Disclaimer I own very little, especially not CSI NY. Wish I did though.

Notes Fifth chapter: thank you very much for all previous reviews, please continue - still love to know what you think - all very welcome, and always replied to. Thank you also to everyone who has this on alert. NB Some swearing ahead.

Thank you to Blue Shadowdancer for a read-through

Lost Letters: Chapter 5

19th August

…Kind of a funny thing happened today, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. I was going out to the store, and saw smoke drifting out of Mrs Adams's front window. When I knocked, she wouldn't open the door fully, just stuck her head round. I asked if everything was okay, trying to get a peek over her shoulder, and said I'd seen smoke and smelled burning. All she'd say was that she'd had a tidy out, and this was the best way to get rid of some things she no longer wanted or needed. I did offer to take anything to the thrift store for her, but she refused, and closed the door…

………………………………...

Almost as soon as she pulled out, Lindsay found herself waiting for a red light. And found her attention wandering back to a few minutes earlier, and the disaster she had been a filament away from. Too close. She shivered. The lights were in no hurry to change, but her vision was not on the cars in front or behind her; it had elided to memory.

She saw the dusty gleam of the black car as it hurtled past her… the black SUV… the same make they used… the licence plate… the letters of the licence plate… the same make… the same letters…

"Oh God…"

She knew then. She knew. It was the same car. Their car. The same she had seen a few hours ago as Mac drove away in it, accompanied by Stella and Danny. Danny. Except that when it nearly hit her, it had not been any of them driving. Why would they not be? Because something was wrong. Something had to be very wrong. But she had no radio, so she wouldn't know…

"Shit!"

A furious blast of honking jerked her back to her present surroundings. Lindsay grabbed the wheel and with clenched jaw, ignoring the outraged yells and gesticulations from other drivers, she swung over to the shaded side of the street. She had to contact someone. Mac preferably. After wrenching on the handbrake, she tipped up her purse and scrabbled for her phone.

………………………………..

"Keep your eyes out the back window if you want me concentrating on the road. Think you can manage that?" Rich shot over his shoulder to his partner, feeling his muscles and nerves winding up again. It was too good to be true that no one seemed to be following them. Seemed. They were still a long way from safety. The car bounced over rumples in the road; heat had turned the tarmac into liquorice with pustules of treacle-oil bubbling across the surface, and every jolt enraged him further.

"Whatever." Jake shoved a finger up at him, but corkscrewed himself round to stare out of the back window, "Can't see no one, think we're okay. How much further, and what we going to do with her?" He untwisted, and jerked his head at the motionless woman in the front seat.

Rich kept his eyes straight ahead, and let his mind wander over an unfolding plan. He knew exactly what he was going to do. And for now, he was keeping the knowledge to himself, "Not much further. Stop screwing around asshole, and keep your eyes out back."

Jake, out of verbal insults for the present, contented himself with another obscene gesture before returning to the street running away behind them.

………………………………...

"Come on, come on, dammit…" The phone was the last thing to shake out of the purse, of course. Cursing herself, angry and miserable for the lifeless radio battery, she saw with a plunging sensation that she had missed calls scrolling all the way down the screen from Hawkes. None from Mac, Stella or Danny.

"Oh no, no, no…" Feeling heat scorching her nerves, and with fingers slipping on the buttons, she dialled Hawkes's number. It rang. She stared round at the street ahead and the sidewalk, wild-eyed, feeling a weight of panic and near-tears starting to press on her chest. He answered and she nearly sobbed in relief, "Hawkes, oh thank…"

There was also relief, and something else in his voice, "Lindsay, I've been trying…"

"To reach me, I know, listen, please, tell me everything's all right, because I've seen something that makes me think it's not. And I know, I know, I'm sorry, my radio, the battery's dead. But I was almost run over, and the car was… it was…"

She had to stop and steal her breath back.

Hawkes, lacking his usual calming vocals, was urgent, "Lindsay, something happened at Mac's scene. We don't know all the details yet, but it seems two of the perps came back to the scene, likely after the evidence. They took Stella, in the car. There's an APB out on it, and…"

Lindsay's hand flew to her throat, trying to keep air within, "Oh God, Stella, was she hurt? Shit, my radio, I didn't…"

"We don't know, Lindsay, we don't know anymore yet. But forget the radio, you said you saw something. Did you see the car? Licence plate is 475 EPI, was that the one you saw?"

Her voice had almost shrunk to nothing, "Yes. Yes, I saw it. Oh God, Hawkes, I didn't call it in…"

……………………………..

"Still can't see no one. Congrats, man, looks like we got away with it." Jake rebounded to his preferred position, hanging over the front seats. Although it did not escape Rich that he leaned closer to him, avoiding as much as possible the body of the female detective, and the blood welling around her; its metallic tang, the smell of leather upholstery and the fear sweating off Jake drenched the atmosphere. The car was sweltering; there having been no time to search for the air-conditioning, and Rich felt lines of perspiration drawing down his arms making him jerk in irritation.

