Chapter Three
When the five nightshift CSIs reached the LVPD crime lab, Capt. Brass was waiting outside of Grissom's office. Nick and Warrick broke off to go down the hall and find Greg while Sara and Catherine followed Grissom toward his office.
"Gil, a word," Brass said, standing as they approached, "Alone."
Sara glanced at Grissom and the fear in her eyes was overwhelming. He nodded to Brass and said to Sara, "I'll page you when we're finished."
Sara hesitated for a moment before she nodded and followed Catherine down the hall to the locker room. Grissom watched the two women from his team as they left. When they were out of sight, he let Jim into his office.
"What's going on?" Grissom asked, sitting down at his desk. Brass took a seat across from him and Grissom waited for the other man to speak.
"Word of last night has already reached the sheriff," Brass began. "He isn't too pleased, Gil."
"What, exactly, about last night?" Grissom asked, his hands becoming fists underneath his desk.
"As he relayed it? You and Sara Sidle alone at a motel," Brass replied, "I don't know who approached him with the information but he's not buying our version. He wants a full report from you and Sara. I tried to explain the situation to let him know that we'd been looking for you two but he wouldn't hear it. He even had your truck towed to the garage for processing."
"Let me guess," Grissom said, anger and annoyance in his voice, "Ecklie's doing the process?"
"I guess the dayshift's been a little slow the last few nights," Brass said, shrugging.
"Ecklie's going to do whatever he can to humiliate Sara," Grissom explained, now standing, "This is personal."
"Not much I can do about that," Brass said. He stood and began to move toward the office door with Grissom.
"I know," Grissom told him, "And I appreciate the information. I'll let Sara know about the report but it may take a while, we're working an open case."
"Mobley wants the report on his desk by the beginning of shift tonight," Brass explained. They had reached the door.
"I'll let her know," Grissom said again.
Brass nodded as he left the office and Grissom slammed the door.
Catherine studied the younger female CSI as she rummaged through her locker. Sara was paler than usual and Catherine could see her shaking. She watched Sara pick up and replace the same photograph four times before shutting her locker. Sara sat for a moment on the bench behind her before standing and opening her locker again. This time, she picked up the photograph and Catherine got a quick glimpse at it as Sara tossed it in the trash.
"You okay?" Catherine asked, maternal concern in her voice.
"I'm fine," Sara lied, "Just a little tired."
She sneezed again and followed this one up with a harsh cough.
"You should probably get that checked out," Catherine told her, "You could have pneumonia from walking in the rain."
"I know," Sara said, "I'm going to feel like shit for the next few days."
Catherine smiled at her, "Yeah, but you're a strong girl, you'll survive."
Sara flushed suddenly and closed her locker again.
"Thanks, Cath," she said, turning and starting toward the door, "Have a good day."
"You too," Catherine called but Sara was already gone.
Catherine closed her own locker and looked around the locker room. She was completely alone and she reached into the trash can beside Sara's locker and picked up the discarded picture.
Oh Grissom, she thought, what the hell did you do?
She stared at the picture in her hand. Grissom, a lot younger than she ever remembered him, had his arm around a lanky brunette girl in a Harvard sweatshirt. They were standing outside of a residence hall on campus, snow covering the ground around them. Sara was leaning into him, both of them smiling brightly. She looks so innocent, Catherine thought. She smiled to herself and folded the picture in half. She stuck it down inside her purse and left the locker room.
"Grissom!"
He hadn't even seen Catherine come out of the locker room until she called his name. He held the elevator for her and watched as she smiled at Sara. Sara smiled back and lowered her eyes to her hands. She didn't speak to either of them.
"Is Lindsey home from school yet?" Grissom asked.
"No, she's got another hour or so," Catherine told him, "I think I'm going to pick her up and take her to dinner, maybe a movie."
"Tonight's your night off isn't it?" Grissom asked.
Catherine smiled, "Sure is."
The elevator had stopped and the three CSIs stepped into the parking garage. Sara immediately headed to her car. Grissom and Catherine stood for a moment beside her car, talking quietly about Lindsey.
