Chapter 3: Anticipation
The scandal in Cybercrimes was a gift. A toxic, messy, profoundly unprofessional gift, but a gift nonetheless.
By the time Teresa was six months pregnant, her condition was just a fact of the bullpen, like the perpetually broken coffee machine or Rigsby’s secret stash of barbeque chips. The curve of her belly was now a definitive sphere beneath her sweaters, impossible to ignore. But no one was looking at her anymore.
Agent Hackett from Cyber had been having an affair with Lead Agent Dobson’s wife for nine months. The revelation happened on a Tuesday, culminating in Dobson storming into the Cyber bullpen at 3 PM, throwing a printed stack of intimate emails onto Hackett’s desk, and shouting, “You wrote her sonnets? You pathetic, motherfu—”
The rest was legend. The fight had required two supervisors to break up. Someone’s monitor got knocked to the floor. The words “linguine incident” and “hot yoga” were now permanently seared into the building’s collective consciousness. Teresa, sitting in her office going over witness statements, had heard the muffled roar. Within an hour, Grace had appeared in her doorway, eyes wide, with the full, brutal report.
The tectonic plates of office gossip had shifted violently. Teresa’s unexplained pregnancy was now old news, a quiet, respectable mystery. The Dobson-Hackett War was an ongoing, three-act daytime drama that provided fresh details weekly. Teresa felt a guilty, profound relief. She hadn’t realized the weight of the speculative stares until they lifted.
Her world had narrowed and intensified. It was a rhythm of doctor’s appointments, ultrasounds with grainy black-and-white images that looked like stormy nebulas, and the endless, gnawing logistics of a life about to be cleaved in two. The baby furniture catalogue from the store Grace had recommended lay open on her coffee table, a monument to decisions she felt unequipped to make. Cribs. Changing tables. The alarming mechanics of strollers.
She needed a lever, a single piece of concrete data to cut through the fog of pastel options and contradictory advice. At her next ultrasound, lying on the crinkling paper sheet in the dim room, she made a decision.
“Can you tell the sex today?” Teresa asked, her voice echoing slightly in the quiet. “If it’s clear, I’d like to know.”
The technician smiled, moving the wand over the cool gel on Teresa’s taut skin. “Let’s see if your little one is cooperating.” The grainy screen showed a tiny, curved spine, a flickering heartbeat. Then, a clear, unmistakable image. “There we are. See those three little lines? That’s a textbook view. You’re having a daughter.”
A daughter. The words landed softly, a key turning in a lock. The formless future inside her suddenly had a shape. She drove back to the CBI holding that single word in her mind, a solid pebble in her palm. Daughter.
She paused at the edge of the bullpen. Grace was filing at her desk. Cho was typing a report. Rigsby was dismantling a ballpoint pen, frowning at its springs.
“Hey,” Teresa said, her voice cutting through the usual office hum. They all looked up. “I, uh, had my scan today. It’s a girl.”
Grace gasped, a wide smile breaking across her face. “A girl! Oh, that’s wonderful!”
Cho met her eyes from across the room and gave a single, firm nod of acknowledgement, his expression unchanged but his focus complete.
“Congratulations, Boss!” Rigsby boomed, quickly reassembling his pen. “That’s amazing. Dad must be…”
His words trailed off as Cho shot him a look that could freeze magma. Rigsby cleared his throat. “I mean, that’s really great news.”
A sudden, shocking heat prickled behind Teresa’s eyes. The simple, uncomplicated warmth of their reactions, this makeshift family of hers, hit her with a force that stole her breath. She blinked rapidly, giving a wobbly smile.
“Thanks, guys,” she managed before turning quickly toward her office. She didn’t trust her voice. She shut the door behind her and leaned against it, a single tear tracing a hot path down her cheek.
Through the glass, she saw Grace whisper something, concern on her face. Cho didn’t even glance toward the office. He kept typing, his voice just audible through the barrier. “Pregnancy hormones.”
Teresa almost laughed through the tears. Of course. She walked to her desk, wiping her cheek with the heel of her hand. The emotional storm receded, leaving a quiet, clear space. A daughter. She needed a name.
That night, lists covered her kitchen table. Sophie. Anna. Maya. Claire. None of them stuck. They were just sounds. Then she wrote ‘Elizabeth’. Her mother’s name. A good, strong name that had belonged to a woman who worked as a nurse and raised four kids with blunt love and relentless perseverance until tragedy stole her away. Beth for short. It felt right. It felt like an anchor.
She wrote it again: Elizabeth. Then, almost without conscious thought, her pen added a second name. Charlotte. The name hung on the page, charged and private. A silent tribute, a ghost acknowledged. No one in her new life would ever need to know its terrible history. Elizabeth Charlotte. Beth.
