Hey guys, sorry for the delay. This chapter has been written out for a while I just hadn't had time to type it up and get it posted until now. I'm glad you all are enjoying the story. Please be sure to review because I want your feedback, even if it's to simply say you are liking the story.

Also, I realized I didn't note this in previous chapters but italics denote Calleigh's abductor's distorted voice. I'm sure some of you figured that out but still, I figured I would make note of it.

Also, I don't own CSI Miami or the characters, I'm just doing this for fun.

Got all that? ;)

Good

Enjoy

XXX

Eric made a bee line for AV where Ben was already waiting with the email which contained the link pulled up on his screen, just waiting for Eric to give the ok.

"You ready?" Ben asked, not really sure he wanted to see what lie behind this link

Eric hesitated for moment for fear of what he might see overwhelmed him. Was he about to see an alive and well Calleigh simply being held somewhere or was he going to see pictures of her tortured, bloody, and bruised? He wasn't sure he couldn't that. He certainly couldn't handle seeing a picture of her corpse, that would kill him. Taking a deep breath, he answered the young tech, "Yeah, click it."

The link redirected them to a simple rudimentary website, where one side of the screen contained a message board type conversation panel while the other side contained a video player with the play symbol in the middle and a message below it that read, "play me."

By this point Natalia and Ryan had joined Eric and the tension was coming off both of them in waves. Both were emotionally drained from having had to process their friend's home, both trying to tell themselves to treat the scene like any other, but it was nearly impossible with photos of Calleigh, Eric and team strewn about the condo and the fact that both had been there multiple times over the years.

Clicking play, the screen flickered to reveal an unconscious and prone Calleigh inside some sort of box that wasn't much bigger than she was. The video was clearly shot through a night vision camera which made it difficult to see certain small details, but the main ones, such as the steady rise and fall of Calleigh's chest gave Eric small sense of relief. That relief didn't last long however, as he went into CSI mode and his eyes scanned the small area around Calleigh it didn't take him, and the others in the room, long to figure out what they were looking at.

"Oh my god, is she…" Natalia let her statement trail off, her brain unable to finish and her heart unable to comprehend the situation her best friend was in.

However, Ryan finished it for her, "she's buried alive."

Leaning on the table for support, Eric's head spun, his chest felt as if someone was sitting on it and his stomach rolled, "buried alive." He thought, his Calleigh was buried alive. "Can you trace any of this?"

Ben deftly moved his hands along his computer for several moments, "no, it's not a live feed."

"What?"

"The video, it's a recording set on a loop, I can't trace it."

"What about the website? Can you trace the IP address?"

Ben shook his head, "they're bouncing the IP address all over the place. This could take a while because I need to backtrack each IP address to its origin, if I can at all."

Eric pinched the bridge of his nose, "What the hell does that mean?"

"According to this the website's IP address is in Finland, now here it's in Canada, and now it's in Italy and Russia, and so on."

"Is there anything you can do?" asked Natalia

Ben's frustration was evident in his body language, "I don't know." That was not what Eric or anyone else wanted to hear, "Look Delko man I'll get into this but there's good chance I'm not gonna be able to find the actual IP address of the site, I'm sorry."

Eric hung his head as a heavy thick silence fell over the room, the only movement was the looping of the video on the screen. Then suddenly the blaring ring of Eric's cellphone broke the silence.

Without looking at the caller ID Eric answered it, "Delko"

"There's your proof of life."

Eric's disgust turned to anger, "it's a recorded loop, how do I know she is still alive?"

"You'll just have to take my word for it."

"Are you kidding?"

"No. Alicia Morrison"

"What about her? What do you want me to do?"

"Finish what you started."

"Finish what I started….I don't understand what that means."

Eric could hear a deep sigh on the under end, clearly the caller was getting frustrated with his lack of understanding.

"Miss Duquesne has 24 hours' worth of air, 10 have already passed which means you have 14 hours left, I suggest you get to work Mr Delko."

"How am I supposed to let you know I've found something?"

"Leave a message on the website and I will contact you."

Before he could reply the line disconnected. Groaning in frustration Eric turned to Ben, hopeful the AV tech had been able to track the call.

No such luck tho as Ben negatively shook his head, "They weren't on long enough."

