A/N: I hope everyone enjoyed/understood the last chapter, I guess I better offer a quick explanation just incase.

Assuming there are two kinds of love needed and present in a relationship- one romantic, the other a kind of maternal and unconditional love for the other person, Sara was missing half of the equation because she had never really had a parental figure in her life. Because she had never experienced that love, she couldn't offer it in a relationship, which is why her engagement with Blaze failed, in a sense. Even though Grissom pushed her away when she tried to have a romantic relationship with him, he otherwise embraced her, which is what she needed, though she wasn't consciously aware of it at the time.

I do hope that helps. Anyway, this chapter gets into the actual investigation. Its the longest chapter I've ever posted, actually... close to nine pages long. 0.o Enjoy! (Oh, and one more thing… I don't know if anyone noticed in the last chapter, Sara's phone password spells 'Snickers'. Just a little joke I threw in. (laughs)) On to the story!

Chapter Title: "I was blowing stuff up."

The night was dark, morning daylight still hours away from peeking its fanciful eyes above the urban horizon, forced to wait as if by cruel fate to envelope the city in its usual warm glow. Sara lay in bed, deciding finally that if she was going to lie looking at the ceiling like this all night, she may as well be warm. Her toes found their way under the covers, followed by the rest of her. Cell phone still clutched in hand, she stole a glance at the clock radio on a nearby oak night table. She really should get some sleep… she was completely exhausted, and her first day back at the lab was tomorrow. Even still… her eyes wouldn't close, and it was giving her a headache. Instead, they stared of their own will at the flashing red digits on the clock, counting the seconds with the unearthly accuracy she could never hope to duplicate…

1:34…

1:35…

1:36…

………

Bzzzzz…

Sara woke with a start to the startling shudder of the damned object clutched in her right hand. A faint buzzing matched speed only with her raised heart rate as she gazed groggily at the phone's caller display, wondering vaguely why it was in her palm.

Nick Stokes.

Suddenly fully awake, she snapped it open.

"Nick?"

"Sara? Why do you sound so… dead?"

"Thanks for that, Nick." Sara cleared her throat, a smile crossing her face as she sat up in bed, her eyes shooting again to the clock at her bedside. 4:45. So she had fallen asleep, after all. "I was… uh, sleeping."

"What? Oh, damn, sorry Sar…"

"S'ok… You're just getting off shift now, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Slow night; just waiting for results from our latest case. Left early. I forgot you're on days now."

"Yeah, it's weird to be sleeping at times I haven't for over five years." She chuckled quietly. "Miss me, honey?" Her voice was teasing, the way it usually was when she was on the phone with him outside of work. He laughed, and she could feel him smile at her.

"Of course. How could I not? You didn't phone me back…"

"Yeah, sorry about that… I kind of dozed off. My phone was off because I was… uh… at the hospital."

"What! Sar, are you—"

"Shh, I'm fine, fine… I wasn't there for me. My old supervisor and I went to visit my old colleague. The one who…" Her voice finally faltered. "survived…"

Nick was silent for a moment, clearly not sure what to say. He must have just made it to his truck out in the parking lot because the sound of a shutting door was finally heard in the background.

"… I'm sorry… Sara, you know it's not your fault."

"I—"

"Sara… I want you to say it… acknowledge it. This isn't your fault."

"Nick… it is."

"No, it's not. It happened a long time ago. You can't determine what these psychopathic freaks are going to do years later. You have to get these thoughts out of your head Darlin'. They're poison, and they aren't helping you." His voice was gentle, but at the same time, stern. "okay?"

Sara sighed, resigned. She really didn't want to talk about it, so she just agreed. "'kay."

"Anyway, I'm sorry for waking you up… you better try to catch a few more winks before shift." At this, Sara could barely contain a giggle. He sounded like a concerned… father. She shook her head and the threw her thoughts to the back of her mind. "What's so funny?" There was a hint of laughter in his voice now, too.

"Nothing… you're just so…" She paused, unsure of the word she wanted to use.

"Just so… what, exactly?"

"Amazing."

Nick smiled; coming from Sara, that meant a hell of a lot.

"So are you."

"I love you."

"Love you too."

"Ready?" A strangely normal Blaze inquired her as he pulled his department issued SUV into the parking lot of the all too familiar San Francisco CSI lab a few hours later that morning. She was surprised at the way he was acting; like nothing had changed… but somehow, she knew that he used many of the same coping mechanisms as her. Regardless, she felt it only polite to play along, especially since she herself was likely the cause of his discomfort. Feeling bad, she nodded, trying to smile.

"Ready as I'll ever be. Thanks, Blaze."

He returned her smile as best he could, deciding it best to throw on a pair of sunglasses to hide the hidden messages she always used to find in his eyes.

