CHAPTER TWELVE
Danny dove forward, slamming Amanda into the floor. Mac, Stella and the others poured into the room. Jess swept Lucy into her arms and murmured, "Auntie Jess is here, Lucy Bug. You're okay."
Danny let Flack shove a knee into Amanda's back and pin her to the floor, as she continued to cry and cuss out Danny and the rest of the world. He scrambled to his feet and half-ran, half-crawled to his wife. "Lindsay! Montana, oh God…"
Lindsay had slumped forward in the chair, her chin resting on her chest as Stella cut the cord binding her to the chair. "Montana, come on, baby, talk to me," Danny said. He vaguely heard Mac calling for a bus. Stella cut the last knot around Lindsay's ankle and his wife came loose, falling forward into his arms. "Open your eyes, Montana," he begged, tears starting to fall. "Come on, baby."
Finally, blessedly…she half-opened her eyes. "D-Danny?"
"Shh, Lindsay, hon, you'll be all right." He saw Mac kneel down next to him and press a baby blanket to Lindsay's side. He looked concernedly into Danny's eyes, but Danny ignored his gaze and locked eyes with his wife.
"L-Lucy?" she asked, and winced. Danny tried to shift her to make her more comfortable. "She's fine, she's fine, she's with Auntie Jess and Uncle Flack," he said, forcing a smile into his voice. "Our baby girl is just fine."
She nodded, faintly. "Okay." Her eyes started to close again. Danny tilted her chin with his hand. "Hey! Goddamn it, Lindsay, stay with me. We're down the block from a hospital, you're gonna be okay."
He heard sirens. Hurry up, hurry up hurryuphurryup- "See, they're already here, baby girl. They're here."
But Lindsay had closed her eyes again. Danny looked at Mac, sheer terror in his eyes. "M-Mac! Mac, oh God…Lindsay, come on…Mac! Mac, help me!"
I can't lose her. Not here. Not like this. I can't lose her…
Two hours later later, Flack and Angell returned to Sing Sing. Sonny Sassone was already waiting for them in an interrogation room. "Donnie!" Sonny hailed him. "And your beautiful par-"
"Fuck you," Angell spat, cutting him off.
"Would like to, honey," Sonny said, not missing a beat. "But that was a little harsh…What'd I do to deserve that?"
Angell looked like she was near ready to jump the table and strangle him on the spot, so Flack took over. "You must like prison, Sonny. I mean, what is it, the food? The company? The room?"
"It's the meatloaf," Sonny said immediately, and Flack had to push aside all his anger to keep from strangling Sonny himself.
"We caught your little sister, Sonny. Doin' your dirty work?"
Aha! Jess caught the flicker in Sonny's eye. "She'll be joining you," Flack told him. "You know what she told us? That she was pissed she spent all these years alone." He slapped the table. "Well, won't it be nice, she'll have some company for the next twenty-five to life-"
"Fuck you, Flack," Sonny said warningly, but Flack wasn't done.
"-and then she won't be alone anymore." Flack leaned over the table, his eyes boring into Sonny's. "Because she'll have you waiting on the other side here in hell." He stood up, as Sonny started simmering in his seat.
"Enjoy the rest of your life, Sonny, what's left of it," Flack told him.
But Sonny had to have the parting shot. "How's Danny?" he asked the detective. "Manda gave me a little phone call before they booked her."
"You son of a bitch!" Flack growled, and this time, he did go over the table. Jess grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back. "Flack, no!"
Jess shoved Flack back against the two-way glass. "Flack, back the hell off," she growled. Her partner glared at her, but she stared right back. "Don't fucking let him get off on this," she whispered to him.
Then she let go of him, and turned to Sonny. "I can't wait until they call and tell me you're about to die here in prison, Sonny," she hissed at him. "Because I'll be in the front fucking row to see you off."
The moon was starting to rise over New Jersey as Mac stepped out of the entryway and out onto the sidewalk outside Queen of Mercy. "Are you okay?" he asked Stella as he handed her the cup of hospital coffee.
She nodded, shoving her free hand into her pocket and taking a sip of the coffee. Her hands shook, and she had to set it down on the bench. She set the Styrofoam cup down with such force that some of the liquid spilled over the side, but she barely noticed it. She glanced over at Mac, who was staring intently at her. "No," she admitted. That was an understatement. The day from hell, how about that? The worst day of our lives?
Mac agreed with a nod. He sighed. No one knew what to say anymore. He suspected it would stay that way a long time.
"Have you talked to Danny?" Stella asked after a moment.
Mac's eyes clouded over. "He's up with…with Lindsay. He's having a hard time forgiving himself for what happened today."
"None of it was his fault," Stella pointed out. "There's no way we could have stopped-"
"I know that, and you know that," Mac replied. He sighed. "But try telling Danny that."
There was silence as the two friends listened to the ambient sounds of the city, neither really enjoying the off-brand coffee. "What do you think she was thinking?" Stella asked. "I thought Danny got through to her. I thought if anything, she'd have trained the gun on him, or herself but…"
"Maybe she was looking for big brother's approval, one more time," Mac offered. "I don't think we'll ever know for sure. Maybe it'll come out at the trial."
"I doubt there'll be one," Stella said. "You saw her as much as I did. Any defense attorney worth his salt is going to get her an insanity plea." She looked at the sidewalk. "I don't think there was a person left anymore….just a warped shell." She shivered. Then she looked at Mac, determination in her eyes. "We have to make sure that doesn't happen to Danny. Today stripped him to a shell of the man he was. We can't let that happen to him, Mac, we can't let him lose himself…"
"It will take time," Mac replied. "But he's got their daughter to take care of. Danny's a fighter, Stel. He'll get through it. We'll be there every step of the way."
"I think we're all going to take a long time," Stella said. "But we'll make it through. We always do," she said. "One step at a time. We're gonna get through this." She looked up at Mac, determination in her eyes. "We're going to get him through this."
She glanced down, saw she was holding Mac's hand. But Mac didn't seem to mind. In fact, he was squeezing it back. Whether to reassure her or him, Stella wasn't sure.
So she squeezed back. And when she started to cry, he was right there to hold her.
Adam sat in the waiting room. The cable channel was showing Superman IV, but he wasn't remotely interested. His eyes kept flickering toward the door across the hall. He hadn't been there, in that apartment, just blocks away today, he'd been in the A/V lab, monitoring everybody through mics and video.
Yet it still hit him as hard as if he'd actually been there. Today had shaken everybody down to the core. It had pushed them all to their limit.
He knew he'd never be the same.
Hawkes was a doctor. He knew the odds. He'd been there, he'd been in the room, listening to the blips on the monitor. Holding someone's life in his hands.
He imagined, in a sick, twisted way, that that's what Amanda Sassone thought as she stood in that room today. She held the fate of three people in her hands for ten hours.
The thing he was sure hadn't computed for Amanda Sassone today, however, was that once something happened while you held their life in your hands, you became responsible not only for their fate…but the fate of everybody intertwined with them. Her brother had kept her under his thumb for so long, using her as a pawn to do his dirty work…Hawkes hated it that he'd broken her down so much that he could use her like he had. That she'd effectively ruined her life, Danny and Lindsay's…and everybody that knew them.
He slid to the floor, his head in his hands.
Author's Note: This chapter and the conclusion have been written since November of last year, and I just wasn't happy with them. Thank you to lily moonlight for letting me bounce them off her to see how I could improve them. Final chapter to follow.