DISCLAIMER:Don't own it... No money made... Just for fun and enjoyment.

SUMMARY: Sequel to Displacement. The CSI team and their recently hired coroner Stephanie are back to work solving cases, sharing companionship and generally making their way through the dire world of criminal investigation with humor and friendship... This one will show the development of the relationship between Grissom and Sara and there should be some other surprises down the road as well. Romance/Drama/Angst/Mature Situations

RATING: M for Mature - I'm starting this one out at "M", since we won't be waiting quite so long for the smut this time out ;) Also, there is a sprinkling of language throughout the story.

A/N: Okay, I have been writing like a mad dog, and I'm like 10 chapters up on the stuff that's been posted. So, you'll see more than a chapter every day for a little while :D So, although I will continue to be evil, you'll at least get some resolution a little faster :)

REVIEWS: I am always looking for ways to improve my writing, and your reviews let me know if I am hitting my mark. Thank you in advance for the time you take to read &review this story.


Chapter 30

Sofia had finally finished up with her onsite interviews of witnesses at the armed robbery scene and glanced down at her watch. It was already five in the morning, and she still needed to get to all of the paperwork from the three scenes she had been called to overnight. She looked over at the counter to find Warrick Brown anxiously checking his own watch, and obviously distraught about something.

She had heard the rumors about his marriage being on the rocks, and she obviously heard about the incident at the Body Farm earlier in the week, but his attitude throughout the whole night had been one of impatience and frustration. It was almost as though he had somewhere better to be, and in her experience, none of Gil's people ever approached their job in such a blaizé fashion.

As she walked over to him, Sofia noticed he was making another phone call, and so she waited to speak up until he had closed the phone with a grunt. "Problems?"

He looked behind him to find her standing there and said, "Huh? Oh, no, nothing, really."

"Well, if we're boring you tonight…" Sofia's sense of humor was often mistaken as vitriole, but Warrick was far too distracted to make that connection.

"Nah… I just wasn't planning on being out in the field all night." He got back to work lifting prints from the counter as he talked with her.

"Wanted to sit back in a chair and prop your feet up?" She did not seem capable of leaving the sarcasm behind when she spoke.

"Not hardly… I was just hoping to get back to the lab, so I could check on O'Halloran." Warrick did not stop what he was doing as he spoke with Sofia, but his words belied the vibe he was sending out.

"Is she still at the lab?" Sofia was shocked to hear that the young medical examiner was still on duty.

"Yeah, when I got in she was, but I was gonna run her home after the first call." He looked up and into his kit for another tape lift sheet, "Just hasn't worked out that way yet."

"Why doesn't she just call her husband? Or Gil, for that matter?" Sofia was confused as to why Warrick would need to take on that responsibility.

Warrick kept working, and never make eye contact with her, which was starting to get on her nerves. "Yeah, Thomas is away at a surgical conference and Steph'd kill me if I called Grissom." Warrick labeled and sealed the last of his print lifts, closed up the jar of print powder, stashed his brush, collected all of his evidence envelopes and locked up his case. "And that should be it for m-…" He was interrupted by his pager going off alerting him to another call from dispatch. "Damnit!" He grabbed at the pager and looked at the message.

"So, where're we headed now?" Sofia asked with a slightly amused tone in her voice.

Warrick's face was the picture of confusion as he read the display, "Next door?" He walked around the corner of the galleria shop and found a gang of security guards and three more uniformed officers.

"Damn, that was fast!" One of the uniforms exclaimed.

Warrick waved the officer off and waited for Sofia to call in to dispatch that they were on the scene. "Yeah, we're both here… No, don't worry about it, we can handle it." She shrugged at Warrick and said, "I'll find out the situation, you should get that evidence to the car, boxed and secured before you gather the evidence for this one."

"Thanks, that'll give me some time to make a few calls, too." Sofia watched him make his way to the stairs as he struggled with all of his gear and the cellphone he was trying to use. She smirked at the sight before turning her attention back to the assemblage behind her.

"Okay fellas, what've we got here?" She asked with her hands on her hips.