"Thanks for tonight," Catherine said, "I really appreciate it. It's been a long time since I've gotten a Friday night off."
"I know," Grissom said, "And you deserved it."
Catherine smiled at him for a moment and then remembered the photo in her purse.
"Is everything all right with her?" she asked, nodding toward Sara's car.
"I don't know yet," Grissom said quietly, "I haven't given her the bad news."
"Which is?"
"Mobley knows about the motel," Grissom explained, "As does the entire dayshift."
"Oh god," Catherine said, "You'd better take some precautions, Sara's gonna be pissed."
"I know," Grissom said, smiling again, "Have a good day."
"Yeah," Catherine said, climbing into her Tahoe, "You too."
Grissom climbed into the passenger seat of Sara's Tahoe and waited for her to start the engine. She didn't. Instead, she turned to talk to him.
"What were you and Brass talking about?" she asked quickly, "Are we in some kind of trouble?"
He hesitated for a moment, trying to think of an easy way to tell her. He didn't come up with anything good enough.
"Sara, Mobley knows about last night," he said, noticing that the color drained from her face at the words. "He knows about the accident and about the motel. Jim told me that we're to give the sheriff a full report of the incident by the beginning of shift tonight."
"Great," Sara muttered. She jammed the key into the ignition and started the car, sliding it into reverse and pulling quickly out of her parking spot. "That's all I need."
She sneezed again and sighed loudly.
"Sara," Grissom said her name with the same tone he'd used at the motel and he wondered if she'd be angry, "There won't be anything in that report that will go on your record."
Sara glared at him for a moment before turning onto interstate 19.
"We have to stop by your truck," she reminded him, "I need to get my kit."
"You can't, Sara," he told her. He'd forgotten that part the first time. "Mobley had my Tahoe towed back to the lab to be processed."
"What?" Sara asked, the car swerving to the left slightly. "Why?"
"Apparently," Grissom said, "He doesn't think that we slid off the road."
Nick and Warrick pulled up in front of the home of David James. Brass had given them a warrant and they were looking for Camille James, Erin's mother.
"Camille James?" Nick asked as the older woman opened the door.
"Yes?" she asked.
"Mrs. James, I'm Nick Stokes with the Las Vegas crime lab and this is Warrick Brown," Nick told her, "Ma'am, we're investigating the brake in of your home last night and the police told us we could find you here."
"Yes, I'm staying with my son, David," Camille James said, "My home isn't exactly safe anymore."
"I know and we're working on that ma'am," Warrick said, "We just need to get a small sample of your DNA for our case, if that's all right with you."
"Of course," Mrs. James said, "Anything that will help. What do you need me to do?"
"All I need is for you to open your mouth for a second," Nick instructed, taking a swab from his kit, "I'm just going to rub the Q-tip along the inside of your mouth and that's all there is to it."
Mrs. James opened her mouth and allowed Nick to do the swab. When he finished, he placed the new evidence in his kit.
"Thank you, Mrs. James," Warrick said as Nick stood beside him.
"You're welcome Mr. Brown," she said, moving back into the doorway of her son's home, "And will you please let me know when I'll be able to go home?"
"Of course," Nick said, "And thanks again."
The two men turned and walked back toward their vehicle as Camille James closed the door.
"That was easy," Warrick said, "Didn't even need out warrant."
Sara and Grissom reached the bar in Gainsville nearly forty minutes after they'd pulled out of the parking garage. Sara had been distracted and it was obvious in her driving. The two CSIs stepped out of the Tahoe and Grissom grabbed his kit from the back seat. Together they walked to the main entrance of the bar but found the doors locked.
Sara shrugged when Grissom eyed her curiously, "Makes sense. Most bars don't open 'til sundown. They probably don't get any business during the day."
Both CSIs began to look around the parking lot. One car sat in a space just a few feet from them and Sara wondered aloud, "What kind of car did Allison Conners drive?"
"I'll call Brass," Grissom said, reaching for his cellphone, "See if he found out from Allison's roommate."
