Once again, reviews would be greatly appreciated. And once again, it will speed up eventually. I have most of the story already written, and I promise there is action later on (and I mean action of all sorts :) ) And muchos thanks to racefh and PisceanPal for beta.

Enjoy ;)

Harper

Chapter 4: Of Broken and Eager Hearts

Greg and Nick met at the lab this time, Greg having left the Madden marathon hours ago to get some sleep.

At the phone call, Greg had realized quickly there was no use dissuading his pig-headed friend. If there was, he would have argued for weeks on end, if need be.

"Okay, first of all, we need a game plan."

Greg could see that his friend had found an adequate method of grieving. He just wished that investigation was not his method, and he worried at the thought of all of the healing and grieving coming undone. Greg glanced around the locker room, checking for potential eavesdroppers. Nick did the same, scanning each side carefully, but nonetheless missing a colleague hidden in the shadows.

Not hearing a response from his partner, the Texan went on. "I say we have three places to start: Griss, Cath and the Feds."

"Not Warrick's? His locker and house seem like the most obvious."

When Nick's face scrunched up in thought, Greg knew he'd won this one.

"Yeah, that makes sense. Do you know the combination for his locker?"

"Uh… no. Not off the top of my head."

"We can't just go breakin' down his locker either. That'll seem suspicious. Know of any subtler techniques to gettin' this thing open?"

"I can give it a try. I have a knack for lock-busting, at least with these basic attachable ones."

Greg put his ear to the locker and proceeded to turn, but got nothing. "That's funny. Most of the time this works."

"How often ya use that skill anyways?"

"Not that often."

"Okay then."

They both sat back down on the locker bench, lost in thought.

"You think there's any chance we can get into the crime scene?"

"I'd say that chance is slightly lower than the chance that they haven't cleaned up the entire scene by now – so about one in a million."

"Seriously?"

Greg nodded.

"The Feds work that fast?"

"When the Feds want something done fast, it gets done fast, especially an old alley way off strip near that dingy old diner, not that I don't love that diner."

Nick processed the new information. "The diner we ate at?"

Greg nodded again.

"Shit. I didn't realize –"

"It's not your fault Nicky."

Nick grimaced to hear Greg call him that. It was a term of closeness, of friendship, and he didn't feel close to anyone now that Warrick was gone.

"Maybe Cath will know more," Nick hypothesized.

"Maybe Cath doesn't want to know more, let alone share anything. Maybe she's just as heartbroken as you are," Greg said pointedly, hoping Nick would get the message.

Which Nick did, in the entirely wrong way. "You're right. She's goin' through the whole same thing too. She'll want to help too. She'll want to know what happened to him just as much as we do."

"You mean she'll want to go digging up his grave just as much as we do?" Greg remarked to his friend, who seemed to be growing more pigheaded by the moment.

Nick ignored Greg's last comment. "Let's go. You know where to find her?"

"That old country bar she likes to hang out at. Just up your alley, I'd say," Greg added, cringing at the thought of all-acoustic music with a twang, and too many pick-up trucks for his taste.

Nick flinched, remembering what'd happened last time he went to that particular bar with Catherine. Putting the past behind him, he got off the bench and headed out, Greg following reluctantly behind him.

The duo could spot Catherine's red hair from the front of the bar, but it was the loud, buffoonish laughter – totally uncharacteristic of their svelte coworker – that caught their attention.

"Is she drunk?" Nick asked.

"Has she been anything else since Warrick died?"

Not knowing the answer, Nick proceeded toward his colleague.

"Cath"

"Oh hey Nicky!" She waved her arms a little too high, turning around and almost stumbling off her bar stool.

"Whoa there," said Nick, catching her halfway to the ground.

"We came here to talk to about Warrick."

Way to be blunt about it, Batman, thought Nick's loyal Robin.

Catherine cringed, again less subtly than they normally saw from her. She shook her head vigorously. She did not come to this bar to talk away her troubles, and the loss of the love of her life, or at least who she thought would be, and who was, in the very least, always the thing that got her up in the morning on the worst days, knowing that she'd have a chance to flirt and talk and feel young again around her fellow Las Vegas-bred friend.

Her face contorted and Greg could see the tears coming before they hit the ground.

What he couldn't see coming was Nick's next, again less than smooth remark.

"What do you think he'd say seeing you like this if he were alive?"

"He's not alive"

"What if he was?"

"He's NOT!"

"How do you know that?"

"What do you mean, how do I know that?! HE'S DEAD! It's not like there's some in-between state! You'd think if there's one thing, one single thing, that, as a CSI, you'd get the concept of, it's death!" she said sobbing.

Greg, who'd been hiding in the shadows behind Nick, stepped up quietly. "You'd think that, if there's one thing in this business that we don't understand in this business, it's death."

