Hey,

Thanks to everyone that has read and reviewed so far. I really appreciate them.

Here's chapter two for you, hope you enjoy.

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Chapter Two

The shrill tone of his pager cut through the peace of their room, slicing through the darkness like a knife, a gunshot.

He groaned loudly, rolling onto his back, rubbing at his eyes tiredly, running his hand through his hair.

"Danny?" Her voice was slurred, exhausted, muffled by the pillow, ripped from sleep and her dreams. "What time is it?"

"It's okay, Montana." He ran his hand through her soft hair, leaning over to kiss her gently on the lips. "I got a page. Go back to sleep."

"Mkay." She yawned, settling back down against the pillows, almost smiling as the mingled smell of her perfume and his aftershave filled her senses. "Make sure you leave me the covers when you…." She yawned again, already drifting back to sleep.

Danny Messer watched her as she slept, a slight smile playing across his lips.

His pager beeped on the bedside table next to him, impatient and frustrated at being ignored. He reached over, pressing the silence button, cutting it off in midsquawk. He squinted at the numbers, his glasses lying forgotten next to his shield and phone. He didn't need them to see the familiar number, the liquid digits crawling across the screen.

"Dammit, Flack, this better not be another fucking cart dash."

xxxXXXxxx

He rested his head against the wall as the night moved in around him, cold and biting, his trousers stiff with his own blood, his knee cap shattered and broken, Michael Caffee's bullet still lodged inside the joint.

Michael Caffee.

Michael fucking Caffee.

James McCann was going to fucking shit when he heard about this.

Michael Caffee.

He almost laughed as the torches swept through the cold, dark night, sirens chasing the piercing beams through the narrow streets. His laughter swallowed, drowned by the sudden stiff rush of pain through his body. Instinctively, he grasped at his knee, his fingertips brushing against the wreckage.

A torch beam played across his face, making him blink rapidly, squinting against the intrusive piercing, penetrating gleam.

"I got something here."

A uniform cop advanced carefully, his partner at his back, torches skimming through the darkness, through the shadows. Guns aimed carefully into the thick cold shadows, tasting of frost, the bitter chill of a New York night.

"bout time you bastards got here."

"Control, this is NA003, we have one male, Caucasian, single GSW to the…"

"Shit, has this guy been fucking kneecapped?"

"Control, we need a bus here." He glanced at Sam's knee, stretched out on the cold ground in front of him, steam rising from the wound as the chill wind kissed it, brushing it with cold fingers. "Shit."

"Copy that, NA003."

"Control…you better notify Homicide as well. Sonofabitch has a bullet in his knee, and I don't think it got there by accident."

xxxXXXxxx

"Flack, you'd better have another db with a Statue of Liberty through his face, otherwise I'm going to kick your ass all over the city."

"What about a knee capping?"

"A knee capping?" Danny raised his eyebrows in surprise, breath frosting out in front of him, shivering a little in the cold. "A real, honest a god knee capping?"

"Yeah." Flack smiled bitterly, chewing on the end of his pen. "Don't see one of those every day, do you?"

"Aren't we a few thousand miles west for that sort of shit?"

"Normally, yeah." Flack lifted the police tape and they ducked underneath it. "Not for this piece of work though."

"You know this guy?"

"Yeah, he aint talking, but I know him." Flack's eyes glittered darkly in the dim light of the alleyway. "Sammy McCann. A real piece of work."

"You think this was a punishment shooting?"

"Yeah." Flack stopped in front of McCann, his hands thrust deeply in the pockets of his overcoat, leaning over the slumped body, his smile twisting, his eyes cold and angry, as cold and dark as the night around him. "Course, Sam here, being the fine upstanding citizen he is, he's not telling me what he might be getting punished for."

"Fuck you, Detective." The man gasped, his forehead coated with a fine sheen of sweat. "I thought I heard one of your boys call for my ambulance?"

"In a minute, in a minute." Flack waved his hand vaguely in the air. "First my friend here wants to have a look at your knee."

"At my knee?" He gasped again, his breath like a cloud of smoke in the narrow alleyway, the buildings tight around them. "Why the fuck would he want to look at my knee?" His eyes widened, fixed on Danny, moving towards him.

"To help us find out who shot you." Flack leaned against the wall, ignoring the chill emanating from the bricks. "You do want us to find out who shot you, don't you?"

"Stay the fuck away from me, cop." He tried to shift on the ground, squirm away from Danny, his leg dragging behind him like a marker, the bullet still tearing at his skin, grinding against the joint. "Stay away from me."

"believe me, I'd rather have." Danny jerked his head at Flack. "Hold him still, will ya?"

"Sure."

Sam writhed on the ground as Flack's large hands closed around his shoulders. Memories of the muzzle flash, the smell of smoke, of burning flesh, of a bullet searing through cartilage, bone and muscle.

His attention focused on the object in Danny Messer's hands.

For the second time that night, Samuel McCann's screams echoed through the narrow alleyway.

Danny held up the bloodstained bullet, grimly clenched in the teeth of his tweezers. "Forty five calibre." He gave a low whistle, reaching for an evidence bag from his case. "One of those suckers from close range, really gonna mess up a knee."

"Yeah." Flack stepped away from McCann, slumped unconscious against the wall of the alley, his skin slick with perspiration. "Daniels! You can let that bus through now!"

"Right away, Detective."

"I'm sorry you caught this, Danny."

Messer shrugged, reluctant to meet his friends eyes, glancing around the alleyway. "I'll finish up here, get back to the lab. We might get lucky, get a hit back on the bullet."

"I'm going to go with our boy to Bellevue." He forced a smile, hungry and eager, a hunters smile. "See if he's a little more interested in talking now that there's not a bullet lodged in his knee."

XxxXXXxxx

"What can I get you?"

"Whiskey. Straight up."

"Coming up."

He leaned back against the bar, nursing his drink, swirling the whiskey in the bottom of the glass, his eyes darting around the rest of the drinkers, old men, worn down and battered, hunched over their drinks.

Scared to met his eyes.

Good.

His heart rate, his breathing, slow and easy, even. As if he had just sent his message to James McCann by phone, or face to face, rather than by a bullet in his nephews knee. He had done what needed to be done.

Better that they didn't look at his eyes, lest they saw the devil lurking inside him.

The bar almost silent, still. Waiting for the calm to break, for the storm to come, to wash them and their sins away.

Michael Caffee smiled grimly, raising his glass to the silent, uncaring bar. "Slainte."

xxxXXXxxx

"Dr. Callaghan…"

"Detective Flack." She stopped in the middle of the ER's organised chaos, lifting another chart from the admits desk, glancing at him over the top of it. "Little early for you to be down here, isn't it?"

"Maybe." He smiled, his eyes warming, brightening as he glanced quickly at her, then darkening to cobalt , the flash of winter sun gone, hidden behind storm clouds.. "I'm looking for Samuel McCann."

"Your kneecapping?"

"Yeah."

She replaced the chart, leaning across the desk to lift another, flicking quickly through the notes. "He's sleeping now. Someone decided that they were going to remove the bullet from his knee with a pair of forensic tweezers."

"Someone decided he was going to put a bullet in his knee in the first place."

"Come back in the morning, Detective." She replaced the chart on top of the disorganised stack, burying her hands into the pockets of her white coat, shivering a little as the doors opened, letting the chill of the New York night into the ER. "It's not like he's going anywhere tonight."

End of Chapter Two