Warrick found this hike a bit more daunting going back to the chamber of horrors than the trudge that lead them to their refuge. The escape had been a panic-infused whirlwind as they blindly fought their way through the woods. He followed a stream towards what he hoped would lead to the back of the house. The route proved to be fairly precarious. More than once he had lost his footing on the uneven ground going back uphill.

He stumbled when his foot connected hard with a sharp piece of rock, barely keeping himself from falling as his hand grabbed part of a tree trunk. He took a moment to catch his breath and looked behind him for the umpteenth time since he had walked out the cabin. He knew that he was alone out here, but he couldn't shake his new found friend paranoia from keeping him in its constant company. No goons were waiting to strike from behind. He forced his exhausted body forward as he absently rubbed at the growing throb of his bruised up shoulder.

He tried to keep his mind occupied with his game plan. The raggedy backpack contained a few of the devices he would use to by-pass the security to the Voice's lair, and perhaps help him inside as well if given the chance. He had grabbed the knife from the cabin and stashed it with the electronic gadgets as his only form of weaponry. The scalpel in his back pocket was not very intimidating compared to a sociopath doctor.

He grit his teeth, struggling on the inclined terrain as he hoofed it up the side of the mountain. His heart pounded at the idea of how close he was to the house. There was no way Nick would have been able to keep up on the more difficult trek. Hell, Nick wouldn't have been able to make it a few feet away from the temporary shelter.

His partner. Warrick could not shake the idea that he was abandoning him. The image of Nick's panicked expression when they had discovered the charges that were rigged to explode. In his state of mind Nick had thought Warrick had left him, screaming and pounding on the lid to his coffin when he had disappeared from view. This time he really was leaving him, but it was with the slim chance he could rescue his wife and get Nick the medical attention he needed so badly.

The cards had been dealt, and this was the only hand he could play to save them all. He'd exchange the files, or himself for Tina's release and call an ambulance for his partner. One way or another he was going to be proactive. Warrick chose option C; it may not had been part of the answer key, but then again he didn't always play by the book when so much was riding on the outcome.

He berated himself; he needed to stay focused on the game plan---the one he was making up as he went along. Being alone with your thoughts was not a way to avoid the crushing feelings of guilt and anger. No doubt when Nick awoke from his nap the sick guy would try to follow him, but it was sad to think that even Kenny would be able to force him to stay put. Nick's time was running out.

Facing death wasn't what Nick feared the most. Dying on some ratty cot, in a shitty little cabin, was a worse fate. His partner's stubbornness was an attribute that caused a lot of problems but one of the things that kept him alive. Warrick prayed that Nick would see that this was a two-pronged war. Warrick was striking hard against their opponent while Nick's part of the battle was with his own body. Keep hanging on till help could arrive. It would take both of them to be successful in order to win.

Warrick re-doubled his efforts as his pace increased, sheer willpower moving his feet faster than he thought possible with all of his aches and pains. If Nick could take torture by needles, then he could hustle up this fucking mountain faster. It was hard to see, and Warrick cursed the absence of light, but he'd use it to his advantage as he snuck in under the cover of night. Damn mob boss lived in the middle of nowhere.

Warrick went over Kenny's instructions in his head again. People rarely surprised him, but his boyhood friend practically astonished him. He knew the geeky nerd was smart, but some of the things he managed to create were damn near ingenious. How could a guy who was so smart with technology lack so much common sense? He could sell what he had to make the money he so desperately wanted. Instead he tried the most foolish and idiotic plan in the world, and pissed off Emperor Nero of the underground

Kenny…the man was so damn annoying sometimes, but beneath it all, he knew there was a goodness. No one survived the shambles of such a rotten life if they didn't have a good heart. Despite acting so intolerable towards his partner, Warrick knew the pack rat would keep an eye on Nick. He'd watch over him long enough to get help.

