Destruction

DISCLAIMER: I do not own CSI or anything affiliated with the show. Based off the Miniature Killer and the episode Living Doll.

A/n: This story begins at the end of Living Doll… sort of my idea of where they'll go from there based upon the fact that I love Sara and I don't want her to be killed off.

Sara dug her fingers into the wet sand. It was freezing cold, but she had to keep moving as much as possible; she had to keep herself awake and alive for as long as she could. Sara couldn't give up. She knew that she was hurt, badly. Her legs were pinned under something, but she could still move one of her arms. The other was pinned beneath her body. She tried to move it, but the weight of the car prevented her from lifting her body enough to move it at all. Pulling her hand under the car, Sara felt around in her vest for her cell phone. The fact that it was missing worried her. Everything hurt so badly, and without her cell phone she couldn't do anything to help herself.

Sara closed her eyes and focused on just trying to breathe as she thought back, trying to remember how she had ended up here. The last thing she could remember was loading her kit into the back of her car, and then hearing someone calling her name. She'd turned around and come face to face with one of the members of the cleaning crew. Beyond that, things were rather fuzzy. She couldn't remember how she had ended up underneath a car; she only knew that it was a car because of the cold metal against her back. It was too cold, but every time she shivered, blinding pain shot through her body. It was almost all she could do to keep from blacking out. Sara resignedly pulled her free arm closer to her body, trying to keep warm with her own body heat. It was the best she could do. She simply had to wait and see what would happen. "Don't be too late," she whispered, closing her eyes in an attempt to conserve as much energy as possible.

LINELINELINELINE

"It's too cold out there," Nick said. He and Warrick were standing at a window, looking out at the rain that poured down.

"I just hope that she's out of the rain. The last thing she'll need is hypothermia, especially after everything else," Warrick replied. He sighed. "If…"

"She's still alive. We work as if she's alive until we have reason to believe otherwise," Nick said. He shook his head and started back to the lab. "We have to find her. Soon."

"What are you going to do?" Warrick asked.

"I'm going back over those old case files. And all the drawings Sofia found in Natalie's apartment. There's got to be something there," Nick replied. Warrick followed him, knowing that it would take both of them to get through everything they had.

LINELINELINELINE

Catherine looked down at the table in front of her. It appeared that Natalie had been in a hurry; she hadn't cleaned up the table and Catherine could still see the remains of the latest model. Sand was scattered all over the tabletop; a foam brush, still full of glue, was stuck to the table. There were a lot of tools lying around that Catherine didn't recognize, along with what appeared to be a doll-sized molded head. She picked it up with a gloved hand and examined it more closely. It had been cut off of the doll's body, and obviously replaced with a different head. Catherine just shook her head and bagged the piece of evidence.

"This is sick," she heard Sofia whisper. Catherine turned around and saw the detective pulling some drawings out of a drawer. "She's drawn every crime scene, exactly the way it ended up looking. Even down to the way the blood pooled. Perfect on all the details." Catherine walked over to look at the drawings Sofia was examining.

"How on earth did Natalie do this? The details are so exact," Catherine replied.

"I've heard of this before. It's called eidetic memory… but you're supposed to lose it in childhood. And the detailed memories don't last long enough to do something like this," Sofia replied. She shook her head. "If these drawings were done from memory, she could very well be the first person to ever show proof of a true photographic memory."

"I wouldn't doubt it… Natalie's already one in a million," Catherine muttered. She looked up, a bit confused. "It isn't possible… she wouldn't have had time to do all of the drawings of the car if she did them after the murders. But they're too perfect to have been done beforehand. There's no good way for her to have done these drawings." She sighed. "There's something very wrong about all of this… the immaculate crime scenes, the detailed models and drawings. I just can't place my finger on why it bothers me so much."

LINELINELINELINE

Sara opened her eyes and tried to see what was going on around her, but it was still too dark to know where she was. Before she knew what was happening, she was coughing. The pain was so intense, Sara could barely breathe. She fought to catch her breath as tears came to her eyes. After several minutes, she finally felt her breathing ease. The pain was yet another warning signal; Sara began to mentally catalogue any injuries she could determine without being able to move. Already she knew that she had a couple of broken ribs. She tried to move her toes; the pain shooting up her right leg gave her the information she needed, and she added a broken leg to the list of probable injuries. Not good, but she continued to remind herself that it could be a lot worse; she could have been unable to feel her legs at all.

Sara closed her eyes again and tried to get her mind off of the pain she was in. While it was helpful to know what the problem was, focusing solely on the pain certainly wasn't helping her frame of mind any. All it really did was keep her mind away from the bigger problem – surviving.

