Second Attack
All it took was a "clean" gun she bought off the street in a seedy Miami neighborhood. Horatio didn't see her from the vantage point she choose in a large, busy parking lot. No one else did either. He went down quickly, a small pool of blood gathering rapidly at his right side. A sinister grin crossed Julia's face, believing she had killed Horatio Caine.
The blood pool was deceiving. The wound Horatio had received was a through and through, meaning it missed all organs and arteries before exiting his body. It had basically only injured skin, muscle and tissue. Though Horatio being Horatio he acted like it didn't, the wound hurt quite a bit. But the first thing on his mind was his wife. She was only 26 weeks pregnant, just past her second trimester. He didn't want this second episode of extreme stress to send her into premature labor. All the way to the hospital and in the ER, Horatio kept telling them that the moment his wife arrived at the hospital to tell her he was not seriously hurt.
"She's six months pregnant. I don't want anything to happen," he said, finally beginning to wince from the pain.
The staff assured him repeatedly they would.
Horatio's been shot.
The words ran through Aimee's head even after she had been told Horatio's wound wasn't serious. They were going to patch him up, give him pain medication and send him home. Aimee had to see this with her own eyes to be sure.
And Horatio wasn't allowing them to administer pain medication till then.
"I'm okay, babe," he said to her, touching her cheek, when Aimee entered the room.
"I know," Aimee replied, touching his cheek with her opposite hand. "Now, take the shot."
Her husband obeyed.
Kyle was upset then mad when he heard had hurt his daddy. Maria let the boy cry, then scream and shout to vent his anger. She was feeling the same emotions but she knew Kyle had to be feeling them at a much deeper level. She reassured the boy that both mommy and daddy would be home very shortly. Kyle told her he wasn't "going to school no more" till "the bad person was gone away forever."
Maria didn't say anything to this. She would let his parents deal with it. Understandingly, Kyle was not letting either parent out of his sight now. Once Horatio was settled in at home, Aimee told her friend that she planned to talk to the school about a home tutor for Kyle. They weren't going to send him back to school till this ordeal was over for good, but they didn't want him to fall behind, either.
"You don't have to," Horatio told Kyle when the boy said he didn't want to go back to school. "Not till you're ready. We're gonna get a teacher to come here for while, okay?"
"Thank you, daddy," Kyle said.
The team was taking Horatio being shot very personally. They had again taken Julia in for questioning but they had virtually no evidence. They had the bullet but had yet to find the gun that shot Horatio.