Danny felt a rage brew inside of him. "Property of the state."

Standing in the middle of the hallway, Frank warningly put up his hand. "I'm not in control of this, Danny. You know that."

He felt it happening; the scenes rushed past his eyes. Jordan's criminal involvement. Her arrest. The look on Sr. Rachel's face as the phone call reached the convent. Jason waving to him. Jordan screaming at him in the interrogation room. His inability to help her in any way what-so-ever. He saw her in court, in jail, in the hospital, strung out on drugs…

Danny's right hand balled into a fist at his side. His knuckles went white. He repeated himself slowly. "You're making her property of the state."

Frank stood solid. "Yes. It's standard operating procedure."

Danny had worked on keeping his composure throughout the entire ordeal for Jordan, for Rachel, and for himself. But as he watched their futures slip out of his grasp, anger flushed his cheeks.

Frank made the mistake of continuing to speak. "You may not see it now, Danny. But you'll be grateful later. This is the only option left for her."

The vice squeezed, and Danny snapped.

He stepped up into Frank Sander's face. "Don't you dare give me that load of crap. You knew," he said, glaring. "You knew that if you could get those dealers to sing it would be easier on you. The paperwork would go through. There would be no rearranging for the girl to be let off, and you would take her off the street in one foul swoop."

The detective made a face, like he'd just eaten a piece of fish that didn't agree with him. "Danny, this is nothing personal."

He glared. "The hell it's not."

"It's just reality, and the way things work-"

"And the reality is you take down the orphanage while you're at it? That was extra. That was extra ground, Frank. And you know it." He stubbornly stood in the cop's path. "Maybe Jordan needs more help than I can give her. I can admit that. You did not have to go here."

"I went there because someone needed to," he justified.

Danny's face scrunched. "Just what in the hell are you talking about?" he demanded. "That place was built on the faith of the community. It remains on faith."

Frank's sweaty face stared forward into his. "Danny, I have better things to do than argue semantics with you. You want to talk about this? You meet me somewhere. We discuss it like professionals. Not now. Not here in this workplace."

But Frank Sanders had ignited Danny's anger, and once that happened, there was no cork large enough to bottle it. Danny's strong body blocked Frank's path. "No, you don't get off that easy. You started this. You'll finish it."

Frank lent him one last warning. "Don't do this, Danny."

"You're taking down an entire convent. An entire establishment built upon keeping kids off the streets since it's inception-"

Frank's curt voice cut into his attack. "And since that inception, how many kids have been lost back to the street they came off of?"

Danny went to start up once more, but Frank kept going. "How many regulations have been ignored? How many children have suffered from the one woman who refuses to close it?"

At the last comment, Danny lost his breath. A new sensation entered him, and one he had rarely ever felt. His voice left him, and Agent Danny Taylor fell speechless.

Frank's contemptuous glare bore down upon him. "I sent the board to review St. Luke's in the best interest of the children residing there. Could you say the same for your own agenda?" As he realized the power of his words, his voice lost some of its volume…but none of its coherency. "We both know there's been something going wrong at that place for months now. You're just too close to see it."

Throat dry, Danny opened his mouth to say something, anything to turn the tables on Frank's argument. But in truth, there was nothing to be said. Frank began to stalk past him, when the detective stopped in his tracks. His mouth gapped open wide in what appeared to be surprise.

Danny swerved around to see what had brought it on. When he did, he felt his heart twist into a knot inside his chest.

There stood Sr. Rachel, an empty devastated look upon her face. She had been standing there during the entire conversation, and she had heard every word they'd said.