Chapter: 9
The Warrant

Horatio isn't expecting to find the suspect at the trailer, but when the team approached it, someone opens fire on the team.

Thankfully whoever it was that is shooting at them misses. Horatio signals to Eric that he is going to sneak around the back of the trailer. Horatio needs Eric to provide a distraction so he can flank the suspect. Eric gives his brother cover fire to allow H to approach without fear of getting shot.

Horatio gets behind the shooter and kicks in the back door taking the shooter by surprise. "Put your weapon down and put your hands up," Horatio tells the shooter.

This is immediately followed by a "Don't do it... don't do…"

Horatio is forced to shoot their only lead when the suspect attempts to shoot H and make a run for it.

Instantly Eric busts in the trailer front door and is hoping that Horatio is the one who had fired the gun and is not the one who was shot.

Horatio looks up at his brother before he says,

"They never listen."

After Natalia runs the suspect through CODIS, the team gets some unsuspected news. Horatio had shot a person by the name of Samuel Wright.

The person that Horatio shot is not who they thought he was. Samuel is, however, involved in both the kidnapping and the torture of Renee. He might not be Kolcheck; he is still guilty.

Natalia can match Samuel's DNA to the DNA that Ryan pulls off of the rope that Renee had been tied and tortured by.

Now it is two down and one to go since the person Horatio had arrested at the hospital was not one of her attackers. He was rather someone the leader had hired to clean up the mess. This case was not going to be an easy one to solve.

Walter is getting a little tired of going back and forth between the hospital and the crime lab, so Ryan takes over being the team's go-between. Horatio understands, and he does miss his co-workers, but Eric is the one that Horatio misses the most.

Since Eric is the team's leader while Horatio is out of commission, Eric can't go to the hospital. Horatio does trust his team implicitly, but he would rather be at the lab.

However, Horatio will never leave his baby sister at the hospital alone since they are all each other had. Ryan called Horatio to see if his sister is awake enough to look at some photos and try to ID her attackers from the warehouse and her house. They want to find out if her attackers at both scenes are the same or if they are different.

When Renee looks at the photo array that Ryan gives her, she inadvertently holds her breath.

Horatio asks his sister, "Do you recognize someone in the array."

Without a word, she nods yes. She is pointing out the person they had attempted to apprehend the night before at the trailer as her shooter.

She also points out someone else that is not yet on the team's radar as one of her attackers at the warehouse.

Renee tells her brother that this person she remembers trying to get her to tell them where the dogs were at the warehouse.

She had two people who were trying to get her to tell them where her canine partners were being held. She, however, would not say, and her attackers were getting very angry that they could not break her.

Her interrogators didn't know that she was a former Marine, and she was trained to withstand even the worst type of torture. There was no way that these people would be able to get her to talk.

Quietly she motions to her brother that she wants to tell him something that she doesn't want Ryan to hear about. Horatio gets close to her as she whispers in his ear. "This is the actual leader of the group," she says as she points to the second person.

The person that she is pointing at isn't yet on the team's radar. "He is the person who asked me the question as to where Echo and Charlie were the other guys would hit me when he told them to and only if he told them where to hit me."

Horatio was a little confused as to why she would whisper this? Why would she not want Ryan to hear the information?

When Horatio notices who she is pointing to, he is a little confused. That is not the leader of the Serbian Mercenaries. The first person that Renee pointed at gives the team the evidence that Horatio was praying for.

They finally have enough evidence to nail the Mercenaries. They know that Renee will be more than happy to testify against this person and that she will not be intimidated by anyone. She is just like her brother Horatio, not easily scared off of doing what is right.

Watching his sister sleeping peacefully, Horatio thinks to himself, "God, she reminds me so much of myself. If I had only known she was my sister, she would have never been alone."
He is quietly kicking himself for something that in no way is his fault.

Eric and the team are making headway, but not as much as Horatio would have liked. Walter has an epiphany. He realizes that they just need to follow the money if the suspects are not talking.

Eric and Tripp round up the bar patrons that know who it is that bragged about killing a cop. The suspects, however, can neither confirm nor deny they know who it is that hired them to question and kill Renee and take the dogs. The mercs are really after the dogs. The price on their heads is much higher than the price on her head.

The price on the dogs is alive, but Renee's is dead or alive. Since she was never going to give the dogs up, they just lose it and beat her to "death." They, however, really want the dogs too. Horatio is sure that the attackers are still after the canines.

With Renee's permission, Horatio wants to use the dogs as bait. Renee is not too sure about using her partners as bait to get the mercs, but the team is running out of ideas, so she relents. Horatio is going to use the dogs to draw out the people who want her dead.

Benton, the teams AV guy, goes onto the dark web and responds to the price on the dog's head. "I know where the dogs are, I'll give you them for a price," is the message that he put up on the website.