a/n--Thanks so much for those of you who have been constantly leaving me reviews. I really appreciate them. Glad you are enjoying the story. Will Greg and Catherine ever be rescued?? Well this chapter will answer that.

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Catherine woke up suddenly feeling like something was crawling on her again. She sat up and grabbed the lantern and turned it on. She saw a spider crawling away and shivered at the thought that it was on her. Grissom would not have minded, she thought crudely.

"What's wrong?" She heard Greg mumble and then he went into a coughing fit.

His cough sounded worse to Catherine then it had before. "Greg, you sound horrible. We need to get you out of here and get you help."

He turned to glare at her. "Like I have not been trying to get out of here. And I am fine, just a bit of a cough."

Catherine fumed. "You are not fine. You look like hell."

"Yeah well, you don't look so great yourself," he groaned as he tried to stand up. His leg felt like it was on fire and his shoulder ached too.

"Where do you think you are going?" She asked him as he started going to the stairs.

"Where does it look like?"

"Stop being so stubborn. You've tried a ton of times already. It is not budging. The only thing you're managing to do is wreck your shoulder more," she yelled at him with a wobbly voice.

He looked back at her and saw that she was near tears, standing with her hands on her hips. He looked from her back up at his nemesis, the door that prevented them from getting out. He felt the conflict inside start to eat away at him again. If he gave up, that meant they would never get out of there. As long as he kept trying, he had some hope they might get out.

"I have to keep trying, if I give up, where does that leave us? Here to die," he said in a quiet, raspy voice.

She saw the fear in his eyes now and understood why he kept trying. She came up to join him on the stairs. She took his clammy hand and looked into his big brown eyes. "Okay, I will help you then."

He smiled gratefully at her, tightening his grasp on her hand. "Okay, let's try this again then."

They went to the top and tried together to break the door.

After ten minutes of trying, they both had to stop. Greg's shoulders could not take any more abuse; in addition he was finding it harder to breath without feeling pain in his chest. He slid down the stairs in defeat, resting on the bottom step.

Catherine joined him, rubbing her shoulder. She had a splitting headache and was finding it harder to ignore her stomach's hunger pains. Her mouth was cotton dry and she was feeling the effects of dehydration.

Greg started coughing again. When he was done, he felt worn out. He lay back against the stairs and closed his eyes. She could tell he was in pain. She also noticed that his breathing was becoming more labored.

She put her hand to his forehead. "You're burning up," she said in whisper to disguise her concern.

He opened his eyes and stared at her. Her face still had some dried blood on it from her head injury along with just some dirt from their current surroundings. Her hair had been in a ponytail, but she now was just wearing it loose. Her blue eyes showed tiredness and fear, but to him, she was still beautiful.

"You're so beautiful," he said to her in a hoarse voice.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Yes, you're sick and delirious now."

He chuckled some then immediately regretted it as he started coughing again. Catherine winced hearing him coughing, it even sounded painful to her.

He sat up and hung his head once he stopped coughing. "I feel like hell and it's only getting worse. This sucks big time."

She put her arm around him gently. "They have to be looking for us. They will find us."

He gave her a sideways glance. "Yeah, they will but when. We won't survive down here forever. I know my gut is killing me, along with most of my body now."

She lowered her head. "I know. I may never see my daughter again." Then he heard her start to cry. He drew her in against him, her body feeling comforting and soft against his.

"I'm sorry. I'm not staying positive for you. It's just that…" he took a shallow shaky breath and shut up, trying to hold it together as long as he could.

She knew what he was going to say. "I know, life has been incredibly unfair to you in the last year, especially the last 3 months."

He just shook his head, not wanting to give a verbal response. He noticed the lantern light flickering suddenly.

"It's going to go out," he said solemnly.

She stared at it now in fright, not wanting to be plunged into total darkness infinitely.

Greg suddenly turned to Catherine, turning her chin with his hand to face him. "I love you, Catherine Willows. I want to tell you while I can still see your beautiful blue eyes staring back at me."

"Greg, please don't…" But he cut her off with a tender kiss. When he pulled away, she started crying again but hardly any tears came her from dry eyes.

"Come on, don't cry. You don't want to make me blubber all over the place, which in turn will make me cough," he said with a small grin.

She smiled and shook her head. "No, I don't want that to happen." She caressed his stubbly face with her hand. "You know I love you too."

"Yeah I know," he grinned feebly.

