Ryan saw the mischievous look exchanged between Delko and Calleigh and had an incredible sinking feeling. They were doing it again, he thought. With as nonchalant a shrug as he could muster, he left the two in the lab and headed to autopsy.
Alexx was waiting for him. She raised an eyebrow when he entered and told him to check on the body. Ryan did so, pulling back the sheet.
The sinking feeling went all the way to the floor.
"Alexx," he asked nervously, "where did the head go?"
Two floors above him, Calleigh and Eric laughed, for what seemed like the first time in months. Calleigh sat down at the table and leaned back against Eric, enjoying the closeness of his body.
"Tim would be so proud," she told him, still giggling.
Eric shook his head with a grin, remembering his own hazing at Speed's hands. "I could have killed him that day he made me observe the headless autopsy," he said, laughing.
Calleigh quieted and sat up, moving away from Eric. "Yeah," she said, her voice suddenly empty.
Eric rested his hand on her shoulder, the lightness gone.
-WG-
Horatio watched Morgan leave. The sunlight continued to stream threw the glass walls of the atrium and Horatio could see the Miami skyline.
"Addicts fool everyone, but mostly themselves." His words rung in his own ears. He had said it once before, to Raymond, when he begged his brother to leave narcotics. Yelina and Ray Jr. needed him, Horatio had said. I need my brother, he had added.
Raymond reassured him nothing would happen. Let me finish this one case, Raymond had promised. And Horatio couldn't change his brother's mind.
Madison slept in her hospital bed. Horatio stood up to stretch, smiling at the tiny angel. The cancer had made his niece weak, but hopefully, with the transfusion from Ray Jr., she would begin to recover.
Horatio placed his hand on her red curls. This child could really be his, with the freckles and matching hair. But she was Raymond's, not his. Of all the things his brother had done wrong, maybe this little girl could be the right thing. Horatio felt in a totally new way how to love a child and considered again what he needed to do to become Madison's legal father and help Suzie to raise her.
He glanced at his watch and absently thought he had spent a great deal of time out of the office, still cleaning up Raymond's messes. Horatio wondered for a moment how his team was doing back at the lab.
-WG-
"He what!" Eric slammed the locker shut. Calleigh stood to the side of the bench, arms folded as Eric angrily toweled off his hair. "That little prick! He went to Horatio with my evidence after I had been swimming around the bottom of that marina. And he thinks he can take the credit for it?"
Calleigh shared Eric's glower. "I thought you should know. I don't know if he thinks he's getting back at us for the headless body or what, but he's ignoring me when I tell him he has to work with us."
"Well, I can see that," Eric said, pulling on his shirt. "What did H have to say about it?"
Calleigh made another face. "'Nice work.' I'm not even sure Horatio noticed."
Eric ran his hand through his hair and decided it was short enough that he didn't need to brush it. "That's another thing," Eric said. "Where is H? Even when he's here, it's like he's not here anymore."
Calleigh sat down on the bench and stared at the lockers, her eyes flitting past the one locker without a name plate. "I don't know. I heard his daughter is sick."
Eric snorted. Calleigh looked up at him, puzzled. "That little girl might be sick, but I don't think she's H's." He watched Calleigh tilt her head and added, "How long ago was it that Raymond Caine was killed?"