Disclaimer: I don't own.

A/N: LOL, I'm trying to make Jace a sympathetic character, but you readers just want to hate him. :) You call him names and say that him crying is wussy, so then in my head he's going all macho and saying 'that's not true! I'm fighting for her!' so I write him fighting, and you guys still hate him. Really, he's a lover, not a fighter. And if he punched Grissom, you guys wouldn't be happy about that either. :P

Still, I'm glad you all care so much to be so emotionally involved. :) It makes my day. I guess I will just have to give up my attempts to garner sympathy for the one who is destined to be left behind. lol.

Enjoy! I plan to update again today, but the fiance has conferences tonight and then after that we're going to help my best friend move into a new place, so... it will probably be late. Just so you know. :)

Chapter Forty:

I was going to kill him! I was absolutely certain that it was him! First of all, the security tape of our hallway had "mysteriously" gone missing, but only an hour of it—apparently, the hour in which our door had been sabotaged, because no one else came near it in any of the rest of the tape. And the man who came to fix it, who introduced himself as Jack once the door was open, said he didn't understand it. It would take someone very skilled to mess with the doors, especially without leaving any mark behind.

I know it's crazy of me, but I had my kit with me. I printed the door, and the lock, and I even had Jack open it up so I could print the inside… nothing. Which was more suspicious than finding a few partials I would probably never identify. Someone had wiped it down.

Seriously, who would think that someone who fingerprint after a dumb prank? No one, except a man married to a criminalist. Who had any kind of motive to lock two strangers in their rooms for no reason? The man married to the woman I had had a date with. Who had the kind of money to make incriminating video surveillance disappear?

But I couldn't accuse him. If there was one thing I knew about Sara, it was that she needed to come to her own conclusions. I mean, if she hadn't been married to Jace, I probably could have suggested it and she would look at the evidence herself and come to a reasonable conclusion… but she was, and so she would feel defensive, unless it occurred to her.

I had intended for this to occur while playing pool, but she was exhausted. Which I understood… not only was she pregnant and had been staying up late and getting up early, but from the descriptions of her day, she'd been exerting a lot of energy. Walking everywhere, playing volleyball… So I walked her back to her room, in part because I wanted to know her room number for future reference. When I'd been locked in the room, we'd been able to call down for help, but I hadn't been able to call Sara's room… because I didn't know which one it was. And though I tried my damnedest, no one would tell me so I could contact her.

After she went inside, I read it carefully, repeated it to myself a few times, and then continued saying it over and over as I walked back to the room I'd been locked in, which I now had to myself. They had comp-ed us a suite as a way to apologize for utterly failing to deal with the door issue, but it came with a King-sized bed, which I was not sharing with Catherine. I let her take it—she had paid for the cruise, after all. Besides, now that I'd come clean to Sara, Catherine was free to find someone on board without worrying about the tie-on-the-door. Which she deserved, considering how Eddie had treated her before the divorce…

Strangely, I found myself lonely. I mean, not that I had wanted Catherine around constantly… but I'd kind of gotten used to being with someone. If not her then Sara. …How was I going to go back to my townhouse, alone, if just spending the first time in my cabin alone had me feeling this way?

Still, I forced myself to sleep, knowing how important tomorrow was, and woke up early to shower, dress, and make sure I could exit my room, well before I would have to meet Sara. She'd been tired, so I figured I'd let her sleep, and instead went to find Catherine. A knock on her door followed by a male voice saying "Just a minute!" had me cringing. No, I didn't need to see her that badly.

Instead, I went to the main dining room and had coffee until I was joined, half an hour later, by Sara, and then another ten minutes later by Catherine and someone who introduced himself as 'Cool Carl.' I frowned, but Catherine explained he was the DJ for one of the clubs on board… which, you know, still didn't explain why he used the name in casual conversation, but I said nothing. If she wanted to have vacation sexy with twenty-somethings with names like 'Cool Carl,' that was her business. After all, I was pursuing a married woman.

Sara ate and talked, seeming excited for the trip, and we took our leave from Catherine and her 'date' with everything working out better than I had expected. I mean, besides the delay of a day. She was excited, bright-eyed, smiles falling easily from her lips…

We took a taxi to the Research Center, visiting Lonesome George, believed to be the last surviving Pinta Island Tortoise (Geochelone nigra abingdoni). I watched Sara's face in fascination as I described their attempts to find a pureblood Pinta female, as he seemed to have no interest in breeding with the tortoises they had put in his enclosure with him—two females of a closely related species. She honestly shined when I talked about it… about efforts to turn what looked like the very last member of a species into a conservationist success story. Her eyes glowed.

"…Wouldn't you just love to do this? I mean… it would be so amazing to live here, to work at the center, to work on things like this that… matter."

I tilted my head. "…The things you do matter, Sara. You find justice for people… you punish those who hurt others, you find the truth, you… give people closure."

She shook her head a little desperately. "I'm not saying the things I do don't matter. I'm saying…" She sighed. "I'm saying that it would be amazing to make the difference before death. Instead of coming after the disaster… making it so the disaster never happens. Instead of saying 'We're working to make sure no other animals are reduced to one remaining,' you could say, 'I'm going to bring this species back to life!' You know?"

