Title: Blood Ties (4/8)

Disclaimer: Don't own anything to do with CSI: Miami, and all you'd get if you sued me is a laptop and a couple pairs of really nice shoes. Hardly seems worth it, right?

Rating: PG-13 (Patience! Next part's gonna be R, I swear.)



Pairing: Eric/Maria (OC)

Spoilers: "Tinderbox," "Freaks and Tweaks"

Feedback: Yes, please! But be nice. If I wanted to be criticized, I'd call my sister.



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"So, according to the brother, Abigail Hammond is his ex-girlfriend," Maria filled Calleigh in. For the second time that afternoon, Horatio had asked her to make the trip to the Florida State campus, this time to question a potential suspect, and had sent Calleigh with her. Now, the two women were standing in front of a red brick dormitory. "She and Jessica were best friends all throughout high school. Last year, Jessica found out that Abby had been in a psychiatric hospital for two months when she was thirteen, and was still on medication and being treated for manic depression. She told Matt, and he broke up with Abby and started dating Lisa."

"And Abby blamed Jessica." Calleigh finished for her.

"That's what Matt said." Maria nodded. "He said that Abby seemed okay at first, but that in the past few months, she'd started causing problems, picking fights with all of them and threatening Jessica. So they all broke off contact with her."

"So, we're about to confront a manic depressive about a murder that she may have committed." Calleigh said. "Some first day you're having, huh?"

Maria smiled. "Sometime I'll tell you about the kind of crazies I'd run into on a typical night in vice."

Calleigh raised an eyebrow. "I'm not sure I want to know." She turned around and waved to Detective Bernstein, who had come along in case Abby didn't cooperate. "Let's go get this over with."

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"Just a second!" A cheerful voice called out when Maria knocked on the door.

The door opened, and a tall, athletic girl with curly dark hair and blue eyes smiled at the two CSIs. "Yeah?"

"Abigail Hammond?" Calleigh asked.

"Abby."

"Maria Santiago and Calleigh Duquesne, Miami Dade PD." Maria said. "We need to ask you some questions about Jessica Billings and Kyle Eden."

Abby's eyes widened. "Are they okay?"

"I'm afraid not." Maria said. "They were found dead in their apartment this morning."

"Shit." Abby gasped, sagging against the doorframe. "How...I mean...oh my God. Are Lisa and Matt okay?"

"As good as can be expected." Calleigh spoke up. "Matt suggested that we come and talk to you."

"Why?" Abby asked, straightening a little. "Does he think that I did it?"

"He said we should talk to you." Calleigh repeated. "Where were you on Friday night?"

"Here." Abby said. "I was here all night, I didn't feel well, so I stayed in and went to bed around eleven."

"Can anyone confirm that?" Maria asked.

"I don't know." Abby admitted. "There weren't a lot of people here, most of them were out somewhere."

"Okay." Maria said. "We're going to need you to come with us."

Abby drew back slightly. "You're arresting me?"

"No." Calleigh said. The look of fear in the girl's eyes made both women feel sorry for her. "We're just going to need to ask you more questions."

"I would never hurt either of them." Abby stated, tears welling up in her eyes.

"No one's saying that you did." Maria assured her.

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"That's the ex?" Eric asked as Calleigh and Detective Bernstein passed by him with Abby.

"That's her." Maria replied. "Doesn't look like a cold blooded murderer. Then again, not a lot of them really look the part, huh? Find anything new at the apartment?"

"Hairs and fingerprints that are being compared to the vics', and Matt and Lisa." Eric replied. "And the murder weapon. They kept their guns in a crawl space behind Matt and Lisa's bedroom, and there was one rifle missing. We found it in a dumpster, right below the fire escape." He noticed how pale Maria looked, and how her eyelids were drooping slightly. "Come on." He said, putting his hand on her arm gently. "You look exhausted, let's get you some coffee."

