Nick had a headache, and the Doctor was clearly not himself. Not that Nick knew what was normal for a 900 year old alien, but he was fairly certain it did not involve clutching onto Nick's arm, doubled up, eyes closed with pain, mouth gulping in air as if he could barely breathe. This happened three times between the hospital and the crime lab, and every time it did, Nick's headache got better.
"I really need to stop living on coffee," said Nick. "I think I've been up for nearly 24 hours working on this case, and it's getting to my head."
"How's your head now?" asked the Doctor.
Nick considered. "Actually, not hurting since your last attack," he said. "What do they call that, Schadenfreude?"
The Doctor didn't reply. When Nick looked over at him, he seemed drawn and tired. As if the past few minutes had sucked the energy right out of him.
When they arrived at the crime lab, Nick could see the Doctor stumbling on his feet. The man didn't look like some sort of menacing criminal, but of course, Nick had put away a number of dangerous criminals who looked like normal, ordinary people. But the Doctor didn't really look like a normal, ordinary person either.
"Your friend," said the Doctor. "Warrick. Find him. Make sure he's okay. Then meet back up with us. Stay together!"
"I can't just leave you alone in here," Nick protested, but the Doctor was already down the hall and turning a corner when Nick noticed he'd left. Nick hadn't realized the man had so much energy left in him. "Wait," he called out. "Where are you going?"
"To find Sara!" the Doctor replied.
The Doctor, actually, made a small detour on his way to find Sara, which allowed him to find the clothes and possessions that had been taken from him when he was first admitted into the prison. He now had everything he had arrived with, minus two items; a small key, and his sonic screwdriver. Dressing as quickly as he could, considering how worn out he was feeling, and replacing the items back into his pockets, the Doctor ran off to find Sara.
When the Doctor finally did manage to locate Grissom's office, he found everyone else was there. Sara, Grissom, Nick, and Warrick were all standing, together, at the far end of the room. The Doctor walked in. "Everyone all right?"
Grissom looked up, and narrowed his eyes when he saw the Doctor. "Those clothes were evidence."
The Doctor looked down at his long jacket and brown pinstripe suit. "Well," he shrugged. "They've been evidence for quite some time now. Probably not all that evidential anymore." He gave them a grin.
Grissom was not amused. "What do you want?" he demanded.
The Doctor looked appalled, although it was difficult to tell if the look was theatrical or sincere. "What?" he asked. "Me? Nothing. Well, sort of nothing. Actually," he added in a whisper, "I'd really just like you to sort of bunch up together, kind of like you're doing now."
"Grissom's right," said Warrick. "Every piece of evidence we've gotten up to this point has been fabricated. You're pulling some kind of stunt, aren't you? Trying to find a get out of jail free card?"
The Doctor just gave them a pointed look. "I hardly think I would have given you a full confession on tape if I expected you to find me innocent," he said. He dug into his pocket. "Besides, I've already got one." He handed Warrick a creased monopoly card. Warrick didn't bother to take it.
"So what do you want?" asked Sara.
The Doctor put the card back into his pocket and began pacing the room. "What I really want right now is a cup of tea," he said. "A really nice, hot cup of tea. But seeing as this is America, I have a feeling that isn't going to be possible."
The CSI team all looked at one another. The Doctor didn't notice, just continued pacing in front of them. Grissom reached for his phone.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said the Doctor.
Grissom just glared at him. "Why?" he asked. "Is that supposed to be some kind of threat?"
The Doctor just sighed, but didn't stop pacing. "You know, every time I try to warn people about something, they think I'm threatening them. And they never listen anyways, so really, I'm not sure why I bother." He looked over at Grissom. "I still wouldn't phone the police."
"We are the police," said Nick. "We're just phoning for backup."
"You know which police I mean," said the Doctor. "The ones who carry around guns." The Doctor gave an involuntary shudder. "Don't like guns. Sorry—forgot. America. Second amendment and all that. But I still really don't like guns. They go bang and hurt people."
"And you're telling us that you've trapped us all together in one place, pacing around in front of us, being generally menacing, and you're unarmed?" said Sara. She was clearly dubious.
"Yep," said the Doctor. "And as for trapping you, I'd hardly think that's fair. I mean, I walked into the room, you lot were already here. I just came in and started pacing. I never said you couldn't leave."
"All right then," said Nick, and began to leave.
He was stopped by the Doctor before he got more than a few steps away from the rest of the group. "Granted," said the Doctor, "I still wouldn't. Safety in numbers."
