Disclaimer - I don't own CSI.

A/N: This story is sort of turning into a very case-centric story, which was never really my intention but it happened anyway. And here's another one for our favourite crime solvers to get stuck into. But all will be made clear soon.

Chapter 7

"Where's the fire?" Greg asked rhetorically, appearing in the doorway somewhat flushed and out of breath.

"A twelve year old girl has gone missing," Grissom stated.

"Well, that's never good," Greg gulped, walking further into the room.

All the other members of the team had already arrived a few hours early as requested by their boss.

"We've been assigned this case as we can devote all our time to it," Grissom explained.

"Meet Anna Wilson. Last seen on her way home from school," Catherine began, handing out photos and information on their missing girl.

"So she's been missing... what... two hours?" Warrick questioned, checking his watch.

"Just over that, yes," Catherine nodded.

"Amber alert has already been issued. Every officer on duty has been sent a description of her. Bus and train stations have been notified just in case," Grissom added.

"Does she have a history of running away from home?" Nick spoke up.

"Not that we know of but we're covering all the bases," Catherine replied.

"So we're looking at a potential abduction?" Nick asked.

"It would seem the most obvious assumption," Catherine agreed. "Brass is already looking into known paedophiles and child abusers in the area."

"We all need to pitch in with this," Grissom stated. "Time is of the essence."

Sara cleared her throat. "All of us?" she raised an eyebrow, speaking before thinking before casting a nervous look in Nick's directed.

"Look, I get it, I get what's going on with you two but you can't keep letting it get in the way of work," Catherine insisted sternly, glancing between Nick and Sara. "We need to find this girl and to do that we all need to work together."

Sara looked down in shame, knowing her colleague was right. She was being ridiculous.

"There isn't a problem here, is there?" Grissom questioned, seemingly in the dark about the situation.

Sara cleared her throat, forcing a smile. "No, no problem here."

"Good, glad to hear it," Grissom stated, looking a bit puzzled but got back down to business. "I'll work out who is needed where when we get to the scene."

Nick was the first one to excuse himself from the room, heading straight for the locker room to grab his car keys and kit. In a matter of minutes he was sitting in the drivers seat of his car contemplating his recent life decisions. Part of him wanted to call up his father and give him what for for convincing him it was a good idea to reveal his true feelings for one of his closest friends. The other part wanted to call him up to thank him for being right yet again. Nick had told her how he felt, and that was supposedly the hard part. But he still had an aching feeling inside him that begged to know if she was even contemplating what he'd said, spent even a second mulling over what it meant. He needed to know what was going on inside her head, which was hard enough to figure out at the best of times. And if she felt nothing at all for him that even remotely resembled romantic feelings then he would preferably like to find out sooner rather than later; harsh reality is better than false hope. Yes, he wasn't expecting to have the happy ending that he wished for land on his lap overnight or for Sara to declare her undying feelings and that she too was madly in love with him, but he was expecting something more than the silent treatment. In fairness, he couldn't be mad at her because it was his own fault things had worked out the way they had but he vowed to fix them, to make it up to her however he could. He just wished that things weren't so awkward and strained between the two of them. His worse fears had to be come true

"Are we carpooling?" Warrick startled Nick as he appeared at the passenger side door.

"Huh, what?" Nick looked up. "Um... Yeah, sure. Get in."

Warrick chuckled at his response as he climbed into the car. Moments later Greg joined them, and they were on their way to the scene.

A week had passed since the 'bomb incident.' That's what Nick and Sara had taken to calling it, though aside from giving the event an actual name like Bob or Steve that was the most appropriate thing to call it. That evening, the night following the confession of Scott Davidson, they were granted a night off, a night to rest, recuperate and recharge their batteries. Grissom had instructed both Nick and Sara to have the following night off as well, or rather for them to consider themselves on call; they would only be called in if extremely necessary. Sara wasn't best pleased about having to sit on the sidelines for a night, but it was being forced to see the department shrink that really irritated her. It was mandatory for events like nearly dying because you ended up holding a bomb at a crime scene. She wasn't at all happy about it, and neither was Nick to be fair but they both knew - as they'd been subject to quite a few of these reviews over the years - that it had to be done in order for them to get back to work. It made sense, if either of them properly took the chance to think about it. What they did for a living was very important, as was their mental health. Everyone has a limit, and while you may not be showing any physical signs of emotional turmoil, that in fact you look perfectly fine on the outside, that doesn't mean that you're not near breaking point on the inside. Like a swan elegantly gliding along the lake, composed and calm, while it's feet are frantically paddling underneath. Thankfully, both Nick and Sara had passed with flying colours. They had both been told to return at anytime if they needed to speak about anything but aside from that they were perfectly fine to continue working. It had been a pretty stressful situation, facing imminent death but defying the odds, but things could have been a hell of a lot worse. And they knew all to well to thank their lucky stars that the odds had been well and truly in their favour.

