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Chapter Five
I locked the door of my Denali and slid my keys in the back pocket of my black Levi's; I noted through the darkness that Nick's car was also parked in the parking lot and hoped he had brought Catherine into work like he had planned to do so, as her new car was on order. I nodded a hello to the receptionist as I made my way into the building and through the glass corridors to the locker room.
Once there I removed my dark blue sweatshirt and pulled on my CSI vest over my white t-shirt. Grissom has promised I could at least go out on a case tonight, even if I was just supervising, and I was looking forward to getting back to actually doing my job. I took a deep breath and turned to head towards to the break room, where I could hear the sound of Nick and Warwick laughing.
As soon as I saw her my stomach flipped and my heart momentarily stopped beating. She was sat on one of the chairs around the table, listening intently to a joke Nick had just finished telling. She looked more beautiful than I ever had remembered her. She was dressed in pinstripe brown trousers, a white shirt and tan brown leather jacket; dark brown leather boots completing the outfit. Her long blonde hair was back to its usual shininess and her make-up was flawless, she looked like she had never been through any of what had occurred to us.
Grissom and Warwick were stood against the counters behind Nick and both smiled at me as they noticed my presence.
"Hi." I slipped into one of the chairs around the table.
Nick shrugged off the rest of his joke and turned his attention to sipping his coffee.
"How are you feeling?" I asked Catherine.
"I'm fine." she smiled, but it wasn't the smile I had wanted to see from her, it was… disconnected. "Are you okay?"
I nodded. "Yes, I am." I returned her smile, but her eyes quickly left mine and I felt my heart go cold.
Grissom cleared his throat, "Nick and I are on a 419 on the strip."
"Warwick and Sara, can you take a hit and run in Winchester," he passed the address over to Warwick, "Sara, you're helping Warwick collect evidence and then you're coming back here to process it, that's it."
I nodded.
"Catherine, Doc Robbins has asked if you could help him out this evening ID'ing a John Doe that came in this afternoon?"
"Sure."
"Okay let's go." Grissom left the break room with Nick in tow.
"I'll grab a kit and my keys, see you outside?" Warwick asked me.
"Mhmm." I hoped the catch a second with Catherine alone before the shift commenced, but as I turned from Warwick to where she had been sat, she was already on her feet and leaving.
I knelt down on the road, tweezers in one hand and a brown envelope in the other, picking up glass shards from where the car headlights had broken upon impacting the victim, who had been taken to hospital. It felt good to be back at work properly and almost like I had never been away. Warwick had let me get a little more involved in the scene than Grissom would have liked, I had interviewed a few witnesses and spoken to a police officer who had been on the scene about the CCTV camera that belonged to a nearby convenience store.
I appreciated that I wasn't being wrapped in cotton wool by Warwick, but I doubted he would have done so even if I had needed it, he always seemed pre-occupied with something or other. It usually bothered me a little that he was so quiet but this evening I wasn't in the mood for light chat and was thankful for the silence.
I finished photographing parts of the scene that needed my attention and collecting the broken headlight glass from the road before bagging everything up that I needed and finding Warrick. He was in the convenience store with the cop I had talked to earlier, getting the CCTV tape from the quite alarmed young guy behind the till, who unfortunately, despite only being 20ft away from the scene, hadn't seen the car drive into the woman as she had been crossing the road.
Warrick passed me the tape, "Pete said he'll drive you back to lab, if you're alright to make a start of processing." He motioned with his head to the cop who he was stood next to, who gave me a small smile.
"Sure." I replied.
Pete turned out to not be a very talkative character, I sensed for some reason that he was a little nervous, and the drive to the lab was a silent one. I spent most of it lost in my own thoughts, I wanted to text Catherine and make sure she was alright but she'd managed to drop her iPhone on the lab floor a few weeks ago and hadn't gotten around to replacing it yet, so any communication would have to be face to face which made me nervous after how she had seemed to blank me earlier.
I thanked Pete for the lift once he had pulled up outside the lab, and after grabbing my evidence bags from the trunk, I headed into the building. Finding an empty evidence room I dumped the bags on the glass table and took the CCTV to Archie for him to run through. On the way from Archie's office back to my evidence room I decided that coffee was needed, I was feeling pretty rough and was actually debating just working my 8 hour shift like a normal person for once.
I entered the break room to see Catherine nursing a cup of coffee, sat at the square black table. She was staring into nothingness, her hands cupped around the mug.
"Are you alright, Cath?" I asked, pouring myself a mug full of the caffeinated liquid from the coffeemaker.
She seemed to be startled by my presence, but gave a smile as she caught me eye - the same expressionless smile she had given to me earlier.
"How are you feeling?" I questioned, hoping to get a response this time.
"Fine."
I felt a twinge of sadness at her short response. "If there's anything I can do to…" I trailed off as I noticed that she was getting out of her seat and turning away. I watched as she left the break room and walked down the corridor back to her work. Whatever we had shared in the desert, any words between us, or comfort we had shared from each others touch, had obviously meant nothing to her. I was pretty sure I felt my heart break at that moment.
I could feel tears threaten to fall. I wasn't going to cry here, anywhere but here.
After collecting my sweatshirt from the locker room I quickly made my way out of the building and to my car. I started the engine as a sob caught in my throat, I breathed out slowly to try and steady my emotions. I felt as though the woman I had yearned for, and loved, had died when she had collapsed in the desert. I didn't know who this women was that now paraded around as Catherine.
A tear slid down my cheek and I quickly brushed it away, my eyes blurry with held-in tears. I desperately needed to be at home, to shut out the world and forget that any of this existed.
How was I going to get over her?
The Vegas night sky was filled of the bright lights from the casinos and bars; although thankfully, with it being 5am, the roads were pretty quiet. I tried to blink away tears but now they ran freely than before and I felt my whole body shudder as I struggled desperately to contain my emotions.
I pulled my Denali into an alleyway and turned off the engine just as another sob echoed from my body, I leaned forward onto the steering wheel with my head in my hands as I sobbed. I felt like the whole world had fallen in around me and the one person I had allowed myself to get close to had slammed the door in my face.
I was alone.