A/N: And now you finally get to see how Nick fares when he has to match wits with the ill-tempered IA captain -- after a little fluffy stuff. I've only got this one new chapter ready to post. Another should be along tomorrow night-- assuming my beta-babe doesn't get sidetracked.

Oh, and BTW, I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on television, so I apologize for any medical inaccuracies. My only "official" source is personal experience with stitches, fevers, and post-surgical pain.

Thanks to all who have sent reviews. I'm still a little strapped for time and haven't been able to respond individually to them. But I do appreciate the feedback.

Chapter Eighteen

Friday, Late Afternoon

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Tricia, the nurse who had accompanied Dr. Gentry on her rounds earlier, carefully tilted Nick's chin up to wipe a stray streak of shaving cream from his throat.

Nick exhaled a long sigh, wincing at the sharp twinge in his shoulder. "It's not that I want to," he said grimly. "But I know this guy's reputation. It's only gonna pi— make him mad if he has to wait too long to get my statement."

Tricia chuckled as she set aside the shaving supplies and picked up a comb. "You don't have to censor your language with me, Mr. Stokes. I grew up with two older brothers. 'Piss him off' is one of the milder phrases I've heard." She finished combing his hair, which he imagined had started to resemble Greg's on a bad day, and stood back to inspect her handiwork. "Much better," she said with a smile. "That whole refugee look just wasn't working for you."

"Thanks." He let his head rest back into the pillow and watched as she piled razor, cream, towel, and comb onto a tray and took it into the bathroom to clean up. "You really didn't have to do this, you know."

"Sure I did," she countered, raising her voice enough to be heard above running water. "It was bothering you, wasn't it? You kept scratching your chin, rubbing your cheek. Let me guess – you've never grown a beard. My oldest brother did the same thing until his grew in completely. Drove our mom crazy."

Nick closed his eyes and let Tricia's smooth, melodic voice calm his tense nerves and soothe away some of the discomfort that had grown more noticeable since he'd awakened. As much as he dreaded Garza's visit, he wished the man would hurry up and get here so he could get this over with and sink back into a drugged haze.

Tricia returned, and Nick's eyes shot open when a damp cloth pressed briefly against his forehead. "Sorry," the nurse said apologetically. "I didn't mean to startle you. You're perspiring."

"Yeah." Nick shifted slightly under her touch. "I feel kinda warm – thought maybe you turned the heat up since I was freezing earlier."

The conical temperature sensor tickled the inside of his ear. "No. It's the fever," she said. "This kind of thing isn't terribly unusual with the kind of infection you've got. Your temp will drop a few degrees initially, then fluctuate. Unfortunately, you're having a minor spike right now."

"Great," Nick murmured bleakly. His eyes slid shut again as he digested the unwelcome news. "Perfect timing."

"I really think you should call this off," Tricia said. "And I know Dr. Gentry would agree."

Nick shook his head. "By now Garza's on his way. If I call it off, he really will be pissed." He heard Tricia opening a drawer in the bedside cart, and a moment later she touched his arm and asked if he could sit up a bit. When he opened his eyes he saw her holding a flat, square pad with wires trailing from one corner. "What's that?"

"Temp pad," she said. She helped him sit up far enough for her to slide the sensor pad beneath his back. "It connects to the monitor," she explained as she plugged in the leads and checked the output. "I can switch everything to remote and keep an eye on your vitals from the central console at the nurses' station. If your fever goes too high, or if anything shows that you're getting over-stressed, I can intervene. If necessary, Dr. Gentry will insist that they leave."

"Okay." Nick gestured vaguely toward the cart. "Any water over there?" he asked.

Tricia handed him a container that looked something like a sports bottle. The sealed lid kept the liquid from spilling too badly if he should drop it, and a bendable straw enabled him to drink from almost any angle. "Hang onto that. You haven't done very much talking yet, so your throat will probably dry out pretty quickly. Do you want me to leave the bed angled up, or lay it back down?"

