Hey everybody. I'm really sorry it's been forever since I updated. I've had a death in the family, health issues with another family member, and a work schedule that has not been conducive to writing (if you want a list of excuses). This chapter was also pretty challenging to write, as what I had in my head and what was on paper never really added up. But I plan on having chapter 12 up in the next two weeks and maybe chapter 13, if everything at home settles down long enough…

FLASHBACK

August 1988

Downtown Miami

In the week that had come and passed since Horatio had stood outside the Castenada residence, not much had happened in Miami. Beryl had glossed over the city, choosing to irritate more of the cities to the north instead. Another cyclone was heading their way. Earlier predictions were that the storm would be the third tropical storm of the season, but now everyone was predicting it would fizzle out into a rain storm before it reached land, knocking it down to nameless tropical depression.

More storms circled the Atlantic Coast, like a pack of wolves enclosing on a wounded animal. That was also an accurate description of several of Miami-Dade's cops.

The Herrera case had gone nowhere fast. The blood at the Castenada's was a type match to Herrera's and the gun used was probably the gun that Arturo Castenada had once owned. The crime lab could even prove Eduardo Herrera had been carried to his own car are the car had been driven to the marina only to be later dumped across town in an area down for its chop-shops.

But none of those pieces of evidence were the smoking gun, because of the lack of gun. The weapon in question, a Colt, reportedly had been sold after the Senior Castenada's conviction. The family even had the receipt still to prove it. Rafael Castenada's clothes had already been sent to the dry cleaners. Any evidence on them was long gone by the time the PD had gotten the warrant for them.

Of course, no one else who had stayed after was talking. All the other gentlemen had said that when they left, Herrera was still alive. No one could name a person who would want him dead. Some enemies they would name, sure; even some of the men that had stayed behind, but nobody with strong enough motives to kill Eduardo Herrera. And, of course, all them said there was no way Rafael Castenada would kill Herrera, that Eduardo had been like an uncle to Rafael, that he was the younger Castenada's trusted friend.

Horatio knew it wouldn't be the first time one family member had been killed by another.

The lack of evidence had brought their investigation to a halt, however. No murder weapon and no one talking had his boss cursing and crowing for another warrant for the Castenada place, but the judge argued that if they hadn't found it that first day, they weren't going to find it.

Waverly was convinced the murder had something to do cocaine, that Rafael was following in his father's footsteps, that Herrera was connected to the same drug ring as Arturo, although they couldn't prove it. Horatio didn't know what to think. He kept waiting for the evidence to tell him.

He knew how far the shooter had been standing when he shot Herrera, close enough he had gotten blood on this clothes. Gun powder would have been all over the cuff and the blow-back would have been all the upper and middle portion of the shirt.

For the thousandth time, Horatio looked up from the dress shirt Rafael Castenada supposedly wore the night of Eduardo Herrera's murder. Even looking at swatches of fabric under the microscope, he couldn't find a speck of either GSR or blood. Either Horatio needed to switch dry cleaners, or Rafael wasn't their murder. Or this couldn't possibly be the shirt he was wearing when he killed Herrera.

Horatio closed his eyes and stretched. He'd been going over the evidence all day, as requested by Waverly. It hadn't yielded anything that they didn't already know. He sighed. He hated this part of the job. Not the long hours or the need for detailed, close inspection, but running into a dead end.

"Are you're eyes crossed yet?" a man asked, and Horatio couldn't help but swing around, startled.

"Geez, Allendale, don't you know better than to sneak up on someone?" Horatio asked sarcastically.

The man in front of him had light, wavy, blonde hair cropped close and spritely green eyes sparkling with mischief, making him look much younger than his thirty years. Dressed in a dark pair of pants and a light blue shirt, a gun and badge on his left him, he grinned at Horatio from the doorway of the evidence room in a way that reminded the redhead of his younger brother Ray.

