A/N: So, basically, we pick up right where the last chapter left off... Lindsay is devastated, the whole team is upset, and Danny is nowhere to be seen, in the clutches of... someone. (You didn't really think I would give the answer away in an author's note, did you? LOL).

Once again, another huge shout-out to all of your reviewers out there. OMG! I just realized that as of Chapter 10, I'm at 100 reviews! Holy crap. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

So, as your reward for being so loyal, I bring you... Chapter 11

The ride back to the lab had been one of the toughest of his life. Mac was struggling to keep it together himself, and hearing Lindsay crying into Flack's shoulder in the back seat had made it nearly impossible. She was inconsolable. She had screamed and pleaded with him to tell her that it wasn't true, that it was all a cruel joke. With tears in his eyes, he had shaken his head and told her he was sorry. This was no joke.

Then she had collapsed into Flack's arms, her sobs wracking her tiny frame. Flack had looked up at Mac with sad eyes, his arms wrapped protectively around his best friend's wife, looking for help. But what could they say? They had no idea where Danny was, who had taken him, or if he was even alive.

The two men had slowly walked Lindsay back toward Mac's SUV, Flack helping her into the back seat before walking around the vehicle and getting in beside her. Mac looked up as he walked over to the driver's side door, catching the eye of Stella Bonasera who was standing beside her own vehicle, her eyes brimming with tears.

Is it true? She had mouthed at him.

He had simply nodded his head before pulling open the door and settling himself in the driver's seat. He glanced in the rear-view mirror, taking in the heartbroken woman in the backseat before he buckled his seat belt and turned the key in the ignition.

A hush fell over the lab as the elevator doors opened and Flack, Lindsay and Mac stepped out into the hall. Everyone stopped to watch as a red-faced and teary-eyed Lindsay was lead into Mac's office, where Flack gently sat her down on the couch before moving out into the hallway to talk with Mac, Hawkes, and Adam.

"Please tell me we have something," Mac said, taking out his handkerchief and blowing his nose before turning to Hawkes and Adam, who had been working on the evidence gathered from the courtyard downstairs.

The group looked up at the distinct clacking noise of Stella's heels on the tile floor as she strode from the elevator, walking quickly toward the group. "What happened?" she asked as she approached her coworkers.

Flack gave her a brief description of what had happened that morning, telling her about finding Danny's half-eaten lunch and his shoe in the courtyard. Then Mac and Adam filled in the parts they knew, including the blood trail and the drag marks leading out into the alley. Stella turned to look into Mac's office. She saw Lindsay sitting alone on the couch, her back facing them.

"Poor kid," Stella said. "We've got to get this bastard!"

"We know, Stella," Mac said. "That's what we're trying to do. But I don't want to stand around out here discussing the case. Let's take this to the conference room. Everyone grab your stuff, and we'll meet in five minutes."

Four heads nodded their agreement.

"Okay, Mac."

"Yes, boss."

As Adam and Hawkes walked back to their various labs to collect their findings, Mac, Flack and Stella stood in the hall, observing Lindsay through the glass.

"What about Linds?" Flack asked quietly. "She's not gonna want to sit there by herself while we try to find Danny. She's gonna want to be involved."

"I think that if that's what she wants, then we should let her," Stella said. "She knows Danny better than any of us, and no one is more motivated to find him than she is."

"We'll let her decide," Mac said. "If she's not up to it, I'll get someone to take her over to Danny's mom's. I don't want her to be alone."

The three of them entered the office. Lindsay looked up at them, her eyes rimmed with red, but she was no longer crying.

"Hey, kiddo," Stella said, sitting beside Lindsay and placing her arm gently across her shoulders. "How're you doing?"

"How the hell do you think I'm doing, Stella?" Lindsay snapped.

"I'm sorry, Lindsay. That was a stupid question," Stella apologized. "Is there anything we can do to help? Do you need anything?"

Lindsay looked down at her hands, her fingers toying with her wedding band and engagement ring. Her face crumpled once again and she leaned on Stella's shoulder as her tears overwhelmed her once more. "I want him to come home," she sobbed. "I need him."

Flack looked over at Mac before sitting down beside Lindsay and gently taking her hand in his. "Hey, come on, Linds. We're gonna get this asshole," he said. "He tries something like this to one of us, he's gonna pay... big time. We'll bring Danny home for you."

Lindsay looked up at Flack, her cheeks glistening with tears. "You can't promise that, Don," she said softly. "I heard you talking about what happened. I've... I've never seen him have an allergic reaction before, but his mom told me about what it was like when he was little. If he didn't get to a hospital right away..." Her voice gave out as her eyes welled with tears once more.

