"Well, it's good to see you awake," Devitt chuckled, letting the door close behind him as he approached the bed. "How are you feeling?"

Mike swallowed, putting the glass of milk down on the overbed before turning to his colleague with a big smile. "Roy," he chuckled as he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and tossed it on the tray. "I was wondering where you disappeared to."

"Well, unlike you," Devitt said lightly, "I actually have work to do. I just got off the phone with Rudy, bringing him up to date." He paused slightly and cleared his throat. "Just so you're aware…" he scrunched up his face and lowered his voice, "he's gonna want to have a little talk with you when we all get back."

Mike shrank back slightly against the pillows. "You told him…?" he asked quietly with an uneasy frown.

Clearing his throat self-consciously, Devitt shrugged, "He's my boss… I really didn't have much choice in the matter…" He paused and glanced away briefly. "But ah, he's, ah, he's not too happy with me either… so…"

They stared at each other in silence for several long seconds then Mike's lips began to twitch into a smile and he started to laugh. Devitt did the same. "We look like two kids who've just been called to the principal's office," the injured lieutenant in the bed managed to get out between chuckles.

Grinning, Devitt snagged a nearby stool and pulled it closer, sitting. "You didn't answer my question – how are you?"

Pushing the overbed away, Mike nodded with a facial shrug. "I'm okay. Considering…" he chuckled dryly. "Look, ah, I want to thank you for being there for me yesterday… and I want to apologize for… for breaking my promise to you and getting out of the car –"

Devitt put a hand on Mike's arm and squeezed. "I don't want to hear that, okay? You found Steve and the Steen kid –"

"Roy, you'da found them later when you did the sweep after securing the house, right? I just got there before you did, that's all."

Devitt sat back sharply, frowning. "Do you really think that? Did you forget about that biker with the gun that I had to kill at the bottom of the stairs?"

Mike's eyebrows knit and he stared at his colleague in confusion; his gaze unfocused as he struggled to remember.

"Mike, if you hadn't been there, if you hadn't gotten Steve untied from that ring, he would've been a sitting duck for that guy, long before I could have gotten there in time to stop him. Don't you remember that?"

Slowly, Mike shook his head. There were snippets of his time at the ranch, in the barn, that had disappeared from his memory. "I, ah… I don't remem- wait, he was lying on the floor at the foot of the stairs, wasn't he?"

Smiling slightly, Devitt nodded. He squeezed his colleague's arm again. "You were losing blood and in a lot of pain. I'm not surprised you don't remember it all right now, but it should come back… I wouldn't worry about it."

Mike nodded distractedly, looking down. "I remember being in the car with you," he whispered, "you saved my life…"

"I got you here," Devitt corrected gently, "Norm and I got you here… if anyone saved your life it was the staff here… not us…"

Mike continued to stare into nothing; Devitt watched him wordlessly.

The journey back home for both partners was going to be slow, but at least it had begun.

# # # # #

The walk across the gravel parking lot and around the myriad official vehicles deposited haphazardly around the house and barn took longer than it normally would have taken. Steve's cracked ribs were slowing his stride, and he was taking the almost leisurely pace to study the area as they approached the barn, it's large door standing open.

The two sergeants were watching him carefully, as they would a suspect, hoping to pick up on any subtle signal he might be unaware he was broadcasting. So far there had been nothing. As if becoming conscious of their scrutiny, he glanced up at them both and shook his head. As they got to the door he looked to his right and froze.

"What?" Healey asked quickly.

Steve glanced at his colleague then nodded towards a small wooden hut alongside the barn. "They, ah, they'd blindfold me and drag me up the stairs and outside to an outhouse. Then they take the rope off my hands and shove me inside. I was told I had to come out with the blindfold back on. Then they'd shove me up against the wall and retie me and make sure the blindfold was in place and then I'd be dragged back down the stairs and tied to the wall again…" His voice had become so soft they could barely hear him. When he finished talking he was staring at the ground, unmoving.

Haseejian put a hand on his shoulder and steered him gently into the barn, looking at his partner over his shoulder. Healey shook his head in anger and frustration as he followed them into the large building now teeming with activity.

A couple of uniformed CSP officers looked up at their entrance and frowned, moving to intercept. Both Healey and Haseejian had their I.D.'s and stars out and the officers nodded, stepping back with acknowledging nods.

Steve crossed to the middle of the barn and looked around, shaking his head. He moved closer to the ladder going up to the mow then turned his attention to the open trapdoor. It was as if he was retracing the steps he assumed Mike had taken the day before.

Ignoring the bustle around him, the officers going up and down from the lower level, the shouts back and forth, he walked around the open trap and stared at the door, still lying flat against the barn floor. Gingerly he bent down and tried to pick it up but, even accounting for his cracked ribs and badly bruised stomach muscles, he realized just how incredibly heavy the door was.

As he stood, slowly and painfully, he looked at his colleagues and his expression told them everything they needed to know; they were all in awe of what Mike, his abdomen held together by stitches, had been able to do. Adrenaline, fear and love can be the most powerful of motivators.

Taking a big breath, Steve started slowly down the stairs, the sergeants close behind. Lights on stands had been brought in; the cavernous space somehow seemed smaller now that there was more illumination.

Steve stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked around. He turned to Haseejian, slowly shaking his head. "I didn't see anything, Norm, this doesn't trigger anything for me, I'm sorry."

