A/N- Because I missed yesterday's update, I'll be posting the next two chapters only a few hours apart. The Epilogue will be posted as soon as it is back from beta, which will be before 6/25.

Thank you to everyone who has reviewed. I'm glad you're enjoying the story.


Chapter 51: She Needs You More

There's a trench at least three feet deep around the entire front of the suburban ranch house, exposing the foundation. The Bennings, the owners who are currently missing their teenage daughter, were getting some cracks that had been leaking groundwater repaired. I walked around the trench slowly.

"Nice hole," Greg commented, his voice aiming for the lightness it usually has, but falling flat. The red and blue lights from the police cars on the road make his expression more severe, but it could just be the feeling in the pit of my stomach that I haven't been able to shake all day. "What do you think, Griss?"

"There was rain last night, and the soil hasn't been disturbed since then. See the patterns? No foot prints." Missing kids, kidnapped kids… it never got any easier, and still isn't. Every day I wonder how much longer I can do this job. I wave my hand and Greg follows me around to the back of the house where the two officers are guarding the back door.

We make our way in, carefully circling around the perimeter. The kitchen, where we enter, is in shambles. Pots and pans are strewn across the floor and counters, a serving or two of cold, plain pasta lies in puddles of water across the floor. This was where she struggled.

"What was Brass able to get from the parents?" Greg asks quietly as he starts taking pictures of the room around us, dropping little yellow markers here and there as he does.

"They left for a lunch meeting with their financial planner around 1 pm. They returned home at 4:30 to the house looking like this. Their daughter was supposed to be home all day, no plans. They tried her cell and several of her friends, but the state of the house was enough to get the responding officers to call it in as a kidnapping." I pull out a small brush and begin dusting a dry counter strewn with the remains of a salad for finger prints, trying not to let the images forming in my brain effect me too much, either emotionally or intellectually. I have to follow the evidence.

"Kid home alone in a good neighborhood just disappears? This place does look tossed. It's like she put up a fight… or was really startled." Another flash goes off. I work quietly for a moment before he interrupts my quiet concentration. "I think we need to get Brass looking at hospitals."

"Why?"

"Well, this spaghetti? It's barely cooked. Look at how some of the pieces are still stiff. And the pot's all the way across the kitchen. What if she was cooking when she was surprised? Boiling water is a pretty good defense. She could have thrown this at them, and then tossed the pot if that didn't work. But if she did hit someone- they're bound to have some pretty bad burns." Greg shrugged, looking between the spaghetti strewn across the counter and the floor and the pot sitting across the room with a few strands still clinging to the stainless steel.

"Good hypothesis." I stand, my knees popping quietly as they've steadily begun to do. I walk carefully to the back doorway, leaning out to the officer there. "Officer?"

"Yes?"

"There's a possibility one or more of our suspects, possibly our victim as well, were burned with boiling water. Please advise Detective Brass that we should probably check the hospitals for any recent burn victims."

The man nods and walks away, talking into the radio on his shoulder.

"Grissom?" Greg's voice calls from deeper in the house.

"What did you find?" I ask, creeping carefully towards his voice, avoiding the pasta on the floor. I step carefully in through the living room and to the bottom of the stairs, looking up towards the second floor landing. "Greg?"

"Grissom?" His voice drops in volume, and increases in urgency causing me to push up the stairs without regard for what's on them. "We're not alone!"

It's the crashing nose of splintering wood that sends me running toward my future son-in-law.

*~*~*

Outside, the crashing noise caused the two officers on duty to look up, but not move. It had come from the back of the house, and was muffled to them. They didn't respond until they heard the gunshot.

*~*~*

"What's going on?" Brass wouldn't let go of my forearms, holding me so that I was facing him. It wasn't good, whatever he was going to say, whatever he needs to say, can't be good.

"Sara, it's not good."

Nick steps behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder, and I can feel the concern coming off of Archie in waves behind me. "What's not good? Tell me."

"The scene wasn't cleared." My hand flies to my mouth, desperately trying to hold myself together in the seconds that tick between his sentences. "The perps were still in the house: three of them and the kid. And now they've got Grissom and Greg."

"What?" Nick asks, more furious and confused than afraid or nervous, like I am. I feel his hands come around my shoulders and I'm not quite sure that he isn't holding me up.

"The officers on scene said the entrance to the attic was locked when they searched the house, one of those pull down ones in the ceiling. It was an oversight on their end. A bad one. The suspects were hiding up there when the ceiling gave way. One of the guys fell through, landed on Greg. The other two jumped down, had what they said sounded like a high caliber semi-automatic, and now they're holding Grissom and Greg hostage along with the girl. They've got them lined up in front of the picture window."

There were tears streaming down my face by the time he was finished. We barely even knew what we were up against and the entire thing had escalated in under an hour. Three armed men holding two criminalists and a teenage girl hostage?

