I have to make an apology for the week-plus wait between chapters, but I was hit with a bad writer's block bug on this story, and trying to deal with a block and a case of strep throat at the same time is not fun at all. But I've been more than happy to come back to this little screwed-up world, and this time, it's a Sara chapter. Refresher: last time we saw Sara, she had found Hodges's body. Last time we heard about Sara: Nick had asked her to go looking for Claberson. That's where we're picking up.

Chapter Thirty-four: Hotel Paper (SARA)

Abraham Claberson had paid for an expensive hotel room. The mini-bar itself could have supplied enough glossily-wrapped packs of peanuts and shiny-papered chocolate bars to get Sara through World War III. There was a massive bath sunk in the floor - - tile that looked like authentic marble - - and a bed with starched five-hundred-thread-count sheets that felt like butter underneath her fingers. And throughout the flawless room, he was nowhere to be seen. His suitcases were sitting on the bed, half-packed with folded shirts and jackets, and his shoes were resting underneath the coffee table, but Claberson himself had disappeared.

"Molecular impossibility," Sara said wearily, sitting down on the bed. "He has to be somewhere."

At least she hadn't come into the room and seen Abraham Claberson swinging back and forth like a pendulum from the ceiling, food for the crows.

Nick had asked her to cover for him on finding Claberson, and she had agreed, mainly because she wanted to assuage whatever had gone wrong between them earlier. But now, she wished that she had said no, wished that she'd not only asked but demanded that Nick go out and find Claberson on his own, and she could have been back in the lab, where everything was just another shade of familiar, and she could have talked to Grissom. She was sick to death of loose ends and bodies.

The death toll was climbing.

Hodges was dead. Hodges, who had been trying to follow the wrong road to the right thing. Hodges had died slowly, choking to death in his own living room with a rope cutting into his windpipe and taking breath away from him one minute at a time. His hands had probably clawed at the rope encircling his neck. He had probably wished, near the end, for the pain to stop, for the death to be quicker, for anything to end well - - and then he had died.

And Greg - - Greg was dead. Which was ridiculous, of course, because it was Greg, and people like Greg didn't die. Couldn't die. Except he had, and so horribly that she couldn't even bring herself to picture his death. It just flickered in between memories, like a changeover in a movie. Greg was teasing her, his eyes interested and playful as he held the results just a centimeter out of her reach, and then, Greg was pinned to plywood, hands flattened against splinters and lips damp and silky with his own blood. Greg had been younger than Sara, and now he was never even going to see the other side of thirty. He'd found the only way to stay young forever, the only route to the Fountain of Youth, and she'd thought all of this and rubbed it like salt into all the hurtful, grieving corners of her mind, so why could she still not cry for him? He had been stolen. He had been torn out of a world in which he was their Puck and their mascot for undestroyed innocence, and crucified in a parking lot because of a mistake.

Her eyes were dry. They were dry. She made a strangled noise in her throat and kicked outwards, her feet tangling in the sheets, and she slid down to the floor. Nothing changed. It was as if she were made of wood and even her fall had been designed by some puppeteer. Her sobs were coughs, one hand on her stomach and the other on her cheek, ready to wipe away tears that would never come.

Sara had spent too long teaching herself not to cry.

She rose shakily, her legs quivering. The room seemed to twirl around her, the windows looking out at the Strip becoming a blur of sunshine and neon lights. After a moment of planting her feet in the plush carpet, her head stilled.

Work it out, Sara, Grissom said in her mind. Read the room.

"He was either packing or unpacking," she said, touching the smooth fabric of the shirts in his suitcase. "Some stuff in the closet, some on the bed, some in here."

So how did she tell? What did people always pack and unpack last? She grinned as she thought of her answer, at least - - toothbrush. Since the first impulse on settling into a room wasn't to take care of dental hygiene, toothbrushes and toothpaste were usually left to be put away later. She checked the bathroom and saw that Claberson's toothbrush was balanced by the sink in a tiny puddle of water. The sink itself was still damp.

"He didn't leave that long ago," she said, reasoning it out. If he had, the water around his toothbrush might still be present, but the remaining condensation in the sink would have dripped down the drain and disappeared if it hadn't been used in the last few hours. "So he was packing again - - probably after the media found out about Greg - - and someone interrupted him."

Flowers?

"No. There's no disorder. He chose to leave."

So is he dead?

"I don't know. If he is, he didn't die here. It's too neat."

Maybe that's the point. Maybe the order was created out of the chaos. Maybe Claberson is dead, and someone else did a great clean-up job.

