A/N: Ok, guys, Valentine's special for you *g* The good news is: This chapter's long. The bad news is: This will be followed by one or two more parts, not to be expected before the next weekend. I'm sorry for not updating sooner, but my exams have started and I'm drowning in work. Today I took that dreaded quantum mechanics exam and – let me phrase that nicely – I didn't exactly shine. So I had to go and buy a "WHO'S – Live in Concert" DVD to lift my spirits. After watching "We won't get fooled again" about ten times, I felt good enough again to revise this chapter and post it.

And this really needs to be said: WoW! THANK YOU everyone at the H/C Yahoo Group and FF.net for reviewing. The feedback I received on chapter six really meant the world to me. I hope you like what I have in store for our favorite characters in chapter 7.

Chapter 7: Pieces Falling Into Place

"So, what have you got?"

"Nothing in the good news department," Calleigh qualified, then consulted her notes to fill her boss in. They were in the Hummer once again, heading back to CSI. In order to compose an exact timeline, they had tried questioning the victims again. "Katherine Douglas has already given me a full statement the first time around so nothing new there. Mendy Barton has not yet recovered enough to talk to me. I was able to talk to Peter Atkins this time, but he was rather vague on the events of that night." Actually, he had seemed too confused to even understand her questions. "You?"

"Nothing much either."

Calleigh sighed. "So I guess we'll have to stick to the timeline we derived from the statements we already had."

They had spent most of the morning interviewing the physically unharmed witnesses from night shift once again. Nothing glaringly obvious had been exposed, still no one claimed to have seen anything out of the ordinary. They hadn't really expected any new revelations anyway. The intention behind that second questioning had been the development of a timeline for the actions of the victims, and they had made good progress on that front. Being a faction of generally perceptive people, the CSIs and lab techs had been able to provide them with fairly accurate times for their respective arrivals and break intervals. They had also helped to establish a chronology of events for the victims.

Apparently, Evan Taylor had been the first to use the coffee maker that night. No one had seen him actually brew the coffee, but everyone assumed he had made the first pot. He had downed the first cup himself, then brought some to Florian Stevenson and Vera Haskins. Later, Ellie Winsgate had gotten a cup for herself. As these four showed the gravest symptoms, the timeline made sense. Later, Mendy Barton had brewed new coffee and shared a cup with Peter Atkins and Katherine Douglas. Only a little later the symptoms of the first victims had kicked in, and the crime lab had become a crime scene. No one else had touched any coffee after that.

Horatio and Calleigh had made a second visit to the hospital with the intention to confirm or modify this chronology by means of first-hand accounts, but it had been little more than a waste of time.

And it was doing nothing for Horatio's state of mind to see his coworkers once again in their agony, Calleigh thought. All day, she had been fighting the urge to comfort him. After their encounter in his office earlier today they had both tried their hardest to only ever display professional behavior. Right now, however, in close proximity to him in the car, Calleigh was feeling her composure slip away. Over the course of the last few years, she had somehow become tuned in to him, receptive for his thoughts and moods and – less often, because he carefully guarded them – his emotions. And in the last two days it had seemed to her that their connection had even deepened and she had caught more than the occasional glimpse beneath the surface of his control. But maybe it was just her. Maybe this case was just shattering him to pieces, and he was merely baring himself to her because she simply happened to be there. Maybe this had nothing to do with the way she was feeling about him.

Abruptly, Calleigh chided herself mentally. She was not supposed to embark on that train of thought. Whatever was happening between them was happening only because they were shaken by the attack on the crime lab. It had nothing to do with … anything else.

Horatio pulled the Hummer into the CSI parking lot just then. Calleigh, who had been absorbed in her thoughts, looked up startled.

"We're back at go," she observed surprised just as Horatio killed the engine.

In the following silence, his low-key answer sounded unmistakably clear. One eyebrow raised at the steering wheel, wearing a serious expression, he said quietly, "Oh, but I don't think we are."

~*~

"Wait a minute. What is going on here?" Horatio's expression swiftly shifted from surprise to anger as he recognized the man standing in front of the reception desk. "What are you doing here?"

