Chapter One

II

The Vegas sun was relentless, bright and burning, paling even the blueness of sky to an almost-white. The clouds had fled, leaving only the tiniest visps of smoke-like cotton in the sky. Summer had come, embracing all and weaving heat into the wind. Walking outside was to be kissed by flames and many sought the shadows and shade.

Catherine Willows was late and did not have the time. Another argument with Lindsey. Another piece of her life she wanted to scream at. And deep down, a deep fatigue seemed to have settled in her. Too much death. Too much life. Not enough rest.

The doors hissed quietly as she went inside, the cool of air conditioning a blessing against her skin. She smiled at a few familiar faces in passing, but didn't slow down. Not until she saw Grissom, hunched over a table of light, his face a mask of concentration. The light and blue coat made him look almost like a ghost, a haunt rather than a human among the rest. She watched him for the briefest moment, taking in the grey in his hair and the lines on his face.

'We're aging,' she thought and then shoved the thought as far as she could into the shadows of her mind with all the others she didn't feel like facing. They would come out again. They always did.

And sometimes they came back as words in another's mouth, spoken as truth.

"Hey," she said lightly. "Heard you had a dead passenger fly in yesterday."

It felt like a stupid statement the moment she uttered it. It was hard not to hear about the case after all, the way the news had blazed all over it. For a moment, she could almost feel an urge to want the case herself. Maybe even with Gil. For all his little quirks and different ways of solving cases, she did miss his presence nearby. It made unsolved cases feel more like mysteries and less like failures.

Maybe she even missed working with Sara.

Maybe.

Grissom didn't look up, peering intently at a small bottle that seemed empty. "Yes. Body's with the good doc."

"Where's your better half?" she asked casually, but unable to keep a slight edge out of it. It didn't feel like jealousy, but something she did not quite know what was. Perhaps a sense of ownership for all their years working together. Perhaps envy. Perhaps a hint of something territorial. Perhaps a little of everything, she wasn't sure.

"Greg is looking through our victim's luggage," Grissom quipped calmly back. She rolled her eyes, but didn't press him further. Grissom had his own paces. But one of these days he had to realise that largo might be too slow for the dance he and Sara engaged in.

Or perhaps he would not and would grow to be old and remember the one he let get away. She had a sense of what Grissom feared and Sara embodied it all, for good and bad.

Sometimes, she wondered if her own fear of letting the right one go had led her into the arms of too many wrongs. She couldn't remember anymore if Eddie had ever felt right. Some many others later. And Grissom... No, not Grissom. Grissom was neither right nor wrong for her. He was just was what he was. She had known him so long now he felt tied to her regardless and sometimes she forgot he wasn't hers.

She slipped away without further comment. Grissom wasn't her knot to untangle. She tried not to think too hard about her own knot before the desire to tangle it even more came over her.

'Now who's afraid,' a little voice whispered in her mind, but she ignored it.

She found Warrick with Nick, both clearly waiting for her. She gave an apologetic smile, which both returned. Even so she sensed tension, which made her wonder just what they had discussed before she had entered. These days it felt a strain not to be paranoid.

"CODIS gave us something on the prints from the gun used at the hold-up," Nick said calmly. He leaned back in his chair with a slight air of triumph. "John Allen. Previous offender. Got six years for armed robbery. Got out a few months ago."

"We'll take him in and get his footprints," Warrick continued. His eyes seemed even darker against the blue of his t-shirt as he looked up at her. "But I'm thinking this is our guy."

"We'll make sure before we hand it over to the DA," she commented, though she hardly needed to remind them. "Any progress on the rape case?"

Nick shook his head slightly, Warrick just calmly regarded her. She knew he had seen her slight discomfort with the case. She always tried to steel herself, but when the victim was so young... Sometimes, death felt easier. At least then the victims were not living dead, shadows of their former self still haunting. Some rape victims managed to stack a resemblance of a life back together. Some seem to walk hand in hand with their tragedy until old age and death did them part.

She slipped down onto a chair, feeling the weight of all the cases descend on her with the sounds of the lab all around. She hadn't realised that supervising would make her feel the cases so much more as her own responsibility. And when cases could not be solved it felt like her failures, her wrongs. Grissom coped in his way with the strains, but she was not Grissom.

She shook the thoughts away as they all chatted briefly about various possible approaches to John Allen and any evidence that might have been missed in the rape case. Catherine had a strong feeling there wouldn't be. Another unsolved case to be stacked with the others in a quiet little cabinet somewhere, with perhaps a note on a board somewhere where everyone would look away. Easier that way. Not forgotten, but not looked at.

The cell phone shrilly interrupted and she sighed as she answered, hoping it wasn't another Lindsey disaster. She wasn't sure could take another. Some days, it felt more like battlefield commanding than parenting.

But the voice was Brass's and she instantly knew from the graveness of his voice that it could only be another murder. The sun could not chase murders away, or offer a vacation from humans being humans in the worst ways they could. Another murder in the summer of Las Vegas.

"We got a DB," she announced as she hung up. "Vega will meet us there. Kensbook Street 9, Winchester."

"So much for using the day for tanning," Nick replied, standing up.

"You look just fine in paler shades," she assured him, giving his shoulder a pat as she got up. It felt almost like a flirt and almost like a betrayal, but Warrick merely smiled good-naturedly and got up as well.

"So do you," he whispered when he passed her, his breath warm as it brushed her skin. And for a moment she forgot death and work and tangles and closed her eyes to the heat.

It was summer.

The scene of death felt strangely like winter. Shades hid the sun, a fan twirled the cool air, the sheets were white. Fresh flowers on the bedside table were hanging their heads. The overhead light was subdued. And the victim was pale, winter pale. It felt like another season, walls and roof shielding summer and life away.

"Boyfriend found her," Vega said, hovering at the doorframe like a shadow. "Next of kin is George James, her father. We're tracking him down."

"Mother?" she asked.

"Dead. The neighbour didn't know of any other family."

She nodded, her gaze returning to the bed and to Nick, kneeling by it.

"She was beautiful to her killer," he remarked, looking up. Catherine felt herself nodding, for all she wanted not to. Fear should not be beautiful to anyone. Death should not be beautiful to anyone. Yet it was.

The blood had been lovingly wiped away, it seemed, for only the wound itself spoke of violence. The eyes had been closed on the victim - before death in fear of what was to come or after by the killer was hard to say. The hair flowed freely across the pillow, a cascade of yellow. She had been young, but not too young. Perhaps in her thirties, Catherine reflected.

It felt like a stage, like it was an image painted with death. The victim was dressed in silver silk clinging to her curves, hair arranged and untangled, almost hiding the shot to the temple. An image of old movie stars it seemed to stir. A beautiful death for Georgina James. It almost spoke of love. Twisted love, but love nevertheless.

And above all there was something familiar with the scene and it sent a cold chill down her spine.

"No sign of forced entry," Warrick said, entering behind them. "Tyre tracks outside, but could be normal traffic."

"Could be," she agreed and hoped it was not. They were here to find closure for victims, for relatives, for the public. Closure. But something had been odd with the picture ever since she entered, a faint sense of deja vu. Hadn't Grissom's victim been blonde too? Perhaps that was the source of her discomfort. Similarities in victims happened. Coincidences of life.

It didn't quite chase the chill away nor the feeling of unease. She looked at the victim again and felt a shudder go through her.

She didn't sense closure. She sensed a beginning.

And outside the summer waited, burning ever and the clouds no shade at all.