Chasing the Present
Nick had never been so grateful for Grissom's absence. His heart was in his throat and he was utterly determined; if Grissom had been here, they'd have left the search for Cassie up to the local authorities. Grissom wouldn't have believed she was alive, like he did; like he had to. Although, if Grissom had been here, there was no way he'd have gotten away with roughing up a suspect. That had been unacceptable, and he knew it.
He would've been hard-pressed to explain why he was so sure the ten year old was still alive. He honestly didn't know. He knew that Sara was thinking back to six months ago, when the LVPD had pulled out all stops to find him, buried in a Plexiglas coffin for 24 hours. She was probably right – he was seeking some kind of redemption for all of the hell his colleagues had been put through trying to find him. Sara had said that it seemed like he was looking for a person, not a body, and that in their line of work that just wasn't usually the case. The odds were stacked against Cassie and all logic said that she was dead.
What troubled Nick was that Sara's logic, six months ago, would've been his. Had he never been through the ordeal of being kidnapped and buried alive, right now he would've been wrapping up the paperwork against Peter, Luke, and Mark and looking forward to going home. But that was six months ago, back when things like this were just that simple. This wasn't simple – he didn't know why, but he knew Cassie was alive and he was going to find her.
Regardless of what it was that was driving him to find Cassie, he wasn't going to stop until he did and he'd been able to convince the officers on the patrol boat to take him out one last time. They'd scour the shores, look for any anomalies . . . they'd find her. He had to find her.
With his flashlight he applied his eagle eye to the shore as the patrol boat coasted quietly, slowly through the water. They'd been out for nearly forty-five minutes and were staying relatively close to the shore, but so far he'd seen nothing except residents of the lake and wild animals.
And then, there was something blue. He moved forward in the boat to get a closer look and when he did, he saw what looked like a mass of hair.
"Stop the boat." His voice sounded foreign. "Let me out – stop the boat."
It took an eternity to reach the shore from where the boat finally stopped. Fighting the sand and muck under his feet, he forced himself through the water, his eyes trained on the spot where her little body lay. His breath was stolen away when he saw Cassie's little face, paste-white and smudged with God only knew what. Her throat was smudged, unmistakably, with her own blood. Nick fell to his knees next to her and placed his big hand under her jaw, still breathless, hoping, praying.
It was weak, but the pulse was there.
Every prayer of thanks he had ever learned as child went up silently as he spoke her name, hoping to rouse her. Then he noticed her balled up hand. She was holding on tight to something, and the criminalist in him reached out to follow the evidence. It was the bubble gum wrapping, still a little wet and very sticky, the last piece still tucked into the bottom.
Before he had an opportunity to catch his breath it was stolen away again when he was hit squarely in the chest. With a squish he was on his backside and Cassie was furiously trying to get away from him. She made it to her hands and knees but was too weak to go anywhere, and collapsed again.
Wheezing, Nick rose to his knees and called her name. "Cassie," he said with a cough, "my name is Nick . . . please don't be afraid."
"Go away," he heard her whisper hoarsely. "Please go away."
He crawled over to where she lay. Other officers from the boat had finally joined him on the shore, but he warned them off.
She was inching away from him; it made his stomach churn to know that she was afraid of him. "Cassie, my name is Nick," he repeated. "I'm a detective from Las Vegas. Sheriff Brackett called us to help find you."
She stopped moving. Her eyes were open, big blue orbs that broke Nick's heart. "Sheriff Brackett?"
"Yeah – Dennis. We've been lookin' all over for you." He paused to gauge her reaction. His breathing had returned to normal, but hers was ragged. "We need to get you to a hospital, Cassie. Will you come with me?"
Without breaking eye contact with Nick, she pushed herself up on one elbow. Her mouth was sticky when she said, "I just want to go home."
Nick didn't bother to tell her she couldn't go home anymore. She was a smart little girl and likely knew that already. He smiled at her and said, "We need to get you to a hospital." She merely nodded. Nick clicked off his flashlight and tossed it to one of the officers behind him, and then rose to lift Cassie off the murky shore.
