This is my second story. It's a short one, only two chapters, but I hope you will still enjoy.
A big Thank You to my wonderful beta jbird! Without her the story would have been only half as long. She was a real inspiration!
And thank you all for your great reception of my first story. No wonder I had fun writing a another one!
Disclaimer: You all know I don't own them. I know it, too. So enough said, let's get on with the story…
-Going to Las Vegas-
Chapter One
"Vivian, I need you to accompany me on a trip to Las Vegas."
Vivian looks up, surprised. Jack is leaning on the partition that separates her desk from the rest of the bullpen. He looks distracted, as if his mind is already on the road. He sends her a short glance and a nod and is already turning around before she can recover.
"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What is this all about?"
Jack stops abruptly, back still turned to her, shoulders slumping ever so slightly in annoyance. He turns around again.
Vivien holds up her hands in surrender.
"I'll do anything for you, Jack. You know that. And I'll even do it most of the times when you don't explain yourself…"
Now he is starting to frown.
"…But do you want to go, like, right now?" she adds, raising her eyebrows.
Jack is taken aback. Vivian had given him a hard time when he did not move to Chicago with his family, staying in New York and taking back the job that should have been hers. He reckons he deserved it, but it still makes him feel unsure about the state of their friendship. He has been treating her with silk gloves ever since. Then he realizes she is looking at him with affection.
He relaxes and smiles a very rare smile. Vivien has not seen him smile in maybe a year, maybe even two. But he seems better lately.
"You know, Jack, Reggie is celebrating his birthday today. We're having a little party this evening and considering the state of affairs," she indicates the clean-scrubbed white board, "I might even be home early."
Jack sighs in defeat.
"I was planning to go this afternoon," he admits. "I want to do it now, since things are so slow around here."
"Is it about Karen Connors?"
He nods and sits down, resting his arms on the desk, looking at her.
"She may be living witha family in Las Vegas. There'sa girl matching the description and the circumstances fit. I want to check it out."
"Why don't you talk to the local field office?"
But she knows this is one of the cases where he will only trust himself and his own instincts.
"I need to do this myself. My source tells me the family has a history of abuse. If that child is Karen, hell, if it's any child that doesn't belong there… She's got no one who really cares, Vivian."
"I know."
They all have cases that stay with them.
Chet Collins, the father of Sean Collins, who disappeared at the age of two on a camping trip, came in for five years, talking to Jack, asking him to check out various leads. That one had turned out all right. Sean has been home for two years. But Karen Connors is a totally different case. Although she has a big family, none of them really seem to care the way Sean's father did. Her mother is in over her head with six other children, the father grudgingly admits that he does not really mind having one less mouth to feed, and grandparents, uncles and aunts are entirely caught up in their own lives.
Karen Connors, a quiet, unassuming, overlooked four year old does not count for anything. Once the case went cold the family never called once.
Jack keeps the file in his desk, looking at it every couple of months for the past four years, looking at the photo of a pretty blonde child who stares unsmilingly into the camera. All her siblings are beautiful children, but they all have that same unsmiling, stern look. Children's Services has had to find foster homes for three of them since Karen disappeared. The father not only beats his wife, but also his children when he is drunk. A very sad and not uncommon story.
Vivian leans back in her chair.
"Okay," she says, "So why don't you take Samantha with you? She was just as involved in the case as you were."
She feels Jack's reluctance. His relationship with Sam has been strained over the past year, ever since Jack didn't go to Chicago, and Sam and Martin became lovers.
Vivian sighs inwardly. She remembers only too well how Jack and Sam were together, even in the aftermath of their affair – the smiles in their eyes when they looked at each other, the mutual trust, the love still being there in plain sight for a good observer like herself. Yeah, she thinks it was love, she is pretty sure of it and part of her is furious with Jack because she feels he has been letting Sam down. On the other side she respects his decision to stay with his wife. But all that is history now, the affair, the marriage and whatever was left between Jack and Sam. When they look at each other now there are only lots of unanswered questions. Jack has tried to open up to her again lately but Sam regularly brushes him off when he is trying to talk about anything else than work
"I don't know," he says now, "I'm not sure she…"
"Come on Jack, she is really the only one available. She won't mind."
ooo
Jack finds Samantha on the balcony. She is staring out at the city.
"Hey," he says.