She would tell her brothers it was for a great-aunt. She wouldn’t tell the team. She folded the paper and tucked it away in a drawer, a secret compartment in her heart now fully furnished, waiting for its occupant.
By eight months, the waiting felt less like anticipation and more like a prolonged, awkward siege.
Her body was a foreign country. The neat, firm curve had become a vast, taut dome that strained the seams of everything she owned. She was down to two pairs of black pregnancy leggings, cycled and washed into softness, and four stretchy shirts that could pass for professional. She stopped caring. Standing for more than twenty minutes made her lower back scream, so she’d given up entirely on shoes that required laces or balance. A pair of thick, fleece-lined slippers lived under her desk.
“Nice kicks, Boss,” Rigsby said one morning, nodding at her feet as he dropped a case file on her desk.
“They have arch support,” she fired back, not looking up from her computer. “Your sneakers are a crime against podiatry.”
He grinned and retreated. She couldn’t see her feet anymore, not without a concerted and undignified maneuver. Dropping a pen was a minor crisis. She had to rely on Cho’s silent efficiency and Grace’s gentle foresight. “Cho, can you grab the file from the low cabinet?” or “Grace, did I just step in something?” became routine requests. They complied without comment, a quiet conspiracy against her own geometry.
The call from the furniture store came on a Thursday afternoon. “Agent Lisbon? Your crib, change table and dresser are in. Our delivery window is tonight, six to nine.”
Teresa’s heart sank. “Tonight? The confirmation said next week.”
“Inventory shifted. It’s tonight or we push to late next month.”
Next month was a hazy, impossible landscape where she might already be holding a baby. “Tonight. Yes, that’s fine.”
She hung up and immediately dialed her brother Tommy. He was supposed to drive down Saturday with his toolbox and his calm, methodical patience. The phone rang four times before going to voicemail. She tried again an hour later.
“T? Everything okay?” He sounded breathless.
“The baby furniture got moved up. It’s being delivered tonight. You still good for this weekend?”
A long, guilty pause crackled down the line. “Ah, jeez, Teresa. I can’t. Anna sprained her ankle at soccer. I’m literally just pulling into the clinic now. It’s a whole thing.”
“Right. Of course. No, that’s fine.” The words were automatic. “Take care of your kid.”
“I could maybe come down next weekend, help you then?”
“It’s fine, Tommy. Really.” She ended the call and stared at the blank, polished surface of her desk. The baby, Elizabeth, shifted heavily, a slow roll that felt like a planet turning. She took a deep breath that didn’t reach the bottom of her lungs and opened her office door.
Cho and Rigsby were debating the nutritional merits of different protein bars.
“Hey,” she said. They both turned. “I need a favor. My baby furniture is being delivered tonight. Tommy can’t make it. Any chance you two could come by and… assemble it?”
Rigsby’s face lit up. “Yeah, absolutely! I’m great at IKEA stuff.”
“That’s not the reassurance you think it is,” Cho said, deadpan. He looked at Teresa. “We’ll be there. What time?”
Grace popped her head around her monitor. “I can come help too! I can hang curtains or organize things.”
Teresa gave a tired smile. “You can come. But I don’t actually have any curtains.”
“Noted,” Grace said, her eyes already thoughtful.
That evening, in her half-empty second bedroom, Cho and Rigsby stood amidst a sea of flat-pack cardboard and cryptic, pictogram instructions. Teresa handed them the power drill her brother had mailed her, still in its box.
“The savages didn’t pre-drill these,” Rigsby muttered, squinting at a piece of beechwood.
Cho took the instruction booklet, studied it for thirty seconds, and set it aside. “It’s logically flawed. We’ll ignore it.” He began sorting screws into neat piles by size.
Teresa lowered herself onto the floor, back against the wall, to watch. She couldn’t help. It was a strange, vulnerable feeling. Grace arrived with a bag of sandwiches and a tape measure, which she began clicking around the window frame.
“Standard size,” Grace announced. “Easy.”
A week later, Teresa lumbered into the CBI and stopped. A small, tasteful pink and silver balloon was tied to her office doorknob. Inside, on her desk, was a single gift bag with a card signed by the entire Evidence Processing team. Throughout the morning, a quiet parade began. Agents from other divisions, clerks from records, even the stern woman from finance, would appear at her door.
“Heard the news, Lisbon. All the best.” A wrapped package of tiny, soft sleepers would be placed on her chair.
“My wife swore by these muslin blankets.” A box from Agent Peters.
By lunch, a small mountain had formed in the corner. By three PM, it had spilled across her second chair. The gifts were practical, thoughtful, devoid of pastel frills. Onesies, a digital thermometer, stacks of absorbent burp cloths. The kindness was relentless, anonymous, and utterly overwhelming.
