Chapter 1

Standing under the hot spray, Sara Sidle forced herself to relax as the water washed away the grime and tension from her body. By nature germ-phobic, trips to the landfill always left her feeling dirtier than she really was, and the reality was bad enough. Today's visit left her exhausted as well, and thoughts of bed beckoned her to hurry instead of savoring the shower.

The hairs on the back of her neck tried vainly to rise under the watery onslaught, and she snapped her eyes open. The water muffled all sounds, so she peeked cautiously through the fog on the shower door. There, in the shadows, she barely made out his outline. After a moment, the dark figure went through the motions of removing a shirt, and she easily imagined his ragged breathing as he spied on her.

Smiling to herself, thoughts of bed took on a new meaning. She moved the soapy washcloth seductively across her chest, slowly circling and rubbing, imagining his reaction. When she judged that went on long enough, she started on her legs, further teasing and enticing him. Daring another glance, she saw the spectral pantomime of another hand moving erotically.

Turning her back to the door, her grin broadened as she moved the washcloth more intimately, knowing that he would soon be joining her. Her eyes closed, already anticipating the feel of his hands on her, his lips caressing her flesh.

When the door opened, she didn't turn around; when the hands shoved her roughly against the wall, it was too late to try. As shrieks filled the air and her world went dark, one thought floated in her mind: Grissom was in Massachusetts!

The shrieking continued as Sara forced her eyes to open, and she slammed her hand on the alarm clock, swearing as she tried to calm her breathing. Nightmares weren't anything new, and her recent case obviously triggered it, but that was the first time one involved Grissom.

Rolling over, she eyed the empty pillow. It didn't take a genius to figure out why he factored in her nightmares now. He was gone, officially to teach, but the reason didn't really matter. He had left her, and she didn't know what it meant.

Sara reached toward the pillow sadly. No trace of his presence remained, not even a lingering scent, but her memory supplied details of the feel of his stubble on her fingers, the groggy way he tried to bury himself under the covers when the alarm sounded, the small, contented smile every time he opened his eyes and saw her beside him.

Letting out a huff, she drew her hand back and threw the covers off. She had a few hours to kill before heading into the lab, and she wasn't going to spend them moping. Pulling off her sweat-soaked pajamas, she marched to the bathroom, ignoring the residual shudder as she approached the shower.

One advantage of his absence was she didn't have to explain the nightmare. They bothered him more than they did her, and she always felt a tinge of guilt at his discomfort. Grabbing a fresh towel from the shelf, she wiped at her eyes and tried to stop thinking about how he'd be soothing her if he had been there.

Grissom would be back in a few weeks, and she'd know then if it was to her.


By the time she reached the lab that evening, Sara was in a better mood. Nightmares always left her tense, but a hot shower, a lot of coffee and two hours of house cleaning forced the haunting images from her mind.

Unfortunately, it hadn't done much for her doubts.

Logically, she knew there was probably no reason to worry, but the fact remained that good things did not happen to her. It was a lesson learned so often she considered it as much a universal truth as Planck's constant. Everything positive in her life resulted from hard work on her part. But her relationship with Grissom went beyond good.

When they finally got together, she'd expected him to remain the same eccentric, somewhat emotionally unavailable man he'd always been. And he hadn't changed. Instead, she learned he had depths that she never expected. He had rebuilt his entire world to make room for her. What he couldn't vocalize he showed by action. If he remained possessive, it was because he cherished her. She thought things would level off with time, but the feelings kept growing stronger. It had been a new experience, and nothing in her life prepared her for it.

So when he had told her that he was leaving for a month, she immediately thought the worst. She wasn't able to reconcile his actions with their happiness. If he wanted to teach, as he said, there was no reason to go halfway across the continent. The fact that he had dropped it on her suddenly and as a done deal hadn't helped.

She wanted to believe he wasn't trying to get away from her, and everything he'd done for her before his sabbatical screamed that he would return. But three decades of a crappy life had left its mark, and in the back of her mind she feared this was his way of calling it off. What he couldn't vocalize he showed by action.

Heading into the locker room, her doubts immediately became unimportant. Greg stood in front of his locker, meticulously straightening his tie over the suit on a clothes hanger. When he continued to do so distractedly for half a minute, she frowned. She hadn't expected him to be the same happy-go-lucky jokester he'd been before his attack, but the nearly constant melancholy air around him was worrisome.

"Late court date?" she asked with more levity than she felt, setting her bag into her own locker.

"Huh? Oh, no," he said, putting away the hanger and closing the door quickly. He darted his eyes to the side, letting his shoulders roll when he noted her concern. "Attorney."

