As he rounded the corner with an armful of books Grissom drew up at an odd scene in the hallway. A tall muscular man who looked like he stepped off the cover of Men's Health stood in the hall, arms crossed in front of his chest, jaw set in anger. Jim Brass was standing next to the man with his battered leather notebook in hand and a small smirk on his face. What added to the surreal vision was the getup the man was wearing. A pair of army surplus camouflage pants, barely pulled up over his burly frame, the bottoms of the legs a full four inches from the ground. His top was an olive drab hooded sweatshirt, straining to the full extent of the fabric, taut around his chest, the sleeves ending midway down his forearms.

It was obvious that Brass was attempting to hide the humor he found in the man's apparel, fighting to keep a serious demeanor as the man in front of him fumed, his face flushed and his lower jaw beginning to work back and forth.

"I'm telling you. That was the guy's description. He had a gun. What was I supposed to do?"

"Okay. So he was African American. About five six?" Another small twitch at Jim's mouth. "And about a hundred pounds. Long braids. Thick plastic-rimmed glasses. That it?"

"The backpack. I told you he had a ratty old olive drab backpack too."

"Yeah…backpack. Like kids take to school, yeah?"

The man sighed in frustration. "Yeah. Like that. He made me give him my clothes and he left these behind. And he took the damn truck."

Jim slapped the notebook shut and gave the man his best approximation of sincerity. "You call this in to your office yet?"

The man rolled his head on his shoulders and tightened his arms across his chest. "No. I'll call it in. They're gonna have my head losing all that cargo," he mumbled between clenched teeth.

"Well, like you said, he had a gun, right? What were you going to do?"

The man looked like he was fighting an internal battle; he fidgeted and worked his bottom lip between pearly white teeth. He rolled his eyes and finally bent down to bring his model perfect face closer to Jim. Grissom couldn't hear what the man said and his head was turned so he couldn't make out his lips' movement.

Jim raised eyebrows in surprise and nodded. "You know that has to go in the report, right?"

The man sighed explosively, his arms dropping to his sides in obvious defeat. He nodded silently and grabbed at his pants which were threatening to sag off of him as they were only precariously perched about his hips.

Jim gave the man a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and sent him off with a uniform who was waiting nearby.

Grissom waited until the man cleared the hall and walked up to where Jim had remained standing after taking his notebook back out and jotting a quick addendum to his previous notes.

The entomologist raised a questioning eyebrow at his friend. "Do I dare ask?"

"Yeah," Brass said with a small chuckle. "I gotta put out an APB on Urkel."

Grissom tilted his head, his brow wrinkling in confusion.

Jim just sighed, realizing there was no way Grissom was going to get a cheesy television analogy. "Never mind," he said with a small shake of his head. "He's a UPS driver. Was coming by the Lab for a pickup when he got 'hijacked'," he said, his fingers making the air quotes.

Grissom's face drew in concern at hearing of the potential loss of important Lab deliveries. Jim saw the look on his face and held up a hand to stop him. "I already checked the log he had. He was picking up and had no deliveries for us today."

Grissom sighed with relief, shifting the heavy load of books in his arms and beginning to regret stopping to talk.

"Anyway," Jim continued, "the guy tells me the dude who held him up was half his size, almost literally. Held a gun on him, made him switch clothes, and the thief took the truck. Then he tells me at the end as the hijacker was fumbling with the gun he got a closer look at it. He said the gun was a fake. Poor shmuck is gonna have to explain how he lost an entire UPS truck to a pipsqueak with a toy."

"A gun's a gun, Jim," Grissom said, rather predictably. Of course he saw little humor in it.

"Except when it isn't, Gil. So, what's with all the heavy reading?" He asked nodding his head at Grissom's book laden arms. "Philosophies of the Far East. Sun Tzu's The Art of War. And …Feng Shooey?" he read awkwardly. "What is all this stuff for?"

