Author's Note: For everyone who wondered where the kiss was in the last chapter, the prompt was letter: xoxo, which was in the note Shawn left for Carlton.

"You could always come over to my place." (body: hands)

The first thing he noticed as he pulled into the parking lot of the station was a black lump sitting in the middle of the parking lot. He steered carefully around it, so that he wouldn't hit it, and that was when he realized what it was.

Spencer's cast boot, thrown away like a piece of garbage.

In the passenger seat beside him, he could hear O'Hara's breath catch as she recognized the boot. Stopping in the first parking space he came to, he threw the car into park and got out, picking the boot up before he headed for station house.

Corbett was crumpled at the foot of the stairs, and O'Hara headed for the other woman, immediately. Carlton paused at the foot of the stairs while O'Hara checked on Corbett, and he was close enough to hear her quiet sigh of relief.

"She's breathing," his partner said, pulling her cell phone out and dialing for an ambulance.

Going inside the station, he was greeted by the sight of McNabb struggling to sit up, groaning in pain. Carlton went over to the other man, pulling him carefully to his feet and depositing him in a nearby chair when he started swaying.

Blood was crusted on McNabb's forehead, oozing slowly from a gash on his temple. His eyes were unfocused as he stared around the station, but there was a flicker of recognition when he saw Carlton.

"Detective," he said, his voice slurred. "He took Shawn. Had a gun."

"Who?" Carlton asked, shoving down the fear that threatened to rise up at the younger man's words. "Who took him, McNabb? Was it Mason?"

McNabb nodded, the movement threatening to topple him out of the chair until Carlton steadied him. Grabbing a box of tissues from the desk, he pressed a wad to the gash in McNabb's forehead, ignoring the other man's pained grimace.

"It's going to hurt even worse if you don't hold pressure on that," he reminded McNabb, who nodded.

He placed his hand over the tissues, holding them in place, but Carlton wasn't sure if he really understood what he had been told to do. Hearing footsteps behind him, he turned to see an emergency tech entering the station, and he waved the man over, impatiently.

"He's got a head injury," he said, brusquely. "Needs to get to the hospital."

"We've already got the other officer loaded in the wagon," the EMT told him. "Are they the only ones?"

"Looks like it," Carlton answered.

Moving away to give the EMT room to work on McNabb, Carlton looked around and saw Spencer's cane lying on the floor near his desk. He picked the cane up and moved behind his desk, freezing at the sight of a single piece of paper in the middle of the desk. For a second, he thought it was from Mason, but then he recognized Spencer's distinctive scrawl.

The note, reminding him about their tentative dinner plans, and ending with a written kiss, had guilt gnawing at him. Spencer had been snatched from the one place where he should have been completely safe. He'd all but sworn to keep Spencer out of Mason's clutches, and then he'd been out on a wild goose chase while the murderer waltzed into the station and grabbed him.

Carlton started for the door, but not before he snagged Spencer's note off of his desk and folded it up, sticking it in his pocket. Going outside, he found O'Hara briefing the rest of the task force, but she trailed off when she saw him.

"Was it Mason?" Detective Andrews called out from the middle of the group.

"It was Mason," Carlton confirmed, to the grumblings of the cops that surrounded him. "He assaulted Corbett and McNabb, and he abducted Spencer at gunpoint."

The noise from the group got louder, at that, and Carlton was reminded of just how many friends on the force Spencer had made while working with the police. And he was never more grateful of that fact than he was, now. Mason hadn't just gone after some random juror; he'd taken one of their own. And he was going to pay for it.

"I want a list of all of Mason's known haunts," he said, raising his voice so that everyone could hear him. "Any place, no matter how tiny, that he might go to ground."

The cops around him leapt into action, heading inside the station. O'Hara followed the group, slower, stopping beside Carlton when she reached him. He could see a thousand questions in her eyes, but she finally settled on placing a comforting hand on his arm.

"We're going to get him back," she said, quietly, but he could hear the worry behind the forced bravado in her voice.

He nodded, patting her hand in his own, small form of comfort. Then, he followed the rest of the task force into the station. The station was buzzing with activity as cops worked to track down Mason, voices flying across the room as they shouted at each other.

