SLOW BURN

~ Chapter 3 ~

Drumming her fingers silently on top of the steering wheel, Catherine stared up at the traffic signal ahead and willed it to change to green. Leaving the Galleria, she'd chosen to avoid the interstate and its mess of road works and mid-afternoon travellers in favour of heading north via surface streets; a move that ought to have saved her both time and hassle and might have, had she not had the misfortune to hit almost every red light possible between Sunset Road and Maryland Parkway.

She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders in an effort to ease the dull ache that had settled in at the base of her neck; it had been a long tedious night followed by a long frustrating day and both anxiety and tension were starting to take their toll.

Glancing across at her front seat passenger, she could plainly tell he was feeling it too; Grissom's determined glare out through the windscreen coupled with the hard set of his jaw and deeply furrowed brow spoke volumes.

"Not long now." Reaching over the centre console, she patted him gently on the arm. "Just try and relax a little, will you? You've spoken to her so you know she's okay and she's also in a busy public area so she's perfectly safe."

"Is she?" Shifting his attention to the still-red traffic light, Grissom scowled. "What the hell was that, Catherine? What kind of abduction starts at one shopping mall, lasts an hour and a half and then ends at another mall with the victim unable to remember anything that happened?" He shrugged. "It just doesn't make any sense."

"I've been thinking about that; there have been a handful of incidents over the past eighteen months where women have disappeared from public places but if this was the same guy, Sara would never have turned up so quickly and she'd never have turned up alive." She glanced across half expecting him to comment but he remained silent so she carried on. "It could be someone taunting us I guess, a kind of 'see what I can get away with right under your noses' type of thing but without context of some kind that would actually be a fairly pointless exercise so I'm leaning more towards a case of mistaken identity." She shrugged. "I mean, it doesn't explain the amnesia – that, I'm going to assume has been caused by a drug of some sort – but it could explain Sara being taken." The light finally turned green and, easing her foot off the brake, Catherine allowed the big SUV to move forward with the surrounding traffic. "It wouldn't be the first time a pissed off husband hired someone to take out his wife and then the guy accidentally grabs the wrong target."

"He wouldn't usually let the wrong one go though, would he?" Grissom countered sceptically. "That kind of person tries not to leave loose ends, which is what Sara would invariably be."

"True," she conceded, "but if he's already got her doped up and is confident that she's not going to be able to identify him, what has he got to lose?"

Catherine waited for a moment, fully expecting her hypothesis to be shot down in flames but, instead, she got silence and glancing sideways, she was surprised to see him seriously considering the idea. She drove on, amazed when they made it through the next set of lights without having to stop and was already focussing on the intersection up ahead before Grissom spoke again.

"You know any people who've had a colonoscopy?" Turning as much as his seatbelt would allow, his mouth arced up into the kind of cocky, self-satisfied grin that Catherine hadn't seen him use in years. "Or maybe an endoscopy?"

"A couple," she answered cautiously. "Why?"

"Did they ever happen to mention what they remember about the procedure?"

"No, I can't say that they did." She frowned as she tried her hardest to recall. "In fact, about the only thing I can remember being told about it was that they had almost no memory of it at all." She shrugged. "But, considering they'd have been anaesthetised at the time, that's probably not too surprising."

"Sedated not anaesthetised or, more precisely, consciously sedated." He corrected himself. "They were never knocked out, they didn't have to be; they'd have been given a drug that kept them calm, relaxed and pain-free during the procedure that also has the ability to induce anterograde amnesia."

"Which is why they have no memory of it."

"Exactly." Grissom's smile widened. "And the main drug of choice for conscious sedation is Midazolam."

"Versed." Catherine gave it its more commonly known commercial name. "It's one of the Benzodiazepines and definitely not something that you can just stroll into a pharmacy and ask for."

"No, it's not and in its liquid form it tends to be available for procedural use in a medical environment only." He nodded. "Works in minutes, can be injected or sprayed into the nose or even inside the cheek and the effects typically last an hour or so."

"And Sara went AWOL for ninety minutes." Glancing away from the road, Catherine smiled. "That could explain her memory loss."

"That's what I thought." Grissom offered her the first genuine, worry-free smile she'd seen from him since her arrival at the Galleria.

"So, what are we going with here?" She asked as she moved the Explorer across into the right-hand lane. "He injected her with the stuff?"

"Not to start with, she'd fight to the death if she saw someone coming at her with a syringe especially with Ben in the middle of things as he was." He quickly shook his head. "No, Midazolam is water soluble so, if it were me, I'd opt for a concentrated spray straight into the face; you'd just need to get enough into the mouth and nose to make your victim compliant and then, when you've got them away from the scene, top up the dose with an IV injection."

Both his supposition and reasoning were so well thought out and so absolutely plausible that Catherine couldn't help but smile.

"You've missed this, haven't you?" Taking her eyes off the road ahead, she glanced across at her old friend. "Not the getting your wife kidnapped bit, obviously, but the chase, the mystery, the puzzling things out."

