Chapter 3. See chapter 1 for rating, disclaimer, and unconditional guarantee of happy ending.

***

"By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes."

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

***

Horatio lay there fiercely concentrating on the future, trying to anticipate various opportunities and prepare advance plans for each, but his mind kept slipping back into the past. Stewart Otis. Of all the criminals he had encountered in his career at CSI, Otis was the one he had dreaded most whenever he considered the possibilities of escape. Dread not for himself, but for the victims, the innocent, helpless children. Images flooded his mind, hurting him more than his leg.

Ruthie Crighton, her angelic features forever stilled on the cold, hard floor.

The sick collection of missing children's pictures on milk cartons that formed Otis' private tombstones.

The children buried in the backyard, many with features still pitifully recognizable.

Otis presenting Horatio with what he honestly considered a legitimate complaint. "I never even got to play with her."

The slam of fear into Horatio's stomach when he had recognized Otis on the traffic camera and realized who else besides Hank Kerner had escaped.

Emma, the child he had vowed would be the last one Otis would harm. Yet it wasn't the first time Horatio had made that vow, and his best efforts hadn't been enough.

The image he kept coming back to over and over was Otis dangling from the top of the parking garage, pleading with Horatio to let him fall. Horatio had wanted to grant him exactly what he was asking for. Yet he hadn't. He wished he could be given the opportunity again, so he could change his decision.

And now Rosalind. . .

No. Horatio's mind slammed that door immediately. He would not imagine Rosalind in this sick monster's clutches. It would never happen. They would get out. He would protect his daughter somehow; he refused to consider the possibility of failure there. He would never see Calleigh devastated like Ruthie Crighton's mother had been. And this time, Otis would not hurt anyone else. Not Calleigh, not Rosalind, not any mother or child.

Calleigh stirred next to him and slowly opened her eyes as if hoping the world would have changed since she had gone to sleep. It hadn't. The disappointment in her expression was instantly replaced by defiance. She looked over at Horatio. "Hi," she said. Neither of them could say good morning. "Did you get any sleep?"

Horatio shook his head. "Couldn't manage it. I spent the time thinking instead."

Calleigh followed him effortlessly into his mind. "You wish you had let him fall, don't you?"

He sighed. "I had a perfect chance there, Calleigh. No one would have blamed me."

"You would have blamed you." She reached out with her cuffed hands to touch his face.

"I wish I could do it over again. I'd let him fall without a second thought."

"No, you wouldn't. You aren't Otis, Horatio; you can't just kill like that. You let him live because you didn't have to kill him to take him down. You couldn't have known this would happen."

He stared at the ceiling. "Maybe," he said after a moment. "If I get another chance like that, though, he's dead, Cal." His eyes switched back to hers, suddenly self-accusing. "Does that mean I value Rosalind more than Ruthie Crighton and the others?"

"She's your daughter, Horatio, but no, you weren't shortchanging Ruthie and Emma. You value all people. It just didn't have to be done then. You could take him without it. I don't think we'll have a choice this time, unless the team gets him for us. If he gives us an opening, we'll have to kill him. I doubt either one of us could escape otherwise, not at the moment."

"He'll have to give us an opening, though." Horatio clenched his fists in frustration, looking at his leg. Calleigh gripped his hand gently.

"He will. Criminals make mistakes. You've told us that a thousand times."

He looked back at her affectionately, returning the squeeze of her hand. "You're right, they do. He hasn't got a chance, Cal."

"Against us plus the team? No way."

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Tired. I don't think that night's sleep was worth much. What about you?"

"Same answer." He was sure that night hadn't been worth much.

"How's the leg?"

"No worse, anyway."

She gave his hand a final squeeze and sat up on the edge of the bed. "I'd better get us some breakfast, I guess. It seems crazy to be hungry right now, but I am."

"You're eating for two," he reminded her. "You've got to take care of Rosalind." Suddenly, he came to attention, looking at the door, and held up one hand to silence her question. Calleigh heard it herself finally. The faint sound of tennis shoes on a concrete floor approached the door, then paused outside it. She could picture Otis listening intently outside, trying to hear a baby. She waited for the door to be unlocked, but he only stood there for a minute, then retreated. Horatio and Calleigh looked at each other in mutual fierce promise. This man would not get their daughter.

After a moment, she finished getting up and headed for the cans, surveying the selection. "What flavor of soup do you want, Horatio?"

"I'm not really hungry." Actually, the pain made him feel slightly sick to his stomach. He had noticed it last night when eating, too. "Just get whatever you want."

Calleigh eyed him, changing the focus of her worry. "You ought to try to eat something."