"Well, what about the phone number, can you find out who it is registered to?" Natalia asked grasping for any straw that might help lead them to Calleigh.

Eric pulled up the called ID on his cellphone, "No, it was a different number than earlier."

"Which means whoever is doing this is using burner phones."

Eric tossed his cellphone down on the AV table before leaning his weight on it and hanging his head in defeat. They were going to have to follow the caller's instructions if wanted any hope of finding Calleigh alive.

Suddenly Ben's fingers began flying over the touch top keyboard, "guys the website is updating."

All eyes moved to the screen and watched as the website refreshed and a timer appeared at the top counting down from 10 hours.

XXX

Calleigh grimaced as she attempted to adjust her body weight to find a more comfortable position. She'd been able to lie still for about an hour or so according to her watch before she began to fidget. It's funny how you can lay perfectly still when you're not enclosed in a box but the second you are all you want to do is move.

Taking deep steadying breaths, Calleigh stared up at the dirt covering her coffin, the greenish hue from the glow stick giving it an ever eerier feeling. She had no doubt her captor wanted her to see she was buried alive, to feel a sense of hopelessness and massive anxiety. The question was why? For whose benefit would it be for she thought to herself.

Thinking back to her captor's earlier statement regarding Eric needing to finish something he started, Calleigh wracked her brain trying to think of something that Eric hadn't finished that would cause someone to go to this type of extreme to get him to do so.

"Hello Miss Duquesne."

Calleigh nearly jumped out of her own skin at the sudden intrusion, but she wasted no time jumping into interrogation mode because she wanted answers, "why are you doing this?"

"I told you."

No, you told me something cryptic. I want to know what you want. I mean it's not like I'm going anywhere or can tell anyone."

Calleigh tried to hide her emotion as best she could, she might have been locked in a box buried underground but she wasn't about to give up, at least not yet, trying to get answers for herself.

"True."

"Well…"

"Alicia Morrison."

Why do I know that name, Calleigh thought to herself. Then the memory hit her, "missing young woman, yes?"

"Perhaps I should've put Mr Delko in the box and let you figure it out, at least you remembered who she is."

Even though distorted Calleigh sensed a hint of anger, regret and most of all a sense of sadness in her captor's voice.

"So you want Eric to find her, is that it?"

"Yes."

"Why do this then?" Calleigh asked waving her hands around to indicate her current situation.

"He needs to stay focused on Alicia's case and find out what happened to her, and I knew taking you would get his attention, and I was right."

For a second time Calleigh thought she heard something in her captor's voice and for the first time Calleigh had a sense of dread fill her. Clearly this person had a deep personal connection to Alicia Morrison otherwise why go to the trouble of kidnapping a cop and burying them alive. And for them to do so meant they were desperate and had no other course of action, and were ready to throw away their lives, and hers, to see this through. Which of course, didn't bode well for her.

And it wasn't that she didn't trust Eric's, or the team's ability as CSIs to figure out what happened to the woman but what if they couldn't? Her captor already told her once she needed to conserve her air so what if the case took longer to solve than her air supply? Exactly how much time she did have?

"This isn't the way to go about this." Calleigh tried to keep her voice as neutral as possible and felt, given what she'd already perceived about her captor, she could perhaps pull at their emotions, their humanity and make them see this wasn't necessary, there was another way. She just needed to keep this person talking. "I understand that Alicia was special to you, and you feel there's no other way, but there is and what you're doing, there's no way out of this for you."

There was a long period of silence before her captor spoke again, "You know nothing Miss Duquesne. And I am prepared to do whatever it takes to get justice for Alicia. Now you really should conserve your oxygen."

And with that Calleigh was once again left alone with just her thoughts to keep her company, both the good and the bad. Squeezing her eyes shut Calleigh tried to push aside the rising anxiety and fear, but replaying her captor's assertion that they were fully prepared to take on the consequences of their method and means of getting Eric and the team to solve Alicia Morrison's case only served to increase the two emotions.

She didn't want to admit it, but Calleigh Duquesne was scared.

