Only one or two more chapters left! Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed! You rock my socks!
AN: As always, I do not own CSI because if I did, Sara would still be on the show, Greg would get more airtime, and there would be a geek!baby in the mix!
Grissom closed his eyes and waited for the bullet to contact his skull. He knew that the end was near. It wasn't the first time he had had a gun pointed at his head, but it was the first time he knew that there was no chance of talking his way out death. He had been lucky a few times, but it seemed his luck had run out. He flinched when he heard the gunshot.
He felt something warm and wet spatter his face and felt the ringing in his ears from the sound of the gun. As he knelt there in the dirt and waited for the pain to come, a million thoughts filled his head.
If this is dying, he thought absently. Then it's not that bad…
But then, as the ringing subsided and the pain did not present, he slowly opened his eyes. Shock rippled through him.
Reichman was lying in the dirt in front of him, blood pouring from a small round hole directly over his heart. Grissom stared in shock and then, as if on autopilot, crawled forward and felt Reichman's neck for a pulse. Finding none, Grissom shakily got to his feet and stared at Reichman's body a few more moments, his mind slowly working through the scene in front of him. Suddenly, he realized that Reichman must have been shot. Cursing inwardly for letting his guard down, Grissom spun on the spot and looked around wildly for the person who had taken Reichman down. That was when he saw her.
Blind panic swept through Grissom and, for the first time since Reichman had called him so many days before (or had it only been a day), the thought that Sara was not going to make it swept through his mind. He sprinted to her side and tried in vain to wake her.
"Sara?"he asked, shaking her desperately. "Sara…can you hear me?"
Sara did not respond, her head lulling limply to the side as Grissom shook her. Grissom could feel the panic and the fear building in him and struggled to keep his head about him. He had never known such awful fear in his life and the desperation with which he tried to wake Sara surprised even himself. He reached out a shaking hand towards Sara's neck and tried to still them long enough to find her pulse, but no matter what he did, his hands would not stop shaking. In desperation, he put his ear to her bloody chest and listened for the thud of her heart. Relief swept through him as the familiar lub-dub met his ears, weak though it was.
"Just hang on," he whispered to Sara, getting unsteadily to his feet and lifting her into his arms and taking a few unsteady steps. "It's going to be okay."
Grissom continued to talk to Sara as he walked, reassuring her, and himself, that everything was going to work out. As he walked, the sun continued to sink towards the horizon and Grissom could feel the exhaustion and weariness setting in his muscles. He could not remember a time when he had been so tired, so thristy, or so desperate.
After an hour of walking, the sun finally fell out of sight behind a distant mountain and from there, darkness came rapidly. It wasn't long before Grissom could no longer see Sara's head, resting limply on his shoulder. He continued to trudge on though, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other. He did everything he could to keep his mind occupied while he walked, from doing multiplication problems, to reciting the scientific names of butterflies.
He recalled Sara telling him about her time in the desert after Natalie had kidnapped her. She had wandered for hours in the hot sun, piling rocks up to leave a trail, never stopping, never giving up. She had told him how she did multiplication out loud and talked herself into continuing on. Even then, desperately dehydrated, with a broken arm and a bleeding head wound, Sara had not given up and he would be damned if he was going to. He carried on, though his steps became slower and slower and his path more erratic. He carried on, ignoring the fatigue in his screaming muscles and the dryness in his mouth. He carried on, never stopping to think that maybe, just maybe, he couldn't do it. And even an hour later when the desert began to spin and he sank to his knees and lay down in the dirt, Sara spilling out of his arms like a rag doll, he did not let his mind stray in the direction of failure. For failure meant giving up and giving up…meant death. As he spiraled down in the blissful realms of unconsciousness, Grissom found himself thinking of the irony of a quote he had recently read: "Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal." Smiling bemusedly, Grissom let out a single breath of laughter and the world faded into darkness.
Greg gasped as a shock of cold water hit his face. Sopping wet and sputtering, he wiped his eyes and looked around.
He was lying on the floor of the bathroom at the lab. Wendy was there, kneeling down next to him, concern etched all over her face. Looking past her, he saw Hodges, Archie, Henry, Bobby, Mandy, and Ecklie standing around him in a small circle. Greg ran his hands through his soaked hair and sat up looking to Wendy for an explanation.
"You fainted," she said, her eyes wide. "I was hugging you and you just sort of collapsed against me. What happened, Greg?"
Greg looked down at the floor. "I don't want to talk about it." He could feel Wendy's eyes boring into him, but he had no intention of telling her the reason he had fainted, especially not with Ecklie in the room. Getting to his feet, Greg looked around at everyone.
"I'm fine," he said. "Let's get back to work. The sooner we find Grissom and Sara, the better."
He watched as they filed out, one by one, and waited until everyone, but Wendy was gone before running into the first available stall and throwing up. When he was finished he shakily wiped his mouth and came back out of the stall to find Wendy still standing there, fear and sympathy in her eyes.
"You going to be ok?" she asked, concern flooding her voice.
Greg nodded shakily and stopped in front of the sink and splashed some more water onto his face. In actuality, he felt terrible. His head was throbbing and he still felt sick, but he clamped down on the nausea and forced a shaky smile.
"Anything new crop up while I was napping?" he asked, trying to sound as if he were merely discussing the weather.
Wendy frowned, but didn't press him. "We may have found Reichman's car," she said. "A passing motorist spotted a blue Camaro, possibly a 1968, sitting off the highway about 20 miles outside of the city to the west. Sofia and some uniforms are headed out there now to find out for sure. Sofia said she would call you directly if she found anything. They should have arrived."
At that moment, Greg's cell phone rang. He jumped slightly at the sudden noise and, cursing under his breath, pulled it out of his pocket and flipped it open.
"Sanders."
"Greg," said the female voice on the other end. "It's Sofia. We've confirmed it. It's a blue 1968 Camaro registered to Joseph H. Reichman. There are also some footprints leading away from the car into the desert."
Greg closed his eyes, relief coursing through him. They were almost there. "Good," Greg said into the phone. "You call Ecklie and tell him to get a team out there as quick as he can. I'm going to call in for a chopper and search from the air. I'll need your exact location."
She gave it to him and he wrote it down in the notebook he always carried with him.
"Thanks, Sofia," he said.
"We're going to find them, Greg," she said. Greg smiled and flipped his phone shut. He turned to Wendy.
"I take it they found his car?" she asked, grinning broadly.
"Yea," Greg said, thanking God that they were on the right track. "I'm going to go Search and Rescue and then get into the air as fast as I can. The sun is going to set soon and we need to get up there while it's still daylight. It's a lot harder to find things using heat sensors, especially in the desert, right after sunset."
Wendy nodded. "Can I come with you?"
Greg glanced at her, wondering if she had lost her mind. "You really want to come?"
She nodded and he smiled. "I could use the help," he said gratefully. Wendy walked up to him and wrapped her arms around him.
"We're almost there, Greg," she whispered into his ear. "Just a little bit longer and we'll have them back."
He held her, hoping and praying that she was right.
Please, R&R! The more you do, the more I want to write!