Sara and Grissom locked eyes. Time passed, how much, Sara didn't know. Thoughts fleetingly rushed by, but none of them would stick. The only realisation she had was that this was it. It was over. It stopped here. The haze in Grissom's eyes which she saw earlier that morning was gone. He was back. She had him back. But she would lose him again in a few seconds. And there was nothing she could do. Holding onto his gaze was the final thing she could do before it all ended.
Rob pulled the trigger.
Sara looked down, couldn't and wouldn't watch Grissom get shot.
There was a single clicking sound. Then another.
Sara looked up, distracted by the noise. That wasn't the sound of a gun firing! It was a sound she wasn't expecting to hear.
'What the… How can this be...?' Rob scoffed when he noticed there were no bullets in his weapon.
Before Sara realised fully what was happening, Grissom made use of the distraction, lifted himself up as far as he could in his tied up position on the chair and pushed his elbow against Rob's face with force. The blow knocked the gun from its attacker's hand and the weapon slid away on the ground.
It were those few seconds that Sara needed to wake up from her shocked state and she didn't waste any more time. Without thinking, she launched herself on Rob and used all of her strength to floor him. Of course she was smaller and less strong than him, but the element of surprise and the fact that Grissom's elbow had hit the right place did the trick. Rob was now lying face-down on the ground and Sara put her knee on his back and her hands firmly around his arms. It was a technique used in law enforcement and a successful one at that.
'You bitch. Get off me!' Rob yelled while he was trying to escape. But the position he was held in made it impossible for him to succeed.
Sara looked around helplessly, because, what now? She didn't have any handcuffs to cuff Rob with and Grissom was still tied up to the chair.
'Here!' came the liberating answer to her silent question when Grissom pushed some tie wraps towards her with his foot. It were the same tie wraps he was tied up with and Rob must have left them underneath the chair.
'You, stay put,' Sara hissed under her breath while she tried to turn Rob's arms on his back.
Her action was followed by a loud, painful scream and a snapping sound both coming from Rob. 'You broke my arm!' he yelled in agony.
Her stomach turned, but Sara continued wordlessly, letting go of Rob's injured arm to grab the tie wraps that were now lying beside her.
It was then that Rob did one final desperate attempt to escape by lifting his body, trying to turn on his side.
Sara felt his weight pushing against her, almost flipping her over and she knew she'd lose this battle. He was simply too strong for her. She tried once more to hold him down, bringing her hand that had been grabbing for the tie wraps back to his arm, but it was too late. Rob rolled to his side, managing to take her with it.
Luckily for Sara, she looked up just at the right time and knew exactly what Grissom was planning to do when she caught his gaze. She pushed herself out of the way at the same time when Grissom used his weight to drop himself and the chair right on top of Rob, leaving the man screaming in pain.
'I'm sorry, was that your sore arm I landed on?' Grissom panted sarcastically. Next, he moved his attention to Sara. 'A little help here honey?'
Sara couldn't help the small smile that appeared on her lips and quickly got up to grab the tie wraps to tie up Rob's arms and legs. She ignored his vocal insults and pulled the tie wraps around tight. An extra set she used to wrap around his leg and connected it to one of the firm tent poles. When she was sure he couldn't go anywhere she helped Grissom up. 'One, two, three,' she counted and pulled up the chair, helped by Grissom who pushed himself up a little more with his feet. Once he was seated again in an upright position, Sara put her hand on his cheek and kissed him on the mouth.
Grissom seemed taken aback by the gesture.
'I'm going to find some scissors and get you out of here,' she said, still a little out of breath. She received a single nod in reply. With a high sense of urgency she went through all the stuff outside and inside and finally found what she was looking for. Hurriedly she went back and cut the tie wraps Grissom was tied to the chair with.
Once he was released he wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. Sara felt tears welling up in her eyes, but was able to stop them, still aware that Rob was there with them.
'I'm so sorry,' Grissom whispered in her ear. 'I'm so, so sorry.'
Sara simply held onto him even tighter in reply. Relief washed over her. They both had survived and she couldn't think of anything else at this moment.
After a short while she let go of him as she heard footsteps approaching them. Back on high alert immediately she looked at Grissom with fright, but he reassured her. 'It's the local authorities. That fancy phone of mine does more than giving me accurate GPS signals,' he laughed looking at his phone on the floor. 'Or did, I should say,' he added. The cell phone indeed was broken into a few pieces. 'Rob stepped on it,' he shrugged when he noticed Sara's questioning eyes.
Before Sara could ask any more questions, four armed police officers entered the camp. She recognised them from a local meet up she organised before. The aim of those meetups was to involve local authorities as well as local inhabitants in their preservation projects.
'¿Señora Grissom, que pasó aquí? Nosotros recibimos una señal de emergencia.' 'Ms Grissom, what happened? We received an emergency signal,' one of them asked.
Sara explained the situation in Spanish as best she could. She had to turn to Grissom to help fill in the gaps. 'How did you know…?'
There was no need for her to finish her question. 'The candy wrapper from Nicaragua. I knew there was something we were missing. This morning it suddenly came back to me. After…' Grissom stopped there.
Sara knew what he was trying to say. After he had his blackout. She nodded in encouragement for him to go on.
'Well, I had taken a few quick snaps of the grounds here with my phone when we arrived back at the camp, just before Brian made a mention of the candy wrapper. When I looked at those photos again this morning, I noticed that the candy wrapper which Brian apparently found, didn't appear in the pictures I had taken.'
