Disclaimer I own very little, especially not CSI NY. Wish I did though.
Notes Sixth 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 Small amount of swearing ahead.
Thank you to sarramaks for reading this, and to my friends Naomi and Stuart for putting up with my plot anguishes, and supplying help with coffee :D
Lost Letters: Chapter 6
18th August
…So I ended up down by the river again, I think my feet just led me there. Does that ever happen to you? Sometimes I get to a place, and I don't even remember the journey there. Good thing I wasn't driving I guess. But I think I'd meant to go there. It was peaceful, no one else around, just me. Well, at first so I thought, but then I saw in the distance a man in the entrance to one of the old tumble-down buildings, I reckon there's maybe a couple of vagrants shelter there, hope no one comes and moves them on, there's no harm done them being there. The guy I saw didn't look to be out for any sort of trouble, just watched me and then disappeared when I waved at him…
The air was stifling and crawling, and Flack felt his limbs as if they moved through syrupy heat. It lay thick, sticky and heavy over everything and everyone. He had arrived at the hospital in time to see Danny rushed away into the Emergency Room, and to find Mac with battle-shocked eyes, and a stance that told the detective that any wrong word or movement and he would be facing a human grenade.
They were in a side room of the hospital now using minutes they didn't have, waiting for any more news of Danny or Stella. But radios held their silence, and corridors remained just staring walls and listening floors. Empty. No words.
"I almost lost it, Don." Mac sat with his head pressed against the wall, his hands placed exactly on his knees. Flack, leaned against the door, watched him carefully; running his mind through all the possible responses he could give to his friend, his colleague and the man with whom he had had some of the bitterest disagreements of his career. But Mac was also at this moment simply a man who looked broken and exhausted.
Flack moved and sat himself down next to him, matching his posture, "But you didn't. Mac Taylor losing it? Come on, it doesn't happen. Damn, Mac, you had reason enough to come a little loose at the seams." He shook his head and let out a whoosh of air; still fighting to accept what had happened himself.
How? How? Danny, and Stella…
Flack continued, "I mean, how the hell do you really react in a situation like that? And yeah, I know; you got what your training tells you to do, you know what you're supposed to do, but in the event it's always your gut kicking in, and you can't do nothing else but what it tells you to. Angell told me, the speed it all happened, she didn't even have time to pull her own piece out, and believe me, she ain't slow on the draw. Honestly, Mac, you can't beat yourself up over how you reacted in the aftermath. You did what you had to, you and Jess. You made the calls, you stayed with Danny, you sent who needed to go out after Stella. You couldn't have done anything else differently."
Eyes dulled to only a shade darker grey than the skin they hid in, faced him and Flack saw through them a rare glimpse of what he could only guess Mac was feeling, and suffering.
"All the training, all the years I spent in the marines, and in a few minutes, all that's gone. I'm there on my knees next to one of my team who's just thrown himself in front of a car, which is driving off with another of my team inside, my partner, and I can't even get the call out before someone else has to do it for me." His fists were clenched on his knees and the bitter words were prising themselves out of his tightened lips.
Flack drew a breath in and prayed for wisdom, knowing that what he said could turn the knife edge that Mac was holding to himself, "Mac, I don't know what I can say that's going to help at this point, but you know damn well you're the last person who needs a reminder of his responsibility. Danny for a start knew what he was doing, and he knew damn well that throwing himself in front of a car, no matter what the circumstances was a dumb ass thing to do. And I ain't going to hesitate to tell him so when he wakes up. That was entirely his responsibility. You knew what you had to do, and would have done it had Angell been there or not. You got a helping hand from your colleagues, that's all there is to it. It's no failing Mac, it's human."
He took another breath, and found his hand gripping the edge of the seat; fingers curling round, the plastic cutting into his palm, "You did what you had to, rode with Danny, even though at the same time you knew you wanted to go after Stella and bring her back; and hunt down the bastards who've hurt two of your CSIs."
