"Yes? What! Sorry." Horatio was sitting at his desk, staring into space, and hadn´t realized that Eric had come into his office. "I´m sorry Eric. What did you say?"
"I just wanted to tell you that we´ve looked at the survaillance tape of the ATM that we found opposite the beauty parlor. No one suspicious, and unless we find tapes that recorded at any of the other bomb threat sites that we can compare it with, we´ve got nothing that could give us a hand. Sorry, H."
"Thank you Eric." Horatio got up from his chair and came around the table.
"For what!" Eric moved his arms in a questioning manner. "We´re looking for this guy for 3 weeks now and haven´t got any further."
"I know, but thank you for not quitting on the case," Horatio faced the younger man in front of him and put a hand on his shoulder. "I know I can count on you, and I really appreciate it."
"Always there for you H." He gave his boss a weak smile and left.
Horatio went over to the green couch, which had already been in here when he´d still worked for his boss Meagan Donner. He sat down, leaned into the soft upholstery, lifted his feet onto the seat beside him, and closed his eyes.
The picture of Cathrine Deven cleaning the pot in her kitchen wouldn´t leave him alone. She had still been sining the song that was playing softly in the background, and the way her hair had caressed the skin along her back had literally knocked out his breath. He usually wasen´t the type that got carried away so quickly, but Cathrine Deven was evoking feelings in him he never knew he could have for someone he barely knew. Yes, they had gotten to know eachother a little last weekt; but he still didn´t really know her. Of course there were people that claimed to know you the moment they first met you, but Horatio was a realist. He felt you could never, really, know anyone.
After the bed question they had just continued serious small talk, chatted about their time being youngsters, finding work, September 11th, and so on and so forth. He´d told her how easy studying at universety had been for him; she, how it never came to her what she wanted to do in her life until she started work at the café.
Cathrine Deven. It was pissing him off that he couldn´t concentrate on work at all. Not that there was anything he could have done to solve the case at the moment anyway, but to see his collegues work their asses of in the labs, while he was sitting around thinking if he should invite Cathrine to go out that night, was tearing at his nerves.
Horatio was rubbing his eyebrows as Tim came running into the room.
"Horatio!"
Suddenly all of his senses were turned on. "Yes!"
"We´ve got another bomb threat!"
The Hummer came to a shrieking stop, but Lieutenant Horatio Caine didn´t notice the gravel flying in all directions. He jumped out of his car and hurried towards the croud of people that was steadly growing larger. The police was evacuating the building that was victim to the current threat, and as Horatio came closer he realized that it was the café that he and Cathrine had taken their drink in, Lobito´s.
Horatio walked over to Detective Frank Tripp to ask for the most recent details on the situation.
Tripp was already filling him in when Horatio was only a few feet away. "We´ve shut off the area in a ¼ of a mile radius and sent the Bomb Squad in already, but they haven´t found anything yet."
"Who called this time?"
"Same guy, of course used his voice distorter again. Didn´t stay long enough for us to trace the call. Basically we have the same stituation in front of us as in all the other cases. Nothing out of the ordinary."
"Alright. Did he say how much time there´s left?"
"No. Nothing. No time limit, conditions for negotiation...absolutely nothing we can work with."
"Okay, he´s playing with us big time. This has been going on for 3 weeks now, and if he would do it for some other reason than pure entertainment, he´d have told us what he wants to get out of this long ago. I guess we´re dealing with a sick mind, and he´s beginning to get on my nerves."
"We´re luky that he´s being so conciderate with us. It could be much worse than this."
Horatio turned towards Tripp and gave him a thoughtful look over his sunglasses. "However you see it."
"So he hasen´t called you at all this past week!" Dana was looking at her older friend with raised eyebrows that were in danger to dissapear into the hairline above her forehead.
"No."
"´No´ what!"
"No, he hasen´t called me after our drink." Cathrine was sitting with Dana at their usual table at the back of ´The Sun´. She did feel a little put out by Horatio´s behavior, but she guessed that he was a very busy man. And with all these bomb threats all over Miami, she couldn´t blame him concentrating on his job instead of on her.
"May be he´s jsut a little to shy to call you this time. I mean...you had to call him first to start things off at all."
"Dana, Horatio is a grown man, and I think he has a right sense of responsibility. Unlike someone I know, who promised me that she would do her homework before her first date with a guy named Mark."