"Payback, CSI Caine," Joseph 'Joey' Allendale replied, smug, referring to the move Horatio had pulled on him in the lab a week before when they were down in the morgue. Horatio had Joey convinced the dead were talking to him thanks to the new radio system that was installed down there. "Still pouring over the evidence from the Castenada manor?"

"Waverly insists that I missed something," Horatio said, not letting his voice betray what he thought.

Nevertheless, he heard the tell-tale chuckle from his fellow CSI. "That's not what you think."

Joey Allendale didn't have as much experience on the police force as Horatio, but he was the lab's go to guy for everything to do with serology and genetics. A scientist first, Allendale had gotten his doctorate at the age of 24, and after three years of working at a medical lab upstate, had applied for a job at the crime lab as 'a change in pace'.

As far as most of MDPD was concerned, Joey was a rookie. The fact that he was scarily good at putting together the missing pieces of a crime scene only seemed to annoy the veterans of the force. Horatio thought it was great. Because he often caught what Horatio missed.

Joey was also a good source of information. He was constantly telling Horatio about the latest research in the forensics field, how the 'speculative' trace evidence was going to help them put more killers behind bars and they were going to match killers to their DNA strand, not just DNA type. To most cops on the force, it sounded like science fiction, but to Joey, it was his life.

"It's what I'm, pretending, to think," Horatio finally said.

"How long have you been staring at that shirt?" Allendale asked. "Long enough you should have bought it a drink hours ago, right?"

Horatio shook his head at the joke. Joey also had the oddest sense of humor. He liked to pull pranks and had already managed to get half the lab, Horatio included. Most people thought it was funny until it happened to them. That was one of the reasons Joey said he liked working with Horatio; he could take a joke, even when it was at his expense.

"Long enough to know there isn't a speck of blood on it."

"Well, that settle's it, then," Allendale said matter-of-factly. "You're taking a break."

Eyebrows raised, "Is that an order?"

"If it need be," Joey quipped. Horatio looked over at him in disbelief. According to their boss, this could be the biggest case of year. He couldn't just walk away.

He was about to say so when Joey held up his finger. "No, don't recite that bullshit Waverly gave us. I remember well enough what he said: 'Castenada is guilty as hell. No one leaves until we prove it. So forget about any rendezvous' with your mistresses and kiss your wives goodbye. The next forty-eight hours you belong to me.'" The southern drawl was dead on, causing Horatio to smirk when he otherwise wouldn't.

"As you may recall, I was there too for that all-so-inspiring speech. Doing work like this was why I quit working for ASA. I started staring at slides and cell cultures until I swore cracking the genetic code wouldn't take as long as identifying cancer morphology. That, my friend, is no way to work. You need to step away from the problem for a solution to present itself."

Allendale leaned on the metal doorframe. "At least leave the room to get a cup of coffee. And—I mean—real coffee. Café Cubano. Not that pot of Everglade muck that is probably breeding seven kinds of micro organisms in it."

"Charming description there, Joe," Horatio admonished. One of these days, Joey was going to say the wrong thing in front of the right person and get himself fired.

"I could list all the possible organisms that would grow in something so acidic for you," Allendale replied. And Horatio knew he would, until he got his way.

"Not if you want me to go out for that coffee with you."

"Excellent. Then we're leaving right now. There's a little-hole-in-wall café just a three blocks north of here called La Paloma Blanca. Hands down, best coffee in the entire city. We can walk there, get a cup and clear our heads, then head back. We'll be gone half an hour, tops."

"Alright then." Horatio began carefully packing the evidence away, finally filing it all in the large cardboard box marked as EVIDENCE, Joey helping him.

That was another thing Horatio liked about Joey; he actually cared. He wasn't just a co-worker, but a friend. When Horatio had come to Miami a little over a year ago, Allendale had made it a point to get to know him, to invite him out for coffee or drinks after work, to introduce him to people Joey knew, to show him the lesser known parts of Miami to help him familiarize himself with the city. He genuinely wanted to make sure Horatio liked working in the lab and made new connections to put New York further and further behind him.

