A/N: Sorry for being late. I hope this makes up for it! Enjoy!

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Day 1

12:45 PM

It wasn't only the fact that they had not found her, the team was patient, even in this situation, it was the fact that they'd never had the chance to find her. There were no leads, no tracking devices, and they were trapped within the walls of the CSI lab trying desperately to find a person who seemed to just disappear off the face of the planet.

"Damn it!" Nick shouted as he hurled his empty foam coffee cup at the wall. This surprised everyone, and all eyes were on Nick.

"Hey, man, it's okay, we'll find her," Warrick tried to sooth his friend. It had only been a few hours, but they could see that this day wasn't going to change. And Grissom was literally watching the time slipping away.

12:46:19, 12:46:20, 12:26:21…

"Grissom?" He looked up at Greg, who was waving a hand in front of his face. "Where'd you go just then?"

"Oh, sorry guys. I'll be in my office if you need me," he said as he stood to walk out of the break room.

"Oh no you don't," Catherine told him sternly as she made her way to his side. "You are going to sit in here with the rest of us until we get this, mess, sorted out." He could tell she was genuinely concerned, but he really needed to get away from the bright lights or else his migraine would begin to threaten his very sanity.

"Okay, but could we turn off the lights?" he asked as he sat down, his head in his hands.

Catherine understood and walked to the light switch to turn it off. After she had done so, the room was a serene blue from the reflection of the hallways. The serenity of the room contradicted the people sitting in it. Everyone's mind was racing as thoughts of Sara came flooding back.

It had been a cold winter night when Sara and Nick were processing a crime scene outside of an abandoned warehouse. It was then that Nick looked up to see Sara staring into a garbage can, which had become garbage itself.

"Hey, Sar, you got something there?" His question went unnoticed, so he walked over to see what was so interesting. "Sara, you with me here?" He looked into the can and realized there was a lone picture of a family, a mother, father, a girl and a boy, sitting on top of the trash. Nick glanced back at Sara to see her eyes glazed over, as if in remembrance. "Hey, you okay?"

This shook Sara out of her reverie and she glanced back at Nick, her mask on once again. "I'm fine, could be a picture of the victim's children. Let's bag it and see what we can get," she said as she slowly walked away to her truck to get a bag…

Nick knew something had been wrong then, and he wished now that he asked what it was. Maybe it could have helped, he thought, but I just let her walk away like it was just another day.

Warrick's mind wandered to a time only weeks ago in the blazing Las Vegas sun.

Sara had been doing an experiment on herself to see how many miles it took running to reach a certain body temperature. "You know," Warrick suggested, "we can get real marathoners to do this." This seemed to enthuse Sara more, so they set off down the road.

Sara was the almost the same height and weight of the victim, and wore exactly what the victim wore, a white lycra/spandex sports bra, black shorts, and white ankle socks with sneakers. Warrick was in the truck following next to her and keeping on coming traffic at bay. Every half mile she would take her temperature, and every half mile she would keep going. It was one hundred two degrees outside, and by the second mile he could she the heat getting to her.

"Sara, you don't have to do this. We can get the same results from the computer."

She just forged ahead, saying, "You won't get the human element on the computer." He knew it was pointless to argue, and continued following her.

At mile three, her body temperature was a dangerous one hundred one degrees, but she needed to get to one hundred three. She knew she was playing with fire, but she had to do this for the victim. Someone had to speak for her. It had only been a few minutes into mile three when her body began to shut down. Warrick could see it and insisted that she stop, for her own health. When she finally fell to the ground, Warrick was right there next to her with a bottle of water.

She never asked for help, so I didn't help her, he thought. I should have just picked her up kicking and screaming and helped her whether she liked it or not. He berated himself for not helping her. She thinks she's so tough, he thought, but we all know she's just begging for someone reach out to her and ask her what's wrong. She just wants someone to be there for her, for her to have proof that they care; and I should have been that person.

Warrick continued to sit berating himself on the break room couch next to Catherine, who was also remembering a time between she and Sara, an argument that seemed like it happened only days ago, but really occurred over two years ago.