At the end of the day, Minelli appeared in her doorway. Cho, Rigsby, and Grace filed in behind him, crowding the space. The air smelled of paper and ribbon.
“I hear there’s some unwrapping to do,” Minelli said, a rare, soft smile on his face.
“Grace organized this, didn’t she?” Teresa said, her voice thick.
Grace just grinned, wielding a notepad and pen. “I’m tracking. Start with the big one from Ballistics.”
Teresa began to open them. She held up tiny socks, a soft rattle, a blanket embroidered with elephants. Grace diligently noted each giver. “I’ll handle the thank you cards,” Grace offered. “And I’ve got the curtains. We can hang them whenever you’re ready.”
Teresa nodded, unable to speak around the lump in her throat. The physical evidence of community, of a village she hadn’t known she had, was piled at her feet.
Then Minelli stepped out. He returned, wheeling in a sleek, charcoal-gray travel system—a stroller with a detachable infant car seat clicked securely into its frame. It was elegant, sturdy, all matte finished and smooth engineering. Nothing like the confusing, brightly colored monstrosities she’d seen in catalogues.
“This,” Minelli said, patting the handle, “is from the four of us. Cho did the research. Apparently, it has a military-grade aluminum frame and a suspension system that can handle off-road terrain.”
“In case the perp runs into a park,” Cho explained, perfectly serious.
Teresa’s vision blurred. The tears she’d fought all day finally spilled over, hot and silent. She pushed herself up from her chair, a slow, graceless heave, and walked to each of them. She put her arms around a stiff but accepting Minelli, then a beaming Rigsby, then a patiently still Grace. Finally, she turned to Cho.
“Thank you,” she whispered into his shoulder.
He gave her back one firm, brief pat. “It folds with one hand. Important for tactical extractions.”
She laughed, a wet, hiccupping sound, and held on for a second longer.
The final weeks were a lesson in physics. Her center of gravity had migrated somewhere near her knees, turning simple acts like rising from a chair into a strategic operation involving momentum and grunting. The stroller from the team stayed in its box in her living room, a sleek, cryptic artifact from a future she couldn’t quite touch. Cho seamlessly absorbed the parts of her job that required foot chases or standing for longer than ten minutes. He did it without fanfare, a silent rearrangement of their dynamic she was too tired to fight.
“Rigsby and I will handle the canvass at the construction site,” he said one morning, plucking the case file from her desk. “You review the security footage. The cement truck has been there for eighteen minutes. Something’s off.”
“You’re narrating the tape in your head now?” she asked, leaning back in her chair, a hand resting on the taut dome of her stomach.
“It passes the time.” He paused at the door. “The Dobson-Hackett tribunal is tomorrow. It’s going to be a circus. You should work from home.”
She did. She spent the day on her couch with her laptop, listening to the distant, impossible quiet of her apartment, her daughter rolling and hiccupping inside her. The silence felt like a held breath.
A month later, Teresa wedged herself behind the wheel of her car, the steering wheel pressed against the shelf of her belly. She’d taken to parking at the far edge of the CBI lot, needing the extra door-swing space. The September morning was cool, the sky a pale, washed-out blue. As she shifted the car into park, a sensation like a hot metal belt cinched around her lower back and pelvis, tightening, squeezing the air from her lungs.
It held for twenty seconds, then vanished, leaving a dull aftershock. She sat very still, hands on the wheel. The first one. She knew the drill from the stern, no-nonsense Lamaze instructor her doctor had recommended. Early labor could be a marathon. Hours. Sometimes a full day. There was no rush.
She breathed out slowly, gathered her bag, and heaved herself out. Inside the building, she moved with deliberate calm. The bullpen was its usual hive of low activity. She nodded at Grace, who smiled back, unaware. In her office, she closed the door. Another contraction came, stronger. She braced her hands on her desk, riding the wave of pressure until it ebbed. Then she pulled the plastic liner from her small trash can, shook it out, and carefully spread it over her chair. She sat, the plastic crinkling softly beneath her.
She had paperwork. Transfer summaries for Cho, pending vacation approvals, a Use of Force report that needed her signature. This was her last day for three months. She would tie up the loose ends. She opened a file. Time became a series of intervals measured by the clock on her monitor and the deep, inward cramping that arrived with increasing regularity. Forty minutes. Then thirty-five.
During one, she gripped the edge of her desk, her knuckles white, focusing on the instructor’s voice in her memory. Breathe into the pain. It’s a wave. You ride it. The crest broke, leaving her damp with sweat. She picked up her pen, her handwriting becoming a jagged scrawl.
Cho appeared at her door just after three, a query about a witness. He took in her pale face, the focused stillness of her posture. “You’re unwell.”
