Here's the end of the cliffhanger for everyone who's been wanting to know what happens to poor Ryan! Enjoy! And thank you all for reviewing! It would have been up sooner but I was having some internet-related problems, and I'll post the last chapter up by the end of the week!

Please, Not Again

Horatio drove as fast as he dared, sirens blaring. Another police car and a rescue team were following him, although weren't quite able to keep up with his crazy driving.

'It's a disused car-park,' Eric said over Horatio's mobile phone. 'Scheduled for demolition. I guess the guy figured no one would find Ryan for a while if they just demolished the place.'

'We're almost there,' Horatio said, swerving madly to avoid another car and swerving again to take the next turning. 'Am I there yet?'

'Yeah, it's just around the corner from where you are.'

'Good. I'll talk to you later!' Horatio tossed his phone aside and stepped on the accelerator and his car screeched up into the first level of the car park. There was nothing there so he continued driving, looking out of the window for anything.

Then he saw something ahead. He braked the car with a squealing of tires, leaving burnt rubber across the floor. He threw the door open and slammed it.

Ryan was lying on the floor, covered in blood, eyes closed, not moving.

'Oh no,' Horatio said softly. 'Not again.' He raced over and crouched down. 'Wolfe? Can you hear me?' He checked the younger CSI's pulse and yelled, 'We need rescue here! Rescue, now!'

The rescue team had just arrived. Horatio moved out to make way for them.

'He's lost a lot of blood,' one said. 'Badly injured, still losing blood. Breathing's shallow.' He checked Wolfe's breathing and placed a ventilation mask and oxygen cylinder over his mouth and nose. 'Need to stop the bleeding. We've got to move him now.'

'I'll have dispatch teams assist with traffic,' Horatio said, going to his car to get his phone. 'Just get him to hospital, now!' He took a look around. There was a gun lying on the floor and a couple of casings. He got a couple of evidence bags out of the car and, pulling on a plastic glove, picked up the gun and examined it. 'Get someone down here to process this scene,' he said to one of the police officers who had pulled his car up. 'Not Calleigh or Eric. I'm going to need them.'

The officer nodded.

The rescue team got Ryan into the ambulance and drove away. Horatio went with them.

'What happened to him?' Alexx asked at the hospital.

'Where are the others?' Horatio asked.

'They're on their way,' she said. 'Horatio?'

'The doctors say the serious injuries were gunshot wounds,' Horatio replied. 'He went into cardiac arrest just after they got him here. They managed to resuscitate him but he's in a critical condition.' He fell silent.

'It's worse than that, isn't it?' Alexx said in a low voice.

'Fortunately for him, they missed all vital organs but he's lost a lot of blood. As soon as he's stabilised they'll take him into surgery.' He sighed. 'They're not confident that he'll survive.'

Alexx nodded. 'All right. We'll catch who did this, right?'

He nodded grimly. 'Oh, we'll catch them.'

'Horatio,' Alexx said gently, 'there was nothing you could have done. He's lucky you got there as quickly as you did.'

'What's happened?' Calleigh said as she, Eric and Valera entered the waiting room.

'He's holding on,' Horatio said slowly. 'I'm going to need one of you to process his clothing, if you can. And see if you can get any trace off of him before he goes into surgery.'

'You think we'll get something?' Eric said.

'Ryan's a criminalist, he'll have tried to get us some DNA to work with. It's worth trying.' He looked at Calleigh. 'And you some processing to do. I managed to bag the gun and bullet casings, and someone needs to process Ryan's clothes.'

'What about you?' she asked.

'I,' he said, 'am going to notify his family.'

Alexx looked at Valera with a faint smile. 'I guess it's you and me staying here, girl,' she said. 'If that's all right with you, Horatio.'

'I think Ryan would feel better if he knew you were here. But Valera, we need you back in the DNA lab if we're to catch the guys who did this.'

She nodded.

'I'll get onto it,' Eric said.

'Me, too,' Calleigh said.

There was a commotion further down the hall and then the entire team was approached at great speed by a man and two women. The younger woman was Ryan's sister Sandra.

'You're Caine?' the older woman demanded.

Horatio regarded her silently for a moment. 'I am,' he said eventually. 'Who are you?'

'I am Isabelle Wolfe, this is my husband and daughter. What is going on here?' she snapped.

'You don't know?' he said.

'I got a telephone call telling me something has happened to my son! Do you know what's going on?'

'Ryan has been injured in the line of duty,' Horatio said carefully.

'What is that supposed to mean? Last we saw of him was him having a childish tantrum and storming out of an exclusive restaurant! What exactly has happened to him? Is it worth dragging me and my husband out of very important meetings at work for?'

Everyone's jaws dropped in astonishment.

Horatio regarded her with growing dislike which showed in his icy tone. 'Your son has been shot and is currently in a critical condition,' he said with his less than usual tack. 'Doctors aren't sure he's going to survive surgery. Is that worth being called out of a couple of business meetings for?'

The Wolfes stared at him in mounting shock.

'Ryan's been shot?' Sandra said softly.

'After he left last night,' Horatio said. 'We found him just in time.'

'I want to see him,' Isabelle said.

Horatio looked silently at Isabelle Wolfe and then said very quietly, 'I don't recall your son wanting to see you before he was shot, Mrs Wolfe.'