Carlton let the noise wash over him for a moment before he headed back to his desk. As he sat down, the note in his pocket crinkled, and his resolve to find Spencer intensified. But, before he could start his own search, there was one thing that he absolutely needed to do.

Dialing his phone, he listened to it ring before Henry Spencer picked up. Summarizing the events in a few, short sentences, he listened to the elder Spencer breathe on the other end of the line, and he waited for the inevitable explosion. But, when Spencer spoke, his voice was tightly leashed, like he was fighting for control.

"I'll be there in fifteen," he snapped, and then Carlton heard a dial tone as the phone was slammed back into the cradle.

Spencer was there within the promised fifteen minutes, stalking his way over to Carlton's desk without a word. Carlton kept one eye on the older man's approach, watching with some degree of amusement as cops scurried out of Spencer's way or risk getting run over.

"What do you have?" the older man barked, stopping beside Carlton's desk.

"So far, nothing," Carlton told him, ignoring the glare Spencer was shooting him. "We're tracking down his known haunts, trying to figure out where he would have taken Shawn."

It hit him as soon as the words had left his mouth that he'd called the younger man by his first name, something that he'd been avoiding ever since that first kiss. But now, the name slipped out as easily as if he'd used it every day. He wondered idly if that was indicative of anything, or if it was just the stress talking.

Suddenly, there was a triumphant shout went up three desks over, and Carlton was jolted out of his thoughts.

"You got something?" he demanded, going over to the other cop, with Spencer not far behind.

"Mason's ex wife," Holden told him, her eyes never leaving the screen. "Her family owns a shipping company with warehouses down by the docks." Looking up at him, she added, "It's just a couple miles away from where the first three bodies were dumped."

"You're with me," Carlton ordered her. "And, you, Andrews," he continued, to the other cop's immediate agreement. "The rest of you keep looking," he called out, catching everyone's attention. "I want more possibilities if this one doesn't pan out."

He headed for the door, stopping short when Chief Vick stepped out of her office, her arms across her chest. He'd taken control of things without even thinking about it, and he wondered if he was about to be reprimanded for it. But, she didn't look angry with him, like he was expecting.

"I just got off the phone with the police commissioner," she said, quietly. "He sympathized with me over the situation, but talked about acceptable losses if it meant bringing Mason in."

Carlton started to speak, but she cut him off with an upraised hand.

"I told the commissioner to stuff it," she went on. "Bring our boy home, Detective."

"I will," Carlton promised.

Vick just nodded in reply, disappearing back into her office as her phone started to shrill, again. Carlton headed out to his car, slamming the door behind him as he started the engine. O'Hara, in the passenger seat, had a fiercely determined look on her face as she stared out of the window. And Spencer, in the back, was ominously silent, but there was a drawn look on his face that showed just how worried he was.

The drive to the warehouse was completely silent, the tension inside the car so thick it could have been cut with a knife. Everyone was occupied with their own thoughts, and Carlton was more than happy to not have anyone trying to engage him in conversation. He had enough on his mind just trying not to think of what could be happening to Shawn every second that he wasn't there.

When they finally arrived at the warehouses, it felt like an eternity had passed. And it took another before they found the right one, slipping silently in through the doors that Mason had left cracked open. There were stacks of pallets piled up near the entrance, providing them with handy cover, and Carlton was grateful for criminals that let the little details slip through the cracks.

He and O'Hara both had their weapons out, and when he turned to offer Spencer his backup piece, he was completely unsurprised to see that the man was already armed. He wondered if he was going to have to stop Spencer from killing Mason, and a small part of him wanted to just let the older man go.

But, he squashed that thought as quickly as it had popped up. Much as he might want to, he wasn't going to go against the book on this one. He didn't want there to be any reason for Mason to slip through the cracks a second time.

They found Mason and Shawn in the middle of the warehouse, Shawn sitting in a chair with his arms tied tightly behind him. There was a dark bruise on his temple, likely from being hit with the gun, and probably countless other bruises that they couldn't see. Mason was circling the younger man, brandishing the gun as he ranted about something that Carlton couldn't hear.

"Why is Shawn still alive?" O'Hara whispered, from beside him, earning her furious looks from both him and Spencer. "I mean," she elaborated, "he never kept his victims alive for any time, before. So, why start now?"