"Okay, then. I'll try." He didn't want to worry Calleigh any more than she already was. "Make us some hot tea, too. That tasted good last night." She turned back to their supplies and heard his velvet voice behind her, as if they were in the break room at CSI and she was fixing him coffee. "Thank you, Calleigh." The words sounded so normal, so routine, that for a moment, tears of nostalgia came to her eyes. Would they ever have conversations at CSI or in their own kitchen again? She instantly fought the rebellious tears down, not wanting to worry him any more than he already was. By the time she finished her task and faced him again, her face was perfectly steady.

***

Speed stared at the screen. For the tenth time, he watched Horatio and Calleigh be caught off guard, and for the tenth time, he had to fight down the urge to yell a warning, as if they might hear him even now and turn. Eric entered the video processing room. "I went over the Hummer. Nothing. We had to rule it out, though. Did you get anything from the tapes from the garage?"

"Yes, just not enough." Speed hit rewind. "One camera has the whole abduction. Watch. Here's 7:05 PM." Horatio entered the garage, heading for Calleigh's car with his easy, graceful stride but with his mind obviously somewhere else. In the far bottom corner of the screen, barely visible, the perp pressed up against a concrete pillar out of view, but his hands were busy, and they could make out the needle in his gloved hand when he started forward. He approached on cat feet, and Horatio, bending to unlock the car, never turned.

"H, turn around!" Eric blurted out, then looked embarrassed. "Sorry, I forgot it was a video."

"I know," Speed admitted. "I've seen it ten times, and I still want to warn him."

The needle flashed, and Horatio crumpled into the car. The perp caught him and dragged him around to the passenger's side, unlocking that door and folding him into the vehicle. He then quickly pocketed the keys and walked away.

"Okay, now here's 7:32. Nothing happens in between." Speed fast forwarded and hit play. The perp appeared again at the bottom corner, hiding behind the pillar. Calleigh entered the garage, then broke into a clumsy run, yanking the door open and bending over Horatio. Eric managed to bite back the warning this time as the perp came up behind her. She crumpled, and he quickly opened the back door, put her in a bit more carefully than he had handled Horatio, then crossed around the back of the car to the driver's side, started the car, and pulled away.

"He had to catch them off guard," Eric said.

"Yeah. And one at a time." Speed stopped the video and looked back at his friend. "But we never once see the guy's face." The camera was pointing at the rear bumper of the car, and whether by accident or design, the perp had never looked toward it. Even when the car backed out of the space, it had turned the other direction, so that their best chance for a close up only focused on an unconscious Horatio in the passenger's seat. "We can't identify somebody from a back."

"He looks familiar, though, somehow. The way he moves or something rings a bell." Eric frowned, trying to chase the thought down. "Tyler completed the search on all of the people H helped put away. None of them are out within the past three months. No one escaped, no one on parole. He's widening it to six months."

Speed sighed. "Why couldn't he look over, just once?"

Valera entered the room and gave Eric a half smile, but her total focus was on the case. "I finished those tests." She hesitated.

"And?" Speed always hated it when people stopped halfway through a sentence.

"The DNA from the woman's body definitely does not match Calleigh. But the blood at the accident scene does match Horatio."

They looked at each other silently for a minute. "It wasn't much blood," Speed said finally, trying to reassure all of them. "If he was dead, the body wouldn't have been replaced."

"How's it coming?" Alexx entered the room, which was rapidly getting crowded, but none of them cared just then.

Speed rewound the tape again and started from 7:05. Valera could not suppress an agitated squeak when Horatio collapsed. Alexx didn't make a sound, but her eyes spoke for her. Speed and Eric both again fought back the urge to call out a warning. Fast forward to 7:32, and the same performance on all fronts was repeated. "Damn it, why couldn't he look the right way?" Eric pounded one fist into the other in frustration.

"Maybe he touched something in the garage, though," Alexx suggested. "Maybe he just pulled the gloves on right before the abduction. If he wasn't wearing them while waiting, he might have touched something there."

Eric was impressed. "Good thinking. We've got to process that garage, Speed."

"You know how many people must have been through there yesterday and today?" Speed got to his feet while speaking, though. He wasn't objecting, just complaining.

"If we can get fingerprints, we'll have ID. I'm sure this guy has to be in the system. He acts professional."

"First, let me tell you something. I finished the autopsies on those two bodies," Alexx offered. Speed and Eric reluctantly hesitated halfway out the door. Alexx interpreted their expressions easily. "It's the same perp. We might get something there to help us find Horatio and Calleigh. Besides, whoever they were, they were people, too."

Eric turned back to face her, though he still stood in the doorway. "Okay, what did you find?"