He lowered his glance to catch Catherine's tear-stained eyes as the woman stared at the floor.

"That's why we keep searching. That's why we still have to try to find the motive every time we investigate. That's why we have a job. Because people never can fully understand death. Least of all us. We see every single possibility for how or why someone can die, and there's never a single formula. People die, yet the possibility and concept of death always baffles us –"

Catherine let out another sob. "But he's dead. He's dead."

"I know –" Nick said exasperatingly.

"You know, then why are we having this conversation? You trying to preserve your denial by inviting me to jump ship too?"

"No, no. That's not what I meant. I know that it looks like he's dead. He just –" seeing Catherine open her mouth, Nick pre-empted her: "Will you please let me just finish a sentence, dammit."

"Fine, go ahead and finish your damn sentence Nicky. I'll go ahead and order another shot to filter your bullshit out. I'm guessing I don't need one for you since you have to be pretty damn drunk to be this stupid. Let Greggo 'ere be the designated driver, ay?"

Seeing Nick, growing angrier by the minute, open his mouth, she cut him off again. "Okay, fine. On second thought, I'll order one for you too. Probably easier to stay in your merry little denial boat with a little help from Jose Cuervo, eh?"

"Hey John!" She motioned to a passing waiter – one of many bar staff she'd come to know on a first-name basis in the last week. "My friend here needs one strong Margarita to keep up this show."

John gave her an obliging, somewhat pitying, glance and a nod, heading over to the bar. "Sure thing, Ms. Braun."

Nick fumed for a few seconds, as Catherine stared forlornly and – Greg guessed – drunkenly, into the distance.

"Since when do you go by Ms. Braun?" asked Nick. "He's –"

"He's my father and I'm tired of people dying on me," Catherine said, uncharacteristically quiet. "I just want to grieve in peace, for all of them. And I don't need you throwing around conspiracy theories, interrupting my grieving process. I tried that, I really did." Her eyes were pleading with Nick. "I didn't even love Eddie anymore, at least I thought I didn't, but when he died, I still couldn't believe it. I still tried to find something that would contradict the evidence. I was in the middle of the fuckin' mud, knee deep, looking for evidence that some damn car was hijacked, when… when…" She dissolved in tears.

Nick glanced at Greg, confused.

"He came and told me to let it go," she let out with a sob, her composure now completely destroyed.

"Eddie?" Nick asked.

"Warrick" Greg answered.

"Warrick?" The confused ex-best friend queried, disbelieving. "How'd he find you?"

"Shh," Greg said. "It doesn't matter."

"Well it could be a clue –"

"Shut up. It doesn't matter."

Nick gave Greg an irritated look, but closed his mouth.

"He said he used GPS to track the Denali," Catherine whispered between sobs. "He told me to stop. He knew there was no use exacerbating the pain. Digging up the graves. That's not how you heal. He knew," she said letting lose another desperate sob. "He knew."

"We know," said Greg gently, placing a firm hand on Catherine's back and patting her shoulder. "Let's get you home. Being sober will help you with the grieving process too," he cautiously joked.

She let out a teary laugh, relieved by his levity. "Okay. I'm sure he'd appreciate the value of me being rational when I was grieving for him, and at least of not having a hangover. He may have had problems with those pills, but I'd be darned if I ever saw Warrick Brown show up for a shift looking drunk." She let out another sad laugh before letting Greg guide her to the Denali already pulled off outside the bar.

Greg handed John a twenty discreetly before continuing on his way, with Nick and Catherine in tow.

"Let her sleep off the hangover."

Nick snorted, reluctantly acknowledging the value of Greg's suggestion.

Catherine had joined them at Nick's place, being in no state for driving herself. Nick had hoped that he could once again try convincing Catherine to help them in their quest for more information about Warrick's death.

Greg, meanwhile, was just hoping to help his colleague through her impending headache with the help of his favorite Blue Hawaiian. He may not have always been so disposed toward sharing his coffee – that, after all was why he'd removed even his secret stash from the lab, keeping just enough between his Denali, pockets and locker for the bad days – but whoever called Greg Sanders anything less than a nice guy?

The smell of the delicious coffee threatened to wake the hung-over woman, but Greg moved it away to the counter just in time, as she rolled over and groaned in her sleep, reaching dazedly for the source of the delightful smell.

"Better to sleep through as much of that nasty of a hangover as possible," Greg whispered as he set it down and wrote a note for Catherine, for her to read whenever she woke up, that explained where the coffee was, as well as where Greg and Nick were.

And with that, the duo set off for their next target, hoping that Grissom was harboring neither the same attitudes nor blood alcohol levels. Knowing Grissom, it would be neither, but he would still be just as difficult to persuade. The true scientist, he would demand far more solid evidence then the pair currently possessed to convince him of a conspiracy.