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Notes Ninth chapter: thank you very much for all previous reviews! I hope chapter eight was okay. Please continue with reviews - I love to know what you think - all very welcome, and always replied to if logged. Thank you to everyone with this on alert.

Thank you to Fat Kat for your review, sorry I couldn't send a reply.

Thank you to Blue Shadowdancer for reading

Lost Letters: Chapter 9

15th August

…I hung out with Joe for most of yesterday, something we haven't had chance to do in ages. He's been too busy with the guys; they've been meeting at TJ's place rather than here, and they didn't want me involved with the latest job. He called round late evening and we took a walk down by the lake and around the shore. It seems to be the freshest place there is in the city right about now. It was getting dark by the time we got there, which was kind of cool as it meant there weren't too many people around. So no one saw us when we went into the water, minus our bathing suits. It had to be done; don't tell me you've never done the same, or thought of doing it…

………………………………...

He was. Only just. Somewhere he could feel with the smallest, faintest strand of consciousness. But where that somewhere began or ended, or where he began or ended… Of that, he had no idea. No colours, no sounds, no identity. Nothing. Not even his name.

The man unknown to himself as Detective Messer, Daniel Messer, Danny, lay in a bed that was the identikit of all the others in the hospital; in a room the same as any other in the building; and in a ward that had nothing to distinguish it from any of the hundreds like it.

But he was not alone. Sitting either side of him, a hand held in each of theirs, were his parents. His father's face was locked into a rigid mask; lips reduced to white puckers in his pale skin; cheeks blotched red. His mother's eyes were mirrors, but she had not cried: the tears were too many; if she let one fall, then they would all fall, and she knew that once that happened, she would not be able to stop them.

With every visible beat of his heart on the monitor above him, his mother squeezed his fingers; feeling them cold in hers and suddenly as small and vulnerable as they had been when he was a child running beside her along the deck of the Staten Island ferry, and she had hollered at him to keep the hell away from those damn railings in case he fell overboard. She had clutched him then, and pulled him back; scolding and threatening. And he had grinned at her, and rushed right back over to dangle his heels above the water.

And all she could see now was the dark, heaving depths of the river, and her son's laughing face; heedless of any danger.

………………………………...

Flack wasted no time coordinating and deploying the personnel milling about the scene. His duty was what he clung to; knowing that if he let go for a second, the horror of what he didn't want to believe had happened to Stella, would put hands around his heart and throttle the life out of it. He kept moving, shouting, focussing; hoping with all his heart that Mac was right, and that the evidence he had found outweighed the evidence of the twisted metal carcass that was in the corner of his vision, no matter which way he turned.

How could Stella be dead? Mac had to be right; she got out. She had too much life in her not to have done. And he had to believe the same for Danny, who had life boiling over, and enough to spare for all those who knew him; he had to believe that he would recover; that he would be laughing again with him soon, drinking beers with him, ribbing him. All the things he would say to him when, when he woke up were stored ready.

He kept moving. Focus. Keep focussed. It was a large area to search; too large, too easy to hide a body… no, a person, to hide Stella. If she was alive. If she was there.

"Come on, Stel." He muttered as he jogged over to a knot of uniformed officers, "Where are you? Don't let us down, don't let Mac and the evidence down. You've gotta be alive, you've gotta be here somewhere, you have to have got out of that car. If anyone could, it's you."

Some of the uniforms he sent over to the edge of the river; another group he sent to the far edge of the waste ground where clumps of shrubs and bushes sagged against a chain-link fence. Next he phoned Hawkes, telling him to get himself to the scene as soon as he could - the search was their priority, but they also had to deal with the fact that this was a crime scene that needed processing. And he knew Hawkes could be relied upon. Then he radioed for the underwater search team, and EMS - with the hope, which he never thought he would have, that they would be needed.

His throat was rasping painfully by the time he had finished; dried up from shouting and from the bone-dry air. He ignored it; stopping instead for a moment and rotating on his heel to make sure he had missed no one, no corner, no possibility. He nodded to himself, as satisfied as he could be, before pocketing his radio and running over to Mac who, with Lindsay and Angell either side of him, was sweeping the ground. Their flashlights were playing over every inch.

Angell gave him a slight smile as he approached, and the understanding in the quick glance and inclination of her head she gave him, renewed some of his strength.

"Mac. All happening. Hawkes is on his way to start processing and I got the uniforms, and everyone else who needs to be, organised and searching." He sucked in a breath, "I also got EMS on their way. Where d'you want me?"

The other man looked up at his voice. Flack saw no change in his expression; except perhaps for a heavier set of determination in his features.

"I want you around the scene making sure everyone knows what they have to do. Lindsay, Angell and I will look in the near group of buildings over there and the containers."

"You got it."

Flack took off again with Angell's eyes keeping him alight.

………………………………...

"Well? Why you got me meeting you here, huh?"

