MIAMI : ONE MONTH EARLIER

Horatio walked into his office finding Ryan sitting in a chair, staring at the stack of cash on his desk.

"Me has been persistent today," Horatio said as he walked up to the arrangement. "This is the sixth delivery isn't it?"

"Yeah. That's ten thousand dollars, H. And you should read the card."

Horatio pulled out the card and read it out loud, "Delko froze at the shooting. You should let your supervisor know. You deserve his position. Consider this a bonus for your last bust."

Horatio folded the card and looked out his office windows. Minutes passed in silence.

"Uhm…" someone said.

The two looked back. The receptionist was holding up a package.

"For Mister Wolfe?" Horatio asked her.

She nodded.

"Ryan, do you have gloves?"

Ryan got up and put on gloves. He took the package from her.

"Take this to Eric?" Ryan asked.

Horatio didn't answer until the receptionist left.

"I think we should talk about this stalker before you go."

"H., I know this is annoying, but I don't know—"

"Ryan, I know you're doing everything you can."

Ryan looked at the package in his hand. "Am I?"

"Yes. I have withheld information that might have helped you. I thought I was helping you, but now I think I was wrong."

Horatio waited for Ryan to look at him. "What information?"

"While you were suspended your stalker sent everyone in the department death threats. I didn't want to tell you until we had some evidence linking the threats with your stalker; which Eric found yesterday. Whoever licked one of the envelopes yesterday was the same female contributor that licked all of the death threat envelopes."

"Are the letters signed Me?"

"They are not."

"H… I'm getting a little scared."

"Perhaps we should consider having a uniform follow you."

Ryan grimaced. "Could we wait one more day on that? So far this person hasn't done anything and… Could we wait one more day?"

"Why is that?"

"It'll be really hard to explain to my date, on our first date, why I have a policeman following me."

Horatio smiled. "So, you finally took up the delivery girl's invitation?"

Ryan smiled, trying not to blush. "She's cute and she's been asking for four months. It's not her fault this psycho keeps sending packages through her company."

Horatio laughed a little. "No it's not. Enjoy your date, but don't let your guard down."

Ryan shook his head. "I won't. See you in the morning."

Horatio nodded his head once, watching him leave.

Ryan stopped in front of an apartment building and got out. He opened the passenger door for his date, Chrissie, and she climbed out.

"Do you want to come up?" she asked, motioning toward the apartment building.

Ryan hesitated. The evening had been pleasant, but there hadn't been a spark. Ryan sensed she was hiding something and he didn't want to know what since he wasn't actually attracted to her.

He glanced at the card pulling up in front of his. The trunk popped and the driver turned, doing something.

"I'd better just go home."

"Oh." She looked up at her building. "Well, would you mind at least walking me to my door?"

"That I can do."

The two headed to the front gate. She pushed it open and went up the stairs. Ryan followed behind her and she stopped at the first door. Chrissie fished for her keys in her purse.

"I should get a smaller purse," she joked.

Ryan looked back when he heard someone coming and watched a man come through the gate. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs to light a cigarette. Ryan looked back when he heard Chrissie's keys drop onto the walkway. He reached down, picking them up for her. Ryan looked up into the barrel of a gun, and then into Chrissie's eyes. She smiled.

"I don't really live here," Chrissie said, "And don't say anything, okay? Cause, well, then I'd have to shoot the first person that tried to help you."

"Who are you?" Ryan demanded.

"Me, my pet."

Ryan started to say ask her name again, when he realized she just told him, and it made his stomach turn into a cold, tight knot. She was his stalker? She had been under his nose this whole time?

"What do you want?"

"You. Now let's go back downstairs quietly."

Ryan's hand moved toward the gun concealed under his sports jacket.

"You don't want to do that. Jerry has a short temper."

Cigarette smoke wafted over Ryan's shoulder and he realized the man that had come through the gate was standing behind him now. He slowly turned, facing Jerry. He moved back, making way for Ryan to go down the stairs, and then rested his hand on his own gun in a shoulder holster.

