Wow. Another one. I know, I'm a little excessive. Scold if you must. But whatever.

I don't own the CSI:NY characters.

He was standing outside of their apartment breathing in cigarette smoke. Not his own. Never his own. Not since Jilly, anyways. Two and a half years of no smoky clothes, ash-spotted carpets, or hurriedly searching the house for that box which he knew was there. Lindsay had always complained about his habit, but when she learned she was pregnant, he quit of his own accord. He'd read too much about secondhand smoke to keep the habit.

After the day he'd had, though, he would gladly have thrown his nicotine gum into the Hudson and headed to the corner store for some smokes. It's not like his daughter was home. Lindsay was picking her up at daycare. He hadn't seen them all day, another cause for his intense desire for a relapse. But what ate at him the most was the case. Some sort of organized crime, he knew, but he couldn't work out the details. He knew he was onto something, but when he'd shown up at the Park Avenue residence of Mr. Dennis Lee, he'd been sent away due to his lack of warrant.

"We'll get 'em," Flack had said heartily, clapping Danny on the shoulder. Sure, Danny thought, sixteen years from now when there are forty more bodies in the morgue. Danny inhaled a deep lungful of the smoke. The holder of the cigarette looked at him curiously. She was a woman of about twenty-six, glittering pink lips, and dangerous stilettos.

She offered the lipstick-marked cigarette to him clutched in manicured fingers.

Danny shook his head and turned back to face the street. Where the fuck are they? They shoulda been here an hour ago. Did Jilly get hungry? Do they have her sippy cup?

"You live around here?" The woman asked conversationally. She nudged her chest out slightly as she leaned against the wall. Her feet edged closer to Danny.

He shook his head and turned away from her. Christ, lady, take a hint. He shoved his hands in his pockets and started to walk down the street, eyes carefully observing the sidewalk ahead of him.

"See ya around," the woman said, and he heard her shoes clicking away over the hum of the other passerby.

Finally, he saw her. She was on the other side of the street. He wondered what she was doing there. She always from the South side of the street, because that's where the subway stop was. Why would she be coming from the north side?

Jillian was held close to her chest, her honey curls peeking and twirling from under Lindsay's hand. Lindsay looked around hastily, winding and working her way through the crowds in such a meandering fashion that Danny wondered if she thought she was lost.

She caught Danny's eye and visibly breathed deeper. She dashed her way across the street when the cars stopped. Lindsay doesn't jay walk. She stays and waits until the little man lights up, like she did in Montana. What the hell is she thinking?

She jogged her way over to him, looking like she was keeping herself from going too fast.

"Montana? What's –" She shushed him by shoving herself at him, pressing herself against his chest. He could feel Jilly moving between them, and he wrapped one arm around his wife and pressed another to the side of his daughter's head.

"Someone's following me," Lindsay whispered to Danny's chest.

He looked up sharply, scanning the crowd for someone hunched or suspicious.

"Get inside," he hissed, whipping open the door to their apartment building and shoving her in. He gave a last glimpse to the crowd before him, noting some and squinting at others, before following her inside.

Once they'd made it inside the elevator, he took Jilly from his wife's vice grip and rocked her. He could hear her whimpering softly, like she did when she was about to cry.

"It's OK, Jilly," Danny whispered to her soft hair, and rubbed her back. Lindsay stood next to him, hand pressed to his back. Danny's arm curled around her.

"What did the guy look like?"

"I didn't get a good look," she admitted, and he noted that her voice was shaking. He tightened his grip. "He was wearing a gray jacket and jeans."

"What kind of jacket?"

"Hoodie. He had tennis shoes on. I watched his feet on the subway, and I knew he was following me when we switched trains with him. He'd been hanging out around the preschool."

Danny pressed a kiss to Jilly's head. Her cries had quelled, and she had nuzzled her way into the crook of his neck, and was sucking her thumb quietly. Her hair tickled his neck.

Danny got them into the apartment, had Lindsay lock the door, then went downstairs to look for the guy. He went out the back of the building, and made his way to the alley next to them. He searched for a full ten minutes, scanning and checking for anyone who stayed in one place longer than to tie their shoe. Shoulda known they were in trouble, he berated himself, she was so late. She'da called or somethin' if she was just running late. Fuck, I shoulda known..

He gave up eventually, already longing to touch his wife and daughter just to reassure himself.

Lindsay sat on the floor with her daughter between her legs, reading her a book. Jilly refused to read anything but the Mother Goose tales that Danny's mother had given her the past Christmas.

Lindsay was distracted. She'd memorized most of the simply-written stories, and recited from memory as she stared at the snow that had collected on the windowsill. Danny had been gone a while. She knew he was just being thorough, but she'd have felt much better if he were sitting behind her on the couch rather than outside, looking for the man following her.

When he finally came in, he took a moment to shake the snow from his jacket before removing it. He was tired and tense, she could tell. She felt bad for worrying him. Was this guy even following me? Was I being ridiculous? Granted, I've felt eyes on my back for the past couple of days now, but still.

Danny shuffled over to the couch and collapsed onto it, the sofa sighing when he fell.

"I didn't see anything."

"It's alright," Lindsay murmured, rubbing his jean-clad calf in front of her.

They both knew it wasn't, especially when the falsity of the statement crept up behind them the next day.