"Safety from what?" asked Grissom, phone still in hand. "You?"
"Nah, just the thing I'm waiting for," said the Doctor. "Not really sure when it'll show up or what it'll look like, but, well, since the little mind-eaters know I'm here, I figure they won't keep me waiting long." A figure appeared in the door, and the Doctor looked up.
It was Catherine Willows. Or rather, it wasn't.
"Doctor," said not-Catherine.
The Doctor stopped his pacing, and edged back towards the other CSIs. "Stay together," he said, fishing in his pocket. He remembered too late that he no longer had his sonic screwdriver, and instead whipped out a pencil, brandishing it at not-Catherine as if it were a deadly weapon.
Not-Catherine laughed at him. It was a cold, hollow laugh. "Missing something?"
The Doctor looked at the pencil, then back at not-Catherine. "Nah," he said. "This is just as good. Get too close, and I can write you a formal letter." He met her gaze, and his expression became grim. "Now, I know you're desperate and I know you're frightened. But I need to know just two things," he thrust the pencil forward, his eyes blazing. "Who are you and why did you kill Sammy?"
"I heard them talking," said not-Catherine. "Before you arrived. You know what they were saying about you?"
The Doctor raised up his other hand in front of the group, as if his long arm would shield the CSIs from any forthcoming attack. "You leave them out of this," he said. "This is between you and me."
"But it was never about me," said not-Catherine. "Oh, no. You never really cared about us. We're a lost cause. You can see it. I can read it in your eyes. You can't bring back an erased timeline. Not without wiping out at least half the galaxy."
"Why did you kill Sammy?" the Doctor demanded.
"I was doing you a favor," said not-Catherine. She walked towards him, her voice mocking. "The all-powerful Doctor. The man who faced down armies of Daleks. The man who can topple empires with just a few words. Trapped by a simple human."
"Stop it," the Doctor gritted out through his teeth.
"You were right, Gil Grissom," said not-Catherine. "This whole thing wasn't about fixing timelines or possessing people's minds. It wasn't about tapes or poison or time travel. No, this was just about the Doctor trying his very hardest to cover up his mistakes."
"Mistakes," repeated Grissom. He began forward, but the Doctor pushed him back.
"Don't touch her," he hissed. "Just stay together." He turned back to not-Catherine, who was now right beside him. She reached out to touch his face, and he flinched.
"Oh, he still remembers," not-Catherine cried, gleefully. "He still remembers all the pain we put him through. All that misery, that torture. All those hours strapped down to a bed, trying to convince one single man that you had to stay. All that work and pain and effort, and now he's dead. You couldn't fix him, Doctor. He's dead."
"You killed him," the Doctor said.
"That's why the Doctor stayed," not-Catherine explained to the other CSIs. "To keep the lion in its cage."
"Not getting any of this," Nick said. He turned to Sara. "You?"
Sara shook her head.
Warrick pointed at not-Catherine. "At the risk of stating the obvious," said Warrick, "I'm pretty sure that's not Catherine."
"No," said the Doctor. "It's not."
"Oh, go on," said not-Catherine. She stepped back a few paces, and folded her arms. "Explain it to your precious little human pets. Tell them what really happened to Sammy."
The Doctor lowered the pencil, and his eyes fell. The other CSIs looked at him expectantly.
"Well?" asked Sara.
"I made a mistake," admitted the Doctor. "When I first got there, I thought… I wanted to be prepared for anything. I started making an escape route, just so I could make a quick getaway if I had to. Knocked out cameras, weakened the structural integrity of the bars, made a little hole in the fence. Simple things, really. I didn't think they'd seal me up in the medical wing, although I guess I should have worked that out."
"So that was your mistake?" asked Warrick.
The Doctor said nothing, and not-Catherine gave another laugh. "Oh, no," she said. "The mistake he made was assuming that Sammy wouldn't figure it out."
"And you two were what?" asked Grissom. "Bedfellows?"
The Doctor looked uncomfortable, shifting from foot to foot. "Well, he certainly tried," admitted the Doctor. "He… I think he had some strange ideas about our relationship right off the bat."
"Obsessed," clarified not-Catherine. "But Sammy always was obsessed with beautiful things he couldn't have." Not-Catherine scanned the Doctor carefully, as if surveying an item she wished to purchase. "Oh, and this body of yours really is quite beautiful, Doctor. You can't deny that."
