Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".

A/N: Wow, some of you are thinking more about this case than I am! I'm happy to keep you busy. Thanks as always to the people who read (and I hope enjoy) and the people who respond. More case to come, along with more angst (you knew that), more friendship, more family, and more loving!

Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY; all song lyrics are from The Beatles.

It's A Long Journey Home

Chapter 34: All Aboard

And our friends are all on board

Many more of them live next door

And the band begins to play

Don drove away laughing at the stunned look on Stella's face. After months of mooning around wondering how to get her to notice him as anything but a co-worker and a friend, he had decided to change his tactics. If that blush on her face was anything to go by, it looked like the campaign may pay off.

He warned himself against speeding things up, though. He had sat with Stella after Frankie's shooting, patiently going over and over the events that led up to her taking a gun and shooting her boyfriend three times, until they were both clear on what had happened and why. All the time he had observed as a police officer, and soothed as a friend, he had battled with the rage inside him which begged for nothing more than the power to resurrect the asshole who had hurt Stella so that he could have the pleasure of killing him all over again in various painful and crippling ways.

The agony of trying to hide that anger was still with him. He was afraid no one would understand it. Hell, he didn't understand it. He heard stories like Stella's every day, often ones which were worse, and although every story touched him, only Stella's experience had stayed with him that way, even following him into sleep. He still woke up some nights, choking from the dust and debris of the building that had blown up around him, the healed scar on his abdomen burning, but filled with rage at the sight of Stella's bruised face and shattered eyes hovering in front of him.

He shifted a little uncomfortably in the driver's seat of his car. He may have already blown it with Stella. She hadn't been out with anyone since Frankie. She clung to Mac, in spite of his relationship with Peyton, which though not widely advertised, was known to the team. She also spent a lot of time with Sheldon Hawkes, whose gentle, undemanding nature seemed to soothe her.

Don scowled. It was hard to imagine hating the doc, but he was beginning to come around to the idea.

He parked the car in front of the building holding his tiny apartment, a sixth floor walk up. That had been too much when he got out of the hospital; he had had to go stay with his parents until he was able to manage it again. The best day of his recovery was the day he had finally pulled his weary body up all six flights of stairs and fallen asleep in his own Lazy-Boy recliner in front of his own flat screen TV, watching the Rangers. That day had been like graduating, losing his virginity, and getting that first promotion, all rolled into one.

He glanced over at his phone, and saw the blinking light that said he had messages. Probably work: he sighed, but dutifully pressed the button as he pulled off the suit jacket and tie he wore to work and unbuttoned the dress shirt, letting it hang open as he moved towards his bedroom.

"Flack, where the hell are you? Don't tell me you're pulling doubles again. Get some of those other lazy bastards to do something once in a while, would ya?"

Don jumped back across the room; the voice was barely recognizable as Danny's. It went on, "Phone this number when you get a chance, 'kay? I need your help with something. Don't worry, I won't ask you to leave the city. One of us knee deep in cow shit is probably enough. I don't think Montana could take two of us out here."

There was a pause as Danny read off a phone number slowly, which Don wrote down on a pad he kept by the phone for case notes. "It's a two hour time difference, so don't worry about when you call if it's night." Danny's voice faded, then came back, intense but so tired Don ached for him. "Call me, okay?"

Checking the time, Don grabbed the phone and dialed the number, praying that he would get Danny and not some member of Lindsay's family. The phone rang once, twice, then voice mail kicked in, "The person you are calling is not available. Please leave a message at the tone."

"Danny, call me back at home as soon …" Don was half-way through the words, when the phone was picked up.

"Flack! Thanks for calling, man. I need you to do something for me."

"Anything you want, Danno, but for a price." Don tried to keep his voice light, but he could feel the anxiety tying his stomach in knots.

"What's the price?"

"Tell me everything that's happened since you got to Montana."

Danny laughed a little bitterly, "Don't want much, do you? Okay, here're the highlights."

Quickly he ran through Lindsay's hit-and-run, the morphine overdose, and the missing evidence. "I have Sheldon running John McKim."

"That's Lindsay's old partner?" Don was writing notes as Danny talked –occupational hazard.

"Think he'd like a more permanent position. He's all over her."

"That why you don't trust him, or is there more?"

Danny sighed, "Naw, there's more. He grew up with the Monroes, so he would know things like the trail they cut last year through the woods from her brother's place to her parents'. He'd have known where to go in, and he'd have known where the horses were kept. So that puts him in the frame for the shooting."

"Along with about a million other people."

"Yeah. The truck that hit Lindsay? She says it was a green domestic half-ton. She also identified the tire tracks at the trail as being from a domestic half-ton. Problem is that nearly everyone in town drives a half-ton, I haven't seen an import anything yet, and about half of them are green." Danny was frustrated, and Don could picture him rubbing the back of his neck, trying to ease some of the tension.

"And does McKim own a green domestic half-ton?"

"Not registered. But like I said, he could have borrowed or boosted one from just about anywhere."

