewis go after her."

Corbett could see the fear sparkling behind her eyes and he ached for her, knowing that fear intimately. "That's why I made the report, Jen," he pleaded. "But I can't go on lying about Kincaid."

He pulled up the video from his interrogation and the other video that he'd acquired from the prison system showing the girl crying herself to sleep on the bunk in her cell. Another clip showed Caitlin in the midst of her panic attack, and the final clip showed Caitlin watching the execution of the condemned girl.

By the end of the videos, his wife could hardly look at anything and he watched her try to find something solid under her feelings. He reached out with his hands and he pulled her close.

"You see? I can't let them do that to her. Not without some sort of a fight."

Jennifer turned her head to look at him and he could see the conflict and the pain in her eyes as she weighed the feelings that came from the video with the feelings and knowledge that what he was doing would put the whole family at risk. It wasn't an easy choice and he knew it. He'd been through the same set of emotions and he'd come out the other side with a decision.

"What would you say if that was Angela?" he asked quietly. "What would you do to the man who knew the truth and lied and covered it up to save himself?"

Corbett looked into his wife's eyes as he spoke.

"Because I know what I'd do. I'd tear the man limb from limb and toss his head from the balcony."

He felt his wife shaking in his arms and he hugged her closer to him, holding her around the waist while he wrapped his other hand around her head to pull her against her chest. Partly it was to provide comfort to his wife, and partly it was because he couldn't bear to look at the pain in her eyes any longer.

"How could I live with myself if I let this happen, Jen?"

Jennifer didn't answer right away, just stayed in her husband's arms and shook. Corbett could feel the little drops of moisture sinking into his shirt and he held her close. He knew it was a lot to take in and he felt that he'd just dropped the whole world on his wife's head, but there wasn't any more gentle way to do it. He only had a little bit of time before Sylvester would have to turn the cameras back on, and by then he had to make sure that she was going to come with him and out of harm's way.

"So how do we stop it?" she asked.

Corbett looked down at her with a little look of surprise, wondering at the inner strength of his amazing wife. He knew how much it took for her to ask how they could stop it instead of how he could stop it. It was her own little way of telling him that she agreed with him and she was willing to go along.

"You remember Sylvester, right? The new inspector from the station?"

Jennifer nodded, "He was the one that we invited to the holiday partly last year, right?"

"That's right," Corbett was always amazed by his wife's memory. He could barely remember what he had for lunch some days, but his wife was a steel trap for those kinds of things, and it seemed that there was nothing she didn't remember.

"He was a cute guy," she said with a smile. "A little young, maybe, but he was cute."

Corbett had to laugh that she was thinking of things like that in the situation they were in.

"He's one of the computer geeks from the basement. They made him an inspector so they'd have someone for high-tech. He's Duke's nephew."

Corbett had told Jennifer about his time in the twenty third and all of the things that they used to do, all the good old boys from the unit and Duke always ended up in at least two or three stories every time he went back to tell them.

"Nephew? But how did he get involved in this?"

Corbett told her about talking to Duke and then running into Sylvester. He started to realize just the network of friends he had around him and it made his heart glow a little to think that these people were putting their lives and their livelihoods on the line for him and this young girl that none of them knew.

"So right now, he's got the cameras off," Corbett explained, "but we don't have a whole lot of time."

Corbett took a breath and looked in the closet, seeing exactly what he hoped to - the family luggage sitting high on the shelf where it should be.

"I'm going to need you to pack what you'll need for a week while I'm at the office tomorrow, okay? Try to do everything in the closet, because the camera can't see in there. I'll need Sylvester with me tomorrow and he won't be able to get the camera off again while he's doing what I need him to do."

Jennifer nodded and looked up in the closet herself. Corbett smiled at the way that the two of them always thought alike. It was one of the reasons that he married her. She thought like him with more attention to certain details and together, they made one hell of a team.

"Duke has some buddies who are going to come and pick you and Angela up when everything's ready. Duke says they're not much to look at, but they're good in a fight and they're full of the old southern boy politeness quotient."

Duke actually said that they'd treat his wife like a rare diamond and get her where she needed to go even if they had to lay down and let the truck drive over them to get her there. He really hoped that with the right preparation, there wouldn't be a need to do that.

Jennifer nodded again and laughed at Corbett's representation of their attitude. "All right, Richard," she said, "where are we going?"

"Duke said you can come and stay with him a while. Apparently he has a whole guest house on that farm he bought a couple years ago and he says we're welcome to it while we figure things out or while everything blows over."

He could see the look of understanding in his wife's eye when he said that, and he didn't have to tell her what this would all mean for his career. Once he got in front of the magistrate and recanted his report, admitting that he lied, there would be nothing that would ever get him into a uniform again. That thought, though, wasn't in the forefront of his mind. He was more concerned with protecting his family than retaining his job.

Corbett checked his watch and took the time for a quick kiss to his wife's cheek.

"I'm so sorry about this, Jen," he said just barely above a whisper.

She leaned in and put her arms around him and her voice matched his in volume. "Stupid man. Just go do what you need to do."

Corbett imagined that he could hear a little beep as the prearranged time came and went and the cameras went back to their live feed. He would have to ask Sylvester just how he managed to get the pictures to line up just right. But that was for tomorrow. For tonight, all he had left to do was undress and climb into bed beside his wife until they both fell asleep.