There was a vacuum in the yellow painted room. Flack turned his gaze to the floor, scuffed with his shoe at a crack in the tiling, and saw no escape from the nightmare that was enveloping all of them. He had to say more; the words were the only thing he could find to keep a grip on the situation, "Danny's tough, he'll be okay, Lindsay and I are going to make damn sure about that, and we'll find Stella; you know she's not the kind of woman to let herself disappear without a fight…"
"That's exactly what might have killed her, Don, putting up a fight." Mac stood suddenly, deliberately suppressed aggression in the movement, "We're sitting here, and she could be lying somewhere dead, or dying. Those men were at the car, she was shouting, they fired a shot and she stopped shouting. What does that say to you? At best she's injured, and at worst…" He faced Flack, who had to look away, his eyes hurting and his mind screaming at him the rest of Mac's unfinished sentence. The white plastic rim of the seat cut deeper lines into his flesh. Mac continued in a voice as strangled and dry as the lack of breeze through the window, "It's been nearly an hour, and every minute that passes is a minute too long, and a minute that could make all the difference to whether she's alive or dead, if we find her."
He moved towards the door, "I've talked enough, Don. I'll call the hospital later, just keep me informed how he is. I need to start looking for any kind of trace left at the scene."
Anything Flack could say was hopelessly inadequate, but he blurted out anyway, "Go. Danny's safe, and we've got everyone we can out there searching for Stella. As soon as I know anymore news on Danny, I'll call you. And yes, we'll find her, alive. We'll find her alive, Mac. You know we will."
The heat and fear tightened around him. Mac's eyes had life enough only to die as he answered, "I hope so, Don. I can't accept anything else."
………………………………...
Free from its pursuers, having sloughed them off down dark streets coiling round and through the city, the black SUV slid to a stop. Rich killed the ignition and sat for a second listening to his breathing and the click and hiss of the overwrought engine, watching the air above the skin of the bonnet distort in the rising temperature.
They had stopped on an expanse of waste ground; layered with huge, square tombstone slabs of cement, which the sun had bleached to a dirty blare of white. Parched weeds fringed every join and crack. Thin and wilted to an apparition of itself, the river was visible a few yards away; brown water, drifting listlessly along. A small outcrop of derelict warehouses, a quivering vision in the muggy haze, slumped in the near distance, companioned by a strewing of containers. Everything was rusting and collapsing in haphazard heaps. No persons were visible; only the traces that they had left. Too hot for anyone to be about and exposed.
Breaking the momentary pause, Jake popped his head into the front again, and asked a needless question, "We stopped? This the place?"
Rich turned slowly to face him, taking in the sweat now pouring down the edges of his face and into his eyes, which Jake flicked away with his sleeve. He watched the droplets fly onto his own shirt and soak to dark specks on the material, his face devoid of expression.
Jake continued, oblivious, "Where are we, man? You know this place?"
The older man kept his silence, staring moments too long at Jake, until he squirmed and dropped his eyes. Then he answered him in a voice as bare of life as the landscape, "You asking me something?"
Jake stuttered, "Just… just wondering, y'know, where we are…"
"You don't need to wonder. And you can leave the knowing to me, I know what I'm doing, you don't. It's safe here, we got no one around to spy on us, and we lost the cops. Don't ask me any more questions, we don't have time; get out the car, and stop fucking around."
Mouth shut to a thin line, Jake hauled himself out, and Rich waited until he saw him standing outside with one hand smacking a beat on the vehicle's roof, before unfolding himself from the front seat. He walked around to the other side of the car, and pulled open the door, catching hold roughly of the woman's limp form as she fell sideways. Her eyes remained shut, and there was no colour in her face other than the purpling bruise and line of blood he had marked across her forehead. No obvious spark of life. But gripping her shoulders, Rich looked more closely at her, and his suspicion was confirmed when he saw an inkling of movement. Despite the gunshot wound he had inflicted and the blood that still wept from it, there was the slightest lift of breath visible in her, and his expression twisted.
"Well, lady, whatever your name is, looks like the game ain't over yet." He pushed her back against the seat, and reached around to his back pocket.
"What you doing, man?" Jake's questions were irrepressible. He stopped the tattoo on the roof and turned to face Rich, before looking in at the woman, and then back at his partner. His face paled on seeing what he held, "What… but you said… hey, I thought…"
"You got me disappointed in you, dude. You let me down." Sun winked on the weapon in his hand, "You made a mistake. See, when you told me she was dead, you got it wrong. Which means I'm going to have to fix your mistake." He drew his finger back and aimed the gun at the woman's head.
Jake stepped forward; Rich read fear and something else in his eyes, "No, man, no, listen. You got to think a minute about this, we got a chance here to cut our sentence if we're caught. You kill her, and we're going down for sure. Look, look, why not we just take the stuff, destroy it and get the hell out of here, okay?" His voice was trembling, he flicked strings of hair from his eyes, and rubbed his hands down his sweat-stained jeans, "Okay? Don't… don't do this, man."