"Archie says the man we think is responsible for our current situation with Warrick and Nick is heavy into Eastern ideology. He describes him as paranoid, obsessed with power brokering and luck. I'm hoping that I can gain insight, get into this guy's head. It's all we've got while Archie works on trying to get an ID on him."

"Looks complicated and obscure. Right up your alley, Gil," Jim said with a wan smile. "And you're right about not having much else to work with. My friends in the gang unit said this guy is a phantom. They've been chasing their tails for years and never got close. You really think our AV tech has a shot?" he asked, his face reflecting his obvious doubt.

"Archie claims to have friends in low places …maybe the key is to have connections to the same underground this guy operates in. If you don't mind…" he said, shrugging his armload of books, "I'm going to take these back to the office."

"Yeah, sure. Have fun," Jim said with raised eyebrows and a nod of his head.

An hour later Grissom raised his head in response to a light knock on his doorframe. Archie stood bouncing on the balls of his feet, a hesitant smile on his face. At a nod the AV tech let himself into the office and plopped down in the plastic chair in front of the supervisor's desk. His eyes fell on the various books spread out open over Grissom's desk. "A little light reading, huh?"

Grissom pulled his glasses off and sat back in his chair with a sigh, his fingers rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "You say this man…The Voice…he believes in this stuff?"

"Oh, yeah. Everything I get back on him, anyone who has had any kind of contact with him says he's heavily into the Eastern culture of Luck and Honor and Power. It's kind of hard to escape it. I mean, in China, it's beat into you from the time you're born."

Grissom looked at his AV tech. He knew so little about the man. He had trusted him with some of the most sensitive of information, especially that relating to the incident of the previous summer, and he knew the man to be smart, fast, and generally quiet. At least around him… he seemed a bit more laid back with the younger members of the team, cracking jokes and sharing meals, but Grissom always had the impression that he and Catherine scared the younger man a bit. Not that he thought of himself as a scary man in any way … but Archie always seemed reticent in his presence. The work they had been conducting together had forced them into close contact on several occasions, but the tech didn't volunteer much, and small talk was out of the question.

Grissom realized he might have an asset here he hadn't fully tapped into.

"Do you know anything about this stuff, Archie?"

The Asian fidgeted in his seat a bit. "Well, yeah. Like I said, kinda hard not to."

"Truthfully, I wasn't sure, Archie. I mean, your last name is Johnson. You could have been adopted …"

At this the lab tech smiled. "My old man's name back in China was Li Xian Sen. He changed it to Lee Johnson when he and my mom came over before I was born. They named me Archie after the comic book character. An all-American boy," he said with a Chinese accent. "Not much they could do about the red hair and freckles, though," he said ruefully. "Anyway, my dad said he wanted me to grow up drinking Coca-Cola and eating Cheerios, not rice. My mom though, she's more old school. She taught me everything from the old country. Instilled all her superstitions in me," he said with a small laugh.

Grissom pointed at the books. "Why would a man as obviously intelligent as The Voice is be swayed by such superstitions?"

Archie sighed and sat back in his chair with a thoughtful look on his face. A moment later he sat forward and leaned his arms on the desk. "See, in China, nothing is gained by hard work or intelligence. It's all Luck. Now you can affect Luck by doing a huge variety of things. That's the success that people get credit for. Doing what they need to do to get the Luck."

Grissom shook his head, the concept so foreign to him.

Archie gamely continued. "See, here in the States we look at a successful guy and we usually think, he must be smart, or he probably works hard, or see what a college education gets you. Things like that. In China, people would see him as a man who did everything the right way to be lucky. He wore the right clothes, said the right things, took the right paths. And bad luck is getting caught by the Evil Spirits. Usually spirits of our ancestors who were wronged or dishonored in some way. I know it sounds crazy, but it is ingrained in you from the time your parents begin to speak to you as an infant. The way the nursery is set up. The color of the toys you play with, and the clothes you're dressed in."

