Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY. Poetry not otherwise referenced is original.

A/N: Sorry to have been gone so long – the relaxing holiday turned out to be neither relaxing nor a holiday, so things were a bit complicated. I'll try to get a few chapters up before the next attempt at getting away from it all (which doesn't work when you just pack most of it up and take it with you!)

If you have written me a message or left a review or posted a new chapter that I haven't reviewed – I apologize unreservedly. I'll try to catch up over the next few days.

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

Mosaic

Every time I stop to look, I see another small moment,

Momentum, movement showing traces of your existence.

You speak: I hear a note from your past, from my future,

A snatch of melody presently capturing who you were, are, will be.

A minute with you and I can feel the weight of time:

All the choices, decisions, coincidences that make up a life,

Which make up a journey from here to there, from then to now.

I want to preserve the now – like small bones in peat –

A fossil record of when and where we are,

But the moment passes: present is past in a gasp,

And I stumble along into the future,

Holding out a hand to you.

Chapter 35: Targeted

Hawkes never did know how he made it from the police station to the clinic – he seemed to have a vague memory of jumping a few intersections and perhaps even turning on his police lights at one point. He preferred to think he had been cool and collected when he ran up the stairs of the Sisters' Centre for Wellness, but the small crowd of muttering men who seemed to congregate at the end of the block stirred and fluttered like a flock of pigeons in Times Square as he passed through them, so he might not have presented quite as calm a picture as he would have liked.

"Angell? What happened? Is everyone all right?" Hawkes flashed his ID at the police officer who stepped in front of him when he banged through the door.

"Doc? What are you doing here?" Detective Angell turned in surprise. "I already have a CSI team."

"I'm friends with the women who run the clinic," he said briefly. "One of them called me. What happened here?" He didn't think about it; he automatically began processing the scene, his heart in his throat as he took in the destruction in the lobby.

Angell shrugged, "Looks worse than it was, Hawkes. A couple of kids, that's all. They ran through, tore the place up a little. We've called DHS in."

His ears pricked up at that, "Department of Homeland Security? What the hell for?"

"Because we deal in cases of homegrown terrorists, sir. And, together with the threatening messages, and the past history of certain members of the staff, this looks like a typical opening gambit in an increase in terrorist activity."

Hawkes turned around and watched as a tall man with startling white hair over a deeply tanned face swung into the foyer of the clinic with the self-confidence of a man who never makes a mistake.

Hawkes had autopsied more victims who got in the way of men who believed they never made a mistake.

"Special Agent Troy Grant. And you are?" The tone was dismissive, the hand held out merely a convention impatiently followed.

"Dr. Sheldon Hawkes, NYPD Crime Lab." Hawkes made sure to grip Grant's hand a little too tightly. Pissing games were time-honoured male rituals, he thought, with an inward grimace for how quickly he fell into the stereotype.

"We have a team already processing the site, Doctor." Grant's eyebrows rose at the title. "We really don't need a doctor – I think we have enough here already." He smirked a little.

"I was called to the scene by the victims. If I may?" Hawkes indicated the hallway Grant had just come from, asking tacit permission to enter the scene.

Grant nodded brusquely, ice-grey eyes watching Hawkes' every move. As Hawkes passed him, the agent said in a quiet voice, "Try to convince them their best bet is to co-operate fully with the authorities, Doctor. They are swimming in some deep waters here."

Miriam had never been good at sitting back under abrasive men, Hawkes thought with a smile. Out loud, he retorted, "I'll advise them as I see fit, within the letter of the law, Special Agent."

He could feel glacial eyes burning as he made his way down the hall to the meeting room he had seen before when he came with Stella and Flack. When he walked in the room, Miriam turned to him with gratitude, Kathleen said, "Oh thank God" loudly, but Nasreen barely looked at him. When he put his hand gently on her arm, she turned to him, head still down, hands covering her face, and burrowed into his arms like a frightened child. He held her as she sobbed silently, feeling the despair flow through her like water through a desert.

"What happened?" he said quietly, rubbing Nasreen's back gently.

Miriam and Kathleen were sitting closely together, hands entwined, and exchanged one of those glances in which many things are said without a word. "Four young men," Miriam started.

"Just boys, really," Kathleen added, protectively.

"Young men," Miriam corrected firmly, but understandingly, "Ran through the clinic, breaking things and shouting."

"Infidels. They called ME an infidel!" Kathleen shook her head, torn between amusement and anger. Unconsciously, her fingers went to the rosary that hung from her belt. Hawkes wondered if she had been in holy orders, then wondered where that idea had come from.

