I've been away for a long time and am probably pretty rusty at this writing lark. There is no guarantee that I will finish this story, but I wanted to see if I still had the writing bug. Thanks go out to Mari76 for pushing me to try writing again and BrailleBaby for posting a new chapter to her wonderful Horatio series!
"Hey, have you seen Horatio this morning?
Calleigh looked up from the piece of trace evidence she was holding and placed the magnifying glass down on the desk.
"He's not here yet?" she asked. "He's usually up and in before the dawn chorus."
She smiled as she said it, although there was a mild tone of exasperation mixed in with her usual Southern laid back demeanour.
Horatio was often like a dog with a bone. Once he had sunk his teeth into a case he was unlikely to let it go until he and the team had solved it and put the perpetrators behind bars.
Speed shrugged his shoulders. "He's not in his office. Alexx says she hasn't seen him either. I figured he'd be in here with you looking over the evidence on the Davis case."
Calleigh looked at the stack of evidence bags in front of her. The crime scene had been a messy one. Four victims killed in their family vacation home on Coral Beach. No sign of forced entry and no signs of a struggle. The crime scene was nothing short of a blood bath and it had taken the whole team two days to collect the evidence.
Now came the hard part. Figuring out what the hell had happened to leave four members of the same family dead.
Calleigh shook her head ruefully. "Believe me, I could use some help going over this evidence." She blew a strand of hair that had come loose off her forehead. "Horatio's the one who is so good at piecing it all together."
Horatio had hand-picked his team and all were fine investigators in their own right. There was something Horatio had that the others lacked and it was not something that could be taught. His instincts were second to none and his ability to see the obvious in the obscure often led to the toughest of cases being cracked.
"Have you tried his cell phone?"
Speed nodded, frowning. "Goes straight to voicemail."
That definitely was not like Horatio. Much like his gun, his cell phone was constantly with him. Horatio always answered his phone when his team called. Without fail.
"Something's not right here."
Speed nodded again. The man was laconic at the best of times, but the frown marring his features spoke silently of his concern for their leader. Something was wrong.
"Can we check the GPS signal on his phone?"
Speed pulled his own cell phone out and made the call.
Motioning to the evidence in front of her, Calleigh rose from her chair. "I'm going to sign this back in and then head over to his house."
Speed slowly clicked the phone shut.
"You know where he lives?"
Horatio was a fiercely private man. He seemed to have an aura of mystery that those close to him felt compelling and magnetic.
This wasn't a conversation that she wanted to get into right now. If Horatio was in trouble, standing here explaining herself to Speed wasn't going to help either of them.
"Let me know when we have a location." She called out as she walked back toward the evidence locker.
There had been no sign of Horatio at his house and no signs of a struggle either. There were also no signs that Horatio had been home any time recently. Things weren't adding up.
Looking across Horatio's kitchen, she willed herself to concentrate and find a clue. Horatio was not the type of man to just up and disappear.
Lost in her thoughts, she hadn't realised that Alexx had entered the room until she spoke.
"Any news on tracing Horatio's cell phone?" the ME asked.
Alexx had insisted she come along with her. Without it being said, there was a growing feeling in the team that something was wrong. Very wrong. Heaven forbid that Alexx's expertise might be needed.
As if on cue, Calleigh's cell phone chirped.
"Uh huh," she said as she scribbled something down on a piece of paper. "How long has it been static?"
Calleigh clicked the phone shut, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, trying to keep her rising panic at bay. "We have a location on his cell phone signal. It hasn't moved for hours."
Both women knew it could mean one of two things – Horatio's cell phone had been dropped or abandoned, or the lieutenant still had it on him and was either incapacitated or unable to answer.
Calleigh wasn't sure which outcome was worse, picking up her keys from Horatio's kitchen counter, Alexx followed her as she moved toward the front door.
Both women were quiet as they drove toward the coordinates given as the location of Horatio's phone. The incessant radio chatter became nothing more than background noise as they both scanned the ever quieter roads that led toward the Glades.
"Calleigh, stop! Over there."
She stepped on the brakes and followed Alexx's line of sight. Her heart sank as she saw Horatio's Hummer parked on the side of the road.
