Author's Notes: The chapters keep on coming! (Knocks on wood quickly...) Thanks for the feedback, as always.
Giving Up
by Kristen Elizabeth
To call his reception at the Dominion frosty would have been an understatement.
But Heather allowed him past the heavy double doors, into the gothic foyer, probably due more to the fact that she was used to letting men she wasn't particularly fond of into her house than to any desire to talk to him. Whatever her reasons, Grissom was grateful.
She'd cut her hair since the last time he'd seen her, and added some streaks that flattered her incredible face. Even with her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, she looked every bit the mysterious dominatrix.
"You're the last person I expected to see at my door ever again," Heather said, breaking the silence between them. "Which begs the question, what do you want?"
Grissom nodded, as if acknowledging her right to still be angry with him. "I need your help."
"My staff are all accounted for; I started keeping tight tabs on them after the third dead body." She folded her arms over her breasts. "So this can't be related to a case of yours."
"It's not. It's…personal."
She arched one eyebrow at him. "Something new for you."
"And uncomfortable." Grissom hesitated. "I owe you an apology."
"Not for sleeping with me," Heather said, vehemently. "No man apologizes to me for that."
"No. Not for that. For what happened afterwards."
"The part where you accused me of murder?" She adjusted her stance. "I don't hold a grudge. But I don't forget either."
"I don't expect you to. I handled things badly." He shook his head. "There was a lot in my life then…I wasn't prepared to deal with…" He stopped and tried a different approach. "I'm sorry."
Heather studied him for a minute. "You're no longer reading my lips, so I take it your hearing problems have cleared up?"
"Thanks to surgery, yes."
"But there's still something bothering you, isn't there? Or else you wouldn't be here."
Grissom cleared his throat. "I need you to tell me what's wrong with me…and how to fix it."
Another long minute passed. "Well," Heather finally said. "And I thought it was going to be a slow afternoon." She started up the stairs. "Come on," she told him when he didn't immediately follow. "We'll have tea."
Something was digging into her left butt cheek. The painful pressure roused Sara out of the darkness, but there was little light when she opened her eyes. She was blindfolded, she quickly surmised. And bound at the wrists she discovered when she tried to pull the blindfold off. Whoever had tied her up wasn't a professional; she could have easily removed it. But her captor had lucked out. There wasn't enough room to move her arms in order to do so. Wherever she was, it was small, dark and smelled faintly of oil.
The trunk of someone's car. She knew it for sure when she came around enough to feel the whir of motion underneath her body.
If the car was on the open road, there wasn't much use in calling for help, but that logic didn't stop her from trying for a few seconds.
"Help!" she screamed, trying to kick her legs. "Help me!"
She gave up almost as soon as she started. A pounding headache wasn't helping the situation; all she could recall was something heavy hitting the back of it. Then, nothing. Had she lost minutes or hours? Days, maybe? There was no way to tell. And that frightened her even more.
Her training kicked in and temporarily squashed her instinctual panic. She had better conserve her energy for whatever happened next. She was obviously being taken somewhere. But by who? The last person she'd seen had been Callie, Lawton's receptionist. Was there any way that seemingly frail woman could have knocked her out and stuffed her unconscious body into a car trunk? It didn't seem likely. Unless she was just a rape center secretary by day and a modern Wonder Woman by night.
Maybe there had been a burglar in Lawton's house. If that was true, Callie might also be bound and blindfolded somewhere. The thought bolstered her momentarily, because even though if this was the work of a random stranger and it would be twice as hard for her co-workers to figure out who was behind her kidnapping in time to help her, it meant that the only other person who could be responsible wasn't.
God, if Grissom turned out to be right about Lawton, he was going to be impossible to live with.
Another wave of panic welled up inside her. Why wasn't she taking this more seriously? She'd been assaulted and kidnapped. Normal people wouldn't be thinking about Wonder Woman in the same situation. Unless they were wishing for her powers to help them out. Although could a Lasso of Truth really help her escape the trunk of a moving vehicle?
Okay. That was it. She had to come up with a plan. Whenever the car stopped and the trunk opened, she would just kick with all of her might. If she was lucky, she'd hit her kidnapper. If she was really lucky, it would be in a particularly vulnerable area.
She hadn't counted on passing out again. When she woke up for a second time, she was all alone.
In the middle of the desert.
"Is that everything?"