Glancing over at the woman, he frowned: for a moment he thought he had seen the slightest twitch of her fingers, "Hey, dude, you see her move then?"

Jake looked at him, then at the woman, and back to him; a flame of fear in his eyes, "You said she was dead."

"No, you said she was. You get that wrong? Don't like mistakes, dude, you better check again."

Warily, Jake shuffled across closer to her, and Rich grinned at his discomfort. "Maybe you ought to check for a pulse?"

The younger man seemed to become thinner, trying to shrink away from the deed, "Fuck you."

Rich returned him a filthy look, and after a moment, Jake dropped his own glare and put his hand out again to her shoulder, a little closer to her neck. He held it there for a second and then shook his head, "Can't feel nothing, man." His eyes swung away as he answered, and Rich's thoughts distilled a little more venom.

"Sure about that? You'd better be. 'Cause I can't afford you to be wrong, dude, know what I'm saying? We get where we're going and I find you've made a mistake, or lied to me, and I ain't going to be real happy about that. You get me?"

"I get it, okay? I told you, I felt nothing." Jake slouched back in his seat, but his eyes darted back every few seconds to their unwelcome passenger. Rich, even with his eyes stripping down the streets for every possible route to escape if necessary, did not fail to notice.

………………………………

"When? When did you see it? Lindsay, just tell me when and where, and where you are now." Hawkes's words were tightly spoken, Lindsay's chest was tighter though as she fought to keep breathing; the horror of what she had just been told stabbing her like hot needles.

Keep talking, give the information, keep talking…

"Five minutes ago, no more than that, about two hundred yards from where I am now. I'm in the Upper West Side…" People drifted past the window along the sidewalk, their forms and shadows mingling into myriads. No one looked at her as they passed.

"You got a street?"

She craned her head out of the window and ran off to Hawkes the street and avenue name and number she could just make out from her position. In the background to her rapid breathing, she heard him calling out to someone, repeating her information. In the gap of words, she felt again the static and heat of the black metal as it almost scalded her skin, smelled the exhaust as it screamed past her. So close. And she had not called it in. She had not done what would have helped Stella. The tears came then, hot, burning hot, down flushed cheeks.

"Lindsay?"

"Sheldon, I'm so sorry…"

But he was talking over her again, in that insistent, taut voice, "Lindsay, don't apologise again. You weren't to know. It happens, okay? Batteries die… it's just… just one of those things. And you were shaken, I'm guessing. You have a near miss, you don't think clearly straight after. But you've called it now, and I've got it out there, it's okay. Now listen…"

The tears were wiped away fiercely, "I'm going after it." There had to be something she could do now. Something to absolve what she was feeling and what she had not done earlier. Pulling her seatbelt on, heat pulsed through her as everything began to process. There had to have been a struggle for Stella to have been taken; she knew there was no way the CSI would simply let herself and a car full of evidence be driven away. A struggle Stella had to have lost; at a price unknown.

And they drove right past me…

"I can at least try and catch it up…"

Hawkes's voice lost some of its control, "You've got no radio or back-up!"

"Then send some. Listen, Hawkes, I'm not going to do anything stupid…"

Handbrake off, car in reverse, phone flicked onto speaker. "Keep the line open, and I'll keep talking as I'm going."

"You don't need to do anymore, and you don't need to jeopardise yourself as well. We got patrol cars out, they're heading towards you now…"

"But I'm closer…" Spinning the wheel, and twisting her head to see all directions, she pulled out and thrust her way back into the shackles of traffic. Every car was an obstacle. None of them the right one, but all of them seemed to conceal just in front, just out of reach, the one she wanted. Black metal was in the corner of her eye, every way she turned.

"Lindsay, you're on your own and risking your safety needlessly!"

She heard Hawkes's frustration with a twinge of guilt, but the need to do something overrode it, "If back-up and patrol cars are on their way, then I won't be for long."

"Listen to me, Lindsay, please." His voice, small and metallic from the seat where she had tossed the phone, was a distraction in the background. Lindsay drove on, her eyes straining against the sun's glare, every car black at first glance.

"You got that back-up coming?" Even as she said the words, the faint moan of sirens caught her ear. In seconds she saw them behind her, cutting through the traffic chains then howling past. "Got the back-up, I'm right behind."

………………………………...

Ears attuned to the faintest sound of danger, Rich heard the sirens first, and a second later, Jake confirmed, "Fuck! Man, they found us. You're going to have to bust this car's ass. I told…"

Rich flicked his head round like a viper and the words shrivelled away from the younger man, "Finish that sentence, and it'll be the last one you ever do."

Jakes mouth snapped shut, and he stiffened to attention in the back.