"Lead the way." Maria said, smiling gratefully.

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"So, what did Abby have to say?" Eric asked, handing Maria a cup of coffee and sitting beside her on the couch in the break room.

"That she didn't do it, of course." Maria sighed, leaning back against the cushions.

Eric studied her face for a moment. "Do you believe her?"

"I might." Maria admitted. "She seemed so surprised when we told her they were dead. So, either she's a really good actress, or...but then again, there's motive, and an unconfirmed alibi. But...I don't know, something's off."

"I was thinking the same thing." Eric told her. Mostly, something seemed off about Matt Billings. Obviously, everyone reacted differently in these situations, but Matt had seemed entirely too calm. When they had spoken to him at the apartment, Eric had noticed him practically leering at Maria when she wasn't looking at him. Leering at her, just hours after finding his twin sister and his best friend dead on their couch. Of course, Eric told himself, it would have bothered him no matter who the kid had been looking at.

"Hey." Maria leaned closer to him. "Earth to Delko."

"Sorry, did you say something?" Eric asked sheepishly, realizing that he'd been completely spacing out again.

"Yeah, I asked you if there was any sign of forced entry at the apartment." Maria replied, rolling her eyes and smiling. She couldn't help but wonder what he had been thinking about so hard.

"No." Eric said. "The door was locked, so were all the windows. So the killer either had a key or was let in. Matt said the only people who had keys were their parents, Lisa's mother, Kyle's parents, Clara, and a few of their friends."

"Including Abby?"

"No, he said she never had a key."

Maria thought for a second. "Well, I guess it's still possible that one of them let her in." She thought back to the scene, to the position of the bodies on the couch. "Except..." She set her coffee down and leaned back against the arm of the couch, keeping her feet on the floor and placing her right arm on the back of the couch, the same position Jessica's body had been in. "Jessica was leaning back sort of like this, right?"

"Right." Eric moved closer to her and leaned in, without even thinking about it. He placed his left hand on the arm of the couch, a few inches from her head. "Kyle was sitting next to her, almost right on top of her, like this. And his right hand was..." He put his right hand lightly on Maria's hip.

"No, it was a little more like this..." Maria corrected, moving his hand up a few inches, so it was resting over her ribcage. She was concentrating, but she wasn't completely unaware of how hot his hand felt through her thin cotton tank top. "And she had her left hand on his upper back."

Eric felt his muscles tense as Maria's hand came to rest between his shoulder blades. "And his head was buried against her neck..." He moved so that his face was barely an inch from Maria's throat. For the first time, he became aware of how close their upper bodies were. He saw her chest rise and fall slowly as she breathed, and noticed that her hair, which had been pulled back at the crime scene, was now hanging loose over her shoulders, slightly curled from the humidity outside. He jerked his head back suddenly, forcing himself to think about baseball, multiplication, anything to calm himself down a little. What the hell were they doing?

Maria pulled back slightly, too, and removed her hand from his back. "They didn't let anyone into that apartment." She breathed, just as the door opened.

"Is this a bad time?" Tim asked, barely concealing his amusement at the sight of his colleagues, breathing heavily and blushing.

"We were just...we were trying to reconstruct the scene." Eric said defensively.

"I'm going to go see how Calleigh and Bernstein are doing with Abby." Maria said at the same time, rising from the couch and walking out of the room as casually as she could manage.

Tim just gave Eric a look, not saying a word.

"Shut up." Eric snapped. "I told you, we were just reconstructing the crime scene."

"I didn't say you weren't." Tim replied calmly. "So, did you figure out anything new?"

"I don't think they let the killer into the apartment." Eric said. "I don't think they were aware of anyone else being there."

"Well, you two were looking pretty oblivious." Tim agreed.

Eric felt like his face was burning. "I'm gonna see if any of those prints we lifted from the apartment weren't from the kids." He stated. Once he was out of the break room, he paused and leaned against the wall, taking a deep breath and shaking his head a few times. There was something seriously wrong with him.

