Cassandra - as always, thanks for the R&R! Sorry to leave you waiting for so long, but I'm going to post two chapters in an attempt to make it up to you :p
Daynaa - again, thanks for the R&R. Yeah, some things never change.
Anna - yeah, I suppose it would seem like that. Not quite my intention, but never mind. The next to chapters are to kinda explain why she seems like that - her past. It seems it's needed.
The gunshot was followed almost at the same second by the two-way mirror exploding into pieces, out into the room. As the glass exploded, both Durrell fired his own gun, and Cheryl and Nick drew their own weapons and opened fire on Durrell. One of them hit him in the chest, and he fell to the ground. As Cheryl ran over, her gun still aimed at him and kicked his gun out of his hand, the door behind flew open and several officers, led by Sofia filed into the room.
Cheryl dropped to her knees and felt for a pulse. He was dead. Two hands placed themselves on her shoulder and pulled her to her feet and led her out of the room.
'Cheryl, are you alright?' Said Catherine, the owner of the hands.
Cheryl nodded and looked down at her hands. The shakes had set in. She looked up, and over at Nick, who was looking back at her, looking just as shaken. His eyes dropped to her stomach, and he shook Warrick off who had his hands on his shoulders.
'Cheryl, you've been hit.' Said Nick, as he hurried over.
Cheryl looked down at the red stain on her white top. 'No, that's not my blood.' She told him.
'Then why is the stain getting bigger?'
Cheryl looked back down at her top to witness a drop of blood fall to the ground. She lifted the top up, and found a small hole in her stomach. 'Well, that's not good.' She muttered, feeling suddenly light-headed. She was vaguely aware of someone shouting for a paramedic as she passed out.
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When Cheryl came around, she was lying down on a bed, and feeling like she had just been shot, which, she remembered, she had. Having been shot four times now, she would have thought she would have been accustomed to the pain. But she wasn't.
As she opened her eyes and was assaulted by the obnoxiously bright lights, she could hear voices.
'Hey, guys, she waking up.'
She ignored the further voices coming from the people in her room, and tried to sit up. A pain erupted in her side as she shifted position and she fell back down, crying out in pain.
'Cheryl, you've just had surgery. Don't try to move so much.' Cheryl ignored Nick and raised her arms in the air, her eyes urgently checking for any form of IV.
'Why aren't I a human pin cushion?' She managed to croak.
'You can thank your uncle,' said Catherine. 'He's your emergency contact. When we contacted him, he expressly told us that under no circumstances what-so-ever, were you to wake up with a needle in your arm.'
Cheryl smiled weakly and accepted a glass of water Nick was offering her. She took a sip, and with his help, manoeuvred the bed so she was sat more upright. 'He's coming here, isn't he?'
Catherine shrugged. 'He didn't say. What he did say, was something along the lines of, please let her know, as soon as she wakes up, that I am the first in a long line of people here, that will make her wish she hadn't woken up.'
Cheryl groaned and sank back into the pillows. 'Yeah, he's coming here.'
'Ah, I see my patient is alive, good afternoon, Detective Carter.' Said The doctor as he walked into the room and over to Cheryl. 'We took the bullet out during surgery. You are a very lucky young lady. The bullet missed every organ and major arteries.'
'Lucky?' She exclaimed, as the doctor checked her pulse and other vitals, 'I was shot. Again! That's not exactly lucky, is it?' The doctor just smiled at her, filled in her chart, and left.
'What you did was stupid. You nearly died!' Said Greg, suddenly.
Cheryl gaped at him, taken back by his sudden angry outburst. 'Sorry,' she muttered.
'Actually, what you did also nearly got Nick killed,' said Grissom quietly. He had been stood at the end of the bed so quietly that Cheryl hadn't noticed him.
She dropped her head, 'I am really sorry,' she said, equally as quietly, 'when I get angry, I don't think about my actions, or their consequences.' She looked up when she felt her hand being squeezed. She followed the arm of the owner to Nick, who was sat in a chair next to her bed.
'Don't worry about it. We're both alive. That's what matters. Besides, that's not the first time I've had the barrel of a gun pointed at me.'
'Nicky here has had a gun pointed at his head on more than one occasion,' explained Warrick, in response to Cheryl's puzzled face. 'Unlike you, he's been a bit luckier and not got shot.'
'The officer should never have left the room, anyway,' said Catherine.
Cheryl looked at them, 'how do you know what happened?'
'We were on the other side of the mirror, watching,' Catherine explained.
'Hey,' said Sara, as she entered the room, 'I hope you are feeling better, Detective Carter,' she said, as she brandished a pile of papers, 'if that really is your name.'
