A/N: Wohoo! I've updated in a timely fashion. One more chapter left after this -- at least I think I can get the wrapup all in one chapter. Thanks for continuing to read.

Reckless Burning

The bird in free flight

Does not alight

On a branch

That does not invite.

They were cognizant of nothing beyond the bundle cradled within her arms – freshly scrubbed pink skin, fingers and toes counted ten and ten again and yet again. One of his arms curled beneath hers cradling the bundle, the other rested on the pillow beside her head, his hand brushing across her cheek as he whispered, "You did it, Montana. She's here, she's perfect and she's beautiful."

Her eyes never left their baby as she nodded in agreement, returning the whisper, "She is perfect and she is beautiful." Then her eyes met his briefly but radiantly. "But we did it, Danny."

He leaned in closer. "Yeah I had the easy part, but you," he curled his fingers into hers, "but you … you … what you did, what you had to go through, I don't ever wanna see you in pain like that again."

"It was worth it," she continued in hushed tones, but their baby stirred, she swayed her arms almost imperceptibly and their baby settled.

"It's baffling, I admit Mac, but I gathered new samples and ran those several times in addition to rerunning the ones Adam gathered. Plain and simple there is no trace of accelerants. This fire seems to have started on its own of natural causes."

Mac shut the folder, tapping the corner of it on his desk, "Or if Sid is to be believed," his eyes following his voice to some place distant and nebulous, "some unbelievably natural causes."

"What's Sid's theory?"

"What?" Mac's eyes coalesced into reality, his shoulders imperceptibly shrugged, "Oh it's nothing – just Sid talking; you know how he likes to do that."

"Idle talk or no, with Adam's possible involvement we owe it to him to investigate every possibility regardless of how far fetched it might be— I mean it could be lead us in a direction we haven't considered and clear Adam beyond a shadow of a doubt."

Mac dropped the file to the desk. "I understand where you're coming from Sheldon and trust me, I'm not going to give up on clearing Adam but at the moment I think you'd be more helpful on that triple homicide that the night shift pulled in."

Hawkes' face stitched in disbelief and even a flare of resentment. "But—"

"I need you on that triple homicide," Mac reiterated as he caught sight of Stella entering the room behind Hawkes, her face holding something, something she seemed to want to say, something meant for him alone. Mac gave a Hawkes a nod of dismissal and Hawkes turned with reluctance and then surprise to see Stella behind him. She avoided a near collision with a quick sidestep, returning his terse greeting as he exited the room.

"What's on your mind, Stella?"

She deepened her presence into the room as Mac rounded his desk, placing the file folder on top of the stack of files in a box marked 'In Progress'.

"I'm wondering what's on your mind, Mac."

He hands straightened the stack as he spoke. "Too much. Night shift pulled in what is shaping up to be a convoluted triple homicide. I'm short staffed again with both Danny and Lindsay out. And frankly I'm stumped on where to go with this case involving Adam."

"Allegedly involving Adam."

His glance was immediate, sharp. "So far. But do I ignore the fact that the victim sought out Adam the night he was murdered and that that encounter sent Adam into a tailspin?"

"Mac, what was it that you said to Flack?"

Mac shook his head at the broadness of the question.

"Explaining Adam's reaction to the encounter."

"Memory's a powerful instigator?"

"Exactly."

"But that just strengthens his motive."

"Or it gives him justification."

"For murdering a man that merely said, 'I'll be watching you.'? Even if he recognized the victim's similarity in accent and looks to Sean Gunn, that doesn't justify murder. Those criminals were dealt with and the hostages including Adam went through extensive debriefing and counseling."

"Maybe this has nothing to do with the hostage situation with the Wilder gang."

"What does it have to do with?"

He turned as she walked past him to face the floor to ceiling windows which were tossing the morning light around the room. Her eyes squinted against the intensity of the light, her voice monotoned in recall of things better left in the hellish shadows of the past. "Do you think that I was justified in killing Frankie?"

He stepped up next to her trying to discern her reason for asking the question, but unable to find it, he replied with his gut feeling, "Stella the man physically brutalized and mentally tortured you and I have no doubt that he wouldn't have ceased until he had killed you!"

She met neither his look nor his emotion as she continued, "And what about Claire's murderers? If given half a chance at those responsible would you—"

"Stella, it's not—" Her eyes, swimming in a turbulent sea, met his only long enough to silence his protest before she was squinting once again against the intense morning light. And then he was squinting into the morning light with her as he murmured, "I pray for the chance."

There was a moment of silent contemplation before she spoke again. "Maybe Adam – like you, like me – was dealt a hand that at times seemed almost impossible to bear."

"What are you trying to say Stella?"

"That on the slim possibility that Adam is involved in this case that you remember that."

He turned to her again, his eyes relaxing out of the scope of the intense morning light, "I will, Stella."

In a rare gesture, her hands swiped across her cheeks. "Thanks, Mac." Then she turned, calling over her shoulder as she exited the room, "I'll get started on the triple homicide."

Adam forced himself to come to a standstill instead of feigning hearing loss and ducking into the nearest lab. Just one week back in the lab – and damn it had been a good week – but now, with that shout of, "Hey Adam, wait up," the second week was starting out on a wobble.

"Adam, I wanted you to be the first to have one."

"A cigar?"

"Yeah, you know as in I'm a father and all now."

Adam read the label, "It's a girl," as he rolled the cigar between his fingers then compulsively added, "Lindsay and the baby are doing okay?" The cigar started to crank back and forth between his fingers as a look passed over Danny's face.

"They're fine, they're fine … the baby was little small but she's healthy."

"Uh … good, that's good, really good, you know for …" His free-flow of babble failed him and the silence fell between them so he waved the cigar in the direction of the lab. "I gotta get into the lab."

"Adam"

"What?"

"Thanks, you know, for how you looked after Lindsay that night. She's— I mean, we're—" Danny let go of the breath that had seemed to bugle and redden his eyes. "I'm thankful and grateful that you were there for her."

"Sure, sure, no problem."

Then as Danny hailed another coworker and retreated down the hall, Adam stood and watched, clenching the tip of the cigar between his teeth which were beginning to showing in a tentative but self-satisfied grin.