Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own NCIS: New Orleans.

A/N: So apparently my muse is in a really angsty mood. I blame BonesBird. We're pretty sure our muses have switched or something. Anyway, on with the story. Warning: Character Death

A gunshot rang through the condemned house and Brody looked in the direction that it had come from. She didn't wait to see if LaSalle was still behind her before rushing through the house towards the back, gun drawn and at the ready. As she moved quickly, but stealthily, through a hallway the rotten wood panels under her feet suddenly gave way and her foot got caught. She quickly pulled it out of the hole, the broken panels scraping her ankle, and kept going.

Through a partially open door she caught sight of Pride's back with his hands up in the gesture of surrender. She caught LaSalle's eye as they took positions on either side of the doorway. They waited three seconds before LaSalle lead the way through the door, kicking it fully open in the process.

Brody quickly looked over the scene as she joined LaSalle, gun raised at the man standing near a broken window. The man, Timothy Evans, had been taunting the team for three weeks before abducting Laurel the day before. It was only thanks to Patton's tracking and Sebastian's analysis of a murder victim's clothing that they'd been able to locate where Evans had been hiding Laurel.

Just in front of Evans was Laurel. She looked as if she hadn't slept, her clothes were dirty, and there was a large bruise on her forehead. Evans had a gun to the girl's temple and an arm around her neck and she was trying not to look too scared, something Merri admired, but it was still quite obvious that she was. She was alive though and that at least gave Merri a little relief.

Just in front of her and Christopher was Pride. His gun was on the floor a few feet away from Laurel and Evans and she could see how tense he was. She also realized that there was a blood stain on his jeans and that he was trying not to put much weight on his left leg.

That explained the gun shot.

Nothing about the last few weeks had been easy on him, but when his daughter had been taken...

She doubted being shot in the leg could affect him much at the moment.

"Don't come any closer," Evans ordered.

She recognized the look in his eyes. She'd seen it a hundred times over. It wasn't the look of a scared individual, or of a panicked one, just of one who was trying to come up with the fastest escape route.

"There's no way out of this where you don't die, Evans," LaSalle stated. "Not if you don't put down the gun and let the girl go."

The corner of Evans' lips twitched upwards into a smirk. "You might be right there, Agent LaSalle. Guess that would be a first for you, wouldn't it?" He chuckled a mirthless laugh and tightened his hold around Laurel's neck. "But I'm not too interested in getting out alive. Not as long as I can take someone with me. Just one is all I want." He moved the gun from Laurel's head and pointed it at King. "Want to volunteer to go in your baby's place, Pride?"

"Let her go, Evans. Just let her go. I'll stay," Pride said in return.

"Tell them to leave," Evans stated, nodding briefly in her and LaSalle's direction.

"We can't do that," Merri said calmly. She followed Evans' subtle movements and tried to get a clear shot. He was making sure to keep Laurel in front of him though and making it nearly impossible to aim correctly.

"Get out."

Brody's gaze flickered over to Pride for a moment and then quickly back to Evans. It was LaSalle who questioned his order though.

"King?" he asked, not sounding at all sure.

Pride didn't spare them a glance and she could tell he wasn't about to look away from Laurel. "You heard me. Leave."

"King...," she began, shifting slightly to get a bit closer.

"Just do it," he ordered firmly. "Now."

She didn't like the idea and had a feeling she knew what he was going to do. She glanced over at LaSalle to see what he thought and to her surprise he inclined his head back towards the door in response. Her instincts said it was wrong, that they needed to stay put and back him up, but she also knew they needed to trust him. Pride knew what he was doing even if she didn't like where it might lead.

Reluctantly she began backing away as LaSalle did the same. She watched tensely as Evans' finger tightened on the trigger. From closer to the doorway, but more at an angle, she could see King give Laurel a small, comforting smile and mouth a couple of words she couldn't quite decipher.

'No,' she thought frantically to herself as the implications of what he was doing set in. 'Don't do it.'

She stopped in her tracks, her heart pounding in her chest as if she were running a marathon, and her eyes widened. In the blink of an eye Evans unwound his arm from around Laurel's neck and shoved her to the ground.

At the same time he pulled the trigger.

Three bodies hit the ground as gun fire echoed through the old house.

Timothy Evans, two gunshots wounds to the chest bleeding profusely, lay unmoving after hitting his head on the window ledge on the way down. Laurel Pride pushed herself up from the floor with wide, terrified eyes as she stared at her father. And Dwayne Pride lay on his back, his eyes open but unseeing, with a single bullet hole right between his eyes.

Everything seemed to stop for a moment as Merri watched the scene. Her stomach churned uneasily and she swallowed thickly even as she quickly made a detour to check Evans. Even before she pressed her fingers to his neck she knew he was dead though. Once she was sure she quickly moved over to Laurel while putting her gun away.

"You're alright," she whispered to the girl as she helped Laurel to her feet. Laurel was shaking and still staring at her father as a tear leaked from her eye unnoticed.

"He's not..." Laurel's voice cracked as she spoke. "He can't be..."

Brody fought the tears threatening to escape her own eyes as she wrapped an arm around the girl's shoulders. She glanced over at LaSalle who was knelt by Pride's body. His back was turned, but she could still see him weakly shake his head. Merri closed her eyes for moment at the confirmation.

Dwayne Pride, as unconceivable as it seemed even to her, was dead.

Brody watched blankly as Pride's body was covered and taken away on a stretcher. From where she sat with Laurel on an empty crate on the porch of the old house she could see a depressed LaSalle speaking quietly with an obviously pained Loretta as the body was loaded into the van. No one was talking much as the scene was processed. There were no words for this kind of day.

Laurel turned her head away from the yard as the van pulled away and pressed her face into Merri's shoulder. Brody continued to run her hand over her hair in an attempt to give at least some comfort to the distraught young woman and held her a little closer to her side.

"Why, Merri?"

The tear laced voice was soft and held the kind of pain only a child could possess when faced with the death of a parent. Merri's heart ached and she had to close her eyes to keep the tears still building in her eyes from falling. "He loved you," she answered. It was the truest thing she could possibly say. "He loved you more anything."

"I don't want him to be gone. He can't be. I...I need him." A muffled sob, almost as if she was trying not to cry, escaped and Merri opened her eyes to see LaSalle and Loretta watching sadly. She shook her head to let them know to leave them alone for a bit longer though.

She rested her cheek against Laurel's hair and started rocking just a little. She didn't know what to say to the young woman clinging to her for comfort. What words could possibly help the pain she knew Laurel was feeling? She herself was heartbroken over what happened. King had been one of her closest friends, one of the first people who so openly cared for her and was willing to give her a place to call home. What could possibly be said to make that kind of loss go away?

She knew for a fact that there wasn't anything.

"I know," she simply said. "We all did. And we all loved him." Her own voiced cracked with barely repressed emotion for a second and she had to take a moment to regain control. "But he wouldn't want us to be too sad. He'd just be happy that you're okay. That's all he wanted."

"What am I going to do without him?"

Laurel sounded so hurt, so broken and child-like, that it took all her self-control not to join her in crying or go use Evans' lifeless body as a punching bag. "You'll keep living," she answered. "That's what he would say now. Just keep living. We'll take the rest one step at a time."

Laurel nodded against her shoulder and Merri held her a little tighter in return. "I can try."

"We all will," Merri whispered softly.

A single tear finally escaped from the corner of her eye and slid unchecked down her cheek. Later on, when she was alone and not needed to comfort the Pride family, it would be joined by hundreds of others until there were no tears left to cry.