"Up's fine," he assured her. He felt at somewhat less of a disadvantage if he was at least partially upright.

She nodded before picking up the syringe she'd brought in earlier and uncapping the needle.

"What's that for?" Nick asked, half afraid that anything she gave him now would further blunt his already questionable mental processes.

"It's just acetaminophen," she assured him. "For the fever." She deftly opened the infusion port in his IV line, halting as the door swung open abruptly and two men entered.

Nick immediately recognized Captain Garza, even though he'd never actually met the man. The other he knew he'd met at some point, but couldn't recall his name. The second man looked decidedly uncomfortable when Garza pinned the nurse with a hard stare and ordered her out of the room.

Tricia returned the look unflinchingly and went about the task of injecting the IV line. "I'll be finished in a moment," she said coolly. "Mr. Stokes needs his meds on a regular schedule."

Garza folded his arms across his broad chest. "The doctor said he wouldn't be medicated during the interview."

"Dr. Gentry agreed to postpone any sedation or pain medication," Tricia corrected. "The antibiotic and fever reducer he still needs on a specific schedule for them to be effective." She finished the injection, recapped the needle and deposited it in the wall-mounted sharps receptacle.

As she turned to leave, she gave Nick a brief, encouraging smile and said, "If you start feeling nauseous or dizzy, or if the pain gets too severe, buzz me immediately." To Garza and his sidekick she warned, "Dr. Gentry left strict instructions that you're to limit your visit to half an hour."

When Tricia had gone, Garza made the formal introductions while his companion arranged a tape recorder on the tray table he moved into position over the bed. His seemingly perpetual scowl morphed into an unpleasant smile as he looked past Nick to the monitor beside the bed, which still dutifully recorded heartbeat, respirations, and blood oxygen. A new LED window now tracked temperature. "Well, look at that," Garza mused. "Not quite a polygraph, but it'll sure tell me if answering questions makes you nervous."

Nick turned just in time to see the glowing green line jump fractionally higher and faster, and he silently cursed his involuntary reaction to Garza's implicit threat. It was way too early in the game to let the IA captain get under his skin.

Garza gave him no time to frame a retort, instead signaling McNabb to start the tape and taking out a dog-eared notebook. "This is a formal statement and will be entered into the record of this investigation," he said, then went on to record the preliminaries of day, date, time, location, and participants in the interview.

Garza's initial questions covered the basics: what happened when, how, and to whom. Nick answered them easily enough, trying to keep his responses as economical and direct as possible. He took frequent small sips from the water bottle to ease the dryness in his mouth and throat, surprised at the effort required to keep his voice even. Funny; he'd never really appreciated the energy needed to speak without sounding like a winded runner. And Garza had made him uncomfortably aware of the monitor just beyond the edge of his peripheral vision.

A long pause when he finished sketching the broad strokes of the story afforded McNabb an opportunity to exchange a look with his captain and remark, "Almost exactly the way Dr. Grissom described it."

Garza shot his subordinate a dark look before turning his attention back to Nick. "Were you aware that Detective Stevens would be joining you to carry out the search?"

"Yeah. I was standing right there when Grissom called to tell him he might have a new lead on the missing money."

"And that didn't bother you?"

Nick frowned, unable to fathom the intent behind that question. "No." He drew out the word just slightly. "He was the lead detective on the armored car robbery. It was standard procedure to notify him."

"I understand you don't get along with Detective Stevens."

"I do my job," Nick told him, "no matter which detective is on the case."

Garza peered at his notes for several seconds before he asked, "What's your beef with Detective Stevens?"

"I didn't have a beef with Stevens," Nick retorted, stung by the accusatory undercurrent.

Garza's eyebrows lifted in apparent skepticism. "Really? Your boss indicated that Detective Stevens seemed to go out of his way to try to goad you into a confrontation. Why would he do that if there wasn't already bad blood between you?"

