A/N: I, as always, do not own CSI.

Grissom marked the hollow area in the wall with a marker and waited until Kohler had finished processing the rest of the room before calling the sheriff and telling him what he had found. The sheriff sent five officers into the house to assist Grissom and Brass and then told them to keep in contact via radio. Grissom retrieved a saws-all from the back of one of the Crime Lab's Denali's and headed back to the room to get to work. Brass greeted him at the door.

"You ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be."

Grissom turned the saw on and carefully followed the lines he had made on the wall. With each swipe of the saw, he felt as though he was one step closer to finding Sara…and one step closer to finding Reichman. After five minutes of heavy sawing, Grissom sat the tool down, pried his fingers into the cracks the saw had made, and slowly eased the loose section from the wall. After setting the piece aside, he turned to see what fruit his labor had yielded.

Where there had been a clean, flawless section of wall moments before, there was now a gaping hole. Further inspection revealed a flight of damp, stone steps leading down. Grissom could only see a few feet into the passageway before everything was swallowed in darkness. Grissom looked back at Brass, whose eyes were narrowed.

"Well that explains the lack of footprints," said the detective.

Grissom nodded. "I figured as much. What do you think? Proceed on?"

"All the money in the world couldn't keep me out of there."

Grissom nodded again and then turned to the five uniforms milling around behind him. "We're going in, guys. Flashlights out. And guns," he added after a meaningful look from Brass. "I have no idea what we're going to find at the end of this, so be on your guard at all times. This could turn against us very quickly."

The officers nodded and hurried to comply with Grissom's instructions. When everyone was ready, Grissom nodded at Brass who stepped up to the entrance of the passageway and shined his flashlight down into the gloom. After a few seconds, he began to descend the stairs carefully. Grissom came up right behind him followed by the five officers.

The passageway, which smelled dank and earthy, was wooden for about 10 steps and then changed into dirt. Grissom counted steps as they descended, but after about 150 he lost count. The image of Sara's naked, bruised body and the words, "Find her if you can," kept interrupting his count. The air was noticeably colder in the passageway and Grissom felt goose bumps popping up all along his arms, a sensation he was not at all accustomed to.

After about five minutes of going down, the steps suddenly ended and the group found themselves standing in a damp, dirt tunnel that stretched indiscriminately into the dark. They tried to gauge how long the tunnel was, but their flashlight beams were swallowed up by the darkness after only a few feet. Brass looked back at Grissom, who gestured forward with his flashlight. Brass nodded and continued on.

The group walked for several minutes in tense silence. Grissom found himself wondering what they were going to find at the end of the tunnel. As his thoughts turned to Sara, he felt a pang of regret. The memory of their last face to face meeting played in his mind

He knew that something was wrong. Sara hadn't been herself since the Weatherly Adams case. Though Sara hadn't been involved in the case directly, her partner, Ronnie Lake, had been and had nearly been killed. He had just started noticing how quiet she had become, how she hardly ever laughed anymore, when Greg had told him of a disturbing conversation he had with Sara during the course of the Weatherly Adams investigation.

"I think I'm tired of having my face shoved in death every day," she said to Greg.

Greg warned Grissom that Sara was unhappy, but Grissom just waved the young CSI off. Surely he, above all other people in the lab, would know if Sara was slipping. After all, they had been living together for the past year and she had just accepted his proposal of marriage not even a month before. She would tell him if something was wrong. Of course, she would.

His convictions were thrown into doubt when another serial killer struck the Vegas area. He had been working a crime scene with Sara for the first time in months and when she asked Doc Robbins about the victims the killer chose and learned that they were completely rando. She dropped the evidence she was processing and stormed out of the house. Grissom followed her and watched as she fought back tears and then walked away from him. The urge to go after her had been strong, but he had a job to do and he just shook it off as residual emotion from her kidnapping. He would talk to her when they got home. Except, he never went home that night. It was off to New York with him to help Jack Malone solve the case. When he got back to Las Vegas a few days later, he noticed that she was even more reclusive than she had been when he left. He started to worry, but, again, shook it off, still convinced that Sara would tell him if something was seriously wrong.