"You talked to her, too, right?" Sara asked, "Did you just forget to ask?"
He smiled at her, half amused and half serious, "I never forget. At the time, a car was not involved in our investigation. For all we knew, Allison didn't have a car."
"We still don't know that she does," Sara said, throwing him her best smile.
"Jim, it's Gil," Grissom said, peering through the window of the small Chevy Cavalier. "Do we know what type of car Allison Conners drove?"
Sara was already pulling a flashlight and jimmy stick from her Tahoe when Grissom gave her the go ahead, "It's definitely hers. Plates match to Allison Conners, registered in Seattle."
Sara had the driver's side door unlocked and open in a matter of seconds. She searched the interior quickly with the flashlight, not seeing much beyond the piles of trash.
"We're gonna have to have this thing towed to the garage," she told Grissom as he opened the passenger door, "I can't see anything under all this trash."
"Keys are in the ignition," Grissom said.
"What?" Sara's eyebrows went up. She leaned further into the car to get a better look around the steering wheel, "Maybe she locked 'em in, I do that all the time."
"Maybe her attacker pulled her out of the car as she was leaving," Grissom said, picturing it in his head.
"I doubt it," Sara interrupted, "Think he really would've locked the doors?"
"Possibly to throw us off," Grissom explained. They both closed the car's doors and moved back to their own vehicle.
"So, Allison's off work and she's in a real hurry to go home," Sara began, everything coming together in her head.
"But once she's in the car, she realizes that she's not alone. Someone's followed her out of the bar and to her car."
"Guy grabs her, probably has a weapon, and forces her out of the car."
"But there are other cars around so he locks the doors and closes hers."
"Someone would call it in if they found a car in the parking lot with the door open and the keys in the ignition, probably one of Allison's coworkers," Sara concluded, "But they didn't call it in when her car was here and she wasn't?"
"Maybe she wasn't alone."
Sara and Grissom stayed with Allison Conners' car until the tow truck arrived. When the car was loaded onto the truck, Sara and Grissom turned to head back into Vegas.
Maybe. Sara thought about Grissom's theory. Maybe. He didn't say that word very often, especially when he was relating to a case. That, and he rarely created a scenario so quickly without evidence. The only evidence they had was Allison's car and that hadn't even been processed. Grissom had been acting very unlike himself lately and it was beginning to get to Sara.
"Grissom?" she asked, trying to find a distraction from her thoughts.
"Yes?"
"When do you want to write out the report Mobley requested?" she asked, not taking her eyes off the road.
Grissom thought about her question for a moment. Half of him was tempted to direct her to his apartment where they would be alone to work things out while the other half of him knew that they had work to do. He didn't voice this thought, being alone again outside of the lab would be illogical, seeing that they were already under the watchful eye of the sheriff.
"We've got to process Allison's car," Grissom told her, "We'll work on the report when we're done."
"Right," Sara said.
She knew that he would say that, anything to keep his emotions at bay. The truth was, Sara didn't give a damn about the sheriff's requested report. She wanted to talk to Grissom. She wanted to talk to him about the night they'd spent together. She wanted him to kiss her again. That could take some convincing Sidle, Sara thought, he's not going to jeopardize his career for you.
"Sara?"
She jumped as Grissom's voice broke her thoughts, "Yeah?"
"We'll have dinner," he told her, "Before our shift. At my apartment."
Sara smiled brightly at him, "Really?"
"Can you work around food?" he asked.
"Of course."
"Greg!" Nick shouted, "Greg!"
The lab tech wasn't hearing a word other than those of the punk-rock music blaring from his stereo. It wasn't until Nick tapped him on the shoulder that Greg jumped about half a foot in the air and shut off the stereo.
"What can I do for you?" Greg asked, his voice a little shaky.
"My DNA, Greg," Nick snapped, "Did you get a match?"
"To the trash can?" Greg asked, shaking his head. "Thirteen of the same markers, but not an exact match. It's got to be the daughter."
