Disclaimer: I obviously do not own CSI: NY. I just own my car, my laptop and my crazy muse who seems to want to write 4 different stories at a time. I also do own any characters that you do not recognize. You can borrow them if you ask permission first!

A/N: Okay. Thanks to everyone that read and reviewed! Here's the next chapter!!! Many thanks to Aphina and Axellia for the beta. I don't own the chapter title either. That belongs to Shinedown.

Chapter 26.

Second Chance

When the team got back from the Hamptons, they were subdued. The scope of the monstrosities that had taken place in the seemingly normal house had shaken each of them down to the core. When the weary CSI's finally logged in all of their evidence, Mac looked at each person. "I know this is disturbing, but we need to find out what exactly happened in that house." He turned to Stella and Hawkes. "Stel? I want you to start going over the trace. Get Kendall to help you." Stella nodded as she turned to leave. "Hawkes, help Sid in autopsy. I want to find out everything about the victims."

Hawkes nodded as he turned to leave, running a weary hand down his face. "I've already talked to Sid. Depending on what staff we have left, I'll be performing some of the autopsies and he'll call in additional staff as needed. God, it's like the Towers all over again," he mused aloud as he walked out of the room.

Mac turned to Danny after they left. "We're going to go pay Mrs. Pasternak a visit in the hospital. Maybe she can shed some light on what was going on in that house."

"Ok, boss," Danny replied as looked down at the vibrating phone in his hand before hitting the reject button. "Do you want to see if Adam has come up with anything before we leave?"

Mac looked at Danny before responding, sensing that something else was troubling the young man. "Yeah. Everything all right?"

Danny forced a smile on his face. "It's nothing," he replied, skating around the issue.

Mac decided to let it go with a simple statement. "My door's always open if you want to talk," he reassured him.

"Thanks, Mac," Danny replied as they both turned to make their way to AV. When they got there, they found Adam staring at the two ruined computers from the scene.

Mac looked at the tech, his shrewd gaze taking in the fact that he was wearing the same clothes as he had when they had left the previous day. "Adam? Did you go home last night?" he queried in concern.

Adam looked up, grinning sheepishly. "Um…no." He saw the look on Mac's face and held up his hands. "I promise I slept," he tried to reassure his boss.

Mac inclined his head slightly. "What did you find out about the owners of the house?"

Adam frowned slightly. "Nothing. It's like they didn't exist before 1989. I swear boss, it's like trying to track down a ghost. I went through income tax records, which by the way, they filed like clockwork every February 1st. But of one thing I'm certain; Mikhail and Nadezhda Pasternak did not exist before 1989."

Mac nodded. "Did you get in touch with Cory about the fingerprints?" he asked, seeing Danny tense at the sound of his fiancée's name.

Adam looked at Danny. "Um, she wasn't in her office," he finally offered, wondering if Danny was going to explain where she was. When Danny didn't do anything other than cross his arms, he continued, "She's in London. She said she was in a meeting with InterPol and would see what she could find out."

Mac glanced at Danny, guessing what was troubling his CSI. "Anything else we can do?"

Adam shrugged. "I ran a reverse aging process on the pictures that I got from the driver's licenses of them and am running those pictures through the immigration database, but no luck so far. Unfortunately, the records that far back are not as intact as those before the use of computers, but if they are in there, I'll find them," he said with a little force. He didn't like that he couldn't figure out the problem.

Mac smiled at him. "Good job so far, Adam. Call me if you get anything useful off the computers."

Adam blushed at Mac's praise and looked at the ruined PC's. "Sure thing, boss," he said as he looked back up, only to see Mac and Danny halfway down the hall. "Sure, work miracles on computers that have been doused in water. My specialty. Not a problem," he muttered to the empty room.

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Taylor was enjoying a quiet evening at home with Marty. He had a rare night off and they were having fun. They had rented a bunch of horror movies, and after a dinner of pizza, Marty had popped some popcorn and they had settled down to watch the films. They were into the second one, a classic horror film called Audrey Rose, when the temperature in the room dropped dramatically.

