Horatio Caine, lead detective for the Miami-Dade Crime Scene Investigation team, was not in a good mood. He had just had to perform one of the hardest duties for any police officer; inform a mother of the death of her daughter, an MDPD police officer. He had put on a necktie, driven out to just west of Opa-locka to one of those quiet neighborhoods everyone wants to live in. He'd parked in front of the house on the tree lined street, and gone up to knock on the screen door. Although the front door was open, the woman apparently didn't hear the banging so he'd wrapped harder and longer. This brought neighbors out to look.

A dark faced woman had finally come to the door and asked. "May I help you?"

"Ms. Martin?"

"Yes." She was already suspicious and looked through the screen this way and that, making sure neighbors were seeing all there was to see.

"My name is Lieutenant Caine from Miami-Dade police" He opened his coat and showed is badge. "May I come in?"

As soon as she heard the words, she knew. Relatives of any police officer live with the dread, the knowledge that this might happen. For a moment, she stood stock still as if this would stop time, perhaps even turn it back. Horatio had seen this action almost every time. Then, as if wondering if the world had somehow gone awry, she eyed the people still standing in their yards or peeking through windows. Yes, they were there, curious, yet respectful of her privacy.

In spite of all of this she demonstrated a poise and self-confidence not often seen in women in their fifties. This probably came in part from her six foot height and the remnants of a model like beauty.

Her daughter, Police Office Nichelle Martin had showed the same attractiveness and more. She had been assigned to the lab, escorting prisoners, standing guard outside of interrogation rooms, carrying evidence as it was required. Like her mother, she had been tall. Horatio had remembered noting the same fire and determination in her face that he had felt in his first days on the job. Yes, given a chance, she would have gone far in the force.

"Do you have anyone close, a relative perhaps that you can ask to come over?"

Getting nervous now, she snapped, "Just throw it out there! I'm ready for it."

"I am sorry to have to tell you that your daughter, Nichelle was shot and killed yesterday evening." He explained that it had been a senseless gang related shooting. What did it matter that they had caught the shooter almost immediately? That wasn't the point! It wouldn't bring that officer, that woman's daughter back.

In spite of her brave words a moment ago, hearing the words, Ms. Martin did what so many mothers have done. She screamed and collapsed to her knees, covering her face with her hands. As he expected, two women and a man suddenly appeared on the porch. They threw open the screen door, shouting inquiries.

The mother cried out, "Nichelle is dead! She's dead! She was shot!"

As a group, everyone helped the woman to her feet and took her to the couch.

"Oh, baby, this is awful!"

"Oh, darlin', you poor thing."

The man asked Horatio for details and nodded as Horatio painted the brief picture. Nichelle was in a patrol car with her partner. They were taking a call when a young man walked by. Apparently he had to 'make his bones' and in this case, it was on her. A witness had called it in and he had been caught within a couple of hours.

"He's in jail waiting for arraignment as we speak."

The man slowly shook his grizzled head at the sad description and then turned to look at the grieving mother. "Her other daughter, Tara, lives in Tennessee with her family. Until she can get down here, we'll see she isn't left alone."

Leaving information about where to go to identify the remains and get information on what to do next, Horatio had left the house as quickly as was expedient. His was to deliver bad tidings, not to share in the privacy of a parent's grief.

Now, driving east on 65th Street, he was trying to throw off the ill feelings by thinking about the rest of the day. First, back to the lab. 65th would take him to Gratigny Parkway and that would get him onto the 95 Expressway and on to Flagler. Once at the lab, he'd check in with the team, look at lab results on last night's shooting, talk with police Lieutenant-Detective Frank Tripp about it, and make sure all of the loose ends were tied securely. He hadn't made any promises to the mother. Even though the thug was considered innocent until proven guilty by a trial of his peers, there was no doubt. They had the gun and the bullets in the evidence locker. The eyewitnesses had cheerfully gotten up out of comfortable beds at a godawful early hour and were in no doubt in looking at lineups. Still, Horatio had too often been caught up in improper handling of evidence and lawyer shenanigans over proving witness incompetence. Even though he couldn't promise the mother, he sure as hell could promise himself this animal would pay for what he had done to a police officer.

Still, his determination on what he had to do was not so distracting that he missed a peculiarity on the roadside. He was passing the main entrance to the extensive Amelia Earhart Park, and noted what looked like a minor legal violation. In this vacation land, it wasn't unusual to see an RV broken down along a road. However, instead of one RV parked at the entrance to the park, there were several. Two were sticking far enough into the road that they caused a hazard to passing traffic. More, these weren't the only large vehicles. All along the entrance road into the park and to the parking slots where the bathrooms were, there were perhaps a dozen trailer homes, RVs, camper trucks and three wheelers. Although Horatio knew that many vacationers traveled as groups, there was just something unusual here.

Ever the policeman besides a forensic detective, Horatio pulled the Hummer to the road side and walked across to take a look. Somehow, these vehicles didn't look like they had broken down. He strolled along the line of better parked traveling homes, down the vehicle lined lane and found a group of men sitting in folding chairs under a shade tree.

