New York Minute 12
May. 20th, 2005 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardDude. Just played the worst piano concert in my entire life. That's eleven years of playing piano, five years of playing flute, and seven months of playing saxophone. Holy crap. I'm the oldest. I'm supposed to play the best, not the worst.
*sigh* NYM 12, in which Things Happen. Also, Flack gets perilously near to an emotional breakdown.
“Hello, Stella,” Mac said, lowering himself into the chair beside her bed. He hesitated a little, brushing his fingers tentatively across the back of her hand. “I’m sorry I left so suddenly yesterday. I had to do some paperwork back at the lab, and then I got a call about a robbery at the Met. More than a million dollars worth of paintings stolen. It’s horrible. There are two security guards dead. Danny and Flack are working the case with me, but they’re working on another case too. The shooting at Starbucks yesterday, do you remember that? They were working that case with you. Danny thinks the two of them are connected – he found some evidence that the vic from the shooting was a thief whose prints were found at similar robberies in different parts of the country – but he and Flack are trying to chase down the shooter from Starbucks. They can’t devote as much time to the Met robbery as I’d like.”
He tilted his head to the side, willing her to open her eyes, to grin at him and try to tease a reluctant smile from his lips. Next time, Stella, I promise. Next time, I’ll smile. I’ll even laugh. Just wake up. Please. I never ask you for anything. Just please wake up. “Aiden’s still working in the Bronx,” he said, exhaling it all in a single breath. “On the rape-murder with the dead cop. I think she might have been helping Danny today, but she really wants to catch the perp from her case. She mentioned something about the detective she was working with being a real – I believe ‘asshole’ and ‘sexist, chauvinistic pig’ were her exact words. He sounds like the kind of guy you used to challenge to drinking contests when we still –” He hesitated again, suddenly thick with tears. Determinedly, he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Years ago. Remember? We used to go out with some homicide detectives from uptown.” Two of them – no, three, Mark Devine ate his gun last year – are dead now. One retired. Another one moved to Salt Lake City and is a police officer there. “You remember that, Stella?”
Tentatively, Mac reached for her hand. There was calluses on her palm from her gun. “Please wake up,” he said.
*
“Now what the hell?” Joey growled, starting the car.
Carmine made a startled sound, tearing his lips away from his milkshake. “What?” He looked toward the front door of the crime lab. “…oh. Jesus, can’t the kid stay at work like a normal person? I mean, it’s not like anybody that wants to kill him is going to get in there.”
“Except for the ones he hauls in in cuffs,” Joey said helpfully. “And since there’s not much of a chance we can get in there –”
“Right, right. Better he be out in the open where people can shoot at him and we can fuck those bastards over than be in there where people can kill him and we can’t get in.”
*
Aiden pursed her lips thoughtfully and turned to frown at Detective McCluskey. “So why’d you bring me up here?” she asked.
“Delia Shelley died up here,” McCluskey replied, watching her with a small pleased smile on his face.
She glanced around the dirty concrete rooftop. “Why do you think that? I don’t see any evidence of a murder. Of course, it’s kinda hard to tell, what with the bloodstains from the stabbing last month and the crack vials and the used condoms, but I guess the evidence has gotta be here somewhere. It always is.” She cocked her head curiously at him. “You got a witness or something? Why didn’t they come forward sooner?”
McCluskey took a step toward her. “This is the Bronx, Burn. You think they care if a woman, cop or not, dies? Gets raped? They don’t give a fuck about anything.”
Aiden’s immediate reaction was to take a step back, but she stayed put, gnawing on her tongue. Danny could kick this guy’s ass, she thought. Fuck, I could kick this guy’s ass. Flack would screw him over forty ways from Tuesday, bad leg or not. “I think you’re wrong about that, pal. I know people can get pretty afraid of stuff –” like bullets and dead bodies and your partner with blood all over his face “– but they’ll do the right thing when it comes down to it. People live in the Bronx too. Not just in Manhattan. Hell, the folk that live over there? Sometimes I’m not even sure they’re human. Businessmen, and politicians, and crap, ya’ know?” She quirked a smile.
He smiled back at her. It made her nervous, deep down, something cool and predatory about it. Aiden put her hand to her gun without even thinking about it. I been shot at once. Not again, before her brain really registered what she was doing.