"Sure. Let's go, then."

The glass doors of the lab swung open before they could be touched as the pair neared them; Sara fixing the strap of the dark red tank she'd matched with her favourite pair of black denims as she drew her own sunglasses from her eyes to the top of her head. A cool blast of air met her face as she entered, Blaze following just behind her. Almost immediately, a friendly, familiar voice greeted her with obvious enthusiasm.

"Sara! It's great to see you again!" She grinned when she realized the voice was of one of her former coworkers. The shorter woman beamed at her from behind the secretarial desk where she'd obviously been engaged in a conversation with one of the receptionists prior to their arrival. Raven haired, petite and tan, she looked much as she had six years ago.

"Adelaide!" The two brunettes rushed toward one other, each enveloping the other when they met.

"Damnit, girl! It's been so long!"

"I know, I know… But how have you been? You look great!" Sara directed her gaze intentionally toward the ring she had expected to see on the woman's finger, a knowing smirk crossing her lips. Adelaide seemed to notice this, and she confirmed what Sara had noted upon reading Neil's visitors chart at the hospital the previous night.

"Michael and I. Earlier this summer."

"That's such great news! It really is about time!" She found laugher escaping her throat. The newlywed before her rolled her eyes with a smirk to match Sara's.

"I know, I know… He's in the DNA lab waiting for some results…"

Coming back to reality, Sara nodded. "What do we know?"

Addie sighed sadly. "Admittedly, not a whole lot. But it's a start… Blaze, Chantal told me you've got a few urgent messages; asked me to tell you. We'll be…" She pointed to the DNA labs behind them, nodding curtly in her boss' direction as she lead Sara down the proverbial halls of the past.

"Thanks. I'll meet you two in there in a few."

Adelaide, Michael and Sara exited the DNA lab together after watching Michael finish labeling the samples he wanted tested. As they walked swiftly through the hallway, their conversation remained all-business.

"Blaze confirmed the prints found on the pay-booth near the entrance to the parkade do indeed belong to our former suspect Miguel Rhodriegez; Detective Daigle interrogated him last night, a few hours after the second bomb went off at the airport…"

"I remember that one… World's biggest asshole. But he was credible, anyway. Twelve witnesses said they saw him knock out the lead singer of the act playing at that nightclub years ago… He was in custody during the time of the bombing, last time, anyway." Sara shuddered, disgusted by the memory of the drunkard that had turned the young singer's face into something pertaining to the texture of raw hamburger.

"But he was the bomb-dealer, remember? We couldn't chuck him in for that one because he'd already been given immunity for the information he gave us. His prints were on the detonator last time." Michael reminded them, opening the massive case file he'd carried under his arm.

"So it could have been his bomb. Where was he yesterday during the time of the second blast?" Sara asked.

"You're gonna love this. And I quote: 'I was blowing stuff up.'" Michael raised an eyebrow in contempt as he read the statement.

"Is this guy asking for trouble, or what? How long was he blowing stuff up for?"

"A few hours; out in the middle of nowhere. But it doesn't help much, seeing as the bomb could have been put there days ago. It just needed something to set it off."

"Ughh… Okay, do we know what kind of bomb it was?"

"Apparently it was a car bomb… There were bits of aluminum everywhere, probably from the car itself. It's hard to tell what kind of car it even was, because so many others were blown up during the explosion as well. The pay-booth isn't manned either, it's electronic… and there is surveillance, but it's directed more at the cars already parked than the ones just coming in. Aspen's notes were burnt up in the resulting fire, and the photos we did recover were mostly generals, nothing very helpful."

Adelaide sighed, pulling the VHS surveillance tape out of the folder that Michael was carrying.

"The tape is also grainy and grayscale."

"Beautiful."

"You're tellin' me."

"Well, let's send it out for analysis anyway, see if we can find out the models and makes of some of the cars around the approximate detonation zone. If we can get anything, we might be able to match the scraps left over… maybe get lucky."

"Sounds good… where will you be?" Michael questioned Sara as he watched Adelaide put the tape back into his file.

"I'm going back to the scene."

"Christ… this place has been totaled…" Sara whispered to herself as she stepped under the yellow police tape and into the airport crime scene. Admittedly, it was hard for her to come alone to the place her former best friend and colleague had been killed. But it was something she new she needed to face. A detective had managed to follow her to the scene anyway. When emotion threatened to take over, she pushed all sense of it to the back of her head, determined not to allow it to cloud her vision.

