Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
A/N: Thanks to all readers and especially reviewers. I did promise that Flack and Stella would have their chance, didn't I?
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 51: Take You Today
The magical mystery tour is coming to take you away,
Coming to take you away.
The magical mystery tour is dying to take you away,
Dying to take you away, take you today
Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe he had hit his head when he had landed in the ditch. But suddenly the thought of Danny Messer, the definitive city boy, being stuck in back-woods Montana in the middle of a snowstorm struck Don Flack as incredibly funny.
He put his head back and struggled to keep his amusement to himself. Breathing deeply, he counseled himself against hysterics; it wouldn't do him any good in this room to start whooping with laughter. Everyone in here was already on edge, worried about Lindsay, worried about Danny. And he was supposed to be one of Messer's best friends! How could he take this so lightly?
Well, it was a pretty funny picture, he argued with that more mature self. After all, Danny's idea of roughing it was having to watch a Knicks game on a small-screen TV and drink beer out of cans instead of bottles. As far as Flack knew, he had never left the Tri-State area. But when it mattered, he hadn't thought twice about jumping on a plane and going to be with Lindsay.
Flack looked at Stella, who was listening intently to something Hawkes and Monroe were arguing about. What, he wondered, would he be willing to do for Stella, if she needed it?
As if she felt his eyes on her, Stella leaned back in her chair and swiveled around to look at him. Her smile started way down in the depths of her green eyes, and lit up her face.
Anything. Anything she needed.
He snapped back to attention when Adam Ross exclaimed loudly, "That's a trip, man!"
"What?"
Hawkes had put up a list of other Bozeman police officers and lab technicians, and Adam was pointing at one name that stood out.
"Look at that! Ross Adams. What are the chances?" Adam was looking around the room.
Mac's eyes narrowed. "He's shown up before."
Hawkes agreed, "He's the tech who lost the bullet casings Lindsay collected at the ranch, and didn't collect her clothes to process at the hospital."
"So: kingpin, incompetent, or scapegoat?" Flack had moved up, all traces of humour gone now.
"What did you find out about him, Hawkes?" Mac snapped.
"Graduated from Montana State University in 2003, BSc with specialty in forensic sciences. Graduated high school in Billings, Montana, 1997. No record of employment outside of the Bozeman lab. He's clean, as far as I can tell."
"Sounding more goat than kingpin. Keep looking, Hawkes. What did you find out about the bullet found at the Monroe ranch?" Mac hadn't had a chance to talk to Hawkes before they met with Monroe; everyone was working on extended and double shifts.
"That bullet was from a Winchester 94 rifle. Pretty standard – most popular hunting rifle sold in the US," Hawkes was looking through his notes as he spoke.
Monroe nodded, "Nearly every family around here has at least a couple like it. Won't tell us much unless we can find the actual gun and match ballistics."
Hawkes looked up and focused on John Monroe on the screen for a moment, "Second shooter at the original scene? Bullets are also from a Win94, but the ballistics test was inconclusive on the original bullets. Looks like the testing is still incomplete?" Hawkes shook his head in disgust, and grabbed another file. "Forbes had a Ruger 10/22. That's confirmed by the ballistics report. But this mark on Lindsay's face from '95?" Hawkes flashed the picture up on screen again and pointed to the mark on her temple. It was rectangular and, once magnified, had a faint crosshatched pattern. "The dimensions could fit the Win 94 rifle butt."
"That makes it an even stronger bet that the second shooter is involved in the recent attacks on Lindsay. It's just too big a coincidence for me to swallow that someone else gets this upset with her when she returns. It has to be connected." Mac's face was a grim mask of frustration.
"I'll send you what I was able to twitch out of the old files, but there's not much more there," Monroe said. "I agree with you that these cases are linked. There's no way that Lindsay could have been involved in something else this big without it having shown up by now. As long as Messer and she are safe, we can work through the rest of this crap."
Mac rubbed his face tiredly. "We're not going to be able to put much more time on this from here, Monroe. We've stretched our resources, and my people, about as far as they can go."
Stella and Hawkes both looked up in inarticulate protest. Mac waved them silent, "I know everyone in this room would work as long as it takes to solve this, but we are running out of time here. I have to be responsible to the rest of the department."
"I understand and concur, Detective. If we could arrange one more meeting, perhaps tomorrow, we might be far enough ahead that we can make sure Lindsay stays safe."
Mac nodded shortly, keeping his back turned to his team, "Thank you, Agent Monroe. We will be in touch."
Hawkes shut down the connections, his fierce concentration on the job at hand showing his anger. Stella was somewhat less restrained.
"What the hell was that?"
Mac did not turn around to face her. "What was what?"
"We are not just giving up on them, Mac! This is Lindsay and Danny we are talking about! We don't just leave our own out there with no back up, no support!" She would have gone on, but the words choked her.
