Date : 11.08.2008
Title : Scream For Me
Author : ElaineDex
Chapter : 1 of ?
Rating : M
Pairings : Detective Mac Taylor/Darcie Morgan
Detective Don Flack/Parker Scott
Warnings : Some Sexual Content, Romance, Strong Language.
Spoilers : Possible references to Season 3 - story is set somewhere mid Season 4.
Feedback : Yes please, always welcome whatever it may be.
Disclaimer : I do not own CSI : New York or any of its' characters. Darcie Morgan and Parker Scott are mine.
FOR MICHELLE - HOPE YOU ENJOY IT X
Summary : AU - A new serial killer is in town but can Detectives Don Flack and Mac Taylor stop him before two women they care about fall victim to him?
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"Everything looks perfect don't you think…even if I do say so myself", Parker Scott, self-made Wedding Planner said, smiling as she proudly looked around the room where the wedding that she had organised for her best friend was to shortly take place.
When her fiancé failed to answer her, she dug her elbow into his ribs.
"Don?", she prodded, but Detective Don Flack barely spared her a glance as he replied,
"Huh?".
"The room, it looks perfect doesn't it?", she said and he nodded.
"Oh yeah…its great", he answered, but she could tell that his attention was still caught by something else.
A flicker of anger shot through her and she folded her arms, careful not to crease the bodice of her Maid of Honour gown.
"Could you stop being a cop for just one day", she said hotly. "This is the wedding of our two best friends and all you've done is skulk around as though you're gathering evidence for one of your damn murder investigations".
"I am gathering evidence", Flack replied and Parker went to walk off but he caught her arm.
"Parker, I think Riley is cheating on Darcie", he stated and Parker's brown eyes widened.
"What are you talking about? It's their wedding day…", she said, her mind unable to comprehend what he was saying.
"I know what damn day it is, its all I've heard about for the past six months, but that doesn't change the fact that I think my friend is screwing one of the bridesmaids", Flack said, watching as Parker's face crumpled.
"You're kidding me…right?", she asked, her heart thumping wildly as Flack gave her a look that told her that there was no way that he would joke about such a thing.
"Oh my God", she breathed, as she thought of Darcie who was right now up in her hotel suite, dressing in her beautiful wedding gown and dreaming of a future with the man she had been with now for four years.
"Oh my god", she said again and Flack reached out and tucked a stray tendril of her blonde hair behind an ear.
"What do we do?", he asked and her eyes locked with his.
Before Parker had a chance to respond though, a commotion in the hotel lobby drew their attention and they glanced at one another briefly, before heading to check out what was going on.
CSINYCSINYCSINY
Darcie Morgan had been blissfully happy, or rather she had been up until around ten minutes ago. That was when she had walked in on her fiancé, Riley Williams, screwing one of her bridesmaids, who just happened to be her cousin Sally.
She had stumbled over her wedding gown as she had backed out of the hotel room, before fleeing down the grand staircase toward the lobby, Riley hot on her heels and trying to do up his pants at the same time.
"Darcie wait!", he had called out, but she had kept going, not wanting to stop for fear of what she would say and do to him.
He had caught up to her though as she had begun to cross the lobby, catching her arm, his fingers bruising her soft skin as she tried to shake him off but he held her fast…
"Get off me!", Darcie cried out, drawing even more eyes to them as she pushed against his chest.
"Come on Darce, it wasn't what it looked like…", Riley said and Darcie laughed incredulously, still trying to free her arm.
"It looked to me like you were SCREWING Sally's brains out, how other way could that look to me Riley huh?", she asked harshly, her words drawing gasps from their family members and friends who were milling around in the lobby area.
"Oh that's right, announce it to the world", Riley said and Darcie stared at him in disbelief.
"What…you wanted me to keep your little affair a secret?", she asked, tears pricking her eyes but she refused to cry…not in front of him.
"It wasn't an affair, it was one last fuck…", Riley began, pausing as a gasp had him glancing over his shoulder to see Sally, looking affronted, as she glared at him.
Darcie leant around Riley as her cousin said,
"You lying bastard. You said you'd carry on seeing me even after you and Darcie were married".
Riley turned back to face Darcie just as she swung her arm and her fist connected with his jaw.
Parker and Flack were just in time to witness this and Parker gasped as she saw Riley release Darcie's arm so that he could cup his jaw in his hands.
As soon as she was free, Darcie headed for the exit, Parker taking off after her as Flack approached Riley.
"You idiot", he said.
Riley rubbed his jaw as chaos seemed to erupt around them.
"Come on Don, don't tell me you wouldn't have done the same", he said and Flack shook his head.
"No, I wouldn't and I cant believe that you did this to Darcie", Flack replied angrily and Riley tried to laugh, the sound sending Flack over the edge and he grabbed Riley's jacket lapels and forced him up against a nearby wall.
"This isn't funny Riley, you probably just single-handedly destroyed any trust in men that Darcie is ever likely to have", he said and Riley held his arms out.
