This is not the ideal way to wake up next to a woman, Grissom thought sarcastically to himself as his eyes focused on the sleeping woman in the chair beside him. She was somehow still sitting upright, one of those tiny little human phenomena that had fascinated him for five minutes until he found out the science behind it. Not a whole lot of wonder involved when you realized that it was just muscle that kept a sleeping jock in his desk.

It was actually after sunrise now he noticed, looking at the glowing blinds. He did not want to wake Sara up, but someone needed to contact Catherine and let her know what had happened. He pulled his hand away from where it and Sara's rested together on the bed railing, and she woke up.

"Are you okay?" she asked immediately.

He nodded and tried unsuccessfully to clear his throat. When he stopped coughing, she brushed his hair back from his forehead, and asked him, "Can I do anything?"

He nodded. "Go home. Call Catherine, number's on my desk. Sleep."

"Okay," she said. She played with the bright red cartoon dragon charm hanging from Nick's keychain. She would have to ask him about that later. "Should I call Warrick or Nick to come sit with you?"

"No. I'm fine," he told her. She looked at him worriedly, so he found her hand again and squeezed it gently. "It's okay. Thank you, Sara."

"Of course," she said. She stood and turned to leave. He was uncomfortable, and she realized that she was too. Still, she turned back to face him and leaning over, gently kissed his cheek. He held her arm when she began to stand up, seeming to want to tell her something. She watched his face, but instead of speaking he let her go and closed his eyes.

She continued watching him until she noticed a tear on his cheek. Embarrassed for both of them, she slipped out the door.


~*~*~*~*~

Sara parked Nick's car in the lab parking lot and looked around. She did not really want to go in there and answer questions she had yet to figure out herself. Just take a deep breath, run in and run back out.

She got out of the car and flashed her ID card to the receptionist. While not quite running, she was walking quickly enough that no one tried to stop her to talk until she passed Greg's work station.


"Hey, Sara!" he said, jumping up and almost sending an expensive microscope crashing to the floor. She stopped and waited for him, considering him an ally at the office if anyone was. "How is he?"

"He's going to be alright." She stopped and wet her lips. She suddenly felt thirsty. "Who's investigating the case anyway?"

"The boss from hell. I hate working dayshift."

"Ecklie's working Gris's case?" Sara scoffed.

"Yeah, and the one that you two were working on when you were there. He's been ranting all morning about your shift abandoning your work," Greg told her, looking uncomfortable to have to share this information.

Sara shook her head. "Ecklie can go to hell."

"I guess," Greg said, rubbing his neck.

"How is the investigation going?"

Greg shrugged, and told her, "I have no idea. He has his cronies drop samples off and I give him the reports. I could do my job a lot better if he would tell me what it is I'm analyzing."

"Yeah. I have to go call Catherine, maybe find Ecklie. I'll call you if anything happens," she said. She looked completely exhausted.

"Same here. Call if you need anything, or to talk, or...you know," he offered, embarrassed. It was not one of his usual clumsy passes, she knew, it was a genuine offer.

She nodded at him and then left him standing, staring after her. She appreciated his thoughtfulness, but had no idea what to say.

When Sara reached Grissom's office, she was surprised to find Ecklie and his team going through his desk.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked, stunned.

Ecklie looked up from the date book he was flipping through. "Looking for anyone with motive for trying to murder our friend Gil. There are people working on the scene and any leads in that direction, and we are checking here for other possibilities."

"Am I supposed to believe that?"

"You know that it could have been anyone. Whoever was responsible for the original crime at the scene was probably long gone by the time you two got started. Someone else could have followed you there. It could have even been you." He said the last in a voice that told her that he did not really think so, but that he was trying to provoke her. After the evening that she had, she could not help but to take the bait.

"I would never -- How could you think that?" She hated Ecklie. He reminded her of someone. "I could never do anything to hurt a man that I -- that I work with. For. I stayed with him, I called the paramedics. If I really wanted to hurt him --," she stopped for a moment and stared at him. Then she asked quietly, "What the hell is wrong with you?


