A/N: For those reviewers who asked so nicely (waves to Trixy2), here's an "update" on what's happening in the breakroom. Short chapter, I know, but there are still more twists and turns to come, trust me. Really. I apologize for the delay. A flat tire, two (count 'em, TWO) floods in my condo from a broken washing machine valve, an eye infection that baffled three optometrists (eventually found to be caused by dust and dirt kicked up by tearing out flood-ruined carpet), and various other real-life emergencies has made recent weeks ... quite miser- ... er, memorable.

Chapter 8

Being held captive is 90 percent boredom and 10 percent terror, Lindsay Monroe thought to herself.

Danny Messer, laying close against her right side, wove his fingers through her sweaty hair and asked, "How you doin', Montana?"

"Okay ... except ..."

Danny tensed and rose to his knees, hands fluttering over but not quite touching her back. "Except what? What is it, what's wrong?"

Lindsay's glower lost much of its power due to her position flat on her stomach, staring up at him with basically one eye. "Will you ... stop that?"

He blinked, confused, "Stop what?"

"Hovering. If something ... is seriously wrong ... I'll tell you ... and Shel."

"Then why'd you say something was wrong?" He tilted his head on confusion.

"I just can't ... breathe as good as I'd like."

Danny freaked. "Shel, she's havin' trouble breathin'!"

Lindsay rolled her eyes and endured the upsurge of attention from her lover and her friend. Hawkes settled in on her far side, fingers over her wrist's pulse point, while Danny squeezed her other hand tight against his chest and hovered over her like a pit pull protecting a helpless pup.

"Lindsay, talk to me," Sheldon said from her blind side in his most "urgent doctor" voice. Unable to turn her head to see him, she instead glared some more at Danny.

"Baby," Messer's voice quivered, "how bad is it?"

"You try ... growing a pair a size C cups and ... laying on them ... see if you can breathe easily."

Messer snickered and deflated with relief, his eyes bright with more than emotion.

"Montana, sweetheart, if I grew a pair of C cups, you an' me," he pointed back and forth in a here/there gesture, "we wouldn't be havin' any kind of relationship, you get my meanin'?"

Slightly more serious about the situation, Sheldon moved around until he could see Lindsay's face more clearly. "How bad is it, kiddo? Really?"

"It's just ... hard to get any kind of ... of deep breath. I feel ... squashed ... starved for air." Her expression turned recognizably stubborn. "Roll me onto my side."

"Whoa, no-no-no, there, baby-girl!" Messer objected. "Shel said not to move, so move you ain't!"

"I think it'll be safe enough."

Danny stared, stunned and slack-jawed, at his friend. "Are you serious, man? You think it's okay for her to move?"

"She needs as much oxygen as she can get, but her weight is pressing down on her breasts. The position curves her spine, compacts her chest cavity, and limits lung expansion. It's forcing her to breathe fast and shallow when she really needs slow and deep." Sheldon lifted the silver blanket to examine the still-white pressure bandage through the remains of her shirt. "The bleeding's under control for now. If we--and she--are very careful, we can roll her safely enough."

Hawkes looked Lindsay in the eye and stressed, "You let us do the moving. Lay as still and relaxed as you can. It's going to hurt but it'll ease up once you're settled again. If you feel any kind of internal disturbance, you let us know, okay?"

"'Internal disturbance'," Messer repeated. "What, like her heart and her left kidney decide to switch places?"

Sheldon answered Messer's sarcasm with some of his own. "That would be one example, yes."

"I know what you mean," Lindsay said. "Expected pain is okay but ... anything unusual ... sing out."

"That's my girl."

Sheldon tucked her left arm tight against her side and loosened the blanket so that it wouldn't tangle around her legs in the move. He checked her vital signs, temperature, and skin condition one final time. Satisfied, he nodded to both Lindsay and Danny.

"Okay, Danny, we're going to roll her my way, right shoulder up, left down. There might be a little jar at the end, when she rolls off her left arm. Be ready for that--hold her steady, and don't let her roll more than 90 degrees. I'll stabilize her head, torso, and shoulders, you watch her hips and legs. Got it?"

Messer licked his painfully drip lips. His free hand twitched and floated over Lindsay, unable to determine where best to touch her.

"You sure about this, Hawkes?" he asked.

