A/N: Ok after two big cliffhangers, this chapter will provide some answers or will it? Credit goes to C.O.L for helping me flesh out the details.

Merri Brody sat at her desk, her face buried in her hands. Two days had passed since she and Pride had found Savannah's unearthed coffin with blood splattered on the side of the concrete vault and still no Chris.

They'd put out a BOLO and searched the local hospitals and morgues and came up with nothing. Even with a BOLO in place and an alert for hospitals to contact them should a "John Doe" turn up medical personnel could still easy miss him in their shuffle of paperwork.

They had been over every shred of evidence ten times over. Thankfully the blood they had found at the scene, wasn't LaSalle's. It belonged to former inmate by the name of Michael Higgins (AKA Mercenary Mike). His cold, dead, lifeless, body was lying just a few feet away on the other side of vault.

Speculation and two rounds missing from the magazine of his P229, all pointed to the Chris as the shooter. But questions remained. Why had the hired killer come back to the scene when for all practical purposes his victim was as good as dead. Change of heart maybe? If so, where was Chris?

Her head snapped up. He couldn't have just walked away and even if he were able, he would have found a way to reach out to them by now. No, there was something seriously wrong. Another player in this sick game maybe?

"Why can't we find him?"

"We're missin' somethin'," Pride came in from the kitchen with a cup of coffee in hand, desperately needing the caffeine. The lack of sleep and of stress over trying to find Chris was wearing on his very soul, emotionally and physically draining him.

"Take Percy, run back down to Mobile. Maybe having a fresh set of eyes will see something you and I missed."

His expression changed, a curious smile springing to his lips, as two middle aged men entered the bullpen, one a tall thin business man, evident by a suit and the other a scraggly looking, dressed in jeans and a cowboy style shirt.

"Can I help ya?"

The man in the suit stepped forward. "Are you agent Pride?"

"I am," Pride listened carefully as the man began to begin to speak with a clear Southern accent, which could rival Christopher's.

"Agent Pride, my name is Michael Carlise, I'm the President of the Mobile Cemetery Association and this here is our caretaker, Russell Mathers." The man in the suit nudged his caretaker friend causing the man to shrink slightly in fear.

"Give it to him." Carlise ordered his grey eyes widening slightly.

Mathers looked back at his employer an uncertain look on his face, swallowed hard before fishing in his pocket and retrieving a black billfold that Pride instantly recognized. He had one just like it that held his NCIS credentials.

"The credentials in there, they say LaSalle?" he asked as Mathers handed it to him with a nod.

"A few days ago, a man paid me $500,000 tuh dig up his daughter's grave." Mather's voice started to cloud with emotion, struggling to finish his story. "But I swear I didn't know what he was gunna do, until the other guy pulled a gun on me! I didn't have a choice! I was darn near lucky they didn't kill me!"

"Tell him the rest." Carlise prompted without missing a beat.

Mathers cleared his throat. "They buried that young fella, alive."

"And then what happened?" Pride asked gently. He could tell the man was spooked and as much as he wanted to get to the bottom line and ask about the here and now he knew he had to let the frazzled looking caretaker work his way through the entire story.

"The man who paid me, shot himself and the other fella he just took off!" Mather's eyes went wide with disbelief. Doubtless the man was still in some sort of shock.

The man in the business suit placed a mollifying hand on Russell's shoulder. "It's ok."

Mather's turned his head, "I waited for the Po'lice tuh leave an… un…I dug 'em…the young fella back up, only the gear on the backhoe jammed and Miss Kelly's vault, slipped, that's why the other un was so torn up when y'all showed up." Mathers turned his head, guilt ridden, "I thought I killed 'em."

"But…he was still alive?" Pride had been almost hesitant to ask, but it was better to ask then to put off the inevitable.

Mathers started to nod furiously, "I…wanted…tuh help em but then that other fella showed back up. He came back tuh kill me!"

"So LaSalle shot him?" Pride finished.

"Yeah…surprised the hell of out me, the shape he was in, I would have thought the boy couldn't hit the side of uh barn if he was standin' two feet from it."

"Where is he, Russell? I promise ya won't be prosecuted for tryin'' to do the right thing." Pride restated. At this moment he would say or do anything just to know his friend was safe.

Chris LaSalle drifted in and out of sleep filled delirium, reacting slightly to the soft touch of a woman's hand against his cheek. The touch was calming to his nightmarish clouded mind that refused to believe that he was safe.

