A.N. Yay! I actually am able to post another chapter in the same day! Some questions should be answered in this chapter, and we finally get to know what happened to Sam.

As always, I do not own Flashpoint, I have merely borrowed the characters for entertainment purposes only.

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Ed heard Spike's desperate yell, just as he threw the flash bangs into the now accessible room. Knowing he was past the point of stopping, he had no choice but to plow forward. Swinging into the room he landed on his feet with a thud, immediately scanning for the subject. "SRU, drop the gun and get down on the ground!" he yelled, spotting the man crouched on the floor covering his ears but still retaining his grip on the gun.

The man looked up and looked to Ed's right, before looking back at Ed and screaming in fury, "NO! YOU WERE BOTH SUPPOSED TO COME IN THE EAST WINDOW!"

Ed frowned in confusion, advancing on the man and continuing to order him to drop his weapon. Though he could see that the man was obviously seriously distraught, the man made no move to fire his weapon at Ed, he was just sobbing and screaming. When Ed finally reached him, he wrenched the gun from the man's fingers and pushed him to the ground. "Sam I need your cuffs!" he yelled as the man struggled beneath him. When the cuffs were not forthcoming, Ed yelled again, "Sam! I need those cuffs now!"

A quiet voice crackled through the coms, stopping his heart cold, "Ed…" There was a pause that lasted what felt a lifetime. "Ed, Sam can't give you his cuffs," Greg finished voice cracking.

Ed's stomach dropped to his feet. Silence reigned in his ears, though they'd long recovered from the abuse they'd taken during the blast. The hostages were screaming, he could see their mouths moving, but no sound reached him. As if moving through molasses, he reached for his own set of cuffs, sacrificing his grip on his gun in order to do so. Subject secured, he pushed off of the floor and turned to face the gaping windows. His eyes were drawn to the one where Sam was supposed to have entered through, and his worst fears were confirmed when he saw that there was no one there.

Sound slammed back into his ears all at once: everyone in the room was screaming, his teammates were talking rapid fire over the coms, and the wind was howling. "Everybody calm down!" he shouted at the panicking people in the room, not helping matters at all, but too emotionally and physically drained to recognize that. "Subject secure, hostages safe. Greg! What the hell happened?"

"Ed! We have an active shooter on the scene that we believe to be the mother of the other victim from last year, Elizabeth Harrison! Long range and armor piercing. Shots came from the east but we have no idea exactly where. Everyone has taken cover; it is believed that we, as members of the SRU, are her sole targets but we can't be sure!"

"Where's Sam?!" Ed yelled, moving towards the window.

"Ed you have to stay away from the window!" Greg ordered desperately, knowing his Team Leader well enough to know exactly what the man was doing.

"What! I said where the hell is Sam?" He was almost to the opening now.

"Ed Lane, stop now! That is an order!"

He froze three feet away from the edge.

"Greg," he said quietly, "please tell me what's going on."

He heard a long, shaky sigh echo from the other end. "Wordy is on his way down to your room to clear out the hostages and Mr. Maclaney. We already had uniforms headed there, so they will be there shortly to help Wordy. Spike too. You need to get the doorway cleared so that they can enter. You cannot, I repeat, cannot, under any circumstances go closer to the window until I say. A sniper is set up somewhere and apparently has a clear line of sight to the east window of that room. She fired just as you and Sam were entering… Sam was hit."

"Excuse me? Sam was hit? Well where is he?"

"… Hanging at the end of his twenty foot safety line. He's not moving and we can't make contact with him."

Ed closed his eyes, picturing what had just been described to him. It was every officer's worst nightmare to have a teammate in trouble. Add to that the fact that they could do nothing to help Sam at this precise moment, and that he'd been a mere five feet away from Ed when it had happened, and it was even worse. He opened his eyes and forced himself to turn away from the window, vowing to do everything he could to save Sam just as soon as he'd cleared the doorway. Maclaney was huddled on the floor, crying and muttering incoherently, and the former hostages were all in a state of shock just staring at him.

Before moving farther into the room, he unclipped his safety line, shuddering at the thought that Sam's own safety line was the only thing keeping him from a four hundred foot drop.

"Okay listen up," Ed called commandingly, capturing everyone's attention. "We need to move those tables and shelves away from the door so that you people can get out of here. Is anyone injured?" When all he saw were head shakes, he felt a small weight come off of his shoulders. "All right, work in teams and clear the door. Let's move!"

As the people began to shake off their stupor and go to work, he turned his attention to the man still crying on the floor. He reached down and pulled the man upright gently (though he really wanted to throw the man out the window) and snapped his fingers in front of the man's face. "Hey," he spoke quietly, but there was an edge to it. "Hey!" He shook the man until the man lifted his gaze to meet Ed's. "What's the play here? Gun down a great man who's just trying to help people? Is that what you call retribution?" The man remained silent. His tears had stopped. "Why? Where's your partner? You were quite insistent that you aren't alone, so where is she?" It was a struggle to keep from shouting, but he managed.

The man took in a deep, shuddering breath, before replying, "You were both supposed to come in the east window. There were supposed to be two of you: two a year ago, two today… an eye for an eye." He grinned, and Ed's eyes narrowed in anger. "She planned it all: studied how you operate, picked the room, picked the time and day, everything. She changed my life!"

