I'm making everyone nervous.

That's awesome.

- -

Chapter Nine: Profaning Holy Ground (SARA)

- -

She hadn't been in a church in years. It had odd associations with her - - the scratchy feeling of lace against her skin, the dark, old wood of pews, and her mother's hand against hers. The old leather smell of the Bible, and the maps in the back, with their glossy colors. But churches had changed since her time spent in them years ago, and this church was bright and colorful - - smooth, white, adobe walls, and posters. She thought it probably played rock hymns while people danced in the aisles.

But underneath the superficial shine, the old religion feeling was the same. This was still, as her mother would say, a house of God, and it would do very well for praying.

It was almost empty. A choir was rehearsing in an adjacent room, by the sound, and there were a few people praying in the pews. Sara slid into an empty pew near the back, and bent her head. Her hair fell forward, covering her face like a veil, and her neck, newly bare, grew chilled, but she didn't adjust it.

She prayed.

It was something like prayer, anyway, although she didn't really think and certainly didn't form words. She just poured her anxiety out towards the ceiling and hoped that some way on their path to the rafters, they were taken further by God.

Someone's hand touched her shoulder.

"Sorry to bother you," a sweet, feminine voice said, "but I was just thinking - - what an incredible coincidence this is."

Lizzie Zimmer.

"An incredible coincidence," Sara said faintly, lifting her head, with a silent twisting of her heart in despair, because Lizzie's appearance seemed likely to be the first in a string of unanswered prayers. "Sure. Do you want to sit down?"

Lizzie smiled, and shook her head. "No, thanks. I was looking for you, though, so it isn't really a coincidence. I don't remember you being religious in college."

"We weren't close," Sara said, hoping her smile was disarming enough to inspire confidence, but Lizzie's own, with a touch of venom, neither faded nor widened.

"No, we weren't. And we aren't now. You don't teach at any university. You work with the crime lab. With - - Dr. Grissom. You lied to me." This all came out very smoothly, very professionally, as if Lizzie had been practicing these lines in a mirror hours before meeting up with her in the church. Looking at Lizzie's bitten fingernails and the set lines of her face, Sara thought that was likely.

"Yeah, I lied," she said, since there was no point in denial, and possibly a lot of hurt. Lizzie had already found everything out. "It didn't make any difference."

"I hope you're not going to tell me that you were hoping to sell my story to some more newspapers," Lizzie said, with a slightly faltering tone at Sara's agreement. "I know better than that. I don't know you very well, but I know better than that."

"He didn't do it," she said. "Maybe someone else did, but he didn't. He wouldn't have touched you."

"No," Lizzie said, "just you, right?"

"Shut up," Sara said, and was surprised to hear the words coming out of her mouth. Gone was the pleasant, plastic friendliness of their earlier meeting - - now everything was sour, and sharp, like barbed wire.

"I heard," Lizzie said. "Don't think I didn't hear. Don't think everyone doesn't know."

Sara pulled her purse off the pew next to her and tried hard to keep her voice down. She thought of Catherine, hard as nails, and Warrick, so shielded by that impenetrable aura of cool. She wondered if anyone ever tried to comfort themselves by thinking of being her. "You don't know anything. You don't know me at all. And you don't know him at all. I'm leaving now. Goodbye."

"This will be all over the press," Lizzie said, and to Sara's surprise, it was almost a hiss. "This won't go away, Sara."

"I'm leaving," Sara said again. She cast a glance around the church, and saw, to her relief, that no one seemed to be watching them. To an observer, they were simply two women in conversation. Maybe even friends. Certainly not two enemies, desperately searching for weak spots. "You should probably stay here. I imagine you have a lot to pray about."

She left Lizzie alone in the church, and for a second, the walls seemed to shift, and she could almost hear her mother's voice whispering to her, asking her to stop drawing on the program and pay attention. She looked behind her and saw that Lizzie's head was bent in prayer, and a bolt of shame lanced through her, so strong that she grabbed the pew next to her in an effort to keep herself upright.

It was wrong. Lizzie was a liar. Lizzie was trying to frame Grissom for something he had never, ever done, and never, ever would have done - -

(are you so sure of that?)

- - and she did, really, have a lot to pray about. Mercy. Forgiveness.

But there was something else. Lizzie had been trying to tell her something. She had been trying to say something - - and for a moment, she turned around. There had been something in Lizzie's eyes, some - - otherness. Something important.

But nothing changed, there was no sudden insight, and Lizzie did not come running from the church doors.

It would be easy to keep walking, but she had never been the kind of person to do the easy thing. She'd torture herself endlessly if she thought what she was doing would have to be done, so, with that in mind, and, hating this view of herself, walked back inside. The church was quieter. The choir had stopped rehearsing.

And Lizzie was praying.

It was a reversal of situations - - she walked over and rested her hand against Lizzie's shoulder. Lizzie looked up, and it was suddenly possible for Sara to see the girl she had known in college behind those cold eyes. Lizzie was pretty, but so delicate, and in the slanting bars of light coming through the church windows, her face seemed pale, and breakable. Her hands, splayed across each other, squirmed.

There were tearstains on her face.

Sara felt frozen. Ice. Cooler than cool. She was freezing. How could it be so cold in Las Vegas? In the middle of the desert?

Oh God, was she still in Boston? Was she still in Harvard, wrapped up in dark scarves and long, deep blue coats, shivering against the cold, laughing with a California girl's naïve delight when she saw her breath freeze in the air? Was she still sitting in a seminar with an alluring lecturer, watching Gil Grissom pin bugs to a board? Was Lizzie sitting next to her?

The room seemed to spin.

Where am I? When is this?

She was understanding too much of the situation, and far too rapidly. Lizzie's face seemed to grow blurry and young, the harshness disappearing from her eyes. A flutter of a smile. A secret, high-pitched giggle. A blue plaid skirt against her legs instead of the professional's pantsuit.

"Someone did hurt you," Sara said. "Someone did, didn't they?"

Lizzie's face was set, like concrete. "Dr. Grissom. I told you."

"No, not him. He wouldn't. He wouldn't," she told herself. "But someone - - you were happier, and something happened - - that's why you changed - - why you're broken- -"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Lizzie said, and maybe they were in a Boston winter after all, because Lizzie's voice was frosty. "I'm not broken. I'm completely in control."

"We tell ourselves that," Sara said shakily, "but I know - -"

"You don't know anything about me," Lizzie said. "You haven't changed. You'll never understand. You don't know what it was like."

"I've processed - -"

"Observation is not a replacement for experience. You'll never understand. You're just like them. They're all the same. All men are the same, Sara Sidle, class of 1998, and the sooner you realize that, the better. Your precious Dr. Grissom isn't any different from the rest of them. Sometimes they give you chances - - and sometimes they take them away."

Lizzie stood, and Sara realized for the first time that Lizzie was taller than she was by a few inches. Lizzie seemed willowy and likely to snap. Sara took a step backwards, and collided with a stack of Bibles. Her skin felt tight, and she could hear her own heartbeat doubling; tripling. Her breath was shallow.

"All you can do," Lizzie said, smiling, "is take your chances when you get them."