Sorry it had taken so long for this chapter to come out! I promise things will go quicker… enjoy!

(Also, I swear, Sara and Grissom will have it going on by the end. I promise. Sorry to keep you guys waiting, for those who are.)

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Leaving Grissom's office, Sara walked down the hall to the computer. She considered going down to see how Nick and Greg were doing on the car, but really had no desire to see the bloody interior of the Toyota again. She would be better off investigating Luke Nigers.

She reflected on the conversation that she and Grissom had just had. She had told Grissom that she didn't believe Sammy was the killer only to gauge his opinion, and in truth, she really didn't know what she thought. Half of her desperately wanted it to be Sammy, for this murder just to be another relationship gone wrong. But she knew that Grissom's reasoning was perfectly logical, as it always was. The killer couldn't be Sammy, at least not according to what they knew so far.

They put him away, she assured herself as she entered the room, the sick feeling coming back again. You were there. You watched the trial. You saw the whole thing happen. They put him away. They caught him, and they put him away. The similar circumstances are only a mere coincidence. It's not Sammy, but it's not him either.

Archie looked up from the computer as Sara walked in, looking a little too guilty for his own good. "Hey, Sara," he said nonchalantly while trying (and failing miserably) to subtly minimize the window he was on. "What's up?"

"Nothing much." Sara leaned down over the lab tech to get to the mouse. "New case, in case you haven't heard, so you can stop reviewing those toy store surveillance camera tapes."

"Oh darn," Archie replied listlessly. "And I was making such progress on those tapes… Eight hours a day for a week, and I haven't noticed a damn thing."

"Which totally explains why you weren't trying your ass off to find something," Sara responded, opening the window to see what certainly was not surveillance camera footage. "CS? Where did the 'I' go?"

Archie's expression went from a little kid's with his hand caught in a cookie jar to outright incredulity. "Don't tell me you don't know what CS is!"

"I've got bad news. I don't know what CS is."

"Counterstrike!" Archie was clearly worked up. "Only one of the best games ever made. I can't believe you don't know about it. You've been hanging around Grissom too much."

If only that were funny. "And you're looking this up on the Internet because…?"

"Well, Greg and I have been playing each other, and I swear that he's been invoking some cheat code that I don't know about, so I'm trying to find a cheat to beat it. I'd totally own his ass if it wasn't for that cheat."

Sara wasn't surprised. Greg tended to make up for his shortcomings through less scrupulous means. "Well, I'll tell you what, Archie. Give me the computer, and I won't tell Greg."

Archie backed away, gesturing at the computer. "All yours." He started for the door, then turned around. "Did Griss have anything for me to do on the new case?"

"Dunno," Sara responded absently, typing Luke's name into the database search query. "Go ask him. He's in his office."

Luke, unlike Sammy, did not have a criminal record, though Sara did find that he had spent a year between high school and college in an institution for anger management problems and a tendency towards violence. He seemed to have overcome his problems, having been released from the institution, but Sara knew how it easy it was to relapse. She had just made a note to Brass to call Luke in and was trying to dig further into Luke's psychological condition when the Nick walked in.

"Hey, Sara," Nick said, walking over to the computer. "How did the autopsy go?"

"Well, you probably guessed that she died from loss of blood. Doc Robbins said that she was raped but couldn't get a sample of the semen, but that's really no surprise either. And this is where it gets interesting. Apparently there was orange juice found on the edges of the slits in her wrists."

Nick frowned. "So there was orange juice on the knife?"

"That's what Grissom thinks. But listen, there's more. She's also pregnant, with, according to Sammy DuLilo, the boyfriend who called her in missing, this person's child." She gestured to the Luke on the computer screen. "Luke Nigers. Sammy's best friend."

"Whooo." Nick raised his eyebrows. "Juicy. This sounds like a bad soap opera."

"A little bit," Sara agreed. "Find anything else in the car?"

"Lots and lots of blood. Greg is taking some samples to test against the vic's DNA just in case there is someone else's blood mixed in, but the splatter seems pretty indicative of someone bleeding out while trying to get out of the cars." He grimaced. "There were a couple prints in the blood near the interior car door handles. Rick ran them, and both they and the prints you collected on the exterior of the car door match the victim's."

Sara let out a breath. "So we really don't have much, do we?"

"Well, we do have this." Nick held up a small envelope. "We found a red fiber on the car seat. It doesn't match any other fibers in the car, so it's probably a transfer from an outside source. There were some more blonde hairs on the passenger seat. Probably from the vic again, but we sent it in for analysis all the same."

