AN: Sorry for the delay in updates, I've been extremely busy and a little uninspired over the past month or so. Anyway, here's the next chapter, hope you enjoy it. Thanks to my beta for helping me out!

4 – Hopeless

"Did you get any sleep?" Catherine asked, coming into the kitchen where Grissom was waiting for the coffee to get done.

"A couple of hours, I think." He replied, accepting the mug she handed him from the cupboard. "I'm not completely sure what was dreams and what was real, my mind kept running through the evidence while I was sleeping."

"I know what you mean." Catherine agreed, grabbing the now finished pot of coffee. "I swear, I've had miniature people dancing around in my brain all night."

"Yeah." Grissom nodded absentmindedly, staring out the window. The sun was about to set, and for a moment, he let his mind go blank.

"Hey." Catherine put a, what she hoped, comforting hand on his shoulder. He turned to look at her, and she realized she had never seen him so tired. "We're going to find her."

"I know." He replied, returning to his view. He had always loved the desert sunsets. "But what if we don't find her in time?"

Catherine didn't know what to respond to that, so she just kept her hand on his shoulder, hoping he knew that he wasn't alone.

"We should get back to the lab." He said after a few minutes, pulling away from her touch.

"Not before we have something to eat." Catherine replied, opening the fridge in search of something edible. Grissom sighed, but didn't argue as he sat down at the table. "OK, we have Chinese leftovers, pizza, or just plain sandwiches. Any preference?" She looked over her shoulder.

"Anything." Grissom shrugged, leaving the decision up to her.

"Chinese it is." She exclaimed, filling two plates with the food before sticking one of them in the micro wave. When the food was heated, she brought both plates to the table and joined Grissom. They ate in silence for a while.

"You can ask, you know." Grissom said after a moment. "I know you're bursting to find out."

"I just figured now wasn't the right time." Catherine replied, knowing what he was referring to. "I can contain myself, you know."

"Might take my mind off of things." He mumbled, pushing away the half-empty plate in front of him. Catherine watched him for a moment before speaking.

"So, how long has this been going on? Since Nick was taken?" That was the time she had suspected since she found out about the relationship. Nick's abduction had affected them all, in different ways.

"Yes and no." Grissom replied, causing Catherine to frown.

"Could you be a little vaguer?" She asked dryly.

"Nick getting taken was the final nail in the coffin, no pun intended." He offered a half smile. "But it really started long before that, years ago in sunny California. I just didn't realize it, or I didn't let myself realize it."

"I always knew there was something there, from the moment she stepped into the lab." Catherine noted, and Grissom nodded.

"At first, after the seminar, I kept telling myself that the age difference was too big a problem. Add that to the distance, you had a failure waiting to happen." He gave a small chuckle. "Then, she was here, and I still couldn't let myself be with her. She was still too young, but as the years went by, it didn't seem like such an issue anymore. I guess twenty to thirty-five seems a lot further apart than thirty-three to forty-eight."

"You've got a point there." Catherine nodded.

"Then there were little pushes along the way, each making me wonder if finally opening up and letting her in would be so bad after all." He gazed out the window for a moment before continuing. "The lab explosion, Debbie Marlin, Adam Trent…"

"The guy at the mental institution?" Catherine asked, and he nodded.

"And then when Nick got taken, all I could think was what if it was Sara in that box?" He looked a little guilty as he said the words, but Catherine understood. They had all had their nightmares during Nick's abduction. "I guess I just realized that I'd rather have her for just a moment, than not at all. Losing her would hurt as much no matter the nature of our relationship."

"It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Catherine said, using one of the few quotes she knew – and her favourite.

"Tennyson." He noted.

"If you say so." Catherine agreed.

xxxxx

"Hey, man." Nick acknowledged as he entered the lab where Greg had his eyes glued to one of the microscopes. "I thought we were all ordered to go home."

"I left, and now I'm back." Greg replied, completely engrossed in whatever it was he had under the microscope.

"Did you sleep?" Nick pressed on, slumping down in a chair across the table from Greg.

"A couple of hours."

"What are you working on?" Nick asked, leaning over the table to see what was under the microscope.

"I was just looking at the cloth we found, trying to find something that would lead us somewhere." Greg sighed and looked up. "Plain white cotton, about as un-traceable as it gets."