"Aaaah...could you please stop getting on my nerves with this homework stuff. I promised, I know. But I really didn´t have the time that night. And anyway, the next time I did my homework, and even finished the history essay before Mark came to pick me up...How about you go visit him at work?"
"I think he´s mostly out on the streets, interrogating people and stuff."
"I don´t know, but you can just try. You now...you work too long anyway. What are your working hours again!"
"12 pm to 6 pm...I know."
"Exactly. You could stop on time for once, instead of working over-time and not having a social life."
"But I have a social life!"
"You call serving people 24/7, and talking to them from time to time, a social life!"
"To me it is. I don´t have school any more and live at home with my parents. I have to earn money to pay my bills and contracts. The apartment costs me a hell of a lot of bucks." Cathrine took a sip from her cappocino. "And anyway, I´m making a lot of friends here, you know."
"Friends you only see while you´re working and never go anywhere else with."
"I go out with You!"
"Yes, and I´m half the age you are. I just think you should go out dancing with people your own generation and so on, that´s all."
"Yes, I know!...The bad thing is, I know your right, I should go out more often with people my age." Cathrine leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "I can´t believe that I need counseling from a 17 year old."
A shot rang over the street passing in front of Lobito´s, and shouts erupted from the people standing behind the yellow crime scene ribbon. Horatio took a quick look over the croud and then crouched on the floor as well. Screams were coming from one side of the group of evacuated people. Some were still standing around, looks of fear stared around the place.
"Down!" shouted Horatio. "Get down!" He got up and ran towards a man in his fifties that was glancing at a window of the renovated hotel opposite the café. He reached up to the mans´ shoulders and pressed him to the ground. "Get down!" Horatio looked up to see if he could spot the sniper that had let the shot go. But there was no one in sight. Finally, as all the other policeman were getting to the same conclusion as Horatio, people did get back up again, and he realized that a womans´ scream was piercing his ears.
"Oh my God! He´s dead! They shot him! Tommy...ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod..."
Somewhere from over his left side someone called. "Caine!"
"Yes!" it was Detective Tripp.
"Get over here!"
Horatio walked over to were he was looking down on the corpse of a little boy. There was bloodon one side ofhis face, a clean shot through his left temple. Horatio put his hands on his hips and tilted his head a little to look at Tripp.
Suddenly Horatio heard an explosion and the ground beneath his feet shook. A shock wave threw him backwards and he felt blood trickling out of his ear. In shock he turned his head over to the resaturant. Half of it had blown away, and some witnesses of the croud had been hit by pieces of wall or furniture from the restaurant that had been catapulted into the air by the explosion. The scene looked like a war zone. Horatio figured that the S.W.A.T. team had already been called, but he knew that, by the time they arrived, the sniper would already be miles away.
Cathrine was walking home from work, thinking about the conversation she had with Dana that afternoon. It was true that her apartment required a lot of her money every month, but she hadn´t told anyone about the little fortune she had inherited from her grandfather after his death. She had never needed it, or wanted it for that matter. She didn´t think highly of people that were getting whatever they wanted, those snobs that thought they were something better than anyone else. That was one of the reasons she hadn´t told anyone about it yet. She didn´t want to be put into that drawer.
After high school Cathirne had decided not to attend collage. There hadn´t been any special field of interest for her in her early life, and therefore her grandfathers money had just rotten away in her bank account. But as she´d moved to Miami it had come handy to her after she found the beautiful apartment she now owned. She hadn´t gone into a shopping frenzy though, and so her flat was only furnished with the necessities of life. And Cathrine was happy with it that way.
Eventhough Cathrine had to pay rent for that apartment every moth, she still had a lot of money left on her account, so there was no real need for her to work at the café at all. But she wanted to have something to do all day, and being a waitress wasen´t such a poor job. But Dana had been right that she did seem a little helpless, hanging around with people that were mostly much younger than herself. Problem was, she didn´t know how she could get in contact with people her age. May be another job would do, or attending womens clubs or something. Cathrine hadn´t been sure about that while her talk with Dana had still been going on, but now, as she was alone with her thoughts, there was an idea that came to mind. Universtity. Of course there were still people younger than her attending, but she also knew that there were people attending that were also older. Women, whose children had grown up, and who now had spare time which they wanted to fill in with something practical, and may be get an authentic job after study as well. Only question now was, what would she study?
She was snapped out of her thoughts, while looking for her keys in her bag, by the ringing of her phone inside of her apartment. She put more attention into finding the key, eventually found it, turned it inside the lock and quickly answered the phone that stood right beside the entrance door.
