Part Thirteen - Betrayals
(Crash and Burn)
One thing Sara had to admit about Catherine - no matter what problems the two of them might have had in the past, the woman knew the name of every watering hole in Las Vegas, and she knew the best place to go for every possible eventuality. Thus, when she'd heard that Sara didn't have plans after shift, had suggested that they should go for a beer, Sara, despite her upset, had found herself smiling, commanding the other woman to drive. She'd known that Catherine would find somewhere decent for them to go, and she had; a small bar, reasonably out of the way, one that wasn't crawling with tourists or other lunchtime patrons.
Another thing Catherine had going for her, Sara decided, as she sipped her beer slowly, was that she knew when to talk and when not to talk. She hadn't said much to her on the way here, nor did she talk when they first sat down, leaving Sara at the table and going to the bar herself, returning with two bottles of beer. Her opening conversational gambit had been about the merits of the case, a rant about Sillmont Healthcare, all the while ignoring the proverbial elephant in the middle of the room; Elaine Alcott and her relationship with Hank.
It was Sara who finally brought it up. "How did you know?" she asked simply, and Catherine paused, her beer bottle frozen midway to her lips, but she didn't ask for further clarification, laying her bottle back down on the table, making sure that it was just so on the coaster before she said anything.
"I suspected when I saw the seating chart," she said frankly, all her emphasis placed on the second word. "But I didn't know for sure until after you came back from talking with her."
Sara smiled bitterly, hoping that a swallow of beer would wash about the taste of bile at the back of her mouth. It didn't. "Am I that easy to read?"
Catherine chuckled, but there was precious little mirth in the sound. "Let's just say that I'm pretty familiar with that look," was all she said, and instantly, Sara felt guilty, although she knew that hadn't been Catherine's intention. She'd forgotten though, when she was agreeing to this drink, that Eddie Willows had never been the most faithful of husbands, and when his ghost appeared at the table with them, it served only as a reminder to Sara that she'd failed to find out who'd killed him.
"I never had a clue." Sara was barely aware that she was speaking aloud, but it was the truth. Not that she and Hank were what you'd call serious. They'd been seeing one another since the previous summer, but in an off and on way. Entire days could pass where they wouldn't see or talk to one another, sometimes an entire week could pass without them seeing one another, or going out on a date. That's why it had been so easy for her for so long to turn to people and say that Hank wasn't her boyfriend and mean it, because he wasn't her boyfriend the way that they meant it; where they were seeing one another every day, practically living together. Yes, she and Hank went out, yes, they spent the night together from time to time, yes, she called him baby, but even with that, as far as she'd been concerned, they were taking it slowly, seeing what happened.
She'd thought that he'd read her well, that he knew that she'd never had great luck with men, that he was being a nice guy, trying not to scare her off. She'd even congratulated herself that she'd found a guy who was patient enough to put up with her little foibles, who could accept her for the way that she was.
Now she realised that it was just a handy excuse, that all the times he hadn't been with her, he'd been with his other girlfriend, the one who took him to Hawaii, the one that he was taking to Tahiti. She'd thought she could trust him, she'd thought that she'd known him, and Grissom's words from a few weeks ago, uttered in the locker room when she was so upset over the Melissa Winters case, came back to her. Ruthlessly, she pushed the thought, the memory out of her head. Thoughts of Hank were enough to be dealing with right now; she didn't need Grissom running through her mind as well.
Across the table from her, Catherine gave a snort of disgust. "Join the club," she said. "I never knew Eddie was screwing around on me either." She didn't flinch when she said the name, but Sara was sure that she could see a flicker of pain in the other woman's eyes, see a slight tension in her shoulders.
"Yeah," she said, concentrating on peeling the label off her bottle, anything to avoid looking at Catherine. "But you weren't the other woman. I was." Catherine's eyes narrowed in confusion, and Sara added, "He took her to Hawaii last year. They must've been together for a long time."
And he'd still chased her, still flirted with her over a DB. Still sought her out at the hospital, told her that Nick was going to be all right. Still talked to her friends as if he was her boyfriend, as if he was doing right by her, as if she was the only woman that he was seeing.
The hell of it was that Sara knew, had known for a long time, that they probably were never going to be truly serious. She couldn't see herself marrying Hank, spending the rest of her life with him. Even when she'd slipped, called him "baby" in front of Warrick and Sulik, she'd known that. It had been brought home to her weeks later, when she'd been torn up over Melissa and she hadn't wanted to talk to anyone, not even him. She must have known in her heart, even then, that Hank wasn't a long-term prospect.
So why did she feel so terrible now?
She'd had a knot in her stomach ever since she walked into the Checkerbox and heard his voice behind her. Her first thought had been that he was there in a professional capacity, though she'd been sure he'd told her that he wasn't working. Then she'd seen him out of uniform, had seen his wrist, and she'd realised that he'd been there as a patron, that he'd been hurt, that he could have been seriously injured, or worse.
She'd been freaked out, because she hadn't wanted to lose him, not like that. So she'd gone to him, had bandaged his wrist, had sought him out in the hospital, and it had been there that the wheels had come off the wagon.