Calleigh didn't know the stranger, but the undisguised hostility in Horatio's voice made her cautious. Horatio generally disliked people for good reasons.

"What do you think?" The man snapped back. He was wearing an ill-fitting suit and an arrogant expression to match.

Horatio abandoned Calleigh's side. With a few determined strides he covered the distance between himself and the visitor. "Richard, if you have been harassing my team while I was away-"

"Don't worry, Lieutenant, you didn't miss a thing. I'm just getting started."

"No you're not," Horatio told him acidly, "You will take your equipment and your computers and you will leave. Now."

"Look, a crime has been committed and you are still no closer to finding the culprit. Once the media uncovers that this has not been an accident, they'll be all over us. Surely you'll agree we have to get some results, and soon. If you won't let me do my work-"

Horatio cut him short without even raising his voice. "I agree, Richard, that we need to get results, but for the victims and not the media's sake," he said slowly, tilting his head as if eye-contact with this man was too much of a courtesy right now. His voice was superficially calm, but carried undeniably dangerous undertones. "You will not keep interfering with our work. You will not, under any circumstances, poly my team while they're on this investigation."

The pieces dropped into place and Calleigh understood her boss's vehemence. IAB had apparently not backed off yet. They were actually intending to subject the team to a series of embarrassing and humiliating tests while they were working on their hardest case to date. Recalling the last time she had endured that procedure, Calleigh's heart missed a beat. It most certainly had not been an enjoyable experience, even without all the additional stress their actual case added.

Simultaneously, however, a more pleasant layer of memories shifted to the top of her consciousness. Horatio had protected her back then, she recalled. He had backed her up and believed her without a second of doubt. He had firmly placed himself in front of her and the whole team and had supported them without hesitation. And by the looks of it, he was just doing it again.

Calleigh decided it was time to get involved. If Horatio had seemed to be struggling for control before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now. He seemed on the verge of doing something imprudent.

Stepping forward, Calleigh immediately drew the IAB official's attention towards herself. "Maybe I can help," she said, but the offer lacked any generosity, "Calleigh Duquesne," she simply added when the man gave her a questioning look.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed Horatio glancing at her. "Don't," his eyes said. She ignored it. He was not in this alone. It was time they fought their battles as the team they were.

"Considering the latest developments, you might want to reconsider your course of action," Calleigh pointed out, struggling not to sound too spiteful. Messing with IAB was a bad idea at the best of times. Especially regarding her previous encounters with them. "A sample just recovered might suggest an outside source. Our trace experts are looking into that right now. Why don't you let them finish their work before you start yours? Why waste manpower and money on an investigation that might not even be necessary at all?"

A moment of silence followed, then the man turned to face Horatio again. "Is that true? Do you really have new evidence?"

The IAB official was physically taller, but it was Horatio who looked down on him. "Isn't that exactly," he asked in a low voice, "what she just said?"

"Of course," the other man replied quickly, even managing to sound offended.

"Then why don't you just take your wires and detectors and leave?" The question was delivered politely, but the affront was not lost on the target.

The two men just stared at each other in silence for a while, one confident and calm, the other disdainful and haughty. Finally, the IAB delegate backed off. Grabbing his suitcase he scoffed, "I'll be back."

Horatio did not even turn to see him leave. "Not if I can help it," he called over his shoulder. Seconds later, they heard the metallic swish of the elevator doors. IAB was gone. For now.

"Can you believe them?" Calleigh asked nonplussed, "Whatever happened to common courtesy?"

Horatio smiled at her outrage. He reached out and gently touched her arm in acknowledgement. "Thanks for the support."

"You didn't need it," she replied with a genuine smile of her own, feeling more light-hearted than she had in days.

"Hey, you're back in. Listen, do you know who that guy was that just passed me?" A bewildered Speed appeared in the hallway, pointing back in the direction of the elevator.

Calleigh extended her smile to him. "We have efficiently chased off IAB again."

"Oh." Comprehension dawned on Speed. "Explains that look of his."

"What's that?" Horatio indicated the bottles Speed was carrying. "Soft drinks?"

