The time line for this is after Slieght out of hand. The CM crew follows the same time line in Season two except I've ignored Revelations and its aftermath for Reid.

The man stood watching the Manhattan skyline as it glowed with the lights of thousands of apartment buildings and offices. He knew that when most people thought about New York City, they imagined, 5 star restaurants, night clubs that featured the hottest in new talent, and the best in theatre. They didn't think of people like him that crawled over the underbelly of the city, like some new, exotic cancerous growth.

It didn't matter what the elected officials did to change things. Prostitutes would stand on their street corners, and entice men for a quick horizontal fuck in the alleyway, or an even quicker blowjob.

Drug dealers had more than enough trade to keep them in business for the rest of the century, and man could always find a reason to kill.

He had a good reason to kill; it was the only way to get the attention of the city's best crime scene investigator. His victims were carefully chosen for maximum effect, and soon he would have the one that mattered most to his target, and then he would rejoice, while his rival mourned, and searched for her in vain.

Finished with the evenings work, the man knelt back down to pull his knife from the body of the man in front of him. The victim's throat had been cut, and his eyes removed. The killer had placed them in glass containers the size of film canisters. They were clear, and held formaldehyde to preserve the tissue. His victim had also been beaten, and stabbed repeatedly.

He reached into the pocket of his jacket, and pulled something out. He tossed it down on the body, and walked out the door. No one looked twice at him. The neighborhood was in the worst part of New York's Hell's Kitchen, and someone like him incited fear and loathing . When the cops were called days later, because of the smell, he would already have his next victim.

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The black SUV pulled up in front of the apartment building and Peyton stepped out. She'd been called in by dispatch, and would be working with Danny Messer. She shuddered as she got out into the starlit night. It was early April, and still chilly in the mornings, but that wasn't the reason she was chilled. This was the third victim in two weeks and the ME's office was baffled by the lack of clues.

The first victim had been an Asian man in his late fifties. He'd been found in his home in the upper west side. His neighbors couldn't believe someone would do something like that to him, he'd had no enemies to speak of. There had been so much blood, and all of it was the victim's.

The second victim was an African American teenager, a sixteen year old boy. He was found in an alleyway off of Central Park.

Now she was here for the third victim, a white male who'd lived in a rat trap of an apartment building in Hell's kitchen. She made her way into the building, and was met by Don Flack.

"Detective Flack," she greeted him. He liked her accent.

" Mornin Doc, we got another one."

"So I heard, where's the body?"

"Come on, I'll take you up. Danny's finished and heading back to the lab."

They negotiated the old wooden steps that looked like they might fall apart at any minute. There was gang graffiti on the walls, but the eyes that watched them pass turned away when confronted by Flack's badge. The smell was terrible, a mixture of rot, urine, and the unmistakable smell of blood in all it's coppery glory. The smell of death overlapped it all, and for the first time since her days as a lab assistant in the London Morgue where Peyton was trained, she nearly vomited.

She put a hand over her mouth, and glanced at Flack again. No wonder he'd looked distinctly green around the gills when she'd arrived. She approached the body, which was in the same condition as the other three. The difference was that he'd been dead for at least five days, and decay was doing its worst.

"Did Danny find the playing card?"

'Yeah," Flack answered as he flipped through his notebook. "It was the same as the others, an ace of spades, thrown down on top of the body as the killer left."

The card was gone; Danny would have taken it in to be analyzed for fingerprints and other trace evidence. If this was the same killer, and at first blush, she had to say that it was, then he wouldn't find anything. She knelt next to the body, and ran her flash light down the length of the corpse.

"It looks like the same wound pattern as the other two. The beating and stab wounds were made after death. The cut to the throat was the COD; he would've bled out within seconds as the wound transected the jugular, and the carotid arteries, your basic ear to ear cutting motion."

One of the uniforms that stood guard at the scene grabbed his mike when a code came over the radio.

He looked at Flack, and the detective said, "We're ok, I'll watch out for the doc, you guys respond. We're nearest to the call." Peyton looked at him inquiringly. "Officer needs assistance," he said simply and she nodded.

She was in the middle of her visual examination of the body when she heard a creak and then a popping noise in quick succession. She looked up in confusion, and screamed when Flack fell to the ground, a bullet hole in his left side. He didn't move, and she was frozen to the spot she knelt in when the silencer equipped gun was turned on her.