He has felt awkward around her since her abduction by drug dealers while being undercover on a case a couple of months ago. She got beaten up badly and was nearly killed. Jack knows it is his fault, but for the life of him, he can't even remember if he told her that he is sorry. In the last couple of weeks he has felt like a man slowly waking from a dream or maybe like someone on the verge of drowning, discovering that he can swim after all. He looks back over the past year and is astonished at how miserable he has been.
"Hey," she answers, her eyes glancing at him for a second and then focusing again on the city around and below them. She has done that a lot lately, always just not looking at him. He can never catch her eyes and catching her eyes was the one thing that got him through so many days. He suspects that she is angry but he is not sure for what.
"I'm sorry," he says.
"For what?" She looks surprised.
"For not pulling you out in time. I should have insisted."
"Jack, what the hell are you talking about?"
"When you went undercover…"
"Oh my God, that was ages ago. Now you tell me you're sorry?"
He doesn't know how to reply.
With a softer voice she continues:
"I don't blame anyone but myself. There's no need for you to be sorry. If it had been up to you, I would never have gone undercover in the first place."
"It was up to me."
"Well…" Sam glances over at him. He is leaning on the railing. His hair is very short. She likes it that way. It makes him look handsome. She wants to touch the curve of his head, trail her hand along his neck but she quells the desire and looks away. She remembers clearly that he didn't pull her out in time because she insisted to stay under, telling him that if they didn't have a history, he would not have a problem. That was pure blackmail and she is not proud of it, especially because she knows how completely he fell for it. But she also remembers his frosty and unkind reaction when she phoned him on the last morning to tell him she had been contacted by a middle-man the night before. He was mad at her for not having informed him sooner and she still does not understand why he so adamantly insisted on protocol.
She does not know that he was sick with fear that something might happen to her.
"You could have visited me at the hospital."
He looks astonished.
"You were there only a couple of hours."
"I was there overnight."
"Martin went with you."
"That doesn't mean you couldn't have visited."
A wave of strong emotion washes over him. The feeling of relief when they found her alive had been covered by a mountain of guilt, burying him. He had assumed that she, naturally, did not want to see him.
Her fingers are curled around the railing and she appears to want to rip it off
"You didn't come out here to talk to me about those old stories."
"No…umh… so how are you and Martin?"
"Jack!"
"What?"
"Don't tell me you…"
She stops when she sees that he has no idea what she is talking about.
"What bubble have you been living in? I thought it was common knowledge by now."
He looks at her, his face a blank.
"We broke up. A month ago." she explains. "Well, actually, he broke up with me," she adds, smiling sadly
Jack is stunned. He does not know what to say. Various responses are drifting through his head but nothing seems appropriate. 'Nobody tells me anything around here' lingers on his tongue. He knows how pathetic that will sound and keeps quiet.
Sam finally breaks the silence:
"Was there something in particular you wanted?"
He recovers slowly. The prospect of going with her to Las Vegas without having Martin's presence looming in his mind seems suddenly very attractive.
"Yes…umh…I want you to go with me to Las Vegas."
"Oh," she says, "Is it Karen Connors?"
"Yeah."
"You think you've got something?"
"We have to find out. I'll fill you in on the way."
They leave the balcony. Now they are completely focused on the task at hand and completely in synch. They are not even aware of that, but anyone watching them would see it in an instant.
ooo
In Las Vegas they hardly notice the bright lights and the bustle around them.
Jack's sourceis a woman named Alison Harford. She worked for Children's Services in New York and knew the Connors family well. She got to know Jack when Karen went missing. Now they are sitting in her office which is situated in downtown Las Vegas, squeezed in between a casino and a hotel. Sam thinks it's a strange setting, but that is probably how things are here in Vegas, glamour and squalor all intermingled.
"You wouldn't believe how many cases I have to look at," Alison says, her gaze fixed on Jack. "It's almost as bad as New York. Of course it's a slightly different clientele. Lots of people with severe gambling problems. There was that woman last month whose children were starving because she couldn't be dragged away from the gambling machines."
Jack and Alison have been catching up for at least ten minutes now, chatting comfortably like old friends. Sam's gaze wanders through the small office. Alison seems to be an interesting woman who likes to travel. There are small souvenirs from all around the world on display, tasteful stuff, not the sort of things you can buy in souvenir shops. Sam has learned that she has three grown daughters and one grandchild, although she can be no older than Jack. There are photos of all of them on her desk. She is actually an attractive woman, slim and lively – and divorced. That bothers Sam. She can see how comfortable Jack is around her and that makes her feel threatened in an odd way. And it makes her feel sad. She pushes those feelings away. There is no sense in lingering on the past. The world has moved on.