Cheryl, along with the rest of the room stared at the brunette, completely clueless. 'What on earth are you talking about, Sara?' Cheryl asked her.
'You know exactly what I'm talking about. There is no point in lying any longer.' Sara raised an eyebrow at her before throwing a sheet of paper on the bed. 'There is no record of a Cheryl Carter being born matching your description. The only Cheryl Carter didn't appear until eight years ago, in New York,'
'No, because before that, I was Cheryl Lincoln. My mother remarried and I took my stepfather's name.'
'Alright. So how do you explain this?' Sara threw another set of papers onto the bed. 'You have three cars in your name and when you lived in Miami, you had a very expensive apartment. The money you earn would never be able to afford that, let alone the mortgage on the house in Henderson you were going to buy, nor the million dollar property in New York, that you also seem to have.'
'You went through my finances?' Cheryl cried, 'what the hell gave you the right to do that?'
'I think you are a fraud, and I'm going to prove it.'
Cheryl looked around the room at the various occupants who were all looking uncomfortable, yet curious. 'You want to know about me?' She asked them, 'fine, here it is, every boring, irrelevant detail.
'My mother came to Florida on vacation. She met a guy and they ended up sleeping with each other. She went home, not knowing she was pregnant, and twenty four years ago tomorrow, I was born. She couldn't get in contact with my father and for twenty three years, I lived not knowing who he was. For the first five years of my life, I was home schooled. By the time I went to school, I was years ahead of the children my age, and got put forward several years. I hated school, and as a result, I did my best to get out of there as quickly as possible. By the time I was thirteen, I was accepted into Cambridge University where I did an engineering degree. Which I loved, because I was the only girl on the course, and Damnit, the only people who have really had a problem with my age were girls.' She glared at Sara, before continuing.
'Whilst doing that degree, I developed an engine, which is similar to the engine in my Hummer at the moment. My then boyfriend, Chris, stole the idea off me, and patented it, and is currently living quite well off it, and might I add, if he ever comes near me, I will shoot him. Needless to say, I wanted out of there after that. Thankfully, my mother met someone, Joseph Carter, of New York's, Carter and Landry Shipping. She moved to New York to be with him, whilst I discovered that I was still considered too young to get a job. So I went back to University, this time in the States. I went to LSU, despite the fact I could have gotten into any Ivy League Institution, which I didn't go to because at the time, after having a ₤25,000 student loan to pay off, I couldn't really afford it, despite any scholarships I could have gotten. Financially, LSU was the only place I could afford.
'One year in, and my mother married Joseph, and I took his name. it was the least I could do considering it was he who was the one financing my education. He paid off my English dept and all the fees for LSU, and even offered to pay for me to go to another University. But I was happy where I was, so I stayed, and he never questioned it, and never pushed it, because it was what I wanted to do.
'In my second year, and after joining a sorority, which was my step-fathers only request, I had teamed up with three of my sisters in a business venture. Together we created a company called Nu Woman. They handled the business side, and I took care of the science and the soap's formulas. We created a line called Clean, which is how I managed to know about the shower gel and shampoo I use and why I use it. And the only reason it's not known to most is because the CEOs of the company, my sisters, wanted to make it as exclusive as possible and only allows it to be sold from the ridiculously overpriced department stores. Or direct from the factory website. But unless you know to look for it, you won't find it. Which I am still trying to get them to change their minds about, but apparently that's not my department. Which, frankly doesn't really bother me, and I am quite happy to be left to the science and formulas of the soap. It keeps me in the back out of the way, and besides, I don't really need any more money.
'When I was in my last year, my step-father was killed in a car-jacking gone wrong. By the time I had finished that degree, nineteen was still considered young, and I still didn't know what I wanted to do. I had enough money from Nu Woman and the second engine I patented for me to live off comfortably, and my step-father had left my mother everything that she need not ever work again. I decided that I wanted to be closer to my mother, who was still living in New York, so I moved there and joined the force.
'I was there for two years, working with the same partner, who is an arrogant ass, I might add, but he was my partner. And I took a bullet for him, on my first day, whilst killing the guy who shot me. After that, me and him spent two years getting to the bottom of that shooting – it was a gang thing, and not only was it the first time I shot someone, it was the first time I encountered a dead body. He was seven.' Cheryl grew silent, and started picking imaginary fluff off her sheets. She sighed, then continued, still picking at the sheets.
'Then 9/11 happened. And my mum was killed. She wasn't on a plane, or in one of the towers. She just happened to be in a coffee shop when the towers came tumbling down on it. I stuck around for a while, long enough to arrest the gang member who killed the kid, but after the detective on the case failed to document the evidence properly, and the kid walked, I knew I had to get out of there.