It stirred feelings in Horatio…thoughts he didn't have a clue how to deal with. Thoughts like that Joey was almost putting too much effort into getting to know him. But that was nonsense. Joey was a friend and follow officer and…his mind refused to follow that train of thought. It was ridiculous.

They stored the evidence in the evidence locker, securing the room upon exiting. They moved out into the precinct without saying a word, as the air was stifling with heat and sweat and tension. The Cuban community was starting to get up in arms about investigating the Castenada family again. Other community leaders, be they construction or political, were leaning on the department to start looking at another suspect, looking away, or dropping the 'hot potato' until the situation cooled off. But they could only follow the evidence. So everyone was feeling the heat of the Herrara murder investigation, and Horatio couldn't help but sense that, like the hurricane season, the real storm hadn't blown in.

The two CSIs made their way down the aisle of police desks when someone shouted for Joey.

"Allendale!"

The duo turned to see a man in his early forties with graying and thinning hair, lean face and a pale complexion despite the number of hours he spent in the sun, wearing a navy suit and a white dress shirt, get up from his desk.

"Sears," Joey replied without enthusiasm. Detective Jack Sears was as old-fashioned, no-nonsense as any cop Horatio had ever met. He believed in hard work, gut instinct and that just about everybody lied to him. He was dedicated to the job, more so than most, but he didn't take the CSIs seriously, believing only 'true' detective work put suspects behind bars. Which was why they both got a little apprehensive when he called on them; it was usually to berate them for ruling out his lead suspect.

"I have a few questions on the blood work you did on the Estes case," Sears told Joey. "I'm scheduled to testify tomorrow and I need you to go over the results with me today."

It wasn't quite asking, but it was better than Sears usual cracks and demeanor. Maybe their work was being appreciated after all?

Joey turned to Horatio. "Do me a favor, and bring me back that cup of coffee?"

"Three blocks north, you said?"

"Between a pet store and ice cream shop. You can't miss it."

"Alright. I'll see you in a bit."

Horatio went through the doors of the MDPD, feeling just a little bit…awkward. It was a feeling he thought he had grown out of, and yet it had struck him at the most inopportune times since he had been in Miami. He didn't feel like a stranger in his own skin like he had as a teenager; now he just felt like a stranger in a place that almost existed in a different world, where the people spoke a language of their own, had rules and customs the natives didn't dare share with outsiders. He was in a place he would never be able to call home.

Of course, New York had its own merger of cultures. Brooklyn had generations of Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Italian, African, Hungarian, Romanian, Arabic families living, working in its borough. Different holidays, different behaviors, different words. He remembered sitting with Ray at one of the outside tables of the restaurant where his mother worked, playing a game of inventing what the native Greek and Italian employees were saying to each other. Or what the owner of Chinese restaurant across the street were 'really' saying when he yelled at his nephews.

For some reason, the differences that delighted him in New York had failed to in Miami. It was as if Miami's people were too loud, the words too sharp and impassioned; the music designed to help the people forget the murdering in the streets and to drown out the screams. The people played in the sun, never acknowledging the shadows. The lack of balance left him off center.

It was while musing on the subject, walking down the stair of the precinct, when he saw her. At first, he thought his mind was playing tricks on him; after all, he had spent most of his week on the Castenada case; but sure enough, it was her. The clothes were different—a pair of dusty yellow slacks with a crème colored blouse—and her hair was pulled into a braid. Yet the eyes that spotted him in the same moment were the same mysterious shade and had the same tranquil scrutiny to them.

Ms. Castenada was standing across the street from the police department, tapping her foot on the ground in a manner that betrayed her nervousness. Her hands couldn't settle, as she went from gripping her arms to swaying at her hips. If he had to guess, he would have said she looked indecisive.

When their eyes met, they both seemed to freeze simultaneously. There was a moment—that felt like an eternity—when he was sure he was falling, so suddenly was he struck with something akin to vertigo. His stomach clinched and he wondered if his face showed his surprise.

