The team stood by in silence and watched as the Coast Guard boat finally came back to shore. Eric and Ryan jumped from the vessel and back to dry land, both looking waterlogged and defeated.
The tall Cuban walked towards the group of his colleagues, shivering slightly as he pulled the dry blanket he'd been given further round his body.
"There was no sign of him," he admitted as he kept his gaze focused on the ground.
Natalia stepped towards him and rubbed her hand lightly up and down his arm, "You did everything you could, Eric."
The gesture was hollow and they all knew it. Each of them silently cursed themselves for not doing more to rescue Horatio in time. They had all imagined the worst-case scenario but it seemed all the more horrific in reality, each of them hoping that the redhead would appear out of nowhere in his customary way, surprising all around him.
That was never likely to happen again, Horatio had perished at sea, all that was left was to find his body and bring it back home where they could all mourn for him properly.
No one wanted to be the first to move as they all kept their gazes to the ground. Even the usually-vocal Andy had descended into a period of silence. Calleigh couldn't help pick up on the New Yorker's accusatory stares in her direction though.
"There's nothing else we can do here, let's go back to the lab."
The team looked at her in shock, expecting her to be the last person to leave the scene.
"But, Calleigh, what about Horatio?" Ryan asked as he ran a hand through his soaked hair, "We can't just leave him out there!"
"We don't have a choice," she responded sadly. "We have to go back and finish the case, Horatio would want us to do that."
She looked at the team, one by one. "If you want to head home, then I understand that. It's been a long day for all of us. There's nothing that can't wait until morning."
"We have to do this the right way; we need to get justice for Horatio. We owe him that at least."
"That's it; we just walk away and leave him out there?"
"Ryan, we don't have a choice. This isn't what any of us wants but we need to focus on what we can do. Now, if you don't mind, I have to go and speak to Kyle."
Far out at sea, a body lay unmoving, floating along with the gradually calming waves of the water. Had the body not been draped over a piece of fibreglass debris it would likely have sunk hours ago as the figure floated listlessly.
The body was bruised, battered and unmoving as blood trickled slowly from its nose and mouth, turning the water that surrounded him a pale hue of pinks and reds. Not much remained on the body's clothes and what little that was evident was torn and scorched. The arms of the unmoving figure covered in burns and cuts, along with the one side of the face that was visible.
The storm had almost passed as the waves lost their ferocious power, the body and debris floating along with the movements of the water surrounding them. The water cold and unforgiving seeped further into the unmoving figure, which remained lifeless and still.
"Hey, hombre. ¿Ves eso?" (Hey, man, do you see that?)
The Spanish-speaking trawlerman turned to his colleague and pointed out at something in the distance.
"¿Ver qué? Estamos destinados a la captura de peces, sin mirar el paisaje." (See what? We're meant to be catching fish, not looking at the scenery.)
"Fuera de allí, hay algo que flota en el agua." (Out there, there's something floating in the water.)
His colleague pointed at the water again, insistent that he'd seen something worth investigating.
The man at the controls pulled out his binoculars and focused his gaze in the direction of his colleague's finger.
"Yo lo veo! Se ve como una pieza de un barco, hay alguien que miente en ella!" (I see it! It looks like a piece of a boat, there's someone lying on it!)
The fishermen directed their vessel towards the wreckage to get a closer look. Their eyes widening as they saw the lifeless body floating with the fibreglass as they neared it.
"¿Crees que todavía está vivo?" (You think he's still alive?) one of the crew questioned as they all leant over the side of the boat to investigate further.
"Sólo hay una manera de averiguarlo." (Only one way to find out.)
Using their fishing equipment and team work, the crew finally managed to reach the prone figure and pull him up onto their boat. It didn't take a doctor to realise that the man they had pulled from the water looked dead.
The flesh of the body that wasn't burned, bloody or bruised had taken on an almost bluish tinge as the figure lay unmoving on its side.
One of the crew pulled off their glove and felt for a pulse, not expecting to find any signs of life.
"¡Está vivo! Llame a la Guardia Costera, ahora!" (He's alive! Call the Coast Guard, now!)
