Chapter 2

Brass stopped just outside the doorway of the bedroom. He was reluctant to intrude on the scene before him, knowing that he was going to ruin the fragile moments of peace Sara and Maggie had managed to find. Maggie's room had seemed to escape the destruction of the rest of the house. Sighing to himself he knocked on the door frame.

"Sara."

Sara turned at the sound of her name, surprised to find Brass entering the room. She hadn't realized that he had arrived. She had to pay more attention. "Maggie, you remember Captain Brass. He works with Grissom and me." She kept her hand on the girl's shoulder as she stood up. As Brass walked into the room, Maggie took a step closer to Sara, latching onto her side as if attached by velcro.

"The ambulance is here," Brass informed Sara.

"Mommy?"

Sara crouched down once more, and ran a hand along Maggie's hair. "The paramedics are going to take care of her, fix her up so that she doesn't hurt anymore."

Brass watched the two, and felt his heart break a little. He remembered another little girl, asking questions in that same plaintive tone. A little blond nine year old, watching her dad pack a suitcase.

"Daddy, where are you going? Why are you leaving us?" Her eyes were big, and the look in them was almost more then he could bear. Stopping in the middle of the shirt he was folding, he picked up his daughter and sat down on the edge of the bed with her in his arms.

"Ellie Rebecca, I am not leaving you. I'm your dad, and I will always be your dad. Your mom and I just need a little break. You know how much mommy and I have been fighting lately." Horrible fights, they had been too. Fights that had culminated in her throwing a nasty little fact at him, shattering any hope he had of keeping his marriage together. Ellie wasn't his. Not his biological daughter. His wife and the mailman. Could there be a worse cliché?

"I will be here tomorrow night to pick you up, and we'll go out to dinner, just the two of us." Brass promised his daughter. "How about Frankie's Pizza?"

"Can I go with you now?" Ellie begged.

"Can I go with her?" Maggie questioned.

"Not right now, Maggie May. I'll take you to see her tonight, okay?"

"Sara, I hate to do this, but I need to ask you some questions. Maggie too."

"Damn it, Brass. Hasn't she been through enough? Do you really need to make her go through it again?" Whatever calm Sara had managed to find abruptly departed.

"Don't you want to find who did this?" It was a rhetorical question, and Sara

did not bother to answer.

"What do you want to know?" she asked, resigned. Sara was accustomed to being the one doing the questioning, and wasn't comfortable with the tables being turned on her.

"Why don't you just tell me what you know, and I'll stop you if I have any questions."

"I was at home about half an hour ago, and received a phone call from Maggie." She proceeded to fill him in on the events of the last thirty minutes, more then a little uncomfortable when she mentioned that Grissom was the one who answered the phone. Their relationship was not a secret, but she still felt weird when the boundaries between work and personal time were blurred.

"Do you know if Debra has a boyfriend?" Brass asked. As usual, in cases like this he looked to the spouse or significant other.

"Not that I know of. Maggie?" she questioned softly. "Is your mommy dating anyone?"

"Nuh uh. She says she likes it being just her and me."

"What about your dad?" Brass lowered himself to the girl's level as he spoke. "Does he come to visit you?"

"I don't havva dad. He went away when I was a baby." She wouldn't meet him in the eye, was starring at his chest instead.

Brass reached down to his front pocket and unclipped his badge. "Do you want to hold this?" Maggie nodded, and shyly reached for the gold star. It never failed. He had yet to meet the kid who said no to a cop's shiny badge. "Do you know who came to visit your mom today?"

Sara was standing behind Maggie, and Brass could feel her stare aimed at him. Hurry up, Brass, it seemed to say.

"I don't know. He said to open the door, but that's not the words he used. He said some words that I'm not allowed to. Like that word that Bobby said at school, and then had to stay in for recess all day. Mommy picked me up and put me in the closet. Said it was a game, like hide and seek, and I couldn't come out 'til she came and got me. But I waited and waited and she didn't come." Maggie's bottom lip was trembling now, tears were starting to form at the corner of her eyes.