Then, everything changed. Kira Dillinger, a freshman in college, turned up dead in front of her dorm. At first glance, it appeared she had jumped, but further investigation revealed that she had most likely been pushed. Evidence collected in the victim's dorm led back to a suspect that everyone at the crime lab had hoped to never see again, Marlin West…and subsequently, his sister, Hannah, the child prodigy. Sara and Nick worked the case two years before that had involved the siblings and the two CSI's had been manipulated by Hannah. Sara, Grissom knew, never quite forgot the deviant prodigy. Against his better judgment, Grissom let Sara take the new case, thogh he watched her carefully from the sidelines as she put the evidence together. He had promised her that he wouldn't interfere, but when he saw the effect that Hannah had on her and the way that Sara lost her temper with the girl, he confronted her.

"I'm worried about you," he told her, hoping she would hear the concern in his voice and let him help her.

"That just makes this worse," she said backing away from him. "I can't talk about this right now. I just…I can't."

And she walked away leaving him to wonder what he had done by giving her the case. Suddenly Greg's concerns didn't seem so farfetched.

Grissom continued to watch Sara, though he didn't confront her again for fear of upsetting her. Convinced that Marlin had loved Kira Sara eventually concluded that it was Hannah who had killed the girl. The problem? Sara couldn't prove it. Hannah had, again, outsmarted Sara and the crime lab though it cost Hannah her brother, who hung himself in his jail cell. Sara was the one who delivered the news to the child prodigy. Grissom knew that she would need to talk about it when they got home that night and he had prepared himself for it. Nothing, however, could prepare him for what was about to happen

He was standing by the Trace lab talking to Hodges about the test results from the case he was working when he noticed her walking down the hallway. His heart nearly broke when he looked into her face and saw how much pain she was in. She stopped in front of him and he was about to ask her what was wrong when she did something she had vowed never to do. She placed her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately, in the middle of the lab. He returned her affections, though he wondered why she was breaking her own rules.

When she pulled away, confusion washed over him and he looked to her for an explanation, but she was already gone. He watched her walk away, wondering what was going on. When she disappeared around a corner, he shook his head and tried to pay attention to what Hodges was trying to tell him, but after five minutes, he gave up. Her actions had left him reeling.

He wandered around the lab, checking to see where she had gone. He knew something was wrong and the envelope that Judy handed him did nothing to assuage his surety that something big was about to happen. He took the envelope to an empty room and opened it, revealing a letter written in Sara's hand. A sense of foreboding washed over him as he began to read.

Gil,

You know I love you. I feel I've loved you forever.

Lately, I haven't been feeling very well. Truth be told, I'm tired.

Out in the desert, under that car that night, I realized something and I haven't been about to shake it.

Since my father died, I spent almost my entire life with ghosts. We've been like close friends and out there in the desert, it occurred to me, that it was time for me to bury them. I can't do that here.

I'm so sorry.

No matter how hard I try to fight it off, I'm left with the feeling that, I have to go. I have no idea where I'm going, but I know I have to do this. If I don't, I'm afraid I'll self-destruct, and worse, you'll be there to see it happen. Be safe.

Know that I tried very hard to stay. Know that you are my one and only. I will miss you with every beat of my heart. Our life together was the only home I've ever really had. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I love you…I always will.

Goodbye.

Brass stopped suddenly, forcing Grissom to bring himself back to the present. Grissom looked around to see what had caused them to stop and saw that Brass was inspecting a metal gate that was set into the wall of the tunnel. Brass tried to open the gate, but it was locked. Looking past the gate, Grissom could see that a room had been dug out and lined with concrete blocks. The room looked vaguely familiar. Grissom racked his brain, wondering where he had seen it before. He looked around the room and saw that the floor was plain brown dirt. Nothing exciting there…except…. a dark patch in the middle of room. Suddenly, Grissom knew where he had seen the room before.

"This is where he held them, Jim," he whispered. It was the first time anyone had spoken since they entered the passageway. The group stood staring into the small room, each wondering what horrors Grissom's team had been forced to endure while in captivity and each wondering what horrors Sara was still enduring. They stood there for a few minutes, memorizing what the prison looked like and then continued on. Grissom let his mind wander again, hoping that something significant would come to him.

He was so lost in thought that he never even heard the gun.

Do you hate me yet? hehe. R&R, please! It makes my sad pathetic little day. hehe