Author's Notes: Got this idea and it wouldn't leave me alone to work on Wrong Place, Wrong Time. I will be wrapping up the other story soon, don't worry. This story is set late season 2 while Danny and Lindsay seemed to have a clear friendship and that easy flirty banter that made us love them as a couple. This first chapter is a little shorter than my usual but you know me and cliffhangers. Reviews are always welcomed and appreciated.

Disclaimer: No matter how much I wish they did, they don't belong to me.

Chapter 1

The call had come in as a dead body lying in the street. But as usual, calls to 911 didn't always turn out as simple as they first sounded. When Danny Messer and Lindsay Monroe arrived at the scene, they had found their victim dead from a gunshot wound. The lack of evidence told them that it was not their primary crime scene. The front door of the closest townhouse was wide open so they suspected that the man had fled the house after he had been shot. Danny offered to take the body while Lindsay got started on the inside after the scene was declared safe by the uniformed officers.

Lindsay knelt beside the bed, camera posed to her eye, snapping several photos of the blood splatter on the wall. At first glance it was evident that this was the primary crime scene. She'd already bagged and tagged a 9 mm handgun that could prove to be the murder weapon. She'd been processing the room for the past thirty minutes but still had a long way to go.

Rising, she set the camera aside and grabbed her printing materials. She had noticed a palm print on the top of the window pane. She had noticed that the victim appeared to be quite tall, well over 6 feet. The placement of the palm print further proved it. She had to rise to her tip toes in order to fully reach the print. Sometimes it didn't pay to be short.

"Nice view there, Montana." Danny Messer quipped in his slow sardonic accent.

Rolling her eyes she glanced back at him wiping a strand of her hair from her face wearily. Why was she so tired this early in the day? Maybe it had something to do with the headache that had formed behind her temple about ten minutes earlier. "You can't even tell what the view is from over there."

"Who said the view I was referring to was outside the window?" He gave her rear end another appreciative look. Those black denim jeans hugged her curves just perfectly. He forced his attention back to the case at hand. "ME's office picked up the body, everything is wrapped up out there so I figured I'd come give you a hand."

Lindsay finished getting the print off the window. Placing the print in an evidence envelope, she looked at Danny, fully aware of where his attention had been. "Well then, if you are through checking out my ass, maybe you could start processing the other room for me."

"The view ain't so good from there." Danny protested. He expected some sort of retort. He loved winding Lindsay up because he never quite knew what sort of reaction he'd get from the new girl from Montana. Unlike so many women he spent time around, she didn't take any of his bull seriously and wasn't afraid to give as good as she got. When she didn't rise to the bait, he raised his eyebrow. "You okay, Montana?"

A wave of nausea she couldn't explain washed over her and she took several deep breaths through her mouth until it passed; her head was seriously pounding now. Growing more concerned by her lack of an answer, Danny crossed the room.

He touched her cheek, his caricature grin turning to a frown. Everything had seemed fine on the drive over. Had she discovered something that upset her? "You're not okay. What's wrong?"

Lindsay shook her head, her soft honey colored curls swaying with the movement. She forced a smile. "Must be coming down with something. I'll be okay. Guess I should have stayed away from the pastries in the break room, cause I felt fine when I got to work this morning."

"If you want to go home, I'll finish up here and clear everything with Mac." Danny offered. It worried him how pale she looked. She was usually so vibrant but now she almost seemed to be wilting right in front of him.

She shook her head, appreciating his concern but not wanting to cause a scene. "It's not that bad. Once I get back to the lab, I'll take a couple of aspirin and overdose on some orange juice. If I can take down suspects two or three times my size, surely I can fight off some stupid bug."

"You sure?" He probed gently and reluctantly relented when she nodded her head. "Okay, I'm in the next room if you need anything."

Once she was alone in the room again, she resumed taking prints. As she worked she felt increasingly worse but didn't want to admit that she should stop. She was still the new girl and felt like she had to constantly prove herself at every turn despite how at home everyone made her feel. Suddenly she noticed a red light blinking through one of the vents. She frowned, curious as to what it might be.

There was no way for her to reach the vent even if she stood on a piece of furniture. She knew she could call Danny in to do it and he'd be able to easily reach it by standing on a chair but didn't want to listen to his jokes about how short she was. Besides, she was an extremely independent person. She didn't believe in asking for help until she had exhausted every other option. She considered her options.

The desk under the vent didn't have anything on it. If she put the chair on the desk, she would be tall enough to reach the vent and look inside. If Danny walked back into the room and saw her acrobatics, she'd never live it down, his jokes about her height and his grousing about her being unsafe. But if she was going to be teased about her stature, she'd rather it be for her inventive ways to compensate.

She set the chair on the desk and made sure both the desk and the chair was steady before poking her flashlight and a screwdriver in her back pocket. She climbed first onto the desk and then the chair. The room spun just a little and she leaned against the wall until the spinning stopped. Then she pulled the screwdriver from her pocket and unscrewed three of the screws allowing the cover to slide to one side. She swapped the tool for her flashlight and shined it into the vent.

A canister lay just inside and she could feel some sort of gas escaping from the opened valve hitting her in the face. An unknown gas that she'd been breathing for almost an hour. Suddenly her sudden onset of illness made sense as the room began to spin again. She needed to get down and out of the house before it was too late. She needed to warn Danny before he too became sick from whatever they were inhaling.

"Danny!" Her sense of balance faltered and she fell. Darkness closed in on her before she hit the floor with a thud.