The following characters are not mine, belong to CSI NY creators, blah blah blah blah blah. Warning, this chapter is why I have it labeled T—for the murders themselves. It's not graphic at all, but just … well, you've seen Lindsay's reaction. It's kind of like in Admissions where someone says 'you have to be sick to think of this' and well, the writers did think of it … so does that make them sick? Anyway, I'm not sure how I did with this chapter. It was a struggle to write, so I would love reviews … and any suggestions to make it better if you have them. Seriously, that's why I write here. Note: A 10-7 stands for Deceased. It fit, so I kept that code as the title.

And I can't remember if I replied back to all the reviews from the last chapter. I think I did. If not, I'm really sorry. I've been grading essays and tests and my brain is fried. The reviews were all appreciated very much!! Thank you, even more so if I missed you.

Deceased

Chapter 7:

It wasn't until night settled over the city that her car was located, parked outside the hotel where she had originally been abducted. It was luck really, as the cop who had been ready to call it in to be towed had recognized the tag from the police bulletin.

Danny carried the voice recorder with him as he walked the street. Lindsay hadn't just left Kaley a message, a song, and the little "loves who" ritual. She'd left him a message as well.

Danny, please don't worry about me. I'll be fine. I love you.

Her voice had broken slightly on the word love, and he couldn't help but remember how rough his hands had been on her, how frustrated he must have seemed. He'd pushed her to go out on her own, to do this on her own.

And now, she was alone.

She was gone.

It was into the next morning before they finally got a trace on Lindsay's phone. The signal came in clear, out of their district. The long line of hapless houses were vacant, being restored or marked to be restored. Flack and Hawkes reached the street first, met up with the men from the area precinct.

Outside the darkened residence, Hawkes stepped up beside Flack and pulled his own weapon. The paint was pealing around the doorway, as if someone had brought in an oversized cheese grater. The porch beneath their feet creaked.

They each took one side of the door as Flack knocked.

"NYPD!"

No one answered. The house was quiet. The only thing that showed anyone inside was a flickering of light from the far window.

Flack looked toward him and nodded. He twisted the knob and it opened.

Too easy, Hawkes thought. His heart thumped, because there was fear—he didn't want to walk in and find Lindsay as he'd found so many other nameless victims.

"Lindsay?" Flack called out as he stepped through the doorway, and turned, panning the way with his gun.

Hawkes went in and turned the other way. He looked back at Flack, who nodded toward the open door and the flickering light.

And there was Lindsay, lying out on the floor, papers strewn around her.

"Lindsay!" Hawkes rushed forward with Flack, stepping around the candles that were around her. He knelt down, carefully ran his hands over her, checking for injury.

"Hawkes?" She blinked as he helped her sit up. "Danny?"

"He's with Mac. They're on their way. You really scared him, Linds," He looked in her eyes, checked her pulse. She looked dazed, almost shocky. Confused. He looked over at Flack who had knelt down beside them. "Lindsay … do you know what happened? Why you're here? Did someone bring you here?"

"Yes, I mean … no—no, I came." she shook her head. "It's all right. I came here. I had to come here.

"Why?"

She stared at him, her expression blank.

"Hawkes—" Flack had turned and was using his pen to move the papers that were on the floor. "Lindsay, did you write this?"

He glanced down at the papers—nearly a half dozen sheets with scrawling writing, but definitely Lindsay's familiar handwriting.

"Yes …" the word came out hesitant, slow, but even as it did, Hawkes watched the fight come back into Lindsay's eyes. He reached out, ran a finger over her pale cheek.

"It's what he … what he said. I had to get it out."

Hawkes pulled on a pair of gloves and reached for one of the sheets. "What is it?"

"It's a list," Flack looked up, horror in his eyes as he met Sheldon's gaze. "Of murders."

They took her to the hospital, even though she told them she was fine. She felt … empty. Simply emptied, except now the wall was gone. She knew now what was behind it, and knew why she'd mentally put it up.

The images flashed. Images her own imagination had created for her, images from past cases; of little girls. Of death. Of children.

Of murder.

It was there, as she sat alone on the exam room table, that Danny caught up with her.

He opened the curtain and stepped in, stopped to just look at her. There was worry in his eyes. Whatever impatience, anger that she expected, wasn't there. She'd left Kaley again. She'd believed he wouldn't understand. Not really.

"They showed you the list," she could tell by the look in his eyes.

"Yeah. Flack thought I should know before I saw you. Are you all right?"

"Not really," she held his gaze. "I'm over here and you're over there, and I've really missed you."

He didn't fly toward her and scoop her up, but that wasn't Danny. The swagger in the short step and the knowing smile. Now that was Danny.

As he slid his arms around her, she simply sighed and rested against him. "It all makes sense to me now, why I shut it out, why I couldn't look at Kaley. What was holding me back. Danny—it wasn't that I didn't want to hold her, it was fear. I couldn't put the two together."

He ran a hand over the back of her head. "I don't think you're supposed to."

"You can't imagine how much I want to hold her right now."

She felt his lips smile against her hair, even as a warm breath of relief escaped him. "I'll take you home. She's waiting on you."

"Mac's going to need to talk to me."

She winced as an image flashed. Of a little girl, in a pink coat. Blond hair, blue eyes. Her cheeks would have been rosy, if not claimed by death.

Lindsay tightened her grip on Danny, held on. She needed him to steady her.

"He can come to us this time. He'll understand."

She shook her head, fighting against another image, of another little girl. If she let go, the images would just flow out of her, all over again.

"I don't want to take this into my home. I don't want it there, with her, with our memories. With Kaley."

"Is that why you left?"