"I thought you talked to them the other day."

"That was the department's rep. I got my own," he said. "The department's lawyer is looking out for the department. Not me."

She couldn't stop her scowl as she said, "That's probably a smart idea."

"Grissom's advice, actually. He made sure to talk to me about it before he left," Greg said quickly. "It's funny. I used to think that he didn't like me. Well, honestly, I get the impression he doesn't like people in general. But then he's there when people need him. Guess he's not the misanthrope everyone thinks he is."

Her eyebrows shot up at that comment, but otherwise she kept her expression neutral. When it became clear his statement didn't carry any other meaning, she forced herself to relax. Recognizing that he was deliberately changing the subject, Sara went along. "Grissom can be, uh, surprising," she said honestly.

"Yeah. Well, I have evidence to process. Catch ya later."

"Yeah," she said, watching him leave with a growing sense of anger. Greg was already suffering doubly from killing the gang member and his brutal beating. He didn't deserve the added stress and guilt of a baseless lawsuit. She made a mental note to drag him to breakfast after shift; even if he didn't want to talk, knowing he had friends would help him.

It turned out to be a slow night, and she took advantage of the break to catch up on her paperwork. The public didn't realize how much of it they had to file: chain-of-custody forms, evidence logs, diagrams and reports, test results, preparing for court. Once Grissom groused that there were probably documents to request documents to document their documents. If he had one clear character flaw, it was his unreasonable belief that if he ignored something long enough it would go away, and she wouldn't be surprised if he had a pile of old memos composting in the back of a desk drawer.

Opening the first folder, she paused as she realized just how much she missed him. Under the pretense of getting a file, she stole into Grissom's office. The very room bore his personality, and she found it strangely reassuring. She saw his desk and was unable to contain a smug smile at the stack of envelopes, folders and packages already piling up there. He wanted a break; let him deal with the backlog of paperwork it created. It was the perfect cosmic justice.

Her smile changed subtly as she looked into the terrarium. The cocoon was unchanged, and she took a moment to watch it wistfully. The only communication she had with him since he left, and he hadn't even bothered to include a note. She gave her head a knowing shake; that was just like him, and it didn't upset her. Besides, who else but Grissom would think to send a bug in the mail as a gift to a distant lover?

It had to have some sort of symbolism, but she didn't dwell on it. He was too unique, and trying to decipher his reasoning was usually an exercise in futility. She just hoped the thing was able to live in Las Vegas after it hatched; she would be pissed if he intended to kill her bug and add it to his collection.

With a last, thoughtful look, she left to face her paperwork. It was nearly the end of shift when she made it to the Li file, and the memories came forth vividly. True, the case had been bizarre, but that wasn't what triggered the flashback.


"Do you know that eighty percent of women admit to faking an orgasm?" Catherine asked her as they lugged a complicated device into the garage.

"I can believe that," she answered firmly and fatefully. "Is there anything more fragile than a male ego?"

"The male ego after finding out that he isn't the stud he thinks he is," she laughed, and Sara joined in heartily as they tried to figure out what end of the machine went up.

Mr. Li had made the contraption after a lover's quarrel, but all it managed to do was break his own foot when he tried to set it. Trapped, he had to call 911 to rescue him, and in pain he whimpered about his wife saying she was going to get a better lover. He refused to answer questions about what the machine was supposed to do, or why he had just bought a two million dollar life insurance policy on his wife.

During the shift, most of the lab ended up stopping by as they tried to figure out what the thing did, but Sara noted that Grissom hadn't. She was more confused to find out that he had already left the lab in the morning; they had tentative plans to go to Lake Mead for breakfast to start their shared day off.

Worried that he wasn't feeling well, she headed directly to his townhouse, but it was empty. She tried to phone him, but he didn't answer or return her calls. Deciding something had distracted him, she went to bed. It wasn't the first time that he'd gotten wrapped up in something and forgotten to let her know. If nothing else, he'd be apologetic later, and she like the way he apologized.

Things seemed really odd when she woke up in his bed alone, and she stopped short at the sight of him sleeping on his couch. She thought that he had a migraine, but then she spotted the bottle of scotch. Totally confused, she started a pot of coffee before disappearing into the bathroom.

"Hey," she greeted him warmly when she came out and found him making sandwiches.

"Sara."

The greeting was casual, too casual. She suspected something was bothering him, but he was trying hard not to show it.

She poured him a cup of coffee, and he thanked her perfunctorily. Frowning, she leaned against the counter and sipped her mug as she watched him appraisingly. "Is everything okay?" she asked.

