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SUMMARY: He could lose everything. She could lose him. Could she break his fall? Only morning would tell.
RATING: T, though it’s probably too high for now.
DISCLAIMER: Similarities with CSI:NY characters are intentional, if there are any. I do not own them or the show.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The trailer probably wouldn’t make sense to you right away, but it should after chapter 3.
A huge thank you to cyko and mstatertot for the beta, and to everyone who watched and responded to the trailer. Your excited feedback has me trembling in my boots, but I guess the moment of truth has come.
INDIGO DAWN
Chapter 1
Danny pulled the crime scene vehicle to a stop, and turned to look at the woman in the seat next to him. His voice was softer than usual. “You ready?”
Beyond the cozy confines of the car waited another day, another dilapidated apartment block, another girl who had died too young. He scanned Lindsay’s face; it was her first day back at work, and barely thirty-six hours since he had walked into the Bozeman courtroom not knowing what to expect. He had gone to Montana on a hunch, offering her his friendship – a shoulder to lean on. He had not thought it through; he‘d had no idea what he was going to tell her. He just knew that he had to be there. It would have been no surprise if she had pushed him away again. But she hadn’t.
Twelve hours later they had returned to New York. Together.
Lindsay replied with a brave smile, her voice steady. “As ready as ever.”
He lightly squeezed her leg; he had always admired her guts; he could only hope that the conviction and sentence had finally brought her some closure. He wasn’t too optimistic though; it may have been a victory, but there was nothing sweet about it. No punishment – however harsh – could ever bring back her friends, her innocence. Danny knew it would take time for the ‘old’ Lindsay to return, if ever, but he was prepared to give her that time, to wait. His words were spoken in simple honesty. “Welcome back, Montana.”
This time the smile touched her eyes. It warmed his chest, but was accompanied by a whisper of fear - fear that he’d mess it up, that he’d push too hard, that he’d expect too much, or not enough.
They walked the distance to the crime scene in silence, greeted by a few cops as they made their way through the ramshackle foyer. The cordoned-off apartment was on the first floor, scanty furniture decorating the dimly-lit lounge area. From the shadows, an icy female voice called their attention.
“Messer.” She spoke his name like a curse, keeping to the dark. “It would be my rotten luck.”
Danny felt his gut twist. Paige Camerer. Detective Paige Camerer. He needed no introduction; she was part of a history he had worked hard to forget. Last time he knew she had left New York for Los Angeles. It was one of the best days of his life.
He brushed off her words, but had less success with the unease she had roused in him. Shining his flashlight around the room, he allowed only the slightest hint of sarcasm into his tone. “What happened, Paige? You run out of enemies in LA?”
She stepped into sight. “Enough of the niceties, Messer. You here to work or to make small talk?”
They followed her to an adjoining room.
“DB’s sixteen year old Mandy Moss,” she told them, gesturing towards the victim on the bed. “Roommate found her early this morning. Familiar MO; third one in as many weeks – all school girls. Looks like we have a sexual serial killer on the loose.”
Shrugging off the crawly disquiet, Lindsay turned to the victim. The girl’s hands were tied to the bedposts, a pair of panties stuffed into her mouth. Wide empty eyes, staring into a distant darkness, spoke of the horror of her last minutes.
“You think he gets off on killing them?” she asked, sensing Danny coming up behind her.
He was silent for a moment, considering the disturbing scene in front of them. “Nah,” he finally said, his tone flat but definitive. “This is about power.”
He sighed, his gaze on Paige; he didn’t need the old guilt, the old questions. Not now.
A slight creek caught his attention. From the corner of his eye, he saw the closet door behind Lindsay jarring open, a flash of light coming off a metal surface. Training, memory, and his need to protect her exploded through his conscious with a blinding flash. This was known territory. He’d been here before. He lunged forward without thinking, flinging his full weight over Lindsay. She hit the floor beneath him with a soft thud, breathing out in a huff. He heard her gasping his name in a question. A black cat darted from the behind the swinging door, the metal tube of a vacuum cleaner just missing it, hitting the floor with a hollow clunk. Air flooded to Danny’s lungs, leaving him slightly overwhelmed and nauseous. It took a moment for reality to settle in. With adrenaline still coursing through his veins and his heart beating in his ears, he pulled himself off Lindsay. “What the … a cat in the closet?”