She clung to him on the boat as it whipped through the water to the opposite shore, where Nick had summoned an ambulance. She let him put her down on the gurney but insisted that he stay with her, and he held her hand all the way to the ER. He ran along side her through the halls of the quiet hospital, which saw little outside of broken bones and car accident victims.
The staff worked quickly, however, and Nick stayed next to her as her condition was assessed and IVs were inserted into her little arms. Before he knew it, the surgeon appeared, and was insisting that he let go of her hand so they could bring her to the surgical suite.
"Just let me walk down there with her," he said. "She's scared." Cassie was scared, this was true; however, Nick was just as frightened and couldn't explain why.
Then he heard her little voice from beside him. "It's okay, Nick," she said, and squeezed his hand, and let it go.
"I'll take good care of her, Mr. Stokes."
Struggling for control, he nodded. "Yeah, okay. Okay, I'll be waiting."
The surgeon nodded and walked swiftly with the nurses who were pulling Cassie's gurney down the hall.
Reliving the Past
Now that she was receiving medical attention, Nick knew she'd be all right. While she was in surgery he had showered and changed into jeans and a warm hooded sweatshirt. Greg and Sara had processed the shore where he'd found Cassie expecting to see exactly what they did – nothing. As they packed their motel rooms and the Denali, he went to the hospital.
First he spoke to the surgeon who had sewn up her throat when he returned to the hospital. "She was pretty severely dehydrated, but she's on fluids now," he began. "We had to give her a pretty considerable amount of blood for such a little girl. She'll be sore for a good while, but she's on the mend. Soon as she wakes up you can go on in and see her."
He waited impatiently for about forty-five minutes until a nurse finally showed him the way. It was eerily quiet in Cassie's little hospital room. As Nick approached her bed, where she was coloring, he whispered a hello. She looked a damn sight better than she had just a few hours previously – her skin was not nearly so ashen and her eyes were no longer sunken. There was a reason that Sheriff Bracket had called her Pipsqueak; she was a tiny little girl, and looked tinier in the adult-sized bed surrounded by machines that were monitoring her blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen.
She looked up at him, touching her throat as if to say, "I can't talk." The cut hadn't been deep enough to kill her, but it had done its damage. There was a significant amount of bruising, and he was sure that Cassie was extremely uncomfortable, if not in a lot of pain.
He had an inquisitive smile on his face when he rounded the corner, but it faded when she handed him the folded piece of paper she'd been coloring. The picture on the front, in any other circumstance, would've been pleasant enough – a big house with trees on the shore of a lake. She had written "Thanks for finding me" in big black letters on the top of the card, and near the shore was a little prone stick figure next to which she had written "Me" with an arrow. Next to the house was another stick figure, running, another arrow pointing and his name, "Nic," next to it.
It was the most heartbreaking thing he'd ever seen, and he thought vaguely that Cassie had a talent for taking his breath away. He struggled to control his voice before he whispered, "You're welcome, sweetie," and tried to smile at her as he put his big hand on her head.
She began scribbling in her notebook. "Where is my family?"
Nick would not have dreamed of lying to her, but he did pause to ponder how to answer her question very briefly before he replied, "They're in Vegas."
She returned to her scribbling with a scowl, and showed him the notebook again with pursed lips. "I'm ten years old. Don't baby me!"
A well-honed talent, indeed. "Their bodies are in the coroner's office, honey," he replied tenderly, his voice trembling.
And damn it, she wouldn't look away. Her big eyes melted into sorrow before his, and as she silently accepted this fact he couldn't look away either. If he didn't know better, if he didn't know he had a job to do, he would've been a big puddle. But he didn't have a choice; things were not that simple for him, and he had to take her down a path he knew she didn't want to go on. The best he could do was put his own experience to use to help guide her. If she had to back to that night, she might as well have someone to hold her hand on the journey.