Ryan moved slowly down the stairs, keeping his eye on Chrissie. Jerry followed behind her, unconcerned. They reached the gate and he saw a car with a trunk open. He had to try to run now, or he may never get out of this alive.

In a burst, Ryan bolted. To his surprise, Jerry easily caught up with him. The man tackled Ryan in the middle of the street. Ryan turned, swinging a punch. Jerry dodged it, and then shoved a damp cloth over Ryan's nose and mouth. He caught Ryan's arm in a painful, pinching grip.

A sharp alcohol smell filled his nose that Ryan immediately recognized as ether. He tried to push Jerry's hand and the cloth off before the vapors knocked him unconscious. But it was a loosing fight that ended quickly. Jerry stood when Ryan laid motionless, flicking ashes off his cigarette. He tossed the cloth and then lifted Ryan over his shoulder. Jerry walked back to the car and dropped him in the trunk. He stopped when Chrissie leaned into the trunk to kiss Ryan's lips. She giggled, prancing back. Jerry smiled a little, getting in. She hopped into the car and slid up to him.

"Thank you! Thank you!" she said, kissing his cheek.

"Mm-hm. Let me go so I can drive, Chris."

She slid back to her side of the car, staring at the back where Ryan was now hidden.

Horatio was speaking to an officer when Calleigh came up. She smiled at the officer and waited until he left.

"Yes?" Horatio asked.

"Ryan's late, Horatio."

Horatio looked at his watch. "Have you called him?"

"I've tried his cell and his home phone. Natalia stopped at his apartment on her way a call and he didn't answer. His neighbor was Ryan was supposed to pick up his dog last night at eleven. He never showed."

"Was she able to get into his apartment?"

"Yes. He wasn't there."

"Okay. We need to find his car. He said last night he was going on a date with the On Time Delivery girl. We need to find her and see if she can tell us when she last saw him."

"There also hasn't been one delivery from his stalker this morning."

That lifted Horatio's eyebrow. "That is a bad sign."

"I'll let you know what I find out." Calleigh turned and hurried off.

Horatio pulled his cell phone off and dialed Eric.

"Delko," Eric answered.

"Eric, Ryan may be missing. I want you to go to On Time Delivery and see if you can speak to the delivery girl that bringing Ryan's packages."

"I'm on my way."

Horatio hung up, looking out a nearby window. His instincts told him they were about to have a nightmare of a case.

Eric walked into the office of On Time Delivery and the woman behind the counter smiled. Eric smiled as he showed her his badge.

"I need to speak to one of your delivery girls. I know her first name is Chrissie, she has long brown hair, and—"

"She was fired yesterday," the woman told him.

"Fired?"

"Yeah. She was billing client accounts for personal packages she was delivering to her boyfriend." She motioned at his badge. "Some guy that worked with you."

Eric's smile faded. "Did she ever mention his name?"

"Yeah. Ryan."

Eric was already starting to see all the clues they had overlooked coming together.

"Did she say how long they'd been together?"

"She said for at least two years. I guess they met when he pulled her over for speeding and hit it off. She was all ga-ga for him."

"Was she?"

"Is there something wrong?"

"I need her address."

The woman hesitated. "I don't know if I'm supposed to give that out."

"She kidnapped Ryan last night. So if you need to get your supervisor to release her address, go."

The girl hurried off to find her supervisor. Eric dialed Horatio.

"H., the delivery girl, Chrissie, she was telling people here they'd been dating and she was sending him the packages."

"Are you getting her address?"

"Yeah." Eric saw the girl coming back with her supervisor. "I'll call you when I have it." Eric hung up so he could talk to the supervisor.

The front door of the small apartment opened slowly. The apartment manager quickly got out of the way of the police and Calleigh. Natalia hung back, speaking to the small oriental man. The apartment was sparsely furnished and spotless. A policeman started down a hall and stopped at the first door. He pushed opened the door and she covered him. The bathroom was empty. There wasn't even a shower curtain hanging. They moved to the second door and opened it. The bed was stripped of bedding. The closet was empty. The officer and Calleigh moved to the last door and opened it. Calleigh slowly stepped into the room, staring at the shrine. It had every newspaper article and picture that had ever been printed. Mixed in with were internal crime scene photos that had Ryan in them.

