Disclaimer: I am not Anthony Zuiker, Ann Donahue or Carol Mendelsohn. All the characters of CSI: NY are not mine…I'm just borrowing them for a little bit. I promise that I will put them back, exactly the way I found them when I'm done….Oh, Cory Reid is mine and I will take credit for anything she does. :)

A/N: I still don't own Taylor Turner or Maddy….Again, thanks to Axellia for letting me borrow them! As always, please, please, please R&R! My muse loves the attention! Also, I did put the translations of the Italian and French at the end of the chapter. I'll put them in the order that they are in the chapter! Btw...fluff is coming in Chapter 33...so if you can stay with me through the remaining angst until then, everyone will get a little breather!

Chapter 30.

Times Running Out

(Unknown location)

Danny heard the door open, but was unable to get up. "Damn. I hope Ortiz didn't break a rib."

"I have a surprise for you lover-boy."

Danny turned his head and began to curse at the sight of an unconscious Cory. "What the hell did you do to her Ortiz!

Ortiz didn't say anything. He just dumped Cory onto the mattress and left the room.

Danny leaned over her. "Cory? Bella? Come on, bella. Wake up." Danny stroked her head. When he felt a bump on the back of it and a barely controlled rage flowed through his body. "I'm going to kill the bastard. Ti amo. Svegli prego presto." He continued to murmur to her in Italian, hoping that she would wake up soon.

Cory felt a soft touch on her head. She heard someone talking but she wouldn't make out what the person was saying. "What the hell happened?" She tried to get her mind to start working, but it refused to cooperate. Finally she got her brain to tell her eyes to open and she looked up and saw Danny.

"Danny? Is that really you?"

"Bella? Of course it is! Are you alright?" Danny looked down at her with concern in his eyes.

"Other than the raging headache, I think I'm fine. Damn. I guess it's time for plan B."

Danny looked confused. "Plan B?"

Cory slowly maneuvered herself into a sitting position. "Yeah. Plan A was getting Ortiz to take me to where you were and then once here, text message Mac and let him know where we were. But since I was unconscious during the trip here…" Cory trailed off. "Where are we?"

Danny shook his head. "I have no idea. I think we are in the country. I haven't heard any normal city sounds since I got here. I guess Ortiz took your cell phone and gun. Did you really expect him to let you keep your phone?"

"Not my work phone, no." Cory paused and looked around the room. "Are there cameras and microphones in here?"

"Um…No. I haven't found any and I've pretty much taken this place apart." The confused look in Danny's eyes just grew.

"Good." Cory got up and reached into her pocket. She withdrew a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. "Glad he left these with me."

"Corinne Reid! You are not going to smoke!" Danny looked like he was in shock now.

Cory just rolled her eyes. "You know? Sometimes it's good to have habits. Habits that certain stalkers know about."

"What?"

Cory exhaled. "When James was killed, I started smoking. Since then, every time something goes wrong in a case, I always have a cigarette. Ortiz knows this. He expected this. That's why…" Cory trailed off as she took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it. She inhaled slowly. When she was done she just looked at Danny.

"You have completely lost me. What the hell are you doing?"

"What Ortiz expects. It's a mind game. One that he will not beat me at."

Danny shook his head. "How is you smoking playing a mind game?"

Cory smiled now. She turned the pack of cigarettes upside down and a slim Razor cell phone fell out onto the bed. "Because, since I don't smoke anymore I can hide a cell phone in a pack of cigarettes!"

Danny's eyes grew wide at the realization of what Cory had done. "You've got to be kidding me. You hid a cell phone in a pack of cigarettes? That's….that's…." Danny could find the word he was looking for.

"Diabolically smart?"

"Um...yeah…that. How? Why?" Danny was still unable to put a coherent thought together.

Cory turned the phone on. "Damn. We must be in the country. There's no signal! Okay. Plan B down…Time to come up with plan C!"

Danny looked at her. "You are insane!"

"Nope. I'm just crafty! Come on, Danny. I knew when Ortiz called me it was a trap. It didn't go exactly how I planned, but you have to be creative when trying to catch an arrogant SOB who wants to kill your boyfriend. Work with me here!"

That seemed to snap Danny back into reality. "Okay. Fine. What else do you have up your sleeve?"