'Meaning he must have planted the wrapper as a distraction,' Sara added. It made sense, she thought. She remembered Brian standing with his back to them when he pointed out the wrapper. He could've blocked their view.
'Yes, so that we would think that this well-known gang from Nicaragua was behind everything,' Grissom agreed. 'But that's not all.' He now spoke in a soft voice, so that Rob wouldn't hear him. 'This morning, after you'd left, Rob came outside from his tent and I asked him where Brian was. To which he couldn't give a clear answer. I can't remember exactly what he said, but probably something about Brian going for a walk. Nevertheless, I do remember seeing a substance on his hand which looked like gunpowder residue.'
Sara knew from experience that gunpowder residue could be visible to the naked eye sometimes, especially when a shot was only recently fired. Grissom would've recognised it immediately, she didn't doubt that a second.
'Rob told me he would go for a leak and during his absence I went to search for a weapon, which I found in one of Rob's bags,' Grissom continued to explain.
His speech was fast, undoubtedly because he wanted to explain things fast before he'd forget, Sara realised.
'I took out the bullets and put the gun back in the bag, so that it wouldn't look suspicious. Then, I sent out an emergency signal to our friends over there,' he pointed to the four officers.
'But Rob came back?' Sara asked knowingly.
Grissom nodded. 'Yes, he came back and saw me coming out of the tent. Well, I guess you can connect the dots to what happened after that.'
Sara could indeed. Grissom wouldn't have been able to fight Rob and played along to win some time for Sara and the police to arrive.
Now Sara knew Grissom's part of the story, she relayed it to the officers in Spanish.
'You've got nothing on me!' Rob suddenly scoffed. One of the police officers had released him from the tie wraps and cuffed him.
Sara knew what Rob said wasn't true. They could at least pin Brian's murder on him. The weapon, Brian's body and the gunshot residue on Rob's hand would be solid proof. However, they still had to connect him to the criminal organisation. When she came to the part of the story about the photos on Grissoms phone, she bent down and looked at the broken cell on the forest floor. Luckily, she found the mini SD card that would have the photos on it. Hopefully it wouldn't be too damaged, or else they lacked proof of what they were trying to explain. She handed the SD card over to the police officers.
'We do need to take you and your partner to the police station in town, to ask you a few more questions' one of the officers told her in Spanish.
'That's okay, we understand,' Sara replied looking at Grissom. He appeared to be very tired, dark circles now rimming his eyes. Once he noticed her looking at him though, he gave her a genuine smile and she knew they would be alright. They would take it day by day.
Two officers stayed behind in the camp to search for Brian's body at the location which Rob had given them in the end. The other two officers took all laptops, phones and other technical equipment that could serve as evidence from the camp and led Grissom, Sara and Rob away.
The nearest town they were taken was four hours away by foot and truck. They first walked as a group to a small community nearby, the same place the officers had come from. There, they were put in two separate police trucks and driven to a larger town on the edge of the jungle.
Sara and Grissom were released from the station within a few hours after they had answered some more questions. There was no evidence to suggest that they were involved in the criminal organisation, but they were asked to stay near in case they needed to come back in for any follow-up questioning. Their passports were taken as a precaution, so that they wouldn't be able to leave the country.
The pair stayed in a hotel in town and waited. Something which was hard for Sara. She had offered her help with the investigation - still hell bent to find Lesley - but that obviously wasn't allowed.
After five days, they finally received the liberating answer. The Costa Rican police had rolled up the criminal organisation with the help of evidence they'd found on Brian and Rob's laptops. The scientists had tried to remove any documents or browser history that could've led to the poachers, but clearly hadn't done it thoroughly enough.
More importantly, the investigators found Lesley, alive and well. It turned out she was held fairly near to the camp, something Sara had already presumed.
In total, the criminal group consisted of only ten members, including Brian and Frank. The group was founded not that long ago and this had been their first big operation, Grissom and Sara learned. In fact, the organisation wasn't tied to any international links at all. The Nicaragua story simply had been a diversion.
Rob was held in custody and would have to appear in court within the next few months. Sara was asked to come back in to testify against him. Grissom could not due to his condition. His testimony wouldn't be reliable. He had simply swallowed and nodded when they told him this. Of course he understood.
When Sara and Grissom signed their final statements and were handed back their passports, they were free to go. Sara noticed Grissom acting very nervous when they walked out of the police station. 'What's wrong?'
'It's just that, it's over now and we don't have to stay here. What will we do now? What will you do now?' he asked.
'What do you mean?' she asked with a grin on her face as she opened her bag and took out an envelope. 'I've got our plane tickets right here.' She handed the envelope over to a confused-looking Grissom who took it and opened it.
'Las Vegas?' he cried out.
'Yes. Unless you don't want to go back of course?' she asked teasingly.
Grissom clearly had to catch his breath as he still couldn't fully understand. 'But you said you didn't want to…'
Sara took his hands. 'It's not just about me now is it? It's about us. And after everything that we've been through and everything that is still in our future - even all the things I don't want to think about yet - we need to be home, surrounded by the people we love. And Vegas comes closest to that for us. So yeah, I want to go back there, together with you.' A little shy she averted her eyes, afraid for his reaction. It was hard for her to open up like this, but it was the only right thing to do.
'Sara,' Grissom whispered.
Her eyes shifted back to his.
'I love you so much.'