I

Sam closed the front door and sighed, relieved to be free of her fear for the next eight hours. She knew James was involved in organized crime, but she also knew that the first person he had ever killed had been a victim in an unsolved murder and the lab couldn't even identify the victim. She could become his second victim as soon as she started talking. Sure, he had hooked up with her just to have a contact in law enforcement. But Sam couldn't do a thing against the fear he created in her. She knew her colleagues would understand and even take care of business if she told them. Especially Zora and their supervisor Horatio Caine.
But IAB could request her to leave.
Even though there wasn't a city in the world she loved more than Miami.
Working as a QD lab tech in the Miami-Dade Crime Lab was a very demanding and tiring job, but for Sam, it was a welcome change, a welcome distraction from James. Damn him.
When everything goes totally straightforward, something has to hold you back from kamikaze.
Sam's life hadn't been a misery; in fact, no life could have been more enjoyable. Sure, her parents divorced when she was only fourteen, but her mom, who was an doctor, MD, decided they should move to Miami because she could get a better job here.
Sam nor her brother ever minded.
Home was cosy, high school was fun. Good grades, fun friends, nice hobbies... what more could anyone want? College and university she also passed smoothly. Sam couldn't even find the smallest thing to complain about on her first three years at the lab. Until she met James Costero a year ago, at a party of one of Sam's brother's rich friends. She thought she had fallen in love with him, but she was actually scared of him. She had realised that only a month ago. It had taken twenty-six years to build her life and career to what it had been. It took just a year to destroy most of it.