He went slow, like he promised her he would, and it took upwards of three hours to get her statement. She was exhausted by the time he kissed her forehead, knowing that Greg and Sara were watching, shaking their heads. He was taking it too personally, getting emotionally involved, and he knew it.
Ultimately, however, he didn't care. Cassie's family was all gone, so if he didn't take the opportunity to show her compassion, to make sure she knew there were people who would fight for her, then how would she know? No – there were some things that changed for Nick in the aftermath of his kidnapping, but this wouldn't be one of them. If that part of him changed, he would have been better off putting his service weapon under his chin and pulling the trigger in the first five minutes.
Focus on the Future
The air conditioning was cranked up a little too high in the little room where Nick stood, riveted by Cassie's appearance.
Her hair was piled high on her head, ringlets occasionally tickling her ears or the tops of her shoulders. Her eyes were lined delicately in black and her lips gleamed with a pink gloss. The color was high in her cheeks, but that was natural. What was most stunning, particularly to Nick, was the white wedding gown she wore. He could hardly believe it, but she was twenty-six, and it was her wedding day.
For a long moment, breath, as well as words, escaped him. When he finally found both, it was to discover that he was, not surprisingly, on the verge of tears.
Holding her delicate hands between his, he began shakily, "I've been trying to think of what I'd say to you at this moment for a while . . . since the day you got engaged, really. I think I'm supposed to offer you some kind of advice, but I don't know what that would be. I know that you love him . . . I don't have any doubt that the two of you will have a good marriage. You don't need any advice from me. I guess all I can really say is that no matter what – no matter how much he says he loves you, he doesn't love you like I do. I hope you never forget that. I'll always love you."
The bride smiled. "I know." She looked down at their entwined hands. "You like him, right Nicky?"
Nick nodded. "He's a good man."
"But do you like him?"
"He's taking you away from me," he replied with a melancholy smile, but conceded when she quirked an eyebrow. "Yes, I like him. Although he should keep in mind that I still carry a weapon."
"You're all talk, Stokes," she said with a smile.
"I know." He reached out to caress her cheek, and out of habit more than anything, tapped the underside of her chin with his crooked index finger. His eyes filling, he drew a deep breath to say, "I'm so proud of you, Cassie."
"Thanks, Nicky." She looked up into his wrinkled face, admiring the tears that made his big chocolate eyes glisten. A few years ago he had finally given up on coloring his hair, and as she had told him many times, the white streaks became him. "You know, I've been thinking about what I might say to you at this moment. I don't think I've had much more luck than you."
He chuckled. "No?"
She held his gaze as she shook her head. "No. What do you say to the guy who saved your life?"
He flushed. He hated when she said that. "You saved mine right back."
She smiled and shook her head again, more vigorously this time. "You say that all the time, but it's not true."
"Yeah, it is, Cass. Among other things, you reminded me every day how beautiful life is. You still do."
She lifted a brow and repeated a line she'd been saying for a long time. "Life's beautiful because you make it that way, Nickelbee."
His eyes crinkled. "It's been a long time since you called me that." She blushed and smiled, looking down at her bouquet of red roses.
Cassie had turned out to be the one case Nick hadn't ever been able to let go. After leaving Pioche he thought of her quite frequently. He mourned for her, for her lost innocence and lost family, and he wanted her to know that she was not alone. He befriended her, fell in love with her; together, they chased away mutual nightmares, and Nick helped her re-build the dreams that had shattered the night her family died. Just before her twelfth birthday, Nick had adopted Cassie. He had put her through college – she had opted to go to his alma mater – and she was now a published author, having written her first novel based on her family's fate.
She chuckled and laid her hand against his wrinkled cheek. "Yeah, I know," she whispered. "I, um . . . Andy and I were talking, and we . . . we decided that we aren't going to wait to have kids."
