Disclaimer - I don't own CSI.

A/N: Woohoo! Two chapters in a week! And there's only two more chapters to go...

Chapter 8

Nick left the room as he'd intended. He exited with a sigh, cursing himself for how he'd dealt with the situation as it had evolved over the week. He realised that he'd been naive to think that she wouldn't have reacted this way, that she would have maybe even been pleased by his confession. He didn't think he had a hope in hell now of resurrecting what they once had, let alone have a more intimate relationship. Although he was pleased to have finally said what had been on his mind for so long, a part of him wished he'd kept quiet. He'd waited that long, why not wait a while longer? Nick usually considered himself to be quite an optimistic person - more of a glass half-full kinda guy - but he was finding it incredibly hard to be optimistic about his future with Sara, in any sense.

Meanwhile, Catherine delegated the roll of narrowing down any potential suspects to Greg, so he and Archie sat for the next hour looking up every name that had appeared on that list, only able to mark off a few names on the grounds of the person no longer living in the Las Vegas area and two cars were registered to women aged over 70, who they didn't believe would be capable of the abduction. They searched the name of every remaining person on that list through every database they could think of, and one name stuck out like a sore thumb: Rick Miller, owner of a 2009 blue Honda CR-V. The best part being he was the father of none other than Becky Miller, Anna's best friend, hence why he stuck out. It may have been a coincidence but Greg thought it would be worth talking to him, if for no other reason than to rule him out. But he knew Grissom didn't believe in coincidences so reminded himself to keep an open mind.

After dumping the more boring of tasks she had to do on poor Greg, Catherine requested Sara's help with the journal, having made photocopies to speed up the process.

"Do we even know what we're looking for?" Sara wondered.

"I guess we'll know it when we read it," Catherine shrugged.

Sara gave a slight nod in response before she began scanning over the pages.

"So are you still avoiding him?" Catherine commented, raising an eyebrow after a few minutes of silence. "Nick, I mean."

"It's really...," Sara started, feeling very awkward about the whole situation.

"Yeah, I know. It's none of my business...," Catherine put her hands in the air in surrender.

"I'm just... I'm trying to separate it, that's all. Separate work from home. Compartmentalise everything," Sara stated. "He's making it very hard but I'm doing my best. I'm dealing with this the only way I know how."

"I know you are," Catherine turned to address her. "And I'm sure you'll work things out."

"I'm glad someone has some faith in me," Sara smiled in spite of herself.

"You're being too hard on yourself," Catherine insisted.

"What do you want me to say? No matter what I say I'm going to turn into the bad guy in all my of this," Sara snapped. "I'm gonna be the one in the wrong, not him."

"We're not going to interfere. We all just want you and Nicky to be happy," she added, casting her a sympathetic look

Sara gulped. "I just want to get on with this..."

"Can I ask you one thing? Do you feel the same way about him?"

"So have you read anything interesting yet?" Sara asked, trying desperately hard to change the subject.

"You didn't answer my question?" Catherine gave her friend a knowing look.

"I'm aware of that," Sara pursed her lips, looking down to hide her blushing face.

Roughly ten minutes later in walked the male members of the team.

"How did it go interrogating the father?" Catherine asked, placing the papers in her hand down on the desk. "He lawyered up, didn't he?"

"What do you think?" Warrick raised his eyebrows, not looking very happy about it.

"I think he's hiding something alright," Greg insisted, looking frustrated. "Scrap that: I know he's hiding something."

"That doesn't necessarily mean he's hiding Anna Wilson," Grissom stated, looking over his glasses

"What hour are we on now?" Nick wondered.

"Nine," Catherine replied. "We may not have much longer to find her before it's too late."

"I still don't know why he would take her," Warrick added. "What's his motive?"

"Thought we weren't supposed to care about the why?" Nick countered.

"But there must be a reason," Warrick insisted.

"Hang on...," Sara announced, looking down at the sheets of paper of Anna's photocopied diary. "Listen to this... 'Today I found out something horrible. I wish she'd never told me. What he's doing to her is disgusting and wrong. She needs to tell someone else, a grown up that can help. He has to stop hurting her, he has to.'"

