"Head hurting?" Jim asked coolly.

"Yeah," she croaked, propping it up with one hand on the table.

"Too bad."

The detective's heartless response caused her to flinch and she straightened up, attempting to exude a little more composure.

To Brass' right, Ecklie folded his hands in front of him and cleared his throat.

"Miss Bell," he stated, "you understand why you're here today?"

"No, I don't actually." She snapped impatiently.

Opening the folding sitting in front of him, Conrad took out a photograph taken of Greg at the hospital, his head bandaged up, and slid it across the table into her line of sight.

"What did you hit him with?" Brass asked, not even bothering to wait for her to offer a denial.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Give it up, sweetheart." The detective laughed bitterly. "We already know the whole story. About how you manipulated Sara into a relationship, how she ended it when you tried to get her to leave her job so you could be together. And you knew that Sara had told Greg all about it."

"Greg didn't know anything." She retorted, nudging the photo back towards them. "And in any case, I've already been suspended. What would be the point in doing this now?"

"Sure he knew." Ecklie picked up Brass' line of questioning easily. "And that's precisely why you attacked him. Since you did such a good job of keeping it quiet, you knew that the only person who could have reported you was someone that Sara had told. And you'd already ruled out one of them..."

Belinda flicked her gaze to Brass' left, where the only other person sitting in on the interrogation had yet to speak.

"The jury's still out on that one." She countered suspiciously.

Catherine scoffed lightly at the accusation, but declined to rise to it.

"You know, the worst thing about all of this is that you haven't just damaged Sara's trust in you, you've damaged it for the rest of us too." She shook her head sadly.

When Belinda gave nothing more than a bemused scowl in response, Catherine reached into her pocket and placed the ring box on the table, finally revealing why she had insisted on sitting in one the interview.

"Sara found this in my possession today." She explained. "I got it after it fell out of your bag when you fled her apartment the other day. Only, Sara doesn't know whether to believe that or not. Because of what you did, she has no idea who to trust anymore."

Belinda's lips turned up into a small smile.

"If you've given Sara reason not to trust you, that's on you, not me." She sneered.

Catherine bit her lower lip, taking a moment to steady her nerves before speaking again.

"It has taken me five long years to win that girl's trust. And you destroyed that in five minutes. And you can be damn sure that I'm going to make you pay for that."

"And, how exactly are you going to do that?" The counsellor sat forward, devilishness dancing in her eyes.

This time, when Catherine slammed her hand onto the table, she left a key sitting between them.

"You had that key made for Sara's apartment." She stated. "So that you could break in and plant a folder there. Sara thought she'd lost it at work, but she hadn't. You took it, to make her think that she'd lost it. You also broke into her locker and stole her mother's wedding ring. We have security footage of you leaving the locker room the day it went missing."

"That doesn't prove anything."

"It proves that you were gaslighting her." Catherine snapped, raising her voice. "You tried to make her think she was losing her mind, so she would come running back to you. That key, the CCTV footage and your fingerprints on that ring box prove it. And if we have to, we'll take statements from every key-cutting store in the city until we found a witness who remembers you."

There was a moment where Belinda appeared to consider this, perhaps weighing up her next response.

Finally, she sat back and crossed her arms.

"Even if you could prove any of this, it's not against the law to mess with someone's head."

"It should be." Ecklie stated bluntly, his eyes narrowed.

She turned languidly towards him, unfazed by his interruption.

"I don't recall you complaining too much when I brought this information to you." She pointed out. "In fact, as I remember it, you were almost giddy with glee at the prospect of calling her out for it. You were ready to fire her. At least I did what I did for her benefit; so, who's the worst one here?"

"Don't try to manipulate me, Ms Bell." The lab director snarled, visibly provoked by the allegation. "I was acting in good faith on information that you provided – information which I now realise was completely fabricated."

"No, it's wasn't." She sat forward earnestly. "Sara was struggling, she needed to get out of that job. Everything I did was to help her..."

"And if it meant that the two of you could be together without impacting your job, all the better, right?" Catherine pointed out, earning her a wordless glare.

"Do you know why the crime lab employs a counsellor, Miss Bell?" Ecklie asked rhetorically. "It's because these guys put their lives on the line every day. And sometimes, they need a little bit of help to cope with the things they see. Your job is to make sure that they're okay – that they're mentally stable enough to go to work every day and keep themselves – and their team – alive. When you abuse one of my guys the way you've abused Sara, you're not only putting her life at risk, but everyone else on her team as well. They carry guns, for Christ's sake! How can you possibly sit there and claim to be a good counsellor when you deliberately put in her danger of physical and emotional harm?"

She swallowed hard, looking from him to the detective, whose ice cold blue eyes were boring into her skull.