She would wonder later if it was her tirade that caused it, or if Ecklie planned to do it all along and just wanted to upset her first.

"Give me your identification and your gun. You are on suspension until this matter is settled. Hopefully we will get some other leads, because right now you are the second suspect on our list."

"After the painfully obvious one!" she said.

"Your error in judgment alone is reason enough to suspend you." He pulled two evidence bags from a pile inside his case. "Your things?"

She shook her head, but carefully placed her weapon and identification in the bags. "I need Catherine Willows's phone number. It was supposed to be on his desk."

"When we find it she'll be notified," Ecklie told her indifferently before turning back to his examination of the date book. "If you're not out of the building in fifteen minutes, I'm going to call security."

Feeling slightly numb, Sara found her way to the locker room and went inside. She only had a few things in her locker, and she really only had one that she wanted to keep. It was a really good picture of Grissom, Warrick, Nick, and Catherine all sitting together in the break room on an insanely slow night a few months before. Grissom had gotten annoyed at her "improper use of equipment" and returned to his office. It had been nice to see everyone together in one place for a little while.

She took the picture and carefully put it in the middle of a book that was sitting at the bottom of her locker. Not caring about anything else, and truly wanting to not completely abandon her claim to her job, she relocked the locker with all her other belongings still inside.

~*~*~*~*~

Things could be worse, Sarah thought as she entered her apartment. All her life, her mood had alternated between hopeless pessimism and desperate optimism, and she really needed to focus on the latter more often.

She carefully took the picture out and placed it in wooden edge of the bulletin board hanging next to the door. She had had the frame more than half her life, but the cork part had been replaced many times. Black magic marker filled the frame where she had ticked off the days until graduation, first from high school and later from college. She did not really have anything to count down to the end of now.


She realized that the constant desire for one part of her life to give way to another was based on the hopes that everything about her life and circumstances would change just because she had managed to escape to somewhere else. Looking back, that was the basis behind her permanent move to Las Vegas as well.


She really did not like it here. It was too hot during the day and too cold at night. The cases seemed so much worse than they had other places she has worked. She did not know anyone and never really had the opportunity to meet anyone. Well, that was not necessarily true. She just never felt comfortable putting roots down anywhere. If the necessity of personnel files did not exist, no one in the state of Nevada would even know her middle name.

She was really tired of living day to day. She needed something to look forward to. She needed to make plans. She needed a future. She needed something to keep her from slipping.

And she knew she would never work toward any of that if she did not force herself to face some things from her past.

~*~*~*~*~

Sara had spent most of the summers of her childhood staying with her mother's sister Chloe and her husband Jake. She did not really mind, because by the time a school year came to the close she was anxious to get out of town and away from people. Her aunt and uncle owned two horses, and she would spend most of her summer days riding. When she was fourteen she entered competitions, and the other kids at the stables respected her, and she enjoyed their company.

Early the following summer, in June, her Aunt Chloe gave birth to a little girl, who Uncle Jake named Stephanie. Eager to help her aunt, and amazed at the opportunity to be a part of this tiny new life, Sara more or less abandoned riding and stayed at the house, babysitting and helping her aunt with everyday tasks.

By the end of the summer she had witnessed more than one screaming match between the baby's parents, during which she would quietly take the baby to the nursery in the back of the house. She wondered if this had always happened and she had never been there to see, or if this was something new from the stress of parenthood. She hated knowing the effects their behavior was already having on her baby cousin.

She came again the next summer, when she was sixteen. Her aunt was waiting at the airport with Stephanie awkwardly held in her arms and a bulky cast on her left wrist. "The bastard's hitting you now, isn't he?" Sara greeted her aunt.

"Don't swear in front of Stephanie," the woman scolded. "And, no."

"How did you get hurt?"

"The horses. Are you going to ride this year? One of the boys at the stable asked when you were getting in town this year. John. You remember him from the bonfire last August, right?" her aunt rambled.

Sara had gotten angry and ignored her. She spent the next three months keeping her cousin away from the baby's own parents. The little girl said 'Sara' before she ever said 'Dad'.