Speed gave him a sheepish look. "Yeah, I got some supplies." Almost apologetically, he added, "There's just so much tap water a guy can drink. And everything else in this building has red evidence tape on it, remember?"

All playfulness vanished from Horatio's demeanor in an instant. "Anything on the acrylamide yet?"

"We did a mass spec. Interpretation should be ready any minute."

"Okay. Interrogation room in five minutes."

"You got it."

~*~

Once again the team was gathered in the makeshift meeting room, some sitting, some standing, Horatio positioned at his place at the head of the table.

Eric and Speed just filled them in, taking turns explaining how they had hardly found any traces of acrylamide at all in the coffee maker.

"Problem is, that stuff is easily soluble in water." Eric was just saying. "So we only found minute amounts in the machine itself. But we were lucky with the disposed filters. One of them yielded enough of the substance for analysis. It's our guess that filter was the primary source."

"Did you identify the substance?"

"Yeah, we did," Eric nodded, "definitely acrylamide. And what's more, we only found the monomer."

"Meaning it didn't come from our labs," Calleigh mused.

"Meaning the perp was probably not one of us," Speed added.

Horatio shook his head. He desperately wanted to believe that theory, but he was not ready to jump to any conclusions yet. "Hm. Can we be sure that the poison was not brought in to confuse us?"

"H, give us a little credit," Speed sighed and Eric chimed in, "Yeah, you think that's all we have for you?"

"Go on."

"Remember I said we think the coffee filter was the primary source? Here's what that's based on." Eric held up a plastic bag containing the remains of a drenched and dried coffee filter. "This is the one we found the traces of acrylamide in. We compared it to samples from the break room and – it's not one of ours."

"What do you mean?"

"It's none of the brands we're using. Same applies to the coffee-grounds inside. They don't match the roasted coffee we had in the break room."

If possible, Horatio became even more alert. "So that does leave us with a prepared filter brought in ready with coffee and poison."

"So whoever did that only had to slip into the break room, place the prepared filter in the machine, pour in some water, switch it on and leave. That would have taken less than a minute, even if you didn't know your way around," Calleigh calculated.

The tension in the room grew tangible. Suddenly, the alleged outside source was moving from the realm of possibilities to the reality of evidence-based theory.

Not even Horatio was able to keep the excitement quite out of his voice. "Nice going, guys. Nice going. Have you done paperwork on that?"

"Not yet. We still have to run a reference sample."

"Okay, do that now. I want to be able to present that as evidence as quickly as possible. Calleigh."

"Yes?"

"You and I will have a look at everyone who was here on that night. Suspects, witnesses, anyone who came in here. I want a complete list of names, double-checked with the timeline on the victims' actions. This has top priority."

They all nodded and went on to work on their assigned tasks. Calleigh however could not help but wonder. Was Horatio deliberately keeping her close for the work on this case?

~*~

Calleigh yawned. The letters grew indistinguishable in front of her eyes, and she became dizzy from lack of sleep. Maybe she should get up and turn some more lights on. The room was rather dim.

It was well past midnight and she was the last person at CSI. She had been working her way through case files and visitor pass approvals for hours. She and Horatio had started out working together, but had quickly decided to split up the workload for the sake of efficiency. Soon after Eric, Speed and Alexx had left, Horatio had insisted she follow lead and call it a day. Knowing it was futile to discuss this matter with Horatio in his current state of mind, she had gathered her share of files and bid him a good night. Knowing it was just as futile to go home and try to get some sleep, she had instead turned to the firearms lab to work on. Back in her familiar surroundings for the first time in days, she had filed through the paperwork with new vigor. About an hour ago she had heard the door of the interrogation room opening and closing. Horatio had left.

Good. So she had all of CSI for herself.

She smiled, thinking it was not the first night she spent at the crime lab. With no night shift team around, the place was completely quiet. What might have qualified as scary to others seemed peaceful to her. She was too familiar with these labs and rooms to be afraid of anything there, even in the light of the recent intrusion. Sleep-deprivation was making her feel giddy. There was not a storage room full of nifty weapons right next to her for nothing, she thought with a private grin.