"Even so, it's still not illegal."

"No." He agreed hoarsely, tapping the photograph of Greg. "But assaulting an officer is. And I'm sure a jury won't look too sympathetically on a psychiatric nurse who put an innocent CSI in the hospital to cover up an affair with a patient."

"Neither do I." Ecklie stated. "On top of which, I will be making a strong recommendation to the disciplinary panel that they move for permanent removal of your licence to practice. Between that and Sara's statement, I'm sure you can kiss your career goodbye."

For the first time, her cockiness faltered, instantly replaced by an unexpected vulnerability that washed over her features.

"Sara wouldn't give a statement against me." She contested, although the waver in her voice suggested she wasn't entirely certain about that. "I know her ... she wouldn't do that."

"Well, maybe you don't know her as well as you think." Catherine challenged, glad to have finally elicited a reaction. "You may know her history, her secrets, her weaknesses ... certainly enough to get inside her head. But you underestimated one thing – her loyalty."

"What, to you?" Belinda snorted disparagingly.

"No," Catherine smiled, a feral sort of smile. "To Greg. You honed in on her weaknesses; but in doing so you completely overlooked her strengths. You see, Sara's sense of loyalty is one of her strongest traits – her loyalty to her team, to her friends ... and to her own integrity. When you attacked Greg, you broke the law and you hurt someone that Sara loves – did you really think that she would stand by and let you get away with it?"

Belinda was staring at her, but her expression was completely unreadable.

"Sara loves me." She said at last, a hard edge to her voice.

"A love built on manipulation and mind games isn't genuine." Catherine argued softly. "She thought she loved you, because that's what you told her and she believed that she could trust you. But that wasn't real."

"You don't get it," Bel laughed bitterly. "Sara doesn't understand love; she doesn't know how to feel it because of her childhood. She needed me to show her that, to teach her how to express it."

"No," Cath shook her head, a deep frown embedding itself on her face. "No, that's simply not true. Sara might not have had a lot of love given to her when she was growing up, but she sure as hell can give it out. And the truth is she probably loves Greg Sanders more than anyone else in her life. Certainly more than she ever loved you. If you spent more time being her shrink than her lover, you'd have recognised that."

That seemed to sting and Catherine smiled again, pleased to have touched a nerve. Evidently, Sara wasn't kidding about Belinda's jealous streak where Greg was concerned.

"If you ever had a chance of getting close to her again – and that's a big if," she continued bluntly, "you ruined it the moment you laid a finger on her best friend. That was a fatal error and one that Sara will never forgive you for. "

Satisfied with her work here, Catherine stood up and made to leave. Brass offered the standard explanation regarding the charges that were being filed against her, before he and Ecklie followed suit.

However, just as Mitch emerged from the shadows where he had been lurking, ready to escort her back to the cells, Catherine turned in the doorway and offered another bright smile.

"By the way, in case you're interested, that wasn't your only mistake. Greg wasn't the one who reported you either. You attacked him for nothing."

Belinda blinked a couple of times, before a red mist appeared to descend over her face and she kicked out in anger at the chair she had just been sitting in, sending it skittering across the floor.

The door closed behind them just in time for them to catch the tail end of her barrage of abuse, while Mitch struggled to restrain her.

Outside, in the observation room, they shared a collective sigh of relief that it was over.

"You didn't hold back." Catherine pointed out, turning to Ecklie with a curious expression.

"This is my lab." He scowled defensively. "Everyone in here is my responsibility. I know I can't keep everyone safe all of the time, but I never thought I'd see one of my guys being hurt like this from the inside. That ... that bothers me."

Cath shared a sly look with Brass, who merely raised his eyebrows, before offering a tight smile.

"You might want to lead with that when you apologise to Sara for trying to get her fired."

It was said with a light-hearted enough tone, but he sensed that she was deathly serious and rolled his eyes a little too dramatically at the idea.

The moment was interrupted by the trilling of a cell phone and Catherine extracted hers from her pocket. Checking the screen and seeing Lindsey's school flashing at her, she quickly excused herself, scampering into the hall to answer it in private.

The men remained behind, sharing a moment of awkward silence before Brass finally cleared his throat.

"Well," he declared, nodding in the direction that the blonde had left. "That was pretty enlightening."

Ecklie apparently didn't understand and shook his head in confusion, causing Jim's smirk to grow.

"Come on Conrad, you're supposed to be an investigator." He teased.

Ecklie looked slowly from the cop, to the door where Catherine had vanished through, and back again, a gradual realisation settling on his face.

And just like that, his relief disappeared, quickly replaced by exasperation. Evidently, his work on this matter was far from over.