The rest of the rooms' occupants looked thoughtful and puzzled.

"Who's she talking about?" Greg questioned.

"A better question would be who would tell her something like this, something so important?" Catherine countered.

"A best friend, maybe?" Nick suggested. "Best friends tell each other everything, especially pre teenage best friends."

"So Anna's talking about Becky?" Sara surmised.

"I'd say so, wouldn't you?" Nick raised an eyebrow.

"And the 'he' she's referring to would be... Becky's father, Rick? The same man we currently have in custody?" Sara thought aloud.

Nick nodded. "And by the sound of it he's been sexual assaulting his own daughter."

"And Becky told the only person she could, her best friend," Sara added. "But unlike Becky, who was no doubt terrified of what her dad would do to her, Anna wasn't scared of him."

"I think we've found our motive," Nick stated solemnly.

"We can't do anything without evidence, Nick, you know that," Grissom reminded him. "We need concrete proof."

"We can speak to Becky, see if we can get her to talk," Sara offered. "Wouldn't hurt to do a bit of digging."

"Well you're the dream team; if you two can't figure this out then no one will," Catherine stated with a smile.

Sara blushed slightly and looked down, feeling somewhat embarrassed.

Sadly their suspicions were confirmed. Nick and Sara gently quizzed Becky about what was written in Anna's diary and she confirmed their theory, just about holding back her tears. It all came down to Nick and Sara's determination and combined skill set, and once again they wrapped up another case. It was shocking really that they were able to practically guess what was going on, based almost purely on their vast experience in the field of child abuse cases. But Becky had been saved, rescued from her vile father far earlier than some girls are or ever were, and Anna too was rescued. With Becky's confession and Anna's diary, Rick Miller was going away for many years but not before revealing what had happened to Anna. After a mild threat from Nick and Brass, who'd closed the blinds in the interrogation room to give the illusion that they were both more than prepared to beat a confession out of him - which at the end of the day wasn't all that much of an exaggeration, especially for Brass - he was all but wiling to announce that he hadn't killed Anna, that he was holding her in his storage facility in Henderson. She was cold, sore and somewhat dazed but Anna was okay, having only sustained minor cuts and abrasions caused by the hit-and-grab. Rick Miller was the worst of the worst, a selfish cowardly manipulator who only cared about himself, and in the bid for self-perseveration he was willing to do just about anything to stop people finding out his sordid little secret. Anna was going to tell her parents and Becky's mum what had been going on and Rick couldn't let that happen, so he did what he felt necessary to save himself. The team felt lucky really that he had been in custody for a while prior to his arrest else they could have made a very different discovery at the storage unit.

"Hi," Sara smiled sheepishly as she entered the locker room a short while later.

"Hi," Nick echoed.

"Everything okay?" she asked, clearly making small talk.

"Fine," he shrugged a shoulder. "You?"

"Um, okay, I guess. I'm just finishing off the report," she explained, hovering in the doorway and fidgeting. "You'd think that with all the technology nowadays that the evidence would be enough and they wouldn't need our version of events."

Nick smiled nervously. "If only."

After a brief moment of silence Nick spoke up.

"I just wanted to say..."

"I was going to...," Sara interrupted.

They shared a nervous laugh.

"Go on, you started so you go first," Sara insisted.

"Ladies first," he countered, smirking a little.

Sara cleared her throat nervously. "I, uh, I just wanted to say well done for today."

"It was a team effort," Nick shrugged. "I couldn't have done it without you though."

Sara blushed self-consciously, looking away. "But, uh, we um, we found a young girl today and that's what it's all about at the end of the day."

"Makes everything else worthwhile," Nick added.

Sara took a deep breath before continuing. "And, you know, I've been meaning to thank you for what you did last week, you know, with the whole bomb incident thing. So thank you."

"You're welcome," he smiled, though he looked somewhat embarrassed. "But there's no need to say anything more about it, what's done is done."

Sara shook her head. "No, Nick, what you did was..."

"Stupid?" Nick guessed, almost smirking.

"No... Well, yes but that wasn't what I was going to say. I was thinking something more along the lines of... of brave," Sara admitted, forcing herself to meet his gaze.

