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 Breaking Benjamin.

Chapter 36.

Dance with the Devil

By the time Cory had made it back to the lab, she had a game plan on how she was going to confront Tang. When she walked into the room, making him jump a little, she threw a file folder on table, so that it skidded halfway across it. "You know, Tang," she drawled. "I really thought you were smarter than this."

Tang looked at her in surprise. Gone was the gentile Southern agent that had interviewed him previously and in place was an agent that clearly was not going to accept the answers that he was prepared to give. "Agent Reid," he responded, trying to buy some time. "How nice to see you again."

Cory rolled her eyes as his eyes roamed over her. "Hey, my eyes are up here," she retorted. "Now, I'm going to give you one chance to come clean. One chance only. Tell me how the smuggling ring works." Cory settled at the table in front of him, leaning back in her chair seemingly without a care in the world.

"And why should I do that? That would be like signing my own death warrant."

Cory smirked. "Ah, but your death warrant has already been signed. Whomever you work for is tying up loose ends. And I can see by the lack of surprise in your expression, you already knew that. Jay Roze is dead and my guess is that we perhaps interrupted you fleeing town."

"I'm not telling you anything," Tang retorted. "And you haven't got anything on me that will stick."

Cory's smirk grew wider. "Fine. You're free to go, but don't think that this little visit to the NYPD has gone unnoticed by your employers. My guess is that you'll be dead before you even make it home," she stated calmly as she gathered her papers and turned to walk out the door.

She had opened the door and was halfway out before Tang's hoarse voice interrupted her, "Wait."

She turned around with an eyebrow cocked. "Yes?"

"Do you really think that I'm next?" he asked her.

Cory nodded. "Yes, I do. I can help you, if you help me."

Tang seemed to be weighing his options. "Fine. I'll tell you all I know. Where do you want me to start?"

Cory settled back in her chair. "How about from the beginning? How did you get mixed up in this?"

Tang sighed. "It was about five years ago when I first met Jay Roze. I had a job down on the docks and he approached me. Asked if I wanted to make some serious dough." He shrugged. "I had some….outstanding loans and really needed the cash, so I said yes."

Cory tapped her finger on the table lightly. "What did he have you do?"

"At first, I was just making deliveries. Taking small packages to different parts in the city. Then, four years ago it all changed. That's when he showed up."

Cory furrowed her brows. "Who? Fredrico Martelli?" Cory hazarded. She could see the fear race through his body as she said the name.

Tang nodded. "Yeah. He just showed up one day. Said that if we knew what was good for us then we'd join him and his organization."

"What's the name of his organization?" Cory queried softly, grabbing a pen to make notes.

"That's just it. There is no name. We just called it "The Organization." We laughed at him. We didn't believe that he had any kind of power."

"What changed that?"

"He killed our boss. Andre Lucio. In his home, surrounded by bodyguards and no one saw anything," Tang recounted with a shudder. "He made believers out of us."

Cory nodded. What he was telling her was matching up with all she had learned about Etienne so far. "So I take it y'all joined up with him."

"What other choice did we have?"

"So, how did y'all change?"

"Didn't really change much at the beginning. I was still a delivery boy for a few months." He paused as he gathered his thoughts. "It was after that it all changed. Jay came to me and said he had another assignment for me. He wanted me to recruit a young woman, but I couldn't let her know what was going on. He said he wanted me to make her hate the government."

"Laquandra Harring," Cory stated.

"Yeah. I was just there to plant the seeds, though. I had no idea of what they had planned for her."

Cory thought for a moment, consulting the notes that she had made. "What about the other school shooters. Did you recruit them as well?"

Tang shook his head. "No, not at all. I only had touch with Quan. They got other people to do their dirty work there."

Alejo Espino and Nnamdi Boateng, Cory thought to herself. "So why weapons smuggling?"

"That's what Fredrico wanted. He said that with people in the right place, it would be pathetically easy to get anything through customs."

Cory sighed. "I won't disagree with you there," she said wryly. "Do you know the ultimate plan?"

Tang shook his head in regret. "No. I'm just a grunt." He looked thoughtful. "I can tell you this. If anyone would know, it'd be Maurice Sadowski. He's an inspector in Brooklyn."

Cory nodded. "Okay. I'm going to keep you here, to keep you safe until I can arrange for a safe house. You okay with that?" Tang nodded at her as she gathered up all the notes that she'd made. "Good. I'll have more questions for you, but I'll see that you get something to eat and drink right now," she said as she walked out of the door, hoping that Danny and Mac would be back soon.

Hawkes was smiling as Carla was telling him another story of about coming to work with her mom. "So, was coming to work with your mom the reason you decided to get into nursing?" he queried as she took a bite of her salad. He had barely touched his pasta because he was so engrossed in watching the way the light was playing over her skin.

