This chapter is brought to you by Trace. Enjoy. And, no, we still do not have any rights to anything CSi related, stop asking.

Chapter 4

The look of pain in the parents' faces took her breath away. To steady herself, Sara leaned on the edge of the coroner's office gurney. The cool metal bit her palm and she concentrated on that instead of the sobs of the mother. The murmured words of the husband were muffled further as he pressed them into his crying wife's hair. Damn I wish Grissom was here, she thought as she felt her own sympathetic tears fight to rush forth. Melissa Adams lay posed on the steel table. The table of death. Hundreds of people before her had laid in that same exposed position: a sheet their only shield from the prying eyes of detectives and coroners, scalpels and saws. Sara felt another pang as the wife whispered, voice still dripping with tears, "How, how did she d-die?"
Something blocked Sara's throat and even as she tried to swallow it away, she still felt it. She took a deep breath and flushed as she realized the parents were still waiting for an answer. "Mr. and Mrs. Adams," she began, "your daughter was strangled."
"I thought she died in a car crash!" the woman cried, confused.
"She was already dead when the car went off the road."
"Was she...assaulted?" Mr. Adams asked, his eyes burning into Sara's, searching for an answer.
"There was evidence of intercourse within a few hours of her death, but there was no evidence that says it wasn't consensual."
Instantly, an indignant expression crossed Mrs. Adams face. "Ms. Sidle, our daughter was twenty-two years old. She was raised to be Christian. She would never do something like that." "Ma'am," Sara said gently, "your daughter was already in a relationship with a man at work, you knew that. She was pregnant with his baby. She was twenty-two years old. She was old enough to make choices for herself." "I don't think she would have chosen this," Mr. Adams said and stroked his daughter's frozen cheek.

Clark Matthews was clean-shaven and well built. His surfer-blond hair barely tickled the bottoms of his earlobes and laugh lines traced his face. But he wasn't laughing today. His eyes were red and his cheeks were moist. Grissom muttered, "I'm sorry for your loss," as he shook Mathews' hand. He almost missed the red-faced woman holding the baby. But then she began to yell.
"Oh, his loss!" Grissom instinctively scooted away across on the couch. "What about my loss? The nights I went to sleep by myself knowing my own husband was keeping some other woman's bed warm?" Mathews looked at his feet. Grissom asked, "When was the last time you saw Melissa Adams, Mr. Mathews?"
Mrs. Mathews stalked out, jiggling the baby. "The day of...the day of the accident."
"Did you have sex with her?"
Clark paused, and cupped his face with his hands. He hesitated and admitted, "Yes."
Grissom nodded. Clark felt the need to explain, "I just couldn't' get her out of my system. It was like every time we saw each other, we knew we had to."
"Every look, every touch makes you want more, doesn't it?" Grissom.

"Do you think he did it?" Sara asked Grissom over the tongue of flame between them. Grissom considered his answer for a moment while he swished a glass of rosy wine. "No," he said. "When a boss starts seeing an employee, it means he feels something for her, something more than just casual attraction. Something that even a pregnancy wouldn't end." Sara's heart began to pound in her chest: an excited beast.
"She would want to work it through with him," Sara continued. Grissom squeezed her hand. Suddenly, she was in a place far from the little fold-up table in Grissom's kitchen and the dead woman in the morgue. She was with him and that was all that mattered. She almost didn't mind when he changed the subject back to the case. "Why did she get an abortion then?" he mused.
"She was terrified her parents would find out?" The room suddenly felt cold.
"Sara?" Grissom questioned, and noticed her flush was suddenly gone. He slid around the table and she fell into his arms.