Greg bounded hurriedly down the hall from an evidence room to supervisor Gil Grissom's office. He clutched a sheet of white 8 1/2" by 11" paper tightly in his right hand, swinging it with every step he took in a full-out run. He rounded the corner and crashed straight into an office clerk, nearly upturning his wheeled basket of supplies; the clerk yelled angrily but the sounds never reached Greg's ears. Grissom's office was in sight and Greg was tunnel-visioned, never ceasing in speed or seeing any of the other innocent bystanders he nearly involved as victims in triage. Greg skidded to a halt abruptly, slamming his hands flat onto Grissom's office desk, crushing the piece of paper under one of his sweaty palms.

Grissom merely looked up, his face's only emotion one of stern puzzlement.

"Yes?" he asked expectantly, waiting wordlessly for an excuse to come from Greg. Peering around the frenzied CSI out his office door, Grissom found Greg's wake of disgruntled law enforcement officers shaking their heads in digsust, the breeze created by Hurricane Sanders only now catching up to them.

Greg took a deep breath. "OkaysoIrantheprintsfromthecashregisteronAFISandnothingcameupbutIcomparedthemtotheonesfromthecarwefoundatthesceneandtheymatch..."

"That can be expected, Greg," Grissom replied patiently, having miraculously understood Greg's tirade.

"BUT..." Greg continued, "The car belongs to one Mr. Peter Jackson, out-of-work actor." he finished, a smug smile on his lips.

"Is this relative?" Grissom asked, feigning ignorance to prompt Greg to explain further.

"Oh, yeah," Greg smiled, the smugness reaching his eyes. "Mr. Jackson served time for several gang-related incidents including arson, robbery, and kidnapping. Check this out," Greg said, his cockiness coming through in his voice. Grissom grabbed the sheet from Greg, smoothed it out on his desk with his palm and slipped on his glasses to view the results. Next to a readout of data, a picture of a brown-haired, hazel-eyed young man stared back at him. One eyebrow raised, and Grissom's emotionless face shone with what could have been hope. He handed the result page back to Greg.

"Let's go have a nice, friendly conversation with Peter, shall we?"

"Jackson? Or..." Greg paused dramatically, "Humber?"

Sara and Nick had been lying in the trunk for some time now, their muscles beyond tense and their states of mind beyond terror. The car had stopped, and both Nick and Sara had arranged each other with ropes tied loosely behind the other's back, so it would seem to anybody else that they were still rendered helpless. For the past twenty minutes, they had done nothing but lie, waiting for their ride in the trunk to end in whatever manner it was destined to end. The worst part of any event was the wait, as they had both been thinking, and so while waiting they were forced to endure psychological trauma in a way that their inept captors would never be intelligent enough to think of inflicting intentionally. Sara let out a whimper which startled Nick after the extended silence, both in the trunk and in the cab of the car. Nick nudged her with his shoulder, his hands loose enough to escape the bonds but incapable of retying them properly.

"Don't worry, Sar," Nick whispered. "We'll get out of this, I promise you."

"How can you promise?" Sara asked woefully. "How do you know?"

"I don't," Nick answered truthfully, "but I swear to God that I will protect you. I'd never be able to live with myself if I didn't. You mean too much to me," he said, sniffling slightly.

Sara barely had time to register the possible implications of Nick's phrasing before the lock on the hatch clicked with the assault of a prying key. Nick kissed Sara quickly on the lips, to Sara's shock, and closed his eyes immediately, feigning unconsciousness once more. Sara followed suit, trying to get her racing pulse to slow and her face to stop showing the surprise it had registered at the contact with Nick. Just as she had succeeded in making her face blank, the backs of her eyelids turned red, the effect of light shining against the capillaries as the darkness of the trunk was removed. The light was dull, however; not desert sunlight, but rather a streetlamp's yellowy glow. Sara wondered for the first time what time it was.