Don looked over his notes. "So far, then, there's really nothing to tie him in. What about the OD?"

Danny went through the sequence of events with Don, as if re-telling it could reduce some of the horror. "So, any one of the three cops in the room could have gone back in and opened the drip – it wouldn't take any special knowledge. John Monroe dusted the IV apparatus; there were no prints. Dead end. A' course, doesn't have to be one of them. Olafsen still hasn't put any cops on Lindsay's door, so her room is pretty open. I got the doctor, Chris Martens, and the nurses doing double duty as security detail. Her brothers Jamie and Mick are going to spend tonight in her room, too."

"What about the missing evidence? The shell casings, Lindsay's clothes?"

"Again, anyone could be involved. McKim, certainly, although he's uniform. It's a pretty open station – small-town like, you know – easy to get in and out. Evans is the detective in charge of the Forbes case overall – Lindsay thinks he may have been on the original scene, even though he hasn't said anything to her. He doesn't like her, and hates me. Olafsen – he's the sheriff and he seems like a decent guy. Don't know whether he's any good at the job, but he's damn good at keeping the job; it would take a major revolution to get him out. Lindsay says he came long after the original school shooting, about 2000, maybe. So he has no direct involvement with the original case."

"He may be protecting someone now, though."

"That's the problem. We could be looking for the original shooter, we could be looking for someone involved in covering up poor police work in '95, we could be looking for someone who is covering up present poor work …"

"Or you could be looking at someone after Lindsay herself, outside of the original shooting at all." Don suggested that tentatively, and Danny's utter silence told him the thought had not occurred to him before this.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit."

"Sorry, man."

Danny sighed, "No, you're right. It is possible, I guess, and it could make things much harder."

Don thought of something, "Why didn't anyone go after Lindsay in the first place, when she came back to Bozeman as a CSI a couple of years ago?"

"I guess she wasn't a threat as long as Forbes hadn't remembered anything about the shooting. The second shooter seems to have felt secure as long as all the focus was on Forbes."

Don nodded, "Uh-huh, I can see that. Lindsay being called back to testify was the catalyst, triggered the anxiety. Now he's made it obvious that she is a target."

"Right. He's opportunistic: quick to take a chance, like the morphine, but he's patient when he needs to be, like the shooting. He could have waited there for several hours, or gone in more than once."

Don doodled on his pad for a moment, thinking his way through the case. There was nothing to hold onto, that was the problem, and not knowing the people involved meant that he was blind here.

"What about her brother, John? Stella told me he's a Fed – how's that going?"

"Okay. He's a pretty good guy, actually. We found the bullet in the field – I went out with Jamie and Mick, her other brothers, this afternoon. John is sending it to Mac to be analysed – I don't trust the Bozeman lab any more. At least we'll have striations to match …"

"If he shoots at someone again." Don finished the sentence grimly.

"Oh, you're a big help to me here, Flack," Danny said, aggravated.

"Sorry, Danny."

Danny sighed again, "Naw, I'm sorry man. I don't mean to take it out on you. I just hate this, you know?"

"So how is Lindsay doing?" Flack asked, hoping to cheer him up.

"She's hardly awake long enough to find out. Every time she wakes up, I have to explain why I'm here all over again. It's like she forgets me."

Don couldn't stand the lost tone in Danny's voice, "Or maybe she just can't believe that you're really there?"

A moment's silence on the other end of the phone, then Danny said gruffly, "Yeah, maybe. Thanks."

Don cleared his throat. "Look, Danny, is there anything I can do?"

"Yeah – I've emailed Mac all Lindsay's crime scene photos. He was right; her camera was in her bedroom. I know you guys have cases and stuff, but if you could look them over with Hawkes and Stella, Mac too if he has time. I know it's asking a lot…"

"You know you don't have to ask. We want you both back here. I got a bet or three riding on how things go from here on in." Don's voice was deliberately teasing, hoping to get Danny riled up to something like normal.

"Don't tell me – I don't even want to know about it." Danny just sounded tired.

Shit. A Danny who couldn't get fired up over his love life being bet on was in a bad way.

"Look, Flack, I gotta go. I don't know when I'll be in touch with you again. I'll try before we take off. Leave messages on this cell – I picked up a couple of disposables so they can't be traced. You and Mac are the only ones with this number – no one from Montana has it. I hope I can find service somewhere close. We're disappearing as soon as Linds is stable."

"Danny, be careful. Take care of her," Don said, and thought, "And yourself, bud."

"I will. Don't worry. Just – take a look at the evidence she collected, okay? I sent her whole case file too from her computer. Somewhere, somehow, there has to be something that will help us figure this out. She'll never be safe until this is finished."

Don promised again, and listened to the dial tone for a few minutes after Danny had hung up. He got up and finished changing into a sweatshirt and jeans, wandered around his apartment for a few minutes, thinking about food, then decisively grabbed his phone and hit speed dial.

"Hey, just heard from Danny. You got a little time to help me out?"