Chapter 6

Sitting at his desk just minutes after he left Trace, he knew he'd done the unimaginable.

He forgot about Sara.

Clenching the desk phone in his hand, his head hung in frustration. He had tried ringing both her cell and home numbers, but found that neither was going to be answered. Either she knew he was ringing and she wasn't going to answer, or she didn't know and wasn't going to answer. There are other possible explanations that would come to him if he could calm down, but right now, all he could think of was Sara.

"God Damnit!" He cursedly hissed into his hand.

"What is she doing here?" Mr. Sidle snapped as he entered the public living area of the bed and breakfast. The same bed and breakfast that he and his wife had owned since their hippy days and the same home he had raised both his now grown up children.

Mrs. Sidle defended her daughter, placing a restraining hand on her shoulder to stop her from standing up and leaving. "Sara's taken a vacation."

Removing his coat, he gave his daughter a once over. "She's not pregnant is she?"

Sara's jaw tightened. "No. I'm not pregnant Dad."

"Andrew, please." Mrs. Sidle pleaded with her husband. "It's been a rough few days, can we please leave this out?"

Mr. Sidle sighed and sat down. "Fine."

Sara sat back and shook her head. "I can't believe you still don't want anything to do with me."

Andrew chuckled joylessly. "You're the one that left Sara. I only wanted what was best for you."

"I went to college Dad! How can that not be best for me?" Sara asked demandingly.

"You were going to be a great physicist Sara." He said almost to himself.

Mrs. Sidle sat down beside her husband and took his hand. "We can't let that pull us apart, dear."

He nodded, but carried on as if he hadn't heard her. "Then you got into forensics. That damned professor." He cursed. "If it wasn't for him, then you'd be at some top lab right now or teaching. Something that could make a difference."

Sara stared at him disbelievingly. "How can you say my job doesn't make a difference?" She stood up and walked a few steps towards the door, but stopped and turned. "That professor, has a name and that professor introduced me to something better, something more challenging. I found something I liked and something I was good at."

She shook her head and pointed at her father with a mocking cynical smile. "Now you got what you wanted. I'm no longer going to be a forensic scientist. I'm going to go back to school and finish my physicist degree. So, thank you for you support Dad. I failed, just like you said I would."

Mrs. Sidle tried to stop Sara from leaving the room, but didn't reach her in time. She looked at her husband.

Andrew shrugged innocently at his wife's stare. "What?"

"You just had to come home and be an ass, didn't you." She snapped before storming out of the room to find Sara.

"I don't really care what you did Gil, you screwed up." Anna remarked as she walked around the living room with a half full glass of wine.

"But, I really need to find her." Grissom stammered. He lifted his face from his cupped hands and looked desperately at the woman pacing back and forth. "I need you to help me find her."

Anna stopped and turned to him. "You have got to be kidding?" Her eyebrows shot up when he shook his head. "You do realise that as soon as she finds out, she's not going to talk to you. Not after nearly four days."

Grissom opened his mouth to speak, but Anna spoke up again with mild amusement. "Four days. Jesus Gil, I know you weren't like this ten years ago. What the hell happened that you forgot about her for four days?"

"A bus crash in the highlands. Twenty-three teenagers were injured and four were killed." He intoned.

Anna stared at him. After a minute, she sipped her wine and sighed. "Ok, that, I suppose could distract you, but…" She shrugged. "You probably have no hope of finding her and she's probably unreachable and vanished from this face of the earth, making it very hard for you to track her down."

Grissom slumped backwards. "Thanks Ann, you made me feel better with that little snippet of encouragement." He snapped sarcastically.

"Anything to help babe." She grinned.

"I need to think." He groaned, rubbing his neck.

Placing her glass down on the coffee table, Anna kneeled on the couch and sighed. "Ok, turn." She commanded. When he did, she squeezed his shoulders tightly. "You think." She instructed him.

Thinking was becoming impossible with her there. Usually he could think with her around, but now it was only becoming more of a distraction, but not in the sexually context like it used to be. He'd made a big mistake sleeping with her after all this time and now his life was dangling by a thread because he was caught in the act of indulgence. Caught by the one person he feared the most.

"Ann?" He asked quietly.

"Yes."

He pulled away from her hands and turned to face her. His eyes looked into hers. "I need, to find her."

"I know." She nodded and offered him a reassuring smile. "I'll call the airports, you call the bus stations. It's a starting place."

Grissom sighed and shook his head. "I did that from work when I couldn't get hold of her. No one by that name has left Vegas."

"What about… driving?" Anna asked. "Could Sara have driven someplace? Someplace close by perhaps?"

He shrugged. "I doubt that. She doesn't know many people in Vegas, so I doubt she made friends on the border either."

"Where's her family?" Anna asked, sitting up slightly at the thought. "Could she have gone to stay with them?"

Grissom started to shake his head, but paused. "She doesn't get on with her father, but she's very close to her mother and brother."

"Did you try her parents place?" Anna asked as she got up to get the phone.

He sighed. "No. I don't have a number."

"You have an address?" Grabbing the phone, she picked up the phonebook as well.

"I did." He stood and took his phonebook from her to quickly flipped through it. "I've had this since LA, so it should be in here." He muttered almost to himself as his fingers searched through the pages of addresses and numbers.

Anna sat down on the couch and reached for her glass of wine. "Where about do her parents live?"

"California," He replied distractedly. "San Francisco." He groaned in frustration when he couldn't find the address. "Damnit, where is it!?" He snapped the book closed and forcefully threw it at the floor before storming off to his bedroom to check his drawers for an older phonebook.

Anna retrieved the book from the floor and flipped slowly through it. "Funny that I'm the calm one here my dear Gil." She said sweetly when he returned to the room in a worse state than when he left moments before.

He looked at her. "Ann, this is no time to brag."

"Good." She flashed him a smile and held up the book. "Found it, I think. Sidle? Right?"

Grissom nodded, quickly crossing the room to sit down beside her. "You found it!" He grinned.

TBC