Mac turned slowly and everyone was shocked at the dead look in his eyes. "What do you suggest we do, Stel? All go out to Montana? We've already lost Danny. Stay here and keep working double, triple shifts? Flack has about five minutes left in him before he collapses, and Hawkes hasn't been home in two days. Do you really think I don't want to help those two out? But I will not jeopardize this lab's work or its integrity. And an exhausted team working round the clock does that."
Stella bit her lip against the angry words struggling to be said. Peyton was looking at her beseechingly, silently begging her not to keep pushing Mac. Hawkes and Adam were keeping out of the way, shutting down the computers and tagging what evidence they had. Flack stepped up beside her, and took her arm gently.
"Come on, Stella. He's right. We need to break, at least for a while. We're not giving up on them, I promise you." He shot a look at Mac, but refrained from adding any more heat to that fire.
He led her out of the room. They walked silently down to the parking lot and Stella held out her hand for the keys to Flack's car. He patted down his pockets, too tired to argue, then froze when he realized he didn't have his keys.
"Shit. Jefferson has my keys. He drove my car back from the scene." He leaned up against the car, wiped out.
"Stay here; I'll find them." It was only a few minutes later that Stella was back, unlocking the doors and pushing Don into the passenger seat. "He'd left them with the Desk Sergeant. Keep an eye on that boy, Flack. He could be useful."
Don nodded tiredly, put his head back against the headrest, and promptly fell asleep.
He vaguely remembered getting out of the car when Stella told him to. He vaguely remembered fumbling for his door key, and holding on to Stella when she said goodnight. The next thing he knew clearly was waking up in his own bed, fully dressed except for his sweatshirt, shoes and socks, with Stella warm and wrapped in his arms.
He blinked once in the darkened room and moved very slowly so as not to wake her up. He needed a bathroom, a toothbrush, and his head examined, in that order. The first two were quickly accomplished; the third would have to wait.
While he was in the bathroom, Stella had rolled into the centre of the bed, most of the bed clothes falling off her. Carefully, Don stripped off the clothes he had now spend far too much time in and climbed in beside her, insinuating himself slowly back into her arms. She was wearing nothing but panties and one of his old t-shirts, and it was the sexiest thing he had ever seen.
He ran his hand through her hair, fascinated as always by the life it seemed to have as it curled around his fingers. He ran his knuckles gently over her cheek, then followed the curve with his lips, down her throat to the warmth of her shoulder. She moaned and moved against him, and his mouth trailed back up to hers.
He teased and tormented her into consciousness, hands held loosely behind her, touching her only incidentally if at all. Nothing but his mouth, his lips, his tongue, tasting, savouring until she was shaking in his arms. She answered him in the same key, her hands touching nothing but his face. They breathed each other in, catching a word here and there and tossing it back, murmuring soft nonsense sounds, creating a language unheard of until that moment.
When his hands finally swept over her body, she arched against him, all thought suspended. His hands exposed, enticed, explored her until she could no longer wait, and when his mouth followed, she lost all the control she had so carefully maintained for the past several months. She simply came apart, and he held her as her body responded, murmuring hoarse, broken words of commitment and passion until she returned to herself.
Then, and only then, did he rise above her. Then, and only then, did he fill her. And only when he felt her respond again, come again, did he take the plunge into oblivion that was waiting for him. And it was her name and nothing more that he gasped out as he went.
The world seemed to have stopped: heartbeat, sight, hearing, all suspended for a few minutes. Then, with a rush, all sensation rolled back and he realized he was crushing Stella under him. He shifted onto his side and pulled her into his arms again, brushing her cheeks, her lips, her hair with his mouth, murmuring her name over and over.
Stella lay still in his embrace. Her eyes remained closed, her lips trembling, her hands cold on his arms. She didn't pull away from him, but he could feel her disappearing, nonetheless.
"Stella? What is it? Did I hurt you?" He knew he hadn't, not physically, anyway. He may not have been with as many women as rumour had it, but he was experienced enough to know real passion when he felt it convulsing around him.
She shook her head, not speaking, not opening her eyes.
"Then what's wrong? Talk to me, Stel." He'd do anything for her, wasn't that what he had thought in the conference room? Anything except wait until she was really ready, it seemed.
She shook her head again, tears leaking from under closed eyelids.
"No way. You don't get to cry and not tell me what's wrong. Only girls do that." His voice was rough, but the hand which swept over her cheeks and dried her tears was so gentle it threatened to turn her weeping to sobbing.
He pushed her away and forced her head up to look him in the eyes. "Tell me what I did wrong."
She sniffed and said, "Nothing. It's not you, Don…"
"If you are planning on finishing that sentence the way I think you are, just swallow it now and think again." His scowl was so fierce, she unexpectedly giggled. He looked ruffled and frustrated and ready to slam his fist through something.
Stella bit her lip, and then threaded her hands through his hair, pulled him close, and bit his lip gently before curling into his arms more closely than before. "I was just wondering," she whispered.
"About what?" Distractions would not work, he reminded himself. He was an expert interrogator and no one sidetracked him from his duty to get the answers he was looking for. Not even a someone who was warm and naked and crawling into his lap.
"Wondering why it took us so long to get here," she whispered again, and took him over.