"They smashed our computer. Rica stepped out to stop them and was knocked over. She was cut when the computer smashed. She's been taken to the hospital; they haven't told us which one yet." Miriam was biting her lip and Hawkes could see how hard won her seeming calm was by the spots of blood on her teeth. She had bitten through her lip at least once.

"Like that Nazi out there would tell us anything," Kathleen muttered.

"I can find out how she is in just a minute, Miriam. Don't worry." He still had not let go of Nasreen, although she had slowly stiffened in his embrace. When she put her face up and took a step back, he was surprised at the regret he felt.

He urged her to sit down beside Kathleen on the couch, but when she shook her head and moved to the window, staring out at the little courtyard just blushing into spring, he did not insist.

"How long did it take?" Hawkes sat down, leaning forward, his hands loosely clasped in front of him. He did not take notes; he rarely needed to.

"Minutes. Maybe less. They just ran through, shouting and knocking things over."

"They trampled Amir. He's five. They didn't even seem to notice him – just ran right over him." Miriam voice was also full of outrage.

Nasreen closed her eyes and shuddered.

"But that wasn't the bad part," Miriam too was watching Nasreen. "When we called the police, they … they …"

"They blamed me." Nasreen's voice was cold and remote, as if she was no longer in the room. "They said it was because of me."

-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY

Peyton had finally talked him out of the office by threatening to sedate him and take him home in an ambulance. Looking at her with no little pride, Mac thought she was just about capable of it too.

Not that he told her that, of course.

Instead, he had taken her advice and called a cab to get them both to his house. When he fell asleep in the back seat, she had woken him quietly, paid the driver and helped him into the brownstone. Blearily looking around him as they moved up the stairs, he thought for a moment that someone was watching them from under the windows near the side of the house, where the shadows were deepest, but by the time he could get his tongue moving to warn Peyton, the sense of someone observing was gone and he forgot about it nearly at once.

Mac couldn't even remember getting to the couch where he fell asleep. It could have been minutes; it could have been hours, before he heard the soft murmur of voices coming from the front hall. He thought about his options seriously, but could not make his body move. Although he couldn't see who was at the door, even from the living room, he could hear the conversation.

He heard Peyton saying, "Well, come in and have some coffee at least, won't you?"

He was a little startled to hear Reed's voice, "I don't want to interrupt anything, Dr. Driscoll."

Peyton laughed, "Well, I told you Mac was passed out in the living room, Reed. I don't know what you could interrupt other than his snoring! Come and talk to me; I could use some company until he wakes up. Then I promise to leave you two in peace to talk. How would that be?"

Mac could feel Reed's hesitation. In the conversations they had had, Mac had never bothered to explain Peyton's role in his life. It was just too complicated: Reed had finally been able to look for his biological mother only to find out that she was already gone; Mac didn't think it would be helpful to rub it in by letting him know she had also been replaced in his life.

Mac lay on the couch, struggling with his own sense of guilt, but still unable to move his limbs. His eyes refused to open; the only conscious sense he had was his hearing and he did not know whether to stop the conversation – try to explain, to justify – or let it work its way through.

Peyton, though, he could tell, had no hesitation. "Reed, if this is uncomfortable for you, I'll try to wake Mac up and I'll go." Her voice had its usual calm serenity; hard as he tried to, Mac could hear no concern or insult in it.

"No, no. That's all right. I guess he hasn't been getting much sleep. I guess I could use a coffee." He sounded uncertain and young, and Mac could almost see the bright light of Peyton's concern through his closed eyes. He sometimes forgot what a good doctor she had been before she came back to the ME's office, not to mention teaching people only a few years older than Reed at Columbia.

"I might even be able to find you a Coke." Her voice moved through the hallway and into the kitchen, and Mac had to strain to hear now.

"Do you want to practice what you need to tell Mac, or would you rather just tell me about your classes?"

It was the accent, Mac thought, which gave everything she said such an impression of calm control. Even when she was angry with him, she always sounded logical. Claire had been a bundle of emotions: a firefly sparking through his often bleak view of life. Peyton was more like a candle flame under glass – a cool steady light.

Reed sighed, a huge gust that Mac almost felt two rooms away. He could hear Peyton opening the fridge to find the cans of pop he had bought one day in hopeful expectation that Reed would learn to be comfortable in his home, in his life. He heard the kettle being filled at the sink, then the sounds of tea being made: Peyton taking down the little china teapot he had brought home a few days earlier, filling it with hot water, rinsing it once, then filling it again to heat through while the kettle boiled on the stove.

