Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of "CSI:NY"-they belong to Anthony E. Zuiker and CBS.

Author's Note: Muchas gracias to all my reviewers. Enjoy Chapter 5!

CHAPTER FIVE

Lucy Messer was her father's child. She had his hair, she had his cheeky sense of humor, even at nine months, and she had his temper. The baby was on her hands and knees in the play pen, her face red and scrunched up, and she was screaming. She was looking right at her mother, as if to say, "Momma, I want out! And you're just sitting there!"

Lindsay wanted nothing more than to run to her baby girl, pick her up and hug her. But with a gun in her face and her hands tied together, there was little she could do. She sat across the room, helpless as her daughter was miserable not ten steps away. She decided it was the most terrible, horrible, awful feeling in the entire world-to know your child was in danger and scared and crying and not being able to help them.

She looked up at the kidnapper as they hung up the phone and stepped away from the window. While they had sounded menacing and threatening on the phone, Lindsay knew the truth.

Staring down the barrel of a .45 pistol, menace in their eyes, was a woman; mid to late thirties. She had long blonde hair that hung frizzy and wildly around her face, framing flushed cheeks and wild green eyes. She was wearing loose carpenter's jeans that the black studded belt barely kept around her waist, and an oversized Yankees hoodie. And while she'd sounded cool and collected on the line, face-to-face she was livid and, Lindsay felt, ready to snap.

"Shut up!" she yelled over her shoulder at Lucy. Lucy's response was to cry even louder.

"You're scaring her!" Lindsay cried. "Please let me hold her. She'll stop if you let me hold her."

"No. No freakin' way," the woman said, punctuating the no's with a jab with the gun. "Do you think I'm stupid? I'm not stupid!"

"No, no, I know you're not," Lindsay reassured her quickly.

Lucy's wailing became more pronounced. Lindsay could tell the incessant, high-pitched cry was irritating the blonde to no end. "She'll stop if you let me hold her," Lindsay said again. "Look, I'll sit right here. You can bring her over to me. We'll sit right here, and I'll calm her down."

She didn't want that woman so much as looking at her daughter…but she wasn't just going to let Lindsay stand up and move around. The blonde covered her ears as Lucy's crying became more of a high-pitched siren. "Shut up, damn it!" she yelled. She turned from Lindsay and strode deliberately toward Lucy.

"No!" Lindsay yelled, nearly removing her shoulders from their sockets as she fought to get her hands loose. The blonde picked Lucy up. The baby squirmed as she brought her over to Lindsay. Then, she set Lucy down. The baby wailed on the carpet, inches from Lindsay's feet. She reached around Lindsay and Lindsay felt her hands give way. Feeling immediately started coming back to her fingers as she leaned down and picked up her daughter, holding her to her chest as tightly as she could. Tears welled in her eyes as she reassured Lucy-and herself- "It's going to be okay, baby girl."

She could feel rope tightening around her ankles, but she didn't care. She had her daughter in her arms. She wasn't going anywhere, anyway.

The air inside Mac Taylor's office was suffocatingly warm.

Mac, Stella, Sheldon Hawkes, Adam Ross, Flack and Danny were all gathered in the head CSI's office.

Danny was pacing. Flack had told him to sit down twice, but his friend wasn't having any of it. Hawkes had offered him a glass of water, but Danny had only shook his head and said, "Unless that's got a shot of Absolut in there, I don't want it."

"Tell us about the phone call again," Stella said finally.

Danny threw his hands in the air. "I didn't recognize the voice, the number was restricted, and there was no way to get a ping on a tower. Me tellin' you about the call again isn't gonna do any good."

Any other day, Adam Ross would've started laughing at how much more pronounced Danny's thick accent got when he was pissed about something (Lord knows he'd heard enough of it in the Trace lab) but instead, the tech said, "Just one more time, Danny. Maybe we'll catch something in the way he said things."

Danny glared at Adam, enough to make his friend shrink back, but then he let out a breath and shook his head. "He told me to listen carefully," he recounted, yet again. "That if I listened he wouldn't hurt Linds or Lucy. He told me to get away from Flack."

"So he was close enough to be watching you," Hawkes said.

"Which meant he coulda been on the street or in any of the buildings around the hospital," Danny pointed out. "That doesn't help much. That area is nothing but office space and apartment buildings."

"It gives us an area to start looking," Mac said from his desk. "Keep going, Danny."

Danny closed his eyes, replaying the one-sided conversation in his head. "He asked if I remembered him."

"Do you? Does anything sound familiar, anything ring a bell?" Stella asked.

He shook his head firmly. "No. I don't have a clue what the hell he's talkin' about. And he got real upset with me when I told him as much. It wouldn't have helped anyway, they were usin' some kind of modulator, made the voice all funky." His exact words to the kidnapper didn't need to be repeated.

"Then what?"

"And then he hung up on me," Danny said. He sank to the leather couch, ran a hand through his hair and letting it slide down to his neck. "I could hear Lucy in the background." He looked up at Flack. "My baby girl was cryin' and I couldn't do anything about it." Suddenly, Detective Danny Messer: Tough Guy was gone, and in his place was Danny Messer: Daddy. He buried his head in his arms and cried. "It's my fault. It's my fault this happened."

Mac Taylor had only ever seen Danny Messer like this one other time. As Flack looked away so he wouldn't start crying himself, and as Stella held Danny and let him cry, Mac was vaulted back outside Angel of Mercy at one in the morning as Danny Messer sobbed into his shoulder as his brother Louie lay in a coma three floors above their heads.

"Danny." He said it so sharply that Adam jumped and Hawkes's dark eyes snapped to Mac's face in a split second, even though he hadn't said either of their names.

Danny's eyes met his. "We're going to figure this out," he said. "We're going to find the connection. And we're going to get your family back."

And the way he said it left no room for argument.