Holding Grissom and Greg hostage?

My heart plummeted to my toes. "I need to get there."

*~*~*

What was I going to say? How would I say it? My palms were sweating bullets since I'd opened my cell phone and called her.

Hey Emma, it's Nick. Yeah, you at home? Stay there. I'll be over in a minute. No, actually, there's…uh… a minor problem. Stay calm. I'll be there soon.

The front door of the Grissom townhouse swings open before I even make it up the steps. "Nick? What's going on?" Her face is red, like she's been crying, but for a while now. There are tears pooled, waiting for a reason to fall. Her hand is shaking on the door frame. I walk up to her, my hands rest on her shoulders.

"Your Dad and Greg. They're ok for now, but they're in trouble."

She takes two breaths, trying to make the words come out before she can actually make the sounds. "What kind of trouble?"

"They're hostages." And her tears fall silently, which surprises me. I can't help it, I hug her, and she clings to me tighter than I can ever remember. She mummers into my shoulder, words I can't really hear until I pull away. "C'mon, I'll take you over. Sara's already there. We're going to get them out."

"I was wrong. I was just afraid and confused and I was wrong, I have to tell him!" She spits out s quickly I can barely hear the words, never mind follow her train of thought.

"What honey? I'm not following…"

"Greg! I gave him back his ring!" She shoves her left hand in my face and I can clearly see that her ring is not where it's supposed to be. "I freaked out today and ran away over something stupid- so stupid!" She starts crying again, harsher this time, and it tears my heart in two.

"Look," I lift her eyes to mine, pulling out a clean handkerchief from my pocket and whipping the moisture from her face, "We're going to go over there and they're going to be fine. You're going to be able to say all of this to Greg yourself in a little while, ok?" She nods pitifully. I stuff the square of linen in her hand. "You have everything you need on you?" She nods again. I pull the door closed behind her and walk her down to the car.

*~*~*

Emma's out of Nick's car and clinging to Sara before I really register that she's here. Nick slowly sidles up next to me, hands stuffed in his pockets. "Any news, Jim?"

"Nothing," I huff, frustrated. "The guys have them over there in the living room." I point to the front picture window where I've been straining to see their shadows from the street. "We've got a negotiator trying to make contact right now, but so far, nothing."

Nick looked back at the two women standing nervously at the edge of the circle of police cars. Red and blue lights flashed across their faces in the dark, making the worry stand out that much more starkly in their expressions. I thought of Elea for a moment then forced myself back to the task at hand.

"I don't like 'nothing,' Jim." Nick sighed, shaking his head and straining to see into the house.

"I don't like it, either."

*~*~*

It was the guy with the angry red burns on his face that fell on me when the ceiling gave way. Good news is I was right about the pasta. Bad news was that there were two men pointing guns at me through the hole in the ceiling from the unfinished attic. Grissom stopped short when he came into the room, hesitating just enough for one of the guys to jump down through the hole and point a gun at him, too. It was when I tried the wrestle the guy off of me through the plaster and dust that the guy left in the attic shot a hole through the floor next to my head.

We didn't resist from there. They tossed the poor Bennings girl down through the ceiling, she landed on her side with her hands tied behind her back, and marched us through the house. My heart was pounding in my head with every breath, every second. They shoved us on our knees in front of the picture window and my mind just laughed at how clichéd it felt even as they barked commands at us and poked us in the back with their guns. They kept the girl separate, across the room. The sound of her crying wasn't helping my own emotional state.

I watched red and blue lights grow brighter as more and more cars joined the makeshift operation in front of the house. Who was out there? Was it Brass? Nick? Sara?

They would have to tell Emma. Even without me, Grissom was here. Was she here? Was she outside looking at us through the window? Was she worried about the both of us or just her father?

Two men left the room, and I could hear them arguing in the kitchen. The third started to edge to the far wall, listening to what his cohorts were saying, barely even looking at us.

"We have to get out of here…" I whispered to Grissom.

"Take it easy, Greg. I'm sure they're working on it."

"I don't think so. Have you heard a phone ring? It's been hours now that we're sitting here."

"Don't lose it, Greg." He whispered harshly. "We need to keep our heads."

"No, we need to get out of here." I could feel it. I could feel the panic rise up in me. Why did I walk up the stairs? Why did I come to this scene? Why didn't I run after Emma this morning? Why did I force the house on her? Why are we here, right now, with some punk waving a gun in our faces? With every second I could feel the panic rising and there was nothing to do but embrace it.

I made the decision so fast that I didn't even know I made it until it was over. "She needs you more," I whispered, looking Grissom in the eyes.

Before he could do more than look at me with confusion, I'd charged into him, sending him flying through the picture window and into the ditch in front of the house.

(TBC...)