AN: Hello! While not new to the world of fanfiction writing, this is my humble first attempt at CSI:NY. So, please, be gentle people. SPOILERS FOR Child's Play!!! While I read some spoilers about the upcoming eps, they were vague, so some facts will not be right. Essentially, I am taking the spoilers I did read and attempting to incorporate it into the storyline. I didn't read anything pertaining to story-lines dealing with Mac, Stella, etc. so anything to do with them is fair game. Also, in my story, Danny and Lindsay are keeping their relationship low-key, meaning the rest of the team don't know they're dating, but suspect anyway.

Alright! On with the show!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. If I did, I would get Lindsay a better wardrobe. And give Hawkes more air-time.

Sighing, Lindsay ran a hand through her hair as she sat at her desk shuffling through paperwork. No new cases had come in which was surprising; it being New York and all and so she was stuck, confined to a small office, trapped under loads of reports, threatening to drown her for the past three hours. She would have wished for a murder, a burglary, a break-in, anything, except she didn't really want that to happen.

Besides, another crime meant more paperwork. Lindsay suppressed another sigh.

On top of that, her eye caught the other vacant desk in the office, Danny had been absent for a while. Not in the lab, oh no, other than that day he took off, he was back at the job, doing what he did best. No, he was just absent from her life...and she had no idea what to do about it. Still, she had to try, eying a yellow post-it note.

She leaned back in her chair and thought about the past few days. Life truly was a roller-coaster. Everything had been going so well and then tragedy struck. It happened every so often, a case or event that hit one of team in their knees, bringing them, and the rest of the team, down. Like a 2x4 dealing repeated blows. Lindsay fiddled with a pen. It happened to all of them. Mac, Stella, Danny, Flack, even Hawkes, one of the most sweetest men she'd ever known. And it took them weeks to get back up.

Only for it to happen again.

Life sucked.

God, her thoughts were depressing her even further than paperwork ever could.

Pushing back her chair and checking the time, Lindsay decided a change of scenery, and another cup of coffee, would do wonders. Her heels clicked softly on the floor as she moved and a smile flitted across her lips as her brown eyes caught sight of Adam and that new tech, Kendall, working side-by-side on something in one of the labs. Those two were so funny. And Lindsay was privately happy to see Adam show an interest in someone; he deserved it. Not only because of what he'd been through, but because he was a genuinely nice person. The next person she spotted caused her smile to disappear. Danny's sculpted back, despite his loose-fitting shirt was easily discernible to her, and to most of the female staff, Lindsay thought wryly. He was moving quickly, file folder in hand, down the stairs.

Watching him disappear around a corner, Lindsay stifled the familiar frown forming on her face. She really had no idea what was up with him. Despite the fact that they seemed to be forming a great relationship, it was by no means solid. In fact, at times Lindsay thought that what she and Danny had was extremely fragile and tentative, set to break at any time with the slightest provocation. Sure, they spent time together when their schedules allowed it and the sex was amazing, but it was times like this when Lindsay realized that there wasn't much she knew about Danny Messer. And that caused her heart to beat painfully.

The thought had crossed her mind, more than once, that his interest in her was waning. And it certainly didn't help that there were copious amounts of alcohol involved in their first time together nor the aftermath of that day when he took her shift. She still felt some guilt over that. Although Danny had allayed some of that. He had, after all, made the choice to not wake her up.

A part of her reasoned that it was just the ups and downs of a relationship, a new relationship. But it still worried her. There were so many things that could go wrong. When she had gone over to his apartment to check up on him and he turned her away, it had hurt. A lot.

But no less than she deserved.

After all, hadn't she hurt him too? First by standing him up and giving him cryptic lame excuses, and then by shutting him down completely in the hallway that day without even an explanation. Just left him there hanging, looking and no doubt, feeling like a fool. In a way, she'd hurt him worse. A full-out rejection to the face versus a 'I can't talk to you right now and could you please leave' followed by the door shutting in her face. At least he had left her some hope.

The minute she had started walking away from him, something between them broke. Changed. Morphed into something not so comfortable. Even when she got back from Montana, things had been slow. And Lindsay felt that in trying to fight to get back some normalcy between them, she had pushed too far in automatically jumping into bed with Danny. She shook her head, thinking back to that night. The plan had been to have a couple of drinks, play a few rounds of pool, talk, perhaps exchange a hopeful kiss, maybe ask him out to dinner, crack a joke about actually showing up, say goodnight, and leave. She had rushed things. And now she had no idea how to help Danny.

Lindsay sighed. Their relationship was so complicated sometimes.

He was shutting her out. And now she was confused as to her next course of action. She didn't want to push, but she didn't want to appear unsympathetic. Staring down into her coffee cup, Lindsay decided to give him a call after work. What she was going to say, she had no idea.

"Lindsay?"

Mac's voice snapped her out of her troubled thoughts and her head swung to look at him standing in the doorway of the break-room. His face heralded the coming of bad news. Shit.

"Hey, Mac. Got a new case for me?" she asked, hoping an holding her breath that he was upset over a case and not something personal. With the way her thoughts were going, she didn't think she could handle it.

If Life could morph into a person, it would've chosen that moment to swing that metaphorical 2x4 at her. "I'm afraid not. Come with me to my office please?"

Abandoning her coffee, it was starting to get cold anyway, Lindsay felt apprehension creeping up her spine as she trailed Mac to his office.

Closing the door behind her, Mac gestured for her to take a seat and she perched on the edge, staring up at him, waiting. The anxiety in her took the form of a cold hand, chilling her insides. "Mac, what's wrong?" She couldn't stop the tremble of rising fear in her voice.

The man she looked up to as a mentor, friend, and quite possibly surrogate father-figure stood in front of his desk, looking more tired than she had ever seen him. This was bad. He took a deep breath, staring at one of his best CSI's, and knew that his news was going to rock her.

"Lindsay, Daniel Katum's escaped."

Her world stopped. Mac's words repeated in her head, drilling themselves into her mind, forcing her to believe them, mocking any attempts at disbelief or denial.

Blank shock washed over her and Mac could almost pinpoint the exact moment when her heart stopped. He was thankful she was already sitting down.

Her mouth opened once, twice before her voice emerged in a whisper. "What? Wh-what do you – How?!" Her heart pounded and there was a rush in her ears. The cold fist that had formed in her had securely clenched itself around her lungs and was squeezing the life out of her, for all that she couldn't breathe.

Mac sighed, his shoulders slumping. "I just got a call from the County Sheriff's office. I don't know if you're aware of this, but apparently, the crime rate in and around Bozeman is increasing, which is only natural as the county expands. A new jail has just finished being built to accommodate the growing numbers. They just started doing transfers into it. Daniel Katum was one of those transfers. Despite having four consecutive life sentences on his head, he was deemed a low risk since the murders happened so long ago.

"He managed to escape, along with another inmate, during the transfer."

Mac paused before striding over to Lindsay, sitting frozen, and knelt in front of her. Gently taking her hands in his, he peered worriedly into her eyes, feeling the fear and panic rising in her."Lindsay...the sheriff put in a call to your parents, just to inform them, said he was an old family friend?" He hesitated as her brown eyes widened. "When they didn't answer, he drove out to their ranch. There wasn't a sign of them, but it looked like the place was ransacked. Lindsay...your parents are missing."

Life had officially begun its beating.

AN: And there ya go with the first chapter. Introspective Lindsay. I gotta warn you people: I take my sweet time to build up to things and I am absolutely, positively incapable of writing nothing less than a short novel.