A/N: Finally, a new chapter, right? Everyone do the happy dance. Wait, no, don't, spare your dignity.
Also, I know my chapters are out of order, I don't know why. I'll have them straightened out some time after I finish this story, or maybe before. The fact is, I am aware, so please don't point it out.
Ch.15
It was wrong. No one should have to feel paranoid in their own home.
Danny, with his head tilted back and his neck curved perfectly with the contour of the couch padding, blinked back the moisture blurring his vision in an attempt to relieve eyes so dry that his eyelids actually – momentarily – stuck. He lifted his hands and dug the heel of both into both eyes, massaging in the moisture. On opening them, he squinted at the television screen and the show that had somewhere along the lines of time replaced the baseball game.
Danny rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, which is basically where he had had them for most of the game. It was a white ceiling, termed 'eggshell white' by a cousin who'd dropped by for an overnight stay a year back.
Eggshell. Who the hell termed that? White's white. Why do people have to make it more complicated than that?
Somewhere outside his door, within the hall, Danny heard a thump that made his heart jolt and his body flinch. It was followed by girlish laughter, and someone shutting a door.
Such noises were the reason Danny couldn't take the nap he desperately wanted. His head was throbbing to a heart-beat rhythm, and that throbbing was inciting his stomach to churn uncomfortably. Then there were the general aches all over the rest of him, especially his side.
There would be no going to sleep of any kind, Danny knew. Not since Quinn had such easy access to his place. A few minutes of catching a couple of Zs, and the moment Danny opened his eyes, he would be staring into Jack's face. If Jack or one of his cronies did decide to hone their breaking and entering skills, Danny wanted to be awake and ready for it. Even if they knocked on the door, he still wanted to be ready for it.
What he wanted even more was to sleep.
A loud explosive shout reverberated through the hallway outside, and Danny snapped his head up and around to the door. His heart started jack-hammering until he heard the follow-up shout coming from some irate female. Danny had completely forgotten about those particular neighbors, which was a fairly bad lapse on his part seeing as how he'd had to pound on their door to get them to shut up a few days back.
Danny's heart returned to its normal pace and he dropped his head back to its original position. He sighed, then closed his eyes, swearing to himself that he wasn't going to sleep, just resting his eyes.
He snapped them back open. Since when had that ever been true? His eyelids begged to differ, and with each blink it became harder and harder to keep them open. The shouting match out in the hall became garbled white noise that spliced with the images slogging through his brain.
" Shut up, whore!" something banged against the wall, shattering, and Danny's heart slammed so hard that it caused the breath to catch in his throat. He gasped, and his head shot up, twisting back around to glare at the door and the people on the other side.
" Get out!" the woman screamed. " Get the hell out now!"
Rolling his eyes, Danny dropped his head back and groaned.
" I can't take this," he whispered. The jolt had burned the sluggishness from his body, and he supposed now was as good a time as any to take advantage of it. He pushed himself from the couch and went to his closet, yanking out his coat and throwing it on as he headed for the door. With the weather being what it was, and immobility making even a warm room cold, Danny already had his socks and tennis shoes on. What he was doing was more than likely stupid, but if he remained inactive any longer he was going to shoot someone other than Jack and his buddies.
Danny slammed the door behind him and stalked off through the hall. Five doors down was the source of the fight, with the black haired young woman in the black tank-top and wearing a nose-stud throwing things at a long-haired man wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt. The fights were a once a week deal, almost like clock-work, giving Danny the impression it was more for a show of intimidation to the rest of the apartment tenants than anything legit.
As far as Danny knew, he was the only one who ever confronted them, since as he approached the fighting died and the two stood there with gazes down. The woman leaned against the door frame, tapping her foot, and the man folded his arms across his chest. The sudden lack of ear-splitting noise helped to lessen the pounding in Danny's head, leaving enough discomfort for Danny to give the couple a cold, withering glare that actually made the man squirm.
" One of you better not be here when I get back," Danny snapped on passing. But the moment he entered the elevator, the shouting resumed.
CSINY
The air was unpleasant to breathe, heavy with gasoline, oil, and exhaust belched out on a daily bases from the vehicles utilized to manage the uncountable number of dead cars stacked throughout the yard. On any other day, the rumbling, bone vibrating noise would have been just as difficult to handle. But today, an unscheduled holiday had just cropped up, and the machines were silent.
