Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
A/N: I do have the greatest reviewers in the world. Keep your ideas coming – every message helps me make this work a little better. Thanks to all those who are just reading too; I can hear you out there, and it is comforting!
Here's just a tiny taste of things to come.
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 35: This Love of Mine
Bright are the stars that shine,
Dark is the sky,
I know this love of mine,
Will never die,
And I love her.
A few hours earlier:
Danny read out the disposable cell phone number slowly. "It's a two hour time difference, so don't worry about when you call if it's night." Danny paused to clear his throat. "Call me, okay?"
He hung up after leaving the message on Flack's phone. He hadn't spoken to him since before he left for Montana, and he needed to talk things through with someone who understood his language.
Danny hadn't thought twice about jumping on a plane to be with Lindsay when Diane had told him she was in the hospital. Now that he was here in Montana, far from home and all his support systems, he felt as if he had lost his balance.
Everything was a little too much: too big landscape-wise, too claustrophobic people-wise. He wasn't used to families like the Monroes; the parents at least had accepted him without question or reservation. They hadn't asked him any questions about his family or what they did: the first questions which would be asked in the Messer family, sometimes before a person was allowed to cross his father's threshold.
After meeting John in the early hours of the morning, Danny was introduced at breakfast to the two brothers who both lived in Montana: Jamie who lived on the ranch across the highway from his parents, and Mick who was a farrier in Butte, and traveled all over the West shoeing horses, especially at rodeos.
As a kid going to South Beach Park with his uncles to the bocce courts, Danny had sometimes wandered over to the horseshoe pitch and watched with bemusement. He had never connected the half-circles of iron with the clopping sound of horses' hooves in Central Park. He had certainly never thought about the men and women who turned iron bars into something that could protect a horse's surprisingly delicate hooves. One thing he knew for sure now, though: farriers were strong, and in Mick's case, at least, big. Mick's hand had completely enclosed his when they shook hands.
Jamie, like Lindsay, looked more like his mother than Ted; shorter than his younger brothers by nearly three inches, he was still taller than Danny by nearly the same amount. Both Jamie and Mick, like Ted, had the tanned leathery skin of outdoorsmen, with eyes sunk deep into sun-wrinkled faces. Both wore their ballcaps everywhere, even into the hospital room to kiss Lindsay and assure her in deep voices that they were going to make sure nothing got past them. They both called her "Peanut," which made her roll her eyes.
Danny didn't know whether to be flattered or worried that both men gave him the same look John had earlier: a promise, not a threat, of unspeakable violence should he be the one causing Lindsay any pain.
Lindsay introduced them both to Danny, a kind of bemused wonder in her voice when she told them he had come from New York to help her. All three brothers seemed to think it natural that anyone who knew Lindsay would be prepared to go to nearly any lengths to keep her safe. Thinking about Team Taylor's off-the-clock work on her case, Danny couldn't fault their assumption.
Danny sighed as he went back into Lindsay's room where her brothers were waiting. At least Lindsay was finally able to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time, and would be able to participate in the upcoming planning session.
Jamie and Mick had taken Danny back out to the ranch to search for the bullet which had so narrowly missed Lindsay. Projecting the bullet's path had been difficult, as the shooter had had her in his shot for several minutes, but Jamie called in his young sons and some of their friends to help in the search. He had also been able to find the point at which Dusty had taken off; Danny could see the difference in the depth and distance of the hoof-prints, so they had concentrated on looking past that area. Jamie had been the one to find the bullet, dug slightly into the hard ground, but remarkably undamaged.
"Hey Danny. Did you get in touch with Don?" Lindsay's eyes were a little blurred; she was still buzzed on pain meds, although Chris had taken her off the morphine. She looked pale and ill, and Danny kissed her cheek as his heart twisted inside. He should have protected her.
"Had to leave him a message. He'll call back," he told her quietly.
"So, Messer, you want to lead this de-brief?" John Monroe was watching them carefully, as always, leaning against a wall, hands negligently in his pockets. Unlike his brothers in jeans and t-shirts, he was dressed in dress slacks and a button-down shirt, although he had left the tie at home. He had rolled the sleeves of his shirt up though, and looked every inch the professional he was.
"I talked to our team in New York, and got some direction from Mac Taylor," Danny started. After going through the case as he understood it, and explaining to the Monroe brothers what investigative steps the New York team was recommending, Danny told Lindsay about the Great Bullet Hunt and finished up, "At least now that we have the bullet, we can get some of the same information as we would have from the missing casings, including striations if we find a weapon to match it to."
Lindsay interrupted, "I did not lose those casings, Danny. Olafsen told one of the techs – Ross? I always want to call him Adam, for some reason – to pick them up off the table. When I packed up all the evidence in the box to give to Jeffers, those casings were not there."
Danny squeezed her hand, "Of course you did, Montana. We all know you wouldn't lose evidence. Mac nearly laughed at the thought."
Lindsay grinned at Danny's reference to Mac's notoriously solemn demeanour at work, then looked at her brothers, who were all smirking. "What?"