There she'd seen him holding Elaine's hand, a distinctly not-just-good-friends air shrouding the two of them. The seating chart had been another piece of evidence, as well as the circumstances of their relationship, how they could go for so long without seeing one another. She'd known Catherine had her suspicions from their conversations in the lab, but she hadn't wanted to admit that her friend was right.
But she'd gone to see Elaine Alcott and she'd seen that picture.
"Creep." Catherine's disgusted pronouncement brought Sara back to reality, and she smiled a weak smile. "Sara, he's a jerk," Catherine continued.
"I make my living separating lies from truth Catherine," Sara objected. "And I never suspected a thing. What does that say about me?"
Catherine rolled her eyes. "Sara, if I've learned anything in my life, it's that we never see what we don't want to see." She shrugged, picking up her bottle of beer again. "And when you don't cheat, you don't suspect."
Sara sighed, strong enough to move Catherine's hair. "I don't even know why I'm so upset," she found herself saying. "I mean, it's not as if I loved him…"
"Totally not the point." Catherine's interruption made Sara look at her curiously. "It's an honesty thing Sara. You trusted Hank, and he turned out to be a complete schmuck. You're entitled to be upset." She drained the last of her beer. "You're also entitled to get a little buzzed. You want another?"
Sara nodded, reaching into her pocket. "I'll get these."
Catherine waved her hand, already standing up. "Forget about it," she said, cutting off Sara's objection. "I'm heading to the little girls' room; I'll get someone to bring them over."
"You got this one…" Sara objected, but Catherine just kept on walking, tossing a sassy grin over her shoulder.
"Then you get the next," she called, leaving Sara shaking her head, never taking her eyes off Catherine as she walked across the room. Taking a swallow of her own beer, she found herself thinking back to one of the last conversations she and Catherine had had, just the two of them. It had taken place in the evidence vault of the CSI lab, and she'd just had to tell Catherine that she wasn't going to be able to find who murdered Eddie. She'd known that her friend was upset, had known that she wasn't thinking straight, that she didn't mean half the stuff she'd said, but that didn't make it hurt any less, and she'd wondered at the time if her friendship with Catherine was ever going to be the same again.
Based on the last hour or so, it seemed as if it was not only going to be the same as it was before, it was actually better.
As the bartender came over, putting two fresh bottles down in front of her, Sara realised that a lot of things were better in her life now than they had been a few weeks ago, even a couple of years ago. She and Catherine were getting on again. Nick and Warrick, both of whom had spent a goodly portion of the last year teasing her about Hank, were two of the closest friends that she'd ever had. She wasn't the same woman who'd come to Las Vegas two and a half years earlier, the woman who could just up and walk away from five years of her life without so much as a second thought. If she were to leave Vegas in the morning, she knew she'd be leaving some good friends behind, knew that it would hurt to leave.
She'd finally done what people had been bugging her to do ever since college; get a life, go out, make friends, see that there was more to life than the lab.
It might have taken, as Catherine pointed out, a complete schmuck to get her to do it, but that didn't make it any less of a big deal.
She may have got burned, but she'd also got over Grissom, and she may have been bruised, but she wasn't broken, not by a long shot.
Things could have been an awful lot worse.
Lost in thought as Sara was, she didn't realise that someone was standing beside her until she heard them say her name. Then she jumped, looking up into the vaguely concerned face of Cyrus Lockwood. "Cyrus, hey," she said, recovering herself somewhat. "I didn't see you there."
"Obviously." The word, said as it was with a smile, didn't come across as a recrimination, and she found herself blushing, looking down at the table. "You looked pretty lost in thought," he continued when she didn't say anything.
"One of those cases," she said, hoping that that would hold him at bay, but when she saw him nod slowly, she knew she wasn't going to be that lucky.
"Yeah, Nick told me you were working that restaurant crash…he said your boyfriend was there. He's ok, isn't he?"
The allusion to Hank had Sara's mouth twisting in a bitter smile, and she reached for her glass of beer, taking a swig to wash away the taste. "Oh he's fine," she said, the beer not doing what she'd hoped it would. "Although he's not my boyfriend any more."
"Oh?" Cyrus's face barely changed at the news; the most he did was lift one eyebrow.
"Well, since he was there with the woman he's been seeing for a year…" Sara said, taking another sip of beer as she spoke, affecting a nonchalant shrug, then shook her head. "I had no clue."
"I'm sorry." And to his credit, he did sound sincere.
"It's not like we were serious," she told him, waving her hand dismissively. "Obviously. But…"
"But it still sucks when it happens to you." His words interrupted her, but they summed up her frame of mind perfectly, and she felt half a smile break across her face.
"Exactly."
"So you're here to drown your sorrows?"
Her smile widened ever so slightly. "Catherine and I are doing some bonding over shared scummy men experiences," she quipped, her words belying the fact that after the way things had been between her and Catherine when she was investigating Eddie's murder, she never thought that they'd get to this point again, certainly not so soon. She saw his eyes flicker with recognition as she mentioned Catherine's name, and she could have been imagining it, but she was pretty sure that his lips quirked up in a small smile. Her words made her think of something though, and she tilted her head in interest. "What are you doing here?"