"The man was indigent, I think. Severely malnourished, teeth in poor condition. I think he was a homeless man just picked for his general build to match Horatio. He had some old injuries, long healed rib fractures and an old broken radius, but nothing acute. He was unconscious, though. Tox screens did turn up something there. Same thing on the woman's tox screen, but much larger doses with her. It might actually have killed her before the fire. I'd say she had been kept drugged much longer, anyway. Aside from that, there's nothing similar. She was well-nourished, well- developed, and healthy. The remnants of clothes, what little were left, were of much better quality, too. He didn't just pull her off the streets."

"I'll check missing persons reports," Valera said, seizing on the opportunity to be useful. "See if I can match anyone that size."

"And we're going to process that garage," Speed said.

"Wait a minute." Alexx's voice halted them all. "Before that, you all need to get something to eat."

"Alexx." Eric's voice was the age-old protesting your parents' lack of understanding tone.

"We have to keep looking after ourselves, too. It's well past lunch time. Promise me you'll get something to eat before you get back to work."

"Promise," Eric muttered.

Alexx eyed him suspiciously. "Show me your hands." With a sigh, Eric removed his hands with crossed fingers from his pockets. "Now, promise me again."

"I promise," Eric repeated, and Speed and Valera echoed him. Satisfied, Alexx gave Eric a pat on the shoulder, and they all exited the video processing room. Behind them, the image of the car pulling away with its unconscious passengers remained, frozen on the screen.

***

Five hours processing the garage yielded more fingerprints than either Speed or Eric wanted. They lifted them from the pillars and also from the rails on the stairs after Eric discovered transmission and oil leaks on the third floor identical to those at the accident scene. They returned to CSI and settled down with a mountain of evidence, starting to run the fingerprints one by one through AFIS after being forcefed a pizza by Alexx.

"Why do people have to touch everything?" Speed protested as he ran another fingerprint through the system.

"They aren't CSIs." Eric took another lifter from his own stack of evidence envelopes. "We ought to check the tapes from that garage from the third floor, too, since we know where he parked now." Neither of them left the fingerprints to do it, though. This was a much better lead at the moment.

"I was thinking," Speed said, "if H is hurt, that's probably how this perp is keeping him cooperative."

"Yeah," Eric agreed. "He'd kill anybody who touched Calleigh if he was able to. But if he can't get them out, that means they're really counting on us." He silently promised his friends again that he wouldn't fail them.

Speed sorted out his next lifter and loaded the fingerprint. "What the hell?"

"What is it?" Eric walked around the table to look at his friend's work.

"This fingerprint is all jumbled up." Speed frowned at it. "I swear, that's a conglomerate of different ones."

Eric felt an icicle pierce his stomach. "It's surgically altered. Megan and I saw one just like this once. We spent hours sorting it out like a puzzle."

Speed looked back at him. "What case was that?"

"Ruthie Crighton." Eric looked horrified, and the same expression swept into Speed's eyes as he put it together.

"Stewart Otis."

Eric nodded. "Stewart Otis."

Speed instantly turned back to the computer, looking up the old fingerprint from that case, the jumbled one that Eric and Megan had used for their reconstruction. Finding it, he ran a comparison with his current print, and the dreaded words appeared. Positive match.

Eric grabbed for the phone urgently. The conversation was short. He slammed the phone back down with a look of disgust. "The prison swears that Stewart Otis is right there, where he should be."

"All except his fingerprints," Speed retorted. He was mimicking Horatio's style automatically, following the example that he always strove to get closer to, and he and Eric both heard the echo a second after he said it. Their eyes locked in determination. "Let's go, Eric." Together, they left CSI, racing through the gathering night to the prison. To hell with visiting hours.

***

Calleigh woke up from another restless sleep. She glanced over quickly at Horatio, but he seemed to have fallen asleep himself at last. He was uneasy, though, barely under the surface, the tide of pain eroding his chances for much rest. Calleigh lay quietly, not wanting to wake him up. She ran one hand lightly over Rosalind, who seemed to be asleep herself at the moment. The ringing in Calleigh's ears was still there, but when she weighed it against earlier, it didn't seem too much louder. She remembered that she was supposed to return to the doctor if she noticed any change at all. I'll be happy to, she thought. Just let us get out of here. We'll all go straight to a doctor and do everything he says, I promise. It occurred to her that she actually was fulfilling her doctor's command to spend most of her time resting in bed, and she smiled as she imagined his reaction if he knew how she was resting this week.

Horatio shifted again, as if her brief, silent amusement had jolted his sleep. His head turned on the pillow, and he made a small, incoherent sound, but he didn't quite wake up. He was facing her now, and Calleigh was unable to resist reaching out to lightly trace his face as delicately as she could, wishing she could take some of the burden for him. He didn't react to her feather touch, but she did, reaching out to touch him again, more firmly, with a sudden chill numbing her soul.

He was running a fever.