"You and I are cool though aren't we?", he asked and Flack shook his head before drawing his arm back and thumping his now ex best friend squarely on the jaw and, as Riley lay sprawled on the floor, he looked down at him and replied,
"I hope that answers your question", and then he headed after Parker.
He caught her as she barrelled into him on her way back into the lobby.
"We have to get the car. Darcie has taken off in one of the wedding limos, I heard her tell the driver to get her away from here but I don't know where they've gone. We have to try and catch her up Don", she said and Flack nodded.
"You get the licence plate?", he asked as they headed for the parking lot.
"I have learnt some things from you, you know", she said, raising an eyebrow at him and he offered her a lop-sided grin.
"That's my girl", he said and Parker felt herself blush, just as she always did when he made any reference to her being 'his'.
She had met Don two years earlier when she had been the planner for his sister, Samantha's, wedding. She smiled as she remembered how he had flirted with her for most of the day until finally, at the evening celebrations, she had consented to dance with him.
They had been together ever since and Flack had asked her to marry him four months ago whilst they had been on a weekend break away in Philadelphia.
Parker had, of course, accepted straight away. She loved Flack with every fibre in her being and she also longed for the stability of a permanent relationship. She had grown up without a father, as he had left her mother before she had even been born and her mother had turned into an alcoholic when Parker had been around eight years old, forcing her to look out for herself.
To have someone want to be with her and look after her was something that she had always dreamed of.
As they got into Flack's car he reached for the radio that was hooked to the dash and said,
"I'll put out an A.P.B. on the plate, see if we can track her down".
"Don't get your friends to pull the car over though Don, Darcie would be mortified", Parker replied and Don nodded before putting out a message to all patrol cars to look out for the limo, but to just give him its location, not for them to flag it down.
ooo
Darcie sat numbly in the back of the limo, now too shocked to even cry.
'How long had Riley been sleeping around?', she wondered. 'Was Sally the first or just one of many?'.
She felt sick.
She wanted to crawl under a rock and hide and she would have tried, only she knew that the layers of her ivory duchess satin wedding gown would get her spotted from five blocks away.
"Where are we going to ma'am?", the limo driver asked, casting a 'I really feel for you', glance at her over his shoulder and she sighed deeply and looked out of the window at the bustling crowds on the street.
She had no idea where they were going.
She knew that Parker and Flack would come looking for her, that Flack would probably have half the station on the lookout for her and so she knew she had to ditch the limo if she wanted to remain un-found.
"Ma'am?", the driver prompted and she turned and looked at him.
"Just drop me off here", she said and the driver frowned at her before looking back out of the windscreen at the busy road ahead.
"Right here?", he asked dubiously and she bit her lip.
"Actually no, take me to Church Street", she said and the driver looked at her again.
"You want to go to the World Trade Centre Memorial? Now?", he asked and she nodded.
"Yeah, why not", she muttered in response and the driver turned back around.
"Okay ma'am, your choice", he said and began to manoeuvre the car through the traffic.
He eventually stopped at Ground Zero and said,
"Want me to wait for you?".
Darcie flung open the door and began to push herself and her cumbersome dress toward freedom.
"No thanks, you head off now", she replied and the driver shrugged, the fact that he was no longer needed as chauffeur obviously making him believe that he didn't need to help her out of the car either.
Rolling her eyes, Darcie managed to get her feet onto the sidewalk and then stood, slamming the limo door shut, but only once she had made sure that none of the material of her skirt was anywhere near the car. The last thing she needed now was for the car to drive off, taking half of her dress with it.
Once the limo was gone she was struck, as always, by the eerie silence that surrounded the place where the terrible incident had taken place almost eight years ago now.
Had her elder brother, Peter, really been gone that long? It didn't seem that way.
Ignoring the stares from passing strangers, she picked up her skirt a little and made her way more toward the centre of the memorial, where the tower that her brother had worked in had once stood.
She stood for the longest time, staring at nothing, trying to block out the image of Riley and Sally, rutting like two Neanderthals on the hotel bed.
As tears began to fall silently from her eyes, she reached up and pulled on the comb that held her veil in place and she yanked it from her long brunette hair, ignoring the stab of pain as it pulled hair-pins with it.
Lowering her hand back her side, the veil blew in the slight soft breeze that always wafted through this quiet place and she let it take the diaphanous material with it, allowing it to be tugged from her lifeless fingers.
On the other side of the Memorial site, Detective Mac Taylor watched the lonesome bride with some interest.
His natural inquisitive side wanted him to find out what the hell the woman in a bridal gown was doing on a Saturday afternoon, just stood in the middle of the Ground Zero site, not moving, when she should have obviously been somewhere else, but the quiet, private side of him was trying to tell him to leave her alone, to whatever thoughts were obviously on her mind.
After all, he came here to think, to be quiet and to reflect. Why shouldn't the bride be allowed the same courtesy?
'Because she was beginning to attract a crowd', he reasoned.
He was about to head over to her when a gang of tourists surrounded her and she quickly took off, running from the site.