Carla nodded. "Yeah, it was. She really instilled into me a desire to help people. What about you? Did your dad influence you?"

Hawkes opened his mouth to answer as his phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt, knowing that even though he was off, it was more than likely the lab. With Lindsay out on maternity leave, they were beyond short handed. "Hawkes?"

"Hey, Hawkes. It's Danny. Look man, I'm sorry to call you in, but we need you at a scene. Let me give you the address."

Hawkes looked at Carla in regret as he jotted down the address. "Okay. I'll be there in a bit. It's not too far from where I'm at right now," he said as he disconnected the call.

Carla held up her as he started to apologize. "Don't apologize. Go catch the bad guy, Sheldon. I know you have an important job."

Hawkes looked at her in gratitude. "Thank you. I promise that I'll make it up to you," he said as he threw some money on the table to cover the lunch. He stopped a moment by her chair before stooping down and placing a kiss on her cheek. "I'll call you tonight if I'm not out too late."

Carla laughed as she looked up at him. "I'm on the night shift tomorrow, so I'll be up late."

"Okay," Hawkes responded as he strode out of the small café.

True to his word, barely fifteen minutes had passed before he was walking into the brownstone. "Danny?"

"Up here!" Danny responded.

Hawkes followed his voice upstairs and into the bedroom. "Wow," he uttered as he surveyed the scene. "Haven't seen a professional hit in a while. Any idea of who this guy was mixed up with?" he questioned the sandy-haired detective who was taking swabs of the various pools of blood.

Danny looked up as he capped off the latest swab he was using. "Etienne," he responded. "I'm on biologicals, Mac's fingerprinting the whole place and he wants you to take the body."

Hawkes analyzed the scene in front of him. "Well, I'll hazard a guess and say that COD is a gunshot wound to the back of the head," he said dryly.

Danny chuckled. "Even I could tell that."

Hawkes smiled. "Maybe I can at least get you an approximate time of death," he said as he extracted a thermometer from his case and stuck in the corpse. He checked the liver temp; it was around eighty-nine degrees. "TOD is approximately six hours ago," he told Danny.

"That would have been about the time that I picked up Tang Lan," Mac said from the doorframe. "Glad you could make it, Sheldon. Coroner's van is out front if we want to move him."

Hawkes nodded as he pulled out his camera. "Let me document the body first." He quickly took photographs and then proceeded to place the victim's hands in paper bags, trying to preserve the evidence before placing him into the body bag.

Mac nodded as he turned to Danny. "I pulled some prints from the front door, so hopefully our guys were sloppy and didn't wear gloves." Danny just snorted in response. "I know," Mac continued. "It's a long shot. Hopefully, they left the bullet though."

He stood behind where the body had been lying and mimicked shooting someone execution style. "If the bullet is not in the body, then it's probably on the floor in front of him. Hawkes? Any sign that the body was moved post mortem?"

"Not from what I could tell, boss, but if it was done before the blood settled then I couldn't tell from just this external exam," the doctor replied.

Mac nodded his understanding as he began to print the bedroom.

After Hawkes had removed the body, Danny began to examine the blood covered floor. He shined is flashlight on the dark wood, hoping that he would find something, but nothing was out of the ordinary. Sighing, he settled back and as he did, the light from his flashlight bounced off of something under the bed. Careful of the blood, he moved to the bed and peered under. "Boom," he muttered softly as he picked up the camera to take a picture.

"What'd you find?" Mac asked him from across the room.

"A bullet. But it's not the bullet that killed our vic," Danny responded as he reached under the bed to grab the bullet. "Mac, I think this is a .480." At Mac's confused look he continued, "The restaurant case? The one that started the whole weapons smuggling case. It's the type of bullet that was used to kill one of the vics."

Mac walked over and gazed at the bullet being held between Danny's thumb and index finger. "It has striations on it," he observed. "But the bullet is in pristine condition."

"That can only be achieved by test firing the bullet like we do in the lab. Either into water or into a gel," Danny reasoned.

Mac shook his head. "We need to get this back to the lab and hope that the bullet is still in the body. I don't want this to be a red herring."

Danny was silent as he bagged the evidence. I never fully understood why Cory was so obsessed with Etienne. Now I think I do get it. He is one crazy bastard and the sooner that we catch him the better.

AN: So, I thought I would give y'all a present for Thanksgiving. :D I have one more chapter prepared after this (although, I'm off tomorrow for the holiday, so I will be trying to write), but that one is not back from my betas yet. :D I'll post that as soon as I can. Also, only one review for the last chapter? Did y'all hate it?

Rebecca - Unfortunately, real life intruded and I truly could not write. I was barely making it to my computer to check my email. I've actually been working on chapter 37 (which I just finished) for about 2 months and ended up having to handwrite a lot of it when I was at lunch at work. Not my favorite way to write. But thanks for the review! I'm glad you love the story.