Mac, surrounded by his team and a team of uniforms, dictated directions on how the junkyard search was to go. What they were looking for required an eagle eye and a methodical pace, especially where tire tracks were concerned. Chances were slim that all – if any – evidence remained intact; considering if this was the yard Gerrard was killed in to begin with. It was the only one near both the restaurant and the shipping yard, and since proximity had proven reliable thus far, Mac allowed himself a little hope.
" Since the death was execution style," Mac was saying, " chances are good that one of these car stacks will have our blood spatter."
If that stack still exists. But Mac didn't have to say it out loud. It was an obvious way to think. This was a junkyard, after all, and enough days had passed that what they were searching for might have already been smashed out of existence, or moved.
Mac gave everyone a direction to search, and with people pointed in their perspective direction, the search went underway.
" Seems a little cliché," Lindsey commented before starting off, kit in hand, " for Gerrard to be killed in a junk yard. Kind of one step away from giving him cement shoes and dumping him in a river."
Stella, snapping on gloves and picking up her kit, smirked. " Sometimes, some trends just never lose their popularity. With the weather being so cold, if there's any blood, it should still be well preserved."
Mac looked to the ground. " Too bad we can't say the same for tire tread."
They dispersed into the maze that was the car graveyard, CSIs carrying kits, and everyone carrying radios. A row was tagged as having already been checked through the use of bright orange flags tied to sticks and stabbed into the ground. There was no denying the length of time the search was going to take, but Mac had no intentions of calling a halt until the entire yard had been searched. And it was a good sized junk yard.
At one point, Mac and Stella came in semi-contact, with Stella one one side of a row of cars and Mac on the other.
" You talk to Danny today?" Stella asked. Mac caught glimpses of her face through gaps and windows.
" Flack went to check on him. Said he looked tired, but seemed fine. Have you talked to him?"
Stella replied, " Not really."
" Are you ever going to talk to him?"
He was met with silence. Leaning to the side, Mac peered through a cracked window. Stella was looking up and around.
" Stella?"
She snapped her head down. " What?"
" Is it just me, or are you avoiding Danny?"
Stella reared her head back, affronted. " What? No, I've been trying to talk with him for days. He's the one doing the avoidance dance."
Mac narrowed his eyes suspiciously, then continued on down the row. " Stella, you've been acting uncomfortable around him since he came back to work. Remember what we talked about? The mother henning situation?"
" What about it? And didn't we already have this conversation?"
Mac shook his head. " Not really. Today, it's something entirely different. Today, it's focused completely on why you haven't talked to Danny yet. Danny can't avoid you forever. You could call, visit him at his place. You could have cornered him, dropped in when he was working and had no reason to leave in a rush."
He heard Stella huff. " What, you accusing me of not trying hard enough?"
" Exactly."
" Wha...! But... Come on, Mac. You'd really think I'd do that?"
" Not intentionally, no. But something's apparently unresolved or you two wouldn't be walking on eggshells around each other. Every time you've encountered Danny – the times I've witnessed – you act like you're going to break him."
Stella coughed out a laugh. " Oh, yeah, break Danny," she sardonically replied. " I'm being careful around poor, fragile, Danny Messer. Look, I know the guy's in emotional hell right now, but it would still take a lot more than me saying to wrong thing to make him finally crack."
" Physically break him, Stella, not mentally."
A scrape of dirt, followed by silence, and Mac knew he had struck something. After all, the notion of breaking Danny bodily seemed more far fetched than breaking him mentally."
" O – kay," was Stella's poor attempt at a nonchalant reply. " What makes you think that? And when did you become Mac Taylor, professional psychiatrist?"
Mac grinned. " Stella, how many years have we worked together? It's my job – our job – to be microscopically observant, down to the invisible pieces of evidence. This same observation we have to apply to people. And, over the years, it becomes second nature. It's not so much a fear of you hurting him, but of seeing him physically hurt again. "
" Well, yeah, it's not anything I would want to relive again."
" Seeing him reminds you of what happened."
They came to the end of the row, and Stella stepped around to lean her shoulder against the bent bumper of a smashed red Ford pick-up. She had her arms crossed in her usual poise of no-nonsense, her expression tight with tension, but her eyes spilling out nothing but worry.