"Anything new for me?" He opened his eyes and saw Horatio approaching him.

"Actually, yeah. Maria and I were just...talking, and we both think that the killer wasn't let in to the apartment by the victims."

"Neither do I." Horatio agreed.

"So that means that the killer was someone who had a key." Eric said, relieved that Horatio wasn't going to question how he and Maria had arrived at their mutual conclusion.

"Exactly." Horatio said.

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"Where's Abby?" Maria asked.

"Bernstein's giving her a ride back to her dorm." Calleigh replied. "She's basically off the hook."

"Really?" Maria said, curious. She'd already been basically convinced of Abby's innocence, but Calleigh seemed to be certain.

"Speed reviewed the security camera tapes from the entrance into the building." Calleigh explained. "We get a pretty clear shot of Matt and Lisa leaving, and after that there were only four people who entered the building, all of them male, and only two who went in after midnight. The images are pretty blurry, though, so I don't know how much help the tape is going to be."

"How about the gun, any prints off of that?" Maria asked.

"Only the ones that you'd expect." Calleigh said. "Two sets were Jessica's, one was Matt's, and there was a partial of Lisa's. None of those were fresh, though."

"So...we're basically back where we started." Maria sighed, leaning against a table.

Calleigh nodded. "For now, anyway." She looked at Maria and saw that she was struggling to keep her eyes open. "It's been a long day. Especially for a first day. Maybe you should get some rest."

Maria smiled slightly. "Uh-uh, I'm not beat yet. Just...a little shaken, I guess."

"That's understandable." Calleigh assured her. "This is your first case. And it's not an easy one."

"It's hideous." Maria agreed. "Freakin' gun nuts." She glanced at Calleigh, remembering that she was in the presence of a ballistics expert. "No offense, of course. I respect guns as much as anyone else. I just don't see why four college kids living in a posh urban neighborhood need to have five of them in their apartment."

"Hey, I agree completely." Calleigh said. "I mean, clearly, they knew how to handle a gun. Doesn't mean that they should."

"They shouldn't." Maria stated. "I mean, those kids would be alive if there hadn't been any guns in that apartment. The killer could have come at them with a knife, but at least they would have had a chance at defending themselves..."

"You know, the angle the bullet came from...the killer stood in the hallway, leaned in, and took that one shot, and that was it." Calleigh sighed, disgust evident in her voice.

"We're gonna get this sick fuck, right?" Maria asked hesitantly. "I mean, I know that there are some cases that just can't be solved, I just can't stand the thought of this being one of them."

"None of us can." Calleigh assured her. "We're going to find out who did this."

"I hope so." Maria sighed. "I mean, the look on Clara's face, when Eric told her that Jessica and Kyle were dead..."

Eric knocked on the door, then opened it slightly. "Hey, H says we should think about packing it in for the night."

"Is he kidding?" Maria asked.

"It's pretty late already." Calleigh pointed out. "And there doesn't seem to be much we can do for now. Graveyard shift's gonna be starting soon anyway. You might as well get some rest. I know I'm going to." She switched off the lamps she'd been using to compare prints. "I'll see you guys tomorrow. Oh, and Maria? Welcome to the team."

Maria grinned. "Thanks. I'll see you tomorrow."

After Calleigh left, the room was silent for a moment before Eric spoke. "You're not leaving yet, are you?"

"No way." Maria confirmed. "I'm way too wired to even think about going home."

Eric nodded. "I understand, I was the same way on my first case." He hesitated for a moment, still feeling awkward about what had happened between them earlier. "Do you want to get a drink or something?"

"Sure." Maria accepted gratefully.