McCluskey stepped close enough to touch and ran his hand lightly down the cloth of her sleeve. Aiden flinched back. “What the fuck are you doin’, man?” she snapped out, unthumbing the strap on her holster so the butt of her gun fit neatly into her hand.
“No goddamned broad oughta be a cop,” McCluskey said shortly. “In this business, the only place a cop oughta see a woman is at home or on the street. Not on the job. Only place a woman’s got for a cop is on her back.”
Aiden tried to step away, but he caught her with an iron-fisted grip. “Get the fuck away from me, you son of a bitch,” she said, drawing her gun.
McCluskey caught her wrist with his other hand, tightening until she let out a gasp of pain and dropped her gun. He kicked it away. “I’ve been thinking about this since the day you walked in on my case, bitch. Thought how good it’d be to fuck you, see that badass look in your eyes fade to fear – where it should be. Women don’t belong on the beat or on the street. I wanna hear you scream.”
“Let go of me!” Aiden screamed.
McCluskey ran his fingers up her thigh until he found her badge. He pressed it cruelly into her hip. “How many guys’d you fuck to get this?”
“Fuck you!” she spat, and screamed again. “HELP! HELP!”
He pushed her down onto the dirty concrete. “Screaming’s not gonna help, Burn.”
*
Ow, Stella thought faintly, then with more surety. Motherfuck, OW.
Carefully, without opening her eyes, she began to test how far that ow really extended. She could feel all her toes, which wiggled obediently but sent arcs of pain up and down her entire left side, from leg to collarbone. On the bright side, everything appeared to be in working condition. Not brand-new factory issue, but not “ready for the dump” either. Just about “I want something new, but this still works, so I think I’ll sell it on Ebay” condition.
Tentatively, Stella tried to move her fingers, only to discvoer with some shock and growing horror that she couldn’t. This was, she realized a moment later, because someone was holding her hand.
Where exactly was she?
“Stella?”
At first she thought it was Sister Judith from St. Basil’s, but no, that wasn’t right. It was too deep to be anything but a male voice, taut with tightly strangled fear and barely-held control. It took her a moment to recognize the voice as the one that had been murmuring to her for what seemed like years, and another to actually connect the voice with a name.
“Mac,” she croaked, opening her eyes and attempting to sit up.
Mac’s – extremely worried – face appeared in front of her. He pressed the palm of one hand against her shoulder, trying to push her back down. “Stella, lie down. You’ve got broken bones.”
“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,” she snapped.
Mac flinched a little and drew back, as though realizing exactly how close they was. He started to pull his hand away from hers.
Stella grabbed at it. “No you don’t, Mac Taylor.”
He gave her a slightly frantic look. “Stella –”
“How long was I out?”
“Thirty-two hours and nine minutes,” Mac said immediately.
“…oh.” Stella tilted her head at him, searching his eyes. He gave her what seemed to be a genuine, albeit small, smile. “Yeah, I missed you too, Mac.”
“Don’t –” Mac started to say – maybe it was don’t do that again – then stopped. He reached for his cell phone. “Taylor.”
“What is it?” Stella asked, as his expression went to outright horror.
“What?”
*
“Aiden!” Danny yelled, racing up the stairs. Flack pounded on his heels. “Jesus Christ, Aiden!”
There was a strangled scream that was quickly choked off. Danny pushed open the door to the roof with his shoulder and came out with his gun up, Flack steely-eyed and trigger-happy behind him.
“Let her go, McCluskey!” Danny barked.
McCluskey hauled Aiden off the dirty concrete where he’d pinned her, sliding one arm around her waist. He shoved his service pistol up against her forehead, taking a few steps closer to the edge of the roof. “Make me.”
Flack growled deep in the back of his throat, his mouth tightening visibly.
It’s like déjà vu all over again, Danny thought, a little wildly. No small wonder Flack was reacting badly. Not yet four weeks ago the cop with the gun to their head had been him. Swallowing down sick memories of blood and terror and Tanglewood in a concrete room, he pushed past his memories and edged tentatively toward the spot where Aiden’s gun lay. “Come on, McCluskey,” he said, licking at dry lips. “You don’t wanna go down like this.”
“What do you care?” McCluskey demanded. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“You’re not gonna be seein’ much more period if you don’t let her go,” Flack said, his voice taut with something that might have been blind terror. He trained his gun on the round curve of the detective’s head.