"So, Jack, how's your family?" Alison asks.
Sam feels Jack going tense beside her.
"They're fine. I think. My wife and daughters are living in Chicago now. We got a divorce," he says matter of factly.
"Sorry to hear that," Alison says. Sam is sure she sees a hopeful spark light up in the woman's eyes. Jack lowers his head and looks at his hands, not noticing. That makes Sam feel better.
There is a short silence. Alison opens a file and takes out a photograph, pushing it over the desk toward Jack. He takes it and holds it so Sam can have a good look, too. After a few seconds they glance at each other.
"Right," Jack says, giving the photo back to Alison. "It certainly looks like her."
"We got involved after a doctor in the Mountain View's emergency room called us. The girl, her name is Betty Wigand, was admitted with a broken arm and bruises. The parents said she fell off while climbing a tree in the back-yard. The doctor remembered he had seen the mother before and when he checked the old files he discovered that she had been admitted four times between 1998 and 2000 – bruises, new and old, two fractured ribs, a fractured wrist, that sort of stuff. She always had a story ready and couldn't be convinced to talk to the police although it was quite obvious that her husband beat her. After that I took a good look at the family. Especially after I discovered how much Betty looks like Karen. They were not very cooperative. Resisted me all the way. I found out that Betty was adopted four years ago, closed adoption. When I looked at the records I discovered that both her parents were dead and that her aunt had custody and gave her up for adoption. Apparently she's a drug addict and raising a child got too much for her."
Alison pushes the file over the desk.
"It looks legal, but I know there are plenty of ways to make it appear that way. I thought you should check it out. I hope I haven't made a mistake."
Jack shakes his head, opening the file.
"Not at all," Sam says, "The resemblance is very strong. It's well worth checking out. Maybe we'll get lucky."
Jack reads out an address. Sam looks at her watch. It's 8 o'clock in the evening.
"Might be a good time," she says.
"Thank you for your help, Alison. We'll keep you posted." Jack stands up, sending Alison Harford a smile that makes Sam's heart constrict painfully. She has gotten far too accustomed to a Jack, who is so exclusively focused on his work that nothing else exists. She thinks back and realizes that he has seemed more open to the world lately. He will probably begin dating again one of these days. It's only natural. He is an attractive man.
Sam does not fail to notice the way Alison touches Jack's arm on the way out. It looks possessive. Jack doesn't seem to mind.
ooo
Sam stops the car at the curb. Jack is studying the file beside her, occasionally reading out snippets of information that are important for her to know. If it was Vivian sitting beside him he would comment on it to make sure she was making the same assumptions. That is not necessary with Sam. He will only have to tell her if he has a thought that is unusual or goes off in a new direction. Usually, though, she would already have a similar notion. Working with her is so smooth that he can concentrate fully on the task at hand, not even aware that to others their professional communication would seem based on seventy percent telepathy. But today he notices and takes a deep pleasure in not having to explain himself, in feeling her presence at his side that is to him steady as a rock and sparkling inspiration at the same time. Jack can tell exactly what she is thinking about the case they are on at any given time, but if anyone would ask him what Sam is thinking about himself he would be at a total loss. Telepathy only goes so far.
They get out of the car. They Wigand's home is small but well tended. Dusk is coming and Sam pulls off her sunglasses.
"Alison Harford is an interesting woman," she says.
Jack looks at her.
"Yeah, she is," he confirms, feeling puzzled about the remark. He climbs the steps to the porch, knocking on the front door.
"She seemed to like you." The words just fall out of Sam's mouth and in the same instance she wishes she could take them back. But Jack grins at her.
"People do, you know," he says.
"It's a mystery to me." She smiles at him and her eyes touch his for more than a second for the first time in months. Jack feels a piercing in his heart. When he is alone in his hotel room later it occurs to him that it might have been that little fellow with the bow and the arrow. The feeling is not unpleasant but Jack finds it hard to recover. It might have to do with being shot twice in the same place. He will lie awake until dawn.