With no car and no phone, they would have little chance of finding him.
Pulling her gun from her holster, Calleigh placed an arm in front of Alexx, stilling her forward momentum as the ME clenched the hand of her kit bag tighter.
"Stay here for a moment. I'll let you know when it's clear."
The doctor nodded and willed her hands to keep still as Calleigh approached the abandoned vehicle silently.
Creeping slowly forward with her gun trained ahead of her, Calleigh spotted something instantly recognisable – the tip of an Italian leather shoe just behind one of the rear wheels of the Hummer.
Ensuring that the coast was clear, Calleigh re holstered her weapon and beckoned Alexx forward. "Alexx, I need you over here now." Try as she might, she was unable to keep her voice from wavering as she looked down at the body.
Was he dead?
Calleigh couldn't bring herself to reach out and check for a pulse. Fear had kept her motionless.
There was so much that she wanted to say. So many things she should have told him sooner.
What if she never got the chance?
"Oh, sweet Jesus." Alexx exclaimed as she knelt down and reached out toward the body, immediately checking for a pulse.
She let out a sigh of relief as she felt it.
"Calleigh, call for a bus."
There was no response until Alexx gripped her colleague by the shoulders and shook her gently. "Get a bus here now, we need to get him to hospital."
Her voice seemed to get through to her this time as Calleigh nodded and pulled her cell phone out with a shaky hand and dialled the dispatch number.
"What the hell did they do to you, honey?" Alexx asked as she rolled him onto his back, wincing at the bruising and bleeding that marred his face and hair. She had no doubt that if she looked closer that she would find further evidence that the lieutenant had been brutally attacked and left for dead.
"Calleigh, get me some blankets from the Hummer."
Alexx continued her assessment of her casualty as the blonde woman did as she asked, returning promptly and holding the material out in front of her.
A faint groan stopped both women in their tracks.
"Horatio, can you hear me?" Alexx gently shook his shoulder, wincing as he flinched away suddenly. "Can you open your eyes for me?"
One eye was already swollen shut. It was impossible to tell if he had heard her, let alone complied with her request.
His face was a mess of cuts, bruises and swelling. Whoever had attacked him had likely not been on their own. Horatio was not a man prone to violence, although both women were under no doubt that the lieutenant could look after himself in a fight if needed.
Calleigh glanced down at his hands. There was clear evidence on his knuckles that he had tried to fight back against his attackers. The left hand appeared swollen and she was certain that she could seen a faint shoe print on the back of it.
Hearing the sirens approaching, Calleigh looked up from the prone figure on the ground toward the sound of the ambulance and saw a smear of blood on the side of the Hummer, no doubt Horatio's.
It seemed to take forever for the paramedics to check him over and then gently move the still unmoving figure of Horatio on to a stretcher.
"Can I come with him?" Calleigh asked. "I'm a colleague...and a police officer." She showed them her credentials as the two paramedics looked at each other and nodded.
"Sure, but you'll need to stay out of the way. It looks like your friend took one hell of a beating."
"Will he be ok?" Calleigh asked nervously as she watched one of the paramedics attach leads to Horatio's bare chest while his colleague started the engine and sirens. She braced herself for the impact of the ambulance pulling away as she watched the man work on her boss.
It took a moment for the paramedic to answer her as he fiddled with wires and machinery. To Calleigh's untrained eye it didn't look good.
The paramedic stopped halfway through his analysis, realising that he was spouting medical jargon at her. He tried to give her what he hoped was a sympathetic smile.
"His pupils are sluggish which means he has a concussion but we won't know how serious it is until we get him to the hospital. There's tenderness around the chest and midsection and it feels distended , so likely there are some rib fractures and internal bleeding. Again, we won't know until we get him to Dade General."
The paramedic reached out a hand, placing it on Calleigh's forearm in what he hoped was a gesture of reassurance.
"How long was he out there for?"
The question took Calleigh by surprise. It suddenly hit her that Horatio had likely been out there all night. Why had they waited so long to check up on him?
If he died, it would be all her fault.
"I...I don't know," was all she could say.