McCluskey pulled Aiden closer against him. She bit her lip, eyes frantic. In the distance, Danny heard police sirens howl. Mac. Thank God.
“Let her go,” Danny said. “Come on. I don’t wanna shoot another cop.”
“I know who you are,” McCluskey said suddenly, staring at Danny’s face. “You’re the scientist killed that cop two months ago. Fuck. They’re letting cop-killers out on the street now?”
Danny’s hands tightened on the gun. “I didn’t kill that cop!”
“Fuck you, McCluskey, look who’s talkin’!” Aiden burst out. “You’re a fuckin’ serial. Three dead –” She stopped abruptly as McCluskey pushed the gun closer against her head and clicked the safety off.
Flack moaned low in the back of his throat. His hands were shaking.
“Flack,” Danny said urgently. “Hey, Flack, hold on. Mac’s on his way.”
McCluskey jumped at Flack’s name. Aiden whimpered a little as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Danny licked at his lips, wondering if he could use that to his advantage somehow. “Yeah, McCluskey,” he said. “Flack. That’s Lieutenant Donald Flack’s kid over there. How’s the department gonna feel if you shoot one of his co-workers? You’re a cop, McCluskey. You know what’s gonna happen in a few minutes. Mac Taylor and ESU and a couple dozen patrol cars are gonna come. So are the news crews. All of New York’s gonna see you go down.”
McCluskey’s face changed a little. His grip on the gun loosened. “What do you think I care?” he said.
Below them, the first of the source of the sirens drew up beside the buildings. Danny drew a soft sigh of relief. “You wanna go down big, McCluskey? So all’a New York can see what kinda guy you are? Think about how that’s gonna make the NYPD look. These people need to depend on us, and they’re not gonna do it if they think we’re all criminals. I don’t know why you joined the NYPD, but I know why I did. Put the gun down, McCluskey.”
Footsteps on the stairs behind him. Come on, Mac, get your ass up here.
There was a click as McCluskey slid the safety back on. His finger slipped off the trigger.
Flack tackled him, knocking him to the floor as Aiden scrambled away toward Danny.
“Okay,” Flack said, kicking his piece aside. “Now you’re under arrest and I hope to hell they put you to death.” He jammed his knee into McCluskey’s back, yanking his arms around so he could cuff him. McCluskey made a startled sound of protest and tried to struggle away. Flack’s gun was at the back of his head in a heartbeat. “Move again,” he ordered, voice strained. “Move again.”
“Aiden!” Danny gasped as she flung herself at him. He hugged her tightly. She was shaking.
“Oh, Jesus,” she said, clutching at him. “I’m okay, I’m okay, he didn’t – oh jesus.”
“Fuck, Aid,” Danny said softly as Mac and three uniforms came barreling onto the roof.
*whimper* I had my first official collision in PE today, while playing some mutated form of kickball, where I turned around to go back to base for some reason and ran smack into the guy behind me. We both hit the floor. It's probably forty kinds of wrong that I really hope I bruise, but I don't think I'm going to. Wah.
Dude, only in the Snafu-verse can Danny be described with, And how the hell did I get to be the same one?
*sigh* NYM 12, in which Things Happen. Also, Flack gets perilously near to an emotional breakdown.
“Hello, Stella,” Mac said, lowering himself into the chair beside her bed. He hesitated a little, brushing his fingers tentatively across the back of her hand. “I’m sorry I left so suddenly yesterday. I had to do some paperwork back at the lab, and then I got a call about a robbery at the Met. More than a million dollars worth of paintings stolen. It’s horrible. There are two security guards dead. Danny and Flack are working the case with me, but they’re working on another case too. The shooting at Starbucks yesterday, do you remember that? They were working that case with you. Danny thinks the two of them are connected – he found some evidence that the vic from the shooting was a thief whose prints were found at similar robberies in different parts of the country – but he and Flack are trying to chase down the shooter from Starbucks. They can’t devote as much time to the Met robbery as I’d like.”
