Implied Connections
Chapter 16 – Dark Places
By: Braidless Baka
Disclaimer: I own no Greg, no CSI, only Rachel… I don't think Shaun, Shelly or Helen are mentioned in this chapter, so yeah… just Rachel this time ^_~
A/N: Gotta thank my betas RainbowsnStars and Krazykid197 – as always ^_~
A/N2: Just so people know, this update is going to be the last of the fast updates. I only have four more chapters to tide me over for a while, and I'd go for steady and consistent over quick and then… not consistent. So, the next update won't be around for a few days. On the upside, the Greg angst is about to commence ^_~ Enjoy!
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Rachel's house was the exact opposite to Sara's. Weak light filtered in past musky curtains that, had Catherine been in any other profession, she'd have opened straight away. Piles of magazines and romance novels were everywhere. And she'd not even been living there a week.
Catherine rested on her haunches quietly as she waited for Grissom to finish talking to Warrick, calling to tell them about his encounter with Shelly.
"Nice job Warrick. Make sure you keep me posted."
Catherine watched wearily as Grissom flipped his cell phone closed. "Good?"
"Definitely. He's got our time tamperer. Maybe she can tell us something about Rachel. In the meantime, we keep this up."
Catherine took a deep breath as she lifted another magazine. The place was filthy, and unorganised. A dump. But they'd been through it inch by square inch. All they'd turned up was a notebook. "Gil, there's nothing else here."
"There has to be something. Warrick says Nick and Sara are coming up dry."
Catherine quietly noted the tautness of her supervisor's voice. "Saying that isn't going to make something appear out of thin air, Gil. She may not have been planning this."
"There had to be somewhere she was going. She wouldn't try to kill three of us without having a back up plan. She proved that much by running away. Besides, she definitely planned to frame Sara. There has to be proof of that somewhere. Maybe on the notepad, maybe not."
With a frown, Catherine got to her feet and moved over to the phone. The dust on it was still present, but they'd already lifted all the prints from it. "I wonder who she called last."
"Try it," said Grissom, appearing instantly beside her, watching as she pressed the redial button.
It rung, once, twice… then thrice, and four times, and so on. She replaced the receiver sharply. "Nobody's answering."
"It's not important," Grissom dismissed, turning back to what he had been doing. "We can pull her phone records."
Catherine watched as Grissom went valiantly back to work, dusting and searching dutifully. "There's nothing else here."
Gil looked up at Catherine's tone. It sounded hollow. Almost like she was spent. "Are you okay Cath?"
"I'm fine," she insisted, lowering her gaze and shaking her head at the ground. "There's just nothing else here to help us."
"There might be," Grissom insisted. "We just haven't found it yet."
"Like, what?"
"Oh, I don't know," the supervisor murmured, reaching under a sofa comically. "Maybe a notebook?" He pulled it out and swept a layer of dust off the top. "Another notebook." He sighed, his face contorting in puzzlement. "How does someone let their house get so dusty in a week?" He then started to open the book up to flip through it when his cell phone rang, breaking the quiet sharply. Quickly, Grissom answered it. "Grissom." He paused, listening to Warrick's hurried voice on the other end. "Okay, we're finished here. We'll be there soon."
"What is it?"
"Rachel called the lab." He stopped, levelling his gaze with hers. "Greg's now officially a hostage."
~~~
It was still light when Greg opened his eyes. He groaned, moving his head slightly in order to figure out where he was, and why his neck was so stiff. His arm was numb, he couldn't feel that at all, and all of a sudden he realised his wrists and ankles were crudely bound. Still drowsy, he blinked and peered up. He was in the backseat of someone's car, someone who was going fast, several potholes in the road bouncing him unceremoniously like a rag doll. He swallowed, his throat paper-dry, as he tried to move into a sitting position. This alerted the attention of the driver, as he saw her glance at him in her rear view mirror. She did nothing, however, but smile at him before speaking. "Good Morning, Greg."
Greg, without enough wits about him to respond coherently, just remained silent, his pulse starting to throb in his temples at the upright, but slouched, position he was now in. He wished he'd stayed lying down.
"I need you to do me a little favour Greg, once we pull in over here." At the words, the biochemist vaguely heard the indicators clicking and felt the car rumble to a halt beneath him. He heard her get out of the driver's seat and then winced as she opened the door nearest to him, the sunlight making his headache worse. He was almost grateful as she stepped up, casting her shadow upon him.
"I'm going to call your friends back at the lab, I'm going to settle up with them. They know you're with me, I'd imagine, but I need to get out. And you're going to help me do that." She paused, regarding the pitiful youth beneath her. His face was pale; his eyes sunken, and his spiky hair was now no more than a floppy mess. The stain in the middle of the backseat told of how Greg's irritated wound was still weeping, and probably still pained him. Schlaufmiden, Rachel was glad, had no high when it was inhaled. Just the big crash. He'd be incapable of even walking for many hours yet, his thought processes would be slow enough to make him seem worse off than he really was. Which would be perfect when she let him speak to his friends.
She took out her phone and dialled the only number she'd been given, Warrick's, and smiled as he answered the phone. Greg saw this, but no matter how hard he tried to keep up with events he was always one step behind them, and so ended up just giving up on it and zoning out. He jumped as Rachel nudged him. "Hey Greg," she said sinisterly. "The phone's for you."
"For me…?" The first words he'd uttered in hours were sore, and dazed. But having spoken the first, they started to come more easily.
"Yeah, you should talk to him now." She held the phone by his ear, her smile sadistically widening.
"Greg?"
Greg frowned. Warrick sounded panicky. Exactly why, was something his mind had yet to piece together. "Yeah…"
"Man, Greg, are you okay? Where are you?"
"I… I umm…" Greg paused, swallowing hard. His throat was closing up again, the words weren't coming. "I'm okay."
"Has she hurt you?" Warrick sounded like he was restraining himself, like he was having to take this slowly. "You sound messed up man."
"My head… kinda hurts… but I… I just woke up…"
"You've been unconscious this whole time?!"
Greg shook his head in confusion. This was too much thought. He didn't know what to think. He leaned away from the phone slightly, trying to get his bearings. This prompted Rachel to take the phone and resume her conversation with Warrick, it going way to fast for the biochemist to follow, and resulted in his attention wandering.
When he started registering his surroundings again, it was because Rachel had opened the car door. "We just need to get you in the back Greg," she said quietly, pulling gently at his uninjured arm. By suggestion, he meekly followed her intent, trying to get out of the car, and succeeding, although a little unsteadily. But when she led him round the back of the car and popped the trunk, no matter how drugged up he was, he saw what she wanted him to do next.
"No," he murmured, trying to totter back, but held in place by Rachel's stern hand. "I don't want to do that…"
"C'mon Greggy," she coaxed, trying to be soothing to make the bundling into the trunk as painless as possible. "It'll be safer there."
"No… I don't wanna… don't wanna go in there." On a subconscious level, the trapped part of his intellect damned himself for being so slow. He wasn't even acting the level of a school kid. He couldn't articulate, didn't even know what he wanted to say, even though he knew he wanted to say something. All he could feel was fear, and foreboding.
Then, it seemed, Rachel had had enough. Sternly, she pulled him across the short distance, grabbing his injured arm to make him respond. The response was somewhat different than she'd expected, making him jump back on impulse rather than with a need to escape, but she caught him off balance, giving a quick shove and slamming the lid shut behind him. She could hear him banging as hard as he could on the lid, screaming at her to open it. He was scared. Only the most primitive emotions got through the Schlaufmiden. Self-preservation. It was almost sad, she thought, as she started the engine again.
Almost.