Disclaimer: I am not Anthony Zuiker, Ann Donahue or Carol Mendelsohn. All the characters of CSI: NY are not mine…I'm just borrowing them for a little bit. I promise that I will put them back, exactly the way I found them when I'm done….Oh, Cory Reid is mine and I will take credit for anything she does. :)

Chapter 5.

Headaches and Hangovers

Cory woke up at 8am and groaned when she looked at her clock. My one day to sleep in and I wake up early. Why?

As she became more aware of her surroundings she remembered the previous night. She looked down at herself, realizing that she had slept in her clothes. She rubbed a hand over her face and decided to take a long, hot shower.

It was only when she was washing her hair that she remembered that Danny was asleep in her living room. "Shit. I'd better finish my shower fast," she said out loud. Quickly she finished her shower and dressed in a pair of workout pants and a baggy shirt.

She walked into the living room and found that Danny was still asleep. She checked to make sure he was still alive and noticed that the bucket she had set by him was still empty.

He's gone to have one Hell of a hangover! Smiling, she decided to make breakfast.

The smell of bacon and eggs teased Danny out of his slumber. "Where am I?" Danny tried to remember what happened the previous night. He remembered making the bet with Cory on who could hold their liquor better. The last thing he remembered clearly was daring Cory to do Karaoke.

He tried to open his eyes but quickly shut them after the bright light blinded him. He groaned as the throbbing in his head got worse. He knew he was not in his bed or from the feel of it any bed.

Cory heard him groan and smiled. Reaching into the cabinet she pulled out her bottle of ibuprofen and got two tablets and a glass of water. Walking into the living room she saw Danny trying to sit up.

"Hey Messer," she said softly knowing that loud noises would only aggravate his headache even more.

"Cory? Where am I?"

"You're at my apartment. We kinda decided last night that you were too drunk to go home and since everyone else had to work today besides us, Flack and I brought you here so I can take you back to your car today."

She walked over to him. "Here take these. It'll help."

Danny opened his eyes and saw that she was offering him pain medicine and a glass of water. Gratefully he accepted the pills and swallowed them.

Cory looked at him and wondered what he remembered. "What's the last thing that you remember?"

Danny shook his head carefully, not liking how composed and apparently lacking a hangover she was. "I remember daring you to sing Karaoke and then you daring me to take a shot. What the hell was in that shot anyway?"

Cory looked at him sheepishly. "It had Jagermeister, Bicardi 151 and Goldschlager. Look. Why don't you go grab a shower and I'll finish getting breakfast ready."

"Ok."

"Oh, do you want pancakes or hash browns?"

Danny looked at her in surprise. He'd never had a woman cook him breakfast before and he hadn't even slept with her. "Um…Surprise me?" With that he found his way into her bathroom and got into the shower.

Cory saw the look of surprise he gave her at her question. It looked like no one had ever made him breakfast before. Smiling she went back into the kitchen and decided to make both pancakes and hash browns for him.

By the time Danny had depleted the hot water he was beginning to feel a little better. His stomach was still a little queasy and he really wanted a hot cup of coffee. He looked around the bathroom as he was drying off. He saw the typical female bathroom. All sorts of lotions and make up were lying around. This feels really weird.

He walked back into the living room and at the smell of food, his stomach grumbled loudly.

Cory looked up and saw him enter the living room. "Food's almost ready, Messer."

He accepted the cup of coffee while she continued to putter around the kitchen. He looked at the refrigerator and noticed some pictures. Curious, he decided to go look at them.

Most of the pictures included Cory and what was probably her family. One picture stood out, however. It was of a younger looking Cory with a good-looking man holding her in his arms. "Who's this?"

Cory looked up and saw that Danny was looking at her pictures. Danny didn't see the brief shadow crossed her face as she saw the picture he was looking at. "An old boyfriend." She left it at that. "Breakfast is ready."

Danny sat at the table while Cory began putting the food out. He saw scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, hash browns and toast. "This is what you consider breakfast? Some spread."

Cory smiled. "It's my signature hangover cure breakfast. I make it for all my friends that crash on my couch because they are too drunk to drive."

Danny looked at her realizing she was not acting like she had a hangover. "Don't you have a hangover too?

Cory laughed. "Nah. I don't get hangovers. So I just try to help those poor souls that do."

Danny shook his head. He knew that she'd had as much to drink has he did and she wasn't feeling any effects. He watched as she put a glass of orange juice down.

"How's your head feeling? Did the ibuprofen work?"

"It's not pounding quite as much now. Thanks."

Both started to eat their breakfast. Cory had just sat down when her cell phone rang. "Reid. Oh, hey Mac. Yeah, he's awake. Okay. We'll be there in about an hour."

She turned to Danny and said, "Mac thinks he has a lead on the human slave case. He wants us to meet him and Flack at the lab."