"Up until now, yes." Grissom set aside his empty cup. "Heather…"
"I can see why you came here. I'm not sure how I feel about playing shrink for you, but it won't be the first time I've stepped into that role." She refilled their cups from the antique china pot. "Quite a hole you've dug for yourself, Gil."
"I'm nothing if not good at what I do."
"Before I start, I need to know something." Heather added sugar to his tea. "Besides the obvious reasons, why did you sleep with me that night?"
He took a long time to answer which pleased her at first. He was trying to be honest with himself, a habit he needed to get into quickly if he was going to straighten out the mess he'd made of his personal life. But after a few minutes of silence, she decided he still needed a bit of prompting.
"Wasn't I a risk?" she asked, lifting her cup to her lips. "What made me an acceptable one?"
"I suppose you were a risk. But only to my career. Not my…" He stopped.
She smiled ruefully as she set her tea down. "You can say it, Gil. Not a risk to your…"
"Heart." He frowned. "She thinks I don't have one."
"Well, she's hurting. And lashing out at you in the only way she thinks might make an emotional impact." Heather crossed one long, leather-clad leg over the other. "I'm going to guess that she's the only one who could."
"Other people's opinions matter to me. They just don't…"
"Hurt."
Grissom shook his head. "She has too much power over me."
"Power is a tricky thing, Gil. Part of what makes my business so successful is that in the real world, we often have little to no say in who has power over us. Parents, bosses…lovers. You asked me to figure out what's wrong with you and to tell you how to fix it."
"What are you suggesting? I take a whip to one of your girls until I can accept the fact that a woman fifteen years my junior has a level of control over me that I've never given to anyone in my entire life?"
Her eyebrow arched again. "If it was that easy, I'd have you matched with one of them before dinner time. That's not what I had in mind, Gil."
"Just tell me what's wrong with me." He splayed his hands across the crisp, white tablecloth. "And how to fix it. Please."
"You already know what's wrong with you. You're lonely. You've taken something that would give you comfort and happiness and put it up on a forbidden shelf because you're scared of losing control. And while I do think a session or two here would do you a world of good, I know that deep down you already know what you need to do."
The lost look on his face tugged at heartstrings she thought she'd severed years ago. Now she remembered what had prompted her to take him into her bed. "What?" he asked again in a near whisper.
Heather swallowed a lump in her throat. "Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for."
"Dag Hammarskjold." He looked down at his hands, chuckling softly. "And she quotes Scandanavian diplomats, too."
"I'm multi-talented." She smiled. "I'm sure you remember that, though."
The look he gave her was much more like the man she'd almost fallen for. Heather nodded. "You're going to be all right, Gil Grissom. I think you just needed to hear it from someone over whom you have no power."
"I can't undo everything I've done to her. Everything I've failed to do."
"No. But every minute from now on is a new chance to do things differently." Heather raised one slender shoulder. "Or are you waiting for another near-death experience?"
Grissom's cell phone rang just then, sparing him from having to think about that possibility. "Grissom."
"Gris, it's Greg. I can't reach Sara. There was someone at the door and she was supposed to call me back, but that was two hours ago and now I'm really worried and her cell goes straight to voice mail, it's weird because she keeps that thing on no matter what and…"
"Greg. Slow down. I just saw Sara and she's fine."
"Then why hasn't she called me back? She promised she'd call me back. She always calls back; it's like a security system, you know? I mean, she lives alone and I live alone, so we have this system and…"
"Greg!" He rubbed his forehead. "When I saw Sara, she was pretty upset. She probably turned her phone off to avoid…everyone."
"Pretty upset?" Greg's tone went up a few notches. "Why? What happened? She was fine when I talked to her, except for someone being at her…door." Realization set in. "It was you, wasn't it? What did you do to her?"
"This isn't a good time to talk. Keep trying Sara; I'm sure she'll turn her phone back on eventually."
But Greg wouldn't be put off so easily. "You don't even care, do you? It really wouldn't matter to you if something had happened to her! God, I'm so stupid! I actually believed that you didn't visit her when she was in the hospital because you didn't want to see her like that, all banged up and broken. But it wasn't that you cared too much. It's that you didn't…you don't care at all!" He went on, even when Grissom tried to break in, "I am going to keep trying her. Because I give a damn. Sorry you can't say the same."
Grissom closed up his phone. Heather wasn't watching him, but it was obvious she'd been listening. Analyzing.
"I'm sure she's fine. She's just mad at me. With every right to be, of course."