He wondered if Reed would find all that routine as calming as he did, or if it would make him nervous and impatient. Slowly the feeling was coming back into Mac's feet as he lay on the couch; he knew he was beginning to wake up properly.

"I think my mom is involved with the Mob," Reed said abruptly.

Peyton's voice was merely inquisitive, "Why?"

Mac could hear Reed gulping down a swallow of Coke, coughing a little as the bubbles caught him unaware. "I heard a guy talking. Did Mac tell you?"

"Why don't you tell me?"

"I heard some guys talking – they worked for Messer and Sons. They're doing all the construction contracts at Chelsea? For nearly the past year? They seem to get every one that comes up. So I was poking around, you know? Trying to find out if there was anything going on?" Reed's voice went on, slowly settling into rhythm as he explained what he had learned about Messer and Sons, especially about Gino Messer's connection with Danny's family.

"I thought it was a little weird, you know? I remember seeing Messer's name on the board when I was in the office talking to Mac. When I went to talk to him after Brian was killed? Then I looked him up – well I didn't mean to look him up. I was looking for stories about Gino. But there weren't any. Doesn't that seem weird? I mean, he's a major player in the city with the contracts he gets."

By now, Mac imagined, Peyton had made her tea and was sitting down across the table from Reed, watching him with that open questioning expression that always made Mac want to show off a little, try to impress her.

"So I found out about Danny Messer and his connection to the Tanglewood Boys – that was all over the media when his brother was attacked, I guess. But I found out something else – Lorenzo Sassone, that's Sonny's father, had been involved with Maureen Messer. That's Danny's mother."

"How ever did you find that out?" Peyton's voice was just ever so slightly admiring, and Mac would have grinned if he could. He was pretty sure Reed would be relaxing and expanding, eager to amaze.

After all, she got to him every time. Why should Reed be immune?

"There was a big – rumble, maybe – would be the right word? It was in 1968. Big fight between the Bonnano family and the Luccheses and the Westies – that's the Irish Mob. They have connections all over the continent. The fight was on Staten Island – well, all over it, really – and lasted a couple of days. It was referenced in some stories about the turf wars in New York between the gangs. There wasn't much, but you know how when you are looking for something, certain names just jump out at you? Well, I'd been looking for Messer and Sassone."

Reed paused and took another drink. His voice had slowed, growing more serious and mature as he marshaled his facts. Mac could almost see him working out how to present the information.

"So, in one of those fights, a Lorenzo Sassone ended up in hospital with a gunshot wound. A guy, Jamie Riley, was charged, but the case was thrown out of court when the witnesses started disappearing. In transcriptions of the court case, a Maureen Riley was called as a witness, but didn't appear. Riley is one of the big names in the Irish mob – Jamie Riley was one of the lieutenants. I couldn't find out anything about him after that court appearance in 1968. Danny Messer's mother's name is Maureen Riley Messer. I figure Maureen was a kid and must have been involved with someone she shouldn't have been. And it would make sense that Sassone was the one, right? I wonder how she got herself married to a Messer later?"

Mac had finally got himself off the couch, desperate to stop Reed from going any further with this line of speculation. Damn, you had to give the kid credit, he thought in dismay. He'd pulled together a few names, a mention of a turf war, and a gun shot, and worked a whole elaborate Shakespearian fantasy out of little but cobwebs and fairy dust.

The problem was, it might be true. And Mac had to stop Reed from going any further into this mess before he was swallowed up in it.

And now he was going to have to tell Danny, who had been mired in the mess his whole life, whether he knew it or not.

"Hey, Reed," he said heavily, as he walked into the kitchen. "You met Peyton."

Reed looked up at him a little uncertainly, and Peyton silently got up to make Mac a cup of strong coffee with two sugars, smiling at him with a brightly troubled look compounded of equal parts amusement and panic.

"We were just talking about the case – I needed to talk to you, but Dr. Driscoll said you were sleeping?"

"I was, but I'm awake now." Mac took the coffee from Peyton with a smile of thanks, fingertips lingering in a caress unnoticed by the young man now looking down at the tablecloth.

Mac sat across from him, rubbing his eyes tiredly. A quick glance at the clock confirmed his worst fears – he had slept only about two hours. But this really couldn't wait.

"Reed, I heard some of what you were telling Peyton. I need to ask you a favour. I need you to drop this."

With a sinking feeling in his heart, Mac knew the answer before Reed's stubbornly set jaw loosened enough to allow him to say quietly, "I'm sorry, Mac. I can't."