The oldest of the guards (who was still likely to only be in his mid-twenties) was the one to step forward and offer his recounting of the situation. "Well, we had roped off the area and were standing post over there," he pointed to the end of the walkway for the casino's galleria. "Mike here noticed something on the ground in front of the shop next to your burglary scene and he and I went to check it out. We found the glass smashed and the displays in disarray, but the security sensor was still in tact, so it didn't set off any alarms. We figured it was a professional job." The man seemed quite proud of his analysis, but there was something about the whole thing that seemed out of place for Sofia.

"'A professional job?'" She motioned at the shop, "At a novelty shop? What were they after? Giant fuzzy dice, or the 'I lost my ass in Vegas' boxers with the plastic buttocks on them?" Sofia shook her head at the ridiculousness of their conclusion and looked around the area a little more closely.

The scene would have been telling her that it was just a simple smash and grab, but there was something off about the whole thing. That was when the janitor showed up with his brooms and bin for collecting the glass.

The man's face showed his intense frustration and then he spoke, "Jesus Christ, Manny! I broke a fuckin' window, it ain't a capital crime, ya paranoid little prick."

The uniforms were struggling to keep their laughter at bay while the senior member called the false alarm in to dispatch. Sofia simply shook her head and threw her hands up as she walked away. If there was one thing she could not stomach anymore, it was gross incompetence. She experienced enough of that to last her a lifetime when she worked alongside Conrad Ecklie, and his final exercise in stupidity was what had taken her away from criminalistics and back into her first love of criminology.

As she made her way out of the galleria, the casino, and then back out to her car, she thought about the reasons she had become a crime investigator in the first place. It was always her parents' greatest worry that she would become a cop, and she allowed that to halt her progression into a detective. She also deduced that there would be greater opportunities for advancement in crime scene investigations than as a detective, simply because she was a woman. And if there was one thing she knew about herself, it was that she relished in accolades. However, in the end, the politics, the compromises, and the ineptitude all became too much for her, when it was all shoved into her face with her demotion from Ecklie. She watched the worst man for the job sail through the advancement system, while the people best able to run an efficient and highly effective lab were being cow-towed and admonished for their efforts. But she knew in her heart, that was only part of the reason for her departure.

If she was honest with herself, she knew that she still craved the thrill of the hunt and the rush that came with taking a case through from beginning to end. A CSI never got that rush, because once the evidence had been processed, they were no longer in the loop. So, she took those last two classes she needed for her criminology degree, qualified on the shooting range, passed her physical tests and became a proud member of the Las Vegas Police Department Detective Bureau. As she approached Warrick's vehicle in the parking garage, she smiled. She was doing exactly what she wanted to, and that kind of satisfaction was rare.

When Sofia rounded the corner of the Yukon she could hear that Warrick was on the phone, so she held back to give him the appearance of privacy, even though the volume with which he was speaking prevented the reality of it.

"Yeah, Cath… I have no idea when I'm gonna get out-… I'M IN A GARAGE… YEAH… CAN YOU SWING BY AND PICK HER UP FOR ME?... RIGHT… THANKS… I OWE YOU… LATER." Warrick was shaking his head as he closed up his phone and reached into the back of the Yukon to pull out another collection kit.

Sofia sauntered to the back of the car and leaned up against the back door when she spoke, "You can go ahead and pack it in."

Warrick's neck snapped his head around to meet her gaze, and she could see that he was surprised to find her there. "Why?"

"False alarm… Or, more accurately, no alarm." Sofia smirked at her vague explanation and Warrick's confusion.

"I don't get it."

"A janitor broke a window when he was cleaning the floor and had left to get something to clean up the glass when the rent-a-cops came on the scene… They had quite the tale prepared for our amusement, but it was nothing after all." She could see that he had been visibly relieved to hear her news. "I already called it in to dispatch, and they said the day guy was already on the clock, so you're officially off the hook."

Warrick looked up into the air and held out his hands, "Thank You!" He turned back to the car and started securing his equipment for the trip back to the lab.

"Hey, since you're done for the night… You wanna grab a drink or something? Ya know, decompress a little?" Sofia was on a fishing expedition, Sometimes you can land a big one that way.