"Is that all, Brass?" It was phrased as a question, but Sara was not-so-subtly letting him know that he was finished questioning the little girl. "Yeah. You did good, Maggie. Real good," he reassured the child in his own taciturn way. "I'm going back to the station, see if there's anything in the system about Debra or her husband." After retrieving his badge he left.

As soon as Brass walked out of the room, Grissom walked in. "The paramedics just left," he informed Sara. "They're taking her to Desert Palms."

"Thanks, Griss." She was standing in the middle of the room, Maggie still attached to her side, grasping one of Sara's belt loops.

"I called Nick in. He's coming here, so as soon as he arrives we can go."

"Good."

Grissom was still in the doorway, unsure of how to proceed. He wanted to comfort both the people before him, but didn't know how. Sara's posture screamed that she was holding herself together by sheer force of willpower. He was afraid that if he pulled her into his arms as he wanted to do, she might either snap or fall apart. Neither was a good choice, so he settled for

squeezing her shoulder and then bending down to pick up Maggie.

"So, I was thinking that on the way home we could stop at the lab and see my bugs. Boris has been asking for you to visit."

"Really? He wants me?" Maggie's voice was eager, still retaining that childlike belief that spiders talked.

"Asked for you by name." Grissom confirmed.

"Can we, Sara?" Maggie wore a smile on her face for the first time that day.

"Sure." If they went to the lab, that would give Sara a chance to do a computer search on her own. Not that she didn't have complete faith in Brass, but she needed to be doing something.

"Griss? Sara?" The slight Texas twang of Nick's voice sounded from the living room.

Grissom set Maggie down and went to greet the CSI, leaving Sara to gather Maggie's bag and take the girl out to the truck. He was filling Nick in on the case when they came out of the back room.

"Hey, Mags," Nick interrupted Grissom in the middle of a sentence when the pair approached them. "How's the ant farm?"

Debra had rejected the idea of a pet spider when Maggie had asked for one after

seeing Grissom's tarantula. She had, however, allowed an ant farm. "They're making lots and lots of tunnels. I feed them sugar water everyday, just like Mr. Grissom showed me. You wanna see?" In the natural resilience that comes with childhood, Maggie trustingly reached out her hand to Nick. Practiced big brother, Nick slipped his hand into hers, and let himself be led down the hall.

"How are you?" Grissom gave in to the urge to touch her, cupping her cheek with his palm.

"I'm fine."

Grissom lifted his eyebrow in silent rebuttal. Fine?

"What do you want me to say, Griss? I'm angry as hell and whoever beat up Debra had better hope that Brass and his guys find him before I do. I'm fine. Just leave it at that." Her hands were clenched and she was breathing deeply, trying to restrain herself from lashing out physically. None of this was Grissom's fault, but unfortunately for him he was the only one there.

"For a minute, looking at Debra, I saw my mom." She clenched her hands even tighter, feeling the sting as her nails cut into the tender skin on the inside of her hands. If she wasn't so upset, she wouldn't have let that piece of information slip out, not even to Grissom. He knew the basic story of her childhood, but very few details. It wasn't something she talked about, not with anyone.

"He broke her arm once. Usually it was just bruises, but once he pushed her down a flight of stairs. I was eleven. Ben had just turned sixteen, and he drove her to the hospital. She told them she had tripped over a pair of shoes and fallen. That night she cooked him dinner, even though she only had one good arm."

"Sara, I..." Grissom began.

"Can we go see my mom yet, Sara?" Maggie and Nick had returned.

"Not yet, Maggie, but we can go to the lab and see Boris. How's that?" Sara's face revealed none of what she was feeling. If Grissom didn't know better, he would think she was unaffected by the events of the last hour. Unless he looked into her eyes. Well versed in Sara, he took her expression as a hint that she needed to change the subject.

"Let's go."