"Because if I know my son," Spencer replied, his voice barely audible, "he's managed to annoy Mason enough to keep from getting shot."

"For once," Carlton muttered, "his overactive mouth is working in our favor."

Peering carefully around the edge of the pallets they were hiding behind, Carlton drew a bead on Mason, waiting for an opening. When Mason finally moved out from behind Shawn, leaving himself open, Carlton took the shot. Mason collapsed in a heap, clutching his bleeding leg in agony, but he managed to keep a hold of his gun as he went down.

He squeezed off a shot that had all three of them diving for cover, and Carlton swore when he lost sight of Shawn. But, an answering shot rang out a second later, and Mason howled again in pain. Getting back on his feet, Carlton moved cautiously out into the open, keeping his gun trained on Mason who was lying on the floor, writhing in pain. He couldn't see either O'Hara or Spencer, and he wondered which one of them had shot Mason.

"You okay?" he asked Shawn, never taking his eyes off Mason.

"I'll live," came the quiet reply.

Behind him, Carlton heard footsteps, and then O'Hara came up beside him, her handcuffs already out. She secured Mason and dragged him to his feet, ignoring his pained protests as he was forced to stand on his bad leg.

"Suck it up," she snapped at him, as she and Spencer forced him to walk toward the door. "I'll call you an ambulance once we're outside."

That left Carlton to get Shawn untied, which he found that he didn't mind at all. Moving behind the chair, he tried to untie the knots of the ropes binding the younger man to the chair. But, the ropes were so tight that they were digging into Shawn's skin, and he had to give up on that, quickly. Luckily, there were pieces of broken glass lying under a window and he used one of the shards to saw through the ropes.

"Thanks," Shawn said, wincing as he rubbed feeling back into his bruised wrists. "It was starting to feel like my arms were going to fall off."

"No problem," Carlton replied, taking one of Shawn's hands between his own as he crouched down in front of the chair.

He rubbed the skin, gently, trying to restore circulation without causing the younger man any more pain. Shawn was looking at him with an odd expression on his face, but he just shook his head when Carlton looked at him, quizzically.

"I'd thank you for rescuing me," he said, wryly, "but the words seem almost inadequate."

Carlton was silent as he kept working on Shawn's wrist, watching color come back into the broken skin. Before he switched to the other wrist, he planted a quick kiss to the palm of Shawn's hand, ignoring the man's quirked eyebrow at his actions. He wasn't sure what it said about him that the casually affectionate gestures were coming easier and easier to him.

He did the same to Shawn's other wrist, focusing intently on his task. Then he just sat there, holding Shawn's hands in a loose grip. The younger man was uncharacteristically silent, not pulling away as he looked at Carlton.

"I wanted to kill Mason," Carlton finally admitted. "When I got back to the station and realized that you were missing, I wanted to kill him."

There was more he wanted to say, like how scared he'd been when he realized that Shawn was missing, that moment when he'd had an inkling of just how much the younger man meant to him. But, he couldn't force the words past his lips, so he just kept holding on and hoped that the younger man really was as good at reading people as he seemed.

"Well, I'm glad you didn't kill him," Shawn told him. When Carlton looked at him in surprise, he elaborated, "It would be kind of hard for us to go on a date if you were being investigated by Internal Affairs."

Carlton had to smile at that. "I got your note," he told the younger man.

"Yeah," Shawn said, ruefully, "I think I might have to miss dinner, tonight. I don't think I'm really up to doing anything right now that doesn't involve going home and collapsing."

"You could always come over to my place," Carlton said, trying to keep his voice casual. "I could cook us both dinner."

Shawn froze at his words, and Carlton marveled at how little it took to stun the other man into silence.

"You can cook?" Shawn asked, but Carlton was pretty sure that wasn't what he meant to say.

"I'm pretty good at it," Carlton told him. "So, what do you say?"

He pulled Shawn to his feet, reaching out to catch him when he started swaying. Carlton wrapped his arms around Shawn's waist to keep him standing, supporting the younger man when he leaned against him.

"I can't believe I'm about to say this," Shawn told him, "but I'm going to have to take a rain check on dinner."

"I'll hold you to that, then," Carlton said, getting a smile from Shawn. "For, now, let's just get you home."