Catherine and Sara were processing the home of a suspected wife abuser when he suddenly appeared in the house. "What the hell do you think you're doing in my house?" he screamed at them.

"Sir, please go outside," Catherine kindly asked of him.
"No, you're gonna have to make me! This is my God damn house! Get out!"

"We have a warrant to be here. Now please step outside." Catherine was starting to get fed of with the man.

"So, who sent you here. Let me guess, my wife called the police telling you I beat her up?"

"No, but why would she say that?" Catherine didn't want to tip her hat too early.

"I was drunk one night and accidentally slapped her, and she got pissed at me and never forgave me."

"One night! One slap?" Sara took off her gloves and headed towards the husband. "Try years! Try every night for years and years and years!" Tears were threatening to break, but she kept strong and continued or torrent of verbal abuse. She could smell the alcohol on his breath and it only fueled the fire. "Your wife is in the fucking morgue you bastard! You beat her to death with your bare hands! And you come here and tell us that all you did was slap her once? Yeah right."

Just then, an officer came in and took the husband outside. "Next time try to do your job, or there won't be a next time!" screamed Catherine as the officer and suspect walked outside.

When they were outside, Catherine turned to Sara. "What the hell are you doing? We could have gotten a confession out of him!"

"What were you going to do, flip your hair and give him a wink?"

That was it. There was no going back from there.

"No! I was going to interrogate him like I do every other suspect! I was going to be an investigator, not and executioner!"

"I wish I were an executioner, so I could take out you!"

"What does that mean?"

"You know exactly what it means!" Before Sara could even lift her fist, Brass walked in and forcefully took her out of the room and stuck her in the back of his car, as if for safe keeping. She needed to cool down.

Meanwhile, Catherine continued standing in the living room of the house, panting slightly as the adrenaline wore off and the realization of the fight finally caught up with her.

Catherine knew she shouldn't have blown up at Sara about it. She realized that those types of things set Sara off. But now she couldn't do anything about it; couldn't ask her why. She needed to know why. She already had an idea, and shivered as she thought about it. She couldn't imagine a life like that, and wouldn't wish it on anyone.

If that was what Sara went through, Catherine knew that it would definitely leak into her work as an investigator. She was astonished that Sara could put such a mask on. Her ability to front amazed her, and Catherine only wished that Sara had let someone share her pain, and maybe she wouldn't be missing.

Greg's thoughts differed from the others'. He was remembering a time many years ago when he and Sara could joke all day long and never get tired.

"So, Sara," Greg began in a provocative voice. "The Greg Man is free tomorrow night. Got the night off. Hows about you and me take a little ride on the S.S. Greggo?" he said wiggling his eyes.

"Greg!" Sara yelled smiling, throwing her pen at him.

"Ouch! Hey, what was that for?"

"You know exactly what that was for!" she told him, still smiling and laughing. She didn't laugh much, but when she did, he wasn't going to stop her. He continued with the charade.

"Oh, you think that was bad." He stood up from his seat in the lab and started towards her.

"Greg what are you doing?" she asked, still laughing. He was walking very slowly towards her, looking like he was about to pounce. Sara noticed this, and was about to jump out of her chair when he flung himself at her, his fingers making a beeline for her stomach and moving viciously around her abdomen.

This immediately sent Sara into a fury of giggles and screams and she swore she wasn't breathing anymore. Her eyes were brimming with tears of laughter when Grissom walked into the lab. He wanted to be made at the two, but Sara smile and laughter shot right to his heart and he realized there was nothing he loved more than when Sara was happy.

He smiled, and she smiled back. The two were caught in a locked gaze when Greg started his torment again.

Greg thought back to the time and realized that it had been so long since he'd seen her smile. It seemed a century ago that she laughed. He wondered what had made her so angry and upset lately. He wished he had talked to her, but now it felt like it was too late.

Brass was sitting at the break room table, cup in hand, remembering a time when he thought Sara was a goner.