"Thanks, Greg," Nick said, turning to go, "And keep the music down."
Sara and Grissom pulled into the parking garage at the lab for the second time that day, neither of them too willing to go back inside. Sara climbed down from her driver's seat and locked the doors to the Tahoe. She and Grissom stepped into the elevator to head up to the lab. Neither of them said anything when they reached their floor and they went their separate ways; Grissom to his office and Sara to the process garage.
When Grissom finally sat at his desk, he was exhausted. He'd, for the first time in months, gotten a good night's sleep but now just looking at Sara was killing him. She was there, every time he turned around she was with him. That, however, had been his own damned fault. He'd assigned her to work his cases with him for the past week. He'd thought that he'd gotten used to the uncomfortable silence between them, and he had, until the night in the motel. Now, if they were silent together, his mind was running in circles trying to decide what it was that Sara was thinking about. He wanted to be inside her mind, he wanted to know her. The wanting was the dangerous part.
Knowing Sara wouldn't be anything knew for Grissom. Before she'd come to work for the LVPD, they'd been close friends. It was for that reason that he'd called her to come and work with him after the untimely death of Holly Gribbs. Grissom had personally called Sara in San Francisco to come and work the internal investigation of their unit. He'd even told Nick, Catherine and Warrick that he trusted her. He'd known Sara for years, nearly ten now, since she was in college. He'd met her at Harvard where she was the star pupil in his graduate program and they'd been instantly attracted to each other. He'd never admitted to her that the attraction was there, but he couldn't help acting on it every now and then.
A knock on his office door stirred Grissom from his thoughts. Nick stood in the door, staring at his boss, a lopsided grin on his face. Grissom eyed the younger CSI carefully.
"Can I come in?" Nick asked.
"Of course," Grissom told him, motioning toward the chair in front of his desk, "What's up?"
"I just thought I'd give you a quick heads up on our case," Nick said, sitting in the chair, "Warrick and I have a match on the missing girls blood in a trash can we found at the scene."
"Good," Grissom said, "Do you have a warrant to search the brother's house and his car?"
"Warrick's working on that now," Nick said.
"Good, let me know when you've got everything wrapped up."
"Will do."
Nick got up to go as Grissom looked back down at a folder open on his desk. Nick stopped in the door, watching Grissom for a minute. He wasn't reading, he was thinking.
"Grissom?"
"Yes, Nick?" he said, without even looking up.
"Go easy on Sara, all right? She seems to be having a rough day."
Grissom took this in and when he looked up to ask Nick what he was talking about, he was already gone.
Sara had done a thorough job of processing Allison Conners' car. She'd collected all of the trash including receipts, fast food wrappers, books and class notes. God, Sara thought, this reminds me of my car in college. Sara had found finger prints on both the driver's side door as well as the passenger's side. They were in trace now and she had also found various pieces of human hair, some of which looked like they'd been pulled out. She'd started separating the trash, laying it all out on the table in the observation room.
When Grissom found her, she was hunched over a month's worth of garbage.
"Find anything interesting?" he asked, scaring her so bad that she actually screamed.
"Damn it!" she cried, "Stop doing that to me!"
He couldn't help laughing at her, "I'm sorry."
"No your not."
Sara smiled at him weakly and a hundred different thoughts ran through Grissom's mind. She was beautiful when she smiled. Hell, she's beautiful when she smiles, when she's angry, when she's crying . . . she's beautiful, period, he thought. He remembered the one time he'd told her that. They'd been investigating the death of a hockey player and they were sitting in the bleachers.
"I never figured you to be a sports fan," she'd said.
"I prefer baseball."
"Figures, all those statistics."
"Hockey's a beautiful sport," he'd said, keeping his eyes on the ice.
"Huh, since when did you start thinking about beauty?" Sara had asked.
"Since I met you."
She'd been stunned, unable to speak to him for a few moments after that. That, however, had been his goal, to prove to her that he paid attention, that she meant something to him. Sara had always been more than just another member of his team.
"Grissom?"