The door is opened by a plain woman in her late thirties. She looks scared when Jack pulls his badge. She calls for her husband, her voice shaking. Jim Wigand appears, a big man with scars around his right eye and a worried look on his face.
"Look," he says defensively, "We've done nothing wrong, so what do you guys want?"
ooo
Jim Wigand works security for one of the big casinos. He sits on the sofa in a cluttered but comfortable living room looking like a trapped animal. His wife sits beside him wringing her hands. She has just taken the FBI Agents through every step of the adoption process, beginning with the realization in the spring of 1998 that Jim would not be able to father a child.
"We wanted a baby of course, but then the woman at the adoption agency showed us a picture of Betty and we just fell in love with her."
She looks at her husband for confirmation and he nods.
"You have no reason at all to question how legal that adoption was. You're only here because that idiot woman from Children's Services wants to make life miserable for us."
Sam takes a measure of comfort in hearing Jim Wigand call Alison Harford an idiot woman. She doesn't show it of course. Beside her she hears Jack's voice, low and with an edge to it:
"Maybe you want to explain to me how your daughter sustained her injuries?"
Jim Wigand looks Jack straight in the eyes. They regard each other for a long moment. His wife reaches over and takes hold of his hand. She looks like a lioness ready to fight for her cub. Finally Jim lowers his eyes.
"I never laid a hand on my daughter," he says.
"He didn't," his wife confirms.
Their eyes lock and she is squeezing his hand hard. Jack sees how Alicia Wigand looks at her husband and feels a painful stab. There is love in her gaze, acceptance and even pride. Not the eyes of a woman who covers up for her husband beating their daughter.
"I did beat my wife," Jim Wigand says in a rough voice, "I did that. But I've got it under control. I'm just lucky she didn't leave me."
"We were under a lot of stress for a couple of years. First we found out that we couldn't have any children, then Jim lost his job, my parents died leaving nothing but unpaid bills…I was hysterical most of the time. But we're all better now. We've got our life under control and it's just not fair that you're digging into all that old dirt and say we don't care for our daughter. She is our whole life."
Her voice is fierce and there are tears in her eyes. Jim puts his arm around his wife. Jack does not need to look across at Sam to know she is thinking the same thing – there is nothing here. These people are telling the truth. And Jim is a lucky man. As plain as his wife looks, she's got the heart of a fighter. Now she looks at her man, smiling and Jack feels that painful stab again, because Maria, his ex-wife never looked at him that way, never gave him that mixture of trust and loyalty that says 'I believe in you'. He suddenly feels very low. He never laid a hand on his wife and kids. He never even came close to doing something like that and still this Jim Wigand who put his wife into hospital four times must be a better man than he is. His wife's eyes say so.
The stairs that lead to the first floor are creaking and a second later a pretty eight-year-old is standing in the door. The newest Harry Potter is pressed to her chest and she looks worried.
"You talk so loud, I can't concentrate," she says.
"You should be sleeping, little miss," Jim Wigand grumbles.
Instead of drawing back she seems to take his response as confirmation that everything is all right, comes and snuggles in between her parents. The resemblance between her and the picture of four-year-old Karen Connors is even stronger in real life but somehow Jack doubts that it is her. Even if it was, it seems this girl is in a good place. Her right lower arm is in a plaster cast that is painted and scribbled on with good wishes. She raises it so Jack and Sam can see more closely and smiles with pride.
"I'm the only one of my friends who ever broke anything," she says.
"Yeah, she's the envy of all the kids on the street, especially the boys," Jim says, ruffling her hair lightly, "I just hope she leaves it at that…"
ooo
They leave the Wigand's house half an hour later. Sam carries Betty's toothbrush in a plastic evidence bag. They will have to do a DNA analysis just to be on the safe side.
"I'll talk to the field office in the morning and get the DNA charts from Karen Connors's parents send over. I 'm just afraid it will take them forever to do this. It won't range high on their priority-list," Sam says.
Jack holds out his hand and she gives him the bag.
"I know a guy here. Gil Grissom. He's the head of the CSI-lab. He can get it done for us in no time. Let's go there and ask."
They settle into the car and while Sam studies the street map, Jack sits enveloped in his own thoughts. After a couple of minutes Sam starts the motor and looks over at him.
"Are you okay?"
He is pale, staring off into the falling darkness.
"Jack?"
He turns to face her.
"How can a woman whose husband beat her still be so loyal?"