He had no clue why she was here, but it seemed when the moment was over, her mind was made up. And she was making her way over to him.

His feet, however, were rooted on the spot.

"Hello, Detective Caine," she said in greeting. "I hope it is okay that I'm here."

"Of course it's okay," he said even though he wasn't a sure he wasn't about to be breaking some unwritten rule. But she was here, and reason said it had something to do with their case. He wouldn't find out what until he took a risk. "What can I help you with, Ms. Castenada?"

She looked around the area outside of the precinct, as if to make sure no one was watching.

"Can we—could I—talk to you, for a bit, some place—well, away, from here?"

He found himself nodding before he realized it. "Actually, a friend recommended this coffee shop not to far from here. I was just going to get a cup. How about we talk there?"

Smiling, the confidence she had standing at the doorway of the Castenada's waiting room back, she nodded. "That sounds perfect."

Horatio lead the way and yet made sure they kept side by side. At every corner, before they crossed the street, he briefly glanced at the street signs, orienting himself.

Ms. Castenada lightly chuckled. He looked to see what she found so amusing and discovered her eyes on him.

"You're still getting use to Miami, aren't ya?" Horatio's eyes shot downward as the blush swept across his face. He hoped she'd mistake the reaction for the heat.

"I'd rather not get you lost," he replied as matter-of-factly he could muster. Her grin softened.

"Well, yes. That would not be for the best, but if we did get lost, it could be worse area than near a police precinct," she mused. "The last time I got lost in Miami, it was definitely in a neighborhood that had seen better days and I definitely didn't have a handsome cop as tour guide and a body guard."

Horatio started blushing for an entirely different reason then. Ms. Castenada didn't notice.

"So where are you from originally?" she asked.

"New York." That was no big secret and an innocent enough question he didn't mind answering it.

"Which borough?"

That threw him for a second. He hadn't said he was from the city.

"I went to college in New York," she explained. "Can't always distinguish one district from another, but I know the accent when I hear it."

So he had been correct earlier. She had lived in NYC, and long enough to pick up a slight accent.

"We moved around a lot when I was growing up," Horatio answered. "But Queens and Brooklyn mostly. Which school did you go to?" Most people knew about New York University and Columbia, but there were numerous colleges within and just outside the five boroughs.

"I went to St. John's University," she told him. "Not my first choice, but I got a scholarship to attend there. Best four years possible, though not the easiest."

The traffic cleared enough for the two of them to cross, reaching their destination. Four small, brick buildings sat isolated from the rest of the commercial stretch. Palmettos lined the sidewalk, providing shade for a few tables outside. The shop furthermost out was a pet store. The tune of "How much is that doggy in the window?" could be heard from across the street, almost loud enough to drown out the music filtering out from the ice cream parlor two doors down. And, yes, there was a café in between the two. It wasn't until he was almost underneath the wooden sign that he could read the script of "La Paloma Blanca" with the image of a dove carved beneath the lettering.

He opened the door for her. She thanked him before crossing the threshold.

The door closed behind him, hitting the wind chime hanging just above it. After that, the first thing he noticed was the silence. Fans blew overhead, a constant hum and swish, but otherwise, the atmosphere was peaceful. The second, was that it was much cooler compared to outdoors, despite the lack of air conditioning in sight. On the turquoise walls were drawings of cathedrals and fountains, trees and birds in flight. The lights were kept low, giving a sense of intimacy in the small room.

Tables were placed with just enough aisle space for servers to move around. A counter with a register and the only employee in sight was situated at the back. All the furniture was done in a cherry finish.

A few patrons were sipping at their cups of coffee, the conversation between them trickling low or dying off all together as they took in the two redheads. Horatio internally sighed. He hated being the center of attention—a lifetime of living in an abusive home had taught him that. He couldn't help but wonder if it was his physique that always made people stare or if something about his mannerisms constantly screamed cop, and not in a way that garnered respect.