I grinned at her. "…Yeah, I know. Still, though, forensics has its place…"

She smiled. "Yes, it does. …Speaking of, did security figure out anything about your door?"

I shook my head, thinking deeply. I had to be careful with how I approached this. "No, they… the videotape showing the time when it must have occurred was missing."

"Missing?" She frowned. "That's strange… Do you think that means that whoever did it works with security?"

I shrugged. "Either that, or they have enough money to pay off someone on security. Though, they all looked like kids… they're in their early twenties. For a prank, a couple hundred would probably buy silence and the destruction of the tape…"

She exhaled. "God, that's just crazy… I can't believe somebody would do that."

"Jack, the man they sent to fix it and get us out, didn't even know how it was done. He said he couldn't believe it, and especially that there were no markings—the lock wasn't damaged in the process at all."

She shook her head. "It can't be that hard, if you know what you're doing. Jace can rewire a car's electrical system faster than anyone he used to work with. I mean, really, he's some kind of genius when it comes to…" Her eyes were wide, and it took everything in me to hide my grin. "I can't believe it!"

"…What?"

"Jace! I… He… Oh!" She stomped her foot, causing one of the little tortoises near us to hole up inside his shell. We chuckled softly at it and I turned to her, waiting. "…Jace must have done it. I know he's got the money, the ability, the motive… and I went right to bed, two nights ago. He could have slipped it and out and I would have had no idea. …You didn't happen to print the lock, did you?"

I smiled, "I did, but… nothing. All the employees who tried to get us out were wearing gloves, but still, you'd expect there to be partials from Catherine and I… nothing."

She huffed. "I know he's afraid of losing me, but… that's extreme. …Gil, I'm really sorry that he did that."

I shook my head, not liking that she was apologizing for him. It meant she was still thinking of the two of them as a 'we' rather than thinking of herself as separate. "Don't be. It wasn't your fault and… I mean, as long as you understand that I didn't miss our date intentionally, there's no harm done. In fact, Catherine's got her own room now, so he actually did her a favor."

She frowned. "How did that happen?"

"Oh, they gave us one that hadn't been booked to apologize for the door fiasco, but it's only got the one bed… I told Catherine to take it."

She smiled. "…That was nice of you."

I shrugged. "Chances are, she'll get more use out of it than I would…"

She smiled and blushed and pulled me over to look at something else. We ate lunch at the Research Center rather than going back to the ship, despite Sara's promise to Jace. She said that the food here would be as American as everything the ship had on board, so it was the same thing… and I wasn't about to argue. I didn't want to give Jace another opportunity to mess up this day.

Afterwards, we stopped to say goodbye to Lonesome George and then took a taxi over to the snorkeling company where we rented snorkels and flippers and signed release papers before boarding the boat which took us and a large group of tourists over to the area they'd advertised as shallow. There was another pregnant woman on board with us, looking like she was six or seven months, and that helped to put Sara's mind at ease.

When we arrived, we sat down to put on flippers and the masks and then grinned at each other, laughing at the way they distorted our faces, before moving into the water. For a while we simply walked around in the areas we could stand, our heads bent forward in the water, pointing to the bright, spectacular fish. At one point, she seemed to get her flipper stuck on a rock on the bottom and fell forward a little. I caught her hand to steady her, and kept it. And though she did not lace her fingers through mine, she allowed me to keep my fingers pressed to her palm, hers tucked safely into mine.

Eventually, we went to the deeper areas, which were still only about six feet, floating face down on the surface and occasionally diving down to explore something more fully, but never too deep. I wasn't sure what was or wasn't harmful, though I knew that diving wasn't recommended in pregnancy, especially early on. When she seemed like she was feeling more adventurous, I would guide her into shallower water, the brush of my fingertips against her bare stomach sending heat flying through my body and gently reminding her to be careful.

The way she shivered from my touch made me feel powerful and alive, though it made me wonder if she was getting my messages at all. Her eyes seemed particularly glazed if I allowed myself to touch her longer than just a moment.

We were tired by the time we were all climbing back into the boat, pulling off flippers and masks and returning them to our guides. Sara pulled out a sundress from a tote bag she'd brought, drying herself off and slipping it over her head before untying the straps of her bikini top and removing the item. I watched her with mouth agape, trying with everything in me to keep my eyes on her face and failing. She was wearing nothing under the thin fabric over her perfect breasts, and I swore I could make out the outline of her nipple, despite the blackness of the fabric and the heat of the day.

When she then proceeded, in our secluded section of the boat, to wiggle out of her bikini bottoms and into a fresh pair—swimsuit bottoms, not underwear, though I had been hoping…—I swear I nearly had a heart attack. Having not been nearly as prepared as her, I simply towel dried the parts of me which were exposed, hoping the sun would mostly dry my swimming trunks by the time we got back.

She didn't seem to mind though, her eyes shaking over my chest and arms, a sly smile crossing her face, the red in her face a mixture of flush and too much sun. I grinned and passed her the sun block, leaning back with my arms spread across the railing behind us, my sunglasses obscuring my eyes, to once again watch the show.