Disclaimer: I don't own Psych or To Kill a Mockingbird.

A/N: Enjoy, and please review! Extended A/N and anon review replies at the end of the chapter! XD

The Finch and the Mockingbird

Chapter Twelve: A High-Stakes Game of Cops and Homicidal Scholars

Shawn was hanging by his wrists from the ceiling, a gaping wound in one arm and the other severely dislocated. Juliet thought she saw a glint of white in the wound. Bone? She felt sick. His knee was swollen beneath his blood-crusted jeans, obviously mutilated. His face was bruised, he was sweaty, shivering, and unconscious. He looked dead, except for the tremors. Then she saw that another length of rope had been fashioned into a noose and secured around his neck, so that if the rope holding his hands were to snap, he'd be hanged. She shuddered herself, frozen dead in horror at the scene.

An older man, bound and gagged and bloody, lay on the floor just a few feet away from where she stopped. She didn't recognize him. He had a small round hole smack dab in the middle of his forehead. His gray eyes stared wide-open, terrified, lifeless at her.

Henry Spencer was on his knees with his back to them, a terrible bleeding welt on the back of his balding head. He was swaying where he knelt, and his attention was focused fully on Shawn. Definitely concussed.

The giant man she assumed to be Aaron Stevens was lying facedown on the wooden floor, unconscious. His right arm was stretched out beside him, limp. A pistol lay at the edge of his fingertips. Men were already swarming Henry and Shawn, asking what had happened, and SWAT was running for the raised platform Shawn was hanging above.

She was moving to pick up the gun when Stevens' fingers twitched. In a move so fast and sudden that she couldn't stop it, he'd grasped the gun, slammed it up and into her jaw, and then sat up, aimed, and fired wildly at Shawn, missing him by a long shot.

Vision blinking in and out, blood welling at a brutal cut on her chin, Juliet grunted and struggled to her feet. Her heart sank.

He hadn't been firing wildly. And he had missed Shawn, but he hadn't missed.

The rope connected to Shawn's hands snapped as the bullet plowed into it. Juliet screamed in sync with Henry as his body fell down, his still tied hands flopping down uselessly in front of him, arm grotesquely broken, the noose around his neck bringing him to a halt.

Officers surrounded Stevens, took him down.

BOOM!

Not even a second after Shawn's sudden stop, another gun discharged, this one from somewhere next to Juliet. Lassiter's bullet plowed into the rope connected to the noose, and Shawn dropped like a stone, crumpling in a broken heap on the platform, his legs disappearing into the trapdoor, his torso slumped awkwardly over the edge and on the floor of the platform.

Everything was still and unnaturally silent for all of one second, a second that seemed to stretch forever and was encompassed by ages worth of fear, worry, disbelief, anger, terror...

And then everything exploded. Like the twirling porcelain dancer in Juliet's old jewelry box, life seemed to spin back into motion, slowly at first, gaining momentum quickly. Henry, Lassiter and Juliet surged forward to Shawn, accompanied by several of the SWAT team. The remaining officers and SWAT wrestled Aaron Stevens into handcuffs and dragged him out of the cabin door, into custody.

Somehow, even with his obviously painful injuries, Henry made it to the platform before anyone else. He dropped to his knees with a groan, highly favoring his left leg, and reached over to his son, fumbling at the rope around his neck with violently trembling fingers. Lassiter reached them next, and it took him and a couple of officers to drag him away from his son so that someone who wasn't badly injured and shaking like a leaf could check over Shawn.

That would be Juliet. Like Shawn's father, she, too, dropped to her knees. She didn't know how she kept her own hands from shaking as she saw her friend's terrible condition. She didn't even know if he was alive.

An officer that had knelt beside her had gingerly taken the wrist on Shawn's right, unbroken arm, right below the ropes while Juliet worked to loosen the noose around his neck, keeping her eyes off of his face and trying to pretend that this wasn't Shawn, that it wasn't someone who was important to her, someone she may or may not have fallen for...

"He's got a pulse," the officer said, and her own heart leaped a little. It sank at his next words. "It's really thin and thready, though. Has anybody called the paramedics?"

Juliet responded as she finally worked the knot loose and gently pulled the rope from around his neck. "Detective Lassiter called them with directions when we found this place. They should be there any minute."

