A/N If I may, I'd like to dedicate this chapter to the people of Boston; the whole world has been thinking of you and praying for you this past week.

Don sat morosely at his desk in the precinct, desperately racking his brain about how he could find Tate's real stalker. He just hoped it wasn't too late; he had no idea about what was scheduled for the remainder of her promotional visit, she wasn't taking his calls, Josh was, but only long enough to call him a few choice names and hang up, and he had no idea of how he could contact Helen. He'd thought about asking Klein, but since he picked up his final paycheck and had to disclose what had happened, he was 'blacklisted', as the man himself had called it.

Just as he was about to get up and grovel to Mac for his help, he felt his phone vibrate in his jacket pocket. Fishing it out, he almost fell off his swivel chair in relief when Tate's name greeted him on the screen. That feeling soon turned to a heavy knot in the pit of his stomach as he opened the message, however.

'KIDNAPPED'.

He didn't think a single word had ever scared him so much, and the worst part was that this was all his fault; if he had just kept his cool and waited until he had all the facts, Tate wouldn't be in this situation. It had been his job to protect her, and he had not only failed, he had practically fed her to the wolves.

For now, though, he had to push that thought to the back of his mind; he had a job to do.

"What do we do here? Do I text her back?" Flack barked, pacing Mac's office. He was itching to do something, anything, but what could he do without a little help? After all, all he had was a text message; he had no idea where Tate was, who had her, or what they wanted.

Mac shook his head. "What if her phone isn't set to 'silent'? The last thing we want to do is tip this guy off that we know he has her."

"But she needs to know that we're coming."

"Stella is on the phone to the DA right now," he nodded in her direction; they couldn't hear her through the glass walls, but she appeared to be having a rather heated conversation out in the hallway. "Once we get the OK from him, Adam is going to try and trace Tate's cell." He spoke slowly, trying to keep the younger detective calm, even though it didn't seem to be working; he hadn't seen him this agitated or fearful in a long time. "You and I have both worked this kind of case at least a hundred times, Don, so let's not get ahead of ourselves, alright?"

He nodded reluctantly, continuing his circuit of the office, all the while keeping his eyes on Stella. After a couple more minutes of watching her gesturing and shaking her head in response to the person on the other end of the phone call, she finally turned to them and gave them a thumbs up, before hurrying off to find Adam and get the ball rolling, at last.

Tate and Alan pulled up outside a Chelsea café. He put the car in park, and got out; Tate wondered as she quickly slipped her phone back in her pocket, if she was fast enough to make a run for it, especially when she saw that there were people milling about to serve as witnesses. She realised, though, that she wasn't that fast, she was wearing heels, and she had no idea how fast he was. Before she had chance to formulate any kind of plan, he was opening her door for her, and gesturing for her to give him her hand. She complied, reluctantly, and he helped her out of the car.

His hand was clammy as he kept hold of it, opening the door to the café for her. 'He's calm,' she mused, unable to get her head around just what was happening; she was still waiting for something to awaken her from this nightmare. And she still had no idea, truly, what he really wanted from her. Were they just going to talk, and then he would let her go, or was he expecting more from her? The prospect of what 'more' might be frightened her, and for the second time since she had met him, she felt her blood run cold in her veins.

As he ushered her inside, she made sure to take the seat facing the exit, still hoping her knight in NYPD armour was going to save the day. He didn't seem to notice anything was amiss, just sunk down into his seat, apparently relieved to be inside.

The team was assembled in the conference room, and Don had resumed his pacing in there rather than in Mac's office, when Adam bustled in. "I was able to track Tate's cell phone to a café in Chelsea, Mister Tea's."

"A café? What sort of kidnapper is this guy?" Danny asked to nobody in particular.

"It's from her book." All eyes in the room were on Adam now, who gradually turned a deep shade of red as he realised that his co-workers were judging his choice of reading material. "What? I like mystery novels! And she's actually quite good – she's got the lab procedure down… Sorry."

"So he's acting out her story?" Mac asked Adam.

"Oh, not so judgemental now, are we?" he replied jovially, but his playful grin was promptly wiped from his face as he felt the sharp bite of someone slapping the back of his head. "Hey!"

"Quit jerking us around!" Don ordered, shoving his hands deep into his pockets to prevent any more acts of physical harm befouling his colleagues. "Do you think we have time for this?"

"Sorry. Uh…" Adam took a deep breath, furrowing his brow as he tried desperately to recall the details of Tate's book. He hadn't been entirely truthful when he said he'd read it; what he meant to say was that he's skimmed the potentially exciting parts, after running out to the nearest book store and making a hasty purchase the day he'd seen her in the lab with Flack. He'd been hoping to ask the detective to get her to sign it, but, he thought morosely, that ship had well and truly sailed now that he'd managed to royally piss Flack off. "Her book is about a serial killer on the loose in Boston, but the main character, Detective Jennifer Pearce, gets an anonymous call from someone who says that they know who the killer is. She's suspicious – rightly so – that it's a trap, so she arranges to meet the guy at a café which she knew her love interest frequented. And when the meeting went bad, he showed up and realised something was wrong because she was drinking tea." He cleared his throat. "She didn't like tea."

