Told you we were getting some action... :P

x x x x

She hadn't even realised how long she'd been sitting there, staring blankly at the wall, until the pair of hands appeared over her eyes and startled her back to reality.

"Hey." Kirsty greeted, leaning down to drop a kiss onto the shocked brunette's cheek. "You look troubled."

"No." Sara laughed nervously. "I was just … thinking."

"Hmm, should I be worried?" The cop asked teasingly, sliding around the chair to perch on her lap.

Sara pursed her lips, shaking her head.

Lately, she had found that the best way to avoid saying the wrong thing was to say nothing at all.

"I'm going into town, do you want anything?" Kirsty continued, tangling her hand in the tight curls at the nape of Sara's neck.

"No, thank you." Sara cleared her throat, resisting the urge to shift uncomfortably at her girlfriend's fondling.

"Okay." Kirsty kissed her again before climbing off and adjusting her clothes. "I won't be long."

"Take your time." Sara smiled.

Indeed, the longer Kirsty was out of the house the better.

As soon as the door closed, Sara stood up and began to pace.

Looking around her small apartment, it felt like a foreign country to her. Kirsty was here so often, she was essentially being held captive in her own home.

Hopefully, though, not for much longer.

The last few weeks had been torture, but she was biding her time. She didn't want to accuse Kirsty of setting off the smoke bomb and planting the messages in her locker before she had conclusive evidence.

Then, and only then, could she turn the tables on the manipulative woman.

Gathering information against Kirsty had been relatively simple, to start with.
From their few stunted conversations about the woman's past, Sara knew that she had trained as an engineer. She had actually wanted to join the army, but they'd failed her on the psychiatric aspect.

Go figure.

As for the lack of fingerprints, Sara frequently found excess gloves in her pockets when she got home from work; it was entirely conceivable that Kirsty could have taken a pair and used them to make the bomb.

All she'd have to do then was get it into the building. And, as a cop, she had unlimited access to the evidence locker. She would simply have had to stick an evidence label on the box and carry it in with a load of other evidence from a crime scene. Cops were always asked to take evidence to the vault – it would have looked perfectly innocent.

This just left one piece of the puzzle. And that piece was now in a folder in her work bag, masquerading as a lab report.

It had taken a little bit of begging – something she was normally loath to do – but thankfully Sofia was still sweet enough on her to not ask too many questions. She had given up the information with surprisingly little argument, in fact.

Sara had a feeling that request would come back to bite her soon, but she would worry about that in due course. After all, once Kirsty was out of the picture, Sara could tell Sofia the truth without fear of repercussion.
She would have to check the handbook to be certain, but she was fairly sure that planting a bomb of any kind in a government building is a sackable offence. And once Kirsty was out of the station and unable to hold that position over her anymore, she wouldn't be so scared to tell the truth.

All that was left for her to do was tell someone. And that's where she'd come unstuck.

Initially, she'd planned on just leaving an anonymous file on Jim's desk, but she figured he'd soon find out it was her and that could lead to some awkward questions.

And lord knows she could not lie to the detective. Hell, the man was the closest thing she'd ever had to a parent.

So, she came up with Plan B. She would admit what had been going on, but only to the minimum number of people possible.

And if she was going to do this, she would need backup.

With a shaky hand, she reached for the phone but something made her stop. It was highly doubtful she knew, but there was a tiny chance that Kirsty could have tapped her phone. After all, she had read her texts.

Instead, she wandered over to her guitar case, reaching inside and around the back of the instrument until her hand brushed the small smooth device.

Her guitar – a beautiful tobacco-sunburst Gibson Hummingbird, with white and gold decoration – was her most prized possession; and it was also one place that Kirsty would never think of looking for a secret cell phone.

X x x

"Catherine, you cannot go around talking to victims like that!"

Sofia stalked the CSI into her office, barely stopping the door with her foot before it was slammed into her face.

"She's not a victim." Cath spat, hurling her bag at the floor beside her desk. It hit the trash can, causing it to teeter for a second before righting itself. "She's clearly the dominant one in that relationship. That poor guy doesn't stand a chance."

"We don't know that." Sofia insisted, placing her hands on her hips. The woman seemed to have a serious chip on her shoulder about something today and it had been driving the detective to distraction all shift.

Catherine whirled to face her, leaning against the desk.

"Women are just as capable of domestic abuse as men, Sofia." She snapped through gritted teeth.

"I know that." Sofia emitted a dry laugh. "But that's not the point here. The point it is you cannot go around making