"Keep your mouth shut Dr Driscoll, or I will shoot you. Stand up and move away from the body." She climbed to her feet, shaking and thinking only how big the gun looked. The barrel pointed at her was the only thing in the world that mattered. He strode across the room and pistol whipped her. She went down silently, and he caught her easily in his arms. No one challenged him as he carried her through the hallway, and down the stairs to the street below.

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Mac Taylor sat behind the desk in his glass encased office. He threw down a file folder in disgust, and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. The headache that was brewing behind his eyes promised to be a killer. He had several manila folders on his desk. They were all unsolved cases that he tried to look at as often as he could. He felt compelled to do so because he couldn't get the victims out of his head. Peyton said he was obsessing, and he supposed she was right, as much as he hated to admit it.

He stood and walked to the window, looking out at the sunrise over the city. The sky was a riot of pink, rose, white and golden tones. There was also crimson red in the sky, and he wondered idly if it would rain again today. He wouldn't mind, he liked the city after it was scoured clean by a good long rain.

Claire had liked the rain. If they had the day off, she would drag him out to walk down 5th avenue or in Central park without an umbrella, they would get soaked, and she would make tea for them when they returned to their apartment.

Sometimes after they had tea, she would get in the shower, with the water on as hot as she could stand it, and he would pretend she'd asked him to join her. Sometimes they would just make love on the bed, a rose colored comforter beneath them, that he would pull over her after they reached the shuddering plateau together. He would roll onto his back, and she would lay her head on his chest.

They would watch the storm play itself out, or the sun go down in a blaze of colors, whichever came first. He always opened the window a bit, because Claire liked the sounds of the city. They would listen to the rain pound on the windows, and sometimes the blaring of car horns would drift up to them Sometimes it would be the sound of people calling to each other, or the sound of screeching brakes. They let it wash over them, like a wave of chaos that couldn't touch them, in the world they created for each other. It seemed like those days had been never ending and he relished in them.

Then Peyton had quietly entered his life. She didn't walk unprotected with him in the rain, but only because they'd found other things to do that were theirs alone. Watching David Letterman in bed, eating at her favorite Indian restaurant, or going to an off Broadway show at some small theater in the round. Peyton loved the small theaters. She said the actors were more interested in playing to the audience, than stroking their own egos.

He jumped a little when the door opened behind him. He turned, and saw Danny looking like he'd been drug through a knot hole. He'd caught the DOA at the end of a long double shift, and Mac wanted to send him home, but he knew it would do little good. In spite of the circles under Danny's eyes, and the lines around his mouth, he would do the job. It was what Mac admired most about him.

"It's the same MO Mac, this is his third victim, and we ain't got nothin!" His eyes were blood shot as well. He was beginning to look like he'd come off a week's bender. "Right down the line includin the playin card found on the body. In fact, I was just comin to tell ya about it, and then I'm on my way to the lab to process it. I gotta tell ya Mac, it don't look like I'm gonna find anythin. It's the same as the others."

"Let's follow the evidence Danny, it's the only thing we can do for now." He followed the younger CSI down the hallway to the lab, and put on a lab coat. Danny began the process of trying to lift a print. When dusting revealed nothing, he set up to fume the card.

Both of them jumped when Mac's phone beeped. They had been staring intently at the card is if they expected it to start talking, and reveal the name of the killer to them. "Mac here… what… when…. How the hell did that happen? Ok… what hospital… ok …. How is he? Okay…. Yeah I got it… What … No she isn't here, but I'm in the lab so she might be in the morgue. You what… shit…? Okay…. Ok …. I'll be there in ten minutes.

He snapped the phone shut and turned to Danny. His eyes were shining with… was that unshed tears, no that couldn't be, Mac Taylor didn't cry. His face was the same color as the corpses in the morgue, and it scared the hell out of Danny.

"Jesus Mac… what the hell -"

He watched Mac open his phone again and call down to the Morgue. "Sid… its Mac, is Peyton with you? No, she was supposed to be coming back with Danny's DB. Ok… no I'm sure everything is ok… No Sid, I'll explain later."

"God Damn it, how the hell did this happen, where were the uniforms at the scene?" He left the lab walking faster than Danny had ever seen, in fact it was a challenge for him to keep up with his boss.

"Mac what's going on, where are you going?"

Mac turned long enough to spit out. "Peyton's gone missing and Don's been shot!"