Cory just laughed. "I don't have sleeves, but I have boots. Steel-toed boots at that." Cory leaned over and began to unlace the boots. Then she pulled two pocket knives out of them. "I have these." She looked at Danny with a twinkle in her eyes. "Never mess with a Texan. You never know how they are armed." Cory heard footsteps in the hall. Quickly she put the knives back into her boots and laced them back up. She hid the cell phone under the mattress. She leaned back, still smoking her cigarette.

The door opened and Ortiz walked in. "Chica. Glad to see you're awake." Both Cory and Danny got to their feet. Cory stamped out the cigarette under her boot.

Danny looked at Cory in amazement when she graphically told Ortiz what he could do to himself with several animals and a gun. "Where the hell did she learn to cuss like that! Even I never would have said that!"

For once, Ortiz did not smile. "I see I'm going to have to teach you manners." He raised his hand to strike her, but Danny interposed himself between them and took to blow meant for her. "So you want to protect her, lover-boy? Fine." Ortiz began to land blows onto Danny.

Cory moved to help him, but two men held her. She tried to kick them, but they had her legs pinned, too. "Stop! Ortiz, stop it!" Cory just could helplessly yell at the man beating Danny to a pulp.

(Crime Lab)

The team was back in the crime lab. Stella and Lindsay were researching all the properties that Cory had listed to see if it was possible that Ortiz had taken them there. Both FBI and NYPD teams were checking all the locations as the women identified them.

Taylor was sitting in the break room, upset that she could not do anything else to help her friends out. Suddenly, Maddy, James and Michael appeared in front of her. Maddy was looking sad and fearful. James and Michael had unreadable expressions on their faces.

"Any news?" Maddy asked.

"We know that Ortiz took Cory and from what Mac had said, he plans on killing Danny in front of her. That means we are working on a deadline now. We just don't now how long we have."

James looked at Taylor. "Save her."

Taylor looked at him. "I'm trying, but we've hit a brick wall. I honestly don't know where to go from here."

He continued to look at her. "Save her." He picked up a pencil sitting on the table and wrote a series of numbers on the counter.

Taylor looked at it. "4-6-9-5-5-5-1-2-3-4. Is that a phone number?" The three ghosts just disappeared as she memorized the numbers. Quickly she ran back to the lab.

"Mac! Hawkes! I might have something. James just gave me a phone number. 469-555-1234. Can you trace it?"

Mac went over to the computer and ran a search. "It's a Dallas cell phone number and the registered owner is….C. Reid. Could that be Cory's cell phone?" Mac quickly decided to try to see if the phone was on and triangulate the area where it was located. "Damn it. It's not on. Let me see if I can remotely turn it on." He punched in some more codes, but nothing happened. "It must be out of the range of a cell phone tower."

Taylor looked confused. "I don't get it. Ghosts don't give me bad information. Maybe we just have to keep trying to see if it comes back into a cell area." Mac agreed and left the computer to keep trying to find the phone.

(Unknown Location)

Cory knelt beside the mattress that an unconscious Danny was lying on. Tears were flowing down her face. "Damn you, Messer! Why did you have to go all white knight on me? Huh? Ortiz would not have beaten me like he beat you? He doesn't want me dead! He wants you dead."

Cory carefully examined Danny's body, looking to see if any of his wounds were life-threatening. Breathing a sigh of relief, the only thing she could find was a broken left wrist. "Tu est très chanceux! Mon cherie. Je t'aime avec tout mon coeur. S'il vous plais de phase, pour moi. Please live, baby. I can't live without you." Cory continued murmuring please live in French until she felt Danny stir.

"Danny? Mon cherie? Are you okay?"

Danny groaned as pain shot through his body. "Did you get the license of the truck that hit me?" He tried to laugh, but pain shot through his ribs as he inhaled. "Damn. I think I might have a broken rib."

Cory was sobbing in relief. She laughed a bit at his joke and then grew serious. "You just have some cracked ribs. Why did you jump in front of me?"

"I had to protect you from that…that parte della merda del cavall!"

"Danny. As romantic as that was…Ortiz would not have hurt me. He's obsessed with me and wants me to be with him. At worst, I might have a black eye. Remember? He wants to kill you!"

"Yeah, well. I wasn't thinking with my brain. I was thinking with my heart. Ti amo." Danny was shocked as the confession came out. "At least it was in Italian. She doesn't speak that."

