Chapter 5 – Birds

The next night, Kate could hardly wait to go to work.  Her breakfast with Nick was so great that she couldn't wait to see him again.  After he revealed that he and Sara weren't together, they spent the next several hours walking along the Strip, talking and shamelessly flirting with each other.  Once Kate finally got home, well after noon, she was too excited to sleep and ended up napping for only a few hours.

She walked through the halls toward the breakroom with the biggest smile on her face.  Even though nothing had happened between her and Nick yet, she knew it was only a matter of time.  The only thing that could have dampened her spirits was the fact that they were at work, so they'd have to act professional, at least somewhat, as they focused on solving their cases.  Nonetheless, Kate was just happy to see Nick and be near him.

Nick sat alone in the breakroom with his cup of coffee.  Shift didn't officially start for another thirty minutes.  Beside the fact that he was in the middle of a hot case, he realized that the reason he was there so early was because he was eager to see Kate.  He had a great time with her at breakfast and their stroll down the Strip.  She was cute, smart, funny and seemed really mature for her age.  When he talked with her, it never crossed his mind that he was ten years older than her.  He no longer denied the fact that he was beginning to like Kate as more that just a co-worker.  That morning they had spent together just talking had erased any hesitations he had.  While his feelings for Kate weren't nearly as strong as hers were for him, he knew he definitely felt something. 

Nevertheless, he couldn't seem to ignore Kate's comment about him and Sara.  It made him see that he kind of took his relationship with Sara for granted.  He knew they got along great and worked well together, but aside from that he never really gave it much thought. Mostly because they were co-workers.  The last thing on Nick's mind at work was romance; he made it a priority to invest his full attention to his cases.

And with that thought, Nick decided he should go and find Sara to catch up on any new findings on their case; he knew she was already there or most likely had never left from the night before.  He was about to get up when he heard someone come in.

"Hi," Kate said as she entered the breakroom and saw Nick sitting alone on the couch.  All of a sudden she felt nervous.

"Hi," Nick smiled up at her.  "How was your afternoon?"

Kate sat down next to him, his smile and soft drawl quickly erasing her jitters.  "Good," she smiled back.

"Did you get any sleep?"

"Some.  Enough, I hope."  She couldn't stop smiling.

Sara walked in and headed straight for the coffeemaker.  When she saw Nick on the couch with Kate, who was smiling dopily at him, she decided to ignore them.

"Hi Sar," Nick called out in an almost chiding tone once he noticed her and it didn't appear that she was going to say hi to him.

"Hi," she greeted him with her best fake smile, one that even Nick couldn't tell was fake.  Without another word she sat down at the table and proceeded to flip through a forensic journal that was lying there, pretending to read it.  How could he leave in the middle of a hot case to go out with her? Sara thought.

"Hey girl," Warrick said to Sara as he came in, with Catherine following right behind him.

"Hey," she said back, with a trace of bitterness in her voice.

Catherine sat at the table next to Sara and started reading over her shoulder.  Warrick poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Catherine.  As he stirred cream and sugar into his own cup, he watched Nick and Kate on the couch across the room.

"What's up with them?" he asked, referring to the rather intimate conversation it appeared the two were having.

"Who knows," Sara said, a little to bitterly, abruptly flipping the journal closed, causing Catherine and Warrick to exchange looks.  "I gotta get back to work, I'll see you guys later."  With that, Sara got up to leave without bothering to fill Nick in on the case.  As she stormed out she nearly bowled over Grissom, who was heading in to hand out assignments.

Grissom gave Sara a puzzled look when she continued down the hall without apologizing, but quickly blew it off as he turned to the rest of his team.  "Double homicide at a liquor store in Henderson.  It'll be just the three of you," Grissom said, pointing to Warrick, Catherine, and Kate.  "Nick, Sara found some things in Mr. Beckett's suitcases that might give us some leads.  Have her fill you in.  I'll be at PD."

"Okay," Nick said as he got up to find Sara.

Sara had gone back to the layout room to continue her work, quickly forgetting about Nick and Kate.  She had been sorting through the suitcases they found in the hotel room of their first victim.  She was waiting for the information on the background check that Detective Vega was running, so for the time being she was trying to use the contents of the suitcases to get some leads.

"Hey," Nick said when he came in.