He tilted his head to the side, willing her to open her eyes, to grin at him and try to tease a reluctant smile from his lips. Next time, Stella, I promise. Next time, I’ll smile. I’ll even laugh. Just wake up. Please. I never ask you for anything. Just please wake up. “Aiden’s still working in the Bronx,” he said, exhaling it all in a single breath. “On the rape-murder with the dead cop. I think she might have been helping Danny today, but she really wants to catch the perp from her case. She mentioned something about the detective she was working with being a real – I believe ‘asshole’ and ‘sexist, chauvinistic pig’ were her exact words. He sounds like the kind of guy you used to challenge to drinking contests when we still –” He hesitated again, suddenly thick with tears. Determinedly, he wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Years ago. Remember? We used to go out with some homicide detectives from uptown.” Two of them – no, three, Mark Devine ate his gun last year – are dead now. One retired. Another one moved to Salt Lake City and is a police officer there. “You remember that, Stella?”
Tentatively, Mac reached for her hand. There was calluses on her palm from her gun. “Please wake up,” he said.
*
“Now what the hell?” Joey growled, starting the car.
Carmine made a startled sound, tearing his lips away from his milkshake. “What?” He looked toward the front door of the crime lab. “…oh. Jesus, can’t the kid stay at work like a normal person? I mean, it’s not like anybody that wants to kill him is going to get in there.”
“Except for the ones he hauls in in cuffs,” Joey said helpfully. “And since there’s not much of a chance we can get in there –”
“Right, right. Better he be out in the open where people can shoot at him and we can fuck those bastards over than be in there where people can kill him and we can’t get in.”
*
Aiden pursed her lips thoughtfully and turned to frown at Detective McCluskey. “So why’d you bring me up here?” she asked.
“Delia Shelley died up here,” McCluskey replied, watching her with a small pleased smile on his face.
She glanced around the dirty concrete rooftop. “Why do you think that? I don’t see any evidence of a murder. Of course, it’s kinda hard to tell, what with the bloodstains from the stabbing last month and the crack vials and the used condoms, but I guess the evidence has gotta be here somewhere. It always is.” She cocked her head curiously at him. “You got a witness or something? Why didn’t they come forward sooner?”
McCluskey took a step toward her. “This is the Bronx, Burn. You think they care if a woman, cop or not, dies? Gets raped? They don’t give a fuck about anything.”
Aiden’s immediate reaction was to take a step back, but she stayed put, gnawing on her tongue. Danny could kick this guy’s ass, she thought. Fuck, I could kick this guy’s ass. Flack would screw him over forty ways from Tuesday, bad leg or not. “I think you’re wrong about that, pal. I know people can get pretty afraid of stuff –” like bullets and dead bodies and your partner with blood all over his face “– but they’ll do the right thing when it comes down to it. People live in the Bronx too. Not just in Manhattan. Hell, the folk that live over there? Sometimes I’m not even sure they’re human. Businessmen, and politicians, and crap, ya’ know?” She quirked a smile.
He smiled back at her. It made her nervous, deep down, something cool and predatory about it. Aiden put her hand to her gun without even thinking about it. I been shot at once. Not again, before her brain really registered what she was doing.
McCluskey stepped close enough to touch and ran his hand lightly down the cloth of her sleeve. Aiden flinched back. “What the fuck are you doin’, man?” she snapped out, unthumbing the strap on her holster so the butt of her gun fit neatly into her hand.
“No goddamned broad oughta be a cop,” McCluskey said shortly. “In this business, the only place a cop oughta see a woman is at home or on the street. Not on the job. Only place a woman’s got for a cop is on her back.”
Aiden tried to step away, but he caught her with an iron-fisted grip. “Get the fuck away from me, you son of a bitch,” she said, drawing her gun.
McCluskey caught her wrist with his other hand, tightening until she let out a gasp of pain and dropped her gun. He kicked it away. “I’ve been thinking about this since the day you walked in on my case, bitch. Thought how good it’d be to fuck you, see that badass look in your eyes fade to fear – where it should be. Women don’t belong on the beat or on the street. I wanna hear you scream.”
“Let go of me!” Aiden screamed.
McCluskey ran his fingers up her thigh until he found her badge. He pressed it cruelly into her hip. “How many guys’d you fuck to get this?”
“Fuck you!” she spat, and screamed again. “HELP! HELP!”
He pushed her down onto the dirty concrete. “Screaming’s not gonna help, Burn.”
*
Ow, Stella thought faintly, then with more surety. Motherfuck, OW.
Carefully, without opening her eyes, she began to test how far that ow really extended. She could feel all her toes, which wiggled obediently but sent arcs of pain up and down her entire left side, from leg to collarbone. On the bright side, everything appeared to be in working condition. Not brand-new factory issue, but not “ready for the dump” either. Just about “I want something new, but this still works, so I think I’ll sell it on Ebay” condition.