Lindsay moved away slightly, using her left arm to push herself up, but dropped back just as soon, her hand clutched to her chest. Danny’s embarrassment was replaced by concern. He saw her recovering, wiping the signs of pain from her face. It didn’t dull his regret; he held out a hand to help her up. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” Lindsay nodded, absently rubbing her wrist, shock still clouding her gaze. “It’s nothing.”
“Way to go, Messer,” Paige scorned from the side, her taunting voice adding to his discomfort. “I see little has changed – you still have a thing for hurting girls.”
He bit back the retort; it was a lesson he had learned a long time ago, the painful way. His attention returned to Lindsay. Taking her hand in his, he scanned her wrist, rubbing his thumb and forefinger over the surface. He shook his head; there was no telling, no knowing what was inside the closet. It could just as easily have been a perp. He should know.
With Lindsay removing her hand from his grip, he turned to Paige. His gaze was meant to pulverize her. “If your uniforms knew how to do their job -”
“Never your fault, is it, Messer?” she interrupted, raising her eyebrows and slowly shaking her head.
Danny felt anger take him. “I think, detective,” he sneered, his tone thick with derision, “you might want to have a talk with the jackass that secured this room.”
“That’s precious,” Paige snapped in response. “Next time I’ll tell my men to remove all felines so one of New York’s finest won’t piss his pants.”
Danny bristled, but didn’t give in to the desire to take her on. Gathering his self control, he slowly turned away, not quite ready to let go. “Next time it might not be a cat.”
With a sudden inexplicable need to get Danny away from Paige, to protect him, Lindsay waved him over, pulling him into the processing, into the case, making sure that she continued talking, or kept him talking. However, with Paige always just a few feet away, the tension in the amber apartment remained tangible.
By the time they packed up to leave, she could feel a headache reaching into her neck and shoulders. Their trip back to lab started in silence. She wasn’t sure what to make of what she had seen. With her eyes on the thickening clouds and the traffic lights, shining ominously against the darkening background, Lindsay finally asked the question uppermost in her mind, carefully shaping their names into a question. “You and Paige?”
Waiting for Danny’s response with a strange feeling of defeat, she returned her attention to their surroundings, absently counting the traffic lights as they flashed by. One. Two. Three. Four.
It wouldn’t have surprised her if he were to push her away, to hold her at a distance. God knows, she had done it to him often enough. The fear in her grew with the silence. Had she gone too far? She knew that she needed time to earn his trust; they had been together for three days only, so far just moving with the moment. Their union was still so new, and so frighteningly vulnerable.
Finally, with the first drops of rain dotting the SUV’s windscreen, Danny spoke, his eyes on the traffic. “We go way back, to when I was a rookie cop.”
Silenced by the pain she thought she had heard in his voice, Lindsay didn’t prod.
It was only when he pulled the van into its spot in the parking garage that he turned to face her, meeting her eyes. Undisguised uncertainty clouded the blue of his gaze. Her heart broke without her knowing why.
“I dated her sister,” he said. “Her baby sister.”
Without thinking about it, Lindsay took his hand in hers, running her thumb over the lines inside it. “It didn’t work out?”
He shook his head, his voice flat. “She died.”
“You loved her?”
He shrugged, raising his eyes to the imaginary heavens above, closing them for a moment. When he spoke, still looking away, his words were hollow, and haunted. She saw years of hurt etched on his face, and felt herself waver under its weight.
“It wasn’t my fault, Linds, I swear, but Paige,” he shook his head, searching her eyes for understanding, “she’ll never see it that way.”