Taylor looked at Marty, knowing that the break that she seemed to be having from TPTB was over. Marty shrugged as they both turned to look over their shoulders, behind the couch.

"Oh, my God," Taylor breathed as both of her hands flew to her mouth before jumping up from the couch and running to the bathroom. Marty glanced at the mutilated and desecrated bodies that stood before him, his own nausea rising, before rising to his feet and following Taylor to the bathroom. When he entered the room, he softly squatted next to her, silently holding her hair back.

When she was done, she looked at him, tears welling up in her eyes. "I….I…" she started, but couldn't find the words.

Marty understood. "I don't know, Tay," he started before his phone rang. Glancing down and seeing that it was Sid, he decided to answer. "Pino?" He listened to his boss for a minute, before glancing down at the shaking woman in his arms. "Okay. I'll be there around nine."

Taylor looked at him in confusion, for if it was truly an emergency, he would be going into the morgue immediately. She resolutely closed her eyes as whispers from the ghosts began to penetrate the fog she felt like she was wrapped in. "We just wanted a second chance," they were saying.

She felt Marty hang up his phone, before wrapping both of his arms around her again. "It's a pretty bad scene in the Hamptons, Tay. I don't know much more, but keep your eyes closed and let's get you into bed. Maybe Maddy and Aiden can make the ghosts disappear for a while."

Taylor just nodded, knowing that if she looked at them, she would spend the entire night in the bathroom and felt Marty lift her up, to tuck her into bed.

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Mac and Danny walked into the hospital, intent on finding answers from the severely injured woman. Due to the high blood loss, she had been flown to New York City when the local hospital in the Hamptons had determined that they didn't have the ability to treat her injuries.

When they finally found the doctor that was working on her case, the doctor didn't look very optimistic. "Detectives," he opened up with. "Mrs. Pasternak is in serious, but stable condition. She lost about thirty to forty percent of her blood supply, so there is more than likely chance that there is going to be injury to her internal organs."

Mac nodded. "What is the extent of her injuries?" he asked the man.

The doctor picked up her chart and reviewed it. "She has a multitude of defensive wounds to her hands and arms as well as a pretty severe concussion. There is a small skull fracture on the back of her head, where she likely hit it against something pointed. She suffered three stab wounds to the upper chest; one of them nicked an artery that caused slow bleeding, which is why she didn't die immediately. It was lucky for her that you found her when you did. She wouldn't have lasted another two hours without dying from exsanguination."

The men nodded. "Is she conscious?" Danny asked.

"She has been drifting in and out of consciousness, but I'm not sure if she is up for any questions," the doctor informed them.

"We have to try, Doctor," Mac responded. "We have to figure out was going on in that house."

The doctor nodded reluctantly. "I'll show you up to ICU," he conceded.

When they arrived in ICU, Danny and Mac took in the multitude of machines hooked up to the woman's body. Mac walked over to her and looked down at her. "Mrs. Pasternak?" he queried softly.

The woman opened her eyes. "Yes," she whispered.

"I'm Detective Taylor, from the New York City Crime Lab. Do you know where you are?" Mac continued.

"Hospital," she responded in the same whisper.

"Do you know why you are in the hospital?" Mac asked.

She nodded slightly. "My husband went crazy," she told them. "He was trying to kill all of us."

"Why?" Danny asked as he moved forward to the bed.

She closed her eyes and just when Danny and Mac thought she had lost consciousness again, she opened them. "I found a lab in the attic. He was doing horrible things to the homeless people that I had invited into our home. I didn't know they were there. He always told me that he had arranged for jobs for them."

Danny and Mac looked at each other.

"When I confronted him, he went mad. He pushed me and I hit my head on the staircase. When I awoke, I could smell smoke and Mikhail was above me with a knife. The look in his eyes was wild and then he stabbed me. What happened to all my friends?"

Mac shook his head and broke the bad news to her. "I'm sorry; you are the only one who survived."

