Part 6

There was only silence, saving for Renee's gasp of indignation. Greg scanned his colleagues' faces: Sara had been rendered speechless, while the rest simply looked like that wanted to eat him alive. Then he turned to face his sister, and realized he'd made a major faux-pas. Normally, Renee would have just kicked right back; this time however, there were no quick comments, only a glistening of embarrassed tears in her eyes as she rushed hurriedly from the group.

Beside him, Nick scrubbed his hands over his face, and then spread his arms wide. "You satisfied now, Greg?" Nick didn't bother waiting for an answer; he merely went after Renee, who'd taken off to presumably the break-room.

As what he'd done sunk in, Greg turned around to face his bosses. Grissom looked merely amused, but Catherine, oh, there was no mistaking the look on her face.

"You're on suspension Greg, until this case is solved."

Greg stared in disbelief at Catherine. "What? Oh come on!"

"She's right Greg," Grissom agreed. "Collect your things out of the break room, but if Renee and Nick are in there, and you so much as breathe on them, the suspension will be extended."

In the break room, Renee was struggling not to find something to throw at a wall, to hear something break wide open and spill out as her personal life had just been, thanks to her big bro. How dare he? Where did he get the nerve to do something like that to her? Had he ever come to her place of business as a patient or in need of someone to talk to, only to have her spill his guts like fertilizer for everyone to see and hear?

At the creak of the door opening, she whipped around, ready to spew venomous threats that instantly dissolved on her tongue when she saw Nick, an apologetic look on his face. He crossed to her without a word, embracing her tightly.

"I'm so sorry, Nick, he has no right to act that way."

Nick smiled against her shoulder, not wanting to let her go. "It's okay he's your big brother, he's got a right to know." But not about my personal life, he added silently.

"Yeah, but humiliating us in front of your co-workers? You already had your personal life laid out once when Kristy-"

"We've talked about that, Renee, this is a totally different situation," he said in a firm voice. He did not want to compare the two women, not right now…or ever.

"Even so, it's your life on display in the lab."

Touched by her consideration for his well-being over hers, Nick pulled back, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her mouth lightly. She put her hands over his wrists gently, as if not wanting to let him go. It was so strange, they'd met in a bar only three or four hours before, yet being with him…fit. Deciding to take that risk that most women who have deemed her suicidal for, Renee laid all her cards on the table.

"He will have to get used to it, to us. I don't know about you, but despite the circumstances-"

"Me too," Nick cut her off, a wave of relief tumbling down his back, glad to know that he wasn't the only one thinking that this night, even with all the other crap that had passed, was a one-in-a-lifetime night. Had he been superstitious he'd have called it fate or karma or even worse destiny, but having her at his office, in his home, in his bed didn't feel like some tawdry affair. It had felt like putting on a favourite pair of shoes, at the perfect stage of being worn in so that they still gave the wearer a rush but at the same time didn't pinch or hurt.

Nick kissed her again, then took her hand. "Come on. Let's go home."

Renee grinned foolishly, liking the way that sounded. Then the giddiness in the pit of her stomach hardened to lead when she saw Greg slink like a kicked dog into the break room and head for the fridge.

"I'll meet you at the car. I want to talk to him first."

Nick noted the change in her voice, saw the light flatten out in her eyes. Without so much as a glance at Greg, he nodded then left, hoping that Greg wouldn't be minus an ear when Renee left.

Renee stared her brother down with an evil look. He may have been six years older, but he was still a man, after all. She cocked her head to the side, braced a hip against the table. "You come back here to slap my wrist a little harder?"

Greg wrenched the door open, pulled out his Arctic Zone cooler of the fridge. He couldn't bear to look at her just yet. "I'm on suspension; I just came to get my lunch out of the fridge."

"Good."

At that, Greg slammed the fridge shut, wheeled on his sister, temper blazing. "Good?" His voice rose by several decibels, but at this point, he didn't care who heard him. Gossip spread like wildfire in the bubble of CSI, the day shift would know about it before he could make it home. "Good? Because of you, I am going to be out until this case is solved. I'm losing money off my pay check and now in my file there's going to be a nice little note stating why I was taken off this case. You should have thought of that before hooking up with Nick."

"No, Greg, you're on suspension and losing money because you made an ass of yourself," Renee fired back. "You humiliated me and Nick because you're too immature to think of me as more then your little sister. This is not eight years ago, when you saw me kissing Tony Giancomo by the pool on Thanksgiving and you sent him for a swim."

Knowing he was losing ground, he struggled not to fidget on the spot. "You're not sixteen anymore, you can't keep snogging my friends."

"For your information, it was Nick who started talking to me, and started hitting on me. He had no idea I was your sister, and he didn't do anything I didn't want him to." When her brother paled at this, Renee simply sighed, switched gears. "Greg, you have to stop thinking I'm some lost waif who needs protecting from the world. I'm twenty four years old, almost twenty five. I'm an adult and I make my own choices. Now, if you'll excuse me, Nick is waiting for me."

With that, she pushed past him, went out the door, leaving Greg somewhere between the realms of protective big brother and first-class moron.

Back in their work room, Sara was still chewing over the nasty tableau as Warrick tried to concentrate on work.

"Boy, Nick really has trouble with the ladies?" she mused aloud to no one in particular.

