Authors Note: Thanks to everyone who is reading and reviewing the story. Special thanks to; jessicaflack, CSI4lyfNCIS13 and afrozenheart412 for reviewing the previous chapter.

Chapter 10

They'd gotten a warrant for the brothers DNA but had only been able to find Joseph and Dominic, the other two had not been at home or work and no one seemed to know where they were. Joseph had already been cleared though Mac shared Angell's belief that he knew more than he was saying. Dominic's DNA didn't match either of the samples from crime scenes but the smug look on his face said he knew more as well.

"I already told you, I don't know where my brothers are," Dominic stated as Mac watched through the glass. He'd interviewed Joseph already, he was refusing to talk, Mac had pushed for answers but once he'd requested a lawyer there'd been nothing else he could do. They had no solid case against him and any decent lawyer would have him out of there within minutes.

"You see, for some reason, I just don't believe you," Don stated, sitting forward in his chair. Mac had noticed as soon as he'd arrived that Dominic's eyes kept straying to Angell, subconsciously glancing at her with an expression Mac couldn't quite identify. He could tell Don had noticed as well, in the way he had moved his chair closer to the table, closer to Dominic, situating himself in between the man and his partner. Angell was quiet, letting Don lead the questioning and added the occasional question and comment of her own. She was tense though, in a way Mac wasn't used to seeing from her, Dominic's glances had not gone unnoticed by her either.

"That's not my problem, you can believe what you want, my answer isn't gonna change," Dominic told them.

"We have DNA evidence that links your brothers to several murders..." Don began only to be cut off by Dominic.

"They you planted it, I ain't gonna give you anything on my brothers, family sticks together. Now, I think I want a lawyer, I'm not talking to you anymore without one," he stated. Mac sighed, there was nothing more they could do now, they'd have to wait for the lawyer to show up. Don and Angell joined him in the observation room, dejected looks on their faces.

"Did you get anything out of Joseph?" Angell questioned.

"No, you're right though, he definitely knows something, he's covering for his brothers, they both are," he replied with a nod toward the glass window.

The lawyer had the brothers walking out of the precinct within minutes of his arrival. Mac had known that he would, they had nothing on either of them, no way to prove they knew what their brothers had done. Don had already arranged to have a car on both men before the lawyer had even shown up and they'd been forced to watch as Dominic had smirked at them on the way out.

"At least we know who are perps are now, DNA cleared them both which only leaves Craig and Kyle," Don stated.

"He was standing right in front of us," Jess cursed, self accusation in her voice.

"You couldn't have known and you had no grounds to arrest him," Mac replied but she just shook her head, clearly intent on blaming herself for a little longer. He knew sooner or later common sense would kick in and she'd realise she couldn't have done anything different, they'd all been through it enough times.

There had still been no sign of the two missing brothers, neither had shown up for work that day and the cops watching their homes had reported no sign of them there either. Don waited in silence at his desk as Mac finished up on the phone, from the sound of it another case had come up and even with the night shift helping out they didn't have enough people to cover all the scenes with most of the labs resources working on one case.

"Don't rush it Danny, be thorough," Mac stated ending the call and Don could tell he was holding back a sigh.

"Another case?" Don questioned, looking around the precinct to see which detectives weren't there and whose case it might be.

"Yeah, I've had to put Danny on it, I've already got Hawkes and Adam working a string of armed robberies this morning," Mac told him.

"Criminals don't take time off just because we have a major case, if anything they're more likely to take advantage of it," Don replied with a shrug. He looked up in time to see Jess come through the door, cell phone to her ear and an unhappy expression on her face. Mac noticed the direction of his gaze and turned around in his chair to see her.

"Well that doesn't look good," he stated as she walked toward them.

"Thank you, call me immediately if anything turns up," Jess said before ending the phone call with a sigh and looking at them. "The officers that were tailing Dominic and Joseph have lost them, both of them."

"You've got to be kidding," Don groaned.

"No, the guys tailing Joseph lost him at the mall and Dominic disappeared in a parking lot. I've put cars outside their apartments in case they go home but I doubt it, they're not stupid enough for that. Stella is trying to track down their mother, her last known address is empty, landlord said she moved out about a month ago, didn't leave a forwarding address," Jess explained, dragging over a chair and sitting down. "Did you have any luck talking to Jodi Bennett's family?"

Mac shook his head. "They hadn't spoken to Jodi in the last 6 months."