He rolled his eyes. "Spinning my wheels, trying to chase a lead."
"I thought you were on that carbon monoxide thing with Nick." She searched her memory for what, if anything, Nick had told her about the case, and came up empty. She wasn't surprised at that, after all, what with her own case and her personal life coinciding so drastically, she'd barely been able to remember her own name.
"Different case," he told her. "I'm multi-tasking."
She chuckled. "Very efficient of you."
"I'm an efficient guy. Though it's not like I get a choice in the matter. Mobley's a hard taskmaster."
Remembering the many and varied colourful sobriquets that she'd heard thrown around during her tenure in Vegas, Sara rolled her eyes. "That's one word for it," she replied, and he laughed, a deep masculine sound, a sound Sara found herself with some surprise wishing she could hear more often. The second the thought hit, she pushed it aside though, mentally adding that she should quit after this beer if it was pushing her mind in that kind of direction.
She was saved from having to wonder if that meant anything at all by Catherine arriving back at the table. "Well, I see I don't have to worry about leaving you on your own for long," she said, her eyes glinting devilishly, and Sara wasn't sure if the words were a manifestation of Catherine's personality, or a manifestation of how much beer she'd consumed. Or perhaps both. "Detective." She nodded at Cyrus, her eyes raking up and down his body, and Sara didn't know whether she wanted to strangle her friend or bury her head in her hands.
Cyrus had no such worries. "Catherine," he said easily. "Good to see you again."
"And you." Catherine's eyes darted from him to Sara. "Everything ok?"
"Everything's fine," Sara said, at the same time as Cyrus nodded.
"I was here on business, just came over to say hi." He nodded at Catherine again, before turning his attention back to Sara, and the briefest hint of a smile crossed his lips as he took a step away from the table. "And now that you're in good company, I'll leave you to it…" His voice trailed off, but as his eyes danced, Sara knew he wasn't finished yet. "I'd hate to interrupt the female bonding…"
"Thanks for the thought," Sara laughed, shaking her head, trying very hard not to notice the look that Catherine was giving her.
"Anytime," he said, moving another step away. "Ladies."
"Bye Detective," Catherine said, glancing briefly in his direction.
"See you Cyrus," was Sara's parting call, and she took a sip of her beer, watching him leave. Looking back at Catherine, she could see the other woman's eyes sparkling, a beaming smile on her face. "What?" she asked, more than a little defensively she knew, but it was damned hard to be anything else when Catherine was sitting across the table from her, looking at her like that. For an insane moment, she felt a pang of sympathy for any criminal that had ever been put in that position, but she pushed it away, knowing that she was going to need all her wits about her for whatever Catherine was thinking.
"I'm not saying a thing!" Catherine held up her hands, her eyes wide, the picture of innocence. "Just wondering if I was interrupting something there."
Sara narrowed her eyes, shaking her head ever so slightly from side to side. "What would you be interrupting?" she asked reasonably. "We were just talking."
"Talking?" Catherine lifted one eyebrow, leaning back in her seat. "That's what you kids are calling it these days huh?"
Sara laughed, but this was pure amazement, not humour. "What are you-"
"Sara, you and I are talking." Catherine told her flatly, cutting across her. "You and the good detective were having a moment."
There was something about the phrasing that was familiar to Sara, and it took her a moment to place it. Then she remembered; the Christmas party, Greg leading the room in the Time Warp, laughing over it with Cyrus, and another person saying the exact same thing. "You've been talking to Lea," she decided, and Catherine just shrugged.
"Among other people," she allowed, and Sara's jaw dropped.
"OK, first Nick and Warrick and Greg, then Lea, now you… what is it with the interest that the lab seems to have in my social life?"
Catherine had the grace to look down briefly in acknowledgement. "We're just curious," she said. "And you can hardly blame us Sara. I mean, for the first year that you're here, you hardly ever go out. Then while refusing to talk about it, which automatically makes it more interesting, you begin to date a fairly handsome, if stealthily skanky, paramedic." She paused then, as if wondering whether Sara would take exception to that characterisation of Hank, but Sara let it slide. For one thing, it was dead on the money. For another, she was quite impressed that Catherine got all that sibilance out without missing a beat. She waved her hand at Catherine, encouraging her to continue, and Catherine did so. "And at the same time, you're seen having in-depth conversations with a man who's nicknamed 'Detective Hot'." She shrugged. "We're only human you know."
Sara took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "It's not like that Catherine," she said quietly. "We're friends."
"If you say so." Catherine didn't sound like she believed a word of it.
"I say so."
"OK." Catherine nodded, raising her glass to her lips. "It's a shame though," she said. "There are worse ways to get over one man than in the arms of another." Sara's jaw dropped for the second time in the conversation, dropping a little further when Catherine added, "And what nice arms they are…"
The phrase had Sara laughing again. "You're impossible," she decreed, and Catherine shrugged, giving her a saucy grin.
"I'll drink to that," she said, raising her glass in salute, and Sara didn't think twice before raising her glass and doing the same.