"Mr. Beckett had two suitcases.  Enough clothes for at least four weeks, but he was only registered at the hotel for a week."  Sara quickly got down to business.  "Looks like he was in town for business, he's got a bunch of shirts and ties here.  Archie's checking out the laptop we found.  And Vega's running a background check."

"What did the rape kit on the female vic say?" Nick asked.

"The clock indicated rape.  Positive for semen.  Two donors, one was Mr. Beckett, the other came back unknown," Sara replied a little angrily.  She hated rape cases.

"At least now we have a link between the two vics."

"Yeah."

"I'll check in with Archie, see if he found anything," Nick said.  After a few seconds he added, "You gonna be okay?"

"I'll be fine," Sara almost snapped as she continued to poke through the contents of the suitcase, not looking up at him.

Nick stood and watched Sara get back to work, already starting to worry about her.  Rape cases always upset her more than their usual cases.  While she always put a hundred and ten percent into every case she worked, those involving violence against women caused her to kick into high gear.  He admired Sara for her drive and determination – she was more passionate about her job than anyone he'd ever known – but he worried that one day the emotional stress would be too much for her to handle.  He sighed as he left for A/V to find Archie.

From the start of shift Nick knew it would be a tough night, but he had no idea it would be as bad as it was.  It was finally over, and as he sat on the cold metal bench in the locker room with his head in his hands, he couldn't seem to shake the events of the tumultuous night from his mind.  The strangest part about it all was that he wasn't concerned at all about how it was affecting him, but rather how it was affecting one of his co-workers.

~*~

It all started shortly after shift began.  As if one rape victim wasn't bad enough, they had found another one.  A visit to their female victim Annette Santini's apartment led them to Annette's roommate, who they found bruised and beaten, but fortunately sill alive.  Nick and Sara followed the ambulance to the hospital to collect samples once the woman was stabilized.

They waited a short while until a doctor came to get them.  They approached the room and saw the frail woman through the glass window, hooked up to a respirator, her face bruised and swollen.

"Son of a bitch," Sara whispered as she turned away, unable to look at the poor woman lying in the hospital bed.

Nick could see she was trying to hold back tears.  "Sara, I can take care of this.  You can help Grissom back at the apartment," he offered.

"I'm fine.  I'm doing this," she said as she pushed past him to enter the room.

After samples were collected and analyzed, and the apartment was processed, it took several hours to piece everything together.  The story that they had uncovered was more complicated than a soap opera, involving an ex-prostitute trying to start a new life, her roommate, an out-of-town businessman cheating on his wife with an ex-prostitute, and a jealous ex-boyfriend/former pimp of an ex-prostitute.

In the end they had only one suspect, Leo Vincent, the jealous ex-boyfriend/former pimp.

In the interrogation room, Vincent sat on one side of the table with his lawyer, while Nick and Detective Vega sat across from him.  Grissom watched from behind the one-way glass window.  Sara stood in the corner of the room, glaring at the suspect.  She couldn't stand how calm and unremorseful Vincent looked as Nick and Vega asked him questions.

"Well then can you explain why your semen was collected from Rose Finch?" Vega continued.

"Who?  I don't know that bitch.  She's not one of my girls," Vincent responded evenly.

"That's not what we asked, Mr. Vincent," Nick said, trying not to lose his temper.

Unlike Nick, Sara was unable to keep her cool any longer.  "Why don't you just admit it?" she said angrily as she stepped forward out of her dark corner.  "You knew Rose was the only one who could turn you in for Annette's murder, so you tried to kill her too."

"That's a nice little story," Vincent replied. 

"That was a big mistake, not checking to see if she was dead," Sara continued, her tone increasingly bitter.  "Without your DNA on file, you knew the only way to ID you would be through an eye witness.  Too bad for you that Rose woke up."

Vincent retained his stoic expression as he looked Sara up and down.  "You know, you come work for me, you could pull in some serious green, with those long legs, cute ass.  And that attitude.  You know, a lot of guys like a girl to boss 'em around once in awhile."

"You bastard," Sara said as she started to lunge across the table toward Vincent.  Nick immediately sprang out of his chair to grab Sara before she did anything stupid.  "You lure innocent and vulnerable women and then you kill them?  What's wrong with you!  You're looking at two murders and a rape!  You know what kind of time that'll get you?"  Sara was yelling now.