Both finished their breakfast quickly. Cory got up from the table. "I have to go get ready."

Cory got dressed quickly in a pair of black slacks and a simple white button down shirt. She pulled her hair out of the loose bun she had it in and securely pinned it back into its normal bun.

As she walked out of her bedroom she called to Danny, "I'm ready to go. You wanna stop by Ray's and pick up your car?"

"Nah. I'll pick it up later."

Cory grabbed her laptop and they walked out of the apartment.

--

"What did you find, Mac?" Cory asked as she and Danny walked into the lab. Danny winced a little under the bright lights.

"The women from the warehouse gave some descriptions of their captors. Enough for a sketch. I'm hoping that you will be able to help identify the men that were holding them."

"Sure." Cory got her laptop out and quickly pulled up a file. She connected with the lab computer in order to put the pictures up on the large monitor so everyone could see. "Let me see the first sketch."

Mac pulled the sketches out of a folder. He showed her the first one and she began scanning the database to see if she could match a photo to the sketch. "Did the women mention any distinguishing tattoos?"

"On this one, one of the women mentioned a tattoo of a woman."

Cory pursed her lips in thought. "He looks like Jesse Valdez, but Jesse doesn't have any tats. Let me see…" Cory started scanning through pictures and stopped on one. "Here. Jesus Valdez, Jesse's brother. He looks like the sketch and he does have a tattoo of a woman on his left shoulder. Were his prints at the scene?"

Cory looked at Danny since he was the one that processed the fingerprints. He seemed a little distracted. "Messer. Earth to Messer?"

Danny looked up. "What? Oh, sorry. I'm just not firing on all cylinders right now. What was your question?"

Cory rolled her eyes. "Did you find any prints for a Jesus Valdez at the scene?"

Danny went to pick up another folder. "Yeah. Right here. One Jesus Valdez's prints were found on the door to the warehouse, but no where in the area were the women were kept. All the prints found where the women were kept were not in AFIS."

"If you leave me the sketches, I'll go through my database and see if I can match them to any unknown people in the surveillance photos."

Mac tried to take the investigation in a different direction. "What do we know about the warehouse? Cory, you have any insight on that?"

Cory thought for a minute. "Not really. Mala Suerte did not seem to be using it, so I had not fully looked into yet. Give me a couple of hours and I'll dig up what I have."

Cory sat down in front of her laptop and quickly started to pull up some data. Mac decided to go check some more things out while Danny went in search of coffee.

A couple of hours had passed before Cory began to get more of an idea of what the warehouse had been used for. She left her laptop and went in search of Mac. The first place she went was the break room. She found Danny there, fast asleep on the couch. Deciding not to disturb him, she went to Mac's office.

"Hey Mac. I found some things that are interesting about the warehouse."

Mac looked up and her. "Continue."

"It seems like the warehouse is owned by the Martinez Brothers. We have suspected them of being involved with Mala Suerte, but haven't gotten any evidence to back that up. I had to wade through a lot of dummy company names before I got to theirs."

"The Martinez Brothers?"

"Yeah. Jose, Gabriel and Hector. They emigrated from Venezuela about 10 years ago. For the most part they look to be on the up and up. Although when I was perusing their tax records, I found some income that could not be explained. I couldn't link it to Mala Suerte at that time, so it went to a different team to investigate. I get in touch with the SAIC and see what the outcome of the case was." Cory looked resigned.

Mac tried to be encouraging. "That will at least give us a place to start. How 'bout I get all the pictures of known Mala Suerte and see if the women recognize anyone?"

Cory nodded. "I had thought about that. It could give us a good starting place. Maybe the women can give us more of a direction."

Mac decided to change topics. "So how hung over was Danny this morning?"

Cory smiled. "Pretty bad. Looked like he had a jackhammer in his head trying to get out. I gave him some ibuprofen and breakfast, so hopefully that helped. He's crashed out on the couch in the break room, though."

Mac smiled a little smile at that and pulled an envelope out of his inside pocket. "Oh, by the way, here is your money from last night. I realized that I forgot to give it to you after you guys left." Mac handed her the envelope with the bet money in it.

"Thanks. I'll go back and upload the files with photos of the known members of Mala Suerte to the lab computer. A lot of them are just surveillance photos and there are some pictures that we don't have names for the people in them." Cory accepted the envelope and turned to go out of the office.

Back at her laptop, she pulled up all the JPEG files that she had for Mala Suerte. She started downloading them to the lab computer. Since there were nearly 1000 images she knew it would take a while to complete the download.

As she was watching the progress of the download she went over the case in her mind. She always did this when the case was going slow. It gave her a chance to go over the fine details and try to figure if she missed something.