As she stepped further into the scene, it became pretty clear where the explosion had occurred. Huge chunks of metal and plastic were strewn in a star-like pattern, all emerging from a sinister epicenter in the far east side of the overlarge parking garage. There were still several damaged cars parked around; their owners had been forbidden to remove them until such time as the investigation no longer required them. She was sure the insurance companies involved had to be having a field day about now. Unsure of where to start as the explosion's debris had something of a rain-like effect on most trace she'd initially look for, Sara turned to the detective that had accompanied her to the scene, presumably at Blaze's request.

"Are you the detective that interviewed Miguel Rhodriegez last night?"

"Yeah. Detective John Daigle."

"Sara Sidle. Good to meet you. So do you know what's already been collected here?"

"Yeah, I was at the scene earlier, too. Michael collected a few metal samples, a few swabs of whatever he could…"

"Thanks."

"Sure."

She sighed, and continued to approach the center of destruction. She wasn't surprised to see a few relatively clean looking scraps laying in the middle of the star; the eye of the hurricane explosion was usually calm. Unless these oddments had been moved, they would likely offer her a clue as to what kind of car she was looking for. Kneeling down, her eyes examined the small heap. Any plastics had been melted onto the rough black asphalt of the garage. She looked over her shoulder back at Detective Daigle.

"Do you know if samples of this plastic were collected?"

"Uh, no… I remember Mike saying it was too hot at the time to collect, would have melted the container he wanted to put it in. Apparently that would contaminate the sample. Come to think of it, a lot of stuff was too hot to collect at the time."

Sara turned back to smirk at the dark grey plastic mound. "I thought so. And he was right, it would contaminate it."

Getting out her kit, she wondered how she'd collect the sample she needed when it was now cold and solid. Finally an idea came to her; but she'd likely need new tweezers afterward. Without looking at the detective, she asked:

"What kind of boots are you wearing?"

He looked puzzled for a moment, but answered:

"Black ones."

At this, she did turn, giving him a derisive look. "What?" he asked, taken aback by her glare.

"Are they steel toed?"

"Yes."

"How about steel soled?"

"Yeah, I think so…"

Sara smirked blithely, tilting her head as she requested cutely:

"Can I borrow one?"

After collecting several pieces of evidence from the scene, including the molten plastic she managed to salvage using her tweezers as a chisel and Daigle's boot as a hammer, Sara made her way back to the lab. The drive back wasn't a long one; and she'd been issued her own department vehicle, so she didn't have to ride with the detective.

On the way back, she stopped at Starbucks for a coffee before continuing on her way, all the while feeling a silent appreciation for the fact she was working while the sun was out. Finally pulling into the CSI parking lot, she collected her evidence bags and headed inside. Blaze caught her as she walked in through the glass doors.

"Hey Sara… the surveillance video just came back from analysis- we managed to clear up some of the graininess enough to determine that we're looking for the owner of either an Acura or Toyota Echo. License plates were too pixilated to read, so…" He sighed, now eyeing her evidence bags.

"Find what you needed?"

"Yeah… I asked Daigle if plastic samples were collected the first time; he said most stuff at the scene was too hot the first time it was processed, so I dug out a few. I need a new set of tweezers." She held up her mangled set from her pocket, the bent points no longer matched up, making it impossible to pick anything up with them.

"Let me guess. Chisel."

Sara coughed.

"… Yeah."

A quite simper crossed his face. Not really embarrassed but wanting to put her reasonably heavy load down, Sara continued.

"I'll take this stuff to the trace lab, and then let's have a look at that video."

"Alright. Meet you in a few."

That night, Nick was back at the lab again for shift. He came in a little early to check on the DNA samples he'd taken in for analysis from his nightclub scene. The tech told him it would be another five minutes or so, so he decided to just wait it out. Gazing around through the glass walls of CSI trying to find something to look at, he spotted Sofia Curtis heading into the locker room with her long hair tied up in a bun. Just before she walked in, she pulled the pen that held the hairdo together out, and her blonde waves fell to her face. For some reason unbeknownst to him, his eyes remained fixated on her until she'd gone out of sight.

"Nick? Hey Nick! Who are you staring at?" Hodges voice finally penetrated his stupor, and he looked away.

"Huh? What?"

"DNA results. Blood from the vic is a match to the blood on the wall, but you do have a separate unknown donor from the blood on the stool. There was also GSR in your second blood pool."

"Okay, thanks Hodges."

"Sure. And don't worry, I won't tell Sara that you were just staring at Sofia."

"What! I wasn't!"

But Hodges just gave him his annoying 'gotcha' look, and turned around, finally taking a seat back in his chair. Nick gave the man his own look of disgust before leaving.

A/N: Not much to say… other than… review! :) Let's do that 'penny for your thoughts' thing again! (laughs) Thanks for reading, I'm really enjoying writing this story- and you all make it even better.

Until Next Time,

-Sahariah