He didn't know how that was possible, though. He'd trained to be anyone he needed to be on the street, be that drug dealer or petty thief. It was why his undercover op in Narcotics a couple of years ago had gone down so well. It wasn't like he had lost the talent since then, either.

Ms. Castenada just smile and slightly waved her hand, as if to tell the staring eyes they were caught and that the pair meant no harm.

A nod from the man at the register told them they could seat where they liked. Conversation slowly picked up as the two made their way to a table a little removed from the others, but not suspiciously so. Horatio pulled out the chair for Ms. Castenada first. With a slight blush, she took it.

Minutes later, they had ordered their coffee, Castenada's in fluent Spanish and his in English.

When everything was settled, Ms. Castenada said, "This is a neat little hole-in-the-wall."

"As I said, I friend recommended it," Horatio said. "He's made it a point to find all the best kept secrets in town."

"I remember doing that," she commented wistfully. "In New York, my roommates and I would randomly get off the subway and check what shops and clubs there were. Not the safest thing to do, even if the three of us were always together, but one of my roommates, Lianne, was determined to take the city by storm. She tried to convince me not to be sacred. 'The Big Apple can't be more dangerous than South Philly' and all that. 'Course, that's all about what part of South Philly you're yakking about. After four years, though, we had a list of the best pizza parlors and pop stands, and no one dared say we were wrong."

It was the lapse into a colloquialism that had his mind piecing together where he'd heard that accent before.

"You're originally from Pennsylvania," he said. "I could pick out the Queens before, but now I can hear the Pennsylvania Dutch."

She blushed as she pursed her lips. "Yep. That's me. Pennsylvania country girl. Thought I'd lost the accent over the years. I guess I'm just that nervous."

He chose to ignore the nervous comment. He knew Ms. Castenada had come to him for a purpose, but he wasn't going to pry the answer out if he didn't have to. He was set on building a repoir with her. Or, at least, that is what he was telling himself.

"It's only when you say certain words that you give your roots away," he assured. "But it sounds like quite a story you have. You'll have to tell me how a 'Pennsylvania country girl' ends up married to one of the most successful contractors in Miami."

"Well, it's like any rags to riches story," she replied, half teasing and half…loathing, he almost wanted to say. "My father was a farmer and my mother worked along side him. I grew up milking cows and plowing corn with my two brothers. We did everything we could to pinch the pennies until my mom got sick. Then I went to live with my aunt in the city.

I did really well in school and we're Catholic so, I got a scholarship to go even farther away from home, and I took it. I studied mathematics and accounting. What the scholarship didn't cover I made up in waitressing where I—somehow—managed to catch the eye of the man I'm now married to."

She sighed. "And when his father went to prison, as much as Rafael detested the idea of taking over his father's firm, he knew he had no choice. So we moved down here. The rest, as they say of history, is matter of interpretation. "

Ms. Castenada smiled then, but it didn't reach her eyes. He knew there was more to the tale she had weaved and, yet again, didn't press.

"Why math?" He was genuinely curious. Not just because it was a subject most detested, but also because it could give him further insight into her.

The young man that had waited on them came back with their cups, sitting them down beside them as well as a small pitcher of milk a cup of sugar cubes. They thanked him and went about fixing their coffee; he adding a cube of sugar and just a touch of milk while she added two cubes.

"Math and I just clicked," she answered. "Always have. I remember my classmates struggling over problems that I could solve without having to write the numbers down. It was almost like math was a secret language and I was the only native speaker in the room. And, as much as I hate to boast, I can only remember a few occasions when I struggled with a formula or got one wrong. I could feel when an answer to an equation wasn't right. Someone once said I had a 'natural affinity' for math."

Her eyes lit up with a passion that he hadn't seen before, her voice lifting with every word. She smiled as took a moment to drink her coffee. "Mmmm. This is the best coffee I've had, ever."