Sam shrugs her shoulders.
"Seems to me she understood why it happened and they worked it out. They seemed very much in love. Not that I really understand why she didn't leave him in the first place, but maybe in the long run she made the right decision for herself."
Jack doesn't answer. He remembers the feeling that Maria used to give him of not being able to do anything right. He remembers the casual remarks she would drop to their friends, to their families how he always worked late, was never at home, left her to do all the daily tasks although she was working full time, too, and a thousand other small pinpricks. She had been right of course, so right… He just wishes she hadn't told everyone. He especially wishes she hadn't told Bernard Scoggins. What her lawyer hit Jack with in the deposition had been secrets, things told in confidence, not to be shared.
Sam is pulling away from the curb. Her blonde hair catches the light of the streetlamps and the breath catches in Jack's throat. He shared things with Sam that he should only have shared with his wife. Maria could never forgive that, even if she would have been able to forgive all the other things he did to her.
Jack is not a man who feels easily sorry for himself. The guilt that he carries around prevents that. But in this moment, thinking back to the way Alicia Wigand looked at her husband he fervently wishes Maria had looked at him that way only once. Well, maybe he just missed it.
ooo
They leave the toothbrush with Gil Grissom, who is more than happy to help once Jack tells him the story.
"Attractive man," Sam says when they drive back to the hotel.
Jack does not answer, but lying awake in the night those two words keep repeating themselves over and over again. He is still in love with Sam. He has not been able to stop that no matter how much he tried to fight for his marriage. He managed to force the feelings away but now it seems they are flooding back with a vengeance. They have actually been flooding back since he realized that Sam had started a relationship with Martin. On that day he resigned himself to finally having lost her. It had felt like a light going out. It had plunged him into one hell of a darkness. The thing is, now that Martin is gone from her private life she'll probably start dating again, soon. It's only natural. She is a desirable woman.
That thought makes any pretense of sleep take off altogether and he spends the rest of the night contemplating how he can prevent that from happening. He is not sure he will be able to live through it again.
ooo
The next morning Jack's mood is so bad, Sam doubts she has ever seen him worse, and she has seen a lot. She takes one look at his hair and his lined face and decides to go really easy on him for the rest of the day.
They spend some time checking out hospital records and validating Betty Wigand's birth certificate. In the afternoon Gil Grissom calls and while Jack stays in the hotel to make phone-calls to Alison Harford and Vivian, Sam goes to pick up the results. She comes back an hour later, high color in her cheeks and still chuckling. Jack looks at her frowning.
"That friend of yours," she explains, "He seemed so formal in the start but he is really a lot of fun."
After a while she adds:
"And so charming!"
Jack practically rips the lab-results out of her hands. They confirm what they knew all along. Betty is really Betty and the adoption as legal as can be.
"Let's tell the Wigands," he says.
ooo
Later Jack sits on the bed in his downtown hotel room. He is rubbing away at his face, looking tired and downcast.
Sam is pacing in front of him.
"It was a long shot," she tries to console him.
"Yeah, maybe, but I had to do it. I had to make sure. It could have been Karen, after all."
"We had to make sure," she says, "I know. I'm not complaining."
"When does the flight leave?"
"Tomorrow, 8.30 a.m."
He looks at his watch.
They've got plenty of time for a good night's sleep. But he knows he will not be able to do any better than last night. There's a voice in his heart trying to tell him that Karen Connors is gone. He tries to shut it up, succeeding. There is always hope and he will not give up. But there is another voice nagging away at him that he will soon lose Sam forever if he is not able to reach out for her and that one will not leave him alone.
He feels the bed move beside him and stops rubbing his eyes, seeing that Sam has settled down at his side, sitting very close. He runs a hand through his hair, feeling suddenly out of breath. Sam sees it sticking up, raising her eyebrows. He smoothes it down again and a soft look comes to her eyes.
"Have you eaten?" she asks.
He shakes his head.
"Come on, then."
"I'm really not hungry."
"We haven't eaten all day!"
"Sam, please, just leave me alone."
He regrets his words as soon as they are spoken because of course he does not want to be left alone, least of all people by her. But she seems to know him well enough to read behind his words. She takes his hand.
"Come on," she says.
He tries to look at her but her gaze keeps slipping away. With a sigh he gets up. Even if he is not hungry, her company is better than sitting here alone.
TBC