"'Cause anyplace else ain't safe, that's why. You got the job done? Any complications?"

Rich shifted further along into the booth, and curled his back against the seat; rubbed his hands down his thighs and met the shadowed gaze of the man sitting opposite.

"We got it done…"

"So, you going to tell me why our buddy ain't here then?"

"We had a few complications, TJ, but I got 'em sorted."

"Oh yeah? Don't think I like the sound of complications." TJ leaned forwards, and placed his red, shiny hands on the table. He wore a baseball cap with a greasy peak pulled well down over his forehead. Not far enough to hide completely the faint pink scar that ran across one brow ridge to his temple; and not far enough to hide his eyes. They bored into Rich, and he recognised all too well the anger in them that was disguised as mild curiosity. "Tell me how, Rich. How'd you get 'em sorted, and what were they? And you'd better sweep that mess you're makin' off of the table. Don't want no complaints about mess to make us stand out."

Rich swept up the sugar that had come bursting out of the packet he had been crushing in his hands unconsciously, "Sorry dude."

Since he had run from the car, he had been perfecting what he could tell TJ that wouldn't get him suffering a similar fate to the one he had inflicted on his partner, and the woman he had left to die. After visiting an address in Harlem, well-known to both himself and TJ, he had received a phone call from the man himself to meet him mid-town. He knew his words now were crucial; any wrong explanation, any hint of a lie, and TJ would know, and would act on it. Rich knew perfectly well that the newspapers would not hold back on the story once what was left of the car was discovered, which it would be eventually. He was on borrowed time.

"You gonna tell me any time soon? I'm a busy man, Rich…" TJ tweaked the peak of his cap down further.

Rich brushed the grains of sugar off his hand and proceeded to tell the carefully rehearsed story. A few facts and truths were lost along the way, but he hoped that by the time they were found to be missing, he would no longer be Rich and he would have no further need to worry.

Half an hour later, a man in a non-descript football jersey, with a baseball cap the same as hundreds of New Yorkers wore pulled down over their faces, left the corner diner and joined the late evening crowds along the streets. As he pushed his way down the avenue towards Central Park, he attracted barely a glance.

………………………………...

He saw something. Just for a second. And then it was gone again.

"Mac? Mac, what is it?"

Lindsay trotted to catch him up as he strode forward, Angell closely following. There was no time for explanations, he had to act, before he lost what he had seen. He squinted up at the moon, then down at the ground, trying to track the faint star of light he had seen over towards the heaps of containers just outside the rays of his flashlight. He stopped, the two women pausing behind him, and looked all around at the white-grey expanse, flat and dead ground. Everywhere was silent, still, waiting. The weeds lining and defining the broken wastes shivered and crumbled under his feet as he moved back and forth. Steps to the left, to the right, back, forwards… nothing. The gleam that had guided him for a moment was gone.

Then it returned, just one glimmer, gone again. But he pinpointed it, marking its place, burning it in his brain. He jogged forward and knelt carefully. More dry grass and leaves sighed before disintegrating under his knees. The concrete, still leaking trapped heat, burned through the thin material of his black pants, and he felt tiny pieces of grit denting his skin. He saw it; a diamond-white jewel nestled in the chalky dirt. He scraped with his fingertips, and its whole was revealed: an earring; a diamante drop on a silver loop that he had last seen at the crime scene that had changed everything. An earring that had last been in Stella's possession. The long-passed moment returned exactly; as she shook her head at Danny, and the sun snatched a mirror image of itself from the jewel in the centre.

It was in his fingers now; he turned it, examining it, and letting the flashlight reflect its light across his face. Another piece of Stella, fallen away, but leading him closer to her. If it was here, then she had been here. She was still here. Somewhere.

Lindsay crept up to him, and knelt beside him, "Mac? What have you found?"

He held it up to her, and she drew a breath in, holding out her hand, "Stella's. I remember her wearing them this morning - I asked her where she got them..."

"Stella's." Mac held onto it, not quite able to let the so small and so significant belonging out of his grasp.

Lindsay brushed it with her fingers and withdrew her hand. "Then she's here somewhere, Mac. She got out, she had to have done." Her eyes were black watered silk in the twilight, and her face was drawn into corners and angles. Mac doubted that she would have much sleep tonight; along with everything that had happened, he knew as soon as she was able to, she would be going to see Danny. As he would; as soon as he knew Stella was safe.

"The evidence tells me the same." He stood, and his eyes darted round; still assessing every face, checking every shadow. But there was nothing untoward.

Angell joined them, "Stella's?"

He nodded, "She was wearing them today. I found it here." He indicated with his foot, "Given its distance from the car, it's further evidence she got out."

Angell stood with her hands on her hips, mouth pursed, "But where is she in that case? If she was injured, she can't have got far." She paused; Mac guessed her words before she spoke them, "Unless she was taken."