Seeing that his supervisor had relaxed in his chair and his face maintained an interested air he took a breath and plunged onward. He picked up the top book on Grissom's pile. "Like this," he said, pointing his finger at the title. "Feng Shui." He pronounced it the proper way, of course, as fung shway, causing Grissom to give a small smile at his memory of how Brass had mangled it so badly earlier.

"Feng shui is a combination of the words for wind and water. It deals with how you place things in your environment in order to gain and keep luck, and to block the evil spirits from messing with it. For instance, the path to your home should be erratic, like winding or a zigzag pattern so the ghosts of your dishonored ancestors wandering the path can't find your home. Mirrors are important. The ghosts can get lost in them, plus you can use them to reflect your Luck back into the room." He saw his supervisor's eyebrows raise with incredulity.

Archie laughed. "There is no way a Westerner could ever really understand it. I mean, in China, it even affects how they drive. Do you know why Chinese drivers have such a bad reputation?"

Grissom shook his head slowly. "I always thought it was just a cultural bias."

Archie chuckled but shook his head. "No, they really are horrible drivers. But it's because of the stuff we're talking about. In China, drivers will deliberately cut other traffic off in an attempt to fool the evil spirits following them. They actually hope that the other cars whizzing by them will sever the hold the ghosts have on the vehicle."

Grissom couldn't help but give a small smile at the image, but he could tell the lab tech was telling the truth.

"Very interesting. Thank you, Archie. If you don't mind I'd like to pick your brain a bit further. You know, Francis Bacon said, 'Ipsa scientia potestas est. Knowledge is itself power.' This man brokers in power, so we fight him with any knowledge we can get."

Archie placed a suitably impressed expression on his face. "Speaking of knowledge, I think I may have name to go with The Voice."

If there was one thing the little guy wasn't good at it was sitting still. He'd gotten up from his seat on the remaining cot in the back room six times now, each time clomping through the front room to head outside, letting the door bang shut behind him. As he returned from his last foray outside Warrick got up from the folding chair he'd opened for himself and cut the man off in mid stride with a firm grip on his upper arm. Casting a quick glance at his partner recumbent on the cot nearby he pulled Kenny back out front, grabbing the door and easing it shut behind them before wheeling on his childhood friend.

"You're making me crazy with all the pacing, Kenny! And for such a little guy you sure make a hell of a lot of noise. Can't you see Nick is trying to catch some sleep?"

"Dude ain't sleeping. I can see that as well as anyone. And I'm going nuts just sitting here. You know The Voice is gonna find us here. I say we hightail it down the mountain. Can't be more than a few miles. We can make it down before dark if we leave now."

Warrick shook his head. "I'm not leaving Tina. She's up at that house and I'm going back for her. Besides, Nick would never make it."

"Ricky, listen to me," Kenny said, his pitch increasing as he grew more insistent. "I say we leave your friend and head down the mountain. We can hop a bus, get the Hell outa Dodge. Tina's lost, Man. There's no way you're getting her back. But we can make it. We can still get clear." He looked away for a moment, then added almost as an afterthought, "We can send someone back for them."

Warrick blinked, stunned by the words he heard coming out of the man's mouth. He knew Kenny had never met Tina, and had a tough time forming social connections, but he never thought he'd hear such coldness, such lack of empathy.

"Are you listening to yourself, Man?" he asked incredulously. "Leave Tina? Tina's lost? You know I've cut you a lot of slack 'til now, Man, but you are seriously mistaken if you think you're gonna get me to abandon my wife and friend. Sorely mistaken."

Kenny began to pace back and forth, poking at his glasses on his face, then dropping his hand to gnaw on a hangnail. "Do you know how cell phones work, Ricky?"

The question took Warrick by surprise. "Yeah," he replied slowly, wondering where this was heading. "Why?"

"How many times this dude call you since we've been on the mountain?"

"Twice. Again. Why?"

