Driving out to New Orleans, Gibbs called in a favor from Horatio and Renee. Telling his friends that there was a human trafficker and drug smuggler who had evaded capture by using the bayou to disappear in.
The other police and federal canines have been unable to follow the trail over the water. Gibbs, however, knew that Echo could track over water since she had done it over the vast Florida Everglades on multiple cases.
Gibbs had told Pride that he knew the only person who would be able to track the suspect over the water. Pride was not so sure about what Gibbs had told him about Renee
Pride thought to himself, "No one could survive what this woman has gone through." However, when he read both her MDPD personnel file and her unredacted military file, he was convinced.
Asking several NOPD mounted officers about the name of the person who trained their horses, the answer was the same from both officers.
"Marine Staff Sergeant Renee Kerrigan trained these mounts along with four other mounts. Her horses are often sold between different agencies. We had to fight other officers to get our hands on one of her horses. Why do you ask Pride."
"Apparently Sergeant Kerrigan is coming with her police canine from Miami to help us track that human trafficker and drug smuggler. You know the one that has been terrorizing the area."
When the officers heard that they begged to help with the case, they wanted to meet this officer. Renee was a legend from where the mounted officers were concerned.
Pride could use all the help that he could get, but Gibbs had told him about the prices that Renee had on her head, so he told the over-eager officers that he would get back to them when he found out more information.
Finally, arriving at the NCIS office, Renee was almost completely unable to breathe, but she would never say anything to her brother. Renee and Horatio meet Pride at the NCIS field office to discuss the ongoing case.
With Pride accompanying them to the NCIS coroner Dr. Loretta Wade's office, they all walked in and introduced themselves to each other.
Renee had brought Echo inside to get a smell of the victim so the dog could track where the victim had been to find out where he was killed, hopefully.
The victim was identified as NAVY Commander Jeff Mancini. While at the morgue, Renee felt a strange tightening around her chest, but she thought nothing of it. She was still taking short, shallow breaths since she had been thrown by her friend's horse.
About five minutes later, during the conversation, Renee had started to feel lightheaded, so she finally tells her brother and the two new friends, "I can't breathe... I can't..." she then promptly dropped straight onto the floor, knocking the tray of Loretta's over, causing all of her autopsy tools to go flying. Horatio and Pride quickly get to Renee's side.
Pride and Horatio turn her over to face them since she had landed on her stomach.
"Nae... Nae... Sweetheart come on open your eyes," Horatio pleads with his sister.
While Horatio begged his sister to wake up, Pride checks her for a Carotid pulse. Placing his index finger and middle finger over her Carotid Artery, he feels for a heartbeat.
Gently placing his hand on Horatio's shoulder, he shakes his head no when Horatio looks at him with pleading eyes.
The two of them quickly pick her up and lay her down on an empty table for Dr. Wade to cut off Renee's shirt to allow better access when the doctor attempted to restart Renee's heart using the portable defibrillator that was in the morgue.
After several failed attempts, Dr. Wade has to tell Horatio that his sister was dead.
Horatio was not willing to accept that since his sister had been declared dead before but fought her way back to the land of the living. He asked for some alone time with his sister's body to say goodbye.
When he was alone with his sister, he grabbed a scalpel from Dr. Wade's autopsy tray. Quickly he hollowed out a pen, so it was just a tube. He was going to try something he had seen one of the paramedics do to his sister when she was shot in the lungs by a sniper a few months before.
He wordlessly makes a deep incision between his sister's second and third ribs. The cut was deep enough to allow him to put the hollowed out pen in her chest cavity. At that precise moment, before he has a chance to get the pen into the incision that he had just made Dr. Wade and Pride walk in.
Seeing someone cutting into one of her patients, Dr. Wade tells Pride, " Get that man away from my body. He's probably not even related. Why else would someone cut into my dead body."
With Pride trying desperately to pull him away, Horatio barely manages to put the hollowed out pen into the incision. When he does, the whole room clearly hears a loud hiss of air.
Hearing the trapped air escaping, Dr. Wade quickly grabs the defibrillator to shock Renee's heart. After one shock at two hundred fifty joules, her heart quickly responded by beating on its own.
When someone has a collapsed lung air escapes the lung. Sometimes it escapes from a hole or a tear in the lung tissue. In Renee's case, it was a microscopic tear that resulted in a slow leak.
The escaping air is trapped in the space around the lung in the chest cavity. Eventually, the pressure that the trapped air causes will collapse the other lung and finally crush the heart.
When Horatio put the hollowed out pen in the incision, it allowed the trapped air an escape route allowing her lungs and heart to function relatively normally.
Quietly Dr. Wade asked Horatio how he knew Renee had a collapsed lung. He responded quietly and quickly.
"I didn't know for sure, but my sister has a long of history of lung injuries. She was shot in the lung a few months ago and suffered from a collapsed lung. I had noticed that her clothes were dirtier when she got back from her horseback ride, but she didn't tell me why, so I just thought maybe she fell and hit her chest and lungs. She would never tell me she got hurt. I guess that she did."
Wade drives Horatio and Renee to the hospital. The pen was only going to work for a little bit of time. Renee needed to have the damage to her lungs repaired. She stayed at the hospital for a few days.
When Renee was admitted to the hospital, she talked to her doctor privately.
"Five and a half hours ago, I was thrown from my friend's horse and landed hard into a sharp rock. Could that have been when I collapsed my lung."
"Can it have taken five and a half hours for both lungs to collapse."
"I was sitting in the car having a hard time breathing. I went to NCIS HQ then the morgue. About five minutes after we got there, I felt a tightening in my chest. Five minutes after that, I felt light-headed. The last thing I remember was telling my brother that I can't breathe."
The doctor quickly answered his patient's questions. "Your lung received a micro tear when you fell. It took five and a half hours for the pressure to build to a point where it collapsed your left lung. That was when you felt a tightening in your chest. That was your left lung collapsing. Your right lung collapsed five minutes after your left one did. As your right lung collapsed, it also crushed your heart. You're lucky that your brother tried to do what he saw another doctor do to you. You are lucky that he noticed your clothes were dirtier when you got back from your trail ride."
With Renee in the hospital, the team of NCIS officers and. Horatio, with the help of Pride and his team needed to work the case without her assistance. Patton was a big help tracing the various cell phone towers that the victim's phone had pinged off of in the time around his death.
Renee was quickly released from the hospital to return to the case. She was, however, advised not to let her heart rate or her breathing get elevated for about two weeks.
The doctors knew Renee since the base that she was stationed at when she was stateside between her five tours of duty was near New Orleans. Renee was known all around the area as an excellent horse and canine trainer.
The paint horse that saved her life was sold from the Border Patrol to the New Orleans Mounted Division. When she was sent back to the states, she was reunited with both Charlie and Sierra.
Charlie was given to her since the dog would not listen to anyone else. Renee tried hard to get the dog bonded to a new handler, but the dog refused to listen to anyone but her. When Renee was released from the Marines, Charlie was allowed to retire.
The pair then transferred to the Border Patrol to keep the homeland safe. Renee and Charlie were unstoppable, so the drug cartels wanted them both dead. Renee still had active hits out on her since she joined the Marines in the first place.