A/N: Sorry to keep you all waiting on LaSalle's fate. It's been a crazy long week and so little time to write, but here we go!

A/N II: Partial credit for this chapter goes to COL for helping me flesh out LaSalle's emotions and reactions.

LaSalle was jerked awake by the rousing chorus to Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison, as it sang out loudly in the pitch black adding another pulsing layer to the pain in his head. Instinctively he reached for his singing phone, knowing by the specific ringtone that it was Meredith Brody calling. But he couldn't quite move his arm, bumping his elbow against the same unyielding surface that had smacked him in the forehead. This wasn't good. This really wasn't good.

He felt around the sides as best he could encountering, tiny shards, splinters that dug into his skin, like miniscule needles reminding him of the numerous times he and Cade had climbed the neighbor's rough unfinished fence for a chance to go swimming in the Wilson's fancy built in pool. He'd been terrified whenever he reached the top, took all of Cade's coaxing to get him to jump down. But he'd trade that irrational fear of heights any day for the one that had begun to twist his stomach and grip his heart with icy fingers.

This fear was entirely rational, because -fuck- he couldn't move but a few inches in the pervasive black, couldn't see, could only feel its limits. Pulling his knee up, it bumped a hard surface. Wriggling, his shoulders hit the sides. He could barely maneuver his arms in the confining space, the confining space boxed in by rough wooden planks. He was trapped, trapped and blind and alone.

But not alone.

Shit. He'd listened to the ringtone often enough to know when it was winding down, reaching its last attempt at getting his attention, fading into a whisper. He fumbled desperately to find his pants pocket. Where the fuck was it?

/Shitshitshitshitshit.../ He scrambled about, which turned into full-fledged frustrated thrashing as he failed to feel the smooth plastic of the device's casing beneath his fingertips, failed to feel the rigid corner poke him in the arm or the thigh.

Where the hell was it?! For god's sake. Help! HELP!

It went silent, leaving him all alone in the oppressive black. The narrow space that could only be described as a 'pine box'. A coffin; the coffin, he was going to die in if he didn't find that phone. He rooted around for several more seconds until he felt the indestructible casing of his Otter Box come into contact with the tip of his middle finger. Damn it was just out of his reach.

Dropping his right shoulder, he strained as he inched his way down the rough pine until an exposed nail caught the sleeve of his shirt, ripping into his bicep. Chris hissed softly, squeezing his eyes shut until his fingers wrapped around the case of his phone. Success! Well, a meager victory given his current situation.

Sparse light from the phone lit up the small confined space just enough to confirm the horror of his reality. Placing his phone on his chest, he pressed his palms flesh to the planks above his head and pushed, straining until his wrists and shoulders ached. A scream a ripped from his lungs as absolute terror engulfed him. There was no way out of this.

Turning his head, he felt his cheek connect with something familiar; cold steel, that he recognized as his P229. He wasn't certain why he hadn't noticed it before other than the thrashing must have brought it into his reach.

Squirming, Chris managed to maneuver the weapon into his right hand, curling his fingers around the grip. Sealing his left hand over the top of the right he pressed the muzzle into the top of the wood directly above his chest and fired, for all that it was worth, the flash lighting up the coffin. It was stupid to fire the gun in such close proximity to his face but getting burned by the back-flash was the least of his worries at the moment.

Using his index finger, he poked it through the hole the bullet had made immediately coming into contact with a hot lump, dashing his hopes that the bullet would have gone straight through, leaving a trace of light and an opening for oxygen.

Keeping his hand wrapped around the weapon, he let it rest at his side, content on putting his energy into the loud ringing in his ears, left behind from the discharge of the gun. For several minutes, he laid there breathing hard, as his heart slammed up against the wall of his chest, in his bodies response to fight or flight, neither of which would do him any good at the moment. So, he waited for rational thought to return but with rational thought came the sickening feeling that he was trapped, in a pine box, waiting to die.

Deep breaths, he tried to coax himself in order not to succumb to the panic again. He couldn't afford to throw another tantrum as he decided to call it.

When he finally calmed, he remembered the phone and that Brody had called him. As ridiculous as it sounded, he had cell service, even trapped in said coffin he had cell service. God, how he wanted to kiss the man who had invented fiber optics right about now, steeling himself, he hit the redial and prayed that Brody would answer quickly.

