A/N - I would like to say here that I have absolutely no idea of the geography of the state of New York having never been to the USA and I have no knowledge of the flora and fauna there either. However I did spend quite a while researching soil samples and indigenous plants before I got mind numbingly bored so I hope it's convincing if nothing else.

Chapter Four

"Well are you happy now?" Mac asked as the elevator doors slid open and he walked out into the Crime Lab hallway followed by Flack.

"Sure am," Flack replied between mouthfuls of the sandwich he was guzzling.

"I've never known anyone to complain so much in my life about missing lunch," Mac said and shook his head in exasperation.

"I was hungry" defended Flack as though he thought that excused the continual moaning Mac had been forced to listen to during the entire journey back from the Institution.

"Just hurry up I don't want my staff to get ideas about eating food in the corridors. We have a perfectly good breakroom that suffices."

Flack grinned and swallowed down the rest of his sandwich in one.

Mac laughed in amusement and then turned into the conference room followed by the detective who took his seat round the table while Mac made his way to the head of it. He was pleased to see his entire team had gathered there for the briefing.

"How was your trip?" smiled Jo as he sat down next to her.

"Long," Mac said, one eyebrow raised as he glanced towards Flack.

Jo exhaled in amusement and then passed round a document detailing the route that Quentin Sosa had taken in his truck.

"This is the route that Quentin Sosa took before he picked up our John Doe," she explained.

"Yeah except he can't remember exactly where that was or for how long he was in the car with him," Danny said irritably.

"How can he not remember?" scoffed Flack.

"He'd been driving for twenty-four hours around the state with only a few stops for forty winks or a cup of coffee," Jo explained.

Flack made an unimpressed face and then looked back at the route.

"He remembers it being a wooded road and dark so it must have been near to the end of his journey but he has no idea at what particular point," Jo sighed.

"An entirely helpful gentleman I see?" Mac said knowingly.

"Quite," Jo nodded.

"Well this may help," Hawkes interrupted. "I analysed the cuts on our vic's hands and it would seem they were made by tree branches slashing into them at a great pace."

"So we're assuming he was running through a forest?" Mac said logically.

"Exactly," Hawkes smiled.

"And that would make sense with him being picked up by Sosa on a wooded road," Lindsay added.

"What about the trace, Sheldon?" Mac asked.

"Ah, it was a plant. Erigeron, a genus of about 390 species of which 173 are indigenous to North America. I'm still trying to work on which particular species it was that was pulled out of the vic's hand."

"Good," Mac nodded. "I want you on that until we know the exact type."

"The clothes were a complete bust," Lindsay informed everyone. "There was nothing on them of any significance except the dirt which is a common soil type to most of New York State. Honeoye."

"So he could have got that from anywhere," sighed Jo.

"And it matches with the dirt on his feet," Lindsay added.

"And this tattoo?" Mac asked picking up a snapshot of the tattoo found on the vic.

"It doesn't seem professional," Adam piped up. "The hand that did it was not the steadiest."

"Any significance to the number?" Mac asked.

"Not the number itself but this styling of tagging with a number is reminiscent of prisoner tattoos," Adam mumbled.

"Hold on," Flack interrupted. "So this guy gets picked up in the middle of nowhere in institution style clothes, a prisoner style tattoo and treatment that would suggest he's actually been in an institution?"

"I see where you're going with this, Flack," Mac sighed. "It all seems to point to the fact that out John Doe was definitely institutionalized at one point in his life."

"And experimented on," Sid added, looking up from his notes.

Every face in the room grimaced as he spoke.

"This is a complete abuse of power if it is what we think it is," Hawkes said in disgust.

"I've been looking at the transplantation again," Sid furthered. "It's most impressively done, one would hardly know some of it had been replaced if the DNA results weren't so conclusive."

"This is so sick," Flack muttered, looking slightly sick himself.

"Have we had any luck tracing the second sample of DNA in our vic's spine?" Mac asked.

"I'm afraid not," Sid replied. "Both sets of DNA were unknown."

"Creepy," Danny murmured with a grimace.

"The Thorn Everidge Mental Institution that Flack and I visited were most unhelpful," Mac told his team.

"And that's the polite way of putting it," Flack added sarcastically.

"They seemed to think we'd made a mistake concerning any disappearances that had happened there."

"Did you believe them?" Jo asked.

"No," Flack interrupted before Mac had a chance to answer. "And the doctor we saw, Hartmann, definitely recognised the photo of our vic no question."

