Here's my next chapter. Just a few chapters left before the ending! I hope you all keep reading!

Chapter Twelve: Two lives in danger

He felt like he had been in this place, next to this wall, for a whole year. As far as he could recall, it hadn't been more than two days because, especially the last 24 hours, no minute had gone by without feeling the terrible pain. The pain was everywhere. He knew all his limbs were broken, except for one leg, which was probably severely bruised. Mac shifted trying to find a less painful position. He regretted the move almost immediately, groaning as renewed pain coursed through his broken body.

When every one of the 30 minutes-rages were over, the boss, Derek, had give him some rest. Mac had been passed out for five minutes, before the ever present the pain woke him up. Since then, he had studied the room and Derek, who was still sitting in his chair. Because he wanted to eat his food, Derek had pushed his ski mask up till it was just under his nose. Mac had watched the mouth, trying to remember if he had ever the seen the guy before, but nothing came to his mind. His voice hadn't rang a bell either. The light to Mac's left was still flickering, and except for the man, there was nothing extraordinary about the room he was being held in. It almost looked like a bunker. The walls consisted of only bare stone; the door was made of steel with a large heavy lock on it. Only hard sounds could be heard trough the wall, no footsteps or voices. Mac had really no idea if there were more members of the gang in the building, and there had been no sign from the child Nick since the beginning. The child probably meant a big deal to them, so he would be still alive and probably not even hurt. When or if his team got him out of here, they would go search for the child. Hopefully Nick wasn't all that far away yet.

When Mac thought about his team, he immediately felt fear for them. Rescuing him would be a tricky plan, this gang knew what they were doing. Mac knew how angry and helpless he felt when one of his team, one of his friends, was in danger. When that building had blown up with him and Flack inside, his only thought had been about Flack. How to save him and why he hadn't sent him away when he first found that bomb. The guilt had never gone away and probably never would. He had also felt anger towards the bomb expert, who had almost killed Flack. He felt helpless when only luck and faith could safe Flacks life. It had been one hell of a day, and there was no way Mac would forget that day anytime soon. And he doubted he would forget these two days either, if he managed to live through them.

Macs thoughts drifted from Flack to Stella… Mac could see her face clearly now. Her long and slim face, those unique and wild curls, those pretty bright eyes looking at him. Her eyes were filled with happiness and her perfect smile appeared. The image became larger and he could see her reaching for someone's hands. The hands belonged to himself. His hands gripped hers and pulled her close. His eyes were sparkling now, looking at her with all the love he could give. A soft chuckle escaped her mouth. The smile on her face stayed while their heads came closer to each other… Right before their lips touched, her face disappeared just like everything else in his mind as he started to loose his battle with the conscious world.

Mac's head became heavier and heavier. His body was losing the fight. Droplets of blood were still oozing out of a fresh wound on the side of his head. Mac tried to rest his head against the wall behind him, but his throat, which was still severely bruised from the blow Derek gave him when they first spoke, couldn't handle his new position. Images were flying through his head. Images of Stella, Danny, Flack, Lindsay, Hawkes, even Adam… bad images. The more time past, the darker and more violent the images became. His mind was losing it to his body. His eyelids were heavy and every blink was like he had to move a mountain. He didn't need a scientific mind to know what was happening… he was dying. The dried blood that surrounded him, the pain inside him which clearly indicated that internal bleeding was a very real possibility, he was drifting in and out of consciousness, he could feel his slowing pulse with every drop of blood that seeped out of his wounds. The whole concept would have interested him extremely if he still had a properly working brain, his scientific obsession would have analyzed every inch of himself but he simply couldn't get his mind to focus anymore. The darkness almost claimed him again, but an image of Sid hanging over him with a scalpel jarred him back. But then again darkness..

Almost as if Derek could sense something was wrong, he looked over in his victims direction. He saw the man struggling for air, struggling for the less painful position, struggling to stay alive… It was not that he felt sorry for him, it was just a necessity for him to stay alive a little longer. He didn't want to spoil all the fun already. The big bang was planned at the end, so this detective had to stay alive until then. Derek stood up and walked over to the detective. He knelt down and watched him for a second. He then tried to examine him, while speaking to the detective and to himself at the same time.

'What is it, man? Why can't you just stay alive for a little longer. You're still bleeding?' Derek knew Mac wasn't able to speak, but he noticed that the CSI didn't even look at him anymore. He couldn't get his eyes open. Derek slapped him softly on the cheek a couple of times.

'Wake up man! Don't die yet, okay!' He checked his pulse; it was still there although slow. He was still breathing but it was very shallow. He then saw the wound on his head, which was still bleeding. He quickly tried to stop the blood with one of his sleeves. Mac's entire face was covered in blood, but when Derek wiped away some of the blood with his sleeve, he noticed just how pale the detective was looking. He pushed harder against the wound on Macs head while he continued to slap him on the cheek, as he demanded that the detective woke up. After almost two minutes, Mac was conscious again and managed to get his eyes open. Derek suppressed a sigh.

Just then, the door burst open. Two men came in dragging a third man between them. His head was covered with a black bag. The man in the middle was clearly shivering, probably from fear.

'There you are! Finally! What took you so long!' Derek jumped up and turned around to face the new arrivals. As he stood Derek had turned Mac's head to face the direction of the three men. The move had hurt, but Mac didn't care because now he could see what was happening. Derek walked up to the guys with firm steps. He was clearly upset. He focused his eyes on one of the two men.