"It was nothing," Nick blushed slightly. "I didn't even need to think about it, I just did it. And like I said at the time, I couldn't leave you there by yourself."

Sara bit her lip in embarrassment and stared down at the floor.

Nick took a deep breath before continuing. "Are you hungry? Fancy having breakfast with me? My treat."

Sara seemed momentarily stunned.

"I think we deserve it after today. And you know what they say, an army marches on it's stomach," Nick added, raising an eyebrow in anticipation.

Sara nodded. "Yeah, breakfast would be good. And who am I to turn down free food from you."

Nick smiled widely. "That's... That's great. That's really great. So will I meet you there?"

"Yeah, I should be done in ten minutes or so."

Nick smiled sweetly. "I'll be waiting."

Sara moved to one side to let Nick past, watching as he left the room and instantly letting out a puff of air once he was gone. It shouldn't have been that way, they shouldn't have been acting that way around each other. Rather, it was Sara who shouldn't have been acting that way around Nick; she shouldn't have been relieved that he'd left. After all, he was the innocent party in all of this. Well, the more innocent of the two of them. He had been forced to except the sudden change in their relationship, and evidently not the change he'd wished for all these years.

But it was his fault things had turned out the way they had, not hers. He may have been innocent in the sense that it was Sara that had freaked out and was acting weird about the whole thing but it was him who'd started the whole thing. Sara hadn't asked for him to suddenly announce that he had romantic feelings for her. He had to take responsibility for that. He'd made his bed so he should lie in it. Nick had started all of this fallout and she would be damned if she was going to blame herself for it. But she had to take some credit for the current situation. While she hadn't asked for it to happen it had happened regardless and there was nothing she nor Nick could do to change that now, so she needed to find a way to deal with it. She probably could've dealt with it a bit better. She knew now that avoiding and ignoring one of her closest friends and colleagues wasn't the answer to their problems. She could run but she couldn't hide. She couldn't hide from Nick's revelation simply by not seeing him, it didn't change what she now knew about him. She knew she couldn't avoid the situation or Nick forever. That just wasn't practical. She knew she had to face it. She also knew that it would be difficult and probably awkward but it needed to be done in order for both of them to move on in which ever direction that may be.

Sara left the locker room, feeling empowered. She decided that she was willing to listen to what Nick had to say. For once she would simply sit back and listen, because he probably had a lot of explaining to do. Until now she hadn't given him a chance to say more than a few words off the subject of work before she'd make her excuses and got as far away from him as she could. But things had been slowly improving as the week had passed, but it wasn't even nearly enough. So they would talk. Well, he would talk and she would listen. Sara had more than a few questions to ask him but she was sure that Nick would cover many of them as he explained his side of things. And after she'd listened to what he had to say, she would listen to her heart for a change. So many times she'd followed said organ and it had led her in completely the wrong direction on quite a few occasions, so for awhile it had felt safer to listen to her head. The information centre of her body didn't feel anything, and she knew all too well how feelings could complicate things, so by letting her head rule her heart she felt she could make good educated guesses without getting heartbroken again. But in the same breath her head hadn't exactly led her down the right path in the past. So on this occasion she decided it was time to change tactics; she would act on impulse and do what felt right at that moment in time.

Sara did feel something for him, how deep that something was she wasn't quite sure of yet. She hadn't allowed herself to find out, and she still wouldn't until Nick had made his peace. She wasn't yet convinced he meant what he had said. A part of her wondered if it was just an impulse reaction to what had happened. The pair of them could have died, one wrong move from either of them and their colleagues would have been helping to plan a double funeral. Obviously that hadn't happened, and they were both still very much alive and kicking, but it still nagged her over whether Nick was truly being honest with her. Because she'd been avoiding the subject she still had some questions that needed answering. She'd been spending a lot of time thinking about it and realised she needed said answers to establish her own feelings and emotions on the subject. She always felt something for him, a more than slight tugging at her heart would maybe be an accurate way to describing it, but she fought against it and focused on work, knowing all too well about how work relationships could end up. She and Grissom had never even really had a thing and he'd broken her heart like a twig. She would do everything in her power to not let that happen again. Having said that, Nick wasn't Grissom; they were very different characters indeed. Nick was a good man with a good heart, and didn't seem the type of guy to lead someone on - not that that was Grissom's intention either. Maybe her feelings wouldn't be unrequited for a change. In fact, she knew for sure that if she did feel anything for him her feelings would be anything but unrequited. That was certainly food for thought.

