Nick was well into his fourth cup of coffee as he perused the third video of the shift. So far nothing remarkable outside of the security guards making an occasional sweep of the parking lot in their vehicles had shown up on the tape. While he was watching the videos Sara had decided to take on the task of methodically logging in the serial numbers of each and every bill they had found in the envelope. They had decided that to divide and conquer was probably a better strategy than to stick together and be distracted. Nick lifted the cup of coffee up to his lips again only to stop before taking a sip and then set the cup right back down as he noticed something curious on the tape.
He rewound it and played it again to make sure he was seeing things correctly. After replaying it about a half a dozen times and zooming in a bit, he decided that Sara would want to see this.
He found her in one of the layout rooms still hunched over an array of dog-eared ones, fives, tens, twenties, and the occasional fifty, all sorted by denomination. He couldn't help but smile as he noticed that she was softly singing to herself, a smile playing at her lips. He walked up and slid onto a stool next to her, leaning over and whispering in her ear. "You have a nice voice."
She felt herself blush slightly; her singing was something that she did subconsciously. "I'm sure you didn't come down here just to tell me that." Part of her wished that he had come down the hall just to see her, but they were working on a case and she knew that his appearance most likely had something to do with it rather than her.
"That's true, but you have a nice voice all the same." He was seriously tempted to kiss her just then, but reached over to tuck a stray curl behind her ear instead; somehow finding that less incriminating should someone walk into the room. He didn't want to hide the fact that he and Sara had become an item, but he didn't want to force her into revealing something if she didn't want to.
Sara smiled at his affectionate gesture. "Did you find something on one of those videos?" Her mind briefly drifted back to Nick's couch as she glanced at his lips and remembered just how pleasantly surprised she'd been at how soft they were.
Nick nodded, unconsciously resting his hand on her thigh. "I did." He noticed her lips pull ever so slightly further upward and he found his own smile widening as well.
She let out a soft chuckle and smirked at him. "Are you going to tell me what you found or do I have to drag it out of you?"
Nick laughed and then spoke in a soft conspiratorial tone. "As much as I'd like to have you drag it out of me, I'd rather show you." He arched his brows suggestively at her for a moment.
Sara let out a sort of half laugh as she pulled her latex gloves off and slid off of the stool.
It was almost too much temptation for Nick to pass up as he stood up. He and Sara were just inches from each other and all he could think about at that moment was that he wanted to kiss her.
Sara seemed to read his mind and she cleared her throat. "This probably isn't the best place for that." Her eyes were telling him that she wanted to kiss him as much as he wanted to kiss her, but they both knew that they needed to act professionally while they were at work.
Nick let out a nervous laugh and reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, a sheepish expression on his face. "Yeah." It occurred to him that they were going to need a second date very soon.
"So the tape." Sara was trying to focus her mind on the case rather than on those deep brown eyes of his.
"The tape." Nick nodded. "We should go watch it." He turned on his heals and walked out of the room trying to clear his head a little as Sara followed after him. When they'd settled themselves in the AV lab, Nick played the portion of the tape in question.
He pointed at the screen after they'd viewed a short portion of it. "What do you think about that?" He turned towards Sara to see if she was thinking the same thing he was.
"The gate was sabotaged." Sara looked incredulous. "So we may be looking at murder here." It never ceased to amaze her at all the ways people did horrible things to each other.
"I've isolated the best face shot we have of the individual." He zoomed in and showed Sara what he was talking about. "And our vic didn't put that envelope in there, this guy did."
"We don't know that it's a man." Sara furrowed her brow as she studied the face on the screen; there was something vaguely familiar about that face.
"True, it's pretty shadowy, but I think with a little more rendering we'll be able to come up with something." Nick continued.
"So if this guy or girl put the envelope on the dumpster, they might be responsible for that note." Sara reasoned and then furrowed her brow again. "Although, the manager of the store said the note was on the desk in that back room. Why would the vic leave it in plain sight?"
Nick considered her words for a moment. "Well she obviously didn't expect to die out there. Maybe she went to retrieve the envelope and thought she'd be back in before anyone else showed up."
Sara shook her head. "There's just something about this that I don't like. Someone was obviously expecting that envelope to be picked up and they wanted to make sure whoever it was didn't get very far."
"Well we know that the vic didn't put the money out there; she wasn't even supposed to be working that day." Nick began to reason out what they knew. "The manager said that there was a large sum of cash missing, which correlates to the cash found in the envelope."
"The note the manger handed to Brass indicated that our vic needed to go out to the dumpster in the first place." Sara really didn't think things were adding up right. "But it didn't actually mention our victim's name and if she wasn't even supposed to be at work, what if someone else was supposed to get that note?"
"I don't know about you, but I'd say someone is lying." Nick began to formulate an idea in his mind.
Sara nodded and then smiled a bit wryly. "Well I know it's not the evidence because it never lies."