"See up this far in the mountains we shouldn't have cell service. The phone working means the man has his own cell tower. When you trace a cell call you usually have to narrow down which cell it's taking place in, then triangulate from there. There is only one cell here, Bro. That means each time he called you he got another point to triangulate from. One more call in or out will let him know exactly where we are. He probably already has a general vicinity. One thing he definitely knows is that we never made it off the mountain."

Warrick processed the info the tech geek was providing, but he had already known the calls were being traced. What he hadn't realized was even the short calls were helping The Voice track them down.

He had been toying with the notion of calling 911 in spite of the danger, especially as he noted Nick's condition becoming excruciatingly more precarious by the hour. The cold meds contained only a tiny portion of the needed antihistamine, plus his system was still teeming with the scorpion toxin. Now he knew that one avenue was no longer available.

He was distracted by the sound of a creak from the porch behind him. He turned to see the object of his current thoughts in mid stride stop at the attention he had garnered. He wondered how much of the previous conversation his partner had caught.

"Hey, just wanted some fresh air."

"'Sall right, Bro." He turned to aim two narrowed green eyes at Kenny. "We were just done talking."

Kenny gave a harrumph and tossed one of his usual icy glares at Nick, shouldering past him to go storming back into the cabin, letting the door bang loudly as it shut. Nick stepped awkwardly aside and stumbled briefly, regaining his footing to lean on the rough wooden railing. He shook his head in disgust and stepped down to sit on the edge, legs stretched out in front of him and his arms wrapped around himself against the cold. He stared out at the sky that seeped through the branches of the surrounding trees.

"It'll be getting dark in a couple hours," Nick observed.

Warrick shuffled over to join him on the stoop, and sat down, bent over and rubbing his hands together. Here where the sun's feeble winter rays never made it through the thick foliage it was even colder than down in the valley.

"So what were you and the Geek Wonder talking about, or is that off limits, too?"

Warrick closed his eyes in defeat. Looked back at his friend to make an attempt at apologizing when he saw a smile on Nick's face.

"Yeah. Big plans. I was gonna send Kenny out for pizza."

"I'd rather have Mexican. No, a big thick steak, blood pooling on the plate next to a loaded baked potato. You?"

"My Gram's fried chicken. Gonna have to see if I can find her recipe and give it to Tina. So… do I dare ask?"

"I'm fine. Starved, cold, and sore. But fine."

Warrick knew there was no way the man was fine but it was his fallback answer. The pat answer that came out every time anyone showed him the least bit of concern. Man could be bleeding out the eyes and he'd wipe 'em off and say he was fine.

He gave a small snort in response. "You're not fine. God, I hate it when you brush me off, Man. Would it kill you to just 'fess up? To let someone in?"

Nick gave him another teasing smile. "Talk about the pot and the kettle, Bro."

Warrick shook his head, returning the smile in spite of himself. "You're not gonna worm your way outa discussing this, Nick. All jokes aside, I need to know how you're doing. For real."

Nick sat up straighter and appeared to give it earnest thought. In reality he was scrambling for a way to lie to his best friend, the man who knew him best, probably even better than family. His partner was usually pretty laid back, but when he got all intense and in Nick's face it was tougher than Hell to put anything past him. Best bet was to lie by omission. A little bit of truth and some stellar acting and he might pass the test.

"All right. I feel like shit. Is that what you wanted to hear? My hand hurts. My chest hurts. Hell, my whole body hurts. And I still feel like I'm gonna yak any minute," he said, figuring there was no way to hide that since he was probably going to be puking by the end of this little discussion.

Warrick nodded, wanting to believe that was all there was to it. Knew he wasn't getting the full story but neither of them had the strength or the time to be fighting over it.

But he wouldn't be a friend if he didn't say it.

"You know this is only temporary, right?" he asked quietly.

Nick looked away, pretending to be distracted by a bird in a nearby tree. "Yeah. I know. I'll just have to make do 'til we get Tina and get off this God forsaken mountain."

His partner sighed. "Oh, yeah? And how do you think we do that, Bro?"