"We'll get something." Nick assured him, though he wasn't as sure as he had been forty-eight hours ago.

"I sent a sample of the chloroform to trace, but I'm not holding my breath." Greg rubbed his eyes, suddenly even more tired than when he left the lab hours earlier. "Nothing specific, could be bought in any chemical supply store in Nevada, or the country for that matter."

"Come on, man, don't be like that." Nick said, though inside he envied Greg for being able to say what had been on his own mind since they realized Sara was missing. But he had to keep up appearances, be his cheerful self. Keep the team's spirits at least a few inches above the ground.

"I know, I know… there's still hope, right?" Greg put on a smile, the mere ghost of the usual Sanders smile, and Nick knew he was right.

They had hope. But right now, that was pretty much all they had.

xxxxx

Sara jumped awake as the door slammed shut. Her eyes focused on her abductor, standing just a few steps away from where she was lying on the mattress. She sat up against the wall and challenged him with her eyes.

"Good morning." He said cheerfully, and she scowled at him.

"Is it morning? I hadn't noticed." She replied dryly.

"Now, I know you're not happy about being locked up down here, but I really can't let you out." He put on a sympathetic smile.

"How long are you going to keep me here?" Sara asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Just a ballpark figure."

"For as long as it takes." He responded, leaning against the door. "As long as it takes." He repeated in a mumble, more to himself than her.

"As long as it takes for what?" Sara asked in an exasperate voice.

"For Mr. Grissom to find me, of course." He said, as if it was obvious.

"So you want him to find you?" Sara frowned.

"I want him to hurt the way he hurt me, but for that to happen, he needs to know what he's lost, doesn't he?" He looked at her, but his eyes seemed far away, maybe even in a different time.

"What did you lose?" Sara almost whispered, afraid to disturb the silence with too harsh words. He looked up as she spoke, and Sara was startled by the pain and loss she saw in his eyes.

"I guess I might as well tell you, you are involved in this after all." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. He was quiet for a moment, then continued. "They took her from me. Took everything from me. Ruined my life."

"Who did?" Sara asked, though she thought she already knew the answer.

"Your boyfriend!" He spat at her, the anger returning to his eyes. "It was his fault, everything was his fault."

"What did he do?"

"He didn't find her. And then… then it was too late, and he wouldn't help me, he just…" He let out a deep breath, not finishing the sentence.

"Who didn't he find?" Sara was running through case files in her mind, but nothing popped up. Maybe if she had a name…

"Kelly." He mumbled. "My baby… she was only six, and they… they…" A sob escaped his lips.

"Your daughter?" Sara wondered, and he nodded. "You must have loved her very much."

"She was my world, my everything." He sounded less like a killer now, and more like a grieving father. Sara knew all too well that there was a fine line between the two, though.

"Do you think she would have wanted you to do this?" She asked gently. "Do you think what you're doing would make Kelly proud of you?"

"Don't you dare say her name!" He yelled, crossing the floor in a few long strides. "You don't have the right to say her name! Shut up!" His fist descended on her, and then everything went black.

xxxxx

"Hey, guys, anything new?" Catherine asked as she and Grissom entered the break room where Greg, Nick and Warrick were gathered around the table.

"Nothing probative." Warrick replied, handing her a couple of papers. "Results on the chloroform, finger prints, and some other stuff. A bunch of nothing leading us nowhere."

"Aren't you the eternal optimist?" Catherine said sarcastically, flipping through the papers. Nothing, just like Warrick said. She could feel her spirit drop a little further. "Is there anything we might have missed?" She asked, looking expectantly at the others.

"Nothing." Nick shook his head. "We were about to get started on the old case files."

"Yeah, might as well get going." Catherine sighed. It was going to be a long day.

"I think I'll take another look at the models, I'll catch up with you in a while." Grissom said. "I've got this feeling that there's something I'm missing."

xxxxx

"There is nothing in here!" Greg exclaimed several hours later, as he closed another case file. They had gone through the rest of Sara's files and were now working on Grissom's, which would take a while, if the piles on the table were any indication.

"There's still a lot to go through." Catherine tried to reassure him. "We'll find something."

"We don't even know what we're looking for." Nick piped in. "We have no idea what set this guy off, it could have been anything."

"We still have to keep looking." Warrick said solemnly. "We'll know what we're looking for when we find it." He frowned. "I hope."