When she was seventeen she worked as a camp counselor to prevent returning to the house. She finally returned in May of her senior year of high school. She missed her graduation to attend her aunt's funeral.

~*~*~*~*~

After Aunt Chloe's burial, Sara and her parents returned to her uncle's house for the night.

Sara could not sleep. A few hours before her aunt had been buried in her husband Jake's family plot.

She walked quietly down the familiar hall and peeked into the door of her cousin's bedroom. She was not quite three years old yet, and Sara knew she would probably not be able to remember her mother in a couple years.

She continued through the house to the kitchen. Her uncle was sitting at the table. She did not notice her mother, also unable to sleep, standing in the corner filling a glass with milk. Sara sat across from her uncle at the table and said, almost conversationally, "You killed Aunt Chloe, didn't you?"

"Sara!" her mother exclaimed from the corner. "How could you ask him that? We're all hurting, but you need to be considerate of everyone's feelings!"


"If you'd ever talked to your own sister, you would have realized that she wasn't okay! He's been beating her for two years now, at least. Did you wait until Stephanie was out of the room, Jake? Or did you let her see what you were doing too?"

"Sara," her mother begged, "Please don't do this. I'm sorry, Jake."

"It's okay," Jake said, eyeing Sara from across the table. "Really. She's upset. It's a shock for her, I'm sure. We all loved Chloe, and we need to pull together if we're going to make it through this. I'm not angry at Sara, I'm just sorry that she feels the need to hurt me to deal with her grief. I guess that if this is how it has to be I can accept that."

Tears burned at Sara's eyes. She felt so helpless. "Please, Jake. I'm not even asking you to turn yourself in. It wouldn't do anyone any good now. Just...Admit what you did. Let me take Stephanie back home. I don't trust you with her. Damnit!" Sara stood up and knocked her chair into the refrigerator.

"Sara. Please." Her mother's voice again, from beside the counter.

"Mom," Sara said. She shook her head. She felt so sick.

"Let me talk to Sara alone," her uncle told her mother. "She's not going to calm down if she feels like she's outnumbered."

"But the things she's saying to you, Jake..."

"It's okay."

Her mother looked at the scene before her, and eventually picked up her glass and retreated back upstairs.

"You can't do anything, Sara," he told her when he heard the door to the guest room closing.

"I was right, though, wasn't I?"

"Go home in the morning. Forget about it."

"This is not supposed to really happen," Sara moaned. She stood in the kitchen feeling absurd, dressed in her white nightgown and crying in front of the man who killed her aunt.

"Sara," he said, reaching out her hand to her, making a move to comfort her, of all things.

"Don't touch me. Ever," she said, backing into the dining room. She backed into the table and fell down. Why did they have two tables with chairs around both? There was not even a door between the kitchen and dining room. "Why did you do it?"

"I didn't mean to actually kill her," Jake said, standing over her and reaching a hand down to her.

Sara stared at his hand in disbelief. "You really did it. God, you killed her and now you're going to raise her little girl."

Jake's eyes looked into her own. "Go to sleep. You can apologize to your mother and me in the morning. You're going to look nuts if you don't, Sara." He offered his hand again and she shook her head. He walked past her up the stair. She heard his door close.

She spent the rest of the night on the floor in her cousin's room, looking through pictures and waiting for her cousin to wake up. When she finally did, Sara took her locket off and wrote "Love, Sara" and her parents' phone number on the back of a picture of Aunt Chloe. She showed it to the little girl then doubled the long chain and clasped it behind the girl's neck.

~*~*~*~*~

Not a day passed when Sara did not wonder if she could have stopped her aunt's death. And, even worse, she was forced to always wonder if her cousin was still okay. She would be fifteen by now, the age Sara was when she was born.

When she finished her shower it was barely noon. She put on a pair of cotton pajama pants and a white t-shirt then fought a brush through her hair. Finally she crawled into her bed. Her last thought before she fell asleep was that she was not going to lose another person she loved just because she was scared. She could not run away again, not with this much at stake.