"Excuse me." He briefly brushed the skirt of his jacket aside to show his badge. "Whose vehicles are those parked on 65th Street up there?"

Two of the men silently pointed further into the park.

"What name should I be asking for?"

Of the six men, four shrugged their shoulders. Two leaned back and smirked.

'Curiouser and curiouser', thought Horatio.

He trudged along the row of behemoths parked on the park road and continued to group of trees. Now he noticed the odor of cooking food. Again, several men sat in the shade though there was no sign of a barbecue or gas stove. Seeing a movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned to look at an RV's open door just fast enough to see a woman pulling back. 'So', he thought, 'this isn't a boys-only skylark.'

"Excuse me." Again he showed his badge just quickly enough to give reason for his words. "Who owns the RVs parked out on the road?"

This time, a man in the group rose from his chair and walked slowly towards the six foot detective. "I think the ones who owns those are out somewhere on the other side of the lake, maybe at the Graham Farm Village."

"They are parked illegally and posing a threat to traffic."

The man frowned and nodded. "I'll tell them if they walk past here, alright?"

The redhead raised his blue eyes upward. "Not really. I'd like to know their names."

The man looked down at the ground for a moment. His hand went to his jaw and rubbed. "You know what? I don't rightly know."

"Then I'm going to have to radio for a patrol car. If the vehicles haven't been moved by the time the officers arrive, the vehicles will be cited."

The shorter man shrugged. "You do what you have to do." He turned and strolled back to his chair.

Turning on his heel, Horatio could now feel the breeze that had been at his back. The humid air didn't do much to dry the slight bit of sweat from his brow. Retracing his steps past the homes on wheels, he now noticed each one had at least one woman peering from a window or a door. One woman was holding a plate, standing still as if waiting for him to pass so she could walk out without being seen. Many of the women had two, three or more children standing to one side, eyeing him without curiosity.

He had pulled far enough off of the other side of the road that he was able to open the car door completely without it being hit by passing traffic. Keeping an eye on the RV's, he stood with his elbow propped on the open window sill as he held the radio microphone.

Hearing that a black and white would be coming from the east down 65th, he said, "Good. I'll wait."

Replacing the mike, he stood facing the open door, stretched his arms through the open window, staring at the nearly empty road.

His mind wandered aimlessly over the sadness of the mother's loss which brought him to considering his own losses and then on to the good fortune of having his adopted family, his CSI team. Suddenly his thoughts became a holocaust of red, a volcano of molten pain and black so great he lost consciousness.

A second or perhaps a year later, the voice that came through the black cloud overlaying the bed of lava in his head. For some reason this voice kept repeating the same senseless words.

"Don't move, H! Don't move! The medics will be here in a bit so until then, don't move."

He tried to drift away from that insistent urging. He wasn't ready to fight the flames of hell.

Then, oddly, he felt himself moving with no effort and still the words, but from a different voice, "Don't try to move Lieutenant. We're putting you on a gurney. You're going to be alright. You hear me? You're going to be alright."

Finally he was awake enough to realize that part of the reason for the darkness was he had his eyes closed. The logical thought, 'so, open them,' came. It was not as easy to carry out as all that, at least, not at first. For one thing, something in the back of his head, a string maybe, seemed to be connected with his eyelids. By this time, the erupting volcano had changed to a nearby thud. If that banging, pounding drum would stop, maybe the string would release. Um, no, that didn't make sense. The huge pain was in the back of his head but there was no way it could be connected with his eyelids. He made a huge effort and slowly, there was light, then a fuzzy object.

"H? You waking up? Hey! That's great!"

Horatio wanted to ask the pedestrian question, 'what happened?' but since it was too hard, he decided to wait for whoever it was hovering over him to tell him. Since the person had called him 'H' he was one of the team. His brains were scrambled enough however, so that, figuring out who was being so familiar with him was still beyond him.

"The unis said you made a call for a patrol car to cover a traffic violation. When they arrived, they found you on the ground beside the hummer, out cold and nothing else. Your badge and sidearm are missing too. Do you know what happened?"

Trying to find a thought, Horatio rolled his slowly focusing eyes. He began to identify the tools and walls of an ambulance. Now he knew why his brain kept whining and screeching; it was the siren. Once that was put into place, he took it out of the equation and continued to put the pieces of his mind back into order. The fuzzy shape he'd seen broke into two separate globs and then gained features. One was Ryan. The second was an EMT monitoring his blood pressure and heart.

Now it was all back. His raspy voice sounded odd. "Rolling by the park, I saw two RV's parked so they presented a traffic hazard. Put a BOLO out for an RV with an Alabama license plate number 58749903. The body of the vehicle is tan with a brown striping running down the sides. The other is an RV with an Alabama license plate number 34556047. The body of that one is light blue and has two dark blue sail outlines outlined in silver." Because of his long days as a police officer, memorizing license plates was second nature to him.

Ryan scribbled down the information and then started texting on his phone.

"There were about twelve other RVs, three wheelers, and trailers pulled by other vehicles. I radioed the information about the violations and was waiting for the car."