Natalia came into the room. "Calleigh the manager said…" She trailed off, staring at the shrine. "This is…"

"Bad." Calleigh finished.

"It gets worse," Natalia added, remembering what she had come into tell Calleigh. "The landlord said she was placed here by The Village."

Calleigh sighed. "So Chrissie was either a serious drug addicted, mentally unstable, or both."

Natalia nodded, but she couldn't take her eyes off the disturbing shrine.

Eric typed in Chrissie's name and it populated on the screen before him, Natalia, Calleigh, and Horatio.

"There. He arrested her for speeding and possession when he was still on patrol," Eric said. "She had escaped The Village that morning and he noted in the report she appeared to be high on coke or heroin."

"So she just picked the first man that she saw and he happened to be it?" Natalia asked.

"No." Horatio's eyes narrowed. "Someone who is delusional needs something to set their fixation off on a person. My guess is something happened during the arrest. We're going to need a warrant to search her room and get her records from The Village. Get it, Eric."

Eric left to do as he was asked. "Ms. Boa Vista, pull up the report of his arrest. See if you can find anything that sounds unusual about it."

She left, leaving Calleigh and Horatio. Horatio touched the mouse and scrolled through a very long list of drug related charges and arrests.

"Chrissie Mandais… You are a very busy drug dealer…" Horatio told the screen.

"Maybe the kidnapping was really about drugs," Calleigh suggested.

"I don't believe so. Some of the gifts she sent were too personal for this to be about drugs. But it does explain the monetary gifts."

"We didn't get anything off them, Horatio. No drug trace and they weren't marked as stolen."

"Then they were well laundered. This woman must be well connected."

Calleigh turned to him. "So well connected that she could make Ryan disappear."

He looked up at her. "We won't believe that, will we? We will believe that we will find him. Somehow."

Calleigh looked back at Chrissie's rap sheet. Not even Horatio's words were consolation. This woman was mentally unstable and well connected – a deadly combination that could not possibly end well for Ryan.

Horatio and Eric waited at the receptionist desk. Horatio saw a doctor coming down the hall and turned to face him.

"I'm Doctor Milner," he said as he stopped in front of Horatio.

"Doctor Milner," Horatio presented him with a warrant. "This is for the patient records of a one Chrissie Mandais and to search the room she occupied when she was here."

He took the warrant and skimmed over it before responding. "Until I can have our lawyer look over this warrant, I'll only let you read the records in my office, Detective Cane."

"I would appreciate that. Meanwhile, I'd like my CSI to have access to her room."

"She left here six months ago."

"We'd still like to see it."

"Let me make the arrangements to have the current patient removed from the room."

Horatio watched him head back down the hall.

"H, if she left here six months ago, what am I looking for?" Eric quietly said.

"Calleigh said there was a shrine at Chrissie's apartment. An obsession like that doesn't happen overnight. Look for anything that would indicate her obsession that the staff may have covered up."

Eric nodded.

Doctor Milner glanced up, watching Horatio walk up to him. He looked back in the patient's room that Eric was searching.

"Our lawyer said the warrant is valid, so I'll have my nurse make copies of the records," Milner told him.

"I appreciate that. I have a question about the records."

"What's that?"

"I see that Chrissie had an obsession with someone. Do you recall who that was? Did she ever mention this person's name?"

"No. She only called him 'her pet,' and it didn't start until a year and a half ago."

"The day she escaped?"

"Yeah. She was high, stole a car and was caught speeding. The officer that pulled her over brought her back in the middle of the night."

"Did you look at any articles about the person she was obsessed with?"

"No."

Horatio cocked his head to the side, looking sidelong at Milner. The doctor was lying, he could hear it.

"Not a single article? No photos? She never mentioned the name Ryan Wolfe?"

Milner frowned. "She only cut out pictures of this person, and yes, she did mention the man's name a few times. She was convinced he was her boyfriend."

"So you knew this was a real person she was obsessed with?"

"Yes."

"And you never thought to contact the police about it?"