Sighing, Mac shoved his hands into his pants pockets and turned away.
One less problem for him to deal with.
CSINYCSINYCSINY
"I dropped her off at the Ground Zero Memorial Site and that's the last I saw of her I swear", the limo driver was saying to a disgruntled looking Flack after being pulled over.
"Why did you just leave her there?", Parker asked angrily, hands on hips as she glared at the man.
"She told me to go", the driver shot back.
Parker sighed and looked at Flack helplessly.
"Okay, you can go", Flack said to the driver who flung his hands into the air with some irritation before getting back into the limo.
"Get back into the car, let's see if she's still over there", Flack said and Parker nodded, her worry for her best friend increasing the longer it was taking for them to find her.
They got to Ground Zero as fast as they could, given the heaviness of the Saturday traffic, but of course, there was no sign of Darcie.
"Damn it", Flack cursed as he met Parker back at the centre of the Memorial after they had split up to take a side each.
"We have to find her Don, she's going to be in a terrible state", Parker said and he nodded and put an arm around her shoulders as he led her back to his car.
CSINYCSINYCSINY
Darcie entered Cozy's Night Club, which through the day was just a bar, a little after 3PM. If her day had gone to plan she would have been Mrs Riley Williams for around an hour by now.
She ignored the glances from a few of the clientele as she made her way to the bar.
"What can I get ya?", the bartender asked, pointedly ignoring her attire.
"Um…a Bud please", Darcie replied and the bartender regarded her.
"You got money?".
Darcie nodded and produced a small wad of bills from between her breasts and the bartender raised an eyebrow before opening her a bottle of Budweiser and putting it onto the bar in front of her.
Darcie took the beer and took a long swig of the cool liquid.
'What am I doing?', she thought absently, then added, 'Forgetting the mess that is currently my life, that's what I'm doing'.
The one bottle of Budweiser quickly turned into two, then three and Darcie was soon well on her way to being quite drunk, mainly due to the fact that she hadn't had anything since her 6 AM breakfast of a piece of toast that morning.
The bartender watcher her warily as she walked in a zig-zag kind of line toward the Ladies rest room and emerged some time later, having had to battle with her dress to even get close to the loo.
"Can I get you a cab?", he offered, noticing that some of the other customers were beginning to take more and more notice of the 'runaway bride' and he wanted the rest of his shift to be as quiet and uneventful as possible.
"No…but you can get me another beer", Darcie replied, not sounding too sure that she should really have another.
"I really don't think…", the bartender began, but stopped as Darcie threw up her hands in disgust.
"That is the trouble with men isn't it really", she said loudly before adding, "You don't think. You just do whatever that thing in your pants tells you to".
Mac, who had decided to call in to Cozy's on his way home to collect the music that the band would be playing in Wednesday's set, caught the back end of her sentence and his eyebrows raised, firstly at seeing the bride again and secondly at her words.
"Look lady, I don't know what happened to you today but…", the bartender started but Darcie cut him off again.
"But you don't care…I know…another 'man thing'. You know, if I don't meet another man ever again I think I'd die happy", but then she turned and came face to face with the club half full with none too impressed looking men.
The bartender spotted Mac and sighed in relief as the Detective approached the woman.
"Excuse me Miss", Mac began and Darcie whirled around.
"Miss?!", she said, clearly outraged and Mac's eyes widened.
"Miss?", she repeated. "Are you trying to be funny you asshole?!", and Mac realised that maybe calling her 'Miss' on the day she had so obviously not become a 'Mrs', could have been a slight faux pas.
Before he could reply though, Flack and Parker arrived.
"Oh thank God, Darcie we've been worried sick", Parker said, wrapping her arms around her friend and Mac watched as the bride's hard exterior began to crumple before him and she sagged against Flack's fiancée.
"You know this woman?", Mac asked as Parker led Darcie toward the exit.
"Yeah, she's Parker's best friend", Flack replied, raking a hand through his hair with barely contained relief that they'd found Darcie.
"What happened?", Mac asked and Flack blew out a breath.
"Riley, her husband to be, my now 'ex' best friend, slept with her cousin and she found them at it, just before the wedding".
"That's rough", Mac replied, "Tell her I hope she'll be alright".
Flack smiled. "You'll be able to tell her yourself soon".
"What do you mean?", Mac asked frowning.
"That new secretary your department promised you…", Flack replied and they both looked toward Darcie who was now sobbing openly in Parker's arms.
"You gotta be kidding me? She just called me an asshole", Mac answered and Flack laughed.
"I've heard you called worse. She was supposed to be starting work after her honeymoon, whether it'll be sooner now I don't know. I wish I could be a fly on the wall when she realises that you're her new boss".
Suddenly Parker called over,
"Don we need to get Darcie home".
"I'm coming", he called back and Mac slapped Flack's shoulder.
"I hope she pukes in your car", he said sincerely and Flack grimaced.
"Gee thanks".
Mac waved and headed to the bar, determined to enjoy the rest of his Saturday.
End of Chapter 1