"We'll get this guy, Lindsay," Mac said. "That I can promise you. Now, I need to know if you are going to be able to help. It's okay if you can't. We would all understand. But if you are up for it, we could really use you."

Lindsay sniffed and sat up, wiping her eyes with the tissue that Stella handed her. She looked down at her hand once again, twisting her wedding ring around her finger. Then she looked up at Mac. "I want to help."

The team gathered in the conference room, going over the evidence they had collected so far.

"The blood on the bench... was Danny's," Adam said, looking nervously at Lindsay who was staring blankly at the table as the people around the room talked. He took a deep breath and continued. "And so was the bloody fingerprint on the water bottle, as well as the blood on the ground. The droplet's were small, and the blood spatter didn't indicate that there was a struggle."

"Thanks, Adam," Mac said. "And what about the trace from the bag? Anything?"

"There was nothing wrong with any of the food, other than the peanut butter in the sandwich," Adam said. "I checked the water and the apple, and they hadn't been tampered with in any way."

"Good. That's good, Adam," Mac said, nodding his head. "Any idea why Danny was eating a sandwich containing something that he knew he was allergic to?"

"Sorry, boss," Adam said, shaking his head.

"Lindsay?" Stella said softly, placing her hand on Lindsay's arm to get her attention.

"Yeah?"

"Did Danny make his own lunch? Or..."

"I didn't do this to him!" Lindsay startled them all with the loudness of her voice. "We didn't even keep peanut butter, or anything with nuts in it, in the house at all. Ever!"

"Sweetie, no one's blaming you," Stella said, patting Lindsay's arm reassuringly. "I just wondered if you remembered what he had packed in his lunch, and when he brought it to work."

Lindsay hung her head. "I'm sorry, Stell," she whispered. Stella squeezed her arm, urging her to continue. "I made Danny's lunch for him yesterday morning before we came to work. It was a ham and cheese sandwich with... with mustard. But with everything that happened yesterday... we never got a chance to eat them, so we left them overnight in the break room fridge."

"So, anybody could have gotten to it," Flack said.

Hawkes looked over and gave Lindsay a small smile. "I went through Danny's medical file. I saw that he had a severe attack of anaphylaxis when he was about seven or eight. His file said that he had accidentally eaten a granola bar that had peanut butter in it. He didn't realize that what he was eating was bad for him, because he didn't recognize the taste - he'd never had peanut butter before."

"What else did the file say, Hawkes?" Flack asked.

"Well, the attack seemed to be pretty severe, but they tend to be worse when you're younger. There is a chance that he may have had a less aggressive reaction this time around. It's not uncommon for people to outgrow an allergy, or for the reactions to become less acute as a person ages. I think it's highly unlikely that he simply walked away on his own, but there's a chance that he could make it, as long as he had an epi-pen. That would alleviate the worst of the initial reactions and give us a bit of time to find him. But he would still need medical attention as soon as possible, or there could be severe complications. Once the brain is cut off from its air supply, there's a window of four minutes before a person suffers lasting brain damage, and eight minutes before the brain becomes irreversabily damaged. But under ideal circumstances, I'd say that Danny has a good chance of survival. He's strong and healthy, his lungs are in good condition, and he's stubborn as hell," he said, glancing at Lindsay, "He's a fighter. He wouldn't give up, Linds."

"Thanks, Hawkes," Mac said. "Anyone else? What do we have from the alley? And what about trace on the lunch bag?"

"Um, well, we found traces of dirt from the garden tracked out into the alley. They stopped about twenty feet from the back entrance to the courtyard. We checked, and there were some fresh tire tracks. I'm looking through the database now to try to narrow down a possible make and model for the tires, and corresponding vehicles."

"Great work, Adam," Stella said, patting the young man on the shoulder. "Anything else?"

"I found... um, I found a fingerprint that I don't think belongs... it was on the inside of the sandwich wrapper, and it wasn't Danny's and it hasn't come back as a match to anyone in the lab. I'm running it through AFIS now to see if it comes back to anyone that either Danny or Lindsay has had dealings with in the past."

Lindsay looked up at Adam, giving him a small smile. "Thanks Adam," she whispered. "You've been busy."

"It... it helps me keep my mind off of... things," Adam said, blushing slightly. Suddenly, something popped up into his head. "Uh... uh, I gotta go check something," he said, jumping up from the table and scurrying from the room.

"Okay," Mac said. "Is there anything else we should know? Did anybody see anything from any of the surrounding buildings? Any witnesses come forward?"

Flack shook his head. "Nah. Nothing, Mac," he said. "It's the classic bystander effect. You get too many witnesses who all see the same thing, they all assume that somebody else is going to do something about it. And in the end, no one does."

"Well, send your men door to door in the buildings if you have to, including this one. Someone saw something. It's not possible for Danny to be taken from an area that is surrounded by three of the busiest office buildings in New York, with thousands of potential witnesses, and yet no one saw anything."