He was turning in a caged circle, seeking out all possible places that Stella might be, trying to suppress images of her lying somewhere, life bleeding away as time wasted away. Every drop a second.

"Even if she was, I'm working on the evidence that she's still in the immediate vicinity, unless I find something that tells me otherwise." He indicated the heaps of battered metal boxes, and the low cluster of buildings that were a moonlit backdrop. Both had potential for a person to be concealed, deliberately or otherwise, "We start with the containers, then we move to the warehouses."

Half-way across, he stopped and bent down again. Very faint, pressed into a ridge of dust, were a few footprints, one set, and a few more splashes of blood. Angell's hypothesis seemed confirmed.

He indicated them to her, "The prints aren't Stella's, she was wearing heels. These are from someone wearing sneakers. It appears you're right; someone was with her."

Lindsay nodded and bit her lip, "More blood…"

More blood. Too much. Stella's blood; where it shouldn't be. And the fact that she was leaving no footprints herself. Mac bowed his head, and tried to walk no further down the dark path his thoughts were pulling him down. Follow the evidence only.

He looked at the prints, and pointed out to the two women the direction they seemed to be going, "This way."

They continued to the containers, Lindsay and Angell now slightly ahead.

Angell flashed her torch and her weapon around the vicinity of the first one, "Nothing here Mac, no footprints, no weeds disturbed, and the bolt's rusted tight."

They moved to the second. It was open, the doors peeled away, revealing a gaping maw, thick black inside. He swung his torch, but it defeated him; empty. His hand struck the side, orange splinters stuck to and stained his hand. They moved on. Listening and looking all the time for any sound, any trace of life. Nothing.

The third container had sagged into its neighbour; a deep concave in its metal flank. The ground looked slightly disturbed around it, and its doors swung open with a dull clang at Mac's touch, darkness pouring forth. He beamed his flashlight, weapon out, and a hollow rattle and scuttering sounded within; closely followed by a flurry of pattering creatures who sped away across the ground. Lindsay suppressed a shriek, and banged her elbow against the container as she jumped, "Sorry, Mac, I startled, it's the way they run… you'd think I wouldn't mind, we had enough of them at home, but…" She shuddered, and peeled herself away from the side, stepping gingerly and shining her own light on the ground in wide circles, "No human prints, just rodent prints."

There was no other life inside. Mac swallowed his frustration and they continued. Hide and seek. All the times he had played as a child on the streets of Chicago he remembered suddenly: he was usually forbidden from being seeker - his playmates having gotten wise to the fact that he was too good at finding the usual places they hid; the back of dumpsters, between groups of trashcans, behind neighbours' fences and shrubs. So he had found better places to hide himself from their eyes; and they had made him seeker again. And now here he was once more. Seeking. Playing anything but a game.

They moved in unison to the final container. A sullen, corrugated heap, streaked brown and blood red in the twilight. Mac put out his hand to the surface, and it touched his skin, the metal still radiating the heat of the day. Silence; no chatter of rats, no creak of a door, but he knew silence could conceal a host of dangers and secrets. The end was unsealed; a defunct bolt hung by an oxidised thread and the doors were joined only by a strip of darkness. With a glance at both women, checking weapons were raised all round, Mac stood to the side and eased his hand around the edge of the door.

He pulled. Nothing happened. It was trapped within its age and shedding skin; flakes of dead iron which fluttered to the ground as he pulled harder. Nothing moved. He tugged it, grimacing, and with a screech and wail, the door parted from its hinges and crashed to the side, everyone leaping out of its way with not a second to spare.

"We're okay." Angell's voice, only slightly breathlessly informed him. Mac peered inside, lifting his flashlight to illuminate the thick creases of darkness within. He swept it round and down. Shadows jumped and flitted.

It was empty. Nothing.

He got no satisfaction from the dull clang the door made as he struck it.

"Dammit! Dammit!"

For only a second, he allowed some of the rage and frustration that he was containing using every fibre of his self-control, fracture out of him. Then he heaved a breath in, then another and sealed the crack. Focus. Lindsay was watching him warily, Angell's expression was carefully calm.

His next words were levelled flat, "Let's move. We still got the warehouses to search."

He led the way to the nearest building; its red brick outer wall barely covered in peeling white skin. They hurried along it towards the entrance; a wooden panel that was designed to slide open on rollers above the lintel. Mac put his hand out to it. Then Angell touched a discreet hand to his arm and murmured, "Mac, turn around very slowly; we're being watched. There's someone standing in the doorway of the other building…"

Measuring the seconds, he pivoted and followed her gaze; a man was half-hidden in the shadows of the doorway. As Mac took a step forward, the man's eyes caught his, and his body slipped out of sight; but his eyes were still visible, and remained so as the three detectives walked with quick, silent footfalls towards him.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please let me know even if not, all opinions very welcome. Next chapter up soon, as I have written a little further ahead. But reviews really help! Lily x