Thank you to LarkinRoss...again...thank youxxxxxx and thanks SGBS4L xxxxxx

Next chapter up tomorrow

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You realised it was the end for your mother, for Sara Sidle. She could not bear it and she would never testify now and she swore that she would never re-enter any courtroom. She quit her job, worked her two months notice but only stayed in the lab. She lost her faith in the courtroom, the prosecutors, and judges. Momma had been hospitalised again that day as she had collapsed from shock and exhaustion. She was diagnosed anaemic and depressed. She was put on to a regimen of anti-depressant medication, which after a few weeks, she refused to take. Actually you knew that wasn't fully true, sometimes you had seen her take too many, to make herself sick. Momma had begun seeing rape councillors and psychotherapists but it soon ceased. She refused to see anyone, her friends, and her former boss and often she would refuse to see you, "leave me alone, for Christ's sake. I am sick and tired. I can't give a damn about you…they should have just finished the job…God, help me…God…give me peace…" Grandmother now permanently lived with you and had tried her best to give you a decent birthday celebration but your party consisted of adults who once knew a woman call Sara Sidle, which looked like the pathetic and broken woman hiding upstairs.
It was the seventh of September when Warrick Brown killed one of the rapists with two shots from his standard police service revolver. Grissom had told Sara and she had gone to see Warrick straight away. Lorena saw it on the news and in a Las Vegas newspaper.

"DeLucca, Philip. "Pip." Twenty-four, unemployed at the time of his death." There was also a photo of him on the television screen, a photo of him doped up and greased up in a glittering manor. Some girl would think he was sexy, an overgrown kid. Lorena and Laura watched the television in the living room, the curtains drawn.

"Well, that's the first of them, babygirl."

Lorena looked at her Grandmother and then her head swerved back to the screen.Lorena understood what she had said but refused to thinkabout it.The photo didn't show him like he had looked in the courthouse in a neatly pressed suit and tie and combed hair but more the way he had looked at the park, whooping and yelping.

"Grandmother, why would he fire two shots? One would have been fatal enough."

She shrugged but it was explained by the reporter that LVPD are required to fire two shots, it was the training.


It was DeLucca who had first sighted and recognised Nick Stokes parking his SUV outside the restaurant that Greg insisted they attended because of tradition.

Philip DeLucca was with Dean Roberts, drinking at the bar of the restaurant.

"Are you following me asshole?" DeLucca had asked and Nick who blanked him not seeming to know who he was and he went to sit with Greg.

Greg left went home after his food but Nick went in to an all-night grocery store that was situated just across the road. Nick couldn't an offer an explanation why he chose to go in that store.

It just was.

He was waiting for CSI Warrick Brown to arrive. When Nick was about to leave the store, a sales assistant realised that he paused and hovered in the doorway, unsure of leaving. After being probed by the attractive sales assistant to leave because he was blocking an exit, Nick had left and that was when DeLucca had jumped him. Was it possible that Nick and DeLucca were aware of each other without so much as seeing each other, as if they were a past of different species and natural enemies? CSI Gregory Sanders commented that he did recognise the men at the bar and possibly Nick Stokes had been aware of each other. Guys hating each other's guts, there had been an incident at the courthouse.

It had been a coincidence that Nick had left the store almost immediately after Philip DeLucca. It certainly wasn't rehearsed. It was instinct.

"He just came at me unprovoked, drunk and saying he was going to kill me."

Approximately at 11:23pm CSI Warrick Brown arrived and witnessed two men shouting and he understood that this was a fight that he would break it up. His instinct was to move in the direction of any disturbance of the peace, to intercede. As Warrick came closer he saw that Nick had fallen and DeLucca was kicking him in the groin area. From his jacket pocket DeLucca drew a weapon: a switchblade and Warrick had estimated its length was between six and eight inches.

Immediately Warrick had called out, identifying himself and he instructed the aggressor to throw down his knife and to keep his hands where Brown could see them. DeLucca made an obscene gesture at Warrick with the switchblade and told him to keep the hell away. Warrick had continued to advance, now drawing his weapon. He looked at the man on the floor.

"Sir, Sir, can you move?"

Nick looked up at Warrick as if to say, "Hey Warrick, you're late." It was clear to DeLucca that both Brown and Stokes would testify, that DeLucca saw Brown's weapon and heard his instructions. Brown ordered DeLucca to drop the knife. Brown ordered DeLucca to step away from Nick. Instead DeLucca lunged forward swiping at Warrick and Warrick fired two shots in the area of the aggressor's heart, from a distance of less than three inches. DeLucca had stumbled backward at once, dying. It was over within seconds and both of them sighed deeply with relief. Warrick shouted asking for an ambulence and he checked the pulse of DeLucca. There wasn't one.

Warrick helped Nick up; making sure Nick wasn't seriously injured, asking him why he was always the one who got in to trouble. Warrick was joking about it, he even laughed as he pushed out the air and made a message over his radio. It felt wrong to Nick. The situation wasn't funny; it was serious.

"Warrick, man…you just saved my life."

Warrick laughed again, his eyes looked at as though emeralds had been dunked in tears.

"Yeah, I guess I did…"


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