Chapter Eleven
Missing.
Sara felt the word fill her, beat against her heart, drown out her thoughts. Missing. Catherine and Warrick, missing. Her and Catherine had clashed often enough, but Catherine was still a colleague, a part of the lab, a part of her life. And Warrick... Warrick who she'd gotten off on all the wrong feet with and still ended up standing.
Missing. Maybe dead, but she dared not think that. Warrick and Catherine couldn't be dead. She wouldn't allow it.
"Do we know anything?" Greg asked again. His face was drawn and he seemed suddenly very young.
'This too is a CSI's life,' she thought and wanted to cry. 'Sometimes we lose one.'
"Their cars were found near the place Georgina James were found murdered. Catherine's car appeared to have been searched. Warrick apparently spotted it and no one's seen Warrick since," she said dully, repeating Grissom's words as she remembered them. "Brass and Nick are running a search operation."
"Nick'll find them," Greg said confidently, but she wondered if he truly felt it or merely said it to comfort her as much as himself.
"Yeah," she agreed anyway and wondered how Nick was coping. At least he could do something. She was trapped here on the other side of the Atlantic, nothing to do but wait and hope.
And just a while ago it had been a warm, sunny day, sunlight and Grissom kissing her. A little illusion of all she wanted and now she paid for it. She always paid for it.
Greg placed a hand on hers and she let him, a simple little gesture that warmed her, even if it was another hand she suddenly longed for.
'Oh, dad,' she thought distantly, even if the thought felt like a betrayal to her mother. Even if it felt like a betrayal to herself. She shouldn't miss her father's hand, shouldn't miss the lies of innocence he'd never told her. Shouldn't miss a childhood she'd never had, or at least never could remember without the blood anymore. Blood-tinted childhood, blood-tinted life.
She wondered if she would have to see Warrick and Catherine's blood too and the thought tore into her flesh like a bullet. And no father there to lie and tell her pain ended and it would be all fine some day.
"Are we heading back to Las Vegas?" Greg asked and she turned her attention to him again. "I can pack in five minutes."
"No, not right away. By the time we get back, it may all be over, anyway."
'On way or another,' she added in her mind and it sounded like the slam of a coffin's lid being nailed shut. It was hard to keep the morbid thoughts at bay and she sternly reminded herself Catherine and Warrick were capable and after all, Catherine had managed the Logan case very well. They would be all right. If she kept thinking it, kept willing it, maybe, maybe...
Willing it away hadn't made her father's blood go away. Willing it hadn't made Grissom take that risk and be with her.
"Where's Grissom?"
"Making calls," she replied, pressing her nails into her palm. The pain seemed to clear her head of memories. "What did you discover at the lab?"
"Huh?"
"Take our minds off something we can do nothing about for a little while?" she offered and smiled weakly.
"Oh. They're still processing stuff. They're as backlogged and understaffed as we are."
"Seems an universal thing."
"I looked through the interviews with our vic's friends. According to them, she did set off for the US very suddenly."
"Corresponding with what the grandmother said," Sara commented, trying to focus on her words and beat everything else into the abyss of her mind. "She seems distraught."
"She could still have done it."
She met his gaze and saw in it something that was far from young, far from innocent, something she felt in her own mind and that every case strengthened.
'This job makes old cynics of us all,' she thought and there was loss and strength in the thought both.
"She could still have done it," she agreed and remembered her own mother's tears after murdering. It was sometimes easy to forget that not all killers came as demons. Some were just normal human beings that in one moment became something other than themselves, something darker, risen from the abyss of the mind. One moment. A lifetime of guilt and grief to cling to your soul. A grandmother could kill her granddaughter and mourn still.
A daughter could see her mother kill and love her still.
"Nothing ever turns out the why you imagine, does it?" Greg asked suddenly, eyes very open and clear as he looked at her. "I used to to think about what it would be like to be in the field and it was all that, but it wasn't only that. In the lab, DNA is just DNA. Out here, it's a life. Now it might be Catherine and Warrick's lives."
