42 HOURS EARLIER . . .
Grissom's body felt boneless as Brass helped him back to the A/V lab. The abrupt awakening from the hypnosis hadn't been good. But nothing about any of this was good.
The thing was, Brass understood he'd just made it worse. Gil had been about to remember something that might identify Sara's abductor. Now the progress was gone, perhaps never to be reacquired. If Sara died because they didn't identify her abductor soon enough, he would have trouble living with himself.
x x x x x x x
Grissom sat at the table. He directed his gaze to Archie and Bobby.
"Any progress?" he said.
"Not much, Gris," Archie said. "I'm sorry. We might be able to clean up the perp's voice a little, but we can't try right now because he's about to go live again. I'll explain it later. After."
Grissom felt his gut roil and his chest hollow out. It was coming up on 6 p.m. This had been going on for only six hours. There was so much time left in which Sara could be hurt. So much time left for her to suffer. And he was helpless to stop it. They had nothing to go on. Nothing they could use to find her.
The anger that had been building in him since he woke up after surgery surged now, and he grabbed the edge of the table so hard those who saw him thought he might have left finger indentations in the steel top.
He was just gathering the muscle power to uproot the table, which was bolted to the floor, and heave it across the room at Archie and Bobby with the television monitor flipped and took his gut with it.
The sight of her brought him to his emotional knees.
Oh, God, Sara, what's become of you? How can you take any more?
A sheen of sweat coated her face. Her beautiful dark brown hair was black with perspiration and matted to her head. One strand hung over her face, over her left eye, and another along her cheek in front of her left ear. Both strands lay entombed in the drying blood that streamed from the cut along her cheekbone.
She seemed to hang from the irons that shackled her wrists, and even her uninjured left leg had buckled with exhaustion.
Her head lolled chin to chest. She kept raising it, only to have it fall back.
Her eyes, her deep brown eyes had gone dull, her face slack.
And it's only been six hours!
He couldn't bear to see her hit again.
"Dr. Grissom, I hope you're there," the man said. "Ms. Sidle – or is it Sidle-Grissom now? – has something she wants to say. Sara, you have the stage. Be brief."
Grissom grabbed the edge of the able again.
His knuckles went white again.
The muscles in his arms strained at his skin.
Uncontrollable trembling started at his hands and traveled up his arms to his shoulders and chest.
He knew he was about to lose the last of his emotional grounding, the last of his sense of self. His penchant for restraint died when he saw the agony in Sara's eyes as she tried to speak.
Don't, Sara, please. I know what you want to tell me. You don't have to say it out loud. Don't do this to yourself. Don't do this to us. We both have to stay tough, Honey. Please, don't let him win. I will get there. I will get to you. I promise.
"Gil."
The sound of her voice choked him. She sounded so terribly hurt.
"I'm sorry I'm putting you and the team through this. I know some of you, especially you, Gil, are blaming yourselves. Don't. Please. There is nothing anyone could have done. It's nobody's fault except the man standing here in front of me."
She cried out in pain, though as nearly as Grissom could tell, she hadn't been touched.
Not again.
Not yet.
"Some of you think I've had a difficult life, and there certainly have been tough passages. But the years here in Las Vegas, with all of you, with Warrick, have been so deeply precious to me. You showed me how to live again. And, Gil, you showed me how to love. And how to trust. You have been my support, my friends, my family, my life. I don't know if I'm destined to die here, to die today, or tomorrow. I hope I don't. But there is always that possibility. And I don't want these things left unsaid if the worst happens."
Sara's voice lowered, as if meaning the next message for only one set of ears.
"Gil, I love you. I've told you this before. I've always loved you. If I'm to die here, I'll die loving you. Hold onto this. It's a beautiful thought."
Her words shocked Grissom's system, whipping his mind back to the aborted hypnosis session, triggered something.
But what?
Behind him, Sophia Curtis's eyes narrowed. Alarms were going off in her head.
But she didn't understand why.
Her eyes were drawn back to the TV monitor, and what greeted her was a scene that made her flinch first, and then crouch down on the floor and let tremors wrack her body. Her mind was in total turmoil.
What had she just heard?
x x x x x x x
Catherine ran out of the A/V lab with a hand clasped over her mouth. She hit the bathroom hard and tried to keep from strangling herself as she sobbed and puked at the same time, straining over a toilet. The bastard had come back with the mace again and used it on Sara's left shoulder. The sound was horrific. Sara's scream had frozen her blood.
She only caught a quick look at Grissom, but she resolved as soon as she got out of the head, she was going to have to have paramedics in the lab on standby. He looked as if he might have a heart attack where he sat.
Sophia came in then.
"Can I help?" she asked.
Catherine spit water into the sink time and again until she felt halfway clean. She had a toothbrush in her locker. She'd use it when she had time.
"Thanks," she said. "I'm going to hold up. I have to. How're you?"
"It's devastating," Sophia said. "And the thing is, I heard something I think should mean something to me, but I can't get a handle on it."
"Maybe we should use the hypnotist on you," Catherine said. "It seems to be a trend."
"I don't need a shrink, at least I don't think so. It was something Sara said. It was like somebody touched a live electric wire to my spine."
"Go work with Archie," Catherine said. "Listen to the segment again. Try to figure out what caused that response."
x x x x x x x
When Catherine left the bathroom, she went looking for Nick. The results from the fleet check of the white Mercedes vans had to be complete.
"All the fleet vans have have writing and images on them," Nick told her. "Lettering, graphics, whatever. There isn't a single plain white Mercedes Sprinter in the county. So I'm expanding the search outside Clark County."
"Well, get Greg to help. We have to move this along Sara's running out of time. She can't last through 48 hours of this." Her eyes darted around the lab. "Where is Greg? I haven't seen him in hours."
Nick shuffled his feet and shrugged.
"What?" Catherine demanded. "We need everybody on the job here. Where is he, Nicky?"
"He was here. He saw Sara get hit the first time. It blew him up. You know how he feels about her. He jokes about it, how he's in love with a married woman. Well, he had something stuck in his craw. A hunch. An idea. He told me he was going to check it out and would be on his cell if needed. I haven't heard from him since."
"You think he was just fabricating a reason to get out of the lab, away from the video feeds?"
Oh, God, no," Nick said. "He didn't want to see Sara hurt. Hell, none of us wants that. But he really did have an idea. I just don't know what it was."
"Well get on the phone, find his ass and get it back here now with a damned good explanation for where he's been or a promise of a suspension without pay," Catherine said. "Now, Nick, or you'll have time off with him."
x x x x x x x
Back in the A/V Lab, Grissom had dropped his head onto his arms, which now lay crossed in front of him.
The migraine had torqued up to full agony, enveloping his head and spreading down his neck to his shoulders and back.
The picture of Sara, now static on a television monitor no one could bear to look at, had burned itself into his brain.
He couldn't live with the image.
He willed the migraine to kill him.