It was his turn to jump at the sound of her voice. Sara smiled to herself, watching him flinch before turning his attention back to her.
"I did find something a little out of the ordinary," Sara told him, motioning to a stack of papers on the table, "These receipts are all from the same gas station in Belmont. There are seventeen of them, Grissom."
"Belmont's a pretty long drive from the UNLV campus," Grissom said, analyzing Sara's evidence, "Not to mention the bar in Gainsville."
"Exactly what I was thinking," Sara said, "And she's originally from Seattle, right? Brass made it a point to tell us she didn't have any family in the area."
"So why was this girl driving back and forth between Vegas and Belmont?"
"That would be the question of the day."
Sara and Grissom had quickly piled back into her car right after a phone call from Brass. Sara wasn't exactly sure what was going on, Grissom hadn't had the time to explain. He simply instructed her to get in the car and head toward Gainsville.
When they pulled into the parking lot at the bar that Allison had worked at, they met Brass and a young deputy.
"So," Sara said, "You gonna tell me what's going on, Gris?"
"We got a hold of the manager," Brass explained for him, "He called in all of the staff that worked the other night with Allison Conners'."
"Right."
Sara prepared herself for the worst when they entered the bar but was surprised to find that it was a decent looking place. Two young women, probably around the vics age, sat on stools at the bar. An older man, late thirties early forties, stood nervously behind the counter and paced the floor. Sara watched this with little amusement, thinking this guy had something to hide. It was the fourth witness that Sara became most interested in. He was a young man, not really old enough to even work in the bar. He wore jeans and a baggy T-shirt with a name tag pinned to it. Joey.
The first sight of the boy would never have prepared Sara for the next thing that she saw. Joey turned to the older man and began moving his hands frantically in front of him. Sign language. Sara immediately glanced at Grissom, wondering what his reaction to this would be. He did flinch.
"Joey would like to talk to you first," the manager told them, "He says he thinks he can help you. If you go slowly, I'll translate."
Grissom approached the younger man and Sara turned to the one behind the bar.
"It's all right," she told him, "My partner knows sign language."
"Hi Joey," Grissom said, voicing this for Sara's benefit while signing to the young man. "My name is Gil. Can you tell me what you saw?"
Joey's hands moved rapidly and Sara only caught a word here and there. She looked at Grissom once the boy had stopped his movements.
"He says that he saw Allison the night that she died," Grissom told Sara, "She was arguing with a man at the bar. He said that the man that Allison fought with had been in here before. He recognized him."
Grissom signed to the boy again, "What did the man look like?"
Sara waited for Grissom to turn and interpret Joey's answer again.
"Average height, like me. Dark brown hair, cut short like his. Same build as Brass. No facial hair or scars," he told her.
He signed to Joey again, but did not speak this time. Sara, however, understood the gesture, Thank you. Grissom took her by the elbow and led her away from the people at the bar, asking Brass to interrogate the others.
"Joey reads lips pretty well," Grissom told her, "He said that Allison Conners called the man she fought with 'professor'."
"So it looks like we're headed back to UNLV?" Sara asked.
"I think we need to speak to Allison's roommate again."
The ride back to Vegas began calmly for Sara. She and Grissom talked about their case and when they'd each run out of things to say, Sara had turned on the radio. She listened to the music, catching the lyrics here and there but keeping her mind mostly on the road and Grissom. He was perfectly still beside her, staring out the window and not saying a word. She wondered if he was listening to the music but decided that they probably didn't have the same taste in music. He's probably trying to ignore it, she thought, suddenly worried that he'd think she was weird for listening to country music. She quickly changed the station to modern rock and looked at Grissom to see if his expression had changed. He hadn't moved.
"Grissom?" she asked, worry and impatience in her voice.
"Yes, Sara?" he replied, not bothering to look at her. He kept his gaze on the scenery outside of the car.
"What do you know about otosclerosis?" Sara asked, throwing another glance in his direction.
Now Grissom straightened up and looked at her quizzically. He didn't answer right away, as if trying to decide whether to tell her the truth or not. For some reason, Sara knew what he'd say.