Vincent stared silently back at her, unflinching through her outburst, his face emotionless.

"You'll get eaten alive in state pen," her voice returned to normal as she gave him her iciest glare.  She wrestled free from Nick's grasp and stormed out, past Grissom and down the hall, the tears already starting to fall as they stung her eyes and blurred her vision.

~*~

Nick looked up when he heard the door to the locker room open. 

"Hey, you okay?" Kate asked when she saw Nick sitting there.

"Yeah.  Rough case."

"You up for breakfast?"

"Thanks, but I think I just wanna crash.  Rain check?"  Breakfast with Kate actually did sound good, but Nick was too worried about Sara.

"Okay.  See you later."  Kate shut her locker and left.

A few seconds later, the door opened again.  Sara slowly walked in, passing Nick to reach her locker, not saying a word.  She looked exhausted, her eyes still a little red from crying.

"You wanna grab some breakfast?" Nick asked cautiously.

"Thanks, but I'd rather just go home.  I don't really feel like being out in public right now," Sara replied quietly.

"Well then you can come to my place.  I'll make breakfast.  I don't think you should be alone right now."

"Nick, I'm fine.  Really."  Sara sighed.  It felt like she'd said she was 'fine' about a hundred times over the past couple of days.  And most of those were directed at Nick.  She shut her locker and tried to move past Nick towards the door.  He got up and gently reached for her arm to stop her.

"Sara, please," Nick pleaded.

Sara looked into Nick's eyes and saw his worry and genuine concern for her.  She was too drained to argue so she gave in.  "Fine," she whispered.

"Thank you."  Nick was relieved Sara agreed.  He wouldn't be able to sleep knowing she was in the condition she was in.  He had seen her get emotional before, but this time seemed different.

They silently left the locker room and walked down the hall, out to the parking lot.  Nick opened the passenger door of the SUV for Sara; she climbed in.  Nick started the engine and pulled out of the lot.  They rode in silence for several minutes until Nick finally spoke.

"So what do you feel like eating?" Nick tried to by cheery.  "You've got your choice of pancakes or eggs.  That's about the extent of my culinary skills when it comes to breakfast."

"Whatever's easiest for you," she replied politely.  She had left the lab feeling completely drained, physically and emotionally.  Shift had been one of the worst in a long while, so bad that it made her question whether or not she could continue doing her job.  But just by sitting in the truck with Nick, she started to feel better.  Just knowing that someone cared about her and was so worried about her made her feel good.  Nick had so much strength and courage, it was like it was radiating off of him and she was absorbing it.  She leaned back against the headrest and stared out the window, a small smile creeping to her lips.

Nick unlocked his front door and motioned for Sara to go in first.  He followed and shut the door behind him.  "I'm gonna get changed real quick," he said to her as he headed for his bedroom.

"Okay."  Sara had been to Nick's several times before and had no trouble making herself comfortable.  She plopped down on the cushy, black leather sofa, grabbed the remote, and turned the TV on.  She smiled when the picture came on and she realized it was Animal Planet.  She settled in and started watching some show about birds.

"So what did we decide on?  Pancakes?" Nick asked as he emerged from his bedroom in track pants and a t-shirt.

"Actually, I'm not really hungry.  I just feel like relaxing for now."

"Okay," he said as he sat down next to her.  "What are we watching?"

"Your favorite," Sara smiled.  "Birds.  The mating rituals of the blue-billed Alaskan swallowtail."

"You know, just because we're in my house doesn't mean we have to watch what I like.  I think I can suck it up this once and watch some forensic show on Court TV," Nick joked.

"It's okay," Sara said.  "This is kind of interesting."

"Alright, suit yourself."

They sat for several minutes in silence watching the blue-billed Alaskan swallowtails do their thing.  Sara was starting to get sleepy and leaned her head on Nick's shoulder.  She didn't even realize she had done so until Nick started to move his arm.  She lifted her head up figuring he wanted her to move, but instead Nick lifted his arm and wrapped it around her shoulder.  She found her head resting on Nick's warm, strong chest, his slow, rhythmic breathing causing a wave of calm to spread throughout her body.  She felt so safe and relaxed, and, at least for that moment, all her fear and sadness seemed to melt away.   She was glad that Nick convinced her to come over.

"Nick?" she whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."