Thoughts: a big "WHAT?!" is all i can say for this chapter.... thanx for all the reviews...(",)

SECOND CHANCE

III – A MATCH

Warrick want back to the scene and found no one but Nick, who was packing up evidence. He looked around.

"Where's Grissom?" he asked.

"Left an hour ago. He had the print and the blood processed."

"Damn."

"What have you got?"

"Visitors." He held up pieces of paper in his hand for Nick to see.

"Listen, you might want to go ahead and meet him at the lab. I'll stay. Got more work to do."

"I will. Thanks." Then he left without another word.

Greg, the DNA analyst, is looking through a microscope and is humming a tune that would divert his mind onto something else. Then Grissom walked quietly into his lab, but still he didn't look up, unaware that he's there.

"Oh, you're such a beauty! I can marry you now!" Greg stated to the specimen being magnified.

"It is?" Grissom butted in, with one eyebrow raised.

Greg suddenly looked up, startled, that his boss caught him doing somehtings. Grissom cocked an eyebrow.

"uh… Uh…" Greg started. "… about the blood on the cup… No luck, boss. The blood matched to Sara." He clicked the mouse and Sara's face appeared into the screen with the matching DNA results below her profile. Grissom stared at the computer screen, thinking he's looking into the real Sara now.

"I'm sorry." Greg suddenly spoke, seeing the reaction on his face, letting him distracted from his thoughts.

Grissom nodded quietly and left. 'My intuition was right. It was Sara's. So there's been struggle. Sara, what could have happened to you?' he thought to himself with worry reflecting in his eyes. He headed straight to the prints lab. He knocked on the door and entered.

"Hey, Mandy. Have you got any leads?"

"I'm working on it."

Grissom leaned beside her and both looked into the demo.

"There was some difficulty here, Grissom. The print you found was smudged."

"Can you not fix that?"

"Sure I can. I will just make the elongated lines back to where they belong before. And this one… This one, too…." Mandy had made the smudged area clear and indicated to Grissom on the demo while she spoke. Finally…

"There! We've got our print! Now to match it to whom it belongs." She clicked the mouse and a database query popped up, automatically looking for a match.

After minutes of waiting, an alert box saying, 'NO MATCH FOUND' appeared on the screen.

"That's impossible!" Mandy blurted out. "This means the suspect's never had any criminal record. Hah!"

"Look into AFIS," Grissom ordered.

Mandy did as she was told and database query started to work again. Again, disappointment welcomed them as the same alert box appeared.

"Check into our database."

"Grissom!" Somebody called him. The supervisor turned. It was Warrick he stood up and talked to Warrick outside. But as he was about to go outside, he turned back to Mandy, "Continue."

"Listen," Warrick started as Grissom's attention was now his, "I've got you something."

He gave him the pieces of paper he held in his hands.

"Those are visitors in Faber Apartment between 8:40 to 12 midnight. Right there, the highlighted one, he logged in but never logged out."

When Grissom finally saw it, his eyes widened.

"Grissom!" Mandy called from inside. "I've got it!"

Grissom came back inside with Warrick. They both looked at each other. The to names in the log-in papers and on the computer screen match. They knew now who their suspect was. right there on the screen, stating 'MATCH FOUND'. Grissom's eye narrowed. 'I should have known.' The EMT that has been dating Sara for a while. Hank Peddigrew.

...R&R....please...thanx....