"Nothing ever does," she agreed and leaned blindly against him.
They sat together for what felt ages of silence, but she had no idea of the time. There was still sunlight outside, but it had to be late, for the light was softer, almost faded. Dreamlike. Perhaps this was a bad nightmare after all. Perhaps she would wake to another day in Norway and lure Grissom to the roller-coaster she had researched and found to be nearby. And then she could call Warrick and tell him his suggestion had worked and he would chuckle softly. She could almost hear it.
That was the dream. Sitting here in the faded light and feel her own pained heartbeats and hear Greg's ragged breath, that was reality.
"I will go and see what Grissom's up to," she said softly after a moment and stood up. "Get some sleep, Greg."
"Who can sleep?" he asked miserably and let out a slow breath.
'The dead,' she thought and felt a chill. She gave him another weak smile and walked away, her footsteps on the hard floor like door slamming in her mind. Slam. Warrick. Slam. Catherine. Slam. Dad. Slam. Slam. Slam.
Grissom's door was closed, but she could hear low conversation and slipped in without knocking. Grissom was on the phone, clutching it so hard she could see the white on his knuckles. He looked up briefly as she closed the door, not quite meeting her glance. She found himself wondering what he was thinking. Catherine was one of his oldest friends and Warrick...
Once, she had envied Warrick for his standing with Grissom, trying to carve her own and finding it hard. But she had soon realised what she wanted was not really Warrick's position. It wasn't enough. She wanted Grissom's heart, still wanted it.
He hung up and she knew it wasn't good news from the hanging of his head and she braced herself.
"That was Brass again."
She nodded.
"No news," he went on. "Sam Braun is apparently willing to offer a reward, but it doesn't seem to be about money."
"Do we know..." she swallowed, not wanting to say the word for fear of making it true, "do we know if they're dead?"
Grissom shook his head. His eyes seemed slightly glazed over and the look on his face tore into her heart and added another pain. She sank down to sit on the bed next to him, for a moment feeling dead herself.
Grissom was staring at his clasped hands and she slowly placed her own hand on his. His skin was warm and she stroked a thumb along his knuckles, feeling lines of years passed.
"They'll be all right, Gil," she said, and his first name felt oddly intimate on her lips. His eyes were dark as he lifted his head and looked up at her; for once he seemed bare before her. She was looking at Gil Grissom and for a moment, she couldn't even feel her breath.
Hurt and fear and strain, all Grissom's, all hers to see and share.
Then his breath was on hers and he kissed her, lips warm and demanding and comforting too. And somewhere deep down she knew he was seeking solace and perhaps she was too. But it didn't matter. What mattered was that he sought it in her.
He braided his fingers into her hair, his fingertips warm against her scalp. His beard scratched her skin, but that too felt like pleasure.
"Sara," he whispered into their kiss, voice raw and needy and warming her to her spine. All seemed white and she could feel the night sun on her face even through closed eyes. She felt strangely beside herself, as if it wasn't her rested palm against his heartbeats, as if it wasn't her skin that tingled, as if she was merely watching Gil Grissom push Sara Sidle down on the bed.
"Say stop," he murmured, hand warm on her stomach, pushing up her shirt.
"Don't stop."
She thought she might kill him if he did stop, but he merely kissed her again, pressing her against cool sheets and the weight of him on her like a shield against the world. An illusion of protection. Sometimes, illusions were all between you and the abyss, where all the losses howled and the strain tied you down.
She arched against his touch as his palm cupped her breast, arched against the sunlight and warmth and let herself forget. It was an illusion and she would pay for it, she knew. But that was tomorrow and the sun hadn't set yet, still burning in the eternity of sky.
'Just another illusion that tomorrow never comes,' she thought briefly, feeling Grissom's skin against hers as the midnight sun blazed its agreement at her.
Tomorrow would come.