Sara felt a small pinch of self-resentment. She had been mildly annoyed when she heard that Grissom had sent Greg and Nick down to the car to recheck her work, but she knew that he was justified. She really hadn't done a good job last night. "I'm sorry about that," she apologized. "I just… I was really tired last night. I didn't really—"

"No, it's okay," Nick cut in gently. "I know." He smiled. "You'd be the last one to be accused of slacking off, Sara."

Sara shrugged. "I still should have—"

"Seriously, don't worried about it." Nick's face turned serious. "You okay, though? We really missed you last night."

"I'm fine. I just… you know, was tired."

"Ergo, you came to work instead. Only you, Sara Sidle." Nick grinned as Sara opened her mouth to defend herself. "Nah, it's cool. No offense taken. You just missed some good times."

Sara smiled. "I'll be there next time, I promise."

"Ah, we'll be sure to make it soon." Nick snickered. "Greg's talking of retribution against Catherine's kicking his ass anyway."

"Excuse me," Greg interjected, walking in. "For the record, Sara, Catherine did not kick my ass. It was a freak shot."

"That hit you square in the face," Nick added.

"A little bit."

"Mmhm," Sara agreed, unconvinced. She eyed a small dab of blue on Greg's ear. "Must have been quite a little shot."

"So, Greggo," Nick said after a small silence, "What's up? Any news on the blood?"

Greg gave Nick an annoyed look. "Clearly, Nick, you have never worked in a lab. On the behalf of all my fellow misunderstood lab technicians, DNA results do not come back this quickly. It is a long, arduous, and underappreciated process."

"But I thought you said you could do anything."

"Hey." Greg held up a hand. "I know that I'm exceedingly smart and unimaginably attractive, but a guy can't be everything."

"All right, both of you," Sara sighed, exasperated, "cut it out. Go take your ego contest somewhere else. I've got work to do."

Nick and Greg seemed to take the "ego contest" bit to heart and left her, still chattering heatedly as they walked out of the room. Shaking her head, Sara went back to her computer.

She knew that there was no way she would be able to get any of Luke's personal medical record with just a curious suspicion. She would just have to pay close attention while talking to him.

She accessed the mental clinic's webpage while waiting for word from Brass. As far as she could tell from the site's limited info, the clinic had a no-drug policy and relied exclusively on psychological coaching and remediation to help its patients. All patients were guaranteed a full year during which they were deemed "stable" by clinic psychologists before being released, after which the patient was required to visit a psychologist every month so his or her progress could be monitored.

Sara found all of this slightly questionable and decided to give the clinic a call. After looping through an obscure series of commands on the phone, a woman finally picked up.

"Hi," Sara quickly said, "I would like some information."

"Mmhm…" the woman sounded pleasant enough. "What would you like to know?"

"What is the success rate at your clinic?"

"What do you define as success? All the patients that enter our clinic leave. Some just take longer than others."

Sara rolled her eyes. Some people could make anything sound good. "I meant, how many people are actually 'cured,' for lack of a better word?"

"Well, certainly everyone is deemed stable before he or she is released."

"What do you define as 'stable?'"

If Sara's questions were getting to the woman, she certainly didn't show it. "The specifics are for our highly-acclaimed and qualified psychologists to decide, but I can assure you that certainly no one who may be a harm to either him or herself or to society will be released."

"Any chance of a relapse?"

"Oh, very little, ma'am. Our methods ensure that we solve the problem at its root. We have a no-drug policy here—all of our patients undergo intensive counseling so that we change the actual mindset of the patient instead of covering it up at the surface."

It sounded like that Tom Cruise interview on the Today Show. "But it's been proven that depression is a chemical imbalance," Sara pointed out. "Counseling wouldn't correct that."

"Nothing has been proven, miss. The ones who champion medicine create a problem that needs medicine. Here at Walnut Hill, we believe that everything can be solved through counseling."

The woman's sickly sweet tone had been annoying Sara, so she took Brass' page as her cue to leave. "Thank you very much," she told the woman quickly.

The woman wasn't ready to let go yet. "Are you considering Walnut Hill for a loved one?"

If Sara had been, she certainly wouldn't now. "Maybe," she replied unpromisingly. "I want to look around first." Before the woman could say anything else, she hung up quickly, leaving to meet Brass at the police station.

Luke Nigers, unlike his best friend, had a much more somber attitude—timid, even. He was fidgeting with his watch when Sara sat down with Brass.