She bit her lip as she closed her eyes, tears leaking out of them. "I'd like to be alone, please."

The two men left her alone, their minds going over what she had told him and the picture that the information created was not a pretty one. "Well, I guess we know what happened," Danny surmised.

Mac looked at him. "I don't know, Danny. It all seems to fit together too well. I have a feeling that she didn't tell us everything. Something happened to cause the man to snap. What was it?"

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Across the ocean, Cory and Alistair were working diligently on identifying the fingerprints. Cory pulled up the FBI fingerprint database and then using the email that Adam had sent her, entered the fingerprints into the system. It took moments for the search to be completed and to her surprise she noticed that the results had been flagged by InterPol. "Hey, Alistair? I got the results back from the fingerprints. They belong to Ludwig Esser and Polina Zolnerowich. They've been flagged by InterPol, but it doesn't tell me why."

Alistair furrowed his brow and he typed the names into his database. Quickly he began to relay the information that was coming up. "All right. We'll start with Ludwig Esser. Father is Heinrich Esser, mother is Zoya Kaminski. Father was a Nazi war criminal that specialized in torture under the Third Reich. He was born in Russia after his father escaped there at the end of World War II. Heinrich Esser was recruited in to the KGB, which is why we flagged him. He was responsible for the capture and torture of many of our undercover operatives."

Cory leaned back into her chair and took in that information. "Okay, so did Ludwig follow in his father's footsteps?" she queried.

Alistair scanned the rest of the information. "Yes and no," he informed her. "His father was a doctor before he began his torturing career, so in that instance, Ludwig did follow in his footsteps. But, from what we were able to determine, he never entered the KGB, he was working in the poorer parts of Moscow, helping people who would never get help."

"So why was he flagged?"

Alistair sighed. "He was suspected in the murder of his father. Late in 1988, Heinrich Esser was found murdered in his lab, and his lab assistant, Polina Zolnerowich and his son disappeared. After probing into the murder, the KGB discovered that Heinrich has a series of accounts in Swiss banks that held millions of dollars. Accounts that had been cleared out almost immediately following his death."

Cory's eyebrows rose. "So Ludwig and Polina cleared out the accounts and vanished," she suggested. Alistair nodded, confirming her supposition. "What kind of information do you have on Polina?"

"Not nearly enough. Here's what we do know. She was an apprentice to Heinrich. When her medical records became available after the fall of the Iron Curtain, we found out that she had been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder." He looked at Cory's puzzled face. "It's a disorder in which the person who has it a disregard for the rights of others."

"Ah," Cory said with a shake of her head. "Makes perfect sense to employ someone with that disorder as a torturer. If you have a disregard for the rights of others, it wouldn't bother you when doing unspeakable things to them."

Alistair shook his head. "There you have it."

Sighing, Cory looked at him. "Mind if we can set up a conference with the lab? I think that this information will be useful to them."

Alistair nodded. "Of course. Let me show you to the conference room. You can set up a video conference if you wish."

AN: Okay. So, I totally meant to update this last night, but I fell asleep. lol. Between this chapter and the next, y'all will get a lot of info regarding my bad guys. :D I will say that my chapters may slow down a bit because I have the crazy idea for a Twilight story that I can't seem to get my muse to shake it, so I'm madly typing until my fingers bleed to get it down.

Axellia - Really, I think you reviewd the same day that I posted it! Or if not, very soon afterwards. :) Did your surprise for your mom go well? And when am I going to get more chapters (Or do I owe you chapters, I can't remember). I love the proud Flack moment. I can totally see him being like that. I see Danny like that, too, but he's going to be much more nervous. And yes, Thank God that Alistair and Cory have sorted things out. He was beginning to annoy me and it will truly take both of them to bring Etienne down. :D

Soccer - Thanks!

Maddy - Thanks, and here ya go!

Aphina - I really needed some lightness since these chapters have been so very dark. I would have ** slapped Alistair too, so don't feel bad. And I am totally loving the darker tint to this. I think it's something that I'd picked up from Heartbreaker because that was so tragic. :D