He had to agree, surprising so, though he knew he shouldn't have been. Joey had remarked that he could identify the region where the coffee grounds had come from solely on taste of the coffee so much of a connoisseur he was.

She took another sip before continuing. "The simple answer is, after growing up poor, I swore I wasn't going to live the rest of my life that way. And I thought the easiest way of doing that is going in the business of making and keeping money, which is all what accounting really is. Before that, it was a toss up between Art and English, but I knew no one was going to pay me to read Shakespeare and working in a museum sounded so boring."

He knew then without asking that the waiting room where he'd interviewed her had been her room, her retreat from the rest of the mansion, and she had sent them in because she had felt the most comfortable there. The question was, why did someone who was so confident need that extra advantage?

"So, now that you know my story, I could ask you the same: how does an honest, New York cop end up a 'crime scene investigator' in a shady city like Miami, Detective?"

Horatio took a moment to compose his reply, his mind flooded with images. He and Ray sitting in a booth while his mother waitressed when he was thirteen. His father coming home, drunk. His father pinning his mother against the kitchen wall, screaming at her as he twisted her wrist to the point of breaking, until Horatio stepped in, drawing the attention to himself. Ray watching their father beat him through the crack through the door and frame of their bedroom. He helping his mother packed the things she valued, checking on Ray as to how much he packed. Horatio stopping by the new apartment for lunch to find his mother's blood splattered across the wall; her face unrecognizable; her body twisted in an unnatural position; his father standing over her body, his eyes filled with an insatiable rage. Meeting Jessica at the bar weeks after the funeral, wanting to drown his sorrows. Him proposing to her outside that bar months later, her smiling wide as she let him slip on the engagement band. The same band she left behind, tucked in the envelope along with the note saying that after two years, she wanted out; that the undercover job had broken her and the only reason she had stayed so long was to make sure Ray had someone he could count on to be at home.

"I started out a beat cop, but the more I learned on the street, the more I wanted to learn how the evidence we gathered was actually processed, what other ways to gather facts there were and how science could assure guilt and innocence more than a desperate confession ever could. I went back to school to understand forensics, but New York already had an established criminalist lab. There's a long waiting list for getting a position on any of shifts. Miami had only recently found the funds for a lab, but they hadn't found all their personal yet. I put in an application more hoping that I would be accepted than anything else, and when I got the call…It was an opportunity I couldn't turn down."

"Did you always want to be a police officer?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"No," he couldn't help but chuckle. "For the longest time, I wanted to be a firefighter." Castenada just grinned. "What?"

She just shook her head. "I just realized—well, I mean, I thought before, but now I'm sure—I can trust you."

A little shocked, Horatio began, "Ms. Castenada—"

"Please call me Monica," she interrupted. "If I'm going to say what I think I'm going to say, then you should at least be able to call me by my first name."

"Monica," he amended, the name strolling of his tongue with an ease no other had. "You came to talk to me, to tell me something important...something about Eduardo Herrera's murder."

Her deep sigh bordered on a shudder. She focused on her coffee, focused on it long enough that Horatio had thought he'd shut her down for good. Then she started talking.

"I remember looking at the clock before I went to bed that night. Not even in college did I know what 3:30 in the morning looked like. I remembered getting dressed for bed and I swore I must have fallen asleep a minute after I climbed in and yet…I woke not long after. I looked at the clock again. It was 4:11." She looked him straight in the eyes. "I have no clue why I woke up then. I just know that after…not long after, a bunch of cars left. Then another car left much later and by 4:40 it was all quiet again and…" Monica closed her eyes for a moment, biting her lip. "…and Rafael didn't come to bed until 6."

As she swallowed, he realized how hard it was for her to say that. That even though she felt the need to do 'the right thing' that she still considered what she was doing as a betrayal. If anyone else had gone with Lieutenant Waverly that day, the case would never had gone anywhere after the meeting in the reception room.