Tentatively, Stella tried to move her fingers, only to discvoer with some shock and growing horror that she couldn’t. This was, she realized a moment later, because someone was holding her hand.
Where exactly was she?
“Stella?”
At first she thought it was Sister Judith from St. Basil’s, but no, that wasn’t right. It was too deep to be anything but a male voice, taut with tightly strangled fear and barely-held control. It took her a moment to recognize the voice as the one that had been murmuring to her for what seemed like years, and another to actually connect the voice with a name.
“Mac,” she croaked, opening her eyes and attempting to sit up.
Mac’s – extremely worried – face appeared in front of her. He pressed the palm of one hand against her shoulder, trying to push her back down. “Stella, lie down. You’ve got broken bones.”
“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,” she snapped.
Mac flinched a little and drew back, as though realizing exactly how close they was. He started to pull his hand away from hers.
Stella grabbed at it. “No you don’t, Mac Taylor.”
He gave her a slightly frantic look. “Stella –”
“How long was I out?”
“Thirty-two hours and nine minutes,” Mac said immediately.
“…oh.” Stella tilted her head at him, searching his eyes. He gave her what seemed to be a genuine, albeit small, smile. “Yeah, I missed you too, Mac.”
“Don’t –” Mac started to say – maybe it was don’t do that again – then stopped. He reached for his cell phone. “Taylor.”
“What is it?” Stella asked, as his expression went to outright horror.
“What?”
*
“Aiden!” Danny yelled, racing up the stairs. Flack pounded on his heels. “Jesus Christ, Aiden!”
There was a strangled scream that was quickly choked off. Danny pushed open the door to the roof with his shoulder and came out with his gun up, Flack steely-eyed and trigger-happy behind him.
“Let her go, McCluskey!” Danny barked.
McCluskey hauled Aiden off the dirty concrete where he’d pinned her, sliding one arm around her waist. He shoved his service pistol up against her forehead, taking a few steps closer to the edge of the roof. “Make me.”
Flack growled deep in the back of his throat, his mouth tightening visibly.
It’s like déjà vu all over again, Danny thought, a little wildly. No small wonder Flack was reacting badly. Not yet four weeks ago the cop with the gun to their head had been him. Swallowing down sick memories of blood and terror and Tanglewood in a concrete room, he pushed past his memories and edged tentatively toward the spot where Aiden’s gun lay. “Come on, McCluskey,” he said, licking at dry lips. “You don’t wanna go down like this.”
“What do you care?” McCluskey demanded. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“You’re not gonna be seein’ much more period if you don’t let her go,” Flack said, his voice taut with something that might have been blind terror. He trained his gun on the round curve of the detective’s head.
McCluskey pulled Aiden closer against him. She bit her lip, eyes frantic. In the distance, Danny heard police sirens howl. Mac. Thank God.
“Let her go,” Danny said. “Come on. I don’t wanna shoot another cop.”
“I know who you are,” McCluskey said suddenly, staring at Danny’s face. “You’re the scientist killed that cop two months ago. Fuck. They’re letting cop-killers out on the street now?”
Danny’s hands tightened on the gun. “I didn’t kill that cop!”
“Fuck you, McCluskey, look who’s talkin’!” Aiden burst out. “You’re a fuckin’ serial. Three dead –” She stopped abruptly as McCluskey pushed the gun closer against her head and clicked the safety off.
Flack moaned low in the back of his throat. His hands were shaking.
“Flack,” Danny said urgently. “Hey, Flack, hold on. Mac’s on his way.”
McCluskey jumped at Flack’s name. Aiden whimpered a little as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Danny licked at his lips, wondering if he could use that to his advantage somehow. “Yeah, McCluskey,” he said. “Flack. That’s Lieutenant Donald Flack’s kid over there. How’s the department gonna feel if you shoot one of his co-workers? You’re a cop, McCluskey. You know what’s gonna happen in a few minutes. Mac Taylor and ESU and a couple dozen patrol cars are gonna come. So are the news crews. All of New York’s gonna see you go down.”
McCluskey’s face changed a little. His grip on the gun loosened. “What do you think I care?” he said.
