Title: Family
Author: Tara Keezer
Rating: R for upsetting adult subject matter
Warnings: Angst. Huge, whomping doses of angst. Seriously. And that's all the warning you'll get, because I hate giving away the story before people have a chance to read it.
Summary: All Bobby Dawson wants is to comfort and protect his daughter.

 When Bobby and Reeny finally pull up to Dan's house, it's coming up on midnight. They should have been there a good three hours earlier, but he ran over something on the highway heading home, and his cooling system took the hit in the form of a small leak. He'll have to take it in for service tomorrow and hope like hell he doesn't mess up the engine any worse in the meantime.

Reeny's asleep in the passenger seat, and Bobby is about to turn off the ignition when he realizes something is wrong. Dan should be standing at the door by now, waiting for Reeny and ready to read Bobby the riot act about his driving, but he isn't. The house is dark, too, and that just doesn't make sense.

Without waking up his daughter, Bobby leaves the truck running -- it's too cold to leave her there otherwise -- and he goes to the front door. He knocks once, and that's all it takes for the door to open. Light from the street illuminates just enough of the mess to tell Bobby that his ex is in trouble or worse.

He knows he should call the switchboard and get the hell out, but Dan might be injured and in need of medical assistance. No matter how pissed Bobby is at Dan, he's not angry enough to leave him lying there injured and alone.

Bobby is five steps in when it occurs to him that he should have grabbed his gun, just in case. It's too late now, so he takes another quiet step forward and stops cold. There's no reason for him to stay there now, no reason not to call the switchboard. All he has to do is reach for his cell phone and dial, but he can't bring himself to do it.

Dan is dead.

A sudden gulp of air breaks the silence of the house, and it breaks Bobby's paralysis as well. He moves backward to the door, thinking he needs to remember where exactly he stepped, so he can tell CSI when they get there.

Dan is dead.

Dan is dead, and Bobby is shaking worse than he did the first time he brought down a deer when he was twelve years old. It takes Bobby a couple of tries before he can dial through to the switchboard, and when he does, he's stammering so hard it's a wonder the operator can get the story out of him at all.

Eventually, though, he manages to spit out the bare bones of it -- his former partner is dead from a close-range shot to the head. The house looks like it was trashed, and oh by the way, this is Bobby Dawson, ballistics analyst on graveyard.

~~

An hour later, Reeny is awake and crying and talking to Catherine while Bobby talks to Grissom. More than anything, Bobby wants to be with Reeny right now, but he can't. Not with the mess this case promises to be. Grissom has already told him that it will be a supervisor's case -- he, Catherine and Captain Brass will handle it because of Bobby's job with LVPD. He's also told Bobby that Ecklie is aware of the situation, so be prepared for Ecklie to put him in front of a camera if he thinks it will help the lab.

None of this means much to Bobby. Dan is dead, and no matter that they split up six months earlier, they'd been together for eighteen years before that. He didn't stop loving Dan just because Dan wanted out. How could he?

"Bobby?"

"Yeah, Boss?" Bobby's eyes stray to Catherine and Reeny again. Reeny is still crying, and Bobby stands up to go to her.

"You need to sit down." Grissom enforces that command by pushing on Bobby's shoulders.

"My daughter --"

"Catherine is with her. She's not a stranger to Reeny, right?"

"But --" But Catherine isn't family. At the same time, Grissom has a point. Reeny and Lindsey used to play together right up until Lindsey started walking on the wild side. That's when Dan and Bobby quietly altered Reeny's after-school activities so that she didn't have nearly as much time to play with Lindsey as she used to. Reeny complains of missing Catherine almost as much as she complains of missing Lindsey.

"Catherine will take care of her. Okay?" Bobby doesn't take his eyes off Reeny, but he nods. "Bobby, have you been shooting today?"

Grissom picks up Bobby's hand. "Yeah. Went to a shooting contest."

"Did you wash your hands since then?"

God. Reeny's crying harder than she was earlier, and Bobby's having to fight his inclination to deck Grissom just so he can take care of his baby. "Peed a coupla times since then, so yeah. I did."

"How do you wash your hands?" Bobby barely hears the question. "Bobby! Focus on me, okay?"