Cory looked shocked. "He loves me!" Italian was enough like French at she understood what he had just told her. Her heart swelled in happiness. "Danny? Je sais. Je t'aime, aussi."

"What?"

"I know. I love you, too."

"How did you know what I had said?"

"Come on, Messer. French is enough like Italian that I understand a little bit. Both languages are from Latin. The Latin work for love is amor. So in French it is amour, and in Italian it's amore. Simple deduction."

Danny just groaned. "Is it wrong for me to get turned on by your brain?"

Cory laughed. "Nope. I'm going to see if I can get a signal on the phone. I can't believe that Ortiz would not be able to use a cell phone here." She got up off the bed and grabbed the phone.

Slowly she walked around the room. As she got closer to the air vent she saw some signal bars on the phone. "This is weird. I'm getting a little signal here. I wonder."

Danny groaned as he got up. "You wonder what?"

"What if Ortiz put something on the walls to block cell phones? It makes sense. If I could just get up to the air vent, I might be able to call someone."

Danny thought about it. "You could stand on my shoulders."

Cory immediately vetoed the idea. "Danny, you're hurt and in pain. I don't want to hurt you even more."

Danny was insistent. "It's better than being dead."

Cory saw the sense in her plan. "Fine. I don't like it, though." She bent down and pulled a knife out of her boot. She quickly typed a text message to Mac. Then she carefully got on Danny's shoulders. When she was even with the vent, she used her knife to take the screws holding the vent into place out. She put the phone in the vent and hit send.

The hair prickled on her neck. Somehow she realized that they might be caught. She left the phone in the vent and quickly put it back into place. She put the knife in her pocket and looked at Danny when she heard footsteps. "Hurry! Get back on the mattress. We can't let them know about this."

The two quickly resumed their previous positions right before Ortiz walked in.

"It's time, mi amor. You're going to me mine soon." Cory just stayed silent as Ortiz dragged them out of the room.

(Crime Lab)

Mac looked at his phone as soon as it beeped. "It's a text message." He read the message and took off towards the computer lab at a dead run. Stella, who had been having coffee with him, didn't question. She just followed him.

She found him in the lab and quickly the rest of the team joined him. "What's going on, Mac?" asked Lindsay.

"I just got a text message from Cory. She said, "Find the cell phone and you'll find us." He quickly ran a new search. "There! Look, they are in Poughkeepsie. That's about two hours from here. We don't have that kind of time. Maybe the FBI will loan us a helicopter."

Mac looked determined as he dialed Agent Michaels number.

Lindsay looked at Flack. Her hand over her mouth. "Please, God. Let us get to them in time!"

A/N:

Bella.—Beautiful

Ti amo. Svegli prego presto. – I love you. Please wake up soon.

"Tu est très chanceux! Mon cherie. Je t'aime avec tout mon coeur. S'il vous plais de phase, pour moi.—You are very lucky! My darling. I love you with all my heart. Please live for me.

parte della merda del cavall!—piece of horse shit.

the little corinthian- thank you for the happy dance...Danny may be hurt but he still is wanting to open up a can of whoop ass on Ortiz! Yup. Cory is going to be less than pleased at Danny's state, but really, Ortiz has been going kinda light on him! I'm glad you have faith that Mac will figure it all out!

tylerhiltongroupie53- I will probably do a one shot about them. I'm not as well versed in Elena's character since I kinda dropped off the WaT bandwagon last season after they completely dropped the "Martin doing drugs" story line! I got a little peeved at the writers about that! Danny of course found out about Cory when Ortiz dropped her in the room with him (big mistake, btw)... :D

axellia- glad I could help you get through work! (which btw, it was 107F here today and our power went off at work. I work on the 10th floor and was down on the concourse level so I got the privelage of walking up 11 flights of stairs! yeah!) Yum...Sam and Dean (my mind took up the residence in the gutter at that thought)...They are just...YUM! With Cory the more calm and cold see gets the angrier she is, so Travis should definately watch out!

chili-peppers-Yup, Ortiz really screwed up by kidnapping Cory. She has a lot of pent up anger against him and well...it was just a stupid mistake on his part! I'm glad you like Flack and Lindsay's relationship...

note to pnkrckprcss-- I'm thinking that the chapter total is going up! It may actually reach 50...since this part of the story took more chapters to complete than I had anticipated!