Beila woke up, and sat there, slightly disorientated. Where on Earth was she? She rubbed her eyes to banish the sleep, and then it all came back, the beach the shots; the bodies. Beila could feel herself choking up again.
"Good morning." Said a voice behind her. She wheeled her head around to see the other red head.
"Morning?" Ah, yes, she was at the lab.
"Yep. I got you some breakfast, so if you want, you can use the showers in the locker room, and then eat some food, and we can have a little chat." Horatio said. Beila just nodded mutely and collected her stuff. "Second on the left." He directed, as the girl walked past him.
The shower made Beila feel more human, like she was washing away the pain a little, like she was shedding this weight as she reflected on her situation. Horatio would find out soon enough. She'd have to tell him about the photo.
Horatio sat in his office, the paper in his hands glaring at him. Surely, it wasn't right. But there was less than a one in a million chance that it was wrong. Horatio rubbed his brow, first it was Kyle, eighteen years ago. And now Beila, nearly seventeen years ago. And he'd been so mad at his brother over Madison. God, wasn't he just a hypocrite.
Beila stepped out of the locker room, her wet hair pulled back from her face in a French plait. She saw someone walk past, and knew she had to say something.
"Excuse me, Sir!" She called. The man in question turned around, and pointed to himself.
"Me?" He said incredulously, as he walked towards her. "Whadda you want?" He asked gruffly.
"I wanted to apologise, Sir. I shouldn't have run yesterday, and because I did, you wasted your time looking for me." Beila apologised.
"'s okay, kid. The name's Berkeley, not Sir." He said with his lopsided grin.
"Do you know where I can find the other police officer who I met yesterday? I'd like to offer my thanks."
"He's over at the PD. But I can pass the message on, if you'd like." The girl nodded her head and went back to Horatio's office.
"Beila," He greeted her. "Have a seat, eat some food."
"Thanks." She said, sitting and reaching for a bottle of orange juice and a muffin. "You mentioned that you wanted to talk? What about?"
"I talked to your Grandfather yesterday, and he mentioned your biological father. He also handed custody to him, when we find him."
Beila sat in mute shock. She was staying in America? With a man who she didn't know?
"Lieutenant, when I was reading my mother's diary, I found a photo, laying between two pages from when she was in New York." Horatio nodded his head in understanding. Beila drew in a deep breath and pulled the small photo from her back pocket, and handed it to Horatio. "That was taken two weeks before she returned home, and found out she was pregnant with me." Horatio observed the photo with scrutiny; the two redheaded people were very familiar.
"Sarah Komalov." He said slowly. How could he have forgotten her?
"Horatio," Started Beila. "You are my father."
Horatio felt very detached, like this was a surreal dream. But it wasn't. It was very true. The next two words fell easily from his lips.
"I know."
It had been nearly three days since the murder and Calleigh had just struck gold on the Conway case. She'd just got a hit off the bullet. She practically ran to Horatio's office to tell him. She bounded in, noticing after that Horatio and the victims' child were in a deep conversation.
"Sorry, I didn't know I'd interrupt something." She apologised. "I got a hit off the bullet, there was a preserved fingerprint: a felon in Calle Ocho. Convicted in '95 of murder one."
"Take Berkeley to his apartment and get him. Get a warrant for the gun, but it's probably somewhere in the Pacific by now."
"K boss." Calleigh drawled. Walking out of the door, she cast a look back at the two redheaded people sat on the couch in her boss's office.
Horatio viewed his daughter through the glass of his office and felt so proud and happy. Similar to the way that he had when Kyle had given himself in.
"Beila." He started, and his daughter looked up from her mother's diary. "It's over. We got him." He saw the tears rising in her eyes. "Now, I've talked to some lawyers who have confirmed that you have a green card, so we don't need to worry about and legal ramifications."
"Thanks, Dad." The silence that followed the sentence was deafening. Horatio couldn't believe his ears, had he heard right?
"Did….you?" Horatio shook his head. Surely he heard wrong.
"Yes, Dad. I did. What's the point of lying? You are my father and I am not afraid to say that. You are a brave man, Dad." Beila paused. "I know some may view this as disrespect to Michael, but I think it would be best for me to accept that he and Mum are gone, and I need…I need…" She broke off in tears again. Horatio pulled his daughter into a hug, and said something that would make any young girl smile.
"You have a brother." He said, and he felt the head lift from his chest and blue eyes stare up at him in disbelief.
"Really?" She asked.
"Yeah, called Kyle." Horatio answered, with hesitation. "Maybe you can meet him someday." Beila decided not to let the mood be dampened by persistent questions. She broke the hug and dried her tears. A knock came at the door and a pretty woman in a suit was stood there. Beila didn't remember seeing her over the last few days, though they had been hectic. So far, due to the fact that it had taken several days to get anything that sounded like a confession out of her parents' murderer, no-one knew of the relation between the two.
"Lieutenant," She started with a nod of her dark head.
"Miss Nevins…..to what do I owe this pleasure?" Horatio asked.
"I wanted to talk to you about the Conway case, and about social services taking the child." She said in a self assured manner. She was a very confident woman; Beila could tell from the sofa that she was used to getting her own way, and that she had some sort of personal relationship with her father.
"That……won't be necessary. We have found a family member in the States who will legally care for her." Horatio countered. Nevins looked slightly unnerved by the sharp tone that her ex was speaking in.
"Well, do you know who this family member is?" Nevins said, with an acidic tone. Beila was tired of being left out of this conversation. It was about her, after all. She stood up and cleared her throat loudly.
"I'm staying with my biological father, Miss Nevins. And I will live with him permanently when I have returned the bodies of my parents to Britain." Beila said patiently, hurt reflecting in her eyes.
"I need to know who it is, as a factor to the case. If I need to contact you about the case, I will need his information." Nevins pushed for information.
"Well, then I guess you'll have a hard time finding that information if I don't tell you." Beila answered back with a typical teenage smirk.
"This isn't a game, Miss Conway, two people are dead." Rebecca spat.
Tears gathered quickly in Beila's eyes. "You think I don't know that?!" She shouted. "You think I didn't see my parents die?! That I didn't hear the guns being fired and the screams; smelled the burning rubber?!" Tears ran down her face as Horatio's closest friends gathered at the door, wondering what the noise was. "You think I don't wish with all my heart that I could have them back?! To hear my mother laugh and scold my father for being the little sod that he could be?! Do you not think that for every moment that my heart beats and my parents' stay still that I don't wish that I had said……That I had said no to the stupid ice cream, this stupid holiday?!" She continued to scream. "Do you not think I know that my parents are dead and gone and cold and that I can never have them back?" Her voice quietened to a whisper. "You may see them as a file, a pile of well written evidence, statistics, and another notch in your lawyering belt. But to me, they were real people, who didn't deserve to die." Her argument subsided into more sobs, as Horatio turned her around and enveloped her in yet another embrace.
"Shh…It's alright…..It's fine….It'll be fine…" He repeated, whilst shooting poignant looks at the lawyer stood in his office.
The next noises were muffled by the girl's head being hidden in their boss's chest, but the team were pretty sure of one word: Dad.
They couldn't have heard right, could they? She didn't just call Horatio Dad. Surely it was just some emotional coping device, that the girl was merely confused.
And with the team confused, they went back to their jobs in the lab.