"I have no complaints."

She raised an eyebrow as she waited for the caffeine to kick in. He sounded upset with her, but he had made her favorite sandwich. She tried to remember anything that would explain his behavior, but he'd been in a good mood the last time she talked to him.

"Do you want to clue me in on what's going on? 'Cause I'm a bit lost," she finally told him in a soft voice.

"What makes you think anything is wrong?"

"Well, Gil, let's start with the fact that you won't look at me."

After a moment, he looked up, and the pain in his eyes made her gasp. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head and went back to the living room. She curled up by his side on the couch, taking his hand in hers. She tried to caress his face with her other hand, but he shifted out of her reach. "Babe?"

"You should have told me," he finally said with a trace of anger.

"Told you what?"

"You know!"

"Uh, trust me, I'm pretty sure I have no idea what the hell is going on," she said, giving his hand a squeeze. "What did I do that made you so upset?"

"Why didn't you tell me you were disappointed?" he demanded in a strained voice. "I'd have made a better effort if I had known."

"I don't know …"

"That you're faking it!" he snapped, a blush creeping up his face as he jumped off the couch.

"What? You can't be serious."

He turned to her with a sad look on his face. "I heard what you said to Catherine. I was planning on helping you with that thing."

"Wha… you think I was talking about you? Why would you think I was talking about you?" she stammered.

"You were pretty damn adamant about it!"

"Well, yeah, but you know I wasn't a virgin when we hooked up. I've never faked anything with you. I've never had to."

He looked over his shoulder hopefully, but he chewed his lip.

She let out a sigh, glancing around the room as she gathered her thoughts. When she turned back to him, she had a slight smile. "Gil, what color is my toothbrush?"

"Huh?"

She walked to him and rubbed his arm soothingly. "Do you know?"

"It's white with sort of gray and teal highlights. That's the one here. You have a red one at your apartment, and you keep a translucent green one in your locker at work."

"Where do I usually get gas?"

"The station on the corner two blocks due east from your apartment complex. What does this have to do with anything?"

"Everything," she said, reaching up to stroke his cheek. "Gil, you notice everything, even meaningless details. Don't you think you would realize if I was balancing my checkbook while you were going to town?"

His mouth dropped open, and she bent forward to kiss him softly. "You don't disappoint me."

"I know I'm, well, out of practice. And at my age, I can't, uh," he paused, his hand gesturing vaguely. "Can't give you all the attention you deserve."

"Have I ever given you any hint that I wasn't satisfied by your, uh, service?"

"I know you," he said, brushing a lock of hair away from her face with infinite tenderness. "You wouldn't tell me if you were unsatisfied. You wouldn't want to hurt my feelings."

Before she could stop him, he kissed her forehead and went into the bathroom. Letting out a frustrated growl, she started back to the kitchen, but her steps grew slower as an idea came to her.

"Here," she said when he emerged later, shoving the printout into his chest and smirking at him.

"A news story that nerds make better lovers?" he sputtered as she started undoing his shirt.

"I remembered reading that. Figured you needed to. It nails everything about you that makes you so good," she said.

He scanned the document, his face remaining a mask even after he finished. "You really think I'm a nerd?"

Sara stopped kissing his chest and felt like banging her head against it. Leaning back, though, she had to grin. He had a great poker face – except when he was teasing her; he couldn't control the twinkle in his eyes.

"Sure. Funny hats, baggy pants," she purred, running her hands over his belly and smirking as he drew in his breath.

"You gave me that straw hat, so I don't know why you tease me about it" he said, closing his eyes as her hand drifted lower. "And, oh, yeah. Uhm, what about my clothes?"

"We are both off tonight," she reminded him gently. "Do you want to talk about your wardrobe, or do you want to get in touch with your inner nerd?"

He opened his eyes and grinned broadly before answering.


Giving her head a small shake, Sara tossed the folder back onto the pile and released a drawn out huff. That was the last thing she needed to be thinking about – it was too long until he came back. Rubbing her cheek, she glanced at the clock and started putting her files away.

Heading down the hallway to find Greg, she stopped when she heard him on the phone. She wandered to the locker room to let him finish in private, but Catherine cornered her with a smile that seemed almost too eager to be genuine.

"Hey, have any problems tonight?" Catherine asked.

"No," she answered carefully. Sara never understood where she stood with the blonde, especially when she was acting supervisor. They worked well together most of the time, but they weren't exactly friends, so the overly-friendly tone made her suspicious.

"Good, but if you need a hand with anything, give me a holler."