She whipped her head around when she heard her partner curse behind her. He was slamming his phone shut as Juliet turned to look at him. "What's wrong?"

"The ambulance can't make it on the path to the shelter," Lassiter said shortly. "They're sending some men our way with a backboard and some medical supplies, and they're going to have to carry him the two and half miles to the house."

"Dammit!" Juliet cried, concern swelling within her. Shawn was in bad, bad shape. He needed an ambulance; he needed a hospital, now. "How long?"

"At least another fifteen, twenty minutes before they get here," Lassiter said. He glanced over to where several officers had finally managed to calm a concussed Henry down enough so that Lassiter wasn't having to help physically hold him back. He walked closer, looking down at Shawn with a badly concealed concern in his blue eyes. He swore, his eyes running over the prone body in front of him. He squatted down next to the younger man and placed two fingers on his neck, right above and darkening red welt from the rope that had momentarily strangled him. Juliet's heart skipped a beat when he frowned and shifted his hand slightly, unable to find a pulse, but then she relaxed only slightly when his face smoothed out the tiniest bit and he sat back.

Lassiter ran a hand over his face, weary, before jumping to his feet, striding across the room and looking out the door. She knew that he was looking for the paramedics even though he had just told her they were fifteen to twenty minutes away. Finally able to let her emotions rise up now that this part of the investigation was over, Juliet's vision became blurred as she turned back to Shawn. She ignored the SWAT men and the officers surrounding her friend, trying to look him over and discern what they could or should do for him without hurting him more, finally coming to the conclusion that they would just have to wait for the paramedics before they did anything, even lift him out of the awkward position he was in, half-in and half-out of the trapdoor on the platform. They didn't know what other injuries he might have, and moving him, even to lay him down on the ground in a more comfortable position without medical supervision, could end up injuring Shawn even more than he already was.

With a trembling hand, Juliet reached out and tentatively ran her fingers through Shawn's tangled, unkempt hair and almost recoiled when her fingers brushed up against the burning hot skin of his forehead. He was running a very high fever.

She shouldn't have told him it would be okay for him to go off on his own, even if there was no physical evidence that he was in this kind of danger. She should have insisted on a protective detail, no matter how paranoid that might have looked. She should have done something, anything to prevent this from happening.

A tear slipped off of her nose and splashed onto Shawn's bruised face. "I'm so sorry, Shawn," she whispered.

He made a pained noise and shifted ever so slightly. She continued to stroke his hair gently, trying to calm him and help ease the pain he was surely in. To her surprise, he actually leaned into her touch, moaning softly in the back of his throat. And then his eyes blinked open, slowly and lethargically. He was awake?

The pain in his eyes made her want him to drift away again. He was shivering, unfocused, disoriented. His face was pale, bruised, and sticky with sweat. His hands were still bound together in front of him, because they didn't want to risk moving them, especially the left one She thought that his arm might be infected, because the skin around the gash was bright red and swollen. And yeah, she could definitely see his bone. Her stomach turned.

"Shawn?" she stammered, pausing slightly in her ministrations.

He blinked again, his hazel eyes confused and agonized. Maybe he wasn't aware. He was definitely aware of the pain.

Then he opened his mouth, his lips dry and cracked, and in a voice that really wasn't a voice at all, he rasped, "D-dad?"

Her eyes widened. "He's okay, Shawn. Your dad's okay. Help is on its way, I..." She didn't know how to speak to him when he was like this. It had been bad enough when he'd called her when he'd been kidnapped before, his voice hushed and pained. Now to see him like this, to hear his weak voice... This was not what Shawn Spencer was supposed to look like; to sound like. He was supposed to be hopping around like an over-energized Energizer Bunny, cracking inappropriate jokes, needling Lassiter until the detective snapped, and solving mysteries with a wave of his hand to his temple.

He didn't seem to hear her, or even see her. His eyes roved around lazily, his eyelids heavy. "I need..." he murmured, his dazed eyes seeing right through her. "N-need my d-dad."

She spun around, spotting Henry sitting on the edge of one of the benches that had made up the jury stands, having his hand examined by a few officers. There wasn't much anyone could do for either of the Spencer men until the paramedics arrived, but they were doing their best. It wouldn't be life-threatening to move Henry or to try to tend to his wounds. Not so for Shawn.

