Chapter 4: Catherine

She hesitated. She didn't immediately answer yes when he asked her if she trusted me.

As soon as that pompous ass walked out, I couldn't contain myself any longer.

"So much for trust, Sara!" We spent nine months together, and she hesitates when asked if she trusts me? I'm still standing there with a look of disbelief on my face when she speaks up.

"I'd like to go home if you don't have any objections." She avoids looking at me when she asks Grissom.

"You can go, Sara. But I want to see you before you have to leave." I'm very pissed off by this point.

She merely says, "Yes, sir," and then turns and leaves.

As soon as she's gone, I turn to Grissom. "What the fuck was that all about?"

He takes his glasses off and sits them down on his desk as he begins to rub his temples.

"Catherine, you heard as much as I did. You know no more and no less than I do."

"I'm not talking about the case, Gil. Fuck! You don't see what just happened here, do you?"

He shakes his head obviously unsure of the point I'm trying to make. "What's your point, Catherine?"

I stand up, shaking my head as I turn to leave his office. When I get to the door I turn back around. "You really have no idea what goes on in this lab, do you?"

With that, I turn and leave.

I storm into the locker room looking for Sara. She is busy changing clothes and doesn't even look up to see who has come in.

"See something you like, Cath?" She flashes me a smug grin before pulling her shirt over her head.

I have to try hard not to gasp. As innocent as it is, the simple gesture of pulling her shirt off has always taken my breath away. "Nothing I haven't seen before," I say. I have been leaning against the lockers with my arms crossed over my chest, but push myself off and advance towards her. "Just what was that all about back there Sara?"

"He asked me if I trusted you. I said I did. Did you want me to say no?" She slams her locker shut and turns to face me.

"I'm not talking about the fact that you said you trusted me. I'm talking about how long it took you to say that you did." My shoulders sag as I say, "Sara, what's really going on here?"

Once again, her eye-lid twitches. "What's going on is that we're going to be heading to California soon and I want to go home and sleep before we have to go over those files. Is that okay with you?"

She walks toward the door. I can't let her leave without finding out what is really going on here. I grab her arm, stopping her short.

"Sara! You're lying." Brown eyes flash in anger as I say these words. "Your eye-lid is twitching. It did the same thing when you saw those two agents in Grissom's office."

A smile plays on Sara's lips as she considers what to say to me next. "I think you must be confusing me with your new girlfriend. I haven't lied to you about anything."

"Sara?"

"What?"

I have known Sara long enough to know when to drop an issue. I'm not going to get any further with her on this particular topic today. "Don't forget to call your girlfriend and let her know you can't make your trip this weekend." Two can play at bitchy!

xxxxx

The next morning I'm at the lab bright and early when Warrick comes in for a refill on his coffee.

"What's up, Cath?"

I look up from the file I am already familiarizing myself with to speak to him. "Oh, hey Rick. I'm just going over the files on this case."

"The one with the FBI?" The disappointment in his voice is thick.

I groan, "Yes, the one with the FBI. Look, Rick, I didn't ask for this. Sara accepted their offer and Grissom said that the only way she could work it was if I worked it with her."

"I know, Cath," he says as he sits down. "It kinda pissed me, Nick and Greg off that she agreed to work that case. And actually, I'm surprised you agreed to this. We all know how much you hate the FBI." He cocks his head in my direction.

I don't look up at him, instead I focus on the papers in my hands.

"You still got it for her bad, don't you?"

"It's nothing like that, Rick," I heave a sigh before putting the papers down and turning to face him. "Something about this just isn't right." I can tell he wants me to explain, so I continue. "When we walked in there yesterday, she knew who those guys were."

"Cath, they said they had worked a case with her before. Of course she knew them."

"No, it was something else. Her eye-lid twitched and she has this vein in her neck that kinda pops out."

"And this is supposed to mean what to me?" I can tell that Warrick isn't as convinced as I am that something is going on.

"Those are her tells. I could always tell when she was lying because one those would give her away. And to top it off, when that Spencer asked her if she trusted me, she hesitated."

Rick stands up, shaking his head. "I don't know, Cath. If I had the past—the recent past—with you that she does, I might have hesitated as well. I think you're reaching here, girl."

"Reaching for what?" Sara asks as she walked into the room.

Taking that as his cue to leave, Rick bade us both goodbye and hightailed it out of the break room leaving Sara and I alone.

"Discover anything of interest in those files?" Sara asks as she sat down across from me and pulls a case file toward her.

"This 'Crazy Hatter' is one sick fuck," I say to her. "He not only rapes and kills his victims, but afterwards, he dresses them up like dolls, puts a Queen of Hearts playing card on their chest and a pendulum in their hand."

I look up to see Sara's eyes closed and once again that eye-lid is twitching.

I reach across the table and cover her hand with mine. "Sar, you okay?"

Her eyes flash in anger once again. "I'm fine, Cath." She pulls her hand away from me. "This is going to be a tough case."

"Yeah, I know." I go back to looking through the file in front of me. "So, what case did you work with those two agents?"

"Huh?" She sits there in stunned silence. "What case?"

"Yeah, they said they had worked with you before. What case did you work with them?"

I can see her struggling to come up with an answer.

"It was…uh…back when I was …"

"…in California. Sidle worked with us on a bank robbery in California." We both turn and look to see Liam Novacek. "We're not here to talk about the past though, unless it's something that's going to help us catch this killer. Right, Ms. Sidle?"