" I still have dreams about it. Sometimes, they're horribly exact. Other times – Danny doesn't make it. So – yes – seeing him, sometimes, it's hard. I look at him and all these feelings of relief and terror starting duking it out. Now, if I'm acting like Danny's breakable... Well, I'm not doing it on purpose. But I was the one there when he almost died. I was the one forced to watch his life start draining out of him..." she threw one hand up, then leaned in slightly and lowered her voice to a whisper. " His blood was all over my clothes, Mac. I could smell it. I wanted to puke. But, thank goodness, I didn't. Not at that moment, but later, after reaching the hospital, I went straight to the bathroom and I vomited. So it's safe to say that all the mutilated bodies over the years haven't numbed me to everything. And, yeah, it is hard to look at Danny sometimes, and hard to talk to him. I want to talk, I just don't know what to say. And even though he's alive and getting well, I'm still terrified that it won't last. The first dream I can handle. The second..." she shook her head. " I don't want that one coming true."
" It won't."
Stella lifted her eyebrows. " Mac, can you honestly promise that, especially with all that crap you told me Danny's going through?"
She had him there, but Mac wasn't going to be deterred. " If we can help it, then yes. Do you honestly think I'd let something like that happen? I definitely know you wouldn't. You really need to talk to Danny, Stella. It would do the both of you good."
Stella opened her mouth, about to reply, when the radio crackled to life and the young officer on the other end excitedly babbled about finding something. He was down a row toward the center of the yard where a fork lift was parked just outside. Everyone gathered around where the uniform was standing, pointing with a flag stick at the smashed remains of a blue car splashed with something dark on the rear door. The pattern of the spray was consistent with a bullet puncturing the back of a head, with the hole at the apex of the spatter and what Mac guessed to be small bits of brain matter.
Stella already had her kit open, pulling out a swab and wiping it against the stain. Mac moved in a little closer, studying the round puncture in the metal.
" It's blood," Stella announced. Mac pointed at the hole.
" Then our bullet should be in there."
Since the only tracks were those made by the fork-lift, Mac and team focused on the flattened vehicle before them. They pulled the rusty door open that screeched in protest, then brought in a saw and blow torch to remove the door entirely when it was made apparent that the bullet had not passed through to the other side. Several uniforms, with the help of Flack and Hawkes, carried the door from the yard to one of the awaiting vehicles. Mac, Stella, and Lindsey stayed behind to continue processing the rest of the scene.
Mac was crouched before his kit when his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and put it to his ear.
" Taylor."
" Mac?"
The female voice was surprisingly familiar, the Brooklyn accent especially.
" Aiden?"
At this, Stella, carefully studying the dirt around the scene for any tracks not smashed by the fork-lift, looked up.
" Yeah, hey Mac. Listen, um... I just talked to Danny. Is – is he all right?"
CSINY
This was a bad idea.
Danny was finding it next to impossible not to stare at the back of the cabby's head. People knew when they were being watched and the Hack was no exception. The man's eyes kept up a haphazard darting from the road to the rear view mirror even when they were stopped at a light. Danny tried to uphold a casual pose and a casual stare out the window as though absorbed in the buildings, street, and people, but his concentration was centered squarely on the cabby's head lingering out of the corner of his eyes.
It was a habit Danny had a hard time squashing, and played a large part in why he avoided cabs. The other part consisted mainly of placating his small phobia. Cabs were a necessity he tried to avoid when he could. The only thing that prevented the phobia from being all-consuming was the yellow color and lighted on-duty signs of a city-owned taxi.
Gypsy cabs – well, it was a fight to keep from spitting on those and cursing the driver to hell. Those he would forever avoid like the plague.
The driver of the present cab was polite enough to keep quiet about Danny's tense vigil, as well as quiet period. Maybe he wasn't a talker, or maybe he knew Danny wasn't in the mood to talk, there was no saying. Danny's muscles tended to go taunt, and his heart beat a little faster, every time he entered a cab. No doubt he was probably a mite pale because of it.
But Danny's wariness against cabs was nothing in comparison to how he was feeling about the subway.
There goes another form of public transportation down the drain.
In all truth, Danny had harbored no intentions of using public transportation. Neither had he gone outside with a destination in mind. He just started walking, spiting the cold and the numerous aches in his body – especially his head. But walking, even in broad day light and with so many people out – made him feel exposed. Hailing a cab had been a split decision when thoughts of the subway made him shiver. Same went for his destination.