When a shadow fell on her, she almost jumped. Looking up she saw a man stand in the doorway, his silhouette illuminated from behind by the harsh lights in the hallway.

Calleigh scrambled to her feet, knocking over her chair in the process. Before she could so much as think about a plan of attack, the man was striding towards her.

"Calleigh? What are you doing here?"

The sound of his voice registered in her brain and recognition dawned. "Horatio?"

He reached her side and steadied her with a hand at her elbow. Only then did she realize she was shaking. "God, you scared me!" She let out a deep breath, feeling weak in the aftermath of an adrenaline rush.

"I'm sorry," he stated, "Calleigh, what are you doing here?"

The intensity in his voice was uncalled for in her opinion.

"The same as you. Working on the suspects."

"I thought you went home."

"I thought the same about you. I heard you leave the interrogation room."

"I went to my office to work on," he explained off-handedly, brushing the topic aside. "Calleigh, you are not supposed to be here." He finally let go of her arm.

"Why not?"

She had expected him to be protective, to make sure all members of his team got some rest even in the middle of mayhem. She had expected his answer to meander around those lines. She had not expected what was to come.

Horatio's gaze dropped. "This place …" his voice faltered and he hesitated for a moment, "… is not safe anymore. And I don't want you here on you own."

She had to lean in to hear him and in doing so covered some of the distance between them. Their close proximity was doing nothing for her barely regained composure. She didn't even realize she was swaying until Horatio brought his hands up again and took hold of her arms. The touch was light, meant to steady and not to confine, but the gesture was an unusual thing for Horatio to do.

"You sure you're okay?" he asked and she nodded. He did not let go. "You're shaking."

"I was serious when I said you scared me," she repeated lightly, trying to dissolve the tension between them.

She should have known it would never work.

She did not even conjure up the ghost of a smile on his face. Instead, he grew even more serious if that was at all possible. And he still refused to look at her.

When he spoke again, his voice was raspy and he broke of at intervals to raise his eyebrows at something only he could see. "What has happened here was bad enough … without you in the line of fire, Calleigh … it … made me realize … that if something like that happened to you …"

He did not go on and there was no need for him to do so. He just broke off in mid-sentence, and she knew. His earlier words came back to her, and she knew. *I thought about you … and I was afraid.* she could hear him say, and, even more clearly, *I care for you. In a lot of ways.* And suddenly, everything made sense.

The fact that he was working close to her throughout the case, that he never let her out of his eyes. His urgency in the Hummer when he had dropped her off at her condo. She looked up to meet his eyes and the impact of the realization hit with the force of a shockwave.

It was like looking into an emotional mirror.

It was too much.

They could still get out of this, she realized. If they just stopped right now, before anything was admitted explicitly, if they just broke apart before getting any closer, they could blame it all on sleep-deprivation and IAB-induced stress and never speak of it again. Nothing would be destroyed. Nothing would be gained.

Only the silence had gone on a moment too long for such an escape to be still credible.

When Horatio pulled her to him, she did not offer any resistance. She felt his arms wrapped around her and his chin resting lightly on her head and for a moment everything was falling into place and she was entirely at peace with the world. They stood completely still, two quiet figures shutting out their dimly lit surroundings by concentrating exclusively on each other.

And then the moment was past.

Calleigh drew back, startling both Horatio and herself by doing do.

"Cal-"

"I'm sorry," she told him. "It's just-"

"No," he replied quickly, "I am. It's alright, really," he assured her. "Do you want me to give you a lift home?"

Calleigh glanced at the pack of files on the desk, waiting to be sighted. Then she looked back at Horatio and faced a whole package of unresolved emotions waiting to be dealt with.

"I don't think I'm in the frame of mind for sleep right now," she commented dryly.

Her remark actually earned her one of those very rare chuckles Horatio reserved for special occasions. "Then how about …" he grabbed the top file from the table, "we have a look at those together. Would that suit your frame of mind?"

Calleigh considered her options. Spending the night working with Horatio definitely beat spending the night worrying about work and the issue Horatio had become.

She made up her mind and rewarded him with a full-blown smile.

"I think that would work just fine, Handsome."