OMG, hav updated, trust me no one is more shocked about it than me*g*. has always been my intention to finish this, albeit slowly. But on the bright side I actually know what's going to happen in the next part and that's gotta be good, right?

Would like to thank everybody who's still with. i realise that this is taking ages and i am trying to be quicker... thanks for all the reviews and feedback, i really, really appreciate it.

'K, now the Nick and Sara thing, am i die hard shipper but don't think it'll work in this story but yunno, sequel*g*. in the mean time am gonna hav to indulge my taste for fluff elsewhere, any fic recs? Please tell me what u think, any suggestions, comments etc are totally valued, especially as i haven't planned this so nothing is set in stone... right, story, onwards...


Part 7

It had seemed like a long shot when they'd started driving that morning, but a long shot worth exploring if not solely as an excuse to get them out of the now claustrophobic environment of the lab. Sara's investigation had led them to a name. A guy who could connect the past to the present... they hoped. The only link between the sequence of not-so-anonymous brown-haired, brown-eyed boys and the stacks of day planners and diaries that Cat had been analysing.

Of course, sitting there with him sipping coffee, he wasn't really a suspect, Catherine Willows thought. He wasn't really an anything. He was a straw at which they were clutching. Tightly. With both hands.

He hadn't left the ranch outside Vegas, where he lived and worked, for over a week, he said. And he hadn't according to the testimony of his colleagues. Jensen North was a well liked if more than slightly odd young man. His painful shyness radiated off him like a mist and only served to emphasise the vulnerability and fragility of his face. In the pictures they'd retrieved the resemblance had been striking if not uncanny but where Nick's jaw had strengthened and his shoulders broadened, suggesting an underlying power that was rarely displayed under his usually sunny disposition, Jen, as he insisted on being called by the 'pretty ladies' who'd come to talk to him, had barely changed from the photo that Sara'd studied on the drive up. The air of innocence that he purveyed was only heightened by the tears that streaked his cheeks when he was told of the murder of Jane Peterson. Sara looked away embarrassed as a single solitary drop of moisture pooled at his chin and drop onto the dry ground below. She practically felt Cat tense in an effort not to physically comfort the forlorn looking figure.

"Why would anyone want to hurt Ms Peterson?" he'd wanted to know, cuffing at his eyes, trying to wipe away any evidence of his 'weakness'. "Ms Peterson says that big boys don't cry," he added by way of explanation. "She wouldn't never hurt anyone..."

"Anyone? How did you know her?" Sara restrained herself from asking what she really wanted: Didn't she hurt you? The prospect of him turning those hurt puppy dog eyes on her was enough deterrent so she settled for the usual generic questions. Any way to distract him from his obvious grief.

"She used to baby-sit for me," he told them quite happily; oblivious to the looks exchanged between the women. "We're friends."

"Friends? So you guys see each other sometimes, huh?" Cat suddenly felt like she was talking to one of her daughter's friends, rather than a twenty five year old man.

"Not so much." His face fell and his lower lip started to quiver once more. "She found a new friend."

A new friend. They'd left shortly after that revelation. They'd driven up the tree-lined dirt track to the freeway back to Vegas. But with something. Maybe something. Jen hadn't known his name, only that the woman who had been the focus of his life since he was a child was no longer available to him. She'd found someone she liked better, someone with whom she had 'things in common'. That was direct quote. Sara frowned. Things in common. It could mean anything, someone she played bridge with for all they knew but it didn't feel that way to them. A quick glance at Cat's tense frame hunched over the steering wheel told her that she felt the same. Everything in her, investigator, scientist, cop, was screaming at her that this was significant. Given the extent of her obsession, the scores of photos both old and recent that they'd found hidden underneath the bottom drawer of chest after going over her place with a fine tooth comb, 'things in common' meant Nick.

******

She was relieved when he opened the door; partly because it meant that he was ok; partly because it meant that he was willing to see her. She held up the pizza she was carrying and he stepped aside for her to enter. Catherine was taken aback by her surroundings. She had stated loudly and clearly as the end-of-shift briefing was closing up that she was going to visit Nick, daring anyone to contradict this assertion or offer themselves in her stead. No one did acknowledging that she was acting in her capacity of 'den-mother', although she was aware of the resentful gazes of Warrick and Sara at her back. He'd confided in her once and she'd be damned if anything was going to stop her from being there for him again.

"Spring cleaning?" she asked casually. He had literally turned his lounge area upside down. The only thing that remained untouched was his TV. Nick closed the door and followed her gaze.

"Something like that," he admitted, taking a slice of the pizza that she offered and in turn throwing he a can of cola. He took a bite of his pizza and sank back onto his cushion-less couch. Grinning at her quirked eyebrow. "I'm ok," he reassured her. "I just need to make sure, yunno, that there's nothing left." She nodded. It was understandable. This was a psychological rather than physical need... It was highly unlikely that she'd been there, had touched any of the things that he'd scrubbed and re-scrubbed that afternoon but it needed to be done, it was enough that she'd come back into his life to make everything in it feel dirty, tarnished in some way.

"Need help?" They finished the food in comfortable silence before she asked. Nick smiled and nodded gratefully. It was good just being around somebody again. A totally non-judgemental somebody at that. He'd been alone with his thoughts all day methodically going over every room in his maisonette, images from the last couple of days revolved through his head along with all of the other memories that had been dredged up with nothing to distract him and he wasn't even halfway finished. He'd been trying to work himself up to going to the lab to face everyone, instinctively he knew that the longer he left facing everyone the harder it would be. And Catherine was cool about it, he rationalised. It, his deep dark (no longer quite so secret) secret, hadn't affected their professional relationship, their friendship. It'd be ok, he decided.

He'd be ok, his friend, at almost the exact same moment, realised. Nick was stronger than any of them could ever imagine. She saw the look of determination fall across his face and the stubborn set of his jaw and knew that he was going to be ok. Not now, not tomorrow but he would be. She shrugged off her light jacket and started to work on the kitchen floor.

Nick watched Catherine grad a cloth and squat down behind his counter. She seemed to know her way around his newly purchased cleaning products, he'd had old ones but they'd had to go along with his toiletries and the small amount of food left in fridge. He replaced own duster and was about to tell her that she didn't need to help like that when he heard her gasp.

"Nick?" Catherine called, straightening up and backing out of the kitchenette. "There's blood."