Chapter 4: Twice the beauty, twice the brains, twice the trouble…

"What do you mean?" Horatio replied. He figured they had a fight and Aimee was just somewhere to get some time off from her older sister.

"Last night I had to pick up my dad, and Aimee was upset about that. When I got home I thought she was asleep so I went to bed, but when I checked this morning….Horatio her bed was still made up, she didn't sleep here last night" Calleigh couldn't hold back a sob.

Only one day, one single day, and again she had failed in protecting her little sister. She wondered if her sister would ever forgive her for that.

"Stay there, I will come over. I'm sure she is somewhere" Horatio said, trying to calm Calleigh down. Normally they would wait 24 hours before starting to investigate, but since Aimee was one of their own, and the woman had nowhere else to go, he did get a bit worried.

Within 10 minutes Horatio was in Calleigh's apartment. He was amazed at how good Calleigh was at keeping her composure, around him she was all professional. But he could see she was still holding back her tears.

"I'm a bad sister, I don't even know where to look" Calleigh sighed.

"You're not a bad sister Calleigh. She must be somewhere" Horatio put his hand on Calleigh's shoulder. "We will find her, don't worry" he said "I'm sure she will be at the lab on time, she is very dedicated to her work"

Calleigh wanted to believe him, but something just felt wrong. Horatio told her they should just go to work and they would see Aimee there.

When they arrived at work Calleigh walked straight to her old lab to see if her sister was there. Her heart sank when she saw the lab was empty. Aimee wasn't there, and she hadn't been here either.

When she walked into Horatio's office, her bad feelings were confirmed. Horatio was reading a letter and he looked worried. When he looked up and saw her, he sighed and asked her to close the door.

All morning she was able to hold back her tears. But one tear managed to escape and was rolling over her cheek when she read the letter Horatio had received earlier. She found it hard to breathe.

"Ryan, that bastard" Calleigh wanted to shout, but her voice was merely a whisper.

Horatio looked at her. "What did you say?" he asked. He couldn't believe his ears, did he just hear her blame Ryan?

"Ryan told that reporter about Aimee, now the whole world knows she works here. That's why they took her!" Calleigh almost shouted. She totally had lost control over herself. Not only had she failed to protect her sister, now her sister was taken away from her and she hadn't even noticed until the morning.

"You are overreacting Calleigh" Horatio said calmly "Calm down"

"Calm down? Calm down? My sister is kidnapped" Calleigh said, she could feel she was losing her calm.

"I think it is best you go home. I will personally make sure Aimee gets back and I will personally keep you updated" Horatio said, placing his hand on hers.

"No, I want to help" then blonde said with a determined voice.

Horatio knew there was no arguing with Calleigh when she was like this.

Calleigh took the letter with her, not that she needed anything to remind her of the text that was written on it, but she wanted to process it. The text was echoing over and over in her head.

We've got the new bullet girl. Hand over the evidence of last week's gang shooting, and she will be back safe and sound. Instructions will follow.

She failed her sister once already, and now she was going to do everything in her power to get her sister back again. She couldn't lose her again.

Aimee woke up with a pounding headache, and also her ribs were hurting, she found it hard to breathe. She wanted to rub her head but that was impossible, her hands were tied. She fluttered her eyelids to try to adjust to the dark room she was in. When she looked around and didn't notice anything familiar it struck her. Suddenly her memory seemed to come back to her. She was abducted!

Suddenly someone turned the lights on. Aimee blinked a few times to adjust to the light. She took a quick glance at the room, it was a small room, and she was lying on a mattress that looked like it came straight from a garbage can. Next to the door there was a big window, she could see two men in the hallway behind the window, they were talking. Aimee focused real hard on their lips.

"Spanish" she mumbled. The two men were speaking Spanish. One of the guys came in, he spoke to her in broken English. Aimee replied to him in Spanish, which seemed to surprise the guy. That was until she started calling him names, which was also the last she remembered.

Calleigh was rushing through the halls of the Miami Dade Crime Lab, looking for Ryan. She was going to tell him what he had done by not keeping his mouth shut. She found Ryan in one of the trace labs. She slammed the door behind her, making Ryan look up at her.

"You" Calleigh hissed she walked over to him slamming her hands on the table he was working at.

"What?" Ryan wondered what he had done now.

"If you had kept your mouth SHUT, Aimee would still be here, you bastard" she shouted at him.

"What?" Ryan asked again. He didn't know what Calleigh was talking about.

Calleigh got so angry. She got up and pinned Ryan to the wall.

"It's your fault they took her! If you hadn't told that reporter girlfriend of yours about her, no one would have known she was my sister, no one would have known she was working at the lab" she shouted into his face.

