Chapter 4:

„You got his personal things somewhere?"

"Yeah of course we do – they're still down at the E.R…"

"May I have a look at them."

She was hesitating before she answered, probably taking into consideration that he knew Danny pretty well and that it would be hard for him to have a look at his stuff.

"If you wish. But I'm warning you – it's not actually a very pretty thing to look at."

"I didn't expect it to be any different."

She slightly shrugged and went to the elevators, being followed by Jack. They got down to E.R. once again where she leaded him to one of the small, more quiet rooms behind the trauma rooms.

"Our patient's personal things are kept in here."

She turned on the lights inside the room and stepped inside before him, scanning through the boards, searching for the right bag with a patient's personal things. It took her about a minute until she finally reached out for one, hesitated another time and then turned around to give it to him.

"Is there anything special you are searching for?"

"I'm not sure – I hope to find any hint to what has happened to him, who did this to him…"

"You want me to leave you alone?"

"That would be nice. Just give me some time to have a look at his things – it won't take long."

"It's okay. You know I'm actually interfering with normal policy. I should've called police first. But I wanted you to know before, I didn't want you to receive the call from police…"

"I appreciate this, Dr. Collins. Thanks a lot."

"I don't think that's anything to be thankful about. But you can do it once again, if I will be able to save Agent Taylor's life…"

"Believe me – I will."

She turned from him and left the room, left him alone.

"Let's just hope there will be a chance to say thank you."

The thought crossed her mind as she closed the door again.

Jack was standing in the room lit by the cold, sterile, aggressive light of the neon lamp, holding the plastic bag, Dr. Collins had given to him, in hands. It felt strange, extremely strange. He had seen that much of evidence through the years of practice in his unit, but this was something completely different. This wasn't a piece of evidence like all the other he had seen, it was something special, something different – this was personal.

Whatever evidence they had been scanning through, he would never know the person it belonged to.

He knew he couldn't allow this fact of personal relation to interfere with his professional duties. He had to stay objective, had to stay calm, needed to keep the emotion out of it. But it wasn't easy, it really wasn't, although he tried to tell himself that he was professional enough to do this properly.

He finally opened the bag to have a look at the stuff Danny had with him when he was brought to hospital. The smell of it invaded his nose when he opened up the bag. The sudden fragrance of dried blood and sweat – Danny's blood, Danny's sweat – his pain, his fear.

Jack couldn't even imagine the pain, the horror and torment Danny had been going through. Seeing the evidence now – his dirty, disrupted, blood-spilled clothing - only gave a slight glimpse to it and that was already enough to make Jack feel nauseous. The sight in front of him, made him memorize little parts of Dr. Collins statement:

- tortured – several days – has been conscious – severe injuries – don't know how he survived...

He closed his eyes for a moment and ordered himself to focus. There was no other chance to proceed with it. Feeling furious and sick about what had happened to Danny wouldn't help him to get better and it wouldn't help Jack to find the ones being responsible.

Jack hoped to find something that would point to the kidnappers – any hint like a note, anything Danny had found out or had been able to scribble down, any information about what had happened. He was scanning through the things Dr. Collins had handed to him, but he wouldn't be lucky. There was nothing, absolutely nothing – at least nothing of importance.

They would need the results of a lab to find out anything more. There definitely were things Jack couldn't see. Hopefully they would find anything useful pointing to Danny's attackers – fingerprints, bodyfluids, anything like that. It was most likely, but as nobody had even seen who had brought his fellow agent here, it was possible that the lab wouldn't find any evidence either. These guys would be damn professional then – which wouldn't make their work – finding them – any easier.

Jack stopped his search and put Danny's stuff back. He couldn't take it with him and to the department's lab right away. Dr. Collins had been absolutely right with her evaluation. This wasn't a case of national measures and FBI probably wouldn't be in lead on this investigation. It would be handled by NYPD as normal policy instructed it and they would only be informed if the local police was polite enough to do so. Right now and all on his own there wasn't much he could do against it, but he would talk to Van Doren and ask her for the admission to take care of the investigation. It was an internal thing and that's where he wanted to keep it.

He put the bag down on the board it had laid before, switched off the lights and left the room. He went to the counter down at E.R. and asked the receptionist to inform Dr. Collins he had finished and that he had left the hospital. He wanted to be kept posted as soon as there would be any change about Danny's condition.

The real hard part about this – except for convincing Van Doren – was up to come. It was the emotionally most difficult situation he could think of right now – he had to inform the rest of his team...

A.N.: I will be gone for the weekend, so don't expect any more updates before Monday. Hope you lik it – please R+R.