"Alright, so you're saying it was her idea to go to the café?" Stella asked, chewing on the end of her pen absent-mindedly. "This guy is obviously either really impressionable, or really eager to please Tate. That could work for us."

"Let's get down there ASAP," Mac said, gathering up his files from the table and slipping his jacket back on. "Flack, have your guys set up a cordon around the café; the last thing we want is a bunch of tourists going in for afternoon tea. Once we're set up we'll get a better idea of what we're dealing with here."

"What do we have, Danny?" Mac asked, approaching the cordon where Danny was stationed, peering into the café windows with high-power binoculars.

"I can't see him, he's facing away from the window."

Don joined them now, glad that they were finally making progress. "How does she seem? Does she look like she's being coerced?"

"She looks… Confused. I don't know, he might have a gun to her or something, but I can't see."

Don adjusted his Kevlar, making a move towards the doors. "I'm going in."

"No one moves until we know for sure," Mac ordered, looking pointedly at him. "And when we do, I want Danny to go."

"What? Why?"

"Because this guy is a stalker; if he followed Tate this far, he must have tracked her while she was in the city, which means he's probably seen you with her. Besides, you going in there all guns blazing isn't going to help anyone."

Before Don had time to protest, Mac and Danny were headed towards the café's entrance, the older detective giving some last minute words of encouragement. Turning away, he balled his hands into fists in frustration. He hated being powerless to stop something potentially terrible from happening – something he learned about himself in the most horrible way when Jess died.

"Dan," he called after his friend, not looking up from his hands. "Just get her out of there, alright?"

Tate looked up as the bell over the door jingled amelodically; Alan himself hadn't noticed, thankfully, because he would have been staring face-to-face with one of NYPD's finest. She recognised her potential saviour as Danny, Don's friend; the two of them had shared an abbreviated conversation in the lab the day before. 'Was it really only yesterday?' Tate thought suddenly. 'Time sure flies when you're having fun…'.

He caught her eye and wordlessly gestured for her to act natural, and so she tried desperately not to follow him with her eyes as he crossed the café, walking up to the counter.

Danny sighed internally, relieved as he saw that Tate was doing exactly as he had hoped; she appeared calm, and didn't make it obvious that she recognised him. His initial assessment of the situation was that she didn't have any obvious injuries, and, though he couldn't get a clear view of her captor, he didn't appear to be armed. The café was more or less empty – that was good, he reasoned – but the college-aged girl behind the counter didn't appear to have noticed him wielding a gun or knife.

He crossed over to the barista, trying to steal a glance back over his shoulder at the stalker as he did so; he was just sitting across from Tate, talking softly to her. Danny smiled as the girl – Alice, her name tag informed him – asked him what she could get for him.

"I'll have an espresso," he replied, passing his badge across the counter to her, lowering his voice before he continued. "Are you the only one working here?"

Alice nodded, her eyes teeming with confusion.

"I need you to make my coffee, then go out into the back and into the alley, alright? An officer will be waiting for you."

"What's going on?"

"We've got a potential hostage situation," he replied, looking in the direction of the only other people in the room. "Did you notice anything about that guy when they came in?"

Alice shook her head as she went to work preparing Danny's espresso. "They came in about half an hour ago. They ordered a pot of tea and two apple turnovers. He had his arm around her, I didn't think anything was wrong…"

"Don't worry. I'm going to take this to that table over there; I want you to wait a couple of minutes and then go outside, alright?"

She nodded in response, her hands trembling with the gravity of the situation she had found herself in; this was certainly not how she envisaged spending her days when she took this part-time job. Her shaking caused drops of hot coffee to jump out of the cup she was carrying and onto her skin. Then cup then shattered on the floor.

Outside, Don heard something smash, the sound echoing in his head as it reverberated through his earpiece. He was done waiting for everything to work out; if the situation was going bad, he wasn't about to let it get any worse by doing nothing. He wasn't about to let anyone else he cared about die on his watch.

Ripping out the earpiece and jumping the cordon before Mac could do or say anything to stop him, he jogged up to the entrance of the café and slipped in through the door almost unnoticed; the man he assumed to be the stalker was on his feet in the middle of the room, Danny was at the counter trying to diffuse the situation, and the woman serving the coffee was making a hasty exit out into the alley. The only person who had noticed Don walk in was Tate, who had been pulled up out of her chair with her new 'friend'. He could see she was relieved to see him, but that relief was almost entirely masked by the fear in her eyes – she knew just as well as he did that he may have just made the situation ten times worse.