Sara had come into the lab, a bag of cough drops in hand. She was so focused on a file she didn't even notice Brass right in front of her and practically ran into him. "Oh, Brass, sorry for almost running into you. Hi! How's it going?"

"Fine. You? You look like you're coming down with something. Maybe you should ask Grissom for the night off." Sara coughed for good measure, scolding herself for not concealing the alcohol masking devices.

"No, you know, I'm fine. I might just hang out in the lab though." Yeah right, she thought.

"You know Sara, sometimes with colds, you have to stay home and let it go away. Let it just blow over. But sometimes," he whispered in her ear as he began to walk away, "You have to confront whatever gave you the 'cold'." She looked at him like he was crazy, and when she was about to argue, he quickly interrupted saying, "feel better," and walked away.

I should have just asked her what was wrong instead of making her feel like an idiot, he thought. God, I can be such an asshole sometimes. What kind of friend am I that I just walk away from her when I know something's wrong.

Grissom's mind was racing through every time he'd been mean to Sara, every time he yelled at her or scolded her. It all came crashing down on him the night she had told him about his family.

Sara had sat down on the chair next to the couch where he sat in her house. She had told him about the fighting that went on in her day after day, trips to the hospital. He had almost cried when she said that that was the way she thought all families lived. Then she had asked if he believed there was a murder gene, and he had given some smart-ass reply about it, saying that they weren't.

But then she had told him the thing that broke his heart into tiny shards that ripped open his chest. She told him that her mother had killed her father, and she broke down crying, right in front of him.

There was also an incident a mental hospital that almost killed Grissom right then and there, when he thought he would lose her forever.

A suspect, Adam Trent, had trapped Sara in the nurse's station, a sharp shard of plaster in his hand. He held the shard against Sara's neck as Grissom stood outside, watching the whole thing unfold through a glass window. The terror in Sara's eyes would haunt him for years to come, he knew, and he never wanted to see it again.

He asked Adam to please open the door, but he didn't respond. When a hospital worker finally got the door open, the noise startled him, and Sara was able to struggle out of his arms as he slit his own throat.

Grissom knew he would never be able to shake those images out of his head. He knew that he should have done something about his feelings immediately after that; should have pulled her into a loving embrace and told her how he felt and try to comfort her.

Now he knew that it was too late. She was gone. She was never coming back.

And that was when Grissom had an idea. He remembered back to Sara talking to him afterwards, about her mother being in a mental hospital. He knew there was something unresolved in that aspect of her life.

Suddenly, his eyes went wide. His mind was putting the puzzle together. He ran out of the break room, all eyes turning towards him. The team looked to each other, to the door, back to each other and they all rushed out the door to find Grissom.

He went to the computer he saw Sara in earlier in the morning, logged onto the Internet, and hit the "history" button. He saw what he was looking for- directions from Sara's apartment to the Santa Monica Mental Correctional Facility.

"Why the hell would she need that?" Catherine asked behind him, startling him.

"I'm leaving. Don't follow me. You know where I'm going. I'll call you when I get there." With that, Grissom took off down the hall to his Denali, not bothering to go home and pack anything. Everything he needed was in Santa Monica, California.'

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3:24 PM

Sara stepped out of her truck and noticed a piece of paper fall off her seat. It was the directions she had printed out that morning. I completely forgot I had that, she thought. Would have saved me from stopping to get that map. She remembered the old woman's words, and continued to repeat them over and over again in her head.

"Some one special at the end of your ride?"

She knew there was someone special at the beginning of her ride, but she had to stop thinking about him. If she continued to think about Grissom, she would never have the guts to go through with seeing her mother. She would just turn around and drive back to Vegas. She would come crawling back again.

So she shunned thoughts of Grissom from her mind and made her way up the steps to the place that housed all of her demons.

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4:12 PM

Little did Sara know that Grissom wasn't in Vegas anymore, but only two and a half hours away from Santa Monica. He was on his way to save her from her mother, but he knew he'd also have to save her from herself.