"That's okay," the sergeant responded quietly, putting a hand on the younger man's elbow, "but why don't we take a walk around. What about sounds? Smells?"

They started to cross slowly towards the wall where he'd been tied.

"The only smells I can remember are the ones we're smelling right now – straw, mold, that musty wet smell, body odor… nothing else, really… " He exhaled loudly in frustration. "And as for sounds, nothing out of the ordinary, at least none that I can think of…"

"Did you talk to Craig Steen at all?"

Steve nodded, staring towards the cell, now filled with lab technicians, the initials FBI on their dark blue windbreakers. "A bit but… the kid was pretty strung out… he told me his name and I told him who I was but… he cried a lot… he was scared…" His voice became a whisper. "We both were…"

He fell silent for a few seconds then said quietly, "He was here for a lot longer than I was… I don't know how I'd be if I'd been here as long as him…"

# # # # #

"Hey, I heard they got the ship last night?"

Mike's question shook Devitt from his reverie. The gray-haired lieutenant was still coming to grips with Steve's revelations of the night before; every time he looked at Mike now he was seeing him though Steve's eyes, and a knot was forming in his belly. He wasn't sure what the knot was made of, though. Was it worry, fear… or envy?

"Ah yeah," Devitt answered with a smile, "yeah, it crossed into American waters around 2:30 and they were on it within minutes. Took it without firing a shot."

"And it was carrying the heroin?"

"Carrying? It was loaded. It's probably going to be one of the biggest seizures in California history when they finally get it all weighed. But they're keeping everything on the QT right now because Interpol is going to get involved and they want to trace it back to where it came from. You know, this is going to have international repercussions. And to think, it all started with a couple of missing young men and a bar fight."

"Yeah," Mike chuckled dryly, his right hand going to his stomach again. "I guess it was worth it, hunh?"

Devitt smiled. "Well, I guess some of us suffered for the cause a little more than others, wouldn't you say?"

"What you mean 'us', kemosabe?" Mike grumbled good-naturedly and Devitt laughed.

Mike laid his head back against the pillow and laughed carefully, his hand remaining on his stomach. A grin lingering, he looked at Devitt in peace. "You know, when all is said and done, I'd go through it all again. We're taking down a drug empire and a human trafficking scheme that was just so… horrifying…" His eyes suddenly filled with tears and he blinked quickly to keep them from falling. "I can't stop thinking about those other families, the ones who'll never get their sons back. What are we going to tell them?"

Devitt nodded. "Yeah," he breathed wistfully.

Mike raised his head slightly. "Steve doesn't know anything about the heroin or the reason for the kidnappings yet, does he?"

"No," his colleague answered, shaking his head.

Mike nodded, thinking. "I want to be the one to tell him," he said quietly, his unfocused stare drifting away. He had no idea how his young partner would take the news, but he knew he needed to be with him no matter what.

# # # # #

"They, uh… they'd bring us food every once in a while… I'm not sure how often… Time became a blur." Steve was standing near the wall where he had been restrained. "They'd untie my hands from the ring but leave them tied together so I could eat. It was always something I could pick up with my fingers – fried chicken once, a hamburger once, a couple of sandwiches. And always water in a plastic cup… I guess they didn't trust me with a bottle or a cup…" He snorted dryly.

"I tried to break away once… even though I was blindfolded and my hands were still tied… I knew I had to take the chance… I didn't want to disappear like the others…" His already soft voice drifted away completely.

After several seconds, Haseejian asked quietly, "What did they do?"

Steve looked up at him, smiling slightly and snorting again, this time with irony. "That's when they cracked my ribs… I didn't get very far. I was thrown to the ground and kicked a couple of times and then they dragged me back and tied me up again… I remember when they brought Craig his next meal, they didn't bring one for me…. punishment, I guess…" He was staring at the ring bolted securely into the wall.

Healey glanced at his partner, anger in both their looks.

"When I got fed the next time, they made sure I wasn't going to do anything by kicking me first… but there seemed to be a method to their cruelty…" He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. "I mean, it was like they wanted to discipline me, they wanted to punish me, but they didn't want to hurt me." He looked up at his colleagues and frowned. "Does that make any sense?"

Not wanting to tip their hand, Healey shrugged and said vaguely, "Maybe they were saving you for something else. Did you have any sense of what that could be? Something they may have said accidently or something you might have overheard?"

Steve looked down and shook his head. "No… like I said, they didn't say much. It was always a male voice, by the way, but there was more than one of them."

"Think you'd recognize any of them?" Haseejian prodded.

The younger man shrugged, shaking his head. "I don't know…" His gaze drifted towards the cage again. "Do you guys know what they were keeping Craig for? What they were keeping me for? Were we some kind of bargaining chips for something? A kidnapping ring? Did it have something to do with drugs?"

The look of confusion and anguish he turned to them cut through the layers of detachment the two sergeants had been able to cultivate over the years, a necessary tool for maintaining sanity in an increasingly distressing occupation.

Healey glanced at his partner then turned his sad eyes on their junior colleague. "Come on, son, let's, ah, let's get you back to Eureka." He put a fatherly arm around the young man's thin shoulders and started to lead him towards the staircase.

The words, 'we want to get you back to Mike' hung unspoken in the air.