"Cathrine Deven."
"Hi Cathirne."
It was Horatio, and Cathrine´s heart made a little jump inside of her chest. "Horatio...Hi."
"I thought that I would get you around this time. Listen..."
"Yeah?"
"I had a very busy and..as you would call it... depressing ...day today." ´Vey depressing´he thought to himself. The Bomb Squad had a lot of casulties to report. "So I thought that may be you could help me clear my head a little."
"And what has come to mind?"
"I hoped you would now."
She was amazed that they talked to together like they had know the other all their lives. "May be I do. Horatio? When was the last time you went out dancing?"
"Do you come here often!" Horatio had lean in closely for Cathrine to understand him. The music was deafening in the small latino club she had taken him to. The whole place was crowded. Cathrine couldn´t see one free space at the table that took up the room on one side of the club, nor up at the bar. The dancefloor was full of couples moving to the beat of a cha-cha-cha. Cathrine noticed that the ´Manana´ hadn´t changed much since the last time she had been there.
"I haven´t been here in ages!" she shouted into his ear. She was touching his forearm very slightly, but he nevertheless got unexpected heatflashes. Horatio couldn´t remeber the last time a woman made him feel like that. "I used to come every week right after I moved here."
He nodded to give her a sign that he had heard. They moved over to one side of the room to give themselfs some space. Horatio moved in closer again, and Cathrine could smell his after shave.
"You want a drink!"
"No thank you, not yet. And anyway, we came here to do something else than drink this time." She took him by the hand and dragged him onto the dance floor.
"I´m not sure if I can do this anymore." he said, referring to his ability to dance.
"That´s okay...I´ll show you."
Cathrine moved beside him and showed him the basic steps of the cha-cha. Horatio followed her steps and was more quickly back into it that he´d thought. He grabbed her hand and guided her back in front of him. The last time he´d gone out dancing was at least 10 years ago, but now he felt as if he´d been dancing all his life. They quickly fell into step and Horatio started to spin her around like a professional. Cathrine was so much into it and wasen´t emberrased to show it. She threw her head back when she fell back wards and moved extremely close to him whenever he pulled her back towards himself. Horatio couldn´t take is eyes off her. Her eyes were sparkling with enery, and her clothes were accentuating her figure perfectly. Cathrine was wearing a short, many-layered red skirt with a black tank-top and a pair of high-heels.
As the song ended she wiped a thin layer of sweat off her forehead and was about to exuse herself to go to the ladiesroom, as the next song started. It was a slower one. Horatio held her back and pulled her towards him. He noticed her breath quickening, and smiled to himself. She felt him place his hand on the low of her back and edge a little closer. She thought she would faint, but willed her hand to place itself on his shoulder. He took her other hand in his and slowly they started moving to the beat of the music. He lowered his head a little so it was in level with hears, and heard her breath against his ear, and her quick heartbeat against his chest.
"Nervous?" he breathed into her ear.
"Yes." She wispered, and they stayed like that till the end of the song.
They were standing in front of her apartment, it was 1:30 in the morning.
"Thank you for taking me out tonight." Horatio said with his hands in his pockets, looking at the door.
"It was my pleasure. You´re a good dancer, you know." She took his hand into hers. "Thank you Horatio...I really enjoyed it."
He squeezed it and gave her a smile. "You wanna go out again tomorrow?"
"Sure. Where to?"
"How about dinner?"
"I´d like that."
"Okay. So 8 o´clock tomorrow night."
"Could we make it 9? I have to go to a birthday party earlier."
"Sure, I have a funeral to aatend to, so that´s okay. 9 then?"
"9."
"Good night, Cathrine."
"Good night, Horatio." She turened her key in the lock and the door opened. She took a step inside and he alreday wanted to leave, when she turned around again and made him stop in his tracks. She reached for his face and took it in her hands. Horatio couldn´t recollect later what really happened, but he knew that she had come really close. So close that he could see all the hairs of her eyelashes, smell the perfume on her neck, her brown deep eyes looking into his. In immedeate reaction he bent lower and felt how she gave him a little kiss on his cheek, their mouths crossed a little. It was too sensuous and he had to let out a shuddering breath to relieve the tension within himself. She backed away, looked into his eyes and smiled.
Then Cathrine turned back around again, went into her apartment, slowly closed the door and took a last look at him. "Good night." The door locked.
Horatio was still standing in the corridor and still felt her lips linger on his face.