Everyone had become brutally aware of what else had occurred during the 'bomb incident.' It wasn't unheard of for news to spread like the plague through the lab. Greg had been terrified to say anything in case he put his foot in it again, in case he said something else he shouldn't have. In the end he confided in Henry, fellow DNA expert and friend. Warrick had walked in on them talking and told them both to keep it to themselves. They had done but gossip had spread regardless. It was a natural thing really, for a department filled with people who were naturally interested and intrigued by things, curious and suspicious of people, to seek to investigate things, whether it be a murder investigation, a home invasion or the curious case of who ate Greg's turkey sandwich last week. In was something that was just inside of all of them, a niggling feeling inside telling them that there was always more than meets the eyes. Most of what had fuelled the gossip was due to the obvious tense and awkward atmosphere between Nick and Sara anyway, which even a blind person would have noticed.

Thankfully things had gradually been getting better. They were taking tiny baby steps to get back to how they used to be. Well, mainly how Sara used to be. Nick was trying his best to act natural around her, pretend like nothing had happened, but in reality he was only making things worse. He was so awkward around her, trying not to saying anything that she might take in the wrong way, trying not to offend her or upset her. He was walking on eggshells around her most of the time. But he'd listened to what she'd said and if she needed time then that was what Nick was going to give her; he'd give her all the time in the world if he thought it would help. It gave him hope. Maybe the outcome would be the same either way, maybe she was just letting him sweat for a bit before she broke his heart, but the possibility of her maybe not knowing yet how she felt or if, like he had so many times, she was weighing up the pros and cons, only just allowing herself to feel something for him now that she knew it wouldn't be and wasn't one sided, made the wait seem worthwhile. He would cling to that tiny thread of hope for as long as he needed to, or for as long as he could, which ever came first.

Grissom slammed the car door closed as he met his other team members in front of several patrol cars parked haphazardly in the middle of the road. Captain Brass came towards them, looking frustrated and stressed.

"Are you okay, Jim?" Catherine wondered, looking concerned.

"In a word - no," Brass replied, narrowing his eyes, each and every wrinkle and crease on his face surfacing. "A twelve year old girl has been abducted and time is running out if we're going to find her alive. The press is all over this like flies to, well... you know what. The Sheriff wants an update every ten minutes, and the Under Sheriff wants a press conference held within the hour."

"Is that all?" Catherine refrained herself from smirking

"Let us help, Jim," Warrick insisted, looking sympathetically at the man in front of him, looking as though he'd aged right in front of their very eyes.

"What can you tell us about what happened here?" Grissom asked

"Well, our missing girl, Anna, left school at her usual time of half past three, walked for about ten minutes with her best friend, something they do everyday, and then it would take roughly five minutes to get home but she didn't make it," Brass began explaining, trying to calm down. "It was round about here that a car was seen speeding away around the time of abduction."

"How can we be sure it's connected?" Sara asked.

"We're fairly confident that the timeframe matches, else it's a huge coincidence. But that's why you guys are here. We figured we'd leave the evidence collecting for the experts," Brass stated.

"Does she have a history of running away?" Catherine asked.

"No, not according to the parents. She's never usually more than half an hour late from school if she gets caught up talking to her friends, but after nearly two hours they knew something was wrong," Brass replied.

"So you've spoken to her parents?" Catherine guessed.

"Briefly," Brass nodded. "They're compiling a list of her friends and anyone else who might be able to help."

Brass let out an exasperated sigh as his cell phone rang again. He answered it and walked away.

"Okay, I think we need to get started on this now. Cath, you and me will head to Anna's house to speak to her parents and get that list of friends," Grissom announced. "The rest of you stay here and see what you can find. You know the drill - tyre treads, shoe impressions, etc. And find out if anyone has requested the CCTV footage from the area."

"We'll get right on it," Nick insisted.

And they did. As Catherine and Grissom headed off down the street, as Anna's house was less than a five minute walk from the suspected abduction site, Nick, Sara and Greg quickly got to work searching for evidence that Anna had been in the near vicinity when she was taken. Warrick and Brass went to speak to the kind old lady who lived directly opposite the taped off section of pavement and road who'd reported seeing a car screeching away after hearing about the young girls disappearance, wondering what exactly she had seen.