"Yeah, they found you and called it in. Only thing is, there were no other vehicles around when we got here."

Feeling a wave of nausea hit him, Horatio closed his eyes. "No? They pulled out, huh. I'm not surprised."

The EMT spoke up here. "You got slammed pretty good in the back of the head. I'm surprised you're awake already."

Ryan looked down at his boss. "We're going to get whoever did this to you, H."

Dr. Alexx Woods gave Horatio a skeptical glance as she entered the curtained exam area. "Now you know you shouldn't be sitting up, don't you."

"I'm alright Alexx." Still, he looked sheepish under the former Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's glare.

"Not from what I've seen of the x-rays you're not. Now lie down and stay there until I say different." Alexx pushed her friend down using her elegantly long fingers. She then took the x-ray film and clipped it onto the light box on the wall.

"And the x-rays say?"

"Mild concussion." The black woman's finger traced the mark of the blow on the picture.

Horatio almost rose again. "So, not so bad."

"No! You're on my playground and so you follow my rules! Down!"

"Okay, analysis of what was done to me please."

"Sideways blow to your right occipital lobe with a heavy object. My bet is on the butt of a gun. I'd say then your head was also knocked into the top of the door to the Humvee, just above the window so, in effect you got a double whammy. Person who hit you was slightly shorter, maybe five, nine. He was muscular too."

A wave of pain feeling like the crash of a tsunami hit Horatio. "The way I'm feeling, I'd say the weapon was Hercules' club and he was a mile tall."

Alexx put a finger in front of Horatio's face. "Follow the finger with your eyes."

She shook her head.

"Does it seem like things have a halo around them?"

"You mean am I suffering from double vision? Yeah, a side effect?"

Considering you were hit in the area that makes sense of what it gets from the optic nerve I'd say yes."

"How long will that last?"

Alexx gave him one of her 'oh, puleez!' looks through her gorgeous eyelashes. "Horatio, if I could tell you that, my next trick would be making millions in the stock market because of my predictions. It's probable that following my directions exactly for the next three days or so, your vision will be fine and cure the killer headaches you're going to have."

"Headaches I'm going to have? With what I have now, I am suddenly a great believer in the power of drugs. That shot you gave me a while ago took the edge off and now I'm ready to bribe you for another."

Alexx smiled indulgently. "Oh, sweetheart, you don't have to bribe me. As long as you have a ride home, I can give you one more just before you check out."

She continued "Okay, now you can sit up. How do you feel in general?"

"Except for those bells, I think I'm alright. I'm a little sleepy, though. Not supposed to sleep with a concussion, right?"

"Wrong. Being a little sleepy with a mild concussion is normal. You'll need to stay with someone for the next couple of days though. If you sleep for more than twelve hours at a stretch, that's not good and I want you brought in immediately."

"May I borrow your cell? I was rolled. They took everything including my badge."

"Ouch!"

Horatio's fingers wavered over Alexx's cell for a moment before he dropped both hands. He looked at his longtime friend and tried unsuccessfully to smile. "Is it common to lose one's short term memory?"

"Who are you trying to call, sweetie?"

"Yelina."

"Oh, I heard she is back in the force. Are you two friendly now?"

"Unless I'm worse off than I thought, I think we're hitting it off."

"It's about time. I don't think it's your memory so much as the blessing and bane of cell phones. You didn't have to memorize her number." She retrieved the phone. "Here, let me call Calleigh. If I know her, she's got Yelina's number."

As soon as Calleigh answered, the former medical examiner handed the phone back to Horatio. She knew Calleigh would want to hear from his mouth that he was alright.

Of course, he had a few other things to tell her, like putting out a trace on his phone and starting the process of getting his badge replaced and a new gun issued.

"Did they get your backup weapon?" she asked.

Horatio checked his ankle holster. "No. Probably in too much of a hurry. That's not police business anyway."

"I know, just checking in case we needed to run a bullet trace." Calleigh's south Alabama accent was a little heavier than usual as it always was when she was under stress.

"Now, could you call Yelina for me?"

Calleigh didn't need to ask why he didn't do it for himself. In her eighth month of pregnancy, some of her thinking processes sometimes didn't work the way she thought they should. If she didn't have all of her necessary phone numbers programmed into her cell, she'd maybe be able to call home, that was all. She pulled up Yelina's number and read it to him.

"Thanks Calleigh. I should be in day after tomorrow." He looked at Alexx as he said this.

Alexx waited until he had returned her phone before saying, "That's if you come in here before reporting for work. I'll decide then."

Typically, Horatio remained silent.

"Meanwhile, you wait here for Yelina. I even recommend you indulge that sleepy feeling. Your brain got rocked inside the skull cavity and allowing it to shut down will help it to heal faster."

Alexx was leaving and about to close the curtains behind her.

Already reclining, Horatio called out, "Alexx."

"Yes?"

"Thanks."

The most sexy eyes Horatio had ever seen on a woman sparkled as her lips spread wide. The warmest voice he had ever heard, filled with friendly adoration answered, "Anytime."

TBC