His heart practically leaped out of his chest at the sound of her sweet voice.

"Chris, where are you? Pride and I just pulled into Mobile."

LaSalle looked around his rectangular tomb, before deciding on how to best answer that question. Although his situation was more than dire so was Cade's. He would never forgive himself if he left this world, knowing he hadn't done everything he could to save his older brother. "Don't really matter right now, I need ya to do somethin' for me."

"Are you in trouble, Chris?" Damn it, she'd picked up on the strain in his voice. Not that he could have held it back if he had tried, but still. He needed her to focus on Cade.

Closing his eyes, he swallowed back the massive lump in his throat, "It's Cade, I need ya to go to Lock Tight Storage on Mathers Way. He's in Unit 234 on the second level. Ya also gotta be on the lookout for Savannah's dad and another guy-"

"Wait, Savannah's dad?" Brody cut him off. "Chris, we just got a call from the local PD, Savannah's father is dead. He shot himself."

Shit!

LaSalle took a moment to look at his gun before laying it back down. One of maybe two people, he knew for certain could confirm his whereabouts was dead. Where did that leave him?

Dead

"Just find, Cade. Make sure he's safe," he replied trying to keep his voice even and light before ending the call. He knew Brody would be pissed at him for hanging up on her, but he just couldn't handle talking to her until he knew that Cade was safe. As it was his phone was only operating on about third-quarters of a battery right now and who knew how long he might needed it to last. With Peter Kelly out of the picture, that meant that the team would have to go after his accomplice and that could take...

More time than what you have, Christopher.

Ironically, the little voice LaSalle had just heard in his head sounded just like Pride. Not that this surprised him really as there were often times when he was out of sorts about something that he would recall some infinite words of his surrogate father, to give him just the right answer to a dire situation. But not this time. This time he knew that he had stepped in it too deep for even Pride to pull him out.

He went back to the concept of time. How much time did he have really? Gauging from what he knew about these situations, both fictional and reality, he probably only had a couple of hours worth of oxygen before his brain cells started dying off and he suffocated. A couple of hours, if that. His heart was still racing, and to top it off he felt like the was going to hyperventilate. The stress of the situation was choking the life out him, literally. Next to being afraid of heights and stinging insects, he hated being alone. For a fun-people-loving person, such as himself, solitary confinement, locked in box, was just about the worst way he could think of when it came to dying.

Brody leaned up against the wall to one storage units and called Chris to tell him that they had found Cade shaken but relatively unscathed. She had listened to the older LaSalle's story as far as Chris giving himself up, and knew that her partner needed immediate rescuing.

"Ok, no more playing the sacrificial hero. I know you're in trouble so give me something that will tell me where we can find you." She pleaded, fearful as to whatever situation he had been dragged into by Savannah's father and his hired henchman. She'd heard something in LaSalle's voice earlier that told her something was horribly wrong, but she hadn't acted on due to partner's unwavering devotion toward his sibling.

"More trouble than ya know. I just need ta make sure Cade, cause ya know how he gets-" he quavered, earning her immediate concern. The fear in his voice palpable. Something was horribly wrong for him to sound this afraid, terrified. There were times when they were in questionable situations as to whether or not they were going to live and he showed her anxiety but this was out right pure unadulterated no way out of this fear in his voice.

"I already told you, Cade is fine, so please-." For several seconds, she listened to nothing but the sounds of his labored, panicked, breathing. "Chris?"

"I'm trapped," he finally hiccupped, unable to get the rest of the words out.

"Trapped, where?" Her heart was pounding now. "Chris, just tell me what you see."

"Nuthin...just dark,'" his voice came back, so broken, that turned the muscles in her legs to Jell-O, sending her slowly sliding down the wall she had been leaning against as he began to describe the specifics of his coffin. She was now sitting on flat on the concrete with her knees drawn up in effort to stop her stomach from lurching.

"Listen to me." she commanded, praying her voice didn't crack. Chris was losing it and she would be of zero use to him if she did as well. She knew it sounded cliché but she couldn't help but promise that they would find him even though at the moment she had no idea of where to look.