Below them, the first of the source of the sirens drew up beside the buildings. Danny drew a soft sigh of relief. “You wanna go down big, McCluskey? So all’a New York can see what kinda guy you are? Think about how that’s gonna make the NYPD look. These people need to depend on us, and they’re not gonna do it if they think we’re all criminals. I don’t know why you joined the NYPD, but I know why I did. Put the gun down, McCluskey.”
Footsteps on the stairs behind him. Come on, Mac, get your ass up here.
There was a click as McCluskey slid the safety back on. His finger slipped off the trigger.
Flack tackled him, knocking him to the floor as Aiden scrambled away toward Danny.
“Okay,” Flack said, kicking his piece aside. “Now you’re under arrest and I hope to hell they put you to death.” He jammed his knee into McCluskey’s back, yanking his arms around so he could cuff him. McCluskey made a startled sound of protest and tried to struggle away. Flack’s gun was at the back of his head in a heartbeat. “Move again,” he ordered, voice strained. “Move again.”
“Aiden!” Danny gasped as she flung herself at him. He hugged her tightly. She was shaking.
“Oh, Jesus,” she said, clutching at him. “I’m okay, I’m okay, he didn’t – oh jesus.”
“Fuck, Aid,” Danny said softly as Mac and three uniforms came barreling onto the roof.
*whimper* I had my first official collision in PE today, while playing some mutated form of kickball, where I turned around to go back to base for some reason and ran smack into the guy behind me. We both hit the floor. It's probably forty kinds of wrong that I really hope I bruise, but I don't think I'm going to. Wah.
Dude, only in the Snafu-verse can Danny be described with, And how the hell did I get to be the same one?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-21 01:43 am (UTC)That's a good thing, mind.
Things that strike me in <3 ways:
What Mac thinks when he wants Stella to wake up. "I'll smile. I'll even laugh." That... that cuts deep. It's Mac being desperate and remembering and it's very much the anything that he'll do for his partner. He'll smile if she'll just wake up.
Stella's Ebay condition makes me giggle.
The whole last scene on the rooftop is completely--and perfectly--fraught with deep, frantic tension. Flack skittering around inside his head like a jackrabbit in a wire cage, Danny trying not to think at all and just talk like he's supposed to.
*flail* So good. Damn.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-21 01:56 am (UTC)What Mac thinks when he wants Stella to wake up. "I'll smile. I'll even laugh." That... that cuts deep. It's Mac being desperate and remembering and it's very much the anything that he'll do for his partner. He'll smile if she'll just wake up.
I think it scares Mac in some ways, how desperate he is. But he's always had Stella there when he needed her, even when he was in his deepest funk after 9/11. Maybe he pushed her away, but she was there. And now she's not. And it hurts him, until he's at the point where he'll do anything to get her to wake up.
Stella's Ebay condition makes me giggle.
Well, it is the kind of thing she'd come up with.
The whole last scene on the rooftop is completely--and perfectly--fraught with deep, frantic tension. Flack skittering around inside his head like a jackrabbit in a wire cage, Danny trying not to think at all and just talk like he's supposed to.
The rooftop scene was the hardest to write, I think, mainly because I wrote it in so many different pieces. I never had a chance to just sit down and write it all at once. At this point in time, Flack really is freaking out. He's this close to a fullblown panic attack, and in NYM 13 he gets much, much closer. It's too close to what happened to him for him to be anywhere in the same zip code as "comfortable." He's scared out of his fucking mind. And Danny? Danny's probably the most emotionally stable out of all of them at this point, which is kind of scary. At this point in time, he's using every skill he ever picked up from Val or Tanglewood or the NYPD to try and talk McCluskey away from Aiden, like a hostage negotiator would do. He can't risk shooting him the way he did Curly - McCluskey's a cop, and Aiden's too close. I think ESU would kill to get Danny away from the Crime Lab at this point in time, because dude, can that guy talk.
I'm really sorry this chapter took so long to come out. Wednesday and Thursday are days when I don't have a lot of time because of afterschool stuff, and more of it was handwritten than was typed, so I had to type it up.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-22 04:27 am (UTC)Also, the entire scene on the roof is real and unbelievably tense, and just pulls you along as you're reading it in a very gripping way. Tbe build-up to what McCluskey tries to do to Aiden, along with how they talk him down, and how they react, is paced really nicely, and just...works. Really well.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-22 11:47 pm (UTC)