Chapter Eight: How to Regain Control
They laid together in his bed, naked and worn. He looked deep into her brown eyes and gently stroked her cheek.
"Why do you do this to me?" he whispered.
She was silent as she peered into his deep blue eyes.
"I told you," she whispered, "It's a private investigation. I can't have you telling everyone what I've done."
"You're murdering people," he whispered. "It's not right."
"Is it really murder?" she quietly asked. "They killed me first."
Horatio looked at her. His heart hurt at her words, but he knew how he really felt.
"You're not dead, Marisol," he responded in a hurt voice. "But those people you've torched are."
"They were Mala Noche. What's it matter?"
"They were someone's child. That's why it matters."
"We have a leak," Thompson said as he stood at the head of the conference table. "Someone within the CIA is leaking information about these warehouse bombings. According to Caine and Stevenson the victims of these bombings has been the Mala Noche, the weapon smuggling gang. The Mala Noche now knows we're onto them. We may need to go about our investigation in a different manner. These men are extremely dangerous."
Horatio sat there and listened to him say everything he already knew. He knew who was doing it all, but yet he couldn't say a word. He wasn't bound by anything. There were no legal ties, no moral obligations, nothing saying he couldn't tell them. Yet he felt he had taken a vow of silence.
He caught her eye from across the room. He wanted nothing more then to reveal what she really was. She was a double agent, an informant, a deceiver. She had no right doing what she was doing. She had ringed him into something he never wanted to be involved with. He wanted to be the one to tell all, divulge her big secret.
But yet something held him back.
Horatio shifted through the remains that the crime scene analysis team had collected from the scene. He slowly but surely pieced together the puzzle. He could see her familiar work coming together. He felt it was senseless. It would be one more thing she would destroy. One more thing she would lift from his report in order to hide her tracks.
A bit of dust flew into his eye and he stopped to remove his gloves. He rubbed at it as his eye watered and sighed and leaned against the wall. When he was sure it was gone, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He had a message from Ryan Wolfe. Horatio read over it and smiled when Ryan said he missed his old boss some days.
Then an idea hit him. She knew how to destroy evidence in the CIA, but would she be able to access it from a different lab?
He hit the callback number and listened to the phone ring several times before he answered.
"Lieutenant Wolfe," Ryan's voice sounded on the other end.
"Hello Lieutenant Wolfe," Horatio said as he began bagging the evidence back up, "This is Agent Caine from the CIA. I have a special request for your lab."
"So let me get this straight," Thompson said as he watched Horatio and Ryan load the unmarked boxes into the Hummer, "You think that the leak is somehow altering your reports."
"No, I know that's exactly what's happening," Horatio said, closing the back of the large SUV.
"Alright, so you want to deport the evidence and all further investigations to the Miami Dade Crime Lab?" Thompson continued.
"Exactly," Horatio answered. "I know the leak has somehow managed to hack my computer and has stolen evidence. I believe if we send evidence from further Mala Noche bombings to Miami Dade then we'll be better enabled to catch the bomber."
"Sounds like a plan," Thompson said with a nod, surprising Horatio a little. "Do you have any ideas of who the leak could be?"
Horatio stood there silently. He stared at the large CIA building. It towered over everything around it, as if it had control over the other buildings.
"No," Horatio quietly said, "I don't."
Eric walked into the lab and looked at the evidence on the table.
"What's all this?" he asked as he pulled on a pair of gloves.
"Well Horatio called me and said there's a leak at the CIA," Ryan explained as he shifted through the debris.
"Ok," Eric said, still confused.
"He thinks the leak is targeting him," Ryan continued. "You know, because he's the new guy. He's had his reports altered, evidence stolen, and his computer has been hacked multiple times. He has a hypothesis that if we analyze the evidence and write up the reports then maybe the leak won't alter anything, getting us one step closer to catching this Mala Noche bomber."
"You mean so the CIA can be one step closer," Eric grumbled.
"No," Horatio said as he walked in, "I'm not ditching all my work on your lab. We're working this together, like we should have all along."
A small smile crept across Eric's face. He looked from his former boss to the debris on the table.
"Alright Agent Caine," he said with a light chuckle, "Show us what we're looking for."
"Well, for starters pieces of the bomb," Horatio explained. "We need to piece it back together to figure out what the bomber's using."
"You don't know yet?" Eric inquired as he began digging out scraps of metal.
Horatio slowly shook his head. "Every time I almost figure it out someone beats me to it and the evidence is gone from right under my nose. If we can put this bomb back together it will be the first time we'd have the complete puzzle."
"Someone's actually stealing evidence?" Ryan inquired.
"Yes, and destroying my reputation as an explosives expert," Horatio responded. "Not to mention possible jail time for me."
"Then let's catch this bastard," Eric said, "Before he can ruin anymore lives."
Horatio looked at Eric, a sad expression on his face. He looked back down at the debris covered table and wished he could say what was on his mind.
He held her body close to his in his bed, stroking her back. He looked deep into her brown eyes before he gently kissed her.
"What happened?" Horatio whispered.
She looked at him and sighed.
"Just before you got to the hospital, someone slipped something into my IV," Marisol quietly explained. "They said it would put me back to sleep just after you left. But I wasn't asleep. I could hear everything, feel everything, but I couldn't move. I couldn't open my eyes to look at you one last time.
"After you and Eric finally left they came in and gave me another injection. I was able to move again and I asked them what they did. They said they were with the FBI and if I wanted to live I had to do everything they said and not ask questions. They sent me back to surgery, fixed me up again, altered my body, and then flew me to Quantico.
"They trained me to become an FBI Agent. They made me stronger, faster, and quick minded. I learned how to take out a man three times my size and I can run a mile in six minutes flat.
"Then two years later they flew me back to Miami. They told me I was some kind of new super solider, like Captain America or something. They said my job was to take out the Mala Noche. They taught me their weaknesses, their strengths, and how their business worked. They secretly inserted me amongst their members, to infiltrate them. I became the major part of their takedown, penetrating the Mala Noche's wall of protection and taking them out one by one.
"The FBI's taken out half of their gangs in just Florida alone. They want to make it National. They want to create more super agents. They want to shut the Mala Noche business down for good. They said with me as the head of the infiltration program the FBI could rid the country of the Mala Noche within the next ten years."
Horatio laid there and just stared into her deep brown eyes.
"You became an experiment for the FBI?" he finally whispered.
Marisol nodded her head. "I tried to get out, but they wouldn't let me leave. I threatened legal action, but they laughed in my face. They said I belonged to them now. They controlled my life."
"Do they still?" Horatio quietly asked her.
"I don't know," she whispered. "I want to say no, but they keep forcing me to do their dirty work. It's like I can't escape them."
Horatio slowly rolled on top of her and kissed her tenderly. His hands wandered across her naked body, following the contours of her body. He slid inside her and began tenderly thrusting.
"They don't control you right now," he whispered in her ear. "No one brought you here tonight."
Marisol gasped softly and pressed her body closer to his.
"No, I came on my own free will," she whispered in response.