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It barely took any time at all for them to be at ease with each other. Before they even got out of Eric's car at the club, the two of them were laughing like they had known each other for years. They'd already covered family; Maria's mother was Russian, and her father was Cuban. Eric had been pleased to discover one more thing that the two of them had in common. She had an older sister and brother, and a younger half-sister and half-brother from her father's second marriage, to a fellow Cuban immigrant. Maria was a former Army brat, and had done a brief stint in the Army herself. The two of them had compared embarrassing memories, favorite childhood vacations, most painful nicknames.

"So, I guess the military is basically the family business." Maria was saying. "Dad just retired three years ago, he served in Vietnam and in the Persian Gulf. My stepmom, Yolanda, was a Navy nurse for almost thirty years. My older brother Anton is a Navy SEAL, and my older sister Francesca is an F-16 pilot in the Air Force. My half-brother, Estefan, is an Army Ranger, and my half-sister Lara is just finishing her first year at West Point."

Eric was impressed. "Wait, so, your brother is a SEAL, your sister's a pilot..."

Maria laughed. "I know, I know. Throw in a big black guy with a band, and my family is the A-Team."

"Exactly." Eric chuckled. It wasn't the first time one of them had known what the other was about to say.

The club was fairly new, it had only opened within the past two months. It was larger than Descent, more open. Glancing around, Eric reassured himself that there were sprinklers, and he counted six fire exits. Still, he took a few deep breaths to clear his head.

His behavior didn't go unnoticed. "You okay?" Maria asked suspiciously. One long, manicured finger slipped into her glass, lazily stirring the ice cubes and mint leaves. She absent-mindedly brought her hand to her mouth, sucking the liquor off of that finger, then running her hand through her hair. Every movement seemed to be in time with the song that was pulsating in the air, causing the table to vibrate.

"I'm fine." Eric replied. "This is just the first time I've been in a club in about a month...remember when Descent burned down?" He didn't need to wait for an answer. No one in Florida would forget that horrible night any time soon. "Speed and I were there."

Maria's eyes widened. Then she slapped her open palm down on the table. "That's why you guys look so familiar. I saw you in the paper, a few days after it happened. You're those two cops who kept going back in to get people out."

Eric cringed. He'd seen that article. Many, many times. People he hadn't seen since high school had clipped it out of their newspapers and sent it to him, as if he could somehow have missed it. Reporters had been hounding both him and Speedle for days. "Yeah. You know, it's weird...how they said we were heroes."

"You didn't feel like heroes." Maria stated.

"I didn't understand it." Eric said. "Why we were singled out. I mean, there were so many people who were there that night. Why were we the only ones who went back in? The rest of them just knocked each other down trying to find a way out, when they could have just as easily helped each other." He hesitated for a moment, then continued. "The bouncer who started the fire, Danny...he was a friend of mine. I thought he was, at least. I just...I kept thinking that maybe I could have seen it coming. I know that's completely insane."

"It is." Maria reached across the table and lay her hand over his. "But I understand, better than you know. Do you...do you remember, almost three years ago, when a student at Florida State opened fire outside the cafeteria?"

Eric nodded. Another incident that he doubted the state would forget any time soon.

Maria pulled the strap of her tank top aside slightly, to reveal a

scar where a chunk of her shoulder the size of a golf ball had been taken off. "I was a senior.

I was sitting right there when the shots started. I didn't even

notice that I'd been hit until it was over, I just grabbed anyone who was around me and told them to stay low and follow me. We made it to a janitor's closet, and I locked us in and called for help on my cell phone. Later...they told me I was a hero, that I'd saved eleven people. But I couldn't save the guy who had been doing the shooting. I knew him, he'd dated one of my roommates, and we had classes together. I just kept thinking, maybe there were signs that I missed, maybe I could have stopped it...it's taken me a long time to get past that."

"But you did?" Eric asked. He looked at the table, at her thin, small hand on his hand. He slowly turned his wrist and closed his fingers around hers.

"Yeah." Maria replied. She glanced down at their joined hands, then looked up at him and smiled. "I did."