Sara felt the trunk heave and buck, then bounce upwards as Nick was removed from the trunk, and by the sounds of it, he was removed rather roughly by at least three people. Sara's mind raced with worry and anxiety; she hoped Nick was okay, and hoped that they would make it through whatever lay in store for them. She was selfishly glad she wasn't alone. Suddenly, a pair of hands grabbed her by the waist and she was flung over a shoulder hurriedly, the trunk of the car slamming and the car being pulled into a garage. She bounced along, barely hindering the progess of her abductor, in extreme discomfort from the position she was in and the way her movement affected the wound in her shoulder. She remained strong, however. She needed to pretend to be unconscious to avoid serious inflicted injury, and the temptation to fight back, to kick and scream, to open her eyes at least was great. She remembered, however, the Greek legend where looking cost a man the love of his life to the devil. Self restraint would carry her far.

Voices murmured and doors were opened, stairs were descended and large objects were scraped across floors. Nick hoped and prayed even that Sara was alright; his base in science often cast doubt on the results and effectiveness of prayer, but he figured he had nothing to lose except for Sara. Now that his confession was out, albeit an ambiguous one (lest he need to revert to misinterpretation for his own protection), he could only hope that Sara held the same feelings and could express them inambiguously. He had probably left her very uncertain, and as soon as they got where they were going he would progress with his thought train, forward if Sara was on the same wavelength and backwards if she didn't think of him that way. It amazed Nick how far removed from the situation he was until he felt himself being lowered onto a cold cement floor with a colder metal pole pressing vertically into his spine. He opened an eye carefully to see three figures looming over him against a dim light source, with a fourth behind them carrying Sara. Sara's eyes opened as well and she opened them wider when she saw a glint of light off of Nick's supposedly closed eyes. Nick opened his eyes fully, to the shock of his captors, and he stood up and removed the loose binding from his wrists, snapping his right fist around and catching a wiry guy in the chin unexpectedly. Sara brought her arms out of her ropes as well, and, using as much strength as she could, she raised her hands together over her head and thumped her captor in the small of his neck. A loud, agitated cry of shock filled the small room and a sickening thud was heard shortly thereafter as Sara fell to the ground. Nick clipped a taller man with a roundhouse to the ear and he bulldozed his way to where Sara had fallen. She picked herself up as Nick got to her and they pounded up the plywood staircase together as fast as they could, their surprise attack having caught the four men in the basement completely off guard. Sara could almost feel the desert air on her skin when she and Nick were stopped abruptly in the doorway leading out of the unfinished basement by a man with mousey brown hair and leering, sinister hazel eyes.

"Stay awhile, won't you? I've a lovely big house here and haven't had a housewarming, perhaps you'd be so kind as to initiate one for me?" the man inquired, his voice laced with a snide confidence that he held the upper hand.

Nick tried to punch him, but his arm was stopped in mid-air. Sara was frozen to the spot, and even if she had had the capacity to run, she would have stood by Nick anyway. Nick tried a punch again but was stopped once more, this time by a needle in his thigh, injecting him with enough codeine to stop a charging elephant. Nick crumpled to the floor almost instantaneously, waking Sara out of her trance. Her eyes opened wide, pupils dilated in fear, and she managed to get her motor skills active again. Her escape attempt was futile, however, as she was snatched out of her trajectory and held in place by the man who had injected Nick. Her arm was wrenched painfully behind her back as she struggled, and her brow creased with pain, but she would not make a single noise to indicate that her attacker had any effect on her. She heard the plywood stairs groaning in protest as four men stormed up through the basement, one with a bruise on his chin as Sara noted with some satisfaction. The man holding her ordered the others to take Nick downstairs again, then squeezed her against him tighter until the pain in her shoulder made her cry out despite her will not to. She felt the man's lips on her neck and she shivered with disgust as a needle was stuck into the back of her thigh as well and her eyes slipped shut.

A/N: Review, please.