SLOW BURN

~ Chapter 30 ~

"Okay, that's it!" Fully dressed and standing at the window, Grissom turned with a frustrated sigh. "They've got another twenty minutes and then I'm signing myself out of here."

"Oh, Sara will love that." With his feet up on the side of the hospital bed, Jim's attention was split between his friend and a replay of the previous night's basketball game. "You promised you'd wait around until they kicked you out, remember or, at least, until your doctor comes to see you which, unless this one-sided game lulled me into a coma, hasn't happened yet."

"The only people I've seen today have been nurses." Grissom held out his right arm showing off the array of bruises that marked his forearm. "Who are more than happy to keep taking blood from me but go out of their way to avoid answering my questions about going home." Dropping down into the second chair, a single eyebrow rose in question. "I don't suppose you could ask Helen to find out what's going on, could you?"

"I could," Jim kept his eyes locked on the screen. "But let's give it a little longer; after all, this is a busy hospital and, odds are, the hold up is due to an emergency." He glanced over and stifled a laugh at the petulant look on his friend's face. "I'm sure they'll get to you soon."

Both men looked towards the open doorway as an almost hesitant tap sounded.

"Conrad, come on in," Grissom beckoned him into the room. "Maybe you'll be better company than I'm currently stuck with."

"You've done nothing but complain since I got here." Jim rolled his eyes. "And, considering I'm your ride to freedom, I wouldn't piss me off too much if I was you."

"I, uh…" Coming to a halt at the end of the bed, Ecklie awkwardly shifted his weight from one foot to the other before continuing. "I was planning on dropping by to see how you're doing, Gil but this is…" he cleared his throat, unsure how best to move forward.

"What is it, Conrad?" Grissom sat up a little straighter, the newcomer's uneasy manner and hard-set jaw instantly putting him on alert. "What's happened? Is it Sara?"

"Yeah, I'm afraid it is." Ecklie quickly held up a restraining hand as he watched the color drain from Grissom's face and heard Jim scramble to his feet. "It's okay, as far as I know she's perfectly fine." He turned to face Brass. "Can I have a couple of minutes alone with him, Jim? It's important."

"After scaring the crap out of both of us just now?" Brass sat back down again as he glared at the other man. "No, you can't."

"Gil, I -"

"He stays, Conrad."

"Okay," looking from one man to the other, Ecklie sighed in resignation. "But what I'm going to say can't go any further than this room and no one can know that I've been here either; I'm going to need your assurances on that."

"And you've got them," Grissom promised as he watched Brass nod his agreement. "Now what the hell is all this about?"

"Okay sweetheart," stopping just shy of the nursery door, Vanessa Parrish crouched low as she addressed herself to the little boy beside her. "Do you remember what we do when we go inside to see the babies?"

With a determined nod, Ben raised a finger to his lips as he looked almost solemnly at the daycare coordinator. "Shhh!"

"Good boy." She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. "As soon as we make sure everyone's awake we can make some noise but not too loudly, okay?"

Fresh from his own post-lunch nap, Ben nodded again and, after gracing him with an approving smile, Vanessa opened the nursery's door and led him inside.

The open-plan room was painted a soft pastel blue and was decorated with bright posters and a mixture of different textured floor rugs. A dedicated play area had been set up against one of the walls and a colorfully painted miniature table and chairs along with matching storage units, took up the other. A third area towards the back of the room contained cots and change tables while the final area had been set up with two overstuffed armchairs and Vanessa made sure to block the little boy's view of them as she guided him further into the room.

"Hi, Ben," seated on the floor beside two of her charges whilst bottle feeding a third, Tasha Bowman smiled a welcome. "You come to help us for a little while?"

Ben looked around what he could see of the room and, deciding it was okay to talk, nodded enthusiastically. "Me helps."

"You certainly do." With a wink at her boss, Tasha tipped her head towards the back of the room. "While I finish up Gracie's bottle, how about you and Miss Vanessa go and see how Wyatt is doing with his."

"Okay." Pulling his hand free of the larger one that held it, Ben made his way around the nearest of the storage cubes and, gaze fixed on the row of white cots up ahead, almost walked passed his mother seated comfortably in one of the armchairs.

"Mommy!" He made a beeline for her, coming to a halt only when he realized what she was doing.

"Hey baby." Careful not to jostle the nursing eight-week-old she held, Sara leaned sideways just enough to kiss her son's head. "Do you know who this is?"

"Wy-hat." Ben looked from his mother to the baby and back again. "Him's new."

"He's new." Coming to a halt behind him, Vanessa corrected the toddler automatically as she ruffled his hair. "And that's because he's still very little." She smiled down at the scene before her. "I told you you'd be a natural."

"So did Gil," Sara grinned back. "But, since every baby I've held in the past has screamed at the first touch, I've had some serious trouble believing it."

She'd arrived at the center twenty minutes earlier, completely resigned to the fact that, within moments, she'd be holding a shrieking baby that wanted absolutely nothing to do with her but the staff of the nursery and Wyatt had made it all seem easy.

Ordered to take a seat in one of the comfiest chairs she'd ever sat in, she'd barely had time to draw breath before she had a child cradled in the crook of her elbow and a bottle in hand and, following an initial curious stare, Wyatt had happily accepted not only the proffered feed but her steadily relaxing presence as well.

"Ben taught you well," Vanessa commented as she swung the little boy up to sit on the arm of the chair his mother occupied.

I guess he did." Switching the bottle to the same hand that held the baby, Sara gave her son's leg a gentle squeeze. "Although he was ten months old when I first fed him and, by comparison, this one is tiny."

"Try telling his mother that," Vanessa chuckled. "Wyatt weighed in at ten pound nine ounces when he was born and he's been gaining steadily ever since."