Warrick felt adrenaline surge through his veins as he recognized what had to be the beginnings of the Voice's land. The woods were thinning out, to be replaced by trees that looked well taken care of. Limbs were cut, the vegetation more luscious looking, the ground trim and neat. Warrick was on full alert mode, slowing down to keep his presence a secret. The flowing waters twisted and turned, and the next bend led towards several large rows of sculpted bushes.

This had to be the outskirts of the house; only yards separating Warrick from his goal. He kept low and crept up towards the bushes, their mass hiding his body from view. He wasn't sure exactly which side of the house he was approaching. He was too far away from the lair to recognize anything so, hoping for a little luck, he continued around towards the left, praying it would lead to the back of the house. He didn't know if the guy had dogs or just electronic security. He didn't see any guards on patrol.

The asshole probably doubted that his enemies would dare attack him on his own turf. He'd prove him dead wrong.

Warrick risked passing the protection of the tall shrubs when he spotted a stretch of tress, and used them as cover as he got closer. He continued to find anything to duck or hide behind as he made his way nearer to the target. Warrick knew the guy had at least five or six hired goons and they, with the vile doctor, made the gambit fairly precarious. The odds were long, but he did enjoy the thrill of gambling, not necessarily the skills behind it.

He would not need the gadgets until he reached a door or a window. After maneuvering as stealthily as possible he discovered he'd gone the wrong way. He was near the front entrance, and not the more secluded back. Shaking his head for choosing left, he prayed that it was the last bad decision, which meant everything else would be slanted in his favor. The CSI smiled ruefully at how ridiculously illogical his rationale was at this point. He was about to turn around, thinking the time it would take to get behind the house was worth it, when he heard the sound of activity.

He fell to his belly as he crawled along the ground to hide within the low-lying shrubbery near his position. He made it over to another tree, the guy loves his damn lawn he mused, when he saw the source of the noise. Three people were coming out a door and were approaching a Cherokee parked on the driveway. At first he thought his ruse was up, until he realized that the hired muscle were not looking for him, but were leaving.

Warrick smiled at his good luck. He caught sight of Madame Chu, shouting orders in Chinese and looking very pissed off. Something had happened and the vile woman was definitely animated about something. All three of them piled into the SUV and took off in a hurry. Warrick stayed where he was for a while longer just in case they turned around. He smiled at the realization that the sudden turn of events evened up the odds; this left the Voice with only a couple of bodyguards. Although he really wanted to smack the bitch up for what she did, he was not stupid. He definitely didn't want to tango with that woman; she was cold and dangerous and a lethal combination he was happy not to have to deal with.

Warrick rummaged through the knapsack and pulled out the knife he took from the cabin. He held it in his right hand, hoping it would be enough. He licked his lips and pulled out one of the gadgets used for getting by the alarms. He was close enough that he could use one of the gizmos to start mucking up the internal security. He took a deep breath. The next few minutes were the most vital. It all came down to what happened next.

He looked up to the sky, seeking enlightenment, and asking for all the luck in the world. Another little prayer sent up to the heavens that he could end this horrid game once and for all.

Nick awoke to find that the elephant previously parked on his chest had moved on to greener pastures. The weight was now more like when the Stokes family's old tomcat, Bruiser, had curled up on his chest at bedtime. That cat weighed damn near twenty pounds, but compared to the tonnage there previously it was a welcome respite.

He lifted his head from the cot, only to gasp at the pain in his back and legs. And hand and chest. And head and… He grit his teeth and pulled himself to sit up, swinging his legs over the edge and planting his feet on the cabin floor. He sat there with his eyes closed as he willed the room to stop spinning and breath into his lungs. Another wave of nausea passed over him and he swallowed back bile as his gorge rose in his throat. While the cat was there it must have shit in his mouth he decided. Could be the only explanation for the horrendous taste. That or the non- stop vomiting for the last several hours.

He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered as the cold damp of the cabin soaked into his bones.

When he finally opened his eyes, he saw Kenny perched on a chair several feet away, staring at him in the dim light. The look on the smaller man's face was inscrutable. Nick really couldn't tell what it said, but at least it was absent the shitty look he normally received.