The sun burned overhead, the air rippled up around them, but Rich didn't flicker, "What are you saying to me, Jake, huh? You arguing with me?"
"No, no, man… I just…"
"I already told you, don't argue with me. And I already told you how I'd feel if you'd made a mistake."
"Listen, it was a mistake, you could have made it too, I didn't…"
"You didn't think. Too bad. But you never do, Jake. However, mistakes can be fixed, and if she wasn't already dead, then she soon will be."
"Rich, man, look, you can't do this…"
"Don't ever tell me what I can't do."
White ghosts, gulls phasing into the ashen sky, laughed and mocked, wheeling circles through the breathless air. A finger moved. A shot rolled round and round, screaming off the concrete and empty walls. One shot. One life. Rich lowered his gun and watched a stream of blood fizz over the thirsting ground.
………………………………...
At Mac's words, a white-hot crack appeared in Don's heart, and he held the other man back momentarily before he left, "Then keep hoping. You know how much she means to all of us, we all care about her, and she's your friend and partner, and all that goes along with that. And you've got to remember, this is Stella we're talking about. If there's one woman in New York who would fight to the last breath, it's her."
They balanced together on the knife edge and then Mac simply nodded, shoulders slumped, "I know, you don't need to tell me that, I know how much fight she has in her." For a moment Flack saw a brief flare of life in his eyes, and then it dimmed, "Holding onto that is the only thing keeping me together at the moment. But I keep thinking that if I hope too hard and tell myself she's alive, then fate's going to turn that around. Equally, if I prepare myself for the worst, then I condemn her."
Flack released his breath and put his hand briefly on his shoulder, "Just keep the hope going, Mac, don't give up."
Mac nodded, "Thanks, Don." Then the usual shutters came down over his eyes, and Flack knew that the brief, and singular, insight into the locked down emotions of a man he knew as intensely private was over, "Keep me informed." He left the room, and Flack sat himself back down with a sigh.
………………………………...
"Never tell me what to do." Rich stared down at the sightless eyes of his partner lying sprawled in the white dust.
He shoved his piece back into the waist band of his jeans and manoeuvred the body of the younger man into the back of the car, grunting heavily. Aware of time more oppressive than the heat now, he rifled through his pockets, pulling out anything that might possibly identify Jake, and stuffing them into his own. As he did so he considered himself and what he did, and came again to the realisation that everything was about identity. And the erasure of it. His own was something even he himself had begun to nebulise. He lost himself in crowds, changed his clothes and hair as the day changed, and kept no name for longer than it suited him. The one he held at the moment was beginning to stretch and wear thin; and it was not long before Rich would blend with all the other detritus that blew along the city streets before disintegrating to nothing. Ashes in the wind.
With only a glance at the body of his former partner, he slammed shut the back doors of the car; time was passing too fast now. Wires wound round and pushed their way into his nerve endings, and he felt the sun burn his back. The woman in the front lay in the same position he had left her, but he could see now for certain she was breathing, and that there was the smallest stir of movement in her. He paused and his hand crept around to his piece. But then a smile snaked across his lips, and he simply closed the door against her side.
Sliding round to the end of the car, he flipped open the trunk and plunged his hand into its contents; he tore, scattered, ripped, smashed and broke. In seconds an ordered collection of kits and evidence was reduced to a chaotic motley of chemicals, paper and plastic. He grinned, and then took out a small item from his front pocket. He flicked the ridged metal circle at the top and held up a corner of paper to it. It flared, a flame jumped and a rippling orange wave soon engulfed the fragile material. He dropped it into the trunk, and waited until more papers threw themselves fainting into the flames; curling, withering, dying into white sheets that fell to nothing. The blaze drew in the combustible material in ravenous delight and devoured it all.
He left the trunk open, and darted round to open the back again; tearing a strip from Jake's shirt, he held the lighter to it, let it catch and then dropped it on his body. And watched as it too caught and grew. Then he ran, across the white ground, with fire under his soles, and left nothing but his destruction behind him.
The white ghost gulls swept low, still screeching and the draughts of heat blew them upwards and away. Writhing, swaying, red and orange phantasms grew and whispered around the car; whispering and breathing. But the one inside who breathed was still not able to hear them.
Sorry about that, please don't hunt me down, but I haven't had a big cliff-hanger for a while… Please review, all thoughts very welcome, and they help me write the next chapter faster if you want to know what happens XD Lily x