Sara's attention was instantly grabbed by the fresh tyre treads on the road, standing out like it was flashing with hypothetical lights. Her mind instantly began running over theories as she took measurements and photographs of her find. Meanwhile, Nick was scouring the pavement for something that would help, though he wasn't quite sure what. It had rained slightly after four o'clock, only for a few minutes but it was long enough to erase any potential shoe impressions made by their suspect, but in all honesty Nick wasn't convinced that there had been any evidence to have washed away. He walked up and down the length of the street, glancing down at the few shrubs and bushes that lined the path. He looked perplexed before spotting a CCTV camera at the end of the road, sitting proudly on top of the streetlight. Coming to the conclusion that there wasn't any evidence on the pathway that he could find, Nick set about making some enquiries.

Greg called Sara over when he saw something on the road catch the light from the streetlights slightly. They both concluded that it was glass from a headlight. The small shard of clear and slightly dented glass was fairly generic, but it was pretty much the best they had done for evidence.

Nick hung up his cell phone and placed it back inside his pocket as he walked towards his colleagues. "Right, so that's the security camera footage being sent to the lab. And see that little convenience store on the corner? It has an ATM machine with a camera, so maybe we'll get lucky there too."

"Great," Greg nodded, placing the glass shard into a small evidence container.

Sara smiled self-consciously, rubbing her left arm with her opposite hand to try and bring some of the feeling back into it; it seemed to be one of the more chilly evenings in a while.

"You okay?" Nick raised an eyebrow with concern.

"Aha," she nodded, forcing a smile. "Winter's creeping up on me, that's all."

Sara continued to shiver, not enjoying the sharp nip in the air.

Nick looked over to her, seeing her rub her arms once again to try get some warmth into them to no avail. He instantly straightened up and did the one thing he could think of that would help her.

"Here, take this," Nick insisted politely as he took off his jacket and went to hand it over to her.

Sara quickly shook her head. "No, you keep it. I'm fine."

"You're not fine, Sara, you're freezing," Nick raised an eyebrow. "Please, just take it."

"I can't... You'll be freezing without it," she protested. "It's my own fault, I should have taken mine. I'll be fine."

"Sara," he gave her a look and moved the jacket closer to her. "Please, take it."

Sara smiled shyly, giving him a curious look. "If you're sure..."

"Of course I'm sure," Nick insisted, shrugging as he continued. "I've been told I have a naturally high body temperature anyway."

She reached out and took the dark jacket from his grasp. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," he smiled sheepishly and moved away from her.

"We'll catch up with you later," they heard Warrick's voice grow louder.

"How did you get on?" Sara instantly asked as the taller man approached them, quickly stepping away from Nick.

Warrick just shrugged. "Didn't find out anything new. What about you guys?"

Greg mimicked Warrick's shrug, and somewhat hopeless expression.

"Oh, well on that cheery note..," Nick said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

"I was thinking - yes, I know, it's a dangerous hobby of mine - but do you think Anna knew her abductor?" Greg wondered.

"I was going to say the same thing, actually. Let's say the car pulls up... the driver probably winds the window down to speak to Anna, then what, asks if she wants to go with him to see some puppies?" Warrick didn't seem convinced by what he was saying.

"No, she's too smart for that," Sara insisted, enjoying the comforting smell of Nick surrounding her. "She's old enough to know not to speak to strangers."

"He wouldn't have been offering her a lift home either because she was practically on her doorstep already," Nick added, looking puzzled. "So why would she have got in the car?"

"He could have had a gun, or a knife. Or he could have just got out and dragged her onto the backseat, he would have easily overpowered her, if it was a man," Warrick thought aloud. "Let's just hope those security cameras can shed some light on the situation."

While Warrick, Greg, Nick and Sara headed back to the crime lab with their evidence and theories, their superiors were searching through Anna Wilson's bedroom. It was much like you would expect a twelve year old girls' bedroom to look like: it was covered in posters of boy bands and actors, most of whom Grissom didn't recognise, along with pictures of her family and friends on her pastel wall. The entire room was a light shade of purple, with matching curtains and lampshade, even the shelves that held the young girls' collection of stuffed animals was a metallic purple colour. Catherine gazed round the room, sighing at the thought of how similar it was to Lindsay's when she was the same age. She tried her best to focus on returning Anna to her family, as Grissom opened the bottom drawer of the the girls' desk to reveal a journal. After being granted permission by the distraught parents, they took the journal back to lab, collecting the CCTV footage that had been requested from the front desk when they got back.