But then there was more. "One of our employees working that night, Felix Guevara, hasn't been to work in a week. But that's normal. Well—I mean—it's normal in that sometimes people don't come in for a week. A child becomes ill or someone gets hurt or there's a death in the family. That kind of thing comes in waves, though. Within a week, half the kitchen staff will get the flu or a couple of the groundskeepers will get hurt on the same project. They just let us know what's happening and we respect that they need the time off."

"But he's the only one and he hasn't called in," Horatio concluded.

"All of it probably means nothing. All of it. I mean—this is not Hamlet. Rafael wouldn't harm anyone, nevermind someone who he considers family. There are no secret plots or assassinations. Sure, Eduardo and Rafael had been arguing a lot lately, but we are in a recession. Sections of business are slowing down; when things don't go according to plan, tempers flare. But that happens everywhere to everybody; there's nothing sinister about it."

Horatio decided that she was equally trying to convince herself as much as him. "Then what has you convinced something is going on?"

Monica swung her braid back over her shoulder where it had fallen when she had leaned forward. "Are you married, Detective?"

"Excuse me?" It seemed like just when he got comfortable, she startled Horatio again.

"I don't want to assume anything anymore, you see, and I know law enforcement officials don't always wear a wedding band. I've been told it can interfere with the job, though the person who said that never bothered to explain what he meant."

Horatio was once again hit with the memory of curly, dark hair and hazel eyes, peach lips and a sardonic smile.

"I was once," he curtly replied, swallowing down the anger and guilt once again. The divorce had been final months before he headed to Miami, and yet the wound was sometimes as fresh as the night he found that note.

"Then you know what it's like to know someone else better than you know yourself," Monica stated, "and that, that kind of relationship depends not just on love to flourish, but trust."

He had to nod in agreement. He had never let Jessica get as close to him as she wanted, kept her from knowing about his undercover work in order to protect her. Yet she had seen it as a lack of trust, as a means of shutting her out until she couldn't take it anymore.

"Rafael has done things this past week that he never does. He's lied, again and again, and when I call him on it, he pretends he doesn't know what I'm talking about. He's shut me out and I can't figure out why. If he was nervous about any bigoted cops, he would just call up any number of our friends from New York and have a horde of lawyers down here in an instant, but he hasn't. And he's not—"she paused as she thought of the right words—"he's not grieving the way someone normally grieves, either. He's known Eduardo Herrera since he was a little boy. He's—he was—like an uncle to him. Eduardo has been lending Rafael a hand since the moment we came to Miami. And yet, Rafael's thinking of not even attending the funeral? I mean, does that sound like someone who is behaving like an emotionally balanced adult to you?"

She leaned back in her seat, her arms trembling before she crossed them. Monica was as close to unraveling as he had yet seen her be. It unnerved him that someone could do that to this woman—someone battled adversity to get where she was. That he in fact had helped bring her to this point.

Slowly, he reached across the table and took her hand. "You're confused. You're scared. You're angry. And you have every right to be.'

Monica let out the breath she had been holding. "Just please tell me you'll help me find out what's going on."

"That, Monica, I can promise you."

"Thank you, Detective."

"Horatio," he said before he realized it.

She quirked her lips. "Thank you, Horatio."

"Now," he said, so he could have just what he needed to help all of them, "what is Felix Guevarra's address?"

They left La Paloma Blanca some time later, agreeing to meet at the café in three days if they didn't encounter each other sooner. Horatio walked back to the crime lab after escorting Monica to the municipal parking lot where she had parked her car. He had the sinking sensation that Waverly may be right after all; that either Castenada or his surrogate uncle had crossed a line that led to the latter man's death; that Monica had woken because of the gunshot; that the only other person who might know where that gun was who just might talk to them, given the right incentive, was AWOL.

He walked back into the layout room he had left some time ago, carrying a large cup of café Cubano, Joey already ahead of him.

"You know, you've been gone for over an hour," Joey commented, not looking up from the shirt he was examining. In fact, it was the same shirt Horatio had been examining when Joey had found him initially.

