Alternate

Chapter 10: Parcel

A/N: here we are, another chapter. Hope I don't throw you all for a loop but I feel like this story will go on a lot longer than I thought a few chapters ago. Let me know what you think by reviewing. I don't wanna sound desperate but I live for reviews.

Dedication: To my wonderful loyal reviewers: Wolfhound159, DaisyDay, megspazzy and ChristyLoisGilmore17 thanks for sticking with me.

Kate watched as Daniel carried on a silent argument with an invisible opponent. She slid closer to him on the couch and leaned her head against his shoulder. Almost automatically his arm came up to wrap around her. They both reveled in how right their closeness felt. Kate smiled contentedly.

"Are you sure you feel alright?" Daniel inquired as he shifted on the couch so that he was lying down with Kate on top of him.

"I feel fine," she assured him, raising her head to look at him "Stop worrying."

"You realize that's practically an impossibility for me, right?" he told her as the ghost of a grin played across his face.

She laughed and brought her lips to meet his in a chaste kiss "Is there anything I can do to put your mind at ease?"

Her voice was teasing, the mischievous look in her eyes tempting. Daniel found himself unable to resist kissing her. The kiss turned deep and passionate quickly as their tongues eagerly explored. Eventually they reluctantly came up for air. They stared into each other's eyes for a long moment. Years worth of unspoken words and un-acted upon fantasies had become unbridled desire.

Still panting heavily they repositioned themselves on the couch so that Daniel was supporting himself on his elbows above her. Their lips met again. Daniel broke the kiss much quicker this time and began trailing kisses along her jawline. When he reached her earlobe he nipped at it playfully.

This elicited a surprised but not in the least bit displeased gasp from Kate. Daniel continued his trail of kisses down to her collar bone. Her hands lost themselves in his hair and she moaned impatiently, wanting him. It was at this crucial moment that the doorbell rang.

"Really?" Kate groaned in aggravation.

"Maybe they'll go away?" Daniel suggested hopefully.

"Yeah and we continue what we're doing here and at some point Max comes downstairs and catches us, mid-act and we break his brain," Kate pointed out, feeling a little foolish for having let things get as far as they had. She reluctantly sat up.

"Alright but you have to answer the door," Daniel replied, retreating to the far corner of the couch.

"Why's that?" Kate inquired.

Daniel looked incredibly sheepish "Take a wild guess Kate," he told her in a tone that was part sarcastic, part humiliated.

Kate noticed the way he had positioned his body in order to conceal his current predicament and chuckled. She leaned in and whispered something in his ear.

"Why?" Daniel stared at her with a mixture of shock and revulsion "That's just..."

"It worked didn't it?" she smirked.

"Well yes..." Daniel admitted "But the mental image may never leave me. That was unnecessarily evil. A few more minutes of baseball stats would have accomplished the same thing."

Kate laughed as she went to answer the door "I'll make it up to you," she promised.

Daniel straightened himself on the couch and wondered just how she was going to make up for implanting that particular disturbing image in his mind. He sighed as his thoughts returned to the way Kate had looked at him in those moments before the door bell had interrupted them. He soon realized he shouldn't think too hard about that or he'd be in need of an incredibly cold shower. So maybe it didn't take much for him to put Kate's erection curing imagery out of his mind after all.

"She might just be too much for you to handle," the younger him had reappeared sitting on the couch beside Daniel and smiling broadly.

"You have worse timing than whoever's at the door," Daniel deadpanned.

"Hey, I didn't interrupt you just as you were about to start tearing each other's clothes off," his hallucination said defensively.

"We weren't... it wasn't like... tearing is a strong word..." Daniel was totally flustered.

His younger self threw his head back and let out a long, hearty laugh "Dude do you hear yourself? You are talking to you, not just in the sense that the person you are talking to isn't real but that you are hallucinating another version of yourself, a version of yourself who knows exactly how you make love. I perfected our techniques, remember?"

Daniel rolled his eyes "I wouldn't say you perfected them," he remarked, a bit smugly.

"I at least laid the framework," his hallucination appeared offended.

Daniel was about to say something else to his hallucination about what truly shaky framework it had been but that was the moment that Kate returned. In her hands she held a brown cardboard box. Her face bore a perplexed expression.

"What's that?" Daniel indicated the box as she set it on the coffee table.

"Not sure," she replied "It's addressed to you. I asked the kid who delivered it about it and he said someone paid him fifty bucks to bring it here. I tried to get him to answer some other questions but he jumped on his bike and sped off," she sat beside Daniel on the couch and joined him in staring at the seemingly innocuous parcel.

"It's probably not a bomb if it was sent by bike," Daniel observed "Too much risk of the device being accidentally triggered..."

Kate scooted closer to him and took one of his hands "I think recent events might have us overthinking this," she suggested.

Daniel nodded but upon closer inspection of the box something peculiar caught his attention. "If this package is all that innocent why does the label only give its destination, no mention of who it's from, not even a label from the currier service that was used."

"I'm not sure that kid worked for a currier service," she observed.

The pair continued to observe the package. Minutes passed in silence. Finally Kate reached for the package "We're getting ourselves worked up over nothing," she smiled reassuringly at Daniel "It's probably some sort of token gift from one of your students who heard about the kidnapping on the news."

Daniel placed his hand over hers as she began to peel back the label "Do you really believe that?" he questioned, half teasingly.

She didn't look at him when she answered "It's certainly the most innocent explanation I can think of," she admitted.