"Okay," she said as she ducked into the locker room, her eyes darting to the side as Catherine joined her.

"You're heading home already? Your face is awfully flushed. You feeling all right?"

"Eh, fine," Sara said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. She had started cutting back on her overtime long ago at the insistence of her PEAP counselor, and the gradual increase in time off went unnoticed by their colleagues after she hooked up with Grissom. They both worked overtime on priority cases, but their definition of priority had narrowed considerably. She made it a point to not change her schedule when he left – it wasn't just a matter of being discreet, but because she wasn't going to let his departure disrupt her life.

The purpose of Catherine's questioning wasn't lost on her. Ever since she let Keppler pull that "reverse forensics" stunt, she'd been trying to get back on the team's good graces. Warrick was trying to smooth things out, but Nick was angry. No one knew what Greg felt. Sara kept her own feelings on the incident private, and there was no way she was going to explain her flush.

"Just getting older. You know how it is," she said in a calm tone.

Catherine let out a resigned sigh. "Yeah, I do."

It was her hurt expression that made Sara shrug her shoulders. She wasn't cruel, and Catherine obviously regretted what happened. She was used to being the people person on the team, and her isolation had to be unsettling.

"I want to take Greg out for breakfast. I think this court thing is getting to him," Sara said quietly.

"Do you think he'll talk to you?"

"I wasn't going to ask him anything. Just let him know he has friends."

Catherine gave her an approving nod. "That's a good idea. Are you taking any… the others with you?"

Before she could answer, both women turned when Doctor Robbins called out, halting at the locker room door.

"What's up, doc?" Catherine chirped.

"Ah, that never gets old," he sighed, pointing to Sara with his cane. "Just the person I need to see."

"You have a body in the morgue?" Catherine asked, looking as confused as Sara felt. None of her cases lately involved corpses.

"That's what I need her to tell me," Robbins said with a mysterious look.


"Mr. John Dough. I am not joking about the name. Found night before last, brought in as a probable drug overdose," the doctor informed her as they entered the morgue. An emaciated body was spread on the slab, and she noticed the telltale tracks on the arms from long-term drug use.

Her head tilted in confusion. Drug overdoses were relatively common, and it wasn't something they usually investigated criminally. "Tox results?" she asked after he seemed hesitant to continue.

"Heroin in his system," he said, handing her the chart.

"This is a high dose."

"Probably fatal if you had that much, but for someone who abused drugs for years? Not necessarily."

"Do you have a cause of death?" she asked.

"As far as I can tell, it was heart failure."

"Not uncommon with addicts," Sara said, frowning when he drummed his pen on a stack of folders. She'd seen Doc amused, tired, irritated and bored. Never in all the years in Vegas had she seen him look so uneasy. "So what was unusual?"

He tossed the pen across the desk and waved to the drawers behind him. "The fact this is the sixth drug addict found dead in that same area in the past two weeks. All apparently of heart failure. None of them with drug levels high enough to be unquestionably fatal."

"That seems high. No pun intended."

"Yes," Robbins said, lowering himself into a chair and frowning. "But strictly speaking not impossible. Heart, liver, kidneys – poison yourself long enough and eventually one of those organs is going to fail."

"Not impossible," she agreed, leaning against a bench and wrapping her arms around her midsection. "But maybe improbable. There had to be another factor."

"I had Trace run a sample from the needles from the scene. No sign of contamination."

Sara shrugged. "But Trace can't check for every compound out there. If the heroin was cut with something exotic, they may not find it."

"Exactly. I had David call Narcotics. There's no talk on the street of bad drugs going around. If it's a tainted supply, it's in a very limited area."

She watched him silently for a moment. The number of deaths in such a small area did seem to be high, but they both knew that wasn't conclusive. The odds of a gambler throwing a dozen sevens in a row at the crap table were next to zero, but it was a possibility that occasionally cost casinos a fortune.

"Why do I get the feeling you're not telling me something?" she asked.

He grunted, shifted in his seat and finally looked up at her with a befuddled expression.

"What do you know about potassium?"

The question seemed odd, but she knew him well enough to know there was a reason for it. "Atomic number nineteen. It's one of the alkali metals; lithium is the only metal that's less dense. Reacts violently with water, oxidizes immediately in air. It's the seventh most abundant element, but it's never found in a pure state," she rattled off, stopping when he burst out laughing.

"Sorry," he said between guffaws. "That was my mistake. What do you know about it medically?"

"It's an electrolyte," she answered hesitantly. "Too much or too little in the body is dangerous."

"Deadly, as a matter of fact. The body regulates it carefully to keep the levels balanced."

