Disclaimer: I do not own CSI:NY. I wish I did. The characters belong to CBS. The ones invented by me are completely fictional.

Summary:Danny Messer's life is in danger. The past even he had forgot isn't a secret anymore, neither is the future he doesn't want to embrace. Danny/Don friendship. Set some months after Snow Day. No season four. Please read and review.

Warning: Rated for violence and mature references.

Last chapter of 2007. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Danny tried to focus, despite his intense headache. There was some activity going on, but he couldn't see exactly what was happening. They were all walking away, living him alone. He closed his eyes, wishing he had his glasses on and some aspirin.

Danny sensed someone sitting in the chair beside him but somehow he doubted it was the guy he had chatted with before. He opened his eyes expecting to see a masked man and was surprised to see a white man with brown eyes and thick lips, full of a commanding presence, just looking at him, his expression unreadable.

Everything was lost... If the boss was showing his face, that meant just one thing: he was dead.

"Scared?", the man hissed.

"No.", Danny answered trying to look brave, although he could hear his own voice wavering.

"Remember me now?", the guy insisted.

"No.", Danny repeated.

"Come on, make an effort... Look at me... It was a long time ago... You must remember me...", he said in a very calm voice, so controlled that it was unnerving... like the calm before the storm...

"I don't remember you, all right?! I'm sorry if this hurts your fucking feelings but you can ask a hundred times, the answer will be always a fucking no! So kill me now and stop asking me these fucking questions!", Danny spat with all the energy he still had, wishing that everything was over already.

"Not yet. I want you to admit what you did and I want to know why you did it.", the man spoke, unfazed by Danny's outburst.

"What? Give me a fucking clue!", Danny shouted, trying to ignore the physical pain he was in.

They stormed in the warehouse, shooting and shouting. There were more people in the warehouse than they had predicted. Some held their hands up in the air before diving to the floor to protect themselves from the bullets, some fired back and others made a run for it. Flack and Mendes made sure all the criminals still in the building were disarmed before running after those who escaped through the back door.
Suddenly, Danny heard distant popping sounds. Were those gunshots? Was it possible they had found him? The man was cursing and the thugs were shouting "move!" and "let's get out of here!". Coming from nowhere, a fist connected with his jaw. Dizzy, he felt the handcuff binding his left wrist being opened, his arms being twisted behind his back roughly and the handcuff being closed again. They unchained his ankles and he did his best to kick but his legs were being held down by someone. As he struggled with the pain in his jaw and opened his mouth to protest, he felt his skin being pierced and something being injected in his neck. His head spun and he blacked out almost immediately.
Flack glimpsed a guy fleeing, turning a corner, three blocks away. As he run after the perp, Mendes right behind him, he saw, from the corner of his eyes, a fancy black car flash past them at speed. Continuing his chase, he noticed two white vans practically flying from another warehouse and going in opposite directions. While his eyes registered this, his mind was set on arresting those thugs who bolted from the drug bust and he kept running, shouting locations and orders on his radio as he did so.

"Flack! Flack! Stop!", Mendes panted as he halted. Flack looked back in time to see two patrol cars speeding past them, going after the perps they were chasing on foot. "They'll have better chances. Let's get back to the warehouse."

"Yeah, yeah. Did you see those vans burning tires?", Flack asked, eyes fixed on the depot that the vans had just vacated. "I want to check that place."

"Yeah, I did. Let's go there.", Mendes replied, already walking in that direction while Flack radioed their whereabouts to the others.

Even though the garage door was wide open, they entered the storehouse cautiously, guns in hand. There was no need, though, it was empty. "They definitely left in a hurry!", Flack shouted to Mendes, who had gone to the other side, observing the cards still on the table, some overturned chairs, half-eaten sandwiches.

"Flack, come over here!", Mendes called from somewhere in the back of the warehouse. "Someone was being held hostage.", he said as Don approached him, pointing to the chains attached to the bed and the drops of blood on the sheets. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I don't want to think what you're thinking...", Flack answered, picking up his cell phone and dialing Mac's number.

Lindsay had been staring at the same object for hours now. It was a picture of him on that same couch she was sitting right now. She had surprised him when she snapped that photograph, he had laughed, grabbed her and kissed her senseless. Looking at that snapshot, she tried to erase of her mind the last moment she saw him, his frightened eyes... the image that haunted her since. There weren't any more tears left in her. She had cried them all.

Catherine was also silent, vacantly looking at Lindsay. But, although Cath's eyes were on Lindsay, her thoughts weren't on her at all. She was also reminiscing, her memories much older, back to the time when Danny and Louie would almost give her heart attacks with their mischievous behaviors... then, her despair when she realized the wrong path Louie had taken when he involved himself with the Tanglewood boys... and her despair when she realized the right path Danny had taken when he entered the Police Academy. Why were her sons always on harm's way?

She knew that what had happened had nothing to do with the fact he was a cop but... How many times had she heard that he was in danger? How many times had she waited for news? Her heart was always constricted as if an invisible hand was holding it, just waiting for the moment to squeeze it till it exploded. She would plead with him to leave the NYPD and live a normal life, that's what she would do. She had just to get him back first.