Hey! It's your boss talking! What happened?

"Boss? I... my head hurts..."

Never mind that! What happened?

"Target got me. Planted a gun. Alerted police. I think they're onto us, Price."

Don't worry. We have contingencies. I need to know if you remember. Tell me exactly where we meet in an emergency.

"At the manor. San Manuel Key, 176, three miles off the city limits."

Good, good. Who's left? Have you any word of who's left.

"Gobi, he and Mojave are supposed to have watched my back as I scouted the hotel for the target. Sahara and Redwood were last at the corner, ready to strike."

The compound, how is it guarded?

"Eight of us. Oak, Prairie, Sierra, Appalachian, Willow, Rocky, Everglades, and Poplar are guarding it."

The world was still fuzzy. His head hurt from the morphine. The white haze receded, but everything was still blurred. But the Face. It wasn't the face of Price.

"Thank you, Reece," the Voice was a mixture of Price's familiar harsh tones and a new, unfamiliar one, "Now, we are done with the easy part," He took a syringe and filled it with a clear fluid, "Now, the fun part begins. Now tell me exactly how this 'manor' is guarded."

"The explosive is Playdoh," Patriks said, his voice bleak, "The barrels, half full of water. The detonators, bolts. Wires, pieces of shit gotten from a dump somewhere. 'Anti-tampering' devices, useless computer parts. Fertilizer is real enough, but not a danger without something to blow. We just spent the past six hours giving a lead to man who escaped custody with thirty minutes to spare."

"There was no way we could have known that it was a red herring," Horatio said, "And you couldn't have left Calleigh there."

"No, and that's the problem," Patriks said, "Pierce knows me too damn well. He can predict me too well. And he knows himself too well to be predictable."

"Then we make that his weakness," Horatio said.

For once, in what felt like years, Patriks cracked a genuine smile, "Your right. We have no one to interrogate, no contacts to squeeze, no intel at hand. So what do we have?"

"Evidence."

"Evidence," Patriks sighed, "Lord save me from the Age of the Geek."

"Where are we on the ammunition used in the Córtez murder?" Patriks asked.

Calleigh, who insisted on returning to work despite a head injury and her recent ordeal, said, "The ammunition was Hydra-Shok 9mm, fired from what appeared to be a weapon with a left twist and wide beveling, most likely a Glock. A different set of striations indicate that the weapon was suppressed aswell."

"Hydra-Shok 9mm?" Patriks said, surprised, "That's the type of rounds used by federal and local law enforcement, as well as military." during his tenure with the SEALs, he had seen those types of round put down juiced guerrillas like nothing. Those were rounds on steroids.

"It's weird because the .22s that killed Córtez was a generic off-the-shelf," Calleigh said, "It doesn't fit the profile of Pierce to use two different ammunitions."

"He is wanted," Patriks pointed out, "Maybe this was all he could get?"

"Then how did he have access to enough medical equipment to treat me?" she unconsciously felt the sutures on her forehead. The doctor had refused to take them out on the grounds that they were better than what he could do, "Sutures and local anesthesia aren't exactly common on the streets."

"He doesn't like Hydra-Shok, either," Patriks said, "He prefers a custom ammunition called Double-Tap Ironmans, it has less power per round as a Hydra-Shok but has a thicker copper jacket. Penetrates deeper before mushrooming."

"Well, I have to run some tests but I found what looks like a 10mm Ironman embedded in the radio of the Audi Pierce used to escape," Calleigh said, "Could be a Double-Tap."

"You met Pierce," Patriks said, "Did he seem unstable, or insane?"

"No," Calleigh shook her head, "He was... pessimistic. But almost cheerful about it."

Patriks chuckled harshly, "Yeah. He was always like that. Most of us were. He was confident, wasn't he?"

"How'd you know?"

"Because one of the first things that you learn in SEAL training is that you will not lose," Patriks sighed, as if remembering simpler times, "That mentality follows you everywhere. You may die trying, but you will not lose," Patriks said, "Go home, get some rest. You run yourself into the ground, you'll do no one good."

"I can't sleep with a concussion," Calleigh pointed out.

"Then get that Cuban boy-toy of yours to help keep you awake," Patriks said as he left, leaving Calleigh suddenly worried as to how her secret had been discovered.

"The Playdoh used to simulate Semtex was made three years ago," Wolfe said, "He didn't just go out and buy it. He's been planning this for a long time."

"Maybe not this specifically, but he likes to think of schemes before hand and keep them in reserve," Patriks explained, "He probably giggled with delight to be able to finally be able to do this one,"

"Well, we found numerous prints, some his, some not," Natalia said, "We haven't figured out how to get them off, because the nature of Playdoh doesn't allow us to use conventional dusting and smoking techniques."

"Can you take a high-def picture?"

"Some one's learning," Natalia said, and Patriks looked a little pleased with himself, "But no, the color of the 'Doh doesn't provide enough contrast for our cameras to get an accurate picture. If it was grey, then we might have been able to do it."

"Like I said, in the wings for years."

"What we did manage to find was trace evidence on the Playdoh," Natalia continued, "Whenever you touch anything, a little bit gets on your hands and is transferred to the next thing you touch. Now, the more contact there is and the harder the grip the more likely the transfer. And one thing you grip harder for a long time is..." Ryan gave a drumroll, "Soap."

"Soap?"

"Soap," Ryan said, "You scrub it on your hands and it penetrates deeper than most other substances. It will get mixed into the oils of your skin and stay there for a while."

"We believe that the larger fingerprints are Pierce's, and the smaller belong to the women we caught on camera. So, we looked at the trace found on both Pierce's and his partner's prints."

"Pierce used common carbolic soap, which is found everywhere," Ryan explained, "It's a common restaurant and hotel soap, because it is strong yet has no strong scent."

"But on his partner's, we found a different type of soap made of aloe," Natalia said, handing him a spectrograph, "Lot's of aloe and natural scent. This stuff is high end, not something you would find at a Motel 6."

"So, she's staying somewhere high end," Patriks said, "Anyway to trace it."

"Thankfully, all soaps are required to keep a record with the FDA about the exact chemical nature of their compound," Ryan said, "It will take us a while, but we'll put this into a chemical chain and find out where it was made, but which batch it was and who ordered it."

"I am now officially crowning you two, King and Queen of the Lab,"

Natalia and Ryan looked pleased. Little did Patriks know that he had just become the origin of many a future headache for Horatio Caine.

In a fancy hotel in South Beach, Lyn cursed. Trev had warned her.

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