When the judge left, Sara wanted to roll to her side and curl into a ball, but she was so heavily drugged all she could do was lie there. Around her she saw people moving around. Mustache unchained her legs and hoisted her up. He half-dragged half-carried her into a bathroom that had a row of toilets to the side and a shower nozzle in the middle of the room. A bar of soap dropped in front of her and she eyed it. It was obvious that she was supposed to clean herself.

"Wash up," Mustache said to her.

Sara gripped the soap, but it slipped out of her hand. Mustache sighed complainingly and grabbed the bar. He grabbed her hand, forced her to grip it, and turned on the nozzle. As the water ran around her, Sara saw bright red blood flow away. She was numb at the moment, but would no doubt feel the pain soon. She lathered her legs up thickly, hoping to wash away the sounds of the judge grunting above her.

"That's enough," he said after Sara had washed the soap away.

She did not struggle with him, but instead let herself be dragged back to the room she just left. She could see other men in suits talking and she imagined that most were pointing at her. She knew they knew who she was, but she couldn't comprehend why they were not helping her.

"You're popular," Mustache said, chaining her back to the bed.

~()~

D.B was busy spraying luminol on the bathroom floor when Gil walked in. He set down the bottle, took off his gloves, and extended his hand to the man.

"D.B Russell," he said as Gil shook his hand. "I want you to know we're doing everything we can to find Sara."

Gil did not reply, but took the UV light out of D.B's back. "Ready?" he asked.

The two men slipped on pairs of glasses and snapped the light off. They trained the black light in the stall where the mud was found and they saw definite smudges of white. Gil swabbed a few separate areas, took photos, and bagged the evidence.

"This may just be the blood we already have," D.B commented. "And not to mention this is restroom in a popular hotel."

Gil raised his eyebrows. "I am not worried about having too much evidence," he said. "I am more concerned that we don't have enough."

The two men stood and panned across the room. On the nearest wall a glimpse of white caught Gil's eye and he stopped to swab it. He leaned over slightly as he did so, checking along the baseboards. It was there in a tiny crack, between the wall and the baseboard, that he found a hair. D.B, who had been observing, pulled open an evidence bag for him.

"Have Greg take those to Hodges," he said. "Tell him to open Sara's locker and compare it to the hairs in her comb."

~()~

"Fuck!" Brass said as he stormed back to his office, kicking a trash can as he passed. "Damn it."

He put his hands on his face and tried to will depression out of his mind. When he had gone to Judge Milton for the warrant signature he thought for sure that he would sign it without question. The new judge did not.

"There isn't enough probable cause," he had said as he took of his robes and hung them up gently.

Brass could not believe his ears. "Are you telling me that the found cellular phone of a missing CSI is not enough?" he pounded his fist on the desk. "Tell me then what is? When we find her body?"

The judge remained calm. "Hopefully it will not come to that," he said.

~()~

At the end of the day Sara was chained back onto her bed in The Sleeping Room. The pain between her legs started and she tried to block from memory how many men visited her. Each man smelled the same and pawed at her the same. Each time a session ended she was hosed off and drugged again. Around her the other girls looked tired, but had somehow found it in them to primp or read. She knew that it was a type of normalcy for them, but this phenomenon was not normal for her.

"You have a husband?" the girl beside her asked.

Sara looked to her right and nodded. "Yeah" she replied.

"I'm Amber," the girl replied. "How did you get here?"

Sara shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I was at a function with my supervisor. When I went to the bathroom I heard a girl crying. I tried to help her, but when I turned my head… someone hit me."

Amber looked down. "That was Beth," she said. "You took her place."

Sara swallowed a lump in her throat. If she had taken Beth's place then that only meant that girl she found had been killed or moved to another facility. Sara hoped for the latter because she could not imagine someone wanting to live like this.

Amber looked down and continued talking. "I was hitchhiking," she said. "The Mustache man pulled up and was friendly. I got in and… woke up here."

Sara noticed how innocent and shy the girl looked. "How old are you?" she asked.

"Seventeen," the girl replied. "I am from Maine."

Sara was shocked. "Maine," she repeated. "Where were you when you were taken?"

Amber looked guilty. "Where am I now?" she asked.

Sara realized that she did not know for sure. "I was taken from Nevada. I don't think we are too far because... some of the men here now who I am."

Amber looked confused. "Who are you?" she asked.

Sara grew quiet. "I am nobody now," she said.

~()~

Ecklie waved Gil over to him and the two men sat down. He handed Gil a cup of coffee and noticed that his old co-worker looked exhausted. The again, exhausted was a gross understatement.