"Maybe, I don't know. I couldn't open them there," she leaned back, just enough to see his face. She reached up and traced a finger over the stubble on his chin. "I don't always have answers for … this. I just know that back in Montana, after the murders and the mothers … they just reacted. All that emotion. The sadness, the fear, the anger. Most of it probably wasn't directed at me, but it felt like … it was just too much.

"I just pushed it all back. I couldn't … deal with it. I told myself I was fine. But the police needed me to remember, and my parents, they were so freaked. I realized I wasn't myself anymore. I was a shell."

"Did you leave then, too?"

She nodded, reaching for his hands with each of her own. "I think I had to. They had insulated me and it just wouldn't open. I couldn't get passed the wall. So I snuck out of the house, took my dad's truck, and headed into town. They found me before the diner opened the next morning, standing on the sidewalk looking in. I'd been there for hours. I had to return there. I had to face it."

"Why that house? Where they found you tonight? Mac said we didn't have a case on record there. Have you ever been before?"

"I don't remember," she frowned over it, "I went into the suite where he said … I remembered the street, the numbers. I didn't recognize it. So I got a taxi, let them take me there …One of the little girls is there Danny … she's at that house."

"I'll tell Mac. What else?"

"I wrote it down," she shook her head. "There may be more. I don't know. I just … can we start this with Mac? I don't want to have to say it more than once."

"All right. Are you ready?"

"Just one thing. When I blocked it all before, I shut everything out. The images, the sounds. The feelings I had for my friends. When it opened … that's when the nightmares began again. I don't want to face those again, Danny. Like that, like before."

He simply drew her close and pressed a gentle kiss against her forehead. "You're not alone, Lindsay."

"But—"

"Lindsay, I can take your nightmares. I survived the days of Kaley waking us up at all hours more than you ever have with your nightmares. I've got a pretty tough shell."

Lindsay rolled her eyes, and smiled just a little. No he didn't. Kaley's tears and cries still freaked him out.

"Just don't …"

"What?"

"Start any karate lessons until we work this out."

Lindsay sat down in the interview room with Danny at her side. He took her hand and she held on as she looked around. It was different, for some reason, being in here like this. It was her choice, of course. Mac had offered his office, had even recommended that they meet in Dr. Thurman's office.

But she'd wanted it as clean and clear as possible.

Mac sat down across from her and set a tape recorder on the table between them. She stared at the simple device, and then turned her brown eyes toward the two way mirror. On the other side, she knew Dr. Thurman watched. He wasn't just there for her benefit. He was a scholar, he was a researcher. He wanted to see how she broke the pattern.

Still, he'd approached her as she'd come to the station, and in his eyes she saw hope. He wanted her to have this break through. She just hoped that he was prepared for what she remembered. No one should have to deal with the death of a child.

"Lindsay."

She turned her eyes to find Danny's steady gaze on her. His fingers tightened on hers. "You ready?"

She nodded and then turned to face Mac.

"Where do you want to start, Lindsay?"

She frowned over it, and slowly licked her lips. "I don't know."

"How about you tell me what happened the day you received this message. He took you from the crime scene."

She could see it, the darkness that surrounded her as she slowly came awake. She'd blinked, felt her hands bound. Even now, her fingers flexed around Danny's.

There, silhouetted in the light of the terrace he stood. He wore a jacket, a cap. She could remember nothing else.

She described the scene with little emotion. The words just came out, one after the other.

"He started describing the … what he'd done. He went one child at a time. He gave locations, how he'd found them, and why. Then he told what he did to them. The first one, blue eyes, blond hair. She had pigtails and a pink coat," she described the murder. There were little details other than what she'd written down. "He was so passionate, so … devoted. He knew … he didn't …"

She shook herself and went through what she remembered as if it were a list. As she talked, Mac sorted through the papers where she'd originally written the details down with a quick scrawl as they'd poured out of her memory. She didn't really remember writing all of it, she just remembered starting.

Then she'd fallen asleep. No first, she'd switched on her phone. She'd known they'd find her. She'd known Danny would come.

She hadn't had any energy to do anything else. She'd just fallen into a deep sleep, into safety. That had been her last thought.

"Lindsay?"

She looked over at Danny, saw the concern in his eyes. She pushed back the weariness that had swamped her. "I don't remember much else … the last one I remember, when he said it, I thought of Kaley. Brown hair, brown eyes. It was her that I pictured. My baby. My little girl. I don't know if he said anything else, or went on with other children. I can't remember anything, beyond him saying those details, and I just …"

"Blocked the rest."

She nodded. "And then I woke up," she looked at Danny. "And you were there."

Danny wrapped his arm around her and drew her close, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. The three of them sat in silence, Lindsay's words—and the horror of them—resonating in the stale room.

At the knock on the door, Mac nodded toward Danny and stood, switching off the recorder. He had more questions he needed to ask her. He needed to go back over the details and see if there was anything else she remembered. He would have to push her, and when he did, he knew he was going to have to go up against Danny.

He didn't mind though. Danny would only voice a mirror of Mac's own thoughts.

He'd already matched up three murders that they had worked over the last two months to the information on Lindsay's list. From their dates of death, Lindsay's list seemed to be in order. Others to be found, three that fell before the ones they had already matched, and one that was between those they'd matched.

He'd looked at the photographs from the scene, just to refresh his memory, and put himself in Lindsay's place. She had it all in her head, interwoven with her natural mother instinct.

Stella was at the door. He stepped out, recognized the look in her eyes.

"Flack called. They found the body," she closed her eyes and he reached out to rub a hand on her shoulder. "Lindsay was right. The little girl was there, still in her pink coat, buried in the back yard."

Did you think the deceased actually referred to Lindsay? If you know me, you know she's not one I would intentionally kill off. I almost didn't use it, because I didn't want you to think that … then I realized, what would it hurt if you do? :p