They were heading deep into Brooklyn down an apartment lined street with young trees and small patches of grass like mini-lawns. They were nice buildings, classic construction from the 1920s, even the more recently erected places keeping with the theme. The cab pulled up to the curb of a brick place, light in color to be almost white, a little more modern but not quite. It sported two stoops, and was the kind of place one had to buzz in to enter.
Danny paid the Hack and slipped from the cab. The effect was immediate, his muscles relaxed and his heart-rate went back to normal rhythms. He headed up the steps on the right and pressed one of the top-most switches.
" Hey Burn, it's Messer. You in?" he said into the speaker. Four seconds passed, and a buzzer sounded, followed by the click of a lock. Danny yanked the door open and stepped into the blissfully warm, white-walled interior that went to work on thawing him. He got cold too easily and too often lately. He stepped into the brass-door elevator across the way, and took it to the third floor.
Aiden's place was five doors down on the right, made apparent by the fact that the door was already open and Aiden was leaning with folded arms against the frame. Her hair, highlighted and curled at the end, was pulled back in a tail. She had on a gray sweat-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of faded jeans. Danny couldn't see her hands since they were hidden by her arms, but those same arms were smeared and splashed with a gray substance that Danny knew right off the bat was clay. Finding a new job had been quick and painless for Aiden thanks to Mac's assistance. Her days as a CSI were over, but her presence in the crime-scene world was not. She was a teacher now in the art of facial reconstruction and sketch artistry. It always paid off to have more than one talent, and art was Aiden's third passion – her second being science, her third aiding law enforcement. She had still maintained the best of all three.
" I'd of cleaned up, but you didn't leave me much time," Aiden said as Danny approached. He slowed, feeling suddenly intrusive. Aiden's brown eyes went to Danny's sling, and she removed a clay-caked hand from its position against her side to gesture at it.
" Still haven't gotten that off?"
Danny stopped four feet from her door. His decision to visit Aiden had stemmed from a desire for a place to be, a place that was far enough away from his own. That same desire had numbed him to everything else except to satiate that desire. But now that he was here, he didn't feel right about it. He had no desire to talk, which was something he had not taken into consideration on heading over to Aiden's.
Danny, shrugging, took a hesitant step back. " Doctor's playing it safe. Listen, if I'm imposing or anything..."
Aiden arched an eyebrow, then straightened and unfolded her arms. " No, no, not at all. I was just – you know – being messily creative," she said with a small smile. She then twitched her head sideways toward the door. " Come on in. I might look like hell, but my place is still pretty decent."
Danny, still reluctant, followed her inside. They went down a short hallway that opened up into a large living room on the right, the kitchen on the left, and another small hallway where the bedroom and bathroom were. Aiden had newspaper covering the floor and a small table on top of that. The lump of clay on that table was already in the general shape of a head, just without the features. Behind that lump was a human skull.
" It's not real," she said. " Just something to go by, you know? So what brings you by?"
Danny, glancing around, did another half-hearted shrug. " I was out, about, thought I'd take advantage of it and visit a few friends. But everyone else is at work, and since this was one of your days off, that made you the only friend to visit."
Aiden smiled and headed into the kitchen. She flipped on the faucet, running the water over her hands that she thickly lathered with soap. Gray clay and white foam swirled around the bottom of the sink into the drain.
" So why aren't you at work? Stella called me a few days back, said you started up again."
Danny's chest tightened, and he swallowed hard. " Um, I haven't been feelin' too good lately."
Aiden flipped the water from her hands. Her eyes roved over Danny's face, then the rest of him, her gaze stern with concentration as she assessed what she was seeing.
" You don't look too good." She grabbed a striped wash-cloth from off the black fake-marble counter and dried her hands, then paused, squinting in concern. " You're not having a relapse, are you?"
" I've been takin' the meds so I shouldn't be. Might be something else." Like stress, crap loads of stress. Telling Mac about his situation had been an unforeseen necessity, as was the rest of the team having to learn about it. With Aiden, telling would be a heart to heart, confidentiality between friends, and an unburdening of the soul. Problem was, Danny had no intentions of saying anything of the situation to her. He refused to do that to her, to bring her in, to give her something to mull over in worry. During Danny's stint in the hospital, Aiden had been ready to hunt down the SOB that had hit him and pound him into next week.
She would have done it too, except that she wasn't a CSI anymore, so didn't have the means to do the tracking.
Knowing what was going on now would piss her off. Yet friendship tended to frown upon one friend keeping secrets from another. If she ever found out that he was holding something back, she would be even more pissed.