"Ten pounds?" Sara stared incredulously.

"Yep and, thanks to that, his mom swears blind that he's destined to be an only child."

"I can't say I blame her." Sara looked from Wyatt to her own swollen belly and exhaled audibly. "Wow, something else to worry about, huh? Maybe instead of being induced two weeks early I should ask my doctor about making it four."

"You'll be fine," Vanessa gave her knee a comforting pat. "Wyatt's parents are both…" she hesitated for a moment as she searched for an appropriate, and polite, description, "a little on the larger side so I don't think his birth weight was really a surprise to anyone." She stared at Sara's stomach. "Whereas you're a more normal weight so I suspect your baby will be too; I'd be shocked if you popped out a ten pounder."

She shifted her attention to the little boy sitting contentedly beside his mother watching as Wyatt worked his way through his bottle.

"Are you ready to be a big brother, Ben? It's going to be exciting when Mommy brings home your little baby, isn't it?"

"Yes," leaning forward, Ben tapped on his mother's belly. "Him's in here."

"Well, it looks like someone's made up his mind as to what he's getting," Vanessa chuckled as she addressed Sara. "Is this inside information?"

"If it is no one let me in on it." Changing the angle of the bottle as the baby she held steadily worked his way through it, Sara smiled.

"And how's Gil doing today?"

"He's good," Sara nodded happily, "although cabin fever has definitely kicked in. He's determined to get out of there this afternoon but that's not going to happen until he sees the doctor to go over all his results and he was still waiting for that to happen when I left to come here."

"So you and Ben are heading back there after this?"

"No, one of our friends is spending the afternoon there and will drive him back to Lily's place when he does get released; the plan is to meet up there and then head back to our place." She winked. "So, since Ben and I aren't really needed, I thought we could go and do some grocery shopping to restock Lily's kitchen after eating her out of house and home and then reward ourselves with some ice-cream afterwards."

"Ice kweem." Ben said almost reverently, his eyes lighting up at the thought.

"Well, clearly that's a popular plan." Vanessa chuckled at the sight before nodding towards the baby Sara held. "So, since you've both done so well here this afternoon and your little friend there is in the process of falling asleep, how about I give you a quick course on burping a sleeping newborn without waking him and then you and Ben can be on your way."

Both men listened in silence as Ecklie quickly filled them in what had been happening: from the locked computer files to the bag of powdered oleander along with the subsequent lab tests conducted on both it and Grissom's blood and stomach contents.

He'd paused for a moment to give them time to digest what he'd said before then bringing up his mid-morning meeting with Assistant District Attorney Maddie Klein.

"Maddie Klein?" Brass shook his head in disbelief. "Of all the people in the D.A.'s office, why the hell would you go to her for advice?"

"Because we've known each other for years," Ecklie shrugged. "And because she's got one of the best legal minds I've ever come across plus I really needed advice on how to conduct this investigation the right way." He glanced at Grissom and inwardly winced at the steadily darkening expression on the man's face. "For the department's sake, for the lab's sake and even for Sara's sake, I wanted to make sure that everything is done correctly."

"And yet you're here now." Grissom's voice was a flat and expressionless monotone as he continued to glare at Ecklie. "When I'm quite sure one of the first things Maddie would have told you was to stay away from Sara and to stay away from me." One eyebrow rose in question. "So what made you come here straight after seeing her?"

"Because I didn't like the way she grabbed this thing and ran with it." Conrad told him honestly. "Seeing the way her eyes lit up when I filled her in on what we'd found…" he sighed heavily. "You know she's on the shortlist for the DA's position, right? The feeling I got was that she's looking at this case as the means to cement her place at the top of that list. That prosecuting someone from law enforcement will underline the fact that she has no intention of playing favorites when it comes to putting people behind bars That she's the only person for the job."

He paused, waiting for a reaction but when none was forthcoming, he continued.

"Maddie's tied up in court tomorrow morning but as soon as she's free she intends getting a search warrant for your home and your vehicles and, after that, she's planning to bring Sara in for questioning on the evidence tampering at the lab and then hit her with an attempted murder by poisoning charge against you."

"That's ridiculous!" Grissom shook his head. "I have no idea why those compounds are showing up in my blood but I sure as hell know it isn't thanks to Sara."

"They don't just appear in the human body, Gil, you know that; someone has to put them there." Ecklie countered. "So unless you've taken to snacking on foxgloves, lily of the valley or, in this case, oleander, someone has been dosing you with it and that someone has to be in close contact in order to carry that out." He shrugged. "And that fact along with the bag of ground oleander in Sara's bag is more than a little damning."

Leaning forward in his seat, Grissom cocked his head. "You've known her for years, Conrad; you really think she's capable of that?"

"When Sara first came back to the lab when you were in Paris, she'd changed, she wasn't the same annoying, antagonistic, hothead that she used to be and we kind of clicked; we worked together a couple of times and wound-up being friends instead of enemies. Do I think she did it?" He shook his head. "No, if I'm honest, I don't think she has it in her to do something like that and I certainly don't want to see her being blamed for something that she didn't do but, right now, the evidence we've got makes her our one and only suspect."

He looked from Grissom to Brass and back again.

"Which is why, as sheriff, I'm telling you that all of this has to be investigated properly; that, if Sara is innocent, we are probably in the best position to find that out and exonerate her." Conrad took a deep breath in and exhaled it slowly before continuing. "But, as a friend, I'm telling you that if it was my pregnant wife that Maddie Klein had lined up in her sights, I'd be getting her as far away from Vegas as possible."

A/N: Thanks, once again, goes to SylvieT for the beta.