He finally faces Grissom. "What?"

"How do you wash your hands?"

"Same as always -- soap, warm water, over and under." Bobby's hands perform the action as he describes it. "Ten seconds then rinse. Just like Dan --" His voice breaks. Dan, a nurse out at Desert Palms, is the one who taught Bobby how to wash his hands to prevent infection of any kind, including colds. Bobby hasn't been sick since Reeny was a baby, and Dan always says it's the hand-washing that takes care of him.

"Just like Dan what?" Grissom's question is incredibly gentle, even as he's running a GSR test on Bobby's hands.

"Dan's death on dirty hands. Was." Bobby's throat is tight, and he can feel tears threatening. More than anything, he wants to give into his grief and cry with Reeny, but he won't. Not with uniforms standing around. He's already heard one of them use the word "fag," and he doesn't want to give them more ammunition.

Bobby looks over toward Reeny again. "Boss, you said Captain Brass would handle this. Why's Detective Curtis with Catherine and Lindsey?"

Grissom looks over and frowns as Catherine says something to Reeny before stepping away a few feet to talk to Sofia. "I'm not sure. Brass must have called her." Bobby tries to stand again, but Grissom isn't having any of it. "Sit down, Bobby. We have to follow procedure. You know that."

"She's by herself." Reeny looks lost and alone, and Bobby's heart is breaking.

"Catherine's nearby. She's not by herself." Grissom leans in a little closer and sniffs Bobby. "Is this the shirt you wore to the contest?"

"Yeah." Bobby's breath hitches when Catherine steps back to Reeny and takes her in her arms. The relief is more intense than he could have possibly imagined, but it's almost immediately overwhelmed by panic when Sofia walks toward them, a grave expression on her face.

"Bobby," she says. Then, "Gil, I need to talk to you for a minute."

Grissom and Curtis step far enough away that Bobby can't hear them. He's torn between trying to listen to their conversation and watching Catherine wrap Reeny into her embrace. Something isn't right. Or maybe it is? Reeny loves Dan as much as she loves Bobby, so of course she's upset. And while they're still getting witness statements, Bobby is still a suspect.

Perversely, his tension relaxes a little when he remembers that. Of course he's a suspect. He's the one who found Dan, and Dan is the one who left the relationship. Bobby knows that the sooner they can clear him of suspicion, the sooner they can start looking for Dan's killer. It only makes sense that Reeny would be that upset while being questioned. He'll explain it to her later -- tell her why they asked questions that made it sound like maybe Bobby had killed her Daddy. She's bright. She'll understand.

"Bobby?"

He turns to Grissom with an effort, because even if he can't take care of Reeny right now, at least he can keep an eye on her. "Yeah?"

"Do you know a Mark Bolton?"

"Yeah. He's Dan's new boyfriend." Bobby thinks Grissom will surely understand if he watches his daughter while answering questions.

"How long have they been seeing each other?"

"I don't know." The question replays itself, and Bobby blinks as he focuses on it. "Three, maybe four months."

"Is he the reason Dan left?" And again, Grissom's voice is gentle. It's far more gentle than Bobby would have credited.

"I don't know. Maybe?" Bobby frowns as he thinks back to the fight they had while Dan was packing to leave. "But I don't think so. Dan just told me he needed out. He would have told me if there was someone else. I would have known."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." He slumps. "Well. Maybe not. I didn't even know Dan was unhappy until he started packing."

"Does Mark live with Dan?"

"No." He's more confident of this answer. "Dan promised he'd tell me if Mark moved in, and even if he didn't, Reeny would have told me."

Grissom glances over to where Reeny and Catherine are seated. "What did Reeny think of Mark?"

"She didn't like him, but --" Bobby shrugs. "She hasn't liked any of the men I've dated either in the last couple of months. She wants Dan and me to get back together, you know?"

"So she's never said anything specifically against him?" When Bobby shakes his head no, Grissom almost immediately asks, "Has she been reluctant to stay with Dan lately?"

Bobby draws breath to say no, but he remembers her muttered, "Finally," when he picked her up last Sunday. She was sullen and out of sorts for two days before she started behaving normally again. "Reeny wasn't happy when I picked her up last week."