Danny's question was; did she need to know, have a right to know, or was better off not knowing?
Better off. She'd be better off.
I knew this was a bad idea.
" Well, you'd better not be contagious," Aiden said, tossing the rag down. " Want something to drink?"
Danny nodded. Aiden opened a top cupboard and pulled out two glasses, setting one on the counter and holding the other. " I've got grape-juice, orange juice, beer, milk, and water."
" Water," Danny said. He was a little thirsty, but not up for anything sweet. She filled the glass from the tap and stretched her arm over the counter to hand it to Danny. She then pointed at the three stools lining the other side of the counter.
" Sit," she commanded. But Danny shook his head.
" I'd better not or I won't get up again. I wasn't planning on staying long."
Aiden leaned with folded arms on the counter, smirking slightly. " Why? Got other friends with today off? Come on, Danny, you look beat. Hell, you look exhausted. Take a load off. It's not like I put glue on the seat or anything. I didn't even know you were coming until you buzzed me."
Danny took a sip of water, but continued his refusal to comply. Appearance wise he might have seemed worn out, but inside he felt too anxious and wired for any sitting. Instead he began roving the living room, looking it over. Posters of well-known paintings added color to the plain white walls, and numerous green plants put a little extra warmth to the place. Danny wandered over to the wall shelves holding framed photos of Aiden's family, her parents, her brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and some that might have been cousins.
" Your families close, right?" Danny asked.
" Pretty much."
" Extended too?"
" Yeah."
Wow, that must be nice having relatives you know for a fact don't hate your guts and want to stab you in the back. But like Danny was going to say that thought out loud.
On another shelf was a picture taken when Aiden was a CSI and needed to use up film so that the photos of one crime scene didn't get mixed with the photos from another scene. It was a picture of everyone in the break room (Lindsey not included, of course), a scene of every day life. Stella was sitting at a table in the middle of saying something and gesturing, Mac was across from her, Hawkes adjacent, Flack standing behind Hawkes, and Danny himself leaning back against the counter with a cup of something in his hand.
Danny had asked Aiden once if she missed working at the lab. More than once, actually, with her response each time being a non-committal shrug. When she finally answered a nonchalant 'yeah', Danny had stopped asking. That she never became annoyed by the question, and her hesitation before the reply, had always been Danny's real answer. She did miss it, but wasn't going to invest in any emotional sentimentality over it. What was done was done. If she was pissed at herself for getting fired, Danny didn't know. One thing he did know was that Aiden's only regret was not catching the SOB who had raped her friend twice. Emotion wise, it was the only one she expressed more outwardly concerning the loss of her job.
Danny found it obnoxiously ironic how Aiden gets the pink slip for opening a packet containing a single hair, but Agent Stevenson was pulling an all out blackmailing tactic and getting away with it.
A crawling sensation prickled along Danny's spine. Association brought Danny's train of thought from Stevenson to Jack, and Jack's skill at planting the right crony at the right spot, during the right time, to wreak a little havoc. In turn, the thought that Jack might be having Danny followed made Danny's insides shrivel. But there was no real proof of it. Most of the attacks always happened to or from work, and it wasn't like Danny's place of work was hard to find.
Still...
" Hey Danny?"
Danny felt a hand land on his shoulder. He jumped, dropping the glass that was spared from shattering thanks to the beige rug, which quickly absorbed the water.
" Ah son of a... ! I am so freakin' sorry Aid..." He immediately crouched to pick up the glass which incited a riot of discomfort in his side.
" It's okay, Danny, I got it," Aiden said, crouching faster than Danny and grabbing the glass before he could. While rising, she took his arm and helped him to straighten back up. She looked him in the face, doing another contemplative scrutiny that made her brow furrow. She also seemed reluctant to let go of his arm, as though if she did then Danny would go dropping to the ground like a sack of rocks. When she did finally release him to take the glass to the sink, Danny felt her eyes remaining fixed on him. The stare felt penetrating, immobilizing, and Danny found that the mere thought of turning around to look at her uncomfortable. He felt like an idiot spooking like that, and even more of an idiot for getting her carpet wet.
Aiden came back with another wash cloth, dropping it on the spill then stepping on it to stomp up the water. Danny returned his own gaze to the pictures without really seeing them.
" Sorry," he said again, shoving his one hand into his pocket.