XXX

Eric eyed the man across the table from him very carefully, but Elliott White was nothing if not stoic and perhaps a bit of a cold fish making him a hard person to read. He had to admit when the case first broke Elliott was at the top of his list of suspects. Besides being Alicia Morrison's fiancé, and the man she was on her way to meet for dinner in Coral Gables when she up and disappeared, the man's total indifference to the woman he supposedly loved and was due to marry disappearance just rubbed Eric the wrong way.

The man couldn't even be bothered to report Alicia missing. That task fell to and was completed by her sister Tiffany who insisted from jump that Elliott had played a role in Alicia's disappearance. At first Eric had agreed, but as he looked deeper it became clear, based on his cellphone records, statements from his co-workers and forensic evidence gathered that Elliott White had not left the Coral Gables area at all that day and appeared not be physically responsible for his fiancé's disappearance. Of course, it didn't mean he wasn't still somehow involved, but Eric had to admit that while his behavior was suspect there was nothing that said the man was involved.

In fact, there wasn't much by the way of anything that said anyone was involved in Alicia's Morrison's disappearance other than some forensic evidence recovered from inside her vehicle that was found in a strip mall parking lot near Miami-Dade college three days after she was reported missing. Alicia Morrison was a 32-year-old, blonde hair, blue eyed, white female from Pinecrest Florida who had walked out of her job at a real estate firm on a Tuesday evening and was never heard from again.

Surveillance footage from her office building showed her driving out of the parking garage at 5:45pm with the two on duty security guards reporting the woman was alone in her vehicle and nothing out of the ordinary. There'd also been no evidence Alicia Morrison ever arrived home to her apartment either, she simply pulled out of that parking garage and subsequently vanished.

And now being forced to go over all the evidence again, retrace all his steps and methods, question every little thing he did or didn't do, had Eric fearing that he may not have only missed something and be responsible for a possible killer going free, but that could also get the woman he loved, the woman who had become his world killed. It made Eric sick to his stomach.

Collecting his thoughts Eric looked off to the side of the room where Horatio stood, fiddling with his sunglasses signaling for him to take the lead. The team had split up with him and Horatio taking Elliott White, Frank, and Natalia went re-interview Alicia's co-workers and the two security guards while Ryan and Walter went to Alicia's apartment. Even though there had been no evidence she'd made it home, the team was tearing apart the case Eric had made, basically starting from scratch and looking at from every angle all at once. They'd had no choice given the lack of evidence and the time crunch they were in.

"Mr. Elliott, thank you for coming in, we need to go over your statement again regarding Miss Morrison's disappearance."

"Again? How many times do I have to go over this and tell you," He said pointedly looking to Eric, "that I had nothing to do with Alicia's disappearance" before shifting his gaze to Horatio and adding "I'm her fiancé and I miss her very much and I want to know what happened to her."

"Yes, you say that sir but you can see why we might keep coming back to you because you are her fiancé, and yet you weren't the one who reported her missing, why is that?"

White shook his head, his demeanor almost bothered as he straightened his tie before leaning forward on the table, "I told you all this already."

Eric bit down hard enough on the inside of his cheek to draw blood, it was all he could do to keep himself from reaching across the table and smacking the flippant attitude out of the man before him. "And now you're gonna tell it all to me again."

Sensing the strong tension coming from the man in front of him, Elliott quickly shifted his gaze between Eric and Horatio, his demeanor and body language quickly shifting from bothered to concerned, "Is there news on Alicia? Did you find her?"

Seeing his former brother-in-law struggle to hold in emotions in check Horatio once again took the lead, "We're currently looking into some new evidence that's come our way, so please answer our questions."

White gave a quiet "ok." Squaring his shoulders, his hands loosely clasped on the table in front of him he explained how while he and Alicia were engaged, he felt she was being distant. Her personality was such she was often aloof, but most women would be excited and bouncing all over the place to be planning their wedding, but Alicia was the opposite, she quiet and reserved. He asked her about it once, but she blew him off saying it was nothing, she was just overwhelmed with work and the wedding planning, but he admitted to Eric and Horatio that he felt it was something else. He thought she was maybe having an affair.

He explained that besides her being distant, Alicia at times was jumpy when her cellphone rang, often hesitating before answering it or secretive about him seeing her mail or any packages she received when he was at her apartment. It just made him suspicious she was seeing someone else and while he couldn't prove it, he always felt it might've been her boss. Her boss just always seemed a little too comfortable and touchy feely with her.