"I'd be inclined to agree with Flack," Mac nodded. "However the Institution is only one hour upstate and not surround by any dense woodland."

"So our guy can't have come from there," Lindsay concluded.

A silence passed around the room as everyone agreed without words they were getting nowhere fast.

"Right," Mac said, taking charge.

"Hawkes, you carry on with that plant trace. Danny, take Lindsay and go and question Quentin Sosa again. He must be able to remember something that will give us a clue. Adam, I need more information on this tattoo. Do institutions use tattoos on their patients and if so I want to know where. Flack speak to Grace, I want to know exactly what she was told over the phone about Thorn Everidge, Doctor Hartmann was lying about something. Sid, any information you can provide on the subject of human experimentation will be most helpful."

The team nodded their heads and began to filter out of the room. After they were gone Mac turned to Jo, worry etched on his face.

"What happened?" he asked immediately, eyes lingering on a small bandage she had taped to the top right of her forehead.

"Oh I'm fine. Don't you worry about me," she smiled.

Mac's face didn't change. "Jo, you should see a doctor," he said seriously.

She sighed and looked at him in all sincerity. "I'm fine, Mac. I mean it. It was just a little bump, I promise you."

Mac nodded and then looked thoughtfully down at the documents still littering the table in front of him.

"I just can't stand the thought of you getting hurt."

Jo reached under the table and squeezed his hand.

"I hate to break it to you, Mac Taylor, but it's happened before and it will probably happen again."

Mac smiled at her. "I know. I'm just not used to this."

"Used to what?" Jo asked, shrugging her shoulders.

"Being in a relationship with someone at work...worrying for their safety."

Jo laughed and gave his hand one last squeeze before standing up. "You think that's bad try being me having to worry about you at work."

Mac chuckled as he watched her leave the room and make her way along the corridor to her office.

"Gracie" Flack smiled as he sauntered into the bullpen and perched himself on the end of her desk.

"Will you move your big ass there," she moaned, attempting to pull her papers out from under him.

"Big? I'm offended," he laughed.

"And I'm busy," she growled.

Flack smirked at her. "Fine," he laughed as he stood up and made his way round to his own desk and sat in his chair.

"Well did you want anything?" she asked irritably.

"Yeah. Mac wants to know exactly what you were told by whomever you spoke to over the phone at the Thorn Everidge Institution."

Grace frowned. "Why?"

"Because when we got there they said we'd been misinformed, nobody has disappeared from their institution."

Grace shook her head vehemently. "No, that's not at all what I was told. The girl I spoke to made it perfectly clear that numerous patients had gone missing."

"Did she say how? Or when?" Flack asked, suddenly serious as he leant forward over his desk.

"She said it was over a long period of time, she'd been archiving the records and had come across names without faces and faces without names. People who had one day been on the records and the next day disappeared."

Flack frowned. "I don't like this. Either this girl you spoke to lied or the doctor we spoke to did. Who was she?"

"She said she was an admin assistant," Grace replied. "Called herself Sue."

"Sue," Flack repeated. "I'm going to check their employee records, see if I can't dig a little deeper into who this Sue could be."

"She did sound a bit concerned there," Grace said, deep in the memory of her conversation. "I thought maybe I'd just caught her at a bad moment."

"What do you mean?" Flack asked interestedly.

"I mean she said people had disappeared but I remember her then saying, 'I don't know why'."

"That's strange," Flack mused.

"It was like she meant the disappearances had occurred but were secret, not public knowledge that patients had escaped or something."

"I think I'm really going to have to look into this place," Flack sighed; he could already feel a headache coming on.

"Well good luck with that," Grace smiled. "I'd help but I've got my own case that needs attending to."

"Thanks," Flack smiled as he yawned and then stretched out his back. "Think I'll start with a coffee though," he grinned.

Mac sat in his office frowning to himself as his mind mulled over the latest case. Nothing was adding up. So far they hadn't been able to deduce who this man was, where he had come from, how he had come to be found by Sosa or anything else on top of that. Not to mention that he was starting to feel more and more convinced that the Thorn Everidge Institution were definitely more involved than they were letting on. Hopefully Flack would find out something useful from Grace about whomever it was who had informed her of the supposed disappearances. And once Hawkes had narrowed down the species of Erigeron then perhaps they might have a better idea of location. Either that or maybe Sosa would finally remember where he'd picked him up. He sighed wearily as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The day had started off so well, waking up to Jo's beautiful, naked form beside him covered only in a thin, cotton sheet. He smiled at the image in his head. But then there had been the John Doe, the human experimentation, the annoying suspects and so many more questions than answers. He jumped a little as his phone suddenly rang.