"Good, now, try being useful to me, and keep looking out the freakin' back window. We're getting out of this."

Although, he considered with a flash in his eye, at this moment 'we' was still debatable. Sun burned through the windscreen in a fiery dazzle; blood glistened on the woman's skin, and on her hand; a hand that seemed not quite as lifeless as it had been. Which would certainly make things more interesting.

He laughed suddenly and spun the wheel through his hands; the squeals of startled cars and drivers sounding their horns was a pleasant sound. The non-existence of sunlight in a side street between towering buildings, lured him; and the car slithered into it. Scattering pedestrians, it once more ceased to be.

………………………………...

Right behind you, you bastards…

Lindsay hardened her face and stepped on the gas.

But Hawkes's voice rose, and she gave him a little more attention, "Lindsay, I need you to come back here. You driving off on your own, putting yourself at risk, is not going to help anyone, least of all Stella. Or Danny."

There was silence, and Lindsay felt the heat sap away from her. Her grip on the wheel weakened, and she whispered, "What do you mean? What else happened? What's happened to Danny?"

"Lindsay, please, wherever you are just pull over. I can't tell you like this."

It was suddenly almost impossible to keep hold of the wheel, but she held onto it as to her sanity, and dragged herself out of the traffic, stopping alongside an empty strip of kerb. At the second attempt she got the handbrake to hold. The cell-phone was almost too heavy to hold as she picked it up and asked for news she did not want to hear, "I've stopped, Sheldon. You can tell me. What else? What's happened to Danny?"

………………………………...

Having taken far longer than it should have, to Mac's mind, the ambulance pulled alongside. Angell greeted the flustered paramedics briskly, and in no more words than necessary, ran them through what had happened.

Mac moved aside as they knelt beside Danny and set to work, helping him, he knew; but all he could see was a man who trusted his life with him, losing that life underneath their hands and equipment. It wasn't Danny lying there. It wasn't Danny with spread-eagled arms and legs, broken body, and skin whiter than the boiled away sky. It was the action of two men he would not allow himself to think of as human. They had taken from him Danny's impetuous bravery, and they had taken Stella's vibrant presence. That they might have taken her life, he could not, and would not let his mind anywhere near to thinking.

Angell approached him, radio in her hand.

"Anything?" Mac demanded, his own voice sounding like it was coming from a radio inside his head, the words coming out along wavelengths and sound bands, bypassing reality. The reek of blood and heat assaulted him.

She gave him a careful look, "They had a sighting, a mile or so from here. It gave patrol cars the slip, but they've got a chopper out after it now, Mac. They'll find the car."

Something buzzed and hissed in his head, words spat forth, "You think I give a damn about the car? It's a piece of metal, it doesn't matter. If it comes to it, I don't give a damn about the evidence either. I can live without both. They've got one of my CSIs. They've got Stella. That's who we need to find, not what."

Angell met the bullet-hail unflinching, "I know. They'll find her, Mac. I'm aware of the priority. It goes without saying who the search is for."

His fists were clenched, trying to hold onto the smithereens of control, "I'm responsible…"

One of the paramedics called out their readiness to depart, and the burst of sound was like the gunshot again, blowing apart the air. There was no sun left in the sky now; just blank, sickening heat. And absence.

Angell took his arm, "Yes, you are, for both of them, which means you're going to go with Danny now, Mac, okay? They're ready to take him. Get him to the hospital safely, and then we go from there." She guided him a step towards the back of the ambulance, "You're in contact with everything that's happening, you can't do anything else right at this moment, but you need to be assured that everything that can be done is being done to find Stella."

In contact… be assured… everything that can be done…

How often had he used those words himself? As had Stella. For the first time the true, terrible barrenness of them ate away at his heart. As he climbed up into the back of the ambulance and heard the doors slam shut, the anger that was nestling inside sent out another tendril, growing and filling the blasted space within him. He did nothing to stop it.

The ambulance drove away and Angell stood and watched it before putting her phone to her ear. She had never seen Mac so desolate. Something behind his eyes had vanished, but had been replaced by something she did not like. The voice she had been wanting answered her call, and she breathed in thankfully, "Flack? It's Angell. Listen, you need to go see Mac. He's gone with Danny to Trinity. He's on his own there, and I don't think he should be. Can you do that? I'll talk to you more soon as I can."

She had gauged correctly. There was barely a pause before he answered, "I'm on my way. You okay?"

"Doing okay. Thanks, Don. We'll catch up later."

"Later."

His voice was a comfort, as was the knowledge that there would be a later with him. She clicked the phone off, and marched back to her own car; every atom of her repeating the mantra that Danny would pull through and they would find Stella. And find her alive.

More of Flack and the others next chapter. Please review and let me know what you think, it helps me write more. I also have a one-shot posted yesterday, 'Perfect Symmetry', reviews for that also happily accepted. Sorry, I shamelessly love reviews XD