"I didn't do anything," he said quickly once they were all sitting. "I swear, I didn't do anything. I was with a bunch of friends, I swear. You can ask them. Like that alibi stuff, whatever. I didn't do anything."

"Whoa whoa whoa, chill out for a second, all right?" Brass asked in his brusque cop manner. "We just wanna ask some questions about Mackenzie, get some background about how the night went. If you didn't do anything, this'll be a piece of cake. What did you do last night?"

"Uh, I watched soccer on TV at the hotel. I mean, Sammy and Mackenzie and others wanted to go out, but I'm a big Manchester United fan so I stayed home to watch the game." He looked at Sara. "You can check it. It was on last night at 7:00. They were playing Arsenal."

"Yeah, we'll do that," Brass agreed as Sara quickly jotted down some notes. "So you were watching soccer… then?"

Luke shrugged. "After the game was over—it was around 9:30, give or take a few, I went down to our friends' room. Just hung out, played some cards."

"Was Mackenzie there?" Sara asked.

Luke frowned. "No. She and Sammy were down at the casino. The Mirage, I think. I'm not really a big gambling guy, and the rest of them were all flat-out broke, so only Mackenzie and Sammy went. Well, Mackenzie went just because Sammy did. He'd been having good nights, scoring some. She didn't really care for gambling either, but…" he shrugged. "They're going out."

"So that makes the last time you saw Mackenzie… when?"

Luke thought for a moment. "We all went out for dinner before we split up to do stuff, around six. Down in the hotel. I paid." He dug in his pocket, then slid a piece of paper over to Sara. "Here's the receipt."

"I see that you've had some anger management problems. How's that been going?"

Luke shook his head. "Man, I can't believe you know about that." He looked up at Sara. "Listen, I was hospitalized for this time at a hockey game back in high school, when I almost killed a kid by running over him in my skates. The blade nicked some sort of artery or something – I don't know. Hockey's a violent game, but I guess I had some issues. It never was a problem like that though. I mean, I'm cool now. I don't get angry anymore."

"What about your psychologist meetings? Having those?"

"Listen, I told you. There's no problem anymore. Any sort of arguments with my friends, I talk it out."

"So you talked it out with Sammy when you got Mackenzie pregnant."

Luke looked back down at the table. "That was a mistake," he said quietly. "I mean, she came onto me, but she's kinda hot, so I went along with it. But yeah, we talked it out. Mackenzie is—was, getting an abortion. We all agreed on that."

"So you and Sammy are cool."

"Yeah. We're cool. I was the first person he called when he found out… when you guys told him that she was dead." He paused, then reached into his pocket again. He looked down at what was in his hand, then looked up again. "Listen, my girlfriend just texted me. She wants to know what's going. Are we done here? Because I really have nothing else to say, and we'd all just like to… be together for this. Be there for Sam, you know?"

"Yeah, we're almost done." Sara produced a Q-tip. "Could we just take your DNA and fingerprints, for investigative purposes and to possibly rule you out as a suspect?"

Luke nodded. "Sure. I'd be happy to give anything."

"And could we have the name of your girlfriend and the rest of your friends, in case we need to contact them?"

Luke thought for a moment. "Sure, I guess. I was with them though. My friends, I mean. I was with them all night. Except for Rachel, my girlfriend. She was out doing stuff, running errands. I can give you her info if you give me something to write on."

Having collected the information and DNA she needed, Sara went back to the lab. She dropped off Luke's DNA at the DNA lab with Mia to confirm that the fetus' DNA did match with Luke's and was on her way back to the computer when she passed by the break room.

"Hey Sara!" Nick called, "how did the questioning go?"

She stepped in to see Nick, Grissom, and Greg gathered around the table. "Good, but nothing spectacular. I checked up on mental institution – Walnut Hill – that Luke had gone to? It's a load of crap, but Luke seems like he's a pretty chill guy. He hung out with his friends all night last night—didn't see the vic after dinner around six. Claims to have watched a soccer game on TV. I was about to confirm that there was a match."

Greg sat up. "Who? Manchester United vs. Arsenal?"

Sara raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, that would be the one."

Greg snapped. "Damn, heard it was a good match. I had wanted to watch that, but oh, the cons of graveyard shift."

"Or paintballing," Grissom pointed out, annoyed. He looked up at Sara. "Sammy mentioned that Luke had a girlfriend."

"Yeah, I got her info."

Grissom continued watching her. "Well, if your boyfriend was sleeping around, how would you feel?"

Sara tried to ignore Greg's snicker in the background. "Pretty damn angry."

Grissom raised his eyebrows. "Let's get on it, then."