Sara hung up the phone and fell back into her chair, staring blankly at the wall. "I'm sorry, Sue," she said for perhaps the twentieth time that night. "I just didn't know where else to go, and I was so scared."
Susan Akers slid a cup of herbal tea in front of Sara, making reassuring noises. "It's fine, Sara. I'm glad I could help you. And you know, Ben always makes things safer when it comes to hiding from men."
Sara absently reached down and petted the big dog, who had his head on her lap. "I'm not hiding, exactly. It's just that . . . he never did that before. Did I show you my arm?"
Susan nodded. "It's not bad, Sara. I've done that to people by accident. You just grab too hard, and if the person has delicate skin, they get bruises in an hour or two." She wished there was something more she could say to reassure the woman in front of her. She'd been shocked when Sara appeared at her door that afternoon, but had welcomed her new friend warmly.
Sara shook her head. "I thought he was going to hit me. He was so angry . . . and my mind is so out of whack with this baby . . . I just thought he was going to hit me," she repeated. Ben, attuned to the fear coming from this new woman, licked her hand.
"Listen, you told me yourself that he's madly in love with you," Susan said firmly. "You told me that he knows about your past and he knows that he wouldn't want to lose you just because he got angry. Why don't you turn your phone back on? He might be calling right now, you know."
"He doesn't know about Donny. I didn't tell him that part. I don't want him to know." Sara looked, Susan thought, like a woman twice her age. Her face was bordering on haggard as the poisonous thoughts of the past whirled through her mind.
"No. No, I can't turn it on," Sara added after a minute, as though she hadn't just acknowledged that Susan was the only person in Las Vegas who knew about Sara's last boyfriend in San Francisco. "I don't want to talk to him, and he's more likely to try to get the police to track me with it than to call me on it." She rubbed her forehead, trying to ward off the headache that was coming on. "I don't like not knowing what to do, Sue."
"Would it be so bad if he found you? I'm sure he's out of his head right now worrying about you. Besides, you called from this phone, he could always track it back through the phone company."
Sara shook her head and took a sip of the tea. "Uh-uh. He'd need either a warrant or a missing persons report to get that, neither of which he has or can get any time soon. I've only been gone about ten hours. That's not long enough to get the police officially involved."
Rubbing her dog's head, Susan frowned. "You've given this a lot of thought. It sounds to me like maybe, in the back of your mind, you want him to come find you."
"Scared," Sara muttered. "I don't trust him."
Opting for another tactic, Susan said, "Bullshit. You've been madly in love with the man since before I met you. You're having a baby with him. All he wanted was for you to marry him. Yeah," she said quickly when Sara opened her mouth, "he flew off the handle. Completely agree with you on that. But you know, I'm sure you've had nights where you just flipped out on him, and you didn't mean any harm. If you ask me," she finished, "you'd trust Grissom with just about anything, including your life."
"Yesterday night I would have. You just don't get it, Susan. You don't understand how much he scared me."
"Oh really." Susan took a sip of her own tea and made a sour face. "You are telling me that I don't understand being afraid of a man? Are you forgetting the whole part about how we met?"
Sara shook her head helplessly. "I didn't mean that. I just don't know how to explain it. He promised me – promised me – that he wasn't like all of them. He was so concerned with making me believe it, and then he went and did this. How could this happen? I gave up my damn apartment because I was so sure about him. Shoulda known better, for god's sake. My track record bites."
"Ok, I give up," Susan said on a sigh. "Maybe you need more time to process this, I don't know. You're welcome here as long as you need to stay, but you know you can't just escape your life forever, and you know you don't want to do that. You're pregnant, Sara. You can't spend the rest of your life hiding because Grissom threw a hissy fit one night."
No response from the other woman. Sara laid her head on the table and shut her eyes, savoring the coolness of the wood. Within a few minutes, she was dozing.
Finally, Susan got up and shook her shoulder gently. "Sara. You're falling asleep. Why don't you go get some sleep in the guest room, honey. You haven't slept all day," she said when Sara just moaned. "Come on. You need to get some major rest before that kid starts beating you up from the inside."
What finally roused Sara was Ben's bark. She jumped three inches off her chair, then blinked. "Wha?"
"You're going to bed, Sidle," Susan said authoritatively. "Come on, up ya go. I'll even let you have the dog while you sleep."
Sara groaned. "Can't sleep."
"Yes you can. You just were. I promise I'm not gonna call the police or anything while you're out, ok? You seriously need to sleep."
Acknowledging to herself that she was utterly exhausted, Sara relented. "Ok, Sue. Thanks. Can I really have Ben?"
Susan nodded. "Yep. He won't let anything get you." She watched as Sara made her slow way to the bedroom, Ben trailing her. When woman and dog were both out of sight, Susan sat back in her chair and started thinking. She wouldn't go behind Sara's back, she knew that, but she wished there was something she could do to fix this situation. Sara was terrified because of her past, not because of anything Grissom had done. What to do?