By this time the door had been cleared and the hostages were being led out by uniforms. Wordy arrived as well and was quietly reassuring everyone while keeping an eye on the two people still standing in the middle of the room.

Ed grasped the front of Maclaney's shirt in both hands. "Now you listen here, unless you want your life changed permanently, in ways you can't even imagine, I suggest you start answering my questions." When the man's jaw clenched and it looked like he wasn't going to say anything, Ed lost his temper. "The Officer you just shot? His name is Sam Braddock! He puts his life on the line every single day to save people like your daughter! And he is damn good at it! I can't say that things would have been different if he had been here a year ago, but I can say that if he was, he would have done every single thing in his power to try and make her come home safe!"

A flicker of remorse showed in the man's eyes, before he muttered stubbornly, "I didn't shoot him."

"Not technically, no, but you think I see it that way? As far as I'm concerned, you're the one that pulled the trigger just by being here and putting him in your partner's sights!" Ed closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing more quietly. "Please," he pleaded, looking right into the other man's eyes, "he saves people every day, and right now, he's the one that needs help." His throat threatened to close but he swallowed hard and pressed forward. "Please. I need to take him home."

They held each other's gaze for a long moment, before the other man dropped his eyes and murmured, "She's in the Jackson Corporation building. It's the tall, gray one. Thirty seventh floor. I'm not sure which room."

"Boss, did you get that?"

"Copy that, Ed. I'm dispatching officers to that building now."

Spike entered the room just then, his face a mask of worry and guilt. Recalling his desperate cry of 'Wait!' right before they'd breached the room, Ed put two and two together and, after handing Maclaney off to a uniform, reached out and squeezed the distraught bomb expert's shoulder. "It's not your fault, Spike."

The Italian wouldn't meet Ed's gaze. "I should have been faster. If I'd gotten her file sooner, I could've warned you and Sam and you wouldn't have even been out there."

"Spike, look at me." He waited until the other man's eyes lifted. "It's not your fault. You did your job, and now we have more work to do. Okay?"

Although not entirely convinced, he nodded and breathed deeply, pulling himself together.

"Greg?" the Team Leader called.

"Yeah Eddie?"

"I'm going to take a look."

"No Ed! Didn't you hear me? She has a line of fire straight to that window! Wait until the officers locate and disarm her! If you get too close she could hit you, too! I am not going to lose two officers today!"

And Ed's patience snapped. "You're not going to lose ANY officers today! Period! End of story! I am going to go and check on Sam. There's a slight lip that I think will cover me, at least enough for me to be able to see him. We're not discussing this Greg," Ed finished flatly, leaving no room for argument and already moving to the edge. He lay down on his stomach and crawled the rest of the way. Behind him, he could hear the police clear out the rest of the hostages and the now quiet subject, leaving just himself, Spike, and Wordy in the room.

Staying close to the wall, Ed peered over the edge. He could see the black line running down the length of the building, straight through the former window, and ending at the limp form of Sam Braddock, twenty feet below. Swallowing, Ed tried to assess his friend's condition. His head was hanging limply forward on his chest, arms completely relaxed at his sides, his body slowly knocking against the side of the building.

"Boss, Sam does not look good, and the longer we leave him hanging there, the worse he's going to get. I don't think we can wait until the shooter's contained."

"I know Ed, but we can't let anyone else out there with a sniper still active, and if you start pulling him up, she may realize he's still alive and start shooting." Though they had no confirmation that he was indeed still alive, there was no other option in their mind.

"What if…" Ed thought quickly, trying to think of a way, any way, that they could get Sam to safety. "What if I rappel down to his level from the west window here, so that the concrete protrusion is blocking me from her view… and then I can reach around and grab him and pull him behind it as well?"

There was silence on the line until Jules piped up hesitantly. "You'd be exposed when you reached around, Ed. She's waiting for us to attempt a rescue and expose ourselves, so her eye is probably trained right on the window and Sam. Given her accuracy the first time at such a distance, I… I don't think she'd miss."

"I don't care dammit! This is Sam we're talking about. He's only twenty feet from me and bleeding out and you're telling me I can't do a damn thing about it?"

"Wait!" Spike cried out, wincing as he recalled the last time he'd uttered those words. "What if we ran with Ed's plan, but a second before Ed goes for Sam, we make a decoy movement up at this level? Make it look like we're about to move from here? She'll see the movement and train her scope here and Ed would have probably five seconds to get Sam clear."

There was a moment of silence as everyone tried to assess the possible ramifications of this plan, before Greg gave the go ahead. "All right guys, do it. Go carefully, and go quickly."

"Copy that." He scooted back from the edge and moved to the other window. His rappel line was already there and he made quick work of reattaching it. Glancing back at Spike and Wordy, he gave final instructions. "Sam is swinging from left to right a bit, so Spike, I need you to get in the position I just vacated and keep your eye on him. When he's just started to swing towards me, you let me know and that's when we make our move. Wordy, use your jacket for the distraction."

"Copy that," Spike murmured, and Wordy echoed.

All three men moved into position, holding eye contact for one brief moment before Ed spoke: "Let's bring him home."

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A.N. 2: In case some of you were confused, Sam (and Ed) detached himself from the main line so that he could move freely into the room without restriction, but left the twenty foot safety line attached, loose. Therefore, theoretically, he could've moved into the room twenty feet... or fall twenty feet before it caught him. I have no idea if this is actual protocol, but this is fanfiction so in my world, it is.