Warrick shrugged and spoke out of the side of his mouth, "Nah…" He looked at his watch before continuing, "If I can get this stuff back before those other turkeys take off, then it can be processed and I can be out of the lab on time for a change… I still want to check on Stephanie."

Sofia was becoming suspicious of his connection to the new coroner, so she dug a little deeper. "You two seem to be spending a lot of time together lately."

Warrick paid no attention to her motives or even seemed to care about her questions when he responded, "That's what happens when you live in somebody's house."

Sofia regarded him with an expression of understanding, "So, I guess that means the rumors are true?"

Warrick shrugged again, "If you're talking about the one where I'm gettin' a divorce, then yeah… That one about me becoming a headliner at the Orpheus; that's total crap."

Sofia laughed at his attempt to diffuse the situation, "That's good… I'll see what I can do to keep that one rolling then. A little misdirection might help keep the wolves at bay for a while."

Warrick tilted his head to side and side, "Nah, I think my status as the lab goat should take care of that one."

Sofia had wondered if the things she heard about the Body Farm incident were as bad as had been reported. She guessed from his statement that they were true. "Tough break on that one, huh?"

He shrugged as he secured his case with the strap, "I'm not so much worried about me…" He turned to finally face Sofia as he continued, "More what it's doin' to Grissom."

She nodded at his response, "Yeah… I hear he got nailed pretty hard on that one. And coming so close on the heels of the thing with Sara didn't help."

Warrick regarded her with a puzzled expression and asked, "Wha'd'you mean?"

"You didn't hear?" She was shocked that his team had not heard about Gil's altercation with Ecklie after the man learned about his relationship with Sara. "Ecklie went ballistic on Gil when he found out about he and Sara being together. I hear he even recommended to Burdick that Gil be terminated for it."

Warrick pursed his mouth and shook his head in a gesture of disgust. "Man! That prick just doesn't know when to quit, huh?" He slammed the back doors to the Yukon closed. "I mean, it's not bad enough the lab lost its ranking, but now we gotta worry about Ecklie completely screwing us over, AGAIN?"

Sofia could tell the man was genuinely upset at hearing her news, and it only reaffirmed her belief that Gil's people would lay down their lives for him, if only he were to ask. "Yeah, I heard about the rankings" She decided to throw one more thing out there and see what Warrick's reaction would be. "I also heard that Gil's been getting offers since the report came out."

"Offers? Like, JOB offers?"

"I'm sure he gets them all the time… I mean, the man does have the reputation and the clout to work wherever he wants, but I think a few of the labs sensed the blood in the water and figured they could lure him away." She shrugged a little, trying to downplay her next bombshell, "A friend of mine in Miami said they practically offered him the moon and a boat to come down and run their lab. Seems they've been having some in-house troubles, and seriously need someone to reign in the madness down there."

Warrick shook his head, "That doesn't make sense… They've got good people down there."

"Yeah, but their lab could use some help. They have a good guy for the field, but their lab is falling apart." Sofia was well aware of their investigative staff's quality, but she had been hearing some horror stories through the grapevine about the rest of the division.

"Yeah, well, I used to wonder what kept him out here, but now? He's got too many ties. I can't see him packing up and going anywhere else." Sofia had to admit that she often wondered why he stayed in Las Vegas after Ecklie was appointed the assistant director, but after working with him, and some of his people, she knew that his loyalties to them ran deeper than he was likely to ever admit, even to himself.

Warrick looked down and then appeared to have remembered something. He checked his watch and became a little hurried. "Hey, sorry to dish and run, but I need to get this stuff back to the lab… Thanks for the info and I'll catch ya later."

And without further pomp or circumstance, he hopped into the Yukon and pulled away from Sofia, leaving her to sort through the information she had obtained during their conversation. She was still processing the information when she got to her car and was paged once again. She picked up her phone and dialed in to dispatch as she opened her car door and got inside. "Dispatch… It's Curtis… Yeah, I can pick it up… No problem… I'm like five minutes from the lab anyway… En route now… Bye."