The Doctor said nothing.
"And what was he to you?" asked Sara. "A friend?"
"It was… complicated," said the Doctor. He began to speak, stopped, then tried again. "Sammy had… some problems. He was dangerous. I couldn't…" he paused, and looked back at the CSIs behind him. "I couldn't just let him escape. That's why I stayed. Because for whatever reason, and I really don't know why, he wouldn't leave without me. So I knew that if I stayed, he wouldn't get out."
"And the tapes?" asked Grissom.
The Doctor suddenly snapped back into lecture mode. He pointed at not-Catherine. "That entity, that thing in your friend's mind, it's been sucking away at peoples' psyches, one by one. But it's harder to swallow when it tries to infiltrate a group. A group of people, all focused on the same thing—they're basically putting their heads together. Doubling their mental defenses. I hoped that if Sammy could organize the prisoners in a common cause, it would be harder for the mind-eater to get at them. So we came up with the idea of leaving you messages on tape. The little click sound was Sammy's idea. He thought it would get your attention."
"Oh, drop the act, Doctor," snapped not-Catherine. The Doctor's expression fell. Not-Catherine smirked. "You're fooling no one but yourself. This isn't about the Doctor versus the monsters. This was all about Sammy." Not-Catherine looked back at the CSIs, cold laughter in her eyes. "You see, this is where it starts to get good. Loyal Sammy, who got so very angry and upset when he saw the Doctor tied up and miserable in the middle of the room. He cared so deeply about you, Doctor, and you twisted him right around your little finger."
The Doctor turned on Catherine. "He was angry enough to kill somebody," said the Doctor. "And I wasn't exactly able to restrain him physically. I thought he was going to run out of that door and snap the warden's neck. So I gave him something to do. Something that wouldn't hurt anyone. I wanted to fix him."
"This doesn't make sense," said Warrick. "If you were staying put just to make sure that Sammy didn't escape, then why'd you go and fake your own death? As soon as he found out that you were dead, he would've been back out on the streets."
"Because they were actually killing me," spat the Doctor, snapping his head around and staring into Warrick's eyes. Warrick flinched beneath his gaze. "I'm not some kind of robot who can take any kind of abuse. They were flooding my body with poisons, restricting my breathing, shooting electrical current through my body. I tried. I really tried. But I was fighting a losing battle, and I couldn't let myself regenerate." He hesitated. His hands were shaking. "When I stopped my hearts, I really didn't know if I'd ever wake up," he said, in a softer voice. "So I… came up with a backup plan…"
"Oh, this is my favorite bit," said not-Catherine. She looked over at Grissom. "You were right, Gil Grissom. Those tapes he left you really were a trap, but not for you. Oh, no, not for you or your team. Would you care to tell them, Doctor, where you asked Sammy to meet you if he actually decided to escape?"
"The Tardis," said the Doctor, in such a small, quiet voice that one had to strain to hear him. He looked back at Sara, pain in his eyes. "I knew you'd call up Sarah Jane. And she'd tell you to make sure you found the Tardis. I figured that way, if anything ever happened to me and Sammy made his escape, you'd still find him." He turned back to not-Catherine, his eyes blazing. He pointed the pencil at her again. "But I was trying to make him better. I was helping him. I was showing him that he could put that anger and passion towards a better purpose. I was getting through to him. You didn't have to kill him."
"Oh, but I did," said not-Catherine, sauntering up to him. "Just to break you that little bit more, Doctor. Just to make sure you were that little bit weaker." She stopped, so close to him that he could feel her breath on his neck. She gave a little fake pout. "Aw, isn't that cute," she said. "You're protecting your little humans."
"They're doing that all by themselves," said the Doctor. "They're stronger than you think."
"Isn't that sweet of him?" not-Catherine asked the other CSIs. "He's put up a nice little mental shield around your little group, and he's trying to make it seem like you did all the work. That's why he wouldn't let you leave. Of course, you and your suspicious little minds thought it was something nefarious. Some evil scheme." She turned back to the Doctor, and stroked a hand gently down his cheek. This time, the Doctor didn't flinch, just looked at her with that steady, threatening gaze. "Of course, Doctor, you know what that means for you, don't you? Spending all this energy and effort just to keep those pet humans of yours safe. It means you are vulnerable to psychic attack." At this last word, she raised her hand to his temple and pressed down. The Doctor doubled up, his eyes shut and his mouth gaping at the air. Not-Catherine looked over at Nick. "Easier than I thought. It looks like he spent most of his energy trying to protect you on the way here, Nick Stokes. How does that feel, knowing that you've killed him?"