"It's a disease that gradually leads to a total loss of hearing," he told her, "A bonny structure forms around the inner ear, causing a blockage to the ear drum."
Text book answer, Sara thought, it figures.
"Why?" Grissom asked.
"Do you think that maybe the boy at the bar, Joey, do you think that he may have had otosclorosis?" Sara asked. It wasn't a really answer, it was simply what she thought of as a logical reason for the question.
"I doubt it," Grissom told her, "From what I know of the disease, otosclorosis doesn't present itself until the later years of the person's life. Joey couldn't have been more than eighteen years old, and he would've been able to speak clearly."
"Oh."
Sara tried hard to focus on the road. She was angry and hurt and what she really wanted to do was pull the truck over and scream at Grissom. Why hadn't he told her? Couldn't he trust her enough to tell her the truth? They told each other everything. He knew everything about her. One thing, she wanted to know one thing and he'd just flat out lied to her.
They rode the rest of the way in silence.
"I got our warrant!" Warrick announced as he entered the break room.
Nick sat around the table with a few of the guys from dayshift, none of which had an active case at the moment.
"Great," Nick said, tossing the remains of his half-eaten lunch in the trash, "Let's go."
He and Warrick walked into the hall and Nick said to him, "Wouldn't you like to have a shift like that every now and then?"
"Like what?" Warrick asked.
"Day shifts got one active case going and only Ecklie and one other member of their team are working it," Nick told him, "I'd kill for a shift like that."
"Not me, man, I'd want to kill someone just to give us something to do."
"I told you everything that I knew when I talked to you last night, Mr. Grissom."
Hannah Martin sat on her bed across from Sara and Grissom in the dorm room she had shared with Allison Conners.
"Look, Miss Martin, all we're asking is if you ever saw Allison with her boyfriend," Sara said, losing her patience for the girl. "Did she ever talk about him?"
"And I'm telling you Miss Sidle, Allison and I weren't best friends," Hannah snapped, "Allison and I run with two separate crowds. I work hard here, I'm on a scholarship, I don't have time for friends."
I know what that's like, Sara thought.
Grissom looked at her and, for a minute, she wondered if she'd said that out loud. He turned back to Hannah, "Are you sure you never overheard her talking about her boyfriend?"
"Maybe once or twice she talked about a guy," Hannah said, rolling her eyes in annoyance, "She was always on the phone with her sister. Their calls would last for hours, it drove me crazy. It's hard to study when your roommate never shuts up."
"Do you know her sister's name?" Sara asked.
"Carly," Hannah said, "She stayed with us for little sibs' week. She's only fourteen or something."
"Thank you, Miss Martin."
Grissom shook the girl's hand and he followed Sara out of the room.
"What do you think?" Sara asked when he'd closed the door.
"I think that I'd like to speak to Allison's little sister," Grissom told her. He placed a hand on Sara's elbow and led her down the hall.
"And how, may I ask, do you propose we do that?" Sara asked, a little confused.
"There's this great little thing called the telephone, Sara," Grissom said mockingly, "Perhaps you should invest in one."
"Really?" she asked, playing along for the sake of making him smile, "Well I don't make a lot of money, you know. Maybe you could buy one for me."
"You really ought to consider working more, Sara. You'll get bigger paychecks that way."
"Hmm. I do recall a certain someone telling me that I work too much as it is."
"Really? And who would ever tell you that?"
"The slave-driver that I've got for a supervisor."
Sara pulled into the drive way of Grissom's townhouse not more that fifteen minutes after they'd left UNLV. She put the car in park and watched Grissom get out and move toward the front door. Sara hesitated. Maybe this isn't such a good idea, she thought, I don't know if I can spend the next three hours alone with him without killing him.
When Grissom paused at the door to turn and look for her, Sara made up her mind. She got out of her car and walked to the door. Grissom led her inside and she took in her surroundings.