Shawn's father was looking around, eyelids heavy, obviously concussed. He kept snatching his hand out of the officers' grasp, asking about Shawn. She knew that if hadn't been concussed and heavily disoriented, there would be no way he wouldn't be fighting like mad to be at Shawn's side. As dysfunctional as their relationship might seem at times, Juliet knew that Henry Spencer cared deeply for his son, and that Shawn reciprocated the sentiment, even if they wouldn't admit it to anyone, least of all each other.

She caught the attention of one of the men assisting Henry and he came over, eyebrows furrowed. "Is he okay to for him come over here?" she asked. "Shawn's awake and asking for him."

The man glanced back at Detective Lassiter, who was alternating between snapping at someone on his cell phone and pacing back and forth in front of the open door, periodically glancing out at the empty wooded area around them, checking in vain for the backup that was much too far away. At Lassiter's curt nod, Juliet said softly, "Mr. Spencer? Shawn is—"

Before she could even finish her sentence, Henry had leapt from his seat, surprisingly quickly and steady on his feet for someone who had a concussion and goodness knows what other injuries. He hobbled his way across the room and fell to his knees beside Shawn, whose eyes wandered aimlessly, drunkenly, until they semi-focused on his father.

"Shawn," Henry said, and Juliet quickly stood at the sound of the gruffness in the man's voice. She knew this was a moment for father and son. No matter how much she wanted to stay by Shawn's side until the medics arrived, she knew that she would only be getting in the way. She went to go talk to her partner, who was now engaging in the pacing back and forth and glaring out the door part of his newfound ritual. She only spared a single glance back at Shawn and Henry, tears once again misting her eyes when she saw the unflappable, emotionally challenged Henry Spencer kneeling over his broken son, worn, shaking hand running his fingers through Shawn's hair and speaking in a low, soft, comforting tone. She couldn't hear what he was saying.

She didn't need to. She could understand the meaning of the tone without the words, and her heart broke for her friend and his father.

She turned back around quickly, swiped the tears from her eyes, and strode over to Lassiter, asking him if the ETA of the medics had changed. She knew it hadn't. She just needed to get away from everything behind her; she needed to put her mind on something else.

And judging from the way Carlton engaged her almost too eagerly, he did too.

Everything was bending and folding in his vision, like he was looking through some kind of whacked-out prism. His whole body hurt, even his eyes, but he'd felt something nice and soothing brushing through his hair, and he had needed to open his eyes, and see the source of the comfort. It had to be his father, right?

Shawn couldn't remember much of what happened, but he knew that it had been bad judging by the pure fiery hell that pulsed through every inch of his body, and he vaguely remembered his father being there – wherever there was – and that he had been in trouble. He'd been fighting someone?

Shawn struggled to get his psychedelic vision under control. He could blearily make out a form directly above him. He didn't move even as his eyes roved about uncertainly, trying to make sense out of the mess that was assaulting his sight. Finally, he was able to make out enough detail to see that this figure was small, blue eyes, blonde hair. Pink lips puckered into a frown of worry. Juliet, his addled mind finally reasoned. He wanted to kiss her frown away. The thought surprised him, but he had more important things on his mind than accidental mind-cheating.

"D-dad?" he asked desperately. Or at least he thought he said it. He wasn't even sure if his mouth had actually moved, let alone if sound had come out.

He realized distantly that his arm was hot and painful, raging with feverish heat and splintering torment. His dad would help him, would make him better. But where was he? He called out for him again, louder. Maybe. His hearing was all jacked up, too. Everything was funny, like it was coming from an old phonograph.

Then Juliet disappeared. Shawn was panicking. He couldn't move, he could barely breathe. And he didn't know where his dad was, if he were even alive, and now Jules was leaving him, too.

And then there was a dizzying blur of movement above him. He closed his eyes for a moment, but when he heard an all-too-familiar and all-too-welcome voice, a voice that he'd needed to hear ever since he'd woken up, he forced his eyelids to open again. A hand was back meshed in his hair. His father's face swam into view. Shawn opened his mouth, tried to speak, but his dad shushed him gently – since when was the great Henry Spencer ever gentle? the more cynical part of his brain said – and started talking in low, soothing words. Shawn couldn't even focus on what was being said; he only caught parts and he was drifting away again, the pain too much, but this time, as he passed out, he felt safe because his father was alive, he was okay, and he wasn't going to let anything happen to Shawn again. Shawn knew this was true, because his dad had just told him so.

