Chapter 3
As Sara opened her eyes she realised she was still in the alleyway, lying on the ground in a pool of blood. She tried to move but an agonising pain in her chest stopped her. Her breathing was shallow as to not irritate the wound that she could only assume was from the gun that was fired moments before she fell unconscious.
It was then that she heard the voices that alerted her she was not alone in this alleyway.
"What are we going to do now Ryan?"
"Shut it. Shhh. Wait while I try to think!"
"Well thinking obviously did you well a moment ago! I thought the deal was we helped you harass that Willows kid and that was all! I'm not getting pulled down for this, Ryan!"
"I SAID SHUT IT JOHN! She killed Ian, the bitch deserved a bullet in her chest!"Taking some deep breaths Ryan continued, "Right, ok. Emm... David go and check she's definitely dead. Go!" As Ryan was the one giving orders and that he had practically admitted to shooting her Sara assumed he was the leader of the pack from before.
Slowly and nervously one of the men approached Sara, David she presumed. Upon noticing she was conscious he kept his cool and bent down and went through the motions of checking whether she was alive. With a last look in to her pleading eyes David knew what he had to do.
"She's dead, Ryan" he stated in a low voice.
"Oh shit. SHIT! What are we going to do now?" Ryan exclaimed. "Right, John come with me and we'll bring the cars around. We'll dump her by Lake Meade. Ryan stay with her!" And with that the two other men left the alleyway.
Sara had started to lose consciousness by this point but was vaguely aware of the man trying to apply pressure to her gunshot wound.
...
The next time Sara awoke she was in the back of an old truck obviously not built for off-roading as her pounding head reminded her.
Peering into the front seats, trying not to be noticed she saw the young man who had covered for her telling the leader she was dead, David she thinks his name was. She was not sure why this was a good thing yet; maybe if she let them finish the job it would save her from whatever her ordeal was about to become. However the instinct to survive was stronger and she just hoped she would be able to get out of this mess.
She was already loosing a large amount of blood and she was not sure she would make it much longer. She immediately stopped that train of thought in her head. She had full confidence Grissom would find her. The same applied for the team; over the years she had began to think of them as the family that she was deprived of as a kid and she trusted them with her life. She knew they would do everything in their power to find her; she just had to hold on long enough. She knew she had to play her part and meet the team half way.
The other man in the front seat was not the man she shot, but she remembered with a pang of guilt that Ryan had said she had killed someone. It was self defence but it did not make her feel better about taking a life. The man was not the leader Ryan himself either so by process of elimination she figured this man must be John, the other name mentioned in the alleyway.
A moment later her suspicions were confirmed as the men started to discuss their situation.
"Thanks for covering for me back there, John" David started
"Don't mention it, David . Ryan was more than happy with the suggestion that he leave and we deal with her, what a coward he's probably half way to the Nevada border by now! Plus I don't want to be brought down for murder either. Did you see the back of her jacket? She's a cop!" His common mistake made Sara want to laugh despite her dire situation. "Her death would have us on death row"
"How did you know I was lying to Ryan?"
"Simple. If she were actually dead you would have freaked out!"
"What are we going to do man?" David sighed
"I don't know. You're pre-med. Once we get far enough away from the centre of the city you should check her over. She's losing a lot of blood and we don't want her dying on us or we may as well as turn ourselves in for murder anyway."
"Do you really think we're going to get off with this, John?"
"Yes David! Trust me. It was Ryan that was shot; it's his blood on the crime scene and his fingerprints on the cop's gun! They won't find any evidence of us being part of it. If they find hair or anything like that they won't have anything to match it with, unlike Ryan we don't have records!"
"But what if he does get caught and he turns us in?"
"I never thought of that. Aagh this is such a mess! I was only helping him out with this to help towards my fraternity pledge. He just said we were going to mess that Willows brat around a bit to teach her a lesson for rejecting him when he tried to get her into bed last month. I never thought it was going to go this far!" with a sudden surge of worry overwhelmed Sara as she remembered Lindsey was also there in the alleyway. She just hoped Lindsey got away in time. If the two Willows women were reunited tonight then Sara felt this ordeal would be worth it.
"At least the kid doesn't know our names. She won't be able to turn us in. And maybe Ryan will keep his mouth shut. He knows we know too much. If we told the cops everything he gets up to we could double his sentence. That's if he isn't going down for murder already!"
"Maybe David. I definitely hope so! Doesn't solve our immediate problem though. What are we going to do with her" John said as he pointed his thumb back towards Sara.
"We can pull over in about 5 minutes. By then we'll be a decent distance from the city. Unlikely anyone will be watching. I'll check over then and try and stop the bleeding. After that we could go to my family's cabin in the mountains. Wait there until we sort out what to do next." David suggested.
"Okay sounds like the best plan we've got" john agreed. "We'll have to ditch the car at some point too. It's covered in blood. Thank goodness it's stolen."
Sara was apprehensive now. It had become obvious they were not intending to kill her but it was just as obvious that they were not going to let her walk away. Sara was not scared of many things but she knew the foreseeable future was not going to be easy. She began to pray to a god she had never believed in nor cared for that Grissom would find her, and soon. Even just so she could tell him how she felt. She hoped her prophecy was not coming true. She prayed it was not too late for them. Comforting thoughts of Grissom searching for her were Sara's last thoughts as she accepted the oncoming darkness.
AN. Sorry it was not as Sara centric as I hoped but I needed to explain what was going on with our bad guys and paint the picture there. The story will become more character based soon.