Suddenly, the Doctor straightened, eyes open wide, mouth ajar, then collapsed into not-Catherine's waiting arms, his eyelids drooping gracefully shut. The CSIs all looked at one another, not really sure what to do. It was clear to each and every one of them that they really should be doing something, but this was so far out of their area of expertise that they really had no idea what.
"There, there," said not-Catherine, cradling the Doctor in her arms as if he were a child. "It's been so lonely for you in your head. You'll never be alone again, though, Doctor. I'll be here with you. Forever."
Without warning, the Doctor opened his eyes, and clasped her head with his hands. Not-Catherine shrieked, as the Doctor cried out, "Help me hold her down!"
Nick, Warrick, and Sara ran over as fast as they could, pinning not-Catherine to the ground. The Doctor looked deep into her eyes as she continued to struggle. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry. But this is going to hurt." And he closed his eyes.
Not-Catherine screamed.
And then Catherine screamed. And opened her eyes.
"What?" said Catherine. She stared at the Doctor in confusion, as he removed his hands from her head. "Who the hell are you?"
Nick, Warrick, and Sara let go, and Catherine got to her feet. She looked around, and spotted Grissom. "Who's he?" she demanded. "And since when do you interrogate suspects in your office?" She turned back to the Doctor. "Oh, wait a second," she said. "You must be that guy that Lindsey's always going on about. Dave or whatever your name is. Well, you know what? She's thirteen years old, so hands off!" And with that, Catherine Willows slapped the Doctor across the face.
The Doctor rubbed his face. "It's always the mothers," he muttered.
Grissom just gave a warm smile. "Welcome back, Catherine," he said.
Catherine arched an eyebrow at him. "Welcome back yourself," she said sarcastically. "What's the big commotion? You didn't just all swamp into this place to help me fend off some perv, did you?"
The Doctor appeared a little hurt by this comment. "Hey, excuse me," he said. "But I am most certainly not a perv."
"You," said Catherine, wagging her finger at him, "stay quiet and keep away from my daughter."
The Doctor sighed, and went over to the other side of the office, while Grissom tried to fill Catherine in on what she missed. The Doctor slumped to the floor, and examined the object in his hand. Sara noticed him and took pity on him. She went over, and sat on the floor beside him.
"I'm sorry about Sammy," she said.
The Doctor didn't answer. He just stared down at his hands, a vacant expression on his face.
"You can't fix everyone, you know," Sara told him. "Sometimes people are just bad to the core, and there's nothing you can do for them."
"I was getting through to him," said the Doctor. "I really was." He shook his head. "You know, that first time he snuck in, I thought, 'this is it, Doctor. You're really in for it now.' And he leaned over and looked at me, and that's when I saw it. That spark you humans all have. That beautiful bit of humanity that just makes you so… wonderful. That's when I thought, maybe it's there. Inside of all of them. All those crazy serial killers and criminals out there behind bars. Maybe they just need someone to bring that little spark out."
"But you knew you couldn't fix him," Sara pointed out. "I mean, you could make him better, but you still wanted him behind bars."
"Yes," said the Doctor, but it was so sad that Sara found herself involuntarily rubbing his arm to comfort him. He looked down at the object in his hand, twirling it between his fingertips.
"Where'd you get that from?" asked Sara.
The Doctor pointed the object at Catherine. "Her mind."
Sara decided she wasn't even going to try to work that one out. "Okay, smarty pants, then what is it?" she said.
The Doctor sighed. "Another problem."
"A bad problem?"
"Less bad," said the Doctor. "For you, at any rate."
Sara looked at him. He was clearly lost in some other train of thought, some train of thought that he wasn't letting her in on. "Would you care to elaborate?" she asked.
The Doctor showed her the object in his hand. It was a yellowish crystal—quartz, perhaps?—about the size of a penny. "I remember these," he said. "From way back. Several centuries ago in my personal timeline. They're found on the planet Manussa in the Scrampus System. Which means I now know exactly who I'm dealing with, and I'm pretty sure I know what they've done and why they need my help."
"You mean you've worked out who this mind-bug is?" asked Sara. She still felt pretty stupid engaging in this game about aliens and mind bugs. As far as Sara was concerned, this whole case was going to fall into the same category as New Years 2000 in her mind—stored away in a big locked chest marked "Do Not Open." But since she was pretty certain she was going nuts anyways, she figured she might as well indulge her imagination. "So that's good, isn't it? I mean, it's always better to fight against something when you know what it is."