'Of course he would wants to see us,' she snapped. 'We're family! Now go away.'

'Maybe,' Horatio said, 'you should have thought more about that last time he was in hospital.'

'Don't you dare talk to my wife like that,' Mr Wolfe said coldly, glaring at Horatio.

Horatio regarded him with silent contempt for a moment and then said, 'I think Ryan would prefer to know that people who actually care about him are here.'

'You don't care about my son,' Isabelle said. 'You care about an officer, one of your little team who run around to do your bidding.'

'I care about all my officers,' H said, still calm. 'They do a good job and a tough one. I appreciate their efforts and their skills. Maybe it's about time you did.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' she snapped.

'Perhaps it's time you appreciated your son's choice of career and exactly how good he is at that career,' Calleigh put in.

Even Eric agreed. Despite the history of hostility between him and Ryan, he had never doubted that the other CSI was excellent at his job.

'Maybe it's time you just appreciated him at all,' Alexx put in.

'How dare you tell us how to treat our own child,' Mr Wolfe said coldly.

'I have children,' Alexx said angrily. 'And I would be ashamed if I treated my children the way you're treating your son. Understand? How can you stand there and talk like that about your child?'

'You can't stop us seeing him,' Sandra said.

'No,' Horatio agreed. 'No, I can't.'

He let the family pass silently by.

'You let them?' Alexx said. She sounded annoyed.

'I can't stop them,' he said. 'I doubt they'll stay, Alexx. They'll have business meetings to go to and people to see. But they're his family. We can't stop them, even if we want to.' He looked around. 'Don't forget, we have work to do if we're going to catch this guy. Get to it, team.'

As it turned out, Horatio wasn't quite right. Ryan's family showed every intention of staying until Horatio pointed out, rather more gently than he had previously spoken to them, that his team had a job to do to catch the man who'd attacked Ryan. They had subsided, the sight of their close-to-death son having taken a lot of the anger out of all of them. They had disappeared to talk to doctors and discuss medical bills. Neither Eric nor Alexx had been very impressed but Horatio thought that it was their way of coping. He seemed to feel rather sorry for Ryan's family, seeing that they weren't close to him and found it difficult to express emotion.

Eric sealed the evidence collection bags he had used and put away the rest of his kit. 'We're going to find the guy who did this to you, Wolfe,' he said. 'We got a name, and hopefully you'll have got us enough DNA to nail him.' He glanced down at the evidence bags. 'You better pull through,' he added. 'We can't be doing with having yet another new team member. We just got used to having you hanging around,' he said with a weak laugh.

Ryan didn't respond. Eric hadn't expected him to. He just lay there, with the soft hum and beep of machines filling the room. Eyes closed, face deathly white except for a vivid purple bruise on the side of his head.

Eric sighed. 'I gotta go,' he said eventually. 'Got to get this stuff back to the lab. Alexx is here, Calleigh's processing the bullet casings and I got to go and get the bullets they got out of you. We'll all come and see you when we can. Valera'll be over when she's finished her shift, she said. Just between us, Wolfe, I think she likes you. One more reason to keep breathing, huh?' He laughed again. 'And Horatio's been trying to keep your family at bay, you might be interested to know. I'll have to tell you about that, it's kinda funny. Or it will be when you're recovered. No one sends people packing like H.'

He paused at the doorway. 'Don't die on us, Wolfe. Bet you never thought you'd hear me saying this, but we'd all miss you.'

Alexx looked up as Eric came out. 'Well?' she said.

He managed a grin. 'Criminalist to the core,' he said. 'Plenty of skin and blood under his nails, blood on his clothes. I reckon the guy who put him in here's going to have great big marks on his face. H was right – Ryan did his best to make damn sure if he died we'd get the guy.'

'Good,' Alexx said. 'You're going back to the lab, then.'

'Yeah. One of the police officers is going to run me back.' He gestured with one crutch. 'Be glad when I'm finally allowed to get rid of these things for good. You going to stay here?'

She nodded. 'I'll keep everyone updated.'

'You going to be okay?'

She touched his arm. 'Eric, I'll be fine. I brought some paperwork along and I'll keep him company until he wakes up. If anything happens, you'll all know.'

'Thanks, Alexx,' he said and then he left.

'Got anything on those bullets yet, Calleigh?' Horatio asked.

'I fired some test rounds from the gun we found,' Calleigh said. 'You know it's Ryan's, right?'

He nodded.

'I compared them to the bullets Ryan's doctors gave us after surgery.'

'Standard procedure.'

'I thought originally that Ryan had got off a couple of shots,' she said. 'But the bullets I tested were a match to the bullets in Ryan.'

'He was shot with his own gun.'

'Weapon of opportunity,' she said. 'Killer might have been acting on impulse, more than likely from what we know about him, and he panicked. Followed Ryan, knocked him out, took his gun. Shot him with it. It's wiped clean, too. No useable prints.'

'Then this case just got harder. We might not be able to match our shooter with this weapon.'

'We're relying on the DNA Eric got off of Ryan,' she said.

Horatio nodded. 'Let's hope it's enough to nail him, with the evidence we got out of Ryan's car.'

'I think we'll have a pretty good case if we can find the guy,' Calleigh agreed.

'Tripp is still working on that,' he said. 'I think our Mr Tyler has gone into hiding, though. We might have some trouble finding him.'