No, Horatio hadn't known he had been gone that long, as he looked over his shoulder at the clock on the wall to confirm. He must have gotten carried away talking to Monica more so than he thought.

"Waverly been lookin' for you, but don't worry, I covered for you."

"Well good, I need to talk to him," Horatio said as he sat the coffee down in Joey's line of sight. "I think I've got a lead on the Herrera case."

"Really? That's great! I've think I've got something that gonna make him think it's the fourth of July," Joey said.

"Oh, yeah? What's that?" Horatio eyed curiously. Again, Joey was notorious for finding what others missed.

"Well, I thought, with all the people that wear suits around here and spill coffee on them, someone would have thought of it. And, well, of course you being a former Narco cop, you would have thought of the other thing. But if you had, you would have found what I found."

Horatio just looked at him.

"Okay, well, I actually discovered it by accident, swiping the wrong reagent, but it does lend proof to Waverly's accusations."

"I'm all ears Joe." Allendale's smile was as bright and sarcastic as the Miami sun.

"I realized there was no way this was the shirt that Rafael Castenada could have worn if he was anywhere near Herrera when he was shot. The dry cleaning probably would have baked the blood in even if it washed away the gun powder residue."

"So?"

"This can't be the shirt he was wearing, if he's our killer."

"How does that help us?"

"Well, he might have switched shirts on us, probably has a dozen shirts just like this one, so no one, even his wife, would be none the wiser" Joey explained. "But he did not switch his ties." The other man suddenly held up a string of cloth. A section of the tip was removed, revealing a red stain.

"That's blood spatter," Horatio said.

"Oh, there's more than that. That reagent I laid on my swab by accident, it turns color in the presence of certain things. Mainly blue."

The wheels turned in Horatio's brain. "His shirt has—"

"I know what dry cleaning does to blood," said the serology expert, "but I had no clue what it did for cocaine."

END FLASHBACK

"Our case unfolded from a dead end after that meeting. Between Joey and Monica, we were set on the road to crack the case," Horatio finished, his eyes focused suddenly on the beer bottle in his hand. Tim had finished fixing the stir fry awhile back and had actually served them. Horatio hadn't eaten a lot because he'd been talking.

Speed, on the other hand…half of the food on the plate was gone. The remaining bits…let's just say, he had lost his appetite. Or that he felt like he had just ingested battery acid.

It wasn't that Tim didn't know Horatio had a past; everybody had one. It wasn't like Tim had expected there to be no other lovers before him; with the Caine charm, the chivalrous nature, the intensity Horatio took to everything, it was a wonder why his lover was on the market when they had gotten together.

With Yelina around, Tim had forced himself to learn to separate the professional and the personal. To not get upset with the tension Yelina tried to create with his lover, to try to see her side of things instead of figuring her for a manipulative bitch like many of the other women he had come across. Not that he was always great at it. But he told himself it was practice for when an actual old flame of H's walked through the Crime Lab doors, not just a would-be one.

Nothing, however, had prepared him for the emotional knife to his heart. He needed to think of something to say, and fast, because in a moment, Horatio's now glassy eyes were going to focus on him, and that would be bad. At this moment, Horatio would read him like any suspect and know what was wrong.

Horatio had spoken about Joey and Monica in the same tone he spoke of Ray Jr. and the team. There was pride and loyalty, friendship and awe. For awhile, Horatio of spoke of the two in the same inflection, something shifted towards the end of his tale with Monica. Something Tim got to see almost everyday in his lover's eyes and yet only heard when his name was spoken a certain way, or whispered above him when Horatio thought Tim was asleep.

Love. Horatio loved Monica. Okay, yeah, Horatio loved Yelina and Susie, even when he was frustrated with one of them, cared deeply for Calleigh, loved Madison and Ray Jr. But better yet, he had been in love with her. Still was, in a way, even though she was now obviously dead. Had obviously moved on and had a child with another man.

Nothing had prepared Tim for that. That's why his stomach was threatening to spew and he was at a loss for words.