She frowned, and moved back into the main room to check the rest of the situation. The bedcovers were smooth, unwrinkled, almost steam-dried. Abraham Claberson had slept on this bed, probably, but it had then been made up by one of the cleaning staff. The curtains were open, letting in a shock of light over the furniture. It gave the whole room a nuclear glow. The television set was turned off, and the remote was resting by Claberson's bed.

"So, last night, he watched some TV before he went to sleep," she said, "and then he woke up this morning - - showered - - and checked the news."

He had seen the focus on the death outside of the crime lab. The press wouldn't have been able to show Greg's body, because by then, it had been taken inside, and Sara herself had been there, denying comments right and left - - but she had given them Greg's identity, at least. And Claberson had probably been smart enough to piece it together. He must have known enough of Flowers's plan to figure out that Greg's death had been part of the puzzle, and not just a side-note.

"But if he knew the plan," Sara said, "then he would have known that killing Greg wasn't supposed to be part of it. So he figured out that something went wrong, and he wanted to hit the hills before Flowers came to find him."

He started packing. Then something happened.

She checked the pad of hotel paper by the remote, and saw what she needed to see: a note. Not the suicide novel that Warrick and Catherine had recovered from Hodges's apartment, but a message.

Nick Stokes / Lindsey / Catherine Willows? Check.

Deal with Flowers & other, compromise. SS is who F & Co wants, offer.

SS. Sara Sidle. She sat down on the bed, cradling the paper in her hands. Flowers wanted her - - Flowers and - - someone. Ecklie? But why wouldn't Claberson have named Ecklie as a conspirator instead of avoiding him? He'd pointed out Flowers as present, but Ecklie wasn't mentioned at all. Flowers was accompanied by Other. And the inclusion of Nick, Catherine, and Lindsey didn't help her growing unease - - were they going to be targeted?

She flipped the page and saw the careful lines of printing squashed together, and began to read aloud so quickly that she stumbled over the words.

"If anyone finds this, then Matthew Flowers hasn't reached this room yet, or this message would have been destroyed. My name is Abraham Claberson and I was hired last year to serve as a lawyer and present Gil Grissom with what I knew to be false charges. I agreed. But I can't be a part of this anymore because Elizabeth Zimmer is dead and I know now what I suspected for some time before - - I know who really raped Elizabeth when we were in school together and - -"

The door to the hotel room swung open, and Sara looked up.

" - - and that's why this has to end now," she finished, looking at him.

Matthew Flowers smiled warmly. "I couldn't agree more," he said, and reached out to take the pad of paper away from her, and then pressed the barrel of the gun against her cheekbone. Sara closed her eyes, but she couldn't stop listening. "Funny," Flowers said. "I didn't actually think he'd be smart enough to piece it together and then leave. Pretty good idea, actually. I came here to kill him and instead I find you. Ironic, isn't it, Miss Sidle? You're the one he offered to he wouldn't have to die. Well, that was before the real problem, though."

The gun was warm. She was cold, her muscles stiff. All those years of hand-to-hand combat training and she couldn't move when it really, really counted.

"Even manipulative bastards like Abraham Claberson have a breaking point," Flowers said, "and in his case, it was Zimmer. Now he's after me, not that I'm worried. I've dealt with plenty of men who found out that I raped their girlfriends. Claberson doesn't really matter, but while I'm at it, I might as well kill two birds with one stone, right? I just can't believe that sleeping with the woman he loved was worse for Claberson than killing her, but I suppose it's human nature. Something I'll never understand. He hated what I took from Zimmer. She couldn't ever love him again after I did what I did in Harvard. She couldn't love anyone, ever again. Now, aren't you glad I killed her? Someone who can't love is just - - just a waste. And trust me, I should know. I wonder if Gil Grissom will be the same way."

His lips were against her ear. Smooth, warm. His voice was almost gentle.

"You know him better," Flowers said. "What will bother him more when he finds your body? That I killed you . . . or that I did what he never could do first?"

The hand that wasn't holding the gun glided down her back, over the slight indentation that marked her spine, and over her shoulder blades, tracing every wrinkle in her shirt.

"Don't take it personally," he said softly, "this is just all that I've ever done."

He kissed her neck right at the pulse, and Sara didn't know whether or not to be grateful that he didn't just kill her then and end it all, as his mouth moved down to her collarbone and his spare hand wrapped around to touch the slope of her hips.

The gun didn't even tremble in his hand.