Ryan was surprised by the force Calleigh used against him. He never thought the blonde CSI was so strong. He was intimidated by her, he had never expected her to be like this. He had never expected the blonde CSI with the honey sweet voice to be so rough.

"I didn't.."

"Shut up Ryan" Calleigh shouted, pushing him even harder against the wall.

Before she could continue her rant, Calleigh felt herself being pulled away from Ryan.

"Whoa there" She heard Delko tell her while he pulled her away to the other side of the lab.

"Give me one minute" Calleigh hissed "just one minute with him alone and I'll…"

"I don't think so" Horatio's calm voice said.

"You" the supervisor continued "are going home"

Calleigh opened her mouth to object but she didn't get a chance to speak.

"You are not helping Calleigh. I want you to go home" Horatio said.

Delko loosened his grip on Calleigh's arms, hoping she was calmed down now.

When Aimee woke up again she felt like she had been sleeping on a bed of nails. All the bones in her body hurt, even in places she didn't even know she had bones. She slowly opened her eyes and got reminded of her situation. She tried to sit up, but fell back on the mattress right away from the nausea that hit her.

"Whoa, bad idea" she mumbled to herself. She seemed to have a lot of bad ideas lately. What idiot in their right mind had the nerve to call their abductor an asshole? Aimee grinned to herself, it was just so her. Aimee Hayes and her big mouth.

The grin quickly changed into a wince of pain, her whole body was aching. She was in a lot of pain, it almost made her pass out. Aimee closed her eyes and tried to focus on other things. Calleigh. Her sister must be worried about her. Oh God, she hoped her older sister knew she didn't just run away and was looking for her now.

A sudden noise startled her. The door to the room she was held in opened and a man walked in. It was the same man who had beaten her up earlier.

"Painkillers please" Aimee pleaded. She repeated the same thing in Spanish because she wasn't sure if this knucklehead understood English properly.

The man, who looked like he was from South-America, laughed at Aimee. His breath smelled like alcohol, which made the blonde feel sick.

"No pain, no gain" the man said in his broken English while he put a plate with food next to the mattress Aimee was on.

Before the man left, he kicked Aimee in the side once more. The pain flashed through her like lightning. She closed her eyes and all she could see was black.

Calleigh sat in Horatio's office, staring straight ahead. The expression on her face was blank, nothing like Horatio had ever seen before.

"You want way out of line" Horatio said to the blonde CSI. He knew he wasn't really getting to her but it was protocol. And since their team was being watched closely, he needed to follow protocol.

"You attacked a co-worker for no reason" the older man continued.

That seemed to snap Calleigh out of whatever she was thinking about.

"no reason" she hissed "NO reason?" She got up and leaned over her boss' desk "HE tells his reporter girlfriend about EVERYTHING going on here! If he had kept his mouth shut, they wouldn't have known about Aimee. Do I need to remind you that the life of one of your employees, MY sister, is in danger….if she isn't dead already!" Calleigh shouted with tears in her eyes. She couldn't believe no one else saw it was Ryan who caused all this.

"Her captors want us to turn over evidence Horatio, if Ryan had kept his mouth shut, no one would have known Aimee was the ballistics expert on the case"

"Calm down Calleigh. We are doing everything we can to get her back. The whole lab has finding her as their number one priority. I will talk to Ryan and YOU are going home" Horatio calmly said before nodding to the police officer standing outside his office.

"This officer is going to take you home. He will be posting outside your house to make sure you are safe"

Calleigh looked at her boss. In a way she knew he was right, but she felt so damn responsible for what had happened to her sister.

"I will talk to Ryan. You go with this officer now" her boss continued.

Calleigh sighed and decided to do what her boss told her. She knew she had crossed the line and being suspended was the last thing she wanted.

"Horatio" she said softly before leaving his office.

The man nodded at her "I know Calleigh" she said as if he could read her mind "It's ok. I promise I will keep you posted" He smiled at the blonde CSI, hoping that would ease her mind a little.

Calleigh felt embarrassed when she followed the police officer outside. Soon everyone would know what she had done to Ryan and she would get those looks again. Just like yesterday when she came walking in with her sister.

When Calleigh got home, she closed the curtains and put on her pyjamas. She curled up on the couch, hugging a pillow. She didn't know what to do, and Calleigh Duquesne ALWAYS knows what do to. But that was until her sister came back into her life.

She had been staring at the phone in her hand for a while now. She was crying and still hugging the pillow, if she would have been 16 everyone would have thought she was suffering from a broken heart.

Then she decided to do it. In any other situation she would never even have thought about it but this was different. She held the phone to her ear after dialling the number and waited for a response on the other side of the line.

"Daddy?" she said with a voice she didn't even recognize herself. Before she could say any more she started sobbing uncontrollably.