"It's… upsetting," the Doctor admitted. "Because it proves what I always feared to be true—that my friend is going to die, and it really is all my fault." He looked over at Sara. "Its name is the Mara. It—well, they—are a manifestation of every evil thought in the human psyche. All grouped together and manifested in the form of a snake. But it can't manifest now. It isn't even real, not entirely. It's just a temporal echo."
"I don't get it," said Sara. "What's a temporal echo? Is it like a ghost?"
"Imagine," said the Doctor, back in lecture mode, "that I went back in time and picked up, oh, I don't know… American…" He tapped the quartz against his lips in thought. "I know!" he said. "Samuel Clemens."
Sara smiled. "Mark Twain."
The Doctor returned her smile with his own manic grin. "Very good."
"It's Grissom," said Sara. "He rubs off on you."
"Well," continued the Doctor, "if I met my good friend Mark Twain back in 1870, and I said, 'tell you what, Samuel Clemens, how about you hop into the Tardis, and I'll take you forward about a hundred thirty years and let you meet some friends of mine in the year 2003?' So we pop off to Las Vegas, 2003, and meet Miss Sara Sidle of the Las Vegas crime lab, and you get to shake the hand of a very famous American writer. Now, you tell me, Miss Sara Sidle, while you're shaking Mark Twain's hand, is Mark Twain alive or dead?"
"Well, he's alive," said Sara. "I mean, if I'm shaking his hand."
"But he isn't," said the Doctor. "He's just a temporal echo. After all, Samuel Clemens died years ago. You can see his grave. In fact, in my nice little scenario I described, I could take Mark Twain off to see his grave and let him morn himself." The Doctor paused. "Don't tend to do that, though. Makes the trips pretty depressing."
"I think I get it," said Sara. "You're saying the mind-eater is a time traveler."
"Not quite," said the Doctor. "He's a bit like me. His timeline comes from nowhere and goes to nowhere. Which means that his homeworld has been unwritten from the pages of history. Torn out of time, so to speak."
"Okay, go slower," said Sara. "Start at the beginning and work your way to the end."
"When I last met the Mara," said the Doctor, "it was hitching a ride back in time by stowing away in the mind of a very good friend of mine, Tegan Jovanka. The Mara seemed determined to cause a predestination paradox. You know, causing his own creation. But at that point in my personal timeline, there were, well, others who could…"
"You mean," Sara cut in, "that your planet was still around."
"Yes," said the Doctor. He took in a deep breath, then continued as if nothing had phased him. "Well, back then, there were certain safeguards in place with time travel. You mess something up, and we'd send someone off to make sure the whole thing got taken care of before anything too nasty happened. But, well, I have this… aversion to violence, you see, which means that I really try hard not to kill sentient life-forms, even if they are evil monsters bent on destroying the world. So I left the Mara in Manussa's past, drained and powerless. And I figured it couldn't possibly do any harm. But the moment I left, Gallifrey no longer existed. The Time Lords no longer existed. The Mara didn't know that, of course. The Mara thought, 'now that the Doctor's gone, I can really make sure I do this right.' And apparently, it succeeded in creating itself before its proper time in history. Predestination paradox. Created a nice big hole in the fabric of space-time, but this time, there's no one around to fill in the hole. Big nasty creatures came out to feed on the temporal bleeding, time swelled out around the planet and plopped it into its own isolated little bubble outside of the universe. And quicker than you can blink, Manussa is erased from history. Never existed."
"So how…"
"Because of me," said the Doctor. "Remember? I'm the space-time anomaly. There are worlds that exist only on my personal timeline. And apparently, there was still a little temporal echo of the Mara left inside Tegan's head." The Doctor stared at his red sneakers, knocking them together at the toes. "The last time I saw Tegan was… oh, about three years from now. In 2006. She told me she was dying. An alien tumor in her brain. I tried to plead with her to let me help, but she was so stubborn. She said she didn't want any alien thing inside her head. And she was right, because I know what that tumor is."
He flipped the quartz over in his hand. "It's time. The tumor in her head. It's the cruel, paradoxical, swirling ravages of time that's slowly destroying her. The Mara must have leapt inside her head, the one last place in the universe it could exist, and the tangle of timelines that accompanied it is slowly killing her. And there's nothing I can do. Even if I take the Mara out of her head, I can't take away that chaos of time. It's impossible." He shook his head. "I always held out hope that I could go back and save her. But now…" He trailed off, and left the thought unsaid.