She'd been in his home once before but it had been so long ago. He'd been forced to take a vacation, to take a leave of absence, because he refused to cooperate with the FBI on the 'Strip Strangler' case. The team had refused to cooperate without Grissom and it resulted in the group of them meeting at his house to work the case on their own. That had been the first and only time that Sara had ever seen the inside of Grissom's house.
From what she could remember, nothing had changed. He still had the same leather love seat and the same coffee table. His butterfly collection remained to be the only decoration in the bland white-walled apartment. Bookshelves. Table. Migraine pills.
Sara immediately went to the coffee table and picked up the pill bottle.
"Do you still take these?" she asked.
Grissom was already in the kitchen, searching his refrigerator for something to cook for her. He glanced at the bottle in her hand and looked away from her just as quickly.
"Every now and then," he told her, "If it's necessary. Usually, if I do get a migraine, I try to get through it without the pills. It's hard to work when you aren't functioning correctly."
Sara put the bottle back where she found it and moved around the small living room. No TV, she thought, No radio but plenty of reading material. He apparently didn't like knowing what was going on in the world around him. Sara's apartment was just the opposite. She had a television in every room, as well as a radio. Not to mention the police scanner she kept in her office and the four different national newspapers she had delivered daily. She'd be lost without it all.
When she'd reached the hallway that she assumed led back to his bedroom, she turned around and went to sit at the breakfast bar. It created half a wall that separated the living room and kitchen. Grissom placed a glass of ice water in front of Sara and she smiled at him, "Thank you."
"I figured that if I gave you a beer, we'd have a problem on our hands," he told her mockingly.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He didn't reply. Grissom turned back to the food he'd started to prepare for her.
"What are we eating?" Sara asked, trying to look around him to the pan on the stove.
"Vegetarian stir-fry," he told her, smiling to himself at the shocked expression on her face.
"You remembered this time," she said, laughing at him a little.
"What do you mean 'this time'?" he asked, looking somewhat confused.
"Oh please, you can't tell me that you don't remember that day," Sara smiled, "You sent me a plant, Grissom."
He looked at her and smiled back, "Right, that was the day that you threatened to quit."
"Only because you wouldn't sign my leave request."
"Because the lab couldn't afford to lose you."
"Excuses, excuses."
"You were just mad at me because I asked you to clean up raw meat."
"I was mad at you because you weren't paying attention to me anymore."
"I never stopped paying attention to you, Sara."
Sara blushed and looked down at her glass of water. She was smiling and that was what he'd wanted. He took two plates from the cabinet, placing them on the counter in front of Sara. He served up their meal before joining her as she moved to his kitchen table. They sat beside each other, both moving food around on their plates with forks. Sara suddenly stopped and turned to look at him. She gave him a quick, simple kiss and whispered, "Thank you."
He kissed her back just as simply and whispered, "You're welcome."
Less than an hour later, Grissom had cleared away their dishes and they'd moved to the small love seat in the living room. They sat close together, legs touching, and Sara leaned her head against the back of the couch.
"Are you all right?" Grissom asked.
"Hmm? Yeah, I'm just tired," she said. Sara yawned then grinned at Grissom.
"It's only four o'clock," Grissom told her, glancing at his watch to keep himself from touching her. He wanted to hold her, to lie down with her again, to kiss her. "Why don't you try to sleep for an hour or so?"
In your bed? Sara thought. She didn't say it out loud, afraid of his reaction. God, do I want to. You don't know how long I've dreamt of laying in your bed.
"What about our report?" she asked, trying to think of an excuse to avoid his bedroom at all costs.
"I'll type it up," he told her, "It really doesn't take both of us to write one report. You'll just have to sign it before I hand it to Mobley tonight."
"That's not fair to you," Sara said, smiling weakly for him, "Besides, I won't be able to sleep alone."
She bit her tongue. Why the hell did I say that? she thought. She hadn't meant to say it out loud. She'd probably scared the hell out of him and when he didn't reply she wished she could take it back.
"Grissom, I-"
He stopped her, placing a finger to her lips. He took her hand with his and pulled her to her feet. Without a word, he led her down the hall to his bedroom.