Eric nodded. "In a sick way, it's almost funny, how nine days later, Speed and I were in a barn with H and a detective, there was a murdered meth head in there. And H and I were poking around, looking for some clue as to who the guy was, when he suddenly just looked at me and told me to run. Turns out there was a bomb in there, we all got out, literally, a second before the whole place exploded."

"Holy fuck." Maria gasped. "So, twice in less than two weeks, you and Tim almost got incinerated? Yikes."

"Yeah." He noticed how wide her eyes were. "I'm not scaring you away, am I? I swear, that doesn't happen all the time."

Maria laughed. "I don't scare that easy."

Eric couldn't helped but notice how beautiful Maria looked when she laughed. Not that she wasn't incredibly easy on the eyes already. At least a dozen other guys in the club had been giving him dirty, jealous looks since they had walked in together. He couldn't help it, he liked the way that felt. He had moved a little closer to her, almost without thinking about it. He'd done the same thing earlier in the day, when he'd caught Hagen and Bernstein checking her out. As if he had some right to stop others from looking at her. It was ridiculous, but somehow he couldn't help it.

"You okay?" Maria asked again, this time casting a suspicious glance at the beer bottle in his hand, and the two empty ones on the table. She'd barely touched her drink, and it was her first one.

"I don't know." Eric admitted. He looked at the bottle in his hand, it was still more than half full. "I don't usually drink this much." He didn't want her to think he was an alcoholic, or an overgrown frat boy. "And when I do, it doesn't get to me like this."

"Well, when was the last time you ate something solid?" Maria asked. She leaned over and placed her hands on his face, tilting his head back slightly and looking into his eyes.

"This afternoon...maybe around one?" He guessed. Her hands on him were distracting. Her touch was light, and her hands were soft, but even that slight contact threatened to knock him out more than any number of beers could.

"There's your problem." Maria said. "Give me your keys, I'll give you a ride home."

"How will you get home, then?" Eric asked, taking his keys out of his pocket and sliding them across the table. He'd planned to drive her back to the lab after they were done with their drinks, so she could get her car and drive herself home.

"I'll call a cab." Maria replied. She stood up, grasping his hand firmly and pulling him to his feet. "And I'll leave my address and phone number with you, so tomorrow you can return the favor and give me a ride to work."

"Sounds fair." Eric agreed, letting her lead him across the club to the door.

"It is fair." Maria said. "Come on, let's go."

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The sky opened up, literally, just seconds after they stepped out of the club. In the ten seconds it took them to cross the parking lot, they were both completely drenched. They had to laugh at it, of course. It was typical Florida weather. Just as typical was the fact that the sky was clear again by the time they pulled up to Eric's apartment building. He led her inside and up the stairs to his apartment, laughing with her the whole time about how ridiculous they both looked.

"Do you want some coffee or something?" He offered. "Maybe a dry shirt to put on? We could throw that one in the dryer while you're waiting for the cab."

"Sure." Maria smiled. "And coffee would be nice, too. I think it's all catching up with me, I'm starting to feel a little tired." She sank down onto the couch, one hand rubbing the back of her neck.

"Are you all right?" Eric asked, crossing the room to stand in front of her.

"Fine." Maria said. "Just a little cramp in my back."

He sat down beside her and placed both hands on her shoulders, rubbing gently at first, then applying more pressure when she moaned softly and leaned back against his hands.

"Thank you." She murmured softly, letting her eyes close slightly. "Not just for this, either. I really needed this night, after today..." She sat up abruptly, moving away from his touch. Her green eyes seemed darker as they focused on his face, slowly dropping to his mouth.

Neither of them were the least bit surprised when she leaned in and brushed her lips against his tentatively. He didn't hesitate for a second, he wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her against him, crushing his mouth against hers.

At the same time, the two of them had the same thought, although neither of them said it out loud.

She wasn't going to be needing that cab after all.

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TBC...