"Montana?" Mick said quietly. "You can take the girl out of the country …"
"Okay, you all get one minute to laugh. Then I don't ever want to hear another word about it, got that?" Lindsay had her mother's "rattlesnake" voice down pat, and laughed when the boys all cringed.
"You do know you've taken all the fun out of laughing at you, don't you?" Jamie asked.
Lindsay just sniffed and turned Danny's left wrist to look at his watch ostentatiously, "Fifteen seconds to go; oh, too bad! Time's up!"
Danny smothered a chuckle, then sobered up to continue laying out the case. "Lindsay, the Bozeman cops won't let me have any of your pictures or the evidence you collected at the scene. Mac and Hawkes could probably get more out it than you could with the equipment available to you here…"
"My camera is in my bedroom, Danny, along with my laptop. You should be able to download and send them without any trouble. The passwords are all the same as at work."
John's head came up at her casual dismissal of basic security, "Messer knows your passwords? Are you sure that's wise? No offense, Messer, but …" he faltered in the face of Lindsay's steely glare. Her hand was gripping Danny's tightly.
"I trust Danny with my life every day, John, just like you do with your partner. It wouldn't make much sense to trust him with my life and not with my passwords, would it?"
Wisely, Danny said nothing, although he wrapped his other hand over Lindsay's so hers was sandwiched between his. A little bitterly, he wished she had trusted him with her past as easily as she seemed to think she trusted him with her present.
"Uhh, I guess not. Still, what about private stuff? I don't know, like journals or something?"
"You have to give the guy credit for solid steel balls," Danny thought almost admiringly.
Lindsay stared straight at John, who was squirming a bit, "Danny, would you read my private files?" Her voice was confident.
"Absolutely." So was his.
She turned and stared at him with disbelief.
"If I thought there was something there that I needed to know to keep you safe, I wouldn't hesitate, Linds. You have to know that I would risk anything to keep you safe. Even break your trust, if I had to, much as I would hate to."
Lindsay may have been shooting daggers at him with her eyes, but all three brothers looked at him with approval.
"You guys are just as bad as McKim and Olafsen. They're constantly trying to keep me out if this too. Well, guess what, boys? I'm in it. Hell, I AM it! So don't go all protective male on me here, okay? I need to be involved."
"Being involved has got you nearly killed three times in one day, Lindsay," John pointed out, reasonably.
"And doing nothing won't change that now. This guy has decided that I know something he doesn't want me to talk about. He won't stop until I either spill it, or he kills me."
"Then we will all have to make sure you get a chance to remember, and put this bastard away," Diane's voice was quiet and somehow soothing as she shooed her sons away from Lindsay's bedside. "Now, you need to get some sleep, Lindsay, if tomorrow is going to work out the way Chris and your dad have planned it. Danny …"
"Is staying here," he broke in firmly.
"Is coming back to the house to eat and sleep," Diane corrected him equally firmly. "Or you aren't going to be able to play your part tomorrow either."
When Danny shook his head, Diane motioned to Mick, who wrapped one big hand around his arm and exerted pressure towards the door.
"Wait a minute! Can't we say goodnight first?" Lindsay asked, a little plaintively.
"Boys, give them a minute," Diane said, and turned back at the door, "I do mean a minute, Detective Messer."
"Yes, ma'am," he said submissively, and waited for the door to close before leaning over Lindsay and kissing her forehead gently. "You sleep good, okay, Montana? I need you sharp tomorrow."
"Danny," she whispered, "Say goodnight properly." She wrapped her good hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer for a kiss, her eyes closing in anticipation.
He tried to keep it chaste and quick, but she was surprisingly strong, and opened her mouth to him with a breathy little moan that nearly did him in. His arms, braced on either side of her, started shaking as he concentrated on not deepening the kiss, on not simply taking things to the next level, on not just dropping into the bed with her and losing himself in her sweet heat.
"Christ, woman," he whispered hoarsely as they finally came up for air. "There are three very big men out in the hall who are going to kill me for that."
She grinned, and pulled him close for a second kiss, this time adding a flicker of tongue and a throaty giggle.
When she let him go, his eyes were closed, and he looked a little dazed, "Of course, you could just kill me first – one more like that oughta do it."
Lindsay laughed, low and wicked, and started to oblige, when someone knocked gently on the door to the room as it opened. Instead of Diane smiling sympathetically, as Danny half hoped, Special Agent John Monroe stepped into the room, face stern and arms folded across his chest.
"Time to move out, Messer."
Lindsay stuck her tongue out at her older brother, and deliberately pulled Danny close for one more kiss, although she thoughtfully turned down the heat on it a little.
John walked into the room and put his hand on Danny's shoulder in a classic "come-along-with-me" move, directing him out of the room and into Diane's gentler hands. She took one look at Danny, who was a little stunned and a lot exhausted, and said gently, "Come along. Hot dinner and a warm bed, I think."
He fell asleep almost before she started the truck engine.