"You came straight here from the airport?" Ecklie inquired.

Gil nodded. "Yes," he said. "We can't waste any time."

Ecklie felt Gil's pain. In the past he hadn't understood Sara, but since her return to Las Vegas she was a different woman. She was stronger and he appreciated working with her.

"You can't help find her if you can't stand up," Ecklie said. "Go get some rest."

Gil started to shake his head. "I can't," he said. "I can't rest while she's out there. I don't know what she is going through."

Brass entered the room and poured himself a cup of coffee. "I was listening in and I agree," he said. "Gil you can't run on empty after getting off an international flight. If you want to help Sara you need to have fresh eyes."

Gil wanted to argue, but he knew the men were right. He felt useless for not being there for his wife. He felt as if he were watching from the sidelines and waiting for her corpse to turn up. If something happened to her then he would never forgive himself.

"Alright," he said, reluctantly.

~()~

Gil hadn't been to Sara's new house in a while, but he knew where the key was kept. He debated sleeping here, but he realized that he needed to be surrounded by her. It was a fact that he never did stop loving her, but he wanted her to have a full and active life. Not a life where she waited on grants to be funded. As he neared the porch he parted the bushes to the side of the house. He pushed mulch to the side and pulled out a fake rock. A shake of the rock told him the key was still there so he palmed it and keyed into the house. The moment he walked in, he was hit with the smell of Sara. She was everywhere and it was all he could do not opt for a hotel room.

"This is your home too," Sara had said during his last visit. "You're not a guest here. You're my husband."

Indeed he was still her husband. They hadn't technically filed for divorce, but it had been going that way. Not because they didn't love each other, but because he loved her too much and he couldn't bear being away from her anymore. He wanted her to be happy and so he decided to let her go. It seemed to come as a shock to Sara.

"I want to fight for us, Gil" She had said. "We've been through too much to stop now."

"Sara, we don't even live together anymore," he had replied to her plea. "I thought we were through with that part of our lives."

"I thought I was too," She said.

Gil had given up. "Sara I can't keep… waiting for you to come back to me," he had explained. "If I can't really have you then what is the point of all this. I know your mother needs you, but so do I."

That had been the last time they had spoken and in retrospect, Gil would have told her how much she meant to him and they would have found a way to work it out. Being without her in the same country was heavenly compared to being without her in life; if her soul was gone then his would be too.

~()~

Sara walked with the other girls into the shared bathroom. To the right of the room she noticed the row of toilets she saw earlier and along the other wall she spotted a row of sinks. In the middle of the room hung the extendable shower head that she had been hosed off with earlier. She put her head down and scurried over to use a toilet. She tried to pull down her shirt for modesty, but the other girls were so desensitized that they did not care.

"You get used to it," Amber said when she saw Sara's expression.

Sara shook her head. "No one should get used to this." she said.

She took a handful of toilet paper and carefully wiped herself down. She was still tender and she winced as she wiped. She looked around the bathroom and tried to find a window or something that told her the time of day. There was nothing but a steel grate that ran along the baseboards.

"Food," Mustache said, bringing bags of fast food into the bathroom.

Sara was handed a bag, but stared down at it. It wasn't that she was a picky eater, but she hadn't had meat in years. Soon it was snatched away and Sara looked up to see Thick Beard glaring at her.

"If you don't want it then don't eat it," he said, keeping the bag and walking away.

Sara pushed her hair behind her ears and walked out of the bathroom, pausing to gaze at the grate near the floor. Were they in all the rooms? Where did they go? Thinking of this, she walked back into The Sleeping Room. There, across from her bed, she saw an old metal grate. She paused to look down at it and wondered how long it would take to unscrew the screws with her fingers.

~()~

Hodges looked at the hairbrush that Greg had given him and he felt melancholy. He had always liked Sara and now he felt that it was his duty to put all of her samples on the front-burner. With his tweezers he plucked a single hair from her brush, slid it onto a slide, and put it under the microscope. Under microscopic comparison, they looked the same. However, he wanted to be thorough. He measured the diameters of each hair and when he saw they were a match, he paged D.B. He then turned to the blood collected at the scene. Luckily, Sara's blood was in CODIS from her run in with Natalie Davis. All he had to do was run the samples and hope for a match.

"You paged?" D.B said as he walked in.

Hodges turned. "Yes," he said in a rush. "The hair fiber Grissom brought back to me was a match to Sara. I am running the blood now," he paused and then added. "Surely this will be enough for a warrant."

D.B nodded and raised his eyebrows. "But Milton isn't the only judge," he said. "I'll just work around him."