Nick's eyes flooded. He knew that Cassie was impatient to start her family and knew that she'd have a big one. She had been utterly fascinated by all of his siblings, nieces, nephews, and cousins, and some of her favorite memories were of family reunions in Texas. Even having expected her statement sooner or later, it was difficult to imagine her, his little girl, as a mother.
His mind went involuntarily back to the first day he had seen her alive, filthy, wet, and hypothermic with a slit throat, clutching a piece of bubble gum. He had hardly felt her weight in his arms when he carried her back to the boat. In the hospital, later on, he had noticed that her forearms were almost as long as one of his hands and first felt the urge to protect her, although at the time he didn't recognize it for what it was.
"You're gonna be a great mom, Cassie," he said, his adoring gaze fixed on hers as he caressed her cheek. "Man . . . if your dad could see you. . . ."
Cassie chuckled and shook her head. "Oh, Nicky . . . don't you get it yet?"
"Get what?"
She drew a deep breath and pressed on. "My dad can see me." And to illustrate, she laid her right hand against his chest.
She didn't know it, but it was the same hand she had used to hit him squarely in the chest, more than fifteen years ago on the night he found her. Today, her hand was manicured and his chest was a little softer, but the effect of her words was the same – the breath was stolen from his lungs.
He tried to reclaim it by drawing in a mighty breath. "Cassie," he whispered, and she drew him closer to hug.
She let him squish her hair and smudge her makeup. Nick's hugs were one of the most comforting things she knew of. He wrapped his arms all the way around you, pulled you in close, put his cheek to yours, and squeezed with the same love of contact that a three year old had.
"I love you so much, Nicky," she said, hugging him tight. "I don't know what I'd have done, or where I'd be, without you."
"I didn't do anything so great," he whispered into her ear, and he meant it. "I did what I did for myself just as much as I did it for you." He pulled back and caught her weepy eyes again as she blotted her face delicately with a handkerchief. "And now I'm supposed to give you away." He paused to swallow more tears. "I'll walk you up there, Casserole, but that guy's gotta know. . . ." He trailed off.
"To watch his back, 'cause my dad still packs heat?" she asked cheekily, trying to lighten the mood in the little room.
He took one step backwards and shook his head. "No. He's gonna find out how goddamn lucky he is to be marrying my little girl."
Cassie held Nick's gaze. The reverent expression on his face, the raw emotion in his voice, the honesty in his eyes, and the one tear that escaped to roll down his wrinkled cheek, caused her breath to hitch, and as he held out his arm for her to take, all at once the idea that she'd soon become a wife, that in less than an hour Nick would no longer be the most important man in her life caught up to her, and she had to concentrate to steady her breathing.
She was silent on the walk out of the little room to the vestibule of the church where the ceremony was taking place, and vaguely heard the music as Nick, dapper in his tuxedo, brought her to the door of the sanctuary.
He knew what he'd see when he turned to her, so he wasn't surprised to find her chin quivering. He removed the handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the few tears that had trickled down her cheeks.
"Enough, now," he said, his deep Southern drawl soothing her, as it really always had. "This is where your fairy tale begins, princess."
She shook her head. "No. My fairy tale began on the night I met you."
His eyes filled again, and both of their chins quivered, and then the music switched and they were urged forward. When they reached the altar, Nick turned to Cassie and took her hand. Her cheeks were wet and so were his, just like on the murky shore of the lake so long ago. On that night, he refused to let her go until he didn't have a choice anymore, and today the feeling was oddly similar.
"It's okay, Nicky," she whispered, knowing where his thoughts lay.
Tears spilled down his cheeks. He squeezed her hand. And then Andy spoke.
"I'll take good care of her, Mr. Stokes," an echo of the words of the surgeon who had repaired Cassie's throat.
The air was sucked out of his lungs and he pulled Cassie forward one more time. He held her tight for a moment as he huffed slightly, and then kissed her forehead before he pressed her hand into Andy's.
"You be careful," he advised the groom, his eyes on the bride. "She'll take your breath away."