"Yeah, we can't just sit here and do nothing." Catherine continued. "This is Sara, remember. Do you think she would be complaining if it was one of us?"

They were silent for a moment, everyone contemplating Catherine's words. They all knew the answer to her rhetorical question.

"I know she wouldn't." Nick finally spoke up. "I might've never gotten out of that box if it wasn't for her, and you guys of course, so I'm not about to let her down now."

"Good." Catherine nodded, and they all turned their attention back to the files at hand.

xxxxx

Putting the model from Izzy Delancy's murder scene away after what felt like the thousandth time of examining it, Grissom sighed. There was something he was missing, he just knew it. Something lurking just out of reach in his mind.

If he could just figure out what it was.

Replacing the Izzy Delancy model with the one from Penny Gardner's case on the desk in front of him, he studied it for a moment before leaning back in the chair.

This really was hopeless.

He, and the rest of the team, had been over every inch of these models several times, he wouldn't find anything new.

Running a hand over his face, he closed his eyes for a moment. Opening them again, he spotted the enlarged images of the photos of the bloody dolls that had been found in the models.

Suddenly everything fell into place.

Standing up so fast that he almost knocked the chair over, he rushed to the fish board on the wall. Scanning the board, he found the reference to the case he was looking for and grabbed the note.

Half running down the corridor, he was oblivious to the people he barely avoided knocking over and their calls of concern after him. Barging into the break room, he came to a halt.

"I think I know who took her!" Everyone looked up at his exclamation.

"You do?" Greg's face lit up.

"I finally figured out what the picture of the bloody doll means." Grissom revealed. "It was a case I worked on, fifteen years ago, when I first started here at the lab. Mr. and Mrs. Nichols came home from a company dinner to find the babysitter asleep on the couch and their six-year-old daughter, Kelly, not in her bed. They thought she had been kidnapped, but there was no ransom, nothing to indicate it."

"What happened?" Catherine asked, sensing where the story was going but not wanting to jump the gun.

"We approached the case from all angles; any signs of previous abuse, anyone paying extra attention to the little girl outside the home, anything to indicate who might have taken her, but we found nothing." Grissom sat down on an empty chair. "I liked the father for it from the start, so I dug a little deeper. Turned out he had a prior for sexual assault, tried to rape his younger cousin when he was fourteen. It wasn't on record, since he was a minor, I only found out through a friend who handled the case. Needless to say, he wasn't happy it got out."

"Oh, man." Warrick mumbled.

"But we couldn't find anything to link him to the girl's disappearance." Grissom continued. "He had multiple witnesses placing him at the dinner at the time she vanished from the house. We looked closer at the babysitter as well, but she was the daughter of friends of the family and had watched the girl since she was a baby. I kept looking into the father, which of course he didn't like one bit."

"Where does the doll come in?" Nick wondered.

"I'm getting to that." Grissom ran a hand over his face. "Three weeks later, the girl was found dead a few miles from her home. She had been raped several times before her throat was slit, and in her hands she had her favourite toy, a doll. It was covered in her blood."

"Did you get the killer?" Catherine asked.

"No. We recovered semen, but it wasn't a match to the father or anyone else involved in the investigation. CODIS wasn't around back then, so the case went unsolved." Grissom concluded.

"So you think this… what's his name?" Greg asked.

"Joseph Nichols." Grissom replied, putting the note from the fish board on the table.

"You think he has her?" Greg continued.

"I think it's the only possibility I can see at the moment." Grissom sighed.

"Boys, we have a new mission." Catherine announced, grabbing the file. "I want everything there is to know about Joseph Nichols, credit report, last known address, everything. We meet back here in one hour."

xxxxx

Sara groaned as she slowly regained consciousness, her hand coming up to rub the spot on her left cheek that seemed to be radiating pain into the rest of her head. At least he hadn't broken the skin, though she could feel the bitter taste of blood in her mouth. Quickly running her tongue over her teeth, she found none missing. She had probably bit her cheek when he hit her.

At least she knew why she was here now. He wanted to get back at Grissom for, in his mind, not saving his daughter. She went over the facts she had been able to gather from his words, and came to the conclusion that the case must have been before her time, since she couldn't remember a six-year-old girl named Kelly being part of any investigation she had been involved in.

So where did that leave her?