"Let's just concentrate on solving this case." Warrick shook his head, not knowing whether he should sigh or laugh at Nick's misfortune. The man simply had no skills, none whatsoever. "So Renee left the hotel around nine forty five, and said Miranda was watching TV with Claudia." He flipped through Brass's notes. "Claudia leaves shortly after and fifteen minutes later she and April are knocking on her door."

"Time of death was established at ten-seventeen."

"And it wasn't called in until nearly two hours later, when another couple staying on the floor complained about the smell. Hotel security went in; found her with her throat cut."

"Claudia and April said they knocked on the door around ten then went downstairs to meet the other girls." Sara paused at this, then grabbed a stack of photos, flipping through until she landed on a specific one which she showed to Warrick.

"So why did Claudia go back up to their floor ten minutes after they left?"

"Look, I already told you, I left around ten with April."

The harsh glare of the interrogation room lights did not suit Claudia's Aryan complexion, especially since it was obvious she was both emotionally exhausted and fighting one mother of a hangover. She crossed her legs, tried her best to look like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, but Sara just thought it came off as tacky as she listened to Brass' questions.

"But you didn't tell us why you went back up to your floor ten minutes later," Sara said, cutting off another of Claudia's protests, showing her the photograph from the elevator surveillance.

Claudia stared at it, seemed to freeze up for only a second before settling into her routine again. "I realized I forgot my wallet and went back to get it. I didn't think it mattered I didn't say."

Sara bit her tongue to keep from asking what kind of college student could think that omitting information from the police because they deemed it unimportant would help them out. "Actually it does, since it puts you within the vicinity of the crime at Miranda's time of death," she corrected.

"Wait, you're thinking I did it?"

"We talked to some of your team-mates," Brass replied coolly. "You and April were the only ones who seemed to tolerate Miranda's presence on the team. We also have reason to believe that you went into Miranda's room at some point during the night."

"You can't prove that." Claudia's voice became thick with panic.

Sara scanned the report from the file. "Actually, we can. We found skin under Miranda's fingernails and traces of saliva on neck. Both matched yours. We also took a sample of the mineral oil found at the crime scene, and it matches the same kind found on your hands."

By this point Claudia had lost all sense of pretext. She was on her feet yelling at the top of her lungs. "First I'm a murder suspect, now I'm a lesbian?"

"I think it's in your best interest to kill two birds with one stone."

Realizing the only way out of this painted-in corner was honesty, Claudia sat back down, gave her response cold and detached as a robot.

"After Renee left, Miranda and I started to fool around a little. Nothing major, like what had happened before at a few wild frat parties. Those hardly mattered; mostly everyone was so drunk they could barely remember their own names. She said she'd ordered room service but I had to get back, so that April wouldn't be suspicious of anything, since I said I'd be coming back when Renee left." Claudia looked from Brass to Sara. "I'm not a lesbian, I was just…experimenting. I left my wallet in my hotel room, so I went back up."

Sara nodded. At least they were starting to get somewhere. "So…what? The plan was for a late night booty call once you guys were back from partying on the strip?"

"Not ten minutes before she died?" Brass added.

"I didn't go to Miranda's, I swear," Claudia whispered.

Brass pulled out another sheet from the stack between his and Sara's elbows, a highlighted streak going through the middle. "You just telephoned her instead. Why?"

"I just wanted to make sure she knew I wasn't blowing her off."

Outside, in the CSI parking lot, Catherine heard a very odd sound as she returned from her coffee run. Jingling her keys, she walked over to Greg's SUV; as she approached she noticed the sound got louder. When she knocked on his window, and he rolled it down, Catherine was nearly lifted off her feet by the sounds of SOS.

"Abba, Greg?" Catherine knew if she laughed now, it was all over.

"It's therapeutic," he said between clenched teeth. He couldn't bear to look at Catherine, not right now.

"Look, you know why I had to pull you off the case, Greg. If you can't maintain your objectivity-"

"Are you the younger sibling in your family, Catherine?" Greg suddenly cut her off.

"Yes, I am."

"Then you don't get it." With that, Greg turned on his car, and peeled out of the parking lot.

Greg was thankful his apartment was in the opposite direction the lab. He needed to get away, to wash the slime off his head and the egg off his face. Letting himself in quietly, he picked up his stack of mail, tossed his backpack on the floor by the couch. Listless, he wandered through the tiny kitchen and took a beer out of his fridge. As he twisted the top off and drank deeply, he looked at the pictures he had on his fridge. Most were of his friends from Stanford, on the retreat for New Year's with his frat buddies. Then he landed on the one of him and his sister. It was taken the summer after he'd graduated from college, and in this particular candid, she'd put him in a headlock.

Greg studied the picture for awhile. This was what his thoughts went to immediately when he thought of his sister, that goofy smartass who'd always managed to outwit him. Maybe that was part of the problem right there; maybe he'd needed something like tonight to realize, however rudely, that his sister was a grown woman with ambitions and desires and – God help him this one was a particularly bitter pill – sexual desires. He held onto the picture as he went over to the blinking answering machine and pressed the play button.

Hey, it's Sanders, can't talk which means I'm probably out make Las Vegas a safer place one epithelial at a time.

Greg stopped short when the voice came over the speaker, filling his apartment.

Hi Greg, it's Nick. Look, I understand why things went the way they did at the lab, but ah, your sister's a good girl man, and…you'd be the last person she wants to piss off. Oh love the voice mail message.

Greg closed his eyes as he pulled from the beer again. When he opened them, he looked at the picture again, then tossed it on the counter, set the beer aside and went to crawl into the shower to try and wash away his shame.