Sara was about to think of something comforting and reassuring to tell him, when a loud ringing sound cut through the air. Catherine fished out her phone, opened it up, and nearly shouted, "Lindsey!"
No one spoke, but everyone could see the expression on Catherine's face turn from parental annoyance to panic. "Where is Lindsey?" she demanded. "Where is my daughter?"
She looked around, as if trying to spot something in the room. "Oh, I'll give you a doctor," she said. "We'll lock you away in a nice padded cell with hundreds of doctors. Now give me back my daughter!"
Before Sara even noticed that the Doctor had left her side, he had already sprinted over to the other side of the office and plucked the phone out of Catherine's hand.
"I'm here," said the Doctor. "What do you want?"
Catherine turned to Grissom, about to protest, but Grissom held up a hand to stop her. Sara could tell that Grissom was up to something, and didn't want to let on. The Doctor, meanwhile, had begun pacing the room.
"Don't you touch her," said the Doctor. "Not one hair on her head, not one neurotransmitter in her brain. You hear? Because if I find out that you've hurt her in any way, you'll have to answer to me. And I guarantee, you really, really don't want to do that."
The Doctor stopped his pacing, his eyes fixed ahead and yet staring at nothing. "I'll be there," he said, so quietly that Sara had to strain to hear him. He flipped the phone closed, and tossed it to Catherine. Without so much as a word to any of them, he turned to leave the office, his tan coat swooshing out behind him.
"Hey, wait a minute," Nick shouted after him. "You can't leave! You're still under arrest!"
"I know," the Doctor reassured Nick as he vanished out the door. "Won't be a minute!"
Everyone looked at Grissom. "Shouldn't we go after him?" asked Sara.
Grissom sat down at his desk and turned to his computer. "We could chase him around," said Grissom, "although I doubt it would do us much good. He seems like the kind of guy who would be hard to tail. On the other hand, we could listen into his phone conversation, and find out exactly where he's going." He opened up a program and started flipping through files.
Catherine bent over his shoulder. "That's my phone number!" she accused. "You've been recording my calls!"
"Only since you began acting out of character," Grissom explained. He clicked on a file, and pulled it up.
"Lindsey!" said Catherine's voice.
"Not exactly, Mrs. Willows," came a Midwestern accent that Sara recognized immediately. Dr Bradshaw. In the background, Sara heard shouts from a clearly angry teenage voice. If Dr Bradshaw heard them, he didn't seem to care. "I do have your daughter with me, Mrs. Willows, but I don't think you have the bargaining chips necessary to obtain her. Hand me over to the Doctor."
"Oh, I'll give you a doctor," insisted Catherine. "We'll lock you away in a nice padded cell with hundreds of doctors. Now give me back my daughter!"
Sara remembered how fast the Doctor had snatched away Catherine's phone, but his voice still came through the speakers well before she expected it.
"I'm here," said the Doctor. "What do you want?"
"I think you know that already, Doctor," said Dr Bradshaw. "I want you. And I'm willing to make a trade. I've got your Tardis, and I've got this pretty little ape." In the background, Lindsey sounded less than pleased with the metaphor. Dr Bradshaw, again, ignored her. "You give yourself up and come quietly, or I'll make sure this little human doesn't reach her fourteenth birthday."
"Don't you touch her," said the Doctor. "Not one hair on her head, not one neurotransmitter in her brain. You hear? Because if I find out that you've hurt her in any way, you'll have to answer to me. And I guarantee, you really, really don't want to do that."
"That's my deal, Doctor," said Dr Bradshaw. "Your life for hers. If you're not behind the Tangiers in an hour, I start taking off body parts. You got that?"
"I'll be there," said the Doctor. And the call ended.
"Who was that?" demanded Catherine. "What do they… who…?" She whirled around, as if not sure which of her team members to interrogate first. "What is going on here?"
Sara ignored Catherine and looked at Grissom. "You think this is like Sammy?" she asked. "They keep Lindsey around to make sure the Doctor stays put and does what they want?"
"If that's what really happened," said Grissom. "And if it is, Lindsey is in deep trouble."
"What do we do?" asked Warrick.
"I think," said Grissom, "we'd better go to the Tangiers."