"I'm never going to let anything happen to you again, son," he'd said.

Those words chased Shawn back into the darkness, but somehow they made the darkness not so dark anymore.

The paramedics finally arrived twenty-five minutes after Lassiter had spoken to them the first time. There were five of them, and they had a backboard and several cases of medical equipment with them. They finally managed to get Henry away from his son and had taken him to the other side of the room so that he could be checked out and bandaged up by one of them.

With their arrival, the rest of the officers and the SWAT team that hadn't already gone to escort Stevens to the SBPD took their leave, making sure to ask the detectives to keep them updated on Shawn's condition. There was nothing more they could do. He was in good hands now.

They did, however, leave a couple of men to keep watch at the now cordoned-off house. Though they had done an initial investigation of the scene while waiting for the ambulance, they were going to return shortly with their crime scene photographer and some more CSU people. This had started out as a rescue mission and was turning into a murder and attempted murder investigation. Juliet and Lassiter would return to the scene after checking up on Shawn at the hospital and stopping by the station to speak with the chief.

They were going to send some more medics to pick up O'Dell's body and transport him to the PD's morgue as soon as they could, but right now, getting Spencer out of the woods (both figuratively and literally, Lassiter thought wryly) was at the top of everyone's priority list.

The other four paramedics swarmed Shawn, examining him first without moving him, trying not to aggravate any of his extensive injuries, but in the end they realized that they would have no choice but to move him, as little as possible.

Carlton watched them work from across the room, his eyes hard. He watched as they carefully slit the rope binding Spencer's hands together and gently moved his hands to his sides. The detective barely concealed a wince of sympathy as the unconscious consultant made a pained noise in his sleep, reacting to the pain even in the throes of unconsciousness. Beside him, Detective O'Hara shifted. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes. She was distressed. Spencer, even with all of his shenanigans, had somehow wiggled his way into her heart a long time ago, he thought distantly.

They should leave, he thought then, even more distantly. The paramedics had it under control; they should oversee the booking of Stevens. File their reports. Question him. They didn't need to be here. They'd only get in the way.

There was no way in hell he was leaving, and he knew O'Hara would say the same.

It wasn't that Spencer was his friend. But the fake psychic had slowly become a part of the department, and even if Lassiter wanted to throttle him sometimes (all the time), he didn't deserve this. No one deserved this. Right now, as far as the head detective was concerned, Shawn Spencer was one of them. He'd gone through torture that he himself in all his rough years of police and detective work, couldn't even begin to imagine. And yet he'd somehow managed to hold out against all odds and survive long enough for rescue.

Now he just had to survive past rescue.

And Lassiter wasn't going to let that idiot get out of this the easy way, like he did with most everything else in his supposedly charmed life.

It seemed like forever, but it was really only ten minutes or so after the EMTs arrived that they had Spencer strapped on the backboard and had hoisted him up between them, ready to carry him to the ambulance.

It was going to be a bumpy ride, and Carlton didn't envy Spencer in the slightest.

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To Guest: Thanks, I'm really glad you're enjoying it!

A/N: Thank you SO MUCH to everyone for your amazing reviews for chapter 11: ShamrockNinny, ChigauBakemono, Liberty Hoffman, Guest, Clara Brighet and ButterCat! Also a huge thanks to thewarpedmind1 and Clara Brighet for leaving reviews for chapter 10, and to thewarpedmind1 for leaving a review for chapter 9! Over 100 reviews now, guys, THANK YOU! :)

Next chapter is going to be extremely angsty, with Henry's perspective on the whole rescue, some Gus, Jules, and even a bit of Lassie angst about poor Shawn...

Shawn's not out of the woods yet (literally or figuratively, like Lassie thought earlier), and we've still got five chapters and an epilogue to go, and they are going to be angst ridden and injured/hurt/scared/angsty Shawn and worried friends and family and... FEELS! XD

Please review, and I'll update soon...

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND FOR MAKING THIS STORY POSSIBLE WITH YOUR REVIEWS, ENCOURAGEMENT AND SUPPORT!

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~Emachinescat ^..^