She realized that every data disk she had gotten in the past 2 years had data missing. Who can the mole be? There must be one…Mala Suerte can't just know which of the business' we are going to be raiding without inside information.

When the computer finished downloading the pictures it beeped, breaking Cory out of her thoughts.

Mac walked into the lab. "Any progress?"

"I just uploaded all of the surveillance photos we have of Mala Suerte. You should be able to print them out and show them to the women."

Mac looked at her thoughtfully. "Do you want be involved with interrogation?"

Cory nodded her head. "I'll print off the pictures right now. We can go down to PD and show them the pictures."

--

Cory walked into the interrogation room. She had pictures of all known Mala Suerte members in a folder. She nodded to the interpreter and pulled out the pictures.

"Ladies, I'd like you to look at these pictures and tell me if any of the men are part of the group that held you. Please look very carefully at the photos."

The interpreter repeated the question in Spanish. Cory saw the women look eagerly at the photos.

One of the women, a woman with hair almost completely down her back, pointed to a photo. "Him," she said in English and then looked at the translator to go into more detail.

"He is the one that picked me up from the airport. He brought me to that horrible place, forced me to do unspeakable acts and then beat me when I complained," the translator said.

Cory stood up at that. She walked over to the picture that the woman had pointed to. She nodded her head to let the woman know that she understood what she was saying. "Are there anymore men her that you recognize?"

The woman nodded eagerly, hoping to catch the men that had dishonored them. Over the next hour the group of women pointed out four other men from the surveillance photos. All four of them were suspected, but not confirmed, members of Mala Suerte.

Cory rose to thank the women for their help. She pulled out one last photo and asked all of them, "Did you ever see this man?"

All of the women looked carefully at the photograph, all answered negatively. They did not know the man in the photo. "Thank you for your time."

As she walked out of the room, she saw Mac and Danny standing there. She gave them the photos of the five men that the women had identified as their captors and shook her head when Mac mouthed, Carlos Ortiz?

"No. There's not one damn shred of evidence to prove that he was there. None of the women recognized him and there is no physical evidence to prove it either. Damn it!! We are so close, but yet so far." Cory started pacing in her anger.

Mac looked at Cory and understood her frustration. He felt like that on the DJ Pratt case. He knew he was going to close the case, but it was still frustrating to have him walking the streets free to continue to terrorize women.

"Cory," he said trying to give her some support. "I know that you will solve the case and put the bastard behind bars like he deserves. It just may take some more time. I know how difficult it is have to let someone walk the streets with you knowing that they are guilty. You will solve the case."

Cory seemed a little happier at the vote of confidence. "Thanks, Mac. I needed that."

"Anytime. Why don't you go on home and try to relax. That helps me take my mind off of things and you might come up with another plan of attack. I'll take Danny to his car."

"Really?" At Mac's nod yes she continued, "Thanks. I'll see y'all later."

--

Danny and Lindsay worked hard at trying to identify the men in the photos that Cory had given them. So far, they had identified two of the men. Ernesto Perez and Javier Valenzuela. Danny called Flack to give him the information.

A little while later, they were still working to identify the other three men when Danny's cell rang.

"Messer."

"It's Flack. It looks like Perez and Valenzuela have skipped town. Both of their apartments were packed up and the clothes missing."

"Damn. They were the two that the women identified as being the 'couriers'. Both were responsible for picking the women up at the airport and taking them to the warehouse."

"I agree. Damn. Any ID's on the other's?"

"No. Not yet. Montana and I are still working on it, but these guys have never been in the system. We'll try, but we're pretty much at a dead end now. I hate it when cases go cold!!"

Lindsay looked up at that and nodded in agreement. Danny hung up his phone and looked at her. "Well Montana, it looks like this is one for the cold case files. Both Perez and Valenzuela have skipped town."

Both CSI's shook their heads in frustration as they cleaned up to go home.

axellia-wow...snakebite sounds like a drink i'd like to try. i've heard of a fade to purple, but i don't know if i have the guts to try it! as for the critique-thanks for noticing...i reposted the chapter after i read you're review...i forgot to preview it before i posted it. glad i could recall a night out for you!

tylerhitlongroupie52-i promise more fm radio to come...glad you like the story so far.

chili-pepper-Thanks!

pnkrckprncss-please don't keep me from letting you study! my school let in in early may so i know how hectic thost last couple of weeks are (bright side--only 7 more classes before i graduate! yeah!)

adamsgirl-i glad you like the horse names...i actually got it from the biblical sense (i was thinking of "couples" names and i figured since she is from the "bible belt" it was fitting).

screaming-poetically-wow. i'm stunned. that is the best compliment that i ever could have gotten! i promise more fm radio soon (not this chapter obviously)...i've already written the chapter about when they are starting to reveal their feelings (i think it's starts in 7 and definately gets going in 8)...so soon! i promise!