He cleared his throat to get Alan's attention, slowly stepping further into the café. Danny stepped forward to meet him; all four of them were facing each other now, separated only by the table that Alan and Tate had been sitting at moments before. "Why don't we all relax for a minute, alright? You OK, Tate?" Don asked, turning his head in her direction but not breaking eye contact with the man standing dangerously close to her.

Now was not the time to come up with a sarcastic response, she realised. "We're OK," she replied eventually, her wavering voice betraying that the opposite was in fact true. "Right Alan?" She had hoped that, if she could make him believe that she was on his side, then they could all make it out of here. But that plan seemed to backfire, too.

He put his arm protectively around her shoulders, pulling her tighter to him as she recoiled away from him. Instinctively, Danny stepped forward again; he and Don already had their guns unholstered, and Tate was surprised that she hadn't actually seen them do that.

Before she knew what was happening, Alan pulled a knife from the waistband of his suit pants. Had he had that the whole time? Suddenly Tate began to realise that not only was he crazy, he was also definitely more dangerous than she had anticipated; the tea hadn't really been a reliable indicator of the situation, she mused, wondering why she was thinking about this when she was probably going to die in this God-forsaken city that had caused her nothing but trouble and heartache. Shouldn't her life be flashing in front of her eyes, or something equally poetic? Instead, all she could do was stand helplessly while the crazy son of a bitch held a knife to his throat as Danny attempted to talk him down, gun trained on him with a steady hand.

"Come on now, Alan, you don't want to do that!"

"You shouldn't have got involved! We were fine until you showed up and ruined everything!" He jabbed the knife in Don's direction; he could see the exasperation on Alan's face. This guy seemed to have enough crazy to spare, so he was going to have to try every hostage negotiation trick in the book to diffuse this situation. And that was when he realised that Alan had been holding the knife to his own neck – not to Tate's.

"I get it, Alan. I do." Alan merely scoffed in response, so Don carried on trying to reason with him. "You and I are pretty similar, you know. We're average guys; we get up in the morning, we go to work, we come home. But we're complex – people think they know us, but they don't, not really. You know what I'm talking about. Me, I'm really into fishing." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Danny's head turn almost indistinguishably in his direction. "See, he's my best friend and he didn't even know that. But I know that when you find someone who just gets you, you wanna keep 'em in your life. You think that Tate understands you like no one else does, not even your wife…"

"She does!" Alan replied, gesturing with the knife again, more wildly this time. He loosened his grip on Tate's shoulders and inched closer to the detectives.

"But that's not a reason to kidnap her. And what now? You're just going to take her back to Boston and live happily ever after?" He could swear he saw Tate scowl at him briefly over Alan's shoulder, unimpressed that he seemed to be giving him ideas – at least she wasn't too traumatised for that.

"Why not?! What – you don't think I could make her happy?"

Alan turned his back on Tate. Quietly, cautiously, she stepped away from her captor and grabbed the closest weapon she could find, bringing it down on Alan's head as hard and as fast as she could. The china teapot smashed as it came into contact with his skull, pieces flying out in all directions, the tiniest shards clinging to his hair. He fell forwards, staggering closer to Danny, who jabbed a boot-clad foot between his shoulder blades and pinned him to the floor.

"Fishing? You distracted this guy with a story about fishing?" he muttered, unclipping his cuffs from his belt, attaching them to Alan's wrists and hauling him up and out of the café. The sound of him sobbing and moaning her name gradually faded as the door slammed shut behind them.

Tate wilted as she watched them go, the reality of what had happened over the last few hours – well, the last few weeks, really – hit her with such force that she felt she had to sit down. Instead, Don crossed over to her, appearing by her side almost instantaneously, and pulled her into a hug.

Her voice was muffled against his chest; her mind had been desperate not to hug him back, but her arms appeared to have other ideas, drawing him closer. "Now do you believe me?!"

"I'm sorry. I…"

"No," she interrupted, surprised at the fierceness of her words, especially when she suddenly realised just how drained her body – and mind – felt. "You said some really, really mean things to me, remember? You essentially called me a sneaky, conniving, money-grabbing bitch!"

His act of heroism and bravery was not playing out the way he had hoped, so he did the only thing he could think of; he kissed her, cutting off her rightfully angry tirade. He hoped with all his heart that she would kiss him back, and when she finally did after what felt to him like an eternity, his mind was finally at rest – she was safe, at last.

He gently released his hold on her and stooped a little to look in her eyes. "I know. You were right."

She flashed him a satisfied smile, gratefully embracing him one more. "Thank God you're a better cop than you are a bodyguard."

A/N2 The end! I honestly don't think I've ever got so knotted up in trying to write an ending before - every time I tried to finish this chapter, it just kept coming out wrong! So I hope you weren't left unsatisfied by how I chose to end it...

As always, my eternal and most sincere thanks go to you, dear reader; thank you all so much for reading, subscribing and reviewing. You have made this one of my favourite stories to have written; so much so, that I hope to write more Flack stories at some point! Stay tuned!