When asked why he didn't report her missing, White said he felt that's where she was, with him and Alicia had a habit of going radio silent on him, sometimes for days at a time so at first, he didn't think much of it and yes she blew off their dinner plans, but again that was Alicia. Because of that he felt her sister Tiffany jumped the gun in reporting her missing and accusing him of having something to do with it. He admitted that while the possibility of her having an affair bothered him, he loved Alicia very much and it wasn't until they found her abandoned car that knew something was very wrong.

"Look whatever you want from me ok, you want my DNA again fine, just find her and get her crazy ass sister off my back please, she was showing up at my office almost every day just sitting outside the building staring at me, letting me know she was there. Or show up at my gym or a restaurant I was at saying she knew I did something to her sister and she was gonna prove it. Sometimes she'd make a scene and scream that I was a murderer for everyone in ear shot to hear. No matter what I said, or did she refused to believe me that I didn't hurt Alicia, so please find out what happened, not just for me or Alicia but for Tiffany because this has clearly ruined her life."

Eric remembered Alicia's sister Tiffany, she was a bit overwhelming, but given her sister whom she was extremely close with, only 18 months separated the two, was missing and Eric of all people having gone through what he did with Marisol understood her distress. She'd immediately accused Elliott of being involved claiming White treated her sister poorly and explained she was the one who had introduced Alicia to him, so Eric believed her desire to put the blame on him had some to do with believing he did it, but also her transferring her guilt about the relationship onto him. But something Elliott said caught his attention, "You said Tiffany had been showing up at your job, did she stop?"

"Uh she did yeah a little less than a week ago"

Eric thought that odd that a woman so obsessed with proving White had done something to her sister would suddenly stop and seemingly walk away. He'd made a note to ask Tiffany about it when he contacted her.

"Don't leave Miami Mr. White"

Elliott rolled his eyes ever so slightly before rising to leave the interrogation room. He might be a spoiled brat who was self-absorbed but he didn't have anything to do with Alicia going missing so he had no intention of going anywhere.

Eric checked his watch, time felt as if it was moving both slowly and quickly at the same time and whenever he closed his eyes all he saw was Calleigh laying in that box buried alive, her oxygen slipping away and all because he couldn't solve this case the first time. Part of the reason he returned to CSI was his love for forensics and being a cop but a large reason was his desire to see and work with Calleigh every day. She was right, they did make a great team, in more ways than just work and the thought of losing her made his chest constrict. Especially if it was his fault.

"That was a bust" he spat, throwing his pen down on to the table and making no move to stop it from rolling off the table and clattering to the floor.

"Hmm, maybe not, did you look into Mr. White's claim that Alicia was having an affair?"

Eric sighed, "yes, I had all the men she worked with tested against the foreign hair and semen we found in her car, no match and the blood found in the backseat was Alicia's."

"Ok let's have Valera run the profile through CODIS again and see if we get anything."

Eric rubbed his temple, the stirrings of a headache begin to form. He knew Horatio wasn't questioning the job he'd done on this case originally, but it still frustrated him they were wasting time going over simple things, retesting evidence he'd already had tested months ago. Deep down it did make him feel as though his boss blamed him for Calleigh's abduction. Besides Eric, the only person who loved Calleigh more was Horatio. There was no one in the world Horatio trusted more than Calleigh Duquesne, even him and Eric knew if they didn't get to her in time, it wouldn't be just him who would be forever broken by her loss.

"I'm gonna check in with Wolfe, see if he and Walter found anything at Alicia's apartment."

Eric was halfway out of the room when he heard Horatio call to him and he turned to face him, "Eric, we're gonna find her."

He knew Horatio was referring to Calleigh but given the situation he knew the same statement could be applied to Alicia Morrison because finding Alicia meant finding Calleigh.

"I hope so H, because I don't…I don't know what I'll do if we don't" With that Eric strode out of the interrogation room leaving Horatio alone.

"I don't either my friend, I don't either."

XXX

Ok there ya have it. Please be sure review and let me know what you think. I'm in the process of writing the next chapter so I can't say for certain when it will be out but I promise to get it up as soon as I can.