"Taylor?" he answered.

"Detective Mac Taylor, investigating the Thorn Everidge Institution?"

Mac frowned, the voice was deep and mechanical, someone was using a device to disguise it.

"Yes?"

"I know what you're looking for. The Institution has secrets you couldn't begin to imagine."

"Who are you? What secrets?" Mac asked.

"Not over the phone. It's not safe. I'll text you details of where to meet me."

"But wait..."

The phone cut dead and Mac was left with a buzzing sound emanating from it. He frowned again as he took it away from his ear and stared at it. Who the hell had that been? He blinked as a message flashed up on the screen from an unknown number with a location. He grabbed his jacket and then headed down into the A/V lab where Adam was staring at pictures of tattoos on a screen.

"Adam?" Mac asked, making the timid lab tech jump.

"Oh, boss?" Adam said nervously.

"Place a trace on the number of the last call to my phone," Mac ordered.

"Sure thing," Adam nodded and turned back to his screen.

Mac turned from the lab and headed towards the elevators.

"Mac? Where are you going?"

Mac turned back towards Jo.

"I've got a lead. Someone called my phone, I've got Adam working on a trace of the number as we speak," he said.

"Don't tell me you're going alone?" Jo asked worriedly.

"You know me better than that," Mac smiled. "I'll give Flack a call on the way."

"Good," Jo smiled. "Hurry back."

Mac nodded and then disappeared into the elevator, dialling Flack's number.

Mac pulled the Avalanche into the empty car park and quickly got out, immediately on guard at what could be a potentially dangerous situation. He knew Flack was about five minutes behind him and he would wait for him to get there before going into the disused building. It was quiet round there, away from all the tourist and business hotspots and Mac shivered as a wind blew round him. Why did people always have to pick the most out of the ways places? He wondered. Meeting in a crowded area was nine times out of ten much safer. Suddenly a shadow moved away from the wall of the building and Mac drew his gun.

"Mac Taylor?" a voice whispered.

It was a female voice but he couldn't see her. She had a hood pulled up over her head and face.

"Yes. Did you call me?"

"They have eyes everywhere. It's not safe," she replied.

Mac took a step nearer but she immediately retreated a step.

"What did you have to tell me?"

"The institution, they know what I told the cops. They're looking for me. If you dig deep enough they'll come looking for you too."

"Listen, we can protect you. Just come with me back to the precinct."

"I can hear the screams. They never leave you. They never go."

Mac frowned as he wondered if perhaps this girl was mad. Maybe she wasn't as reliable as he'd hoped.

"We can get you help."

"They hide their patients from view, the ones that won't be missed. Only one...only one or two at a time. They think no-one sees, no-one notices. But I do, I see," she said.

"Why don't you tell me your name?" Mac asked.

"Sue. They call me Sue."

"Well Sue..." Mac suddenly stopped as he felt a small pinprick of pain in his neck. He clasped a hand to the spot and when he brought it back a tiny dart was held in his hand.

"What the..." he mumbled as he suddenly felt his knees give way and hit the ground hard.

Screaming erupted in front of him from the girl, from Sue and he saw her petrified face as her hood fell when she turned to run. His whole body felt like it was shutting down, numbness spreading throughout his muscles and bones. He saw the girl disappear quickly into the shadows she'd come from and then his eyes slowly closed of their own accord. Nothing more was known to him.

The man sauntered casually up to where the body of the older cop lay. He grinned down at it, chuckling as he enjoyed the immense feeling of power that ran through him. Too bad the girl had escaped, but he knew her face now and it wouldn't be long before she resurfaced and when she did he'd be waiting. However, in the meantime he had the cop to deal with. He heaved Mac up over his shoulder and easily walked back over to where his car was, hidden behind two dumpsters. It wasn't that Mac was light but the man was strong, weight being no objective for him. He flung the cop into the boot and then slammed it closed before getting into the driver's side and speeding away. He grinned again as he pulled out onto the main road while another car passed him by going in the direction he'd just come from. It was the other cop, that tall, dark-haired one.

The man let out a howl of laughter as he thought what a surprised he'd get when he arrived and found his friend gone.