They both watched the lantern as the light slowly died. Catherine held on tight to him when it went out completely. It seemed now that she noticed his breathing seemed irregular.

"Greg?"

"Yeah?"

"They will find us."

"I know," he replied softly but not with convincement in his voice.

Grissom looked at his watch. He did not have a sure time in which Greg and Catherine had disappeared, but based on his calculations it was almost 5 days that they were gone.

The search teams had covered a 10-mile circumference the day before with no results.

They had no new clues based on the letter left behind for Grissom or the one released to a media outlet.

Nick and Sara had joined the search team, each teaming up with others and a search and rescue dog.

They were spanning out further into the forest with their search, still hoping they were there and not in the dessert.

It had rained again, making any trails nearly impossibly to find. They were hoping the dogs would be the ones to track them down.

She was so tired but she found it hard to sleep given the circumstances, but she had drifted off anyway. Her sleep was plagued with nightmares of being alive while her body slowly disinerigrated right in front of her, by bugs eating her rotting flesh.

She scared herself awake and now only partially understood what Nick must have gone through being buried alive with the ants biting him. She had been itching at her arms at invisible bug bites; chills ran up and down her spine.

She was stirred from her own dark thoughts when she heard Greg coughing again. She knew he was in bad shape. His breathing sounded horribly congested and he had started having chills, while still burning up.

They hardly spoke to each other, being that their mouths were so dry. A small ray of light telling them it was daytime, cracked through one corner of the door that trapped them.

Catherine wrapped her arms around Greg as he started shivering badly again. She could not cry anymore, she had cried herself out. She was cold herself. It was early November and in the mountains it was always much colder. They had not been dressed in really warm clothes. They both were in jogging pants from their jog before all went to hell. Catherine had on a long sleeve t-shirt, while Greg did have on a lightweight fleece jacket, but he had been soaked by the rain and he never shook the chill since then.

She held onto him until he stopped shaking again. "Thanks," she barely heard him say to her. He slept most of the time now, making her feel more alone than she already did. Her body ached all over now. She welcomed the sleep when it came but dreaded the strange, scary nightmares she had during that time. She had no idea if Greg had them too, but she assumed he did since he seemed to make noises during his sleep and was restless when he slept, like he had been with his nightmares after Tyler Renning cut him up.

She closed her eyes again, keeping her thoughts on more positive images such as her daughter Lindsay playing on the swings when she was young. She fell asleep fast with those images on her mind.

Grissom walked through the woods with Warrick, Brass, and a couple of officers with a German Shepard search dog. They had come across numerous old cabins some currently occupied, but most abandoned at this time.

They came across yet another one of those seemingly abandoned tiny cabins around 4pm in the afternoon. The officers noticed the dog getting more excited as they approached the door to the cabin.

"Captain, we may have something here," one officer said to Brass. Grissom, Warrick and Brass all came up behind the officers.

Brass moved ahead of the officers, with his gun drawn, ready for anything. He knocked on the door first and announced himself. When there was no response he tried the doorknob. It turned freely in his hand. He opened the door slowly, with gun ready.

The dog behind him started barking. Once Brass saw that the small cabin was clear, he gave the okay for the dog to run in. The dog walked around the small room sniffing the ground. He came to a halt where a wooden chair sat. He started pawing at the floor.

Grissom and Warrick had come inside with hope finally showing a sign to them. They used their flashlights to illuminate the floor where the dog was pawing.

"It's a trap door to a cellar or basement. It has locks on it," Warrick told the others, trying to remain calm.

They pulled back the dog to get a better look at the door. "They are black locks so you can hardly make them out," Grissom noted. He noticed locks placed on three sides of the door.

"They wanted to make sure no one got to what is inside there," Grissom said.

"Or for no one to get out of there," Warrick added, anger hinging on his tone.

Grissom met his angry glare. "Possibly," Grissom said in his simple tone. He knelt down and decided to try knocking on the door while Warrick went to find his equipment to get the locks open.

He knocked but got no response. He did not really expect to at this time.

Warrick came back with a drill to unscrew the screws holding the locks down. He knelt down by Grissom and started working on the first lock.

It took him about five minutes to get them all done.

They all stood back a moment. Brass drew his gun. He pulled the latch on the trap door and opened it.

Grissom and Warrick shined their flashlights down into the darkness. They saw stairs but at the very bottom of the steps they saw two bodies they immediately recognized.

"Catherine! Greg!" Warrick exclaimed as he started making his way down the stairs, with Brass and Grissom right behind him.