Horatio swallowed to try to control his feelings of nausea, but it wasn't helping much. He closed his eyes, and leaned against the bathroom wall. Why did everyone he cared about have to be taken from him like this? He had scrubbed his hands ten times now, and still thought he could see traces of her blood there. He was exhausted – it had been seventeen hours since the shooting, but he couldn't go home.

Alexx had rung him twice, once to let him know Frankie was being rushed into emergency surgery and again four hours later to tell him she had pulled through, losing a kidney along the way. She was in intensive care, being kept heavily sedated to aid the healing process.

He had ordered Eric and Ryan to go home to get some rest, but there would be no rest for him until he knew they had the people responsible. He suspected Eric would be going to the hospital, despite his orders to get some sleep, and hoped he would come in tomorrow with some good news.

Sighing, he washed his hands again and headed back to the trace lab, hoping for a hit on the tire treads. He was certain that the Fuentes brothers were behind the attack, but they had disappeared along with their bike and gun. Guards were outside Frankie's room, heavily armed and under specific orders to shoot anyone they thought looked suspicious. Horatio was beyond caring about rules now; he just wanted to make sure this wouldn't happen again.

This was all his fault. He should have been more insistent about her taking this threat seriously. He should never have left her alone for a second. He winced as he remembered her words: 'stay away from me'. He should have been there for her. From the moment he met her, he should have always been there for her. His Chessie. Except that she wasn't his, he had ruined any chance they had together by his stubbornness.

The machine beeped unexpectedly. They had a hit on the tire tread. Well, Horatio thought tiredly, it was a start.


Alexx and Calleigh had spent much of that long night's vigil comparing stories. Calleigh was all for hitting Horatio repeatedly with something heavy, but Alexx managed to calm her down. Still, the ballistics expert was fuming when she went into CSI the next day. She fully intended on yelling at Horatio for breaking her friend's heart like that, but when she saw him, her words died in her throat.

Horatio looked like he had aged ten years in a day. Still in the same clothes as yesterday, it was clear he hadn't been home. Calleigh had always thought of Horatio as the strongest person she had ever met, but she had never seen anyone look as vulnerable as he did, standing with his attention fixed on the crime scene photos.His sharp intellect was still working though, and she didn't have the heart to tell him to go home. Lord knows, they would catch the perps far quicker with Horatio on the case.

Eric and Ryan joined her and they walked in together. Horatio didn't look around.

"Calleigh, run the bullets that they pulled out of Frankie please. Eric, we got a hit on the tire tread: it's from a Ducati 350, brand new. Take Ryan and go to every dealer in Miami. I want to know where and when the Fuentes brothers bought their bike, and anything else you can find." His hyper-focused voice scared them with its intensity.

"What are you going to do H?"

"I am going to talk to everyone that the Fuentes brothers knew, and then I'm going to find the scum that hurt her." The too-controlled fury in his voice worried the hell out Calleigh and she shared a worried look with Eric. Horatio swept out of the room, the picture of determination.

"I hope someone else finds them before he does," Ryan murmured. "Otherwise we might have another crime scene to process."