Her face burnt under the direct sunlight.

To most she looked better, but it was unlikely that many would call her healed if they knew what was going on in her mind. Her cuts had mended and her arm was no longer bandaged, but that did not equate to a fully recovered CSI.

That did not mean that Sara was okay.

And when the sand shifted beneath her boots, it was hard to focus on anything but the vast desert around her. Her mind chose not to focus on Catherine and Nick who were no more than fifteen feet away from her, but instead on the way the small grains of sand stung her cheeks as they swirled past her.

It was a wonder that the desert could be so hot and still have gusts of wind strong enough to shake the frame of the Denali.

The desert sun had already heated the metal of the door handle enough to burn Sara's hand when she grabbed it. She paused, let go, and looked into the tinted window of the passenger's seat. She was tempted to try again, to open the door and get in the car.

But Catherine was calling her name. And her kit was already lodged in the sand beside her.

And there were two dead bodies with sandbanks piling up against them.

With each step of displaced sand, Sara got closer to the scene and farther from the protection of the intact car.

So she did her best to stay behind the safety of her lens.

It was a tall task for a scientist to try to convince herself that she wasn't truly where she stood, but behind the camera she could imagine her surroundings were but images from a place she had already left behind.

She could even try to pretend she was looking at them in the lab.

In Grissom's office.

But in his office the air wasn't so dry that it pulled all of the moisture from her mouth. It wasn't hard to swallow in the climate controlled lab.

It didn't become hard to breathe.

To think.

Her skin didn't feel like it was baking in the heat.

In the lab it wasn't difficult to get her mind or her camera to focus.

But here, each small piece of plastic she found seemed to take longer to photograph than the drive into the desert had. And with each photograph, each step farther and farther from the scene, it proved impossible to hide from her reality.

She had been trained to follow the evidence, and in the most literal sense that was exactly what she was doing.

Following small pieces of plastic with no attempt to evaluate their importance to the scene.

She followed the evidence until she finally looked up and saw nothing around her but sand.

XXX

Grissom got out of his Denali with a bad taste in his mouth that always seemed to follow a meeting with Ecklie. He tried to shake it off as he surveyed the scene in front of him.

Two DBs.

Catherine was crouched beside David as he examined the body. Nick had begun sifting through the sand around their bodies. Sara-

Sara?

"Catherine," he shouted as he walked toward the scene.

She looked over, sunglasses protecting her eyes from the sun, "Grissom," she shouted back, "we've got one male, one female. No obvious signs of trauma."

He ignored her information, "I thought I sent Sara with you."

"You did, she should be-" Catherine stood and looked around, noticing for the first time that Sara wasn't there.

Nick halted his sifting operation and walked over, "she was taking photographs."

"Where?" Grissom squinted his eyes.

"I-" Catherine dropped the rest of her sentence when she realized she didn't know. She looked over at Nick who seemed to have the same response.

"She couldn't have gotten far," Nick finally supplied.

"Well when was the last time you saw her?"

Neither of them had a response.

"Sara!" Grissom cupped his hands around his mouth as he shouted, but the wind wiped out his words before they could cover any distance. Just as it would have her footprints.

"Gil-"

"We need to find her, Catherine."

Catherine nodded, although she knew Grissom wouldn't see her with how his neck was twisting, looking out all around them.

"David, stay with the bodies," she ordered, "Nick and I will take the Denali and look."

"I'll follow the evidence."

Grissom looked around the scene. If Sara had been taking photographs she would have been looking for evidence. If he could see what she saw, maybe he could figure out where she had gone.

He tried not to think about the last time he had lost her in the desert.

He started at the center of the scene and moved out. There was a granola bar wrapper that had gotten lodged under a rock. There was a half filled plastic water bottle.

Then he saw a small piece of black plastic that he couldn't immediately identify. It looked like a broken piece of something bigger.

He held out his hands, pretending he was taking a photo of it. He moved his hands down, she would have looked for another piece. When he saw it he stepped around the first. Then there was a third and he finally had a trail.

He began to run, alternating between looking down to follow the trail and looking around the vast desert to find her.

He noticed a slight decline in the land that he hadn't identified when first looking around. When everything was sand, the terrain could be hard to predict.

He was careful to stay far enough from the evidence so that when he kicked up sand behind him he didn't disturb it. He paused to shout her name again, still with little hope that his words would get to her.

When he turned back he couldn't see the scene anymore. The descent had been so gradual that he hadn't realized it'd been enough for the desert to block any sight of yellow crime scene tape behind him.

Suddenly it made sense. He didn't know how far she'd made it before realizing she didn't know where she was.

He looked ahead again, his mouth slightly open as he tried to look for any sign of her.

Then he saw it.

Three rocks, all nicely stacked.

He ran to them and from there saw a sandbank with another stack of rocks.

And at that sandbank he found her.

Her knees were tucked to her chest and her boots were buried in the sand.

"Sara." He ran to her and crouched by her side.

"Everything was gone," she turned her head and looked at him. There were tear tracks through the dust on her face.

"I know, Honey." He reached out his hand and wiped her cheeks.

"Gil-" her voice broke as fresh tears came.

He wrapped his arms around her and closed his eyes when she rested her head against his chest.

He held her there long enough for the sand to turn his own skin a dusty orange before a car pulled up less than 100 yards away and Catherine emerged from the passenger side door.

Grissom looked at her, and when they made eye contact he shook his head. She returned it with a slight nod. Nick walked over to her side and Gil couldn't hear what he was saying even though he saw his lips move.

Then Nick held up the car keys and tossed them through the open window onto the passenger side seat. Catherine gave him a gesture in the direction of the crime scene and they began to walk, leaving Sara and Gil alone behind the sandbank.

"Sara, can I take you home?"

She nodded into his chest even though she knew she should have protested.

After a few more moments she pulled away from him. She looked at him and watched him stand, struggling a bit in the deep sand. Then he put out a hand and helped her up. She faltered more than he had, her legs feeling unsteady.

He brought his hand to the small of her back and supported her for the walk to the Denali. He opened the passenger door for her and took the keys before she sat. He drove back to the crime scene, parking beside his own car. He waved Catherine over and handed her his own keys that he had pulled from his pocket.

"Call Greg, he can help you finish processing the scene."

"Okay," she looked over to Sara who had her back to them.

Grissom knew her look and gave her a shrug and slight head shake in return.

She nodded, "we've got it covered."

"Thank you."

"No need to," Catherine smiled.

Gil put the car in drive and maneuvered through the sand until he came to the small road he had driven to the scene on.

Sara faced the window but she didn't look out of it. She wanted to pretend that they were driving somewhere beautiful. Somewhere safe.

"I don't know if I can do this, Gil."

He looked over at her wishing that he could give her more than he could in that moment. Instead he settled for reaching out and taking her warm hand in his. He gave it a gentle squeeze.

"You don't have to do it alone, Honey."

Sara was quiet for the rest of the ride and remained so when they walked into his apartment. The familiarity of the surroundings was comforting to her. She felt more at home here than she did in her own apartment.

She took the glass of water that Gil handed her.

Then she ran her fingers down his arm from his shoulder to his hand. She felt goosebumps form on him when she reached his bare skin. Sara took his hand and led him into the bedroom.

They laid together above the comforter and she rested her head on his chest.

"Did you mean what you said?" The warmth of his body and the slight rise and fall of his chest gave her more comfort that she usually would have admitted.

"Did I mean what?"

"That I don't have to do this alone."

He kissed the top of her head, "every word, my love."