Occasionally, he would startle from the vivid, at times horrifying dreams, never fully awakening. His battered, run down system wouldn't let him. It had finally made the statement that it was shutting down to recover from the lunacy it had endured over the past week. Drugged out his mind with toxic Quaaludes, buried alive and nearly crushed to death. He was done.

Yep, the big crash had finally come and he didn't have a snowballs chance in hell of fighting it. Not that he wanted to really. The soft pillow that was cushioning his head, combined with the warm blanket that had been pulled up to his chest suited him just fine. Until his body told him otherwise, he was content to just breathe and let it do its thing.

He couldn't hear all of the little noises that he made when his heart started to accelerate with outright fear, from the thought of being trapped, buried under concrete and six feet of dirt. But he heard the sound of her voice. His mind seemed to recognize it as a familiar voice, a soothing voice, so when she was near his heart rate calmed, the dreams and the fear all subsided.

The scent strawberries and vanilla lingered whenever she was near reminding him of her body wash, (the half-empty bottle of body wash that was still in his shower, the one that he refused to throw away).

Chris swept the long red locks of Savannah's hair aside, nipping her at neck as the warm droplets of the shower danced around her beautiful pale form.

"Uh, you're out of soap," She pointed out as she reached into the soap dish and picked up the beige sliver of what remained of a once dense bar of manly Safeguard.

"Don't matter, I'll just use this, " he shrugged, picking up his head and reaching over her for the clear bottle of red body wash that sat in his shampoo caddy, next to the Head and Shoulders.

Chris LaSalle don't you dare! Savannah shrieked. It wasn't a shriek of fear but one of playfulness, giddiness. Over the last several months she'd become accustom to his lively antics, a far cry from the shy and at times uptight, boy she remembered from high school.

Chris pressed the pop-up top and squeezed a quarter size amount into his palm as she turned to face him, winding her arms around his neck. "You got somethin' against your man smellin' fruity?" he quipped, giving her a quick peck.

"Not if it helps keep other women from coming on tuh you," she smiled into his mouth as his hands fell to the center of her back, slathering the sudsy liquid up and down her bare spine.

She would hold his hand giving it a gentle squeeze and he would squeeze it back, a reflex, he was sure but nevertheless he felt her warmth flowing through him and he welcomed it.

Every once in a while he would open his eyes to a blurry vision of her, that he would never remember. She would just be a memory in the back of his mind, which would feed into rational thought, blaming his subconscious.

But by the time, they arrived all visions of her had dissipated, leaving him with an empty void and unsettled sleep. He heard the sound of the door being kicked open, Pride's voice, Brody's voice but it didn't fully register until they touched him. He vaguely remembered the caretaker depositing him into the hands of someone else but he couldn't remember who.

"Chris? Can you hear me?" Brody gave his shoulder a firm squeeze as a pair of hazy disoriented blue irises came to life. He blinked once, twice and then shifted his eyes before finally focusing on his partner's face.

"Brody?" he questioned as her hand slipped away from his shoulder.

"Right here, partner." She was watching him carefully making him think he had a strange look on his face, which he probably did.

Everything was a blank; just like it had been the morning he woke up in that hotel room with a set of bite marks in his side. He tried to sit up a little taller and was immediately met with an all too familiar sensation of vertigo. "How did I get here?" he grimaced looking around at the unfamiliar sights of an off the beaten path motel room. A knot formed in his stomach as he was overtaken by a sick sense of deja'vu. How in the hell had this happened again?

Brody opened her mouth and then promptly closed it, choosing her words carefully. He was contemplating, trying to figure things out. "Are you sure you want the answer to that right now?"

His eyes fell to the sheets. Judging from her expression his nightmares of being trapped in the pine box had been more than real. "So then-"

Brody frowned at him before brushing her fingers through his hair to garner his attention.

"You're alive and right now that's all that matters." She didn't want to verify the details right now for fear of what it would do to the man, as it is was he would already need to spend time in a padded room to prevent everything that had happened to him in the past six months from swallowing him alive. Right now, she feared for him. She shuddered to think what he would do when he discovered that he'd for all practical purposes been entombed alongside his dead girlfriend. In time she would help him to put all of the pieces together but for right now he needed to comfort of his loving family.

He looked up at her and her heart turned over at the sight of his eyes. Aside from being a little bloodshot, for the first time in a week his pupils were normal size. She cupped his chin so that she could examine the side of his face. There was a long cut that started at his scalp that ran down to his cheek and sizeable gash in the meaty part of his left bicep. But other than that he seemed fine. But just to sure they'd have a doctor check him out when they got back to New Orleans.

"Let's get you home."