He felt a touch on his arm, and flinched again. The touch became a firm grip as Aiden pulled Danny away from the pictures, then turned him around to face her.
" You'd better not look away," Aiden said, putting her hand on his forehead. " You feel warm."
Danny narrowed his eyes at her. " What are you, my mother? I already told you I wasn't feeling good?"
Aiden gave him a light pat – like a mock slap – on the cheek and flashed a brief smirk. " Yeah, well, you didn't say how bad and I wanted to make sure you weren't feverish to the delusional point." The grin had become a thoughtful frown. " Seriously, Messer, you all right? The fact that you're acting a little jumpy... it's kind of making me nervous. The Danny Messer I'm used to doesn't do jumpy. Remember that rig I set up that Halloween, the one that had the snake pop out of your desk drawer? You remember how you reacted? It jumped, and without even looking at it you grabbed it and tossed it over your shoulder. Same with the fake spider. You normally don't spook that easy, Messer. So either your fever's running high or... what? something goin' on with you?"
Bile shot searing into Danny's throat, only to go searing back down when he swallowed it.
Bad idea, really bad idea. His need to be anywhere but home had actually clouded his thinking. He couldn't tell Aiden what was going on, and he shouldn't have come, not if there was a possibility that Jack was having Danny followed. It was paranoid thinking, but paranoia was more like caution when it came to Jack.
But Danny might also be overreacting.
Better safe than sorry, right?
" I gotta go," Danny blurted, and without giving Aiden the chance to respond, stepped around her and walked swiftly to the door.
" Danny!" Aiden called. Danny cringed on shutting the door behind him, and picked up his pace on heading to the elevator. He felt sick enough to puke, mostly because he had no idea what he was doing. He still refused to go home, but his destination options felt suddenly slim, especially if there was a chance he was being tailed.
Once outside he began moving up the block. Direction wasn't important, only moving, and moving fast, glancing periodically over his shoulder. His lack of attention to where he was heading made time slip by more quickly. He left the neighborhood and entered a market street smelling of smoke, fried foods, gas, and something slightly foul. He passed a butcher shop with naked chickens hanging by their feet in the window, a small Chinese Restaurant, a fast food joint, food mart, book shop, novelty store, small clothing store, and even more businesses dealing in food. The sidewalks were full but not packed, and the traffic flowed freely without horns blaring and cars inching along.
The cold was leaking through Danny's coat, clothes, and skin. His muscles pulled tight until he started shivering, and the arctic air rubbed his throat and lungs raw. It was time to face the inevitable and hail another cab.
He hadn't even turned his head to look at the street when an arm dropped itself across the back of his neck. Danny faltered in alarm and tried to stop, but the owner of the arm kept moving, pulling Danny along.
" Hey Danny."
Danny didn't even turn. He could see Jack just fine out of the corner of his eye.
" How'd you find me?" Danny spat.
" What, you think you CSIs are the only ones who know how to dig up info? Deduction, pal. Someone saw you leave, so we thought to ourselves 'where would Danny Messer go this time of day when he's not working? Oh, how about to his pal Aiden Burn's place!' You think we don't know about her, Messer? We knew where to look, and waited. You can't really catch a cab in a residential area unless you call first." The arm around Danny's neck tightened ever so slightly.
" We?" Danny asked, trying to turn his head, when Jack jerked him.
" Keep looking forward, Messer. Pretend we're playing follow the leader."
Danny's heart, which had begun to gradually pick up speed, started hammering when Jack steered Danny down a side-street between to buildings. Numerous footfalls echoed close behind. Danny was steered again to the left into an alley where two massive trash bins sat. It was quite the secluded area, where the city sounds were became distant reverberations, and where Danny was pretty certain no one would be able to hear anything should any noise be made.
" And here we are," Jack announced. He slid his arm from Danny's neck and stepped back. Five other men, including that junky Al, flanked Jack on each side as they walled Danny in. Their movements were deliberate, like prowling, grinning hyenas. They had Danny cornered, literally backed into a wall. His eyes passed from one to the other, his expression as loathing as he could get it. Inside, his hammering heart was making it hard to breathe, and his shivering was from more than just the cold.
" Danny," Jack, said, folding his hands before him, " we need to talk."
SGA
A/N: I apologize for the cliff-hanger. But, hey, they happen. Things are about to get a little messy and a little fast. We're nearing the end. Savage Danny abuse is nigh at hand.