Disclaimer: Not mine.
Chapter Four:
He sat in his office, his mind reeling. She had lied to him—listening to her heart rate increase as she spoke had given her away, no polygraph needed, thank you very much! He replayed the conversation in his head. She had lied when she explained why she was here early… and her heart rate had sped up when he mentioned Greg, but not when she told him they weren't together. He let his eyes roam about the room as he considered these things.
Perhaps she was attracted to Greg—why was it that his flirtations didn't irritate her? But then, he could not prevent her from being with any other man when he refused to claim her… He had no right to be upset.
But more importantly, Sara did not lie to him, almost as a rule. When Catherine had had a bad day and he asked what was wrong—she lied when she told him she was fine. Sara did not even do this… the word 'fine' slipping from her lips not even a full second before an explanation of why she was not fine slid out too. What could be going on to bring her here early, to make her lie to him?
He pictured her there, in the break room, a shining vision of beauty and perfection—hair curling, unruly, at the nape of her neck, struggling for life against her ponytail—her chocolate eyes as they flashed to him and away—the sultry lips defining a mouth that was more telling than even her eyes, failing to hide that which her eyes had learned to disguise. What, exactly, was she keeping from him?
The answer came to him unexpectedly quickly, despite his apparent frustration a moment previous. She was still working the case he'd tried to throw her off of. It was so simple, so obvious… so Sara. He wanted to be angry with her—disobeying a direct command from her supervisor—but the flame burned cool and faded quickly. He should have expected this… His only consolation was that there was very little evidence to go on thus far, and the attacker had at least been prudent enough to destroy any trace of what he really was. She couldn't possibly figure out, from the information she would have now, what the attacker was… and without that, she certainly couldn't make the connection between his traits and Grissom's own…
He had been so careful for so many years—surely it would not all come crashing down today because of the curiosity of one human woman?
Pandora all over again—how very Sara Sidle.