He blinked a few times, trying to bring things into focus. Kenny sat staring at him like a stone gargoyle.

"What are you starin' at?" he finally croaked out.

"Nothin'. How do you feel?"

"Fine. What's with the sudden concern, Kenny? You need me for something?" he asked irritably.

"Naw. Just askin'."

That was definitely odd. No biting rebuff? No sneer or snarl?

"Where's Rick?"

"Outside." A hand rose to play with a loose braid.

Nick nodded, figuring his partner was probably pacing out his problems.

Kenny continued to stare at him and the little guy was creeping him out.

"Something on your mind, Kenny?"

"Naw…" A long pause followed. "You need this?" He held up the asthma inhaler that had gotten lost during his most recent crisis.

The relief he had gotten the last time he used it persuaded him to nod and hold out a hand. Kenny got up from his seat, handed Nick the inhaler, then sat back down, his new toy a ragged hangnail.

Nick gave the small container a shake. Not much liquid left in the small metal bottle. "No, Kenny. It's almost gone. You keep it." Nick held out a hand to return the medication to its owner.

Kenny shook his head. "I'm good, Dawg. You need it more than me. 'Sides. I know what it's like not to be able to breathe," he said turning his head slightly away.

Nick gave a small smile at the man's sacrifice and huffed it deeply into his lungs, enjoying the feeling as his bronchials opened up.

He dropped the now pretty much empty bottle to his side and bent over to put his head in his hands. He regretted what he'd said earlier to Warrick. Confessing his fear… his knowledge that he wasn't going to walk away from this. Pills and inhalers could only do so much, he knew. But he shouldn't have added to his partner's burden. He knew that his partner carried guilt around like an albatross 'round his neck. He felt personally responsible for Holly's death, much as if he himself had pulled the trigger. He felt responsible when Nick got thrown out the window. And the whole coin toss thing … He sighed as he remembered how his partner could barely look him in the eyes the first few days after he came to in the hospital.

He lifted his head from his hands to see Kenny's brown eyes back fixed on him. Damn eerie.

He cleared his throat and sat up to rub one still shaky palm on his jeans. The way the man was gawking at him made him flash to a memory he had from calmer days.

"I have a friend," he said, then paused, seeing Kenny start a bit at this new attempt at conversation. "I have this friend, Greg, back at the Lab," he started again. "He likes to sit and watch the popcorn pop in the microwave. I keep telling him he's gonna melt his eyeballs out one day. But he says it's like watching chemistry and physics in action."

Kenny sat up straighter. "Yeah. I mean, the way the microwaves agitate the water molecules in the kernel to just the right vapor pressure…" Kenny caught himself actually getting excited. "It's cool, I mean," he finished with a mumble.

Nick gave a small chuckle. "It is cool. Actually, Kenny, you'd like Greg a lot. I'll have to hook you two up when we get back," he added with a reassuring smile.

The smaller man just grunted at him.

"You know, Kenny… I, uh, never thanked you for what you did back there at the house. You saved our hides showin' up like that. Thanks. I mean it."

Kenny bit his lip and nodded in reply. Chewed for a bit, ripping off a dry piece of skin leaving a streak of red on his bottom lip.

Nick watched as the man ingested himself in fragments. The little man was a bundle of nerves. No wonder with an upbringing like his…

He was just about to get up and try making his way outside when he saw Kenny sit up straighter and look him in the eye.

"Ricky told me …"

Nick waited for the words he didn't want to hear. Warrick told him…no wonder he's staring at me, being nice. Then he watched, as Kenny appeared to change his mind, mentally moving his words around like tiles on a Scrabble board.

"Ricky told me what you did for me back there. What happened to you."

Oh. Nick nodded in response. "Warrick told me you guys go way back. Heard that today wasn't the first time you saved his ass. Seemed only appropriate I do the same for you," he replied simply.

"Yeah, well, I dunno if you noticed but Ricky don't make friends too easily. You guys are pretty tight so I figure you must be a'ight. For a white boy," he said, a flash of a smile, the first since he'd met the man.