"Let's go talk to MacGyver. See what he has in his bag of tricks." With that he slapped his hand on Warrick's knee, then used the taller man to push off from to get up, pleased with how steady he was able to make himself stand.

His partner groaned as he got up from the stoop, as if showing him he wasn't afraid to let the world know how badly everything hurt. He worked a hand inside his shirt and rubbed at his sore shoulder, which had stiffened into a throbbing ache.

Nick just rolled his eyes and pulled the door to the cabin open and held it for Warrick to enter. He knew if they wanted to get into Kenny's bag of goodies that Warrick would be the only one with a ghost of a chance at it.

Warrick entered the cabin and peered into the room. The sun was lower in the sky now and the late afternoon rays failed to bring much illumination to the gloomy room. He blew on his hands and eyed the squat woodburning stove with a baleful eye. Knew there was no chance of firing it up and risking the smoke being seen.

Kenny sat on what Warrick already thought of as Nick's cot and scrambled up at their entrance. Nibbled on a nail as he waited to see what the two CSIs were going to do next.

"Hey, Kenny. Let's see the bag."

Kenny pulled it in closer with a suspicious look but with two pairs of eyes staring down at him he grunted and dropped the bag on the floor, pushing it over with his foot.

Warrick sighed and bent to pick up the bag and pulled it over to the cot where Nick had sat back down. He folded himself Indian style on the floor and opened up the knapsack, pulling stuff out and piling it around him.

The littler man's eyes grew big as he saw what Warrick was doing. "Hey, Man! There's dust all over the floor. That stuff can't get dirty! Here. Let me."

Kenny dropped down next to Warrick and pulled the bag into his lap. He picked up the first item Warrick had pulled from the bag, a plastic box with wires hanging off it. He made a show of blowing gently at it and placing it to balance on his leg. The next item was another electronic gizmo of unknown provenance. Several mystifying objects later he stopped. "That's it."

Warrick sighed in frustration. "All of it, Kenny."

Kenny shook his head. "The rest is just personal stuff."

Warrick grabbed the bag up and shoved his hand in, pulling out two more items. The first was a photo in a cheap plastic cover. Warrick pulled the picture up and turned it so the image could be seen better in the darkness of the cabin. It was a picture of Kenny's mom. It was taken when she was young. Before the drugs and the string of abusive men in her life had ravaged her looks. It occurred to Warrick that he had no idea if Kenny's mom was still living. If she had cleaned up, or if she was in jail.

He mumbled an apology to Kenny and shoved the picture back in the bag. The other item was a compact disc.

"These the files The Voice is looking for, Kenny?" Warrick asked, waving it in his friend's face.

The smaller man reached out and snatched it away, shoving it back in the bag and scrambling back up to stalk away. In the process he knocked off all the equipment he had been so concerned about keeping off the floor.

"Kenny! If those are the files then we can use them. Maybe if I give the man the files I can get him to let Tina go."

"No way, Man. These files are five years work. I've got viruses and decryption programs on there that each took years to develop. They're all I have left, Ricky." This last was said with a plaintive whine and he clutched the bag to him like a child would his woobie.

Warrick was about to respond when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Nick had leaned over from his seat on the cot and was shaking his head at him.

"Let it go, Warrick. Let's see if we can figure out what this crap is. We may not need the files."

Warrick nodded and cast a glance at Kenny who plopped down in the folding chair Warrick had been using earlier. He stared at the two men pawing through his stuff.

Nick bent over slowly and picked up one of the plastic boxes. It was about the size of a deck of cards and had wires protruding from it. "This looks like a relay box. Like to bypass a signal of some kind. Phone or electric I think."

"Phone." The barely spoken grunt came from the small man sitting in the chair. "It allows landline phone calls to be diverted. It encodes analog to digital and sends it out wireless so the data stream can be captured and decoded."

Nick shook his head and gave a low whistle. The guy knew his tech stuff.