She turned the corner and was going to head in the direction of the break room once again, to try and finish her paperwork in silence, when Henry flagged her down.

She gave the DNA tech a puzzled look, as she came towards him.

"Are you missing something?" he wondered, waving a cell phone in front of her face.

"Where did you find it?" Sara raised an eyebrow.

"With Bobby in ballistics," Henry explained.

"You know, I thought I was missing something...," she trailed off as she took the phone from him. "I had no idea it was missing, but thank you anyway."

"My talents are endless," Henry shrugged, smiling coyly.

"It must be a quality only reserved for experts in DNA analysis," Greg insisted, appearing in the doorway.

"Is that so?" Sara pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows.

"There is more to us DNA dynamos than meet the eye," Greg stated.

"DNA dynamos?" Henry questioned, clearly not impressed.

Greg shrugged. "It was the first thing I could come up with."

"Anyway, thank you for this. All I have to do now is sign off on my report and I can leave," Sara spoke up again, smiling gratefully.

"Going anywhere nice?" Greg enquired.

"Just to the diner... for breakfast... with Nick," Sara shrugged, looking down to hide the redness appearing in her cheeks.

Greg smiled. "Good. I'm glad to see you two getting on again. I know it's partly my fault but it's a good thing you're not still being weird around each other."

"What do you mean 'partly'?" Sara raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, alright," Greg huffed, shrugging off her comments.

Sara turned her attention back to Henry. "Thanks again for this, Henry. I owe you one."

"Many people do," Henry nodded.

"Oh, that reminds me. I've gotta talk to Nick about that bet, I owe him a hundred bucks. It's weird that he's not asked me for it yet, but I guess with everything else going on it's not really been his priority. I wonder if he'll just let me pay him in instalments, maybe I'll just buy him coffee every day for as long as it takes to pay off my debt. I still can't believe I lost. It was a sure fire win for me, I never expecting him to actually...," Greg rambled absentmindedly, instantly stopping when he realised what he was about to say.

"Huh?" Sara looked up from papers in her hand having been skimming over the content. "Did you say something about a bet? What was it about?"

"Nothing, it's not important," Greg insisted, mentally kicking himself for letting it slip.

"You bet a hundred dollars on something - a stupid amount of money if you ask me - it must be important," Sara countered.

"It's really nothing... I mean, you're right, it was stupid, the whole thing was stupid. Never again will I make a bet with Nick about anything to do with you...," Greg mumbled, trying to stop himself from saying anything else that would incriminate him and no doubt sentence him to certain death. Too late.

"What did you just say?" Sara raised her eyebrows in surprise. "The bet was about me?"

"No, I never said that," Greg attempted to deny it.

"Greg, don't even try it. Why was it about me?"

"I said Nick would never tell you how he felt about you, but he said he would so I made things interesting by betting a hundred bucks that he wouldn't say anything to you within a week," Greg explained, sighing.

Henry's face fully conveyed the thoughts that entered his head at that exact moment, and took the first chance he had to quickly exit the room.

"Why would you do that?" Sara asked, looking hurt and confused.

"I thought it would be the push he finally needed, that's all. He's been keeping it to himself for so long I just thought you should know. I never really expected to win, I thought he'd tell you and we'd forget all about it," Greg insisted.

"But why?" Sara questioned, narrowing her eyes a little.

"You were never supposed to find out about it," he shrugged, shaking his head.

"Oh, because that makes it so much better," she insisted sarcastically, fighting back her emotions.

"I don't know what else to say...," Greg admitted.

"Don't say anything," she held up her hand to stop him before storming out of the room.

Thank you for reading. More to come soon. Trust me, this is going somewhere. Review please.