LINELINELINELINE

Grissom watched the hand in the model as it began to slow in its movement. This was bad; if the hand stopped moving, that meant that the chances of finding Sara alive pretty much went down the drain. Natalie was not only a gifted artist; she could also calculate to within about an hour how long it would take for someone to die. Of course, this all hinged on whether or not Natalie had gotten to Sara at the exact moment she had planned. If Sara had been behind for some reason, then there was a good chance that she was still alive out there. But not for very long.

"Grissom?" Greg asked, opening the supervisor's office door. Gil looked up and waited to hear what Greg had to say. "I found the towing company that picked up the Mustang from impound. It was rented to an Ernie Dell yesterday. I tried to tell the guy that was impossible, but he says he has a copy of the driver's license to prove it. He faxed it over, but the picture isn't of our Ernie Dell."

"Who's in the picture?" Grissom asked, confused.

"Natalie. She faked the ID… changed a few dates, the gender and the picture. It's a really convincing fake, though. If I didn't know it was a phony, I wouldn't believe it. I ran the driver's license number, and she didn't change it at all," Greg replied. He held the report out to his boss, in case the man wanted to see what he'd found for himself.

"Call Brass. We need to talk to the person who rented Natalie that truck." Greg nodded and walked out of the office to follow Grissom's instructions. Grissom looked back down at the model, willing the miniature hand to keep moving, just for a little while longer. Just until they could figure out where the car was located and get to Sara.

LINELINELINELINE

Catherine dug through the small trashcan under Natalie's worktable, curious as to what she might find. She pulled a couple of photographs out of the bottom and looked at them for a moment, before looking up at Sofia. "You need to see these," she said, motioning for the detective to come look at the pictures. Sofia looked at them for a few moments, somewhat confused.

"What are these? Why would Natalie take pictures like this?" Sofia asked. Catherine shrugged.

"Not the type of thing you'd find in a memory book, that's for sure. Why on Earth would she want pictures of Ernie Dell's dead body?" Catherine looked through more of the photographs, before stopping at one that looked familiar. There wasn't really any good reason for Natalie having taken the photo; it was a rather nondescript patch of desert. Except for the fence… Catherine recognized that particular feature of the landscape. "I know this place… I used to live out there."

"Why would Natalie have a picture of that place?" Sofia asked. Catherine shook her head, utterly confused.

"I haven't lived there in years… not since I started working in the lab. She couldn't have known that," Catherine replied. She pulled the photo out of the pile and moved to the next one, swallowing hard. It was a picture of Sara and Grissom kissing, outside her apartment. She turned to glance at Sofia, whose eyes had grown wide.

"Did you know about that?" Sofia asked. Catherine shook her head.

"Not until tonight. I'm starting to think that there's a lot we don't know about Sara and Grissom's relationship."

LINELINELINELINE

"I talked to someone who works at the rental place where Natalie got the tow truck, and she hasn't returned it yet. The guy who rented it to her went missing a few days ago," Brass said, walking into Grissom's office. Grissom looked up at the detective expectantly. "He was stealing money from the rental company long before he ran into Natalie. Apparently he realized his mistake in renting her that truck and skipped town before anyone could find out about what he'd done."

"And before we could find out what Natalie did to get him to rent the truck to her," Grissom replied. He closed his eyes and sighed. "Every lead we have seems to be going down the drain. We can't even prove that she's the one who kidnapped Sara at this point. The only thing that conclusively connects her to any of it is what the receptionist saw and the one fingerprint on the last doll." He shook his head.

"It's tough," Brass replied. "Natalie's brilliant, somewhere behind that twisted mind. Problem is figuring out just how much she understands that what she did was wrong." Grissom looked up at him on that one.

"She knows, Jim. This isn't the effect of a psychotic episode any longer. This is her way of getting revenge for the death of Ernie Dell. She blames us for that… blames me, anyway. In her mind, justice hasn't been served until I'm just as miserable as she is," Grissom told him. He closed his eyes and sighed. "In her mind, I took away the only person she ever loved, so she has to do the same thing to me," Grissom added. Brass cleared his throat at that comment, and Grissom looked up. "She's going to hate me for telling everyone." He reached down into his desk drawer and pulled out a small box, tears in his eyes. "We have to find her, Jim. I never even got to give this to her," he said, opening the box to reveal a diamond ring.

"You'd better put that back in that drawer for safekeeping. We'll find her, Gil," Brass assured him. He pulled out his cell phone as it began ringing. Grissom listened as Brass spoke to Catherine on the phone for a moment. As soon as he hung up, Brass started towards the door. "Get your stuff… Catherine and Sofia found the car."

"They were supposed to be at Natalie's apartment," Grissom replied.

"I know… which is why I'm wondering what the hell they're doing out in the middle of the desert," Brass said, walking out quickly. Grissom followed him, grabbing a jacket off of the back of a chair as he went. Neither man noticed that the small hand on the miniature had stopped moving as they talked.