Encouraged by Kenny's help Nick held up another piece of equipment. "What's this?"

"That's what I used to find the room where you guys were … where he had you guys. It tracks electronic signals."

Nick raised his eyebrows and looked at Warrick. Put it next to him on the cot.

Warrick picked up the next piece. "Okay, show off. What about this thing?"

Kenny was warming to his subject, relishing the chance he was being given to boast a bit. "That's another type of bypass. It's used on fiber optic lines carrying a heavier load of data. Like computer modem lines and cable TV."

He got out of his chair and dropped back down to the floor, picking up a fourth piece of equipment. "This is the GPS tracker and this," he said, picking up one of two or three little devices, "is a GPS signal transponder." He put them back down on the floor and moved on to the next items.

He pushed aside some cables and picked up a piece that looked like a small handheld computer game.

"What is that? A Blackberry?"

"No way, Dawg. Those things cost big bucks. Naw, I threw this together. It's like a Blackberry …sort of. But I've got over a gigabyte of memory on that thing," he said with pride.

It was Warrick's turn to whistle. He was truly impressed.

"Kenny, Man. How did you manage to get so much memory in such a small package? The electronics companies would kill for this thing."

Kenny looked at him uneasily and put it back in the bag. "Just made it for myself, Ricky. You really think people would pay for this thing?"

Warrick smiled at him. "Yeah, Kenny, I do."

He held his hands out over the stuff surrounding them. "So, Kenny, could any of this stuff help us get back into the house?"

"Yeah… Maybe. I could find the main entry point for his phone and electric conduits. Could probably use the bypass to cut his connection to the outside world temporarily. But dude's got a cell tower I can't do anything with, and he probably has WiFi access from it."

"But you could at least make it tougher for him inside, right?" Warrick encouraged.

"Yeah. Yeah I could probably disable the security system. But, Ricky, you saw the guys he's got in that place. And that freaky chick. What are you gonna do about them?"

Warrick looked up as he realized he hadn't heard anything from Nick in several minutes. His partner had his eyes closed and his mouth was gaping open as he struggled to breathe.

"Fuck! Nick, why didn't you…?" He trailed off with his admonitions and fumbled for the epi-pen he'd left beside the cot. It had rolled under the metal frame and he scrambled on the floor to find it. His fingers brushed the plastic case and he snatched it up, snapped it open and rapped it hard against Nick's outer thigh.

Nick had felt the tightness increasing as he sat there watching the two men go through the equipment. He had made himself ignore it and it had worked for a while. Just as he had himself fooled into thinking he could control it, his lungs began to fill and he felt the stirrings of panic in the animal part of his brain. He couldn't get the air to move through his constricted airway. He felt his face flush and his hand rose to pull at the collar of his sweatshirt. Anything to ease the pressure.

He could hear Warrick's voice but it was distorted as if he was underwater. He felt the impact of his partner's fist on his leg and knew that Warrick had used the second pen. He struggled to maintain his composure, to wait out the time the medication needed to work, but his hand still reflexively clawed at his throat. He pushed back with his feet, the cot dragging on the floor, stopping only when the legs became stuck in the space between the rough floorboards.

It was another five minutes before he was able to feel the beginning of the epinephrine's effect. Warrick could tell because the hand finally dropped from where it had been wrenching on the collar of his shirt. He glanced briefly at Kenny. The smaller man had not really witnessed Nick's earlier crisis in the van, his attention solely on the road in front of them. Kenny looked at Warrick, his eyes large with shock. "Damn, Ricky. That was some scary shit. That what happened in the van? That cuz of the scorpion?"

Warrick sighed. The man was finally gonna get it. And he only had to see Nick clawing at his throat for air to have it finally sink in.

"Yeah, Kenny." He turned his head and spoke softly to his friend. "He's dying, Bro"

With those two words, Kenny Longman saw an expression of utmost sadness, that was slowly replaced by a sense of determination that the pack rat had not seen since the whole fiasco began.

tbc...