"It's a risk, I know. But so is poor air intake. If we had some oxygen to give her, I'd say to stay flat, but considering the circumstances-"

"Meaning we don't have any oxygen to give her," Danny deliberately vented his anger in the direction of their captor, loud enough Nathan Collier to hear, "so we have to do something else."

Sheldon looked at Collier and said, "We're going to roll her onto her side to help her air intake."

"Yes, Doctor. I overheard. Rather difficult not to, given the limitations of our current environment. Your medical knowledge and experience outstrip mine. I bow to your expertise."

"Ready?" Hawkes waited while Messer worked through the last of his misgivings. The Staten Island boy answered with a single, sharp nod. Sheldon gave the blanket a final flutter, cupped Lindsay's head in one hand, and slid the other between her right arm and ribcage. "Okay. On three."

On the count of three, Hawkes and Messer rotated Lindsay's body upward in a single, smooth motion. She cried out once, a short, barked squeak and whimper, before biting her lip. Within two seconds, she was settled on her left side.

Hawkes shifted to examine the bandage, his fingers pressed against her carotid pulse the entire time. Messer rearranged the towel under her cheek. He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead, all the while murmuring reassurance through his tears.

Linsday could now breathe without obstruction, but the wave of renewed agony in her back left her dizzy and half-conscious. By the time the tsunami receded and she reconnected with her surroundings, Danny was absolutely frantic. Reassuring him would take more energy or concentration than she had at that moment, so she settled for breathing deep and banishing the pain.

Desperate to take her mind off the reawakened pain of her back, she watched Collier open a leather snap case and place its contents one item at a time on the breakroom's countertop.

"What is he doing?" she whispered.

The items were bottles--squat little plastic pill containers with their white, child-proof twist tops and taller, dark brown bottles with liquids. One after another came out of the bag to line up, soldier fashion, next to one another on the counter.

Where did that snap case come from? Sheldon thought. I don't recall seeing it earlier. Maybe he hid it in one of the cabinets, pulled it out while we were busy with Lindsay.

An even better question to ask might be, what does he have in it besides pill bottles?

The one threat that could make the whole situation worse would be explosives. There might be a bomb or a grenade or something of that nature in the case. Sheldon somehow doubted that would be the case. Collier might be presenting them with a combination benevolent and domineering, seesaw personality but he didn't seem the type to either favor or know how to use explosives.

Collier could have been a demolitions expert in his youth--Korea or Vietnam, maybe. He was the right age for either one. Unless or until he exposed a bomb, they had no way of knowing.

Hawkes couldn't read the precription bottles from that distance or even guess the nature of the pharmaceuticals until he actually saw some of the liquids, pills or capsules. However, there was one set of items he could recognize--a white-blue-and-red box of 30-guage ultrafine syringes and bottles of insulin.

Diabetic insulin? Wait, Collier said he has an inoperable brain tumor. Two months or so to live. Maybe it's metastasized to other organs, like the pancreas. If he goes into diabetic shock and can't take his meds in time, he could react out of panic, decide to shoot us all before he passes out.

Can this situation get any worse?

Or ... or might this be a blessing in disguise? No way to tell yet. Just have to wait and hope that something breaks before he decides to kill one of us or we lose Lindsay.

"You."

The detectives looked up. Nathan Collier, the gun still in his right hand, aimed their way, pointed to Sheldon with an insulin syringe in his left. Having caught their attention, Collier signaled Sheldon to move away from Lindsay and Danny, toward the cabinets.

"Get away from her."

When Hawkes stared down at Lindsay in confusion. What was wrong? Hadn't he been treating her this entire time with Collier's blessing? What was he planning to do?

When his command was not obeyed switly enough, Collier transformed into something violent, something twisted and hateful. "I said, get away from her, you black bastard."

Collier's sudden turn of personality caught his prisoners completely by surprise. What had happened to turn him from congenial host to raging captor? Nothing in their past interactions with Nathan Collier hinted at any kind of bigotry. Where had the racial slurs come from?

"What do you see when you look at me, 'Detective Doctor Hawkes'?" The otherwise cultured his voice dripped derision. "Do you see vulnerability? Do you see your master? Or do you simply see another white man who stands in your way?"

Collier jabbed his gunarm forward, the .38 pointed directly at Sheldon Hawkes' forehead. He thumbed back the hammer.

"What do you see?"

Frozen in place, his breath sharp with fear, Sheldon Hawkes stared down the barrel of the gun and prayed. Hard.