"Maybe because the guy was a jerk," Nick shot back. He clamped his teeth together and took a couple of deep breaths through his nose, trying to bring his temper – and a sudden jolt of pain in his shoulder – back under control.

"So, he was a jerk," Garza paraphrased thoughtfully. He rocked back slightly and looked away into the distance. "I find it interesting that you keep referring to Detective Stevens in the past tense," he mused. "Why is that, Mr. Stokes?"

Nick stared at Garza's averted profile. "Wh--? He's dead, isn't he?" he asked, confusion and the effort required to keep his thoughts in some semblance of order making him feel even more light-headed than even his current physical condition justified.

Garza's dark, stony eyes pinned him again, giving away nothing. "As a matter of fact, he is," he agreed. "But I didn't tell you that. How did you know Detective Stevens was dead, Mr. Stokes?"

Nick didn't need to look at the monitor to know that his heartbeat suddenly accelerated. He felt the heavy thump against his breastbone, and his pulse echoed through each of his limbs. He couldn't answer immediately, his voice frozen by a paranoid certainty that Garza would twist whatever response he made. Fragments of disjointed memories drifted through his awareness – staring up through a red-tinted haze as Stevens and Grissom grappled for possession of Stevens' gun; shots echoing through the rocky chamber; the rumble and crash of falling stone, Stevens stumbling away as he tried to evade the killing rain of rock. Through it all he heard the ghostly echo of Warrick's voice. Hang in there man…Stevens died…IA's gonna come…not supposed to be here…not gonna back down…

With a soft, wordless sound that was as much a gasp as it was a desperate laugh, Nick rolled his head back into the pillow. "Is that what this is about?" he asked. "You think I was somehow responsible for Stevens getting killed?"

Garza answered with a negligent shrug. "You tell me, Mr. Stokes. Detective Stevens can't speak for himself. So all I have left is you and your boss, and whatever evidence wasn't lost in the cave-in."

"Stevens planned to kill us," Nick said with careful precision, forcing his tone to remain even. "I'm sorry he's dead. But he kinda brought it on himself. Ya know? Anything I did – anything Grissom did – we were just trying to stay alive."

"So, the idea that if you made it out and Stevens didn't," Garza went on without missing a beat, "you could do whatever you wanted with that two million dollars never entered your thoughts?"

"No."

Garza's hard stare openly conveyed disbelief. "Oh, come on," he scoffed. "You've got a line on two million bucks that's already been missing almost a year. It wouldn't be that hard to make sure it stayed missing a little while longer. Are you really going to tell me you weren't just a little bit tempted?"

Nick met the IA captain's gaze directly. "That's right." He didn't miss Garza's quick glance past him to the bedside monitor, obviously expecting to see some evidence of dishonesty. Garza seemed almost angry when his attention shifted back to Nick.

"What about your boss?" he mused. "Maybe Grissom suggested a little temporary partnership? Even split of the proceeds if you just played along and kept your mouth shut?"

"You obviously don't know Grissom," Nick snorted.

Garza tilted his head in a half nod. "You're right, I don't," he conceded. "I don't know either one of you – except by reputation. Of course, reputations can be manufactured – intended to mislead. Who knows what a man's really made of till he's put to the test?"

Nick didn't even blink. "Ain't that the truth," he said grimly. "Dan Stevens had a reputation, you know. He wasn't very well liked, but everybody thought he was a reasonably good, honest cop. And look what he turned out to be."

After a few more questions, which Nick answered with rapidly fading interest and energy, Garza seemed satisfied – if not with the answers he'd gotten, at least that he would gain nothing further by prolonging the interview. He signaled McNabb to shut off the tape recorder and tucked his notebook back inside his jacket. Nick exhaled a weary sigh that ended in a grimace, and closed his eyes.

"So, what now?" he asked, his voice roughened by fatigue and the pain that had grown steadily more intrusive.

"I'll be in touch," Garza assured him as he sauntered toward the door. "For now, though, I'll do what you CSIs are so fond of doing: I'll let the evidence speak for itself."

To be continued…