Sara gave him an appraising look. "Potassium chloride is the 'lethal' part of lethal injections."

"Exactly. It causes the heart to stop beating. And it's also the drug of choice with mercy killers in hospitals and nursing homes," he said.

"An elderly patient in critical condition going into heart failure at a hospital isn't likely to draw attention," she admitted, turning to him quickly as she nodded toward the body. "What were the potassium levels in your addicts?"

"I didn't check," he said, holding up his hand to quiet her. "Remember I said that the body regulates potassium levels. It stores it throughout the body to use when needed. One of the first things to happen when a person dies is the body releases all the stored potassium. Every corpse would have potassium levels that seem through the roof."

Sara gaped at him for a moment. "There's no way to tell if they were injected with it?"

"And remember when I said it was the drug of choice of mercy killers? Forensically, it's almost impossible to detect potassium poisoning."

"Almost?"

"It causes a unique disruption on an EKG, but it's not likely anyone was measuring these guys' heart rhythms when they died."

Sara gave her head a shake. A poison that doesn't leave a trace? If it was a poisoning; many things caused heart failure. "Is there any reason you think it was potassium poisoning and not something else?" she asked.

He cleared his throat and gave her a sheepish shrug. "Nothing concrete. Look at the vein sample in the microscope."

"What the hell?" she said as she examined the damaged tissues.

"Have you ever gotten salt in a wound? Imagine injecting a highly-concentrated salt solution directly into a vein," Robbins said, smiling when she visually winced. "Sorry. The effect is similar to acid damage."

"They don't do that with lethal injections, do they?" she asked in shock.

"No! Potassium chloride is a very commonly used drug, but the dosage varies considerably. Medical supply companies sell it in concentrated form, and it's diluted before use. Well, it's supposed to be. There are a handful of accidental deaths every year because someone used a concentrated solution."

"It's common, which means it's probably not too hard to get a hold of it," she mused, frowning as she worked through the facts she already had. It didn't take long. "Are you ruling these a homicide?"

"No," he said firmly. "There's absolutely no evidence that these were anything other than what they appear to be."

"Except you have a hunch that they really aren't," she said with a friendly smile. "I didn't know you were fond of chasing wild geese."

"I am the chief coroner of Clark County. I do not go on wild goose chases," he said meaningfully, but then he gave her a wink. "But I can have you check into a suspicious death. Inconspicuously."

Her head bobbed slightly. There wasn't enough evidence to justify a full-blown investigation at this point, but it was damn strange. "To see if they died from an undetectable poison?" she quipped.

"Or something else," he sighed. "I don't believe their deaths are a coincidence, but stranger things happen. The only thing I can find physically wrong with him – that isn't a direct result of drug abuse – was that vein. Even that isn't definitive."

"Something caused that damage," she said, wincing again at the thought of a salt-water injection.

"But I don't know what. Trust me – I've seen addicts who shot up anything they could get into a needle. I can't even say precisely when that injury happened, just that it was within a day of his death."

"The other bodies?"

Robbins gave her a short look. "I didn't have any reason to think there was anything odd about them. Professionally, I can't request an exhumation on a hunch."

"Yeah, individually there's nothing suspicious about any of the deaths. It's all of them together that's odd," she said. "If it was potassium chloride, how would I find out? I take it the police didn't find a bottle of it with any of the bodies."

"I wouldn't have you down here if they did," he said with a smile. "You already noted the first clue – the odds of multiple addicts dying of heart failure in the same area in a short time frame are pretty slim. It's how they caught the mercy killers. An unusual number of deaths triggered suspicion. A review of the deaths showed one nurse on duty with each death."

"And you want me to review all the drug addicts dying of heart failure in the city to find all the people that were present at each one?" she joked.

"Well, personally I'd start at the scene where Mr. Dough was found. The police only gave the scene a cursory exam since there was no sign of foul play."

"You mentioned accidents. Could this be one? An addict found or stole a vial of potassium chloride and didn't know what it was? They die, but some other addict finds the bottle and takes it before the police get there."

"I've thought about that. I guess it's a possibility. But in the concentrated form, it hurts like hell when it's injected. Maybe they wouldn't notice the pain if they were already high on something else first."

"Or if they were high enough not to stop someone else from injecting them," she muttered. "Which also explains why there wasn't any of it around."

"I've thought of that, too," Robbins said softly as he stood up. "Look, we don't know if this is a murder, tainted drugs or a statistical fluke. But I'll put out word to the police to let you know if any more bodies are found. If this is a killer, I don't think they're going to stop with six addicts."

TBC