CSI Lab Offices, Las Vegas, Nevada

Gil Grissom sat at his desk. Surrounded by paperwork and unfilled reports, his thoughts kept straying to the book in his bag. He finally admitted defeat, or at least a stalemate, with his record keeping, and pulled out the soft-cover book.

"Leisure reading?" Catherine, fatigue accenting the growing collection of tiny creases around her eyes, leaned in his doorway.

"Stephen Gould," Grissom waved the book vaguely at her. "The Panda's Thumb."

"Ah. Evolutionary biologist, right?" She slid inside and collapsed slowly but gracefully onto his couch. He'd always admired the way Catherine moved. Not in a purely sexual way, but just the elegant mechanics of it. Good design was good design.

"Actually I think he's a geologist, but he's written extensively on ethics, evolution, even the reconciliation of science and religion." Grissom looked at the book for a moment, and set it down.

"He argues here that two mechanisms that appear to be the same, and to perform the same function, do not necessarily come from the same origin. Selection pressures final forms, but origins shape underlying structures."

"You're thinking about Nick again." She closed her eyes and let the burden of the past months press her deeper into the sofa.

"I look back at his work, at what I know of him, and I just can't believe I was that wrong. I see the person he was here and I can't conceive of an underlying structure that is so different as to explain everything that happened."

He closed his eyes. He rubbed his temple pensively with the thumb of one hand while weighing the book idly in the other.

"I have trouble living in a world where I can be this wrong," he admitted at last.

Catherine grinned at the unbridled hubris implied in this statement, yet she also understood the sweetness of spirit, the desire to understand and empathize that informed it. Grissom was a densely complicated man, but he was also a good man, and a good friend. She knew he would never let go of Nick Stokes. None of them could.

"Let's go drink some Coronas and raise a toast towards Texas." She stood slowly, reversing her earlier collapse by unfolding her long legs like an origami crane. "Maybe we'll feel better."

"I doubt it." He looked around the office. For once, he wanted to be out of the lab, out of work. "Make it tequila, I'm off tomorrow."

- - -

Cell 1138, Huntsville, Texas

Nick lay on his bunk, staring at the dark ceiling and trying to process everything that had happened to him during and after his meeting with Otto and the Aryan brothers.

"That," he sighed softly, "was some truly surreal shit."

"So, it true?" Tucker's voice floated up suddenly from the bunk beneath him. Nick had thought Tucker was asleep, but the wiry man never seemed to really sleep.

"You had a visit with Otto, like in his actual cell?" Tucker sounded impressed.

"Yeah," Nick told him, grudgingly glad to share the experience with someone. "He had some naked guy tongue-washing his shoes the entire time I was there, and he had files, like actual files in folders."

"No shit?" Tucker sucked in air through his teeth and hummed tunelessly for a while. "That's not how it works, man. That shit ain't right."

Nick rolled over on his side, letting his bicep be his pillow as he talked softly to his cellmate.

"How do you mean?" he asked at last.

"This fish, Snowe, something like that. He had a cell down by Bobby the Wolf and his boys. He had photos, like his family and what, and actual clean sheets, clean clothes. Had him magazines and like books and all."

"Yeah, and?" Nick prompted. Usually the trick was getting Tucker to shut up, but this story he seemed oddly shy about telling.

"Well, some of Bobby's goombas, they tell his cellmate to grab a smoke. Six guys rush this fish, bang bang bang. Strip him, beat him, fuck him, and piss in his bed. Just like that, bang bang bang, you know? I get back from smoking, there he is, naked in a bed of piss and bleeding out his ass."

"Harsh," Nick said.

"No, that's just it, man. He wanted too much, and he got what was coming to him. So Otto? What kind of Hannibal evil genius prince of darkness shit juju you gotta have to pull off that scene you saw, in here? It just ain't right, man."

"I suppose you have to know someone," Nick allowed.

"Knowing people is for shit, Nicky. Hell, I know people. To live like that, in here- you got to be someone."

"Well, I'm someone, Tucker, so just go back to sleep."

"That's just it, Nicky. You think you're someone, you act like someone, but they're just waiting to prove you're nothing. You're just some harsh acting fish with attitude like you used to be somebody, and they gonna fuck you up."

After a while, listening to his heartbeat in his own ears and the muttering background noise of Tucker winding down, Nick fell asleep. He dreamed of eggs and toast and hot coffee with lots of sugar.

- - -

Unit 5, Huntsville, Texas

Luke Carina was 28, and had been a corrections officer in Unit 5 for three years. The first in his family to go to college, Luke had been a promising linebacker for two seasons at Texas A&M. His junior year, during two-a-days, he had missed a tackle and landed badly on his left knee. His ACL had healed, but he'd never been the same player, and his pro football aspirations had vanished along with his scholarship during his senior year.

He'd managed to salvage enough credits and scraped together enough money to finish his abbreviated college run with an associate's degree in Criminal Justice and a recommendation from an alumni group to the warden at Huntsville. By the time he was working in Unit 5, Carina appeared to have his life back on track.

Carina also had almost twenty grand in gambling debts, and was working on an increasingly expensive addiction to prescription painkillers. He took more Vicodin now as a 180-pound guard than he ever had as a 235-pound linebacker. He also took money from certain individuals, usually in the form of credit towards the interest on his debts, to perform a few services for guests of Unit 5 that they might not normally be able to procure for themselves.

Today, all he had to do was hand a sealed envelope to an inmate for delivery to Robert Volpe. Luke was still at least a little cautious, and had run the envelope through the mailroom x-ray when no one was around. He didn't know who was sending Bobby the Wolf a cell phone, but for a $2000 vig payment, he didn't really care.

He left the envelope in an inmate's cell during a routine search. Within twenty minutes, it was in the hands of Bobby the Wolf.

- - -

Cell 1492, Huntsville, Texas

Bobby took the phone into his cell. He got maybe one bar of signal strength, but if he didn't move around much it should be enough. The phone itself was a knockoff Motorola, disposable, and about as untraceable as a Saturday Night Special with the serial number ground off.

He flipped it open and hit "redial."

"Hello." He knew that voice.

"I was told you'd be expecting my call," Bobby said, running his fingertips in a lazy pattern across the top of the small table he used as a desk in his cell. His position was not without certain amenities.

"Stokes is still alive."

Bobby smiled, without warmth or humor. "I had noticed that. But I figured, fuck I care?"

The voice on the other end was quick and cool.

"If that situation were to change, I would be very grateful."

"Again," Bobby said patiently, "fuck I care?"

"The guy who gave you up, Bobby, who put you in there so he could take a nice cozy deal from the Feds with a shiny new car and a shiny new name? I know where the Feds hid him. You fucking care now?"

Bobby the Wolf sat for a moment, staring into a bright and bloody future. He forgot, for a few seconds, that he was still on the phone. He shook himself slightly like a dog coming out of water.

"Deal."

"I leave it to you." The connection went dead.

Bobby the Wolf motioned in Segundo, his right hand man. The younger man waited with endless patience while Volpe thought and drummed his fingers. Finally, Bobby the Wolf dropped the cell on the floor, where Segundo unhesitatingly crushed it to high tech rubble beneath his foot.

"Stokes," Bobby the Wolf said softly. "Grazie."

"Prego, Primo."