'Did you lose your tongue?! What took you so long?!' The man wasn't shocked or scared of these words or his bosses anger:

'We drove as fast as we could. You told us we had to be thorough, so we were. We took a quick look in the apartment. Didn't find anything interesting, I think they didn't want to screw this up this time and just gave us the guy. And we got him, okay? No problem.' Derek did everything except getting calm from his words.

'No problem? Of course it's a problem! The longer you stayed, the more the chance they had to follow you! Did they follow you?' His voice became angrier while he stepped into the guys personal space, getting right up into his face.

'I didn't see anyone. They would be crazy to risk their boss's life.' The calm guy grabbed at Derek's shoulder with his hand. 'I wouldn't have risked it if it were your life on the line, and we are not even the good guys here, remember.' Derek finally calmed down after this comment.

'Good, okay. You're probably right.' Derek looked down to the figure between his guys and remembered again why they were here in the first place.

'So this is him, he. The one who killed Trisha.' Both the other guys nodded.

'Let's see what fish we caught before we skin it, right guys?' Both the guys smiled and nodded again. This was the moment of truth. The moment they had all been waiting for. Derek had given orders by Sonny to find the killer, no matter what they had to do for it, and kill him like he had killed Trisha. "Just make sure he suffers before you kill him." Derek remembered Sonny say. Derek snapped out of his trance and looked at the guy in the middle again. He put his hand on the top of the plastic bag and took a couple of deep breaths letting them out slowly.

With another sigh he put his fingers around the skull underneath the bag. He felt a lot of hair. At the same time as he pulled off the bag, Derek heard several cars hit the brakes. The fact they could hear it, made the noise at a very close range. Derek turned to the guys, furiously.

'They did follow you?! Go check out who they are and come tell me right away!' Derek screamed. The guys left the room as fast as they could.

Mac's heart froze. The one who appeared from underneath the bag wasn't someone he was expecting. He had expected anything but, Adam?! No, he never thought he would see him here in this situation. Adam the lab-tech, Adam the genius and the best of his class, Adam the shy but funny one. Adam meant a lot to him, but it wasn't like he knew anything about him, except those things. Every day they shared results and conclusions of tests Adam had ran for him. But the conversations never went beyond work. Mac now regretted this as he saw Adam shivering with fear, eye locked with his own. Flack would have never just let him walk into this. It wasn't a good idea to let Adam play this role. He wasn't trained, he had never been in this sort of situation before and he wouldn't know what to do. Were his team so desperate, to send an innocent friend into this mess? Mac felt himself become dizzy again.

Shots were heard through the walls.

Adam's heart stopped pounding. Flack had tried to drill into him the whole night, what he had to do in all kinds of situations, and what he should not do. At this moment, Adam couldn't remember any of those things, and that made him even more frightened than he already was. But when the bag was pulled off his head, his sight locked on one thing. The man in the corner. The man with torn clothes, the man who was tied up. The man… who was covered in blood, lots of blood. Almost nothing indicated that the guy he was looking at, was Mac, but when he saw those green eyes, which were looking at him shocked, there was no doubt. This guy, totally beaten up, was Mac. Mac his boss, the one he trusted blindly, the man who was almost a saint to them all. The only thing that indicated that Mac was still alive, were his open eyes. When he took a closer look, he was taking very slow and shallow breaths. If they didn't get him to the hospital soon, then they had done this all for nothing.

More shots were heard. A couple of fists were banging on the only door in the room now. All three man inside the room were startled by the sound of those fists. They heard someone yelling behind the door, but no one could make sense out of the sound and Adam didn't even recognize the voice. The walls and door were too thick to let any sound in. Then it was quiet for a few seconds, only to continue with a even louder bang to the door, which made the door move a bit, but not much. They were trying to break in the door. Four bangs followed, none of them successful. Another silence came. Larger artillery was probably being prepared.

Since the first attack on the door, Derek hadn't move a muscle. He had frozen. After the last bang to the door, he had managed to regain his sense again. There was no way out, that door was the only entrance and exit, and they were trying to break it in. No escape plan was possible; he had to take the fight. He grabbed Adam by his hair and pressed his gun to his head. Adam squeezed his eyes shut in fear.

'Don't make an unexpected move, or you're dead. Don't move at all before I say so.' Derek dragged Adam by his hair to the other side of the room, to the point farthest away from the door.

Adam whined in pain, but managed to get to the other side, Mac's side, without too much damage. Derek threw him to the floor, so the guy was standing between him and Mac.

A louder shot echoed through the room. It sounded like a shotgun was now being used to take care of the locked door. The first bullet wasn't a through and through, but a second shot penetrated the door followed by a few more.. Another attempt at breaking the door down succeeded after a flew blows. Flack and a couple of SWAT guys stormed into the room, directly followed by the rest of Mac's team. Their guns were pointing towards the three men in the far corner of the room.

Mac felt a hand on his neck, pulling him up. Mac couldn't deny the pain caused by it and cry out a little. As Derek pressed a gun against his head.

When Mac looked up he saw those 5 people standing there… Flack, Hawkes, Lindsay, Danny, Stella. His family, his love. He tried to catch her eyes, but his vision was blurred. He forced himself to focus as hard as he could, but it didn't help.

One last look. Did he see tears? He only wished that, if someone had to die today in this room, it was him and not one of those 5 people he loved the most in this world.

After that he didn't hear or see anything more.

Eight hearts stopped pounding.

Mac's eyes closed.