“I’m finishing the Jennings file,” she said, not looking up. “The timeline for the third suspect doesn’t hold. Check the cell tower pings against his alibi again.”
He stood there for a moment longer, his dark eyes missing nothing. “I’ll do that.” He didn’t move. “You’re sure?”
“It’s indigestion.” The lie was thin and they both knew it. He left without another word.
At four-forty, she was stacking the finalized files in her outbox. A final, seismic contraction locked her muscles, a deep, rending pull that made her see flashes of white light behind her eyelids. When it released, she felt a warm, sudden gush, soaking through her leggings and onto the plastic-covered chair.
She stared at the monitor, dispassionate. Her water had broken. Game time. She pushed herself up, the wet fabric clinging unpleasantly. She grabbed the go-bag from beside her desk, its packed contents suddenly absurdly real. She slung it over her shoulder, took a steadying breath, and opened her office door.
The contraction that hit her in the doorway was a living thing, vicious and all-consuming. It stole the space from the hall, the light, the sound. She clutched the doorframe, stifling a groan into a sharp exhale, her body folding in on itself. She rode the brutal crest, counting breaths, her forehead pressed against the cool wood.
As the pressure began to relent, she opened her eyes. Minelli and Cho stood frozen three feet away, having evidently been walking past. They stared. Minelli’s mouth was slightly open. Cho’s expression was carefully, perfectly blank.
“Lisbon,” Minelli finally managed.
“My water broke,” she said, the words coming out in a pragmatic puff of air. “I’m heading to the hospital.”
“Alone?” Minelli’s voice climbed. “Absolutely not. Cho, you’re taking her. Right now.”
“I can drive myself,” Teresa protested, straightening with an effort. “It’s early. I have time.”
“No,” Cho said. It wasn’t an argument. He stepped forward and took the bag from her shoulder. “Where are your keys?”
She fumbled in her pocket, another contraction beginning to build its terrible momentum. “Car. Front lot. Far side.” She thrust her keys at him, then her free hand shot out, pressing the crumpled garbage bag from her chair into his chest. He looked down at it, confusion flickering across his face.
She didn’t have time to explain. She pushed past them, down the hall toward the elevator, leaning heavily on the wall. Cho followed, a steady presence at her elbow. In the parking lot, the cool evening air hit her damp clothes, raising goosebumps. She stopped at his sensible sedan, bracing her hands on the roof as the contraction peaked, a raw, guttural sound escaping her clenched teeth. “My car.” Cho said flatly, pulling out his keys and unlocking the door. “You won’t make it yours.”
When she could speak again, she gasped, “The bag… for your seat. My water broke. I don’t want to get it wet.”
Understanding dawned. Cho wordlessly shook out the plastic and draped it over the passenger seat. He opened the door, his hand a firm guide under her elbow as she lowered herself in with a wince. He shut the door, rounded the hood, and slid behind the wheel. The engine purred to life.
“Seatbelt,” he said, his eyes scanning the dash.
“Cho, it’s not going to fit.”
He glanced over. “Right.” He put the car in drive. “Brace yourself.”
He didn’t use the siren, but he drove with a smooth, aggressive efficiency that sliced through the late-afternoon traffic. Teresa watched streetlights blur past, her body tensing against the next gathering wave. The city outside the window felt distant, a film playing at the wrong speed.
“How far apart?” His voice was calm, cutting through her focus.
“About four minutes,” she breathed out, her eyes closed. “Lasting a minute. Maybe more.” A faint, irrational panic bubbled up. “The bag for the seat. Was that weird?”
“It was logical,” he said, changing lanes without a signal. “Hydraulic fluid is harder to clean.”
A startled laugh hitched in her throat, swallowed by another surge of pain. She gripped the door handle, her breath coming in short, controlled puffs. The hospital entrance lights bloomed ahead, a beacon of white and red.
He pulled under the Emergency overhang with authority, putting the car in park. “Wait,” he commanded, and was out his door, moving toward a nurse already wheeling a chair out the automatic doors.
Teresa watched through the windshield as he spoke, concise, pointing to the car. The nurse nodded, her face shifting into professional alertness. As Cho opened her door, the exterior sounds flooded in—the electronic doors swishing, an ambulance radio chirping, the nurse’s calm voice.
“Let’s get you inside, ma’am.”
Cho’s hand was there again, solid and sure, as she transferred from the car to the wheelchair. The plastic on the seat rustled as she left it behind. He grabbed her bag from the backseat. As the nurse began to wheel her away, Teresa looked back at him, standing there beside his car under the fluorescent lights.
His expression hadn’t changed, but he gave her that same, single nod. It meant everything. Then he turned, got back in the driver’s seat, and pulled away to park. She was rolled into the bright, antiseptic bustle, the doors closing behind her, leaving the familiar world outside.