He found it within himself to offer her a soft smile "There are probably a dozen innocent explanations for what this is," he reasoned, though his hand remained covering hers.

Kate placed the mystery package back on the coffee table and leaned her head against Daniel's shoulder. She had to admit to herself that she was on high alert. After what Daniel had gone through while they'd been at Tasha's mercy she wanted to do anything and everything to protect him. Perhaps she was seeing danger where there was none.

"I think my paranoia is rubbing off on you," Daniel remarked teasingly.

"Maybe," Kate replied half jokingly. There was the possibility that this was something to be paranoid about.

Taking a deep breath, Daniel reached for the package and tore it open before he could change his mind. Upon seeing what was inside he dropped the box as if it had caused him physical pain. He immediately wrapped his arms around Kate and held her tight. His breathing had become slightly ragged.

"Daniel, what is it?" her voice was overflowing with concern as she wrapped her arms around him and began to stroke his hair and back soothingly "What's wrong?" she implored.

He had begun to tremble slightly, mostly from fear but what he'd seen in the box had also angered him. He wished he hadn't seen it and part of him hoped it was a hallucination. Though he was fairly certain he, even at his worst, would never hallucinate that.

Eventually after a minute or so of being held by Kate and holding onto her for dear life, he was able to speak "I don't think it's from one of my students."

Kate gradually released her hold on Daniel and reached for the fallen package. She retrieved it and stared at its contents in horrified disbelief "Oh my God," she murmured.

Staring back at her was a doll with brown eyes and long straight brown hair. The implication that the doll was representative of her was clear. But the doll's passing resemblance to Kate was not what had frightened Daniel so badly. The doll had not a stitch of clothing and its body had been horribly mutilated.

Tucked against one of the sides of the box was a folded piece of paper. Kate withdrew it and stared at the typed words on the page. Aloud she read "His Grasp Far Exceeds Your Reach."

She and Daniel locked eyes. They both recognized the words from the video of Donnie. They had seemed puzzling then but now it was clear that they were a threat.

FBI agents filled Daniel's house. Daniel and Kate had given their statements and the package and note had been spirited away to the lab to be run for fingerprints and other clues. Parsons had arrived and informed Kate that she would not be investigating this case. Kate did not take too kindly to that news but Parsons would not back down.

"Not only does this appear to be a direct threat against you," the director explained "But you were just released from the hospital today after being kidnapped and shot yesterday," Parsons groaned, realizing he was pointing out the obvious to a grown woman "You already took vacation time for the next two weeks. So no you aren't on this case."

Kate was about to object when she caught sight of Daniel out of the corner of her eye. He was watching her with concern. She reached over and took his hand. There was something in the way he grasped her hand that made her consent to Parsons "But I want to be kept in the loop," she stipulated.

Parsons agreed to her terms and was about to leave but he turned back, having picked up on the subtle change between the two "I'm going to leave a couple agents outside to watch the place," he informed them with a soft smile.

Neither Kate nor Daniel objected. As the agents cleared out, leaving them alone Kate gathered Daniel in her arms. He reciprocated the hug with fervor. They stood like that for a long moment before Max stuck his head in from the kitchen.

"Tea anyone?" he offered.

Kate turned and smiled gratefully "Thanks Max," a hot beverage seemed like just the thing to relax her nerves. She and Daniel made their way into the kitchen to find two steaming mugs of tea already waiting for them on the kitchen table.

"I don't know about you guys but I've had more than my fair share of excitement for today," Max remarked as he joined them with his own cup of tea in hand.

"That's for sure," Kate commented as she took a sip of her drink.

Daniel just nodded. Every time he closed his eyes he saw that damn doll. The implied threat against Kate was stomach churning. For the life of him he was trying to be strong, to pull himself together but he couldn't help being terrified.

Kate watched Daniel carefully. She could tell he was scared. She was scared too but this wasn't the first time she'd been threatened. But aside from being scared Kate found herself incredibly pissed off. Whoever had sent that package had addressed it to Daniel and probably didn't know that she was there too. The primary intent of that package had been to upset Daniel. This infuriated Kate to no end.

Someone had decided to mess with Daniel's head. It was a truly cruel thing to do to someone without a mental illness but to prey on someone as prone to paranoia as Daniel was just vindictive. Kate knew that when they found the bastard someone would have to hold her back from beating him into a coma.

"Well..." Max intoned, somewhat awkwardly, as he finished the last of his tea "I should get back to studying," he got up from the table and placed his mug in the sink before beating a hasty retreat. He felt a little like a third wheel at the moment.

Max's departure didn't do anything to make Daniel more talkative. He split his attention between Kate and his as yet untouched mug.

Kate reached out and laid her hand on Daniel's shoulder "Hey," she smile encouragingly "Don't worry."

This made Daniel laugh derisively "Easy for you to say," he said without thinking.

"Actually it's not," she corrected as her hand slid from Daniel's shoulder "It isn't easy to say that after seeing a doll that's been mutilated like that that bares a strong resemblance to you but it's not the first time someone's threatened my life."

Daniel eyed her curiously. He was unaware that Kate had been threatened in such a manner before. "You've been through this kind of thing before?" and here he thought he knew most everything about Kate Moretti.

She sighed heavily. She had hoped she wouldn't have to tell anyone about this. Not even Donnie knew the specifics of the case that had gotten her sent back to Chicago. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. When she opened them again she saw Daniel watching her, his gaze brimming with love and compassion.

She began "It was a little over three years ago in D. C. Donnie and I were separated and a serial murder case had just landed on my desk..."