Nick smiled himself, recognizing truth in the man's words. Warrick's suave and cool persona masked a shy and gentle interior that sometimes made it hard for the man to connect.

Speaking of … where was his partner? It was freezing inside the tiny cabin; it had to be worse outside.

It dawned on him that there might be another reason for Kenny's nerves.

"Where's Rick?"

"Told you. Outside." Hands reached for a braid again.

Nick shook his head. "No, he isn't, is he, Kenny? Where is he?"

Kenny sighed. "He took off. 'Bout an hour ago when you fell asleep. Couldn't talk him out of it, Bro."

"He went back to the house." Not a question. A statement of fact. And he knew why his partner had chosen that time to leave. It was right after he uttered those foolish words.

He rose from the cot, his only thought to follow his partner. That was the plan. They were supposed to be going together. He managed to get his legs to stop wobbling, but the first step he took had him swaying unsteadily, and only a pair of small hands catching him by the waist stopped him from crashing to the cabin floor. Kenny helped him ease back down to the cot where he sat pounding his fist on his knee in frustration.

"It's my fault, Kenny. I said something I shouldn't have and that's why he left."

Kenny reached back and pulled the chair up closer. "Wasn't anything you said, Dawg. Nothing stopping that man when he's got a mind to do something. Just chill, Bro."

Nick shook his head. "We were supposed to go together. I thought if I could just grab a few minutes of sleep…" He faded off, knowing that no amount of sleep was going to bring him back far enough to be of help. His body was failing him. He knew he'd have been a liability if he'd gone. But the thought of his friend taking on a houseful of armed guards and state of the art security alone…

"He left you here for me, didn't he?" he asked thickly.

Kenny paused before he answered. "Uh uh. I told him there was no way I was goin' back to deal with guns and scorpions and shit. No, I, uh, told him I'd rather stay behind."

"You know he's got no chance, don't you, Kenny?" he asked, dark eyes shining in the little light now left in the cabin.

The smaller man averted his gaze as his teeth met another tag of flesh on his thumb.

He felt his lids grow heavy as exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him. The temptation to lie back on the cot and let sleep steal away the last of his time was strong. It would be easier than waiting for what was inevitably to come.

Instead he once more lurched himself to his feet and stumbled across the few feet of floor between him and the wall, barely making it as his hand scrabbled for purchase on the cut wood planks. He turned and leaned his weight against the wall, his breathing once more having turned to gasping. But he was standing.

"What was his plan, Kenny? Did he even have one or go off half-cocked in true Warrick Brown style?"

Kenny had risen to his feet, standing by to lend aid while he watched the CSI stagger across the room. He returned to his earlier pacing as he opened another wound on his thumb.

"I gave him my stuff. The, uh, equipment, and my encrypted disc. He's gonna try to disarm the security system with the stuff I gave him and sneak in and get Tina. If that don't work, said he's gonna turn hisself and the disc over to The Voice. He's gonna get the dude to let Tina and us go. He figured the files were enough bargaining power that it might work. Ricky's right. Voice can make billions with it using it against his competitors. Probably only have to use it once. He'd get the rest of the money in blackmail."

Nick sighed as he leaned his head against the wall, pounding it lightly trying to clear it. It had been well over an hour since the last cold pill and the inhaler was only getting him so far. He could already feel the hitch in his breathing and the sensation that his lungs were filling with fiberglass insulation.

His back rested on the cabin wall, the cold seeping through from outside to chill him even further. He wrapped his arms around himself and eyed the wood stove once again. Then he sighed and closed his eyes as if blocking the lure of the promise of warmth from sight.

His partner had a heart of gold and a will of iron. He was a highly skilled investigator, now carrying high tech cutting edge equipment. And he had that famous Warrick Brown luck. But no amount of skill, luck, or equipment, James Bond not withstanding, was going to win out over armed guards and sociopathic doctors and there was no way it was going to get his partner and his wife out of there unscathed.