'Despite the fact I am a trustee child, with enough money that I will never have to even think about work again, and could probably afford to buy a small island, I realised that I could never do that because it's not the kind of person I am: I would get bored. I had spent all my time working in one way or another, and hell, had only just turned old enough to legally drink. So I got in touch with an old professor at Cambridge and he got me into forensics. I live in London for two years, where in the entire time there, I had a grand total of eight days off. I lived and breathed work. By the time I got the job in Miami, I was a level 3.
'On my first day there, I was shot saving a colleague, and on the same day I found out the man my mother slept with all those years ago was my boss' dead brother, and suddenly I found out I had a whole new family, including a half sister, and a half brother who don't even know about each other, let alone me. Whilst the half-sister, and her mother, quite happily welcomed me into the family, Horatio and I decided that my half-brother, Raymond Jr, and his mom, my father's widow, couldn't find out about me, and we let them come to the conclusion I was Horatio's daughter, to protect them.
'I'd been there about a month when we all went out one night, which, believe it or not, was my first night out in about three years. And as luck would have it, some muppet decided it would be a good idea to open fire in the club to try and get revenge on the guy who had raped her girlfriend, and the same guy who was also, conveniently, talking to me. We found out that the guy, who had raped the girl, was also supplying fake ID's. Which is where the FBI come into the story that is my life. As I was the only one who could unsurprisingly pass for a minor, I ended up going undercover, which is when I died my hair from red-brown, to red-blonde, in the hopes he wouldn't recognise me. He didn't, but he was working with the barman, who was spiking drinks with Rohypnol. I didn't get raped, or anything. Thankfully, the rest of the team arrested him before that could happen, but after that I decided to keep my hair blonde. And it helped secure the idea in Yelina's, my step-mother, I guess, in her head, that I was her niece.
'The girl who opened fire in the club – she was the reason for me developing the Cocaine Procedure. Long story short, the girl who did it, covered her tracks by going straight to a gun range and shooting a few rounds, so we couldn't prove she did it, even though we all knew she had. And then, because she really pissed me off, I spent the next few months working on a procedure so that in the future should anyone ever be in the same situation, they could test and compare GSR. And that was another few months where I hardly left the lab, and had a life.
'After that, I ended up working the case with Mayor Rollin's son. Another case, where in the process, I was shot. By both the guy who had kidnapped his son, and my colleague, who I forgive, because if she hadn't, I would most definitely be dead. And that's how I ended up with this bogus level 4 being awarded to me, which I didn't want then, and still don't want now, because all it has done is brought trouble, with people like you, Sara, who already can't except me because I am twenty three and doing the same job as you. But Damnit, I worked hard for it, and if you have something else to say, then say it.' Cheryl glared at Sara, who was staring back at her.
Nick leant over and put his hand on her arm, 'Cheryl,' he muttered, 'you didn't have to do that.'
'Sara, was that necessary?' Greg cried.
Sara ignored him, 'so why is it every piece of literature, and even that DVD have some other woman in it?'
'Calleigh Duquesne?' Cheryl asked, 'because I asked her to. If you were to look up the leading ballistics experts in the world, you would find her name close to, if not at the top, of the list. And as you've already proved, people are going to take her more seriously than me, who, as we've already established, is easily mistaken for a child, or an intern. And who's going to take a child seriously when they have a very visible bullet scar on their neck?
'As I have already explained to Grissom and Warrick, the name behind it was not my first choice. I didn't know what to call it for ages, and it was saved as the Carter-Caine Procedure for the longest time. But when I sent it off to various people for them to check it and verify it, the computer had somehow changed the name to the C'caine Procedure. Or, as it sounded when read out, the Cocaine Procedure. I hate publicity, and talking in front of people, so I kept it in an attempt to keep some animosity. And, if you were to look at the papers and DVD properly, you would see that my name is all over it, and it is merely presented by, or verified by Calleigh, who, if you want to check with her, was more than happy to do it.' She pulled out her phone and flung it at Sara, 'speed dial 7.'
Sara scowled before throwing the phone back on the bed.
'Sara,' started Grissom.
'No, wait,' said Sara, 'you may have explained that, but how do you explain this?' She held up several sheets of newspaper, the top one blaring the headline, Cole Turnall's Girlfriend to Tamper with Evidence. Next was CSI Investigated as she Cheats on Star, and Cheats on Case. She dropped it on the bed and held up the next, Cheryl Carter: Detective, CSI, and Drug Addict. This was followed by, Turnall's Ex Attacks Both Medics and Reporters, finally followed by, Carter Suspended for Violent Misconduct.
So, I'm back from my Spring Break (begging my liver to forgive me) and have decided, what-the -heck, and I'm going to post a second chapter in a few moments!