"Detective Cane, if I called the police with every patient that came here obsessed with someone who really existed, the jails would be full of my patients."

"The night she was returned, she was brought in by patrolman Ryan Wolfe. He happens to be my CSI now. And he is also the object of her obsession, Doctor Milner."

Milner looked at him. He was a bright man and he understood what implications were unspoken.

"Has she hurt him?"

"We believe she kidnapped him, we don't know if she's hurt him yet or not."

Milner covered his mouth for a second. "I thought we'd moved past it. I didn't think she was even interested in him anymore."

"Why is that?"

"I ordered her to take down all of her pictures. She'd completely covered this room with pictures of him. She had several fits before she finally did as I asked. I never saw another photo or heard his name or her reference 'her pet' again."

"Horatio!" Eric called.

"Perhaps next time a patient is obsessed with a policeman, you'll contact us."

Horatio walked into the room, seeing Eric standing with one foot on the toile back and the other in the sink. He'd pulled off the bathroom vent cover and had pulled out a dusty shoe box. He handed it down to Horatio and then climbed down.

Horatio opened it and hundreds of pictures of Ryan Wolfe stared back at him. Eric looked from the photos to Horatio.

"Are we going to find him, H?"

Horatio picked up one that had a heart draw around his face with smeared lipstick. Maybe it was pure hope that made him answer yes, while in the back of his mind he was telling himself no.

Ryan heard laughter coming toward the car. He had no idea how long he'd been in the trunk, but it was hot and stuffy. His clothes were wet with sweat. He moved around, getting ready to kick whoever opened the trunk.

The trunk clicked and lifted. He kicked both feet at the first person he saw. The man fell back. The four men that were with him drew guns, aiming them at Ryan. The man came up from the ground, reaching for Ryan.

"Mike, stop it!" Chrissie ordered as she came up behind them. "You startled him. He's like a little kitten right now. Don't hurt him."

"Chrissie, if that's a kitten I'm the president."

"Pleased to meet you Mister President."

That got a chuckle from the men, even Mike. Ryan didn't find any of this amusing. She looked down at him, reaching her hand out to touch his face. He jerked away, glaring at her.

"After three days I would have thought you'd have calmed down some," she told him.

"You kidnapped me and left me locked in this trunk for three days!"

"Maybe we should park the car outside and leave him in there for another three days," one of the other men said. "Cook the fight right out of him."

That made all of them laugh.

"We're leaving, Jerry."

"Chrissie, this is a bad idea. He's a cop, he's going to slow us down, and we have a time table that you made. I really think—"

"Jerry," She turned to the speaker. "My connections, my plan, my expertise to forge papers and passports. I told your daddy that if he wanted all that, I wanted this." She motioned at Ryan. "Stop your complaining; he's going too."

"Going where?" Ryan asked.

She looked at him. "All in good time, my pet."

"I'm not your pet!"

"You will be when I'm done with you." She leaned in and he shied back, staring into her eyes. "We're about to hit the road, Ryan. And as you can see, I'm about the only one here that likes you even a little' something to do with you being a cop and all, even though I've tried to explain how CSI aren't cops. So, Jerry here, he's going to take you to the restroom cause I have other things to do – otherwise I'd help you. It's going to be a long ride to the next one, for you, so you'd better take advantage of this while you can."

She stepped back, crossing her arms over her chest. Ryan slowly sat up and for the most part, the men helped him out. Standing at the back of the car he found himself standing in a large warehouse. Lined up and waiting to leave were two dozen hearses. Men and women, dressed in surgical gowns, were pulling organs from cadavers, and then packing bags of drugs in the bodies. Ones that were already packed were being dressed and having make-up applied before being placed into a coffin. He didn't need anyone to explain what was happening – they were going to smuggle their drugs in cadavers using hearses. It was perfect, unfortunately. With a hearse and corpse, they could cross state lines and no one would ever suspect drug trafficking.

Ryan stumbled a few steps when Jerry pulled him in a walk. He looked back at Chrissie. She was talking to another man, hiding her insanity. Ryan looked away, his mind racing with any idea of how to get loose – and coming to dead ends with every thought.