Kenny had turned out to be a smart, resourceful little guy, and like the Cowardly Lion, only had to be confronted by a real challenge for his courage to shine through. He could probably leave the cabin and be in Mexico before the next sundown.

It was then that Nick realized the one thing he had left to contribute and that it could be the thing that saved the other three.

As he reached his decision he ironically felt his heart speed up with his own homemade epinephrine, his two adrenal glands way into double overtime producing the stress hormone. He felt the odd skipping of beats, as if the percussion section in his chest went from philharmonic to elementary school. Every few thuds gained a scary hiccup while the valves did their best to flap open and shut, now exhausted from overuse and lack of oxygen and out of sync with his normal cardiac rhythm.

He'd made his decision and apparently none -too- soon.

He eyed the smaller man as Kenny continued to pace, glancing up every once in a while as if to make sure Nick was still standing.

"Hey, Kenny…did he leave the phone?"

Kenny's hand sunk unconsciously to his front pocket to feel the weight there. "Yeah," he said offhandedly, "but it's no good, Bro. One more call and they'll be able to find us."

"I know."

The words hung suspended in the cold dank air of the steadily darkening cabin.

"So what you want the phone for then, Man?" Kenny asked uncomfortably.

"I want you to call 911 and tell them where we are."

Kenny shook his head in exasperation, as if Nick's lack of oxygen was affecting his brain. "I told you… can't use it, not even once."

Nick pushed off from the wall and slowly stepped towards the center of the room, weaving only slightly now as determination set in his face.

"I want you to call 911, Kenny. Tell them we need help. Make sure they know that Warrick is here. Do you understand?"

"Dude, if I call it'll bring half that house full of thugs on us …… oh."

Nick nodded as the smaller man caught on. "You call 911, put on as good an act as you did back at the house. Then get yourself outa here."

Kenny shook his head. "Man, even at full power you'd never be able to take them on. Whatcha gonna use against 'em? A fishing pole?"

The fleeting burst of renewed energy he'd gained was quickly fading. He stumbled a bit but managed to make it back to the cot where he sunk down heavily, unable to form words as he tried to breathe deeply and slowly. He closed his eyes as his concentration fell to trying to rein in his heart, which was now galloping away like a wild stallion.

"Kenny, I know Rick told you," he said, still not willing to open his eyes and see the confirmation he knew would be on the smaller man's face. "You do this and Warrick has a chance of getting Tina out. The outcome for me is pretty much the same either way."

Turned out he didn't have to have his eyes open for evidence that Warrick had told Kenny. The silence that followed his last statement told him all he needed.

"Do it, Kenny. Do it now. If he left an hour ago he could be there soon." He reopened his eyes to see that Kenny had removed the cell from his pocket and was staring at it in his hand. Flipping it open he gazed at the number pad while his teeth worked at another chunk of flesh on his bottom lip. He looked back up at Nick, nodded, and pressed the three buttons. 9, 1, 1.

What followed was an Oscar winning performance. Nick wasn't sure if a real 911 operator or a stand-in imposter had answered the other end of the line, but regardless, Kenny gave it his all. His emotional appeal for help, combined with feigned yells to a phantom Warrick provided his little drama with all the needed details, leading anyone listening to think that all three men were there.

The hackles raised on the back of his neck as he listened to Kenny's impassioned pleas for help shouting about how his friend couldn't breathe. A little too close to true for comfort.

Kenny spat out a final, "Hurry!" before hanging up the phone and flinging it to the floor in distaste.

"Tried to make me think it was a real 911 operator," he muttered. "Then he tells me to hang up, help is coming. Real 911 guy woulda had me stay on the line. Figure he had all the info he needed now…"

Nick nodded in acceptance. Everything was in motion and nothing could stop the consequences now.

"Do me one last favor before you take off, Kenny?"

The little man looked at Nick expectantly, his face a picture of awe and respect mixed with guilt and pity.

"Yeah, Bro. What you need?" he asked softly.

"Grab some wood and start a fire. Might as well be warm while I wait."

tbc..