CHAPTER ONE: "Alone in the Sands"
The wind picked up quick, maybe just a little too quick for Sara's liking. She was standing outside, unprotected, in the middle of a desert. Grissom had needed to run back into his office for some weird Grissom like supply he had forgotten on his first trip out. So that left Sara standing in the Las Vegas desert with no coat, no car, and no way out.
"Looks like it's just you and me now, Bub," she said as she sat down next to the crash-test dummy version of a dead body on the ground. The medical examiner's van had already been by and picked up the body, but David had brought her the dummy, made up like the corpse and it was still in the sand. Catherine was supposed to be coming by in a few moments, but her "few moments" were up ten minutes ago.
Sara was slowly getting used to the wind blowing her hair in her face, but she still itched to turn around. She was just about to spin into the wind when she had to jump up off the ground. An F-150 truck roared past her, zooming over where she had been sitting just a second before.
"HEY!! LOOK JERK!!" she screamed as the truck left a trail of dust and dirt to blow at her. "I WAS THERE!! YOU COULD HAVE KILLED ME!!"
She was almost scared out of her skin when an SUV pulled up behind her and a voice spoke to her. "Talking to the wind are we now, Sidle? Or are you just talking to your boyfriend down there?"
Sara swung around, ready to punch whoever it was behind her, and stopped her fist short as she recognized the strawberry blond framed face of Catherine Willows. "CATH!" Sara fussed, "I hope you know I was just about to kill you there. And, no, I'm not insane enough to be talking to those strange guys who like to lay on the sand…and before you even think it, I'm not that desperate either."
Catherine smiled at Sara as she realized she honestly had been starting to think that. "So would you like a ride back to the office or at least a spot with some air conditioning…and WHERE IS GRISSOM?" Catherine asked when she finally realized he wasn't there.
Sara rolled her eyes as she climbed into the passenger seat of Catherine's SUV and pulled the door shut. "He had to head back for some…..thing. I don't remember exactly what it is." Catherine shook her head as she wondered what Grissom could possibly need to get, before realizing that she suddenly didn't want to know.
Sara sighed as she closed her eyes and sank into the seat, loving the feeling of 30 degree air conditioner blowing over her as she heard more tires approaching the site. A few seconds later, Catherine poked her in the side and said, "Come on Sara, Grissom's back. With his 'thing'." Sara opened her left eye and glared at Catherine. "You're not scary, Sara," Catherine said.
"I wasn't trying to be," Sara almost whined as she got out of the car, slowly. "I was trying to not move as much as possible."
The two women walked over and saw Grissom holding a book with a swirling text seeming to scream Greek Mythological Rituals in Every Day Modern Society's Cults. Both women sighed as they could already see where Grissom was going to go with this case.