"She didn't tell you why?"

A horrible, creeping suspicion is growing in Bobby's mind with each question Grissom asks. These are careful questions, designed not to lead the witness. They're designed to get answers without implying what the real questions are.

"What's going on?"

"Did she tell you why she was unhappy?"

"No." Bobby's watching Grissom's face when he sees a flicker of emotion. He keeps his voice low, but the intensity of emotion is clear as a bell. "Did that son of a bitch hurt my baby? Did Dan bring a goddamn predator into our family?"

Grissom puts a hand on Bobby's shoulder. "Reeny told Catherine that Mark abused her."

~~

The wonder is that Bobby isn't in jail right now. It took Grissom, Curtis and a couple of uniforms to subdue him when he found out what happened to Reeny. Bobby hopes that he didn't frighten her too badly when he went out of control. He thinks he didn't, because she demanded that he be right there with her for the entire exam. She wouldn't even let go of his hand the entire time.

Reeny is sleeping, now, courtesy of a sedative, and Grissom is standing in the doorway of the hospital room when he gestures to Bobby. He hates like hell to leave Reeny alone, but with the drugs in her system, she'll never know he stepped away. In the hallway, Grissom holds what look to be test results. Bobby is afraid to ask what they say, afraid to find out how badly damaged Reeny is, but he has to know. Now that Reeny's asleep, he can ask.

"Well?"

"She's intact. There's no indication of vaginal or anal penetration, but --" Grissom looks a little pale, which shocks the hell out of Bobby. Grissom and emotions just don't match up.

"But what?"

"Reeny has gonorrhea. I'm going to ask you to submit voluntarily to --"

"Yes."

"Bobby, you need to understand that this is voluntary. You should probably talk to --"

"Look, Boss. I haven't had sex since before Dan left me six months ago. I ain't sick, and that test will prove it. I want off the suspect list for Dan and Reeny as soon as possible, you got it?" Bobby glances back at Reeny's room. "I can't be dealing with cops and helping my daughter at the same time."

"I understand." Grissom glances at Reeny's room as well. "Brass got a warrant for Mark's arrest based on Reeny's statement. We'll be looking at him for Dan's murder as well."

That snaps Bobby's attention back to Grissom. "Why?"

"Reeny said she called Dan the day before yesterday and told him about Mark. We think Dan may have confronted him."

Bobby can't catch his breath for a few minutes. When he does, he tells Grissom, "You'd better find him before I do."

~~

As it turns out, Captain Brass tracks down Mark the next day. He also finds the gun Mark used to kill Dan. As far as LVPD and the prosecuting attorney are concerned, the case is closed. There's enough physical evidence to show that Mark molested Reeny, and because she's only thirteen, Mark will be going to jail for life. It probably won't be a long life sentence, though, because he's also up on capitol murder charges.

Bobby hears all of this, hears the congratulatory tone in everyone's voice, and all he wants to do is scream at them. How can they possibly think any of this is good? His baby's been violated in the worst possible way, but his colleagues are all slapping each other on the back.

Well. Not all of them. Nick is the only one who seems to get that just because Mark is behind bars, nothing is over.

He shows up on Bobby's doorstep a week after Mark's arraignment, and Bobby invites him in reluctantly. Reeny's been shy around strange men since Dan's death -- no. Since Mark got his hands on her two months before he killed Dan.

"Didn't expect to see you here, Nick."

"Um. Yeah." Nick looks extremely uncomfortable. "I, uh, I wanted to talk to Reeny."

"Case is closed," he says quietly. "No reason for you to."

"It's nothing official." Nick glances around before looking at Bobby. "I thought maybe I could help."

"Help how?" Yeah, Bobby sounds suspicious. He never used to, but that was before he realized a predator could hide so very, very well.

"Look, man. I've only ever told Catherine this, but --"

Bobby can suddenly see the story in the way Nick is holding himself right now. Reeny has that same posture, that same attempt to hide in plain view.

"Jesus."

Nick takes a shaky breath. "Yeah. Anyway, I thought maybe I could help."

Bobby looks at him for a long moment and thinks he sees the first bit of light in the tunnel since this nightmare began.

"Maybe you can at that."