"I have, kind of, yeah." Grissom shrugged self-consciously. "It was a part of my life for a long time, Catherine; I suppose I'll always miss some aspects of it."

"Well, I happen to know that Days will be looking for a new supervisor in about three month's time." Her eyebrows rose in question. "So, if you had no problem with me being your boss and felt like coming back, the lab would be delighted to have you."

"Well, I survived Ecklie so I dare say I'd survive you but it's not something that I feel the need to do anymore, Cath." Grissom shrugged. "Thanks for the offer but I like the job I have now; I spend most of my working week hiking my way along the Wash and Lake Mead and the rest of it writing reports on what I find there. I can set my own hours, work around Ben's schedule and Sara's when it's necessary and, most importantly, make sure that the two if us actually manage to get some time alone together which is not always easy when you're working diametrically opposite shifts and there's a toddler in the house."

"Yeah well, looks like you've been more than successful on that front." Catherine didn't even attempt to hide her grin. "How far along is she?"

"Almost twelve weeks," Grissom admitted. "She's booked in for a scan next Monday and, provided we got the all clear, we were going to let everyone in on it after that." He sighed wearily. "I guess that's kind of been taken out of our hands now though."

"Why, because you told me?" Catherine asked incredulously. "I could keep it a secret you know, especially if I didn't have to sit on it for long but, having said that, I actually might not have to." She glanced over with a grin. "Once she's processed, Sara's going to have to be checked out medically and any self-respecting ER doctor is going to want to check out Grissom junior too so she might not need that appointment next week after all."

A message notification beep sounded from the console and she nodded towards her cell phone.

"Could you check that for me?" She glanced at the dashboard clock as Grissom reached for the phone. "I'm going to guess it's Crawford."

"It's from Ecklie actually." Scrolling his way through the text, Grissom read out the salient points. "Judy Robbins collected Ben ten minutes ago, Crawford's on his way up here now and apparently Greg is on the warpath." He looked up. "Conrad says he stopped at the Galleria on his way back to the lab and was more than a little pissed when he discovered Sara had been found and no one thought to let him know."

"Damn, I knew there was something I forgot to do." She shrugged sheepishly. "I left him to finish up the scene we were working when I first got the call about Sara; I was supposed to call him when I knew what was going on."

"Do me a favour, will you?"

"Please don't leave Sara at a scene?" Catherine guessed with a single raised eyebrow. "Don't worry, I wouldn't, especially not now; let's make a deal, okay?" She offered him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "You do whatever you have to in order to make sure she's safe at home and I'll do the same thing at work; between the two of us, she'll probably end up being the safest person in the whole of Vegas."

Five minutes and one final red light later, Catherine turned the Explorer into the parking lot of Old Orchard mall. A 1980's leftover that had steadfastly resisted the almost constant redevelopment that had been going on all around it for the past thirty years, it had an Albertson's at one end and a Target at the other while the middle was comprised almost totally of mid-priced clothing stores, cell phone retailers and a wide variety of fast food vendors.

Swinging the SUV into a parking space near the entrance, she nodded towards the assembly of marked police cruisers and the single black SUV positioned immediately outside the centre's door.

"Well, that's saved me some work." Pushing the driver's door open wide, Catherine stepped out into the hot afternoon sun. "I thought I'd be the one processing Sara but it looks like someone's beat me to it."

"Huh?" Closing his door behind him, Grissom's attention had been caught by something else.

"I said it looks like Days may have beaten us here." She smiled, pleased with the proof that the lab's new call-out procedures were clearly working well. "If my theory's correct and this does turn out to be a case of mistaken identity-"

"I'm not entirely sure that it's going to pan out that way, Catherine." Grissom keep his eyes firmly locked on a four storey building that abutted the north-eastern end of the mall's car park. "So you may want to rethink that theory of yours."

"Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"That building over there, you see the third floor balcony on the left?" He paused a moment to give her time to orient herself correctly. "That's Sara's old apartment."

"Are you sure?"

"Trust me, I spent a lot of time there, Cath; I'm positive." Grissom shrugged. "I never made the connection when she told me where she was but now that I'm here and I see just how close that apartment building is…" He shook his head. "There's no way that's a coincidence."

"Okay." Drawing in a deep breath, Catherine let it out slowly as she processed what she'd just been told. "So, Sara was definitely the target."

"It looks that way." Turning his back on the building, Grissom stared across at the mall's entrance. "Which means we're back where we started from; we don't know who, we don't know why and we have no idea when, or if, they're likely to do it again."

"Well, we can stand out here and try to work it out the hard way or we can go inside and see what your wife can tell us." Seeing him about to speak, she held up a restraining hand. "I know, I know, she doesn't have any memory of what happened but she's not the only one being forgetful around here," her mouth quirked up into a grin. "We've got Locard on our side, haven't we?" She cocked her head. "Sara might not be able to tell us anything directly but the odds are that there's evidence of the perp on her that can."

A/N: Mahalo SylvieT :)