The Element of Surprise

Damaged - Part 4

Rossi's finger hovers over his phone for the up tenth time this morning. Again, he comes close to pressing the call button, only to lift his thumb to continue staring at the contact name on the screen.

Why is it suddenly so hard to call her? He has nothing to be nervous about. She'll answer like she always does; cheerful, and in that tone of voice that makes his chest clench.

At last, he gives up yet again and slips the phone into the inner pocket of his blazer. He'll try again in an hour.

It's strange the others haven't picked up on his hesitant attempts to make a simple phone call. Perhaps their thoughts are stuck on this case as his are supposed to be. They're currently driving down a road towards the house where the three kids now reside. Of course, they're not kids anymore, but he never could get the image of their faces out of his head of the day their parents were killed. They were kids to him then, and they remain kids to him today.

Derek parks the SUV in front of a house. It's neglected, the paint is peeling off the walls, and the garden has seen better days. He would've never thought they were at the right place if it wasn't for the blonde woman standing on the sidewalk - Connie. And her brother and sister are there as well.

For the first time since he woke up, Rossi's able to to move the thoughts of Estella to the back of his head to focus on the case at hand. He's the first to get out of the car once Derek put it in park, and approaches the young woman, "Hi, Connie. I brought the team --"

"You need to stop this." He's is harshly cut off by her.

"Excuse me?"

This is not how he thought this would go.

"We thought that if we didn't call you back the last couple of years, you would just give up and leave us alone," she verbally attacks him.

Blinking in astonishment and hurt, Dave says, "Well, I know that it hurts, but I'm only trying to make sure someone pays for your parents' deaths."

"We don't care anymore," Connie snaps and glances at her brother and sister over her shoulder, "It's been twenty years. We need to be able to move past it. Please!"

In that moment, all the senior agent feels is heavy and strangely empty. Rejection never comes easy, he's well aware of that, but this hits differently than other times.

Accepting that this is where their paths split for good, he nods and backs off to the car, "I won't bother you kids again."

"And you'll stop it with the gifts too?"

He stops, "Gifts?"

"What are we supposed to do with a bunch of toys?" Connie rambles on, "They remind us of the worst day of our lives."

Dave's brows knit together in suspicion, "I never send you any gifts."

The color draining from all three kids' faces is enough proof to know that the case is officially afoot. Rossi wastes no time in telling them to gather all the toys they've received over the years, and signals the team to follow him into the house.

The four of them wait around five minutes until the siblings have gathered every toy and gift in the tiny living room. Putting on their gloves, they start sorting through the objects, holding them up so JJ could snap pictures of the evidence. There are teddy bears, flickering light toys, and more plush animals.

"This is all we could find," the brother, Georgie, states after chucking that last toy on the pile.

"We threw a lot of them away," the youngest, Alicia, adds.

"I wish you would've told me about this," Rossi comments while scanning the pile of objects on the coffee table. It certainly would've helped a few years ago to solve the case while it was still fresh.