"Same story as all the others," Don added. "We spoke to Kaitlin Stone's mother as well. She actually spoke to Kaitlin three weeks ago over the phone. She said her that her daughter had very little contact with the family but they would call her every few weeks to make sure she was alright, they tried to call her yesterday but obviously no one answered."

Jess sat down with a sigh. "I hate this case."

The rain was coming down hard, Jess grabbed her umbrella from the car but it didn't offer much protection. The scene was already being cleared as she and Don joined Mac and Stella, the body was in a body bag already, protecting it from the rain and hopefully preserving any evidence that might be on it. The two CSI's were frantically trying to gather up anything that they deemed might be evidence even though they knew it was unlikely to be, there was no time for a proper examination at the scene.

"I'd ask you what we have here but I probably know the answer already and you both seem kinda busy," Don stated with a small smirk. Stella paused just long enough to send him a glare.

"Body was found by her," she gestured toward a woman stood beneath a black umbrella with two police officers. Don walked away to talk to her and Jess watched as the body bag was taken away from the scene.

"It's definitely Kaitlin Stone?" Jess questioned.

"Yeah," Stella replied as she stopped looking around the entrance to the alley they were all stood in. She was completely soaked; the waterproof jacket she was wearing had only been able to protect her so much from the rain. Jess shifted the umbrella so that it was covering Stella as well, giving her friend a moment's reprieve from the cold rain, 2am was far too early in the morning for this. "There's nothing here, as usual and anything that was here was probably washed away by the rain."

"So, do you think it's a coincidence that less than twelve hours after we lose Dominic and Joseph another body turns up?" Jess asked, she doubted it.

"I don't know, DNA cleared them both and we have no proof that either of them have any involvement in the killings, even if we think they know more than they're saying," Stella replied. "They could just be protecting their brothers, either way we need to find them all."

Jess shook her head. "If one of my brothers murdered six people, I'd drag their ass into the station, that's if dad didn't get a hold of them first."

"Stella just called," Lindsay heard Don say as she and Jess decided whether they wanted a snickers or MnM's for their breakfast. "She tracked down Bernadette Philips, the mother," he told them with a meaningful look and they both abandoned the vending machine and followed him out of the precinct. It took them less than ten minutes to reach the apartment Bernadette had moved to and there were two uniformed officers waiting there for them. The elderly woman answered the door in her nightgown and slippers, seemingly bewildered by their presence.

"I hope my boys haven't been causing too much trouble," Bernadette stated after she had invited them in.

"We need to ask them some questions about a homicide case we're working," Jess told the woman, probably not wanting to alarm her more than was necessary. "We were wondering if maybe you'd heard from them in the last couple of days, if you knew where they were now."

"I'm sorry," she told them. "But I haven't spoken to any of them since..." she paused, seeming to think about it. "Since three days ago."

The old woman was lying; she kept glancing at the closed door to her left, probably the bedroom. Jess and Don had noticed too and she could see Don's hand reaching for his weapon. Jess gave Lindsay a look and she nodded.

"Mrs Philips, why don't we step outside and..." Lindsay began to say but was cut off by the bedroom door opening and a gun being fired. The gun was quickly joined by others and bullets hit the floor by her feet and the walls around them. Lindsay handed the old woman over to one of the uniformed officers who quickly took her out of harm's way. She had barely handed the woman over when a searing pain went through her arm and she fell backwards into the wall.

"Lindsay," she heard Jess shout but the sound seemed far away. She looked down to where her hand was clutching her arm and realised there was blood, a lot of it. The second officer that had been there knelt down by her side and Jess barely heard a word she said as she made a call over the radio for back up.

She looked passed the woman, realising that she had fallen just behind the couch and craning her neck to see around it. The door to the bedroom was wide open now, the gun fire had ceased and Don and Jess were moving through it, their weapons aimed ahead of them. Lindsay watched as they disappeared around the corner, willing the sirens that were approaching to hurry. She heard several more gunshots, these ones sounding further away.

It seemed like forever before paramedics came through the front door followed shortly by Don and Jess. Lindsay looked up at them in confusion, glancing at the bedroom door they had gone through the last time she'd seen them.

"Fire escape," Jess stated in explanation. "The brothers got away."

"Which brothers," she questioned through gritted teeth, wincing when the paramedic moved her arm.

"All of them," Don replied. "The four of them were firing on us, we couldn't get close enough to make an arrest. How is she?"

The paramedic looked up as Don directed his question to him. "It's not as bad as it looks. We're going to need to take her to the hospital for treatment but I see no reason they won't release her later today."

"Danny is gonna freak," Lindsay muttered.

"Yeah," Don drew the word out, reaching for his cell phone. "I'd better call him."

"Is Mrs Philips alright?" Lindsay questioned, only now remembering the old woman.

"She's fine; uniform took her down stairs as soon as you got her out. She's a little shook up, though she's maintaining that her sons are good kids and they would never have hurt her. I say she was lucky you got her out so quick because they didn't seem to care where the bullets were going," Jess told her glancing up at Don as he tried to calm an obviously worried Danny over the phone.

Danny had just arrived at the precinct when he'd found out. He'd just finished informing a family that they had caught their son's killer, it had been more or less an open and shut case. The boy had been murdered yesterday afternoon and by this morning they'd known the killer's name, they'd just had to locate him. He'd been intending to find Don and see where they were on the serial killer case when a uniform had run over to him and told him that there had been a shoot out and an officer down, his heart had almost stopped when he's been told the officer down was Lindsay.

He'd been on his way to Bernadette Philip's apartment when Don had called to say that Lindsay was alright and being taken to the hospital. An ambulance had just pulled up outside the ER and Lindsay was brought through the doors on a stretcher.

"Hey," she greeted when she saw him, he could tell she was trying to gauge his reaction.

"You scared the crap out of me," he told her, emphasising every word as he moved alongside the stretcher.

"Scared the crap out of me too," she replied with a small smile. "I'm fine; the bullet grazed my arm that's all." He looked to her arm, there was a bandage wrapped around it, stained with blood, a lot more blood than he would have liked.

"Just a graze?" he questioned with a raised eyebrow.

"A bad graze," she corrected. Danny was asked to step back as she was taken through a set of double doors and he found himself a seat in the waiting area. His cell phone rang and pulled it out of his pocket, reading Don's name across the screen and walking outside to answer it.

"You at the hospital?" Don questioned.

"Yeah," he replied, looking through the glass doors to make sure he didn't miss anything.

"Lindsay alright?"

"Yeah, they've just taken her through to get her arm fixed up, x rayed, and whatever else," he replied, allowing himself to be relieved now that he had seen for himself that she wasn't badly hurt. "What the hell happened Don?"

"The brother's were hiding out at their mothers, we figured out they were in the bedroom and Lindsay tried to get the old woman out. The idiots opened fire and Lindsay got hit before she could get under cover," Don explained.

"I take it the brother's got away?" Danny questioned, knowing he would know by now if any of the brothers were in custody.

"Yeah, they bolted down the fire escape, Jess and I went after them but they fired some more shots at us, we couldn't get near," Don told him and Danny could hear the frustration in his friends voice.

"At least no one else was hurt," Danny stated.

"And we know for sure now that all four of the brothers are somehow involved, even if they weren't, they're all going to jail at the very least for firing on police officers," Don added and Danny nodded, he supposed that was a silver lining.

"Does the mother know anything?" Danny asked.

"No," Don replied. "Jess and I spoke to her at the scene, we're gonna talk to her again here but she claims not to know why her sons had been hiding out, they'd just told her that they needed to avoid the cops for a while and when she asked why they said to trust them, evidently she did. She thinks her sons are good guys."

"You sure she's not lying?" Danny asked. If someone wanted to hide out from the police in his apartment, no matter who they were he'd want answers as to why.

"Pretty sure, like I said, we're gonna question her again but I think she genuinely doesn't know anything," Don told him. "I've gotta go, tell Lindsay to take it easy."

Danny hung up and went back to his seat in the waiting room, he leaned back and closed his eyes, letting out a breath and releasing all the worry and stress that had been building up over the last eight days, ever since Amy Greenwoods body had been found. His body was demanding sleep but his mind was too concerned with Lindsay to let him.

"Mr Messer?" a voice questioned and Danny's eyes shot open to see a nurse looking around the waiting room. He stood up, and nodded to her that he was the one she was looking for. "Your wife is asking for you, you can come through now."

He was led through to the double doors and she gestured towards a set of closed curtains. Lindsay was sat behind them, her arm being stitched up and a frown on her face Danny recognised as her trying to ignore pain. He walked over and held her free hand, kissing the top of her head and waiting for the doctor to finish up.

TBC