Heather nodded. "I'm sure." She paused. "Every minute from now on is an opportunity, Gil. But you're not guaranteed a single one of them." She stood up. "It was good to see you again. Now, if you don't mind, I'll have to ask you to leave. You never know when a client might show up, and there are a few of them who wouldn't like running into CSI Grissom on their way inside."
He nodded, but his mind was already out the door. Heather saw him out, unable to ignore that in the short time it took to descend the stairs, he managed to make three out-going calls. She didn't need to look at his phone to know who he was trying to reach out and touch.
Her kidnapper (kidnappers?) had at least removed the blindfold. Sara wasn't sure if she should be grateful for that small favor. It just meant that she could clearly see the danger she was now in. Stranded in the desert in the heat of the day without shade or water…ignorance really was bliss.
She allowed herself sixty seconds of pure fear. Sixty seconds to be absolutely convinced that she was going to die alone in the middle of nowhere and that she'd end up on Doc Robbins' slab as nothing but a pile of bones. Sixty seconds to think of all the things she'd never done, and now never would. Sixty seconds worth of goodbyes to her friends.
Sixty beats of her heart to wish she could see Grissom one last time.
Then it was time to get down to the business of saving herself. Blinking away her tears, Sara struggled to sit up. Her hands were still bound in front of her rather tightly. She'd start on getting free of those first. It turned out to be a much more difficult task when her head felt like Athena herself was trying to be born from her skull. She smiled as she fought the ropes; Grissom would have appreciated the Greco-Roman mythological reference.
Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead and the back of her neck. The sun beat down on her without mercy. By the time she freed her right hand, she could already feel the tell-tale skin tightness that signaled a serious sunburn. Why did she have to have such fair skin? Grissom could go five hours at an outdoor crime scene with a light layer of SPF 10 and come out with a slightly deeper tan; she needed 50 and had to reapply every hour on the hour. And she still got freckles.
Whatever had been digging into her backside in the trunk was still bugging her. When her hands were finally free, Sara reached back to find the source of the irritation. She winced; the ropes had left raw, bloody marks on her wrists. But the pain turned out to be worth it. There was something hard in her back pocket.
Her cell phone.
Sara pulled it out, her fingers trembling from sheer relief. The battery was fully charged. She kissed the phone before flipping it open.
Searching for signal…searching for signal…searching for signal…out of service area.
Her elation was so quickly replaced with disappointment that it physically hurt. Sara looked around, trying to get her bearings. There were mountains all around her, but no real way to identify any of them. The sun's position gave her some idea of direction, but which way should she go? She could be anywhere. She might not even be in Nevada anymore. Death Valley wasn't that far a drive from Vegas.
If she was in California, she'd need to head east. If she was in the Wildlife Refuge, she'd need to head south. There were too many possibilities and with no real way to narrow any of them down, Sara decided to be as logical as possible. Assuming that her kidnapper was the same person who killed Julia Sommers…and she wasn't quite ready to deal with the implications of that just yet…then it was likely that she'd been dumped in or around the same area where Julia was found. That would mean she was approximately thirty miles to the north of Las Vegas in the Refuge. It was a start.
She had at least a few hours until the sun set, when she'd be in real trouble. Heat could hurt, but cold could kill. A tank top and jeans were hardly going to protect her from the nighttime elements. But all she could do was get going and pray she came into range of a cell tower soon.
But before she started out, she noticed something. Fresh tire treads in the rocky sand. Whoever had driven her out there had left something behind. Every CSI instinct compelled her to process her own crime scene. She carefully wound up the rope; there could be epithelial cells from the person who had tied her up. With the camera in her cell phone, she snapped as many pictures as she could of the tire tracks. If she was going to die in the desert, she wanted the responsibility party, whoever that might be, to fry.
Sara took a breath, closed up her phone, and started walking.
You've reached CSI Sara Sidle. I'm unable to answer my phone right now, but if you leave your name and a brief message, I'll return your call as soon as possible. If this is an emergency regarding an active case, please contact the Las Vegas Crime Lab and ask for Supervisor Gil Grissom. Thank you.
It was the thirty-third time he'd listened to the message. By the twentieth, his heart rate was up to ninety, but it wasn't anger he was feeling. It was dread. She wasn't at her apartment. She wasn't at the lab. She wasn't even at the rape crisis center.
By the fortieth time, he'd stopped expecting her to answer. Now all he wanted was to hear her voice.
Sara was missing. And suddenly all of those minutes he thought he'd always have were anything but guaranteed.
To Be Continued