A couple of hours later, Sara was sitting in her own little world, absentmindedly gazing down at the photographs she'd taken of the tyre treads at the scene whilst scrolling through the database for matches. She was acutely aware of the time but in trying to hurry herself it felt as though things were going ten times slower instead. She'd uploaded the image onto the computer and was now just waiting for it to beam back some results. She was hoping that the tyres were so unique that only one car in the whole world had them and then they would have found the person who'd taken Anna Wilson, but that was highly unlikely to happen.

Nick came in the room and smiled as he watched Sara work. He hadn't purposely entered the room silently but he took the chance to admire her as he so often had in the past, though recently he hadn't dared to look at her for more than was necessary.

"Hard at work, I see," he spoke up, approaching her from behind.

"More than I can say for you," she shot back.

"Got a match yet?"

"As a matter of fact I do...," Sara trailed off, her eyes glued to the computer screen. "I managed to narrow down the search radius due to the width of the car. From my calculations we're looking for a large vehicle, like a SUV or a Buick. And the winner is... the Honda CR-V range."

"Beautiful and intelligent...," Nick teased out of habit.

He instantly regretted his words. By this point he was leaning over her shoulder looking at what she'd found, so their close proximity only intensified the situation. In the past she would have just blushed and brushed it off, quickly retaliating with a comment of her own, but in the past Nick probably wouldn't have even given his slip of the tongue a second thought. It wasn't exactly one of his more flirtatious of comments but he feared that Sara would take even his breathing the wrong way. He quickly took a step back from her.

Nick cleared his throat, awkwardly. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. It's not exactly appropriate for the work place, especially not with what's going on right now."

"I'm not the type to go running off to Ecklie screaming sexual harassment," Sara insisted, turning in her chair to face him better, chewing on her lower lip slightly.

"You'd have grounds if you did," Nick replied.

"So would you, and a lot of others around here," Sara stated. "But we never mean any harm. I don't anyway, and I'm sure you don't either. It doesn't always mean anything. It's pretty harmless, really."

Nick let out a slow sigh as he nodded in agreement.

"Good, you two are both here," Catherine blurted out as she burst through the doors.

"I was just about to call you," Sara insisted. "The tyre treads match..."

"Let me guess...," Catherine interrupted. "A blue Honda CR-V?"

"I can't give you the colour but yeah...," Sara nodded.

"CCTV footage get a good picture?" Nick questioned.

"Aha. It clearly shows the driver of a blue Honda driving away from the scene of the crime after knocking over Anna and shoving her onto the backseat of his car, hence the glass that Greg found at the scene," Catherine explained. "Though unfortunately we don't get a good enough look at the guys face."

"What about the license plate?" Sara asked.

"Out of luck again; we could only make out the first couple of letter on the plate," Catherine told them with a sigh. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. "That's Archie with the list of license plates that match our partial. Good work you two. I'll catch up with you later."

And as quickly as she had entered she was gone.

Nick sighed pitifully at himself, and the situation. He knew this reaction from her was possible but in reality he hadn't really been prepared for it. Admittedly, things had been improving between them, but in some ways that only made him feel worse; this was an improvement and they were still standing on a knife edge. All he wanted was to make it up to her, was that so much to ask for? Was it that hard to achieve? Nick had been trying to make her forgive him, maybe he'd been trying too hard.

Sara gazed down at the floor as the atmosphere shifted back to being awkward again. Nick decided it was best if he made his excuses and left her alone.

"I'm just going to go...," Nick pointed out the door as he stepped back a bit, sighing as he did so.

Sara found herself reaching out a hand to stop him. "Hey... are we okay?" she wondered, nervously twiddling her fingers.

"Yeah, of course we are," Nick insisted, though he didn't sound convinced.

Sara struggled for a moment to find her words. "I… I know... I know it's difficult but we, uh, we need to stay professional. I'm not sure how pleased Anna's parents would be if they found out that we could have found their daughter sooner, or maybe even alive if instead we find her body, because we were too busy avoiding each other."

"I'm not the one avoiding you, Sara," Nick stated, their eyes meeting.

"I know that. But I don't know what to do. There isn't exactly a manual for any of this. I'm dealing with it the only way I know how," Sara tried to explain.

"It's okay, you don't need to explain, I understand."

"But right now, we need to focus on this case and forget about everything else for the time being. We'll deal with it later. Does that sound okay?" Sara raised an eyebrow in question.

Nick nodded. "Yeah. Let's go find this little girl."

Thank you for reading. This one is more of a filler chapter to be honest, and again I kind of winged it with the stuff about the car. More to come soon. Review please.