Here is the latest update, at last. :) Please bear with me - the DL stuff gets better and more intense SOON - chapter 6 or so. I swear! Fluffiness to come shortly.
Chapter 4
"Where is this thing going?"
Lindsay rolled her eyes. She couldn't believe Danny had just asked her that—how could she possibly know?
"You tell me," she said tartly. "You talked to the conductor." The more the bleakness of their situation dawned on them, the shorter their tempers grew, causing them to snap at each other unapologetically.
"Yeah, sure, I talked to the conductor. Then you called me up here to the penthouse suite," he replied sarcastically.
"Are you saying this is all my fault?" Lindsay accused. She was seated in the corner on a bed of dusty straw, hugging her knees to her chest, as Danny paced back and forth.
"No, of course not," he said, and threw up his hands in exasperation. "Look – bickering won't help us out of this mess. We have to work together… like we always have. We make a great team, right? We can get through this."
Lindsay nodded, suddenly exhausted. Danny had a point -- fighting would get them nowhere. Besides, there were countless nights she had dreamt of being alone with Danny, no matter what the situation. Maybe it was possible to make the best of this predicament.
"We should catalog the evidence," she suggested, rubbing her throbbing temples. "I have my kit, so we can bag and label the things from Abrams's bag."
"Good idea," Danny agreed. "That little bastard got away once, but we'll be ready to get him the second time around. If nothing else, it will give us something to do." He squatted down next to Lindsay, offering her a small smile that was tinged with apologies. "Truce?" he asked, holding out his hand to her.
She took it and squeezed it vigorously. "Truce." She sent up a small prayer of thanks that it was Danny here with her, and that she had not become trapped by herself.
With the tension behind them for now, they set to work, glad for the distraction of doing something productive. Lindsay pulled two fresh pairs of rubber gloves from her kit, and finagled a holder for the flashlights with a piece of wire she found nearby.
Digging through the pockets of the red sweatshirt, a filthy garment that smelled heavily of marijuana, she located a tiny gold key. "Look at this," she said, holding it up in the beam of light, dust particles dancing around it. "The key to the padlock that was on our vic's chains?"
"Looks like the right size," Danny murmured, taking it from her to deposit in an evidence bag. "It stinks in here," he added. "What were they hauling? Pigs?"
"Machinery, probably," Lindsay replied tiredly. Her knees hurt from kneeling on the rough wooden floor of the train.
After a few moments of silent concentration, Danny suddenly snapped his fingers. "That's right – Akron!"
"What?" Lindsay asked, puzzled.
"The conductor," Danny said. "He had a delivery to Akron. That's where this train is headed."
"Akron? As in, Ohio?!" Lindsay covered her face with her hands. Not that it mattered – it may have well been Alaska they were going to. She wasn't even sure she could survive another hour. Still, they plodded forward, tedious work being better than boredom.
Danny came to the last items in the bag—granola bars and bottled water. "Lindsay, we might be needing these things, depending on how long this joyride goes. I know s'mores and hot dogs would be more fitting, but this is the best we can do."
"We can't eat the evidence, Danny," she argued.
"So we'll save the wrappers. A jury isn't going to care whether Cory Abrams ate raisin or honey-oat granola bars."
"Yeah, I guess. Later. I can't think of food right now." She began thumbing through the envelopes of evidence they had collected, trying to focus on the crime, but it was no use. To complicate matters, the light from the two flashlights was growing fainter and fainter.
"We should turn them off, try to conserve the batteries," Lindsay sighed sadly. Danny merely nodded. She leaned over and clicked them off one at a time, carpeting them in inky blackness once again.
-----
Wyndham walked into Mac's office, his face grim.
"Good to see you again, Detective Taylor," he said as they shook hands. "I'm sorry it's under these circumstances."
Mac nodded, the worry written all over his leathery face. "Tell me what you know."
Wyndham read off his notepad, where he had jotted down every single piece of information. "They arrived to the scene around 9:15am, processed the body and the area, then interviewed the station manager and train conductor. That was the last anyone saw of them. Their department vehicle is still parked at the station. Messer's processing kit was found near the tracks. Monroe's is gone, so I'm thinking Messer followed her wherever she went."
"Any idea where they could have wandered off to?" Mac asked. "My detectives are thorough, were there any clues they were following away from the station?"
"I told them about a possible suspect seen fleeing the sight this morning; a guy in a red sweatshirt who ran into the woods just before the train hit the body. Maybe they found a trail into the woods, and now they're lost." He paused, tapping his fingers on Mac's desk. "How do you want to handle the case now?"
"We'll handle the forensics here. Hammerback's going to be doing the autopsy, I'll let you know when I get the report. For now, I'll send out a new team to look for any evidence Danny and Lindsay may have left behind. But anything important, they probably have with them, wherever they are."
Wyndham nodded. "We're still on the lookout for this guy in the red sweatshirt, I'll release the composite sketch to the press. We ID'd the victim as Harvey Parsons, age forty-nine. Get this, he works for a repossession company. That leads to a long list of potential enemies we'll be looking over."
Mac picked up his phone and began dialing. "I'm going to get a team to search those woods. If Danny and Lindsay went that way, hopefully they left some trace behind."
----
When Wyndham had left, and Mac hung up the phone a few minutes later, he noticed Stella and Hawkes waiting hesitantly outside his door. He waved them in.
"This is bad, isn't it?" Stella's voice registered her fear, the fear all three of them felt.
"We don't know anything about their whereabouts yet," Mac said firmly. He briefly filled them in on Wyndham's report. His voice softened, dropping an octave. "We can't rule out foul play, either, at this point."
Hawkes interjected, "Maybe they were kidnapped. Maybe they got close to the killer, and he took them hostage." Little did he realize how close his guess was to the truth.
Mac held up his hand. "Slow down. We're hoping they just got lost in the woods."
Stella looked horrified. "If they're lost in the woods, it gets below freezing at night… and there's mountain lions! We only have a couple of hours of daylight left to find them."
The group silenced, overwhelmed by anxieties.
"We have to hang on to that hope that they're okay," Hawkes said, then smiled softly, sadly. "And you know what? At least they're together."
Mac raised an eyebrow curiously. "What do you mean by that?"
"Come on, don't pretend you haven't noticed it," Hawkes replied, breaking into a grin at the thought of his colleagues. "Those two? They have something special going on. And you know what? I think as long as they stick together, they'll make it."