The captain of the fishing vessel raced towards the on-board radio, almost tripping over some netting in his desperation to raise the alarm.
"Mayday, Mayday! Este es el vaso, Katrina. Hemos encontrado un cuerpo flotando en el agua, que está vivo, pero necesitamos ayuda, ahora!" (Mayday, Mayday! This is the vessel, Katrina. We've found a body floating in the water, he's alive but we need assistance, now!)
The mood was decidedly sombre in the break room as the team converged back at the lab, tired and defeated. Frank had had the presence of mind to grab the bottle of scotch from his desk drawer back at the department and had brought it with him to the unofficial wake being held in their fallen leader's absence.
The big Texan poured each of the team a mug with a shot of scotch in it and handed them out, giving Andy a puzzled look as he shook his head when offered a mug.
"I don't drink," he told the other man. "It's a long story," he added as the detective gave him a puzzled look.
"Man, I never thought I'd see this day," Frank remarked as he took a large gulp of his drink, wincing as the scotch burned the back of his throat as he swallowed it down.
"God, what I'd give for H to sneak up on me right now and scare the shit out of me," Ryan remarked as he took a swig from his mug.
He smiled at the thought of Horatio appearing out of nowhere, seemingly always knowing when and where to appear, usually to catch an unwitting criminal in the middle of carrying out some nefarious deed.
"I always wondered how he did that. How he just appeared at the right place at the right time. I swear, if we put bells on that man we still wouldn't hear him coming."
"I never thought I'd miss being called Miss Boa Vista half as much as I do right now," Natalia mused.
The other members of the group let out a small laugh, their smiles not reaching their eyes or their hearts.
"I never thought I'd miss being glared at," Walter added as his colleagues nodded their head in agreement.
Frank raised his mug to make a toast, "To Horatio, the best of all of us."
Murmurs of the redhead's name floated through the room as each of the team raised their mug and downed the rest of their scotch.
Kyle stood in the corner of the room, glaring at his father's colleagues who seemed to have given up on finding him. It would do his father no use if they continued to mourn him, they didn't even know for sure if he was really dead. It seemed to him as if they had given up and accepted the fact that his father was never coming back.
He could feel the anger threaten to overwhelm him and so he threw his paper cup down and stormed out of the room, heading for anywhere he could find for a bit of solitude. His father's team might have given up on him, but he hadn't.
He stalked through the corridors of the lab until he found himself in his father's office, a place where he had sought comfort only a few short days ago. He had brought himself here to calm down yet he found the starkly decorated room had the opposite effect on him. It occurred to him that there was so little of the man he had grown to know and love imbued in the room that it would be all too easy for another person to inhabit his father's office in his absence.
At a loss for what else to do, he allowed his anger to overflow as he took his rage out on anything he could find. Kicking over the desk and chairs, throwing files and folders towards the windows as he created merry Hell in his father's office, screaming with rage.
Calleigh had heard the commotion from down the corridor and began running towards Horatio's office where the sounds were emanating from. She threw open the door and found Kyle grabbing whatever he could lay his hands on and throwing it across the room.
After a few moments the young man's anger and energy ran out, he stood bent over, hands on his knees as he breathed heavily, gasping as he tried to get more oxygen into his tired and overworked lungs.
As the anger dissipated, it soon began to turn to misery and grief as Kyle looked up at Calleigh with pained eyes, the tears already flowing down his young face.
She did the only thing she could think of, careful of the carnage of the room, she walked towards the young man and enveloped him in a fierce embrace, holding him tightly to her in an attempt to alleviate some of his suffering.
"He's gone, isn't he? He's really gone."
Calleigh felt the tears fall unbidden from her eyes too as she held on to Kyle with all of her might. She kissed the top of his head as she ran soothing circles over his back, struggling to come to terms with her own grief and loss.
"It'll be ok, Kyle," she said as she squeezed him tighter, "Everything will be ok."
She had no idea how she expected the young man to believe her when she didn't even believe herself.
A.N: I have a passing knowledge of Spanish but I am not fluent in it. I apologise if there are any mistakes in spelling or sentence structure :-)