"You got it, Mac," Flack said. He moved out into the hall to put a call in to the precinct. Adam passed him in the doorway, a file clutched in his hand. He sat down and looked nervously up at Mac.

"Adam?"

"Yeah, um... well, this morning I was talking to Danny, and, um, he... he asked me to do something for him," Adam stammered, trying to avoid Mac's steely gaze.

"What is it, Adam?" Stella asked gently. "You can tell us. No one is going to be mad."

Adam swallowed hard, giving Stella a nervous smile. "He, um, he asked me to look into some prank phone calls that he and Lindsay had gotten that morning..."

Everyone turned at the sharp intake of breath that came from Lindsay. "Oh, my God!" she breathed.

"What is it, Linds?" Flack asked, stepping back into the room, shoving his phone into his pocket.

"He told me," she whispered. "He told me this morning that someone had called. He said the landline rang first and no one was there, but he thought he heard breathing. Then my cell rang and it was the same thing. But there was no number, it just said Unknown Caller."

"Did the caller say anything the second time?" Mac asked.

"Danny said that the caller knew his name," she said, her eyes filling with tears once more. "I heard him yelling into the phone that he wanted the prank calls to stop, or Danny would make whoever it was regret it."

"Danny told me that they guy threatened him, and that's why he wanted the phone records checked," Adam looked around at the shocked faces staring back at him. "He... he said that they guy laughed at him, then told him that he'd be seeing Danny soon."

"Fuck! Who is this freak?" Flack exclaimed, slamming his hand down on the table.

Danny let out a strangled moan. His throat hurt like a son of a bitch. He tried to open his eyes, but they were wollen almost completely shut, and he could only make out vague shapes in the room around him. He heard a steady beeping coming from somewhere beside him. Where was he? He struggled to sit up, but found that he was restrained, he could feel the rough bindings rubbing against his wrists.

He struggled for a moment, but quickly gave up when he found that he was unable to catch his breath, his lungs rasping with the effort. He heard movement from the other side of the room, and what sounded like footsteps coming toward him.

"Ah, you're awake! I was getting worried, Messer."

Danny recognized the voice, both from the courtyard, and from their brief conversation on the phone earlier that day. He tried to speak, but his swollen tongue would only allow him to utter a string of mumbled profanities.

"Oh, now is that any way to thank the person that saved your life?" the faceless voice chuckled ominously. "You're very ungrateful, you know. It's very rude. And I just... I can't tolerate rudeness, Messer."

Danny's heart started to beat rapidly in his chest, and strangely, the beeping in the room seemed to speed up at the same time. He turned his head and opened his eyes as wide as he could and was shocked to see that he was hooked up to what appeared to be a heart monitor, albeit a much older model than he was used to seeing in hospitals these days. Where the fuck was he?

He heard another chuckle coming from the other side of him, and he slowly turned his head, trying to get a look at his surroundings, as well as the face of the man who had captured him. He had a vague memory of a face staring back at him in the courtyard, but he had been so focused on keeping himself breathing, that he hadn't paid attention.

He squinted, trying to focus his eyes on the face in front of him. "I can see the wheels turning, Messer. It's driving you crazy, isn't it? Well let me help you out." As Danny's eyes adjusted, the man leaned forward, allowing Danny to get a good look at his face.

"We got it, Mac!" Adam said, running down the hall toward Mac's office, a piece of paper clutched in his hand. "We got a match!"

Mac, Lindsay and Flack had been sitting in Mac's office, going over Lindsay and Danny's old case files, trying to see if there were any leads - anyone that might have had a grudge against Danny, or anyone that paid unnaturally close attention to Lindsay.

At the sound of Adam shouting in the hallway, their heads snapped up. They turned to the door as Adam barrelled into the office, breathless. "We got a match!" he panted.

"Who is it?" Flack asked, standing up and grabbing the paper from Adam. "What the fuck? Who the hell is this guy?"

Lindsay stood up, silently taking the paper from Flack's hand and staring down at the picture of the man who's fingerprint had been found on the inside of Danny's sandwich wrapper. A place it had no business being.

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Flack looked down at her, then back up to Mac, shrugging his shoulders. "Linds?" he said tentatively. "Do you know him?"

She silently nodded her head.

Oh, snap! Another cliffie? Am I really that evil?

*thinks*

Yes. Yes I am! Mwa ha ha!

I am sorry. I really am... Well, I'm a little bit sorry. But I just couldn't resist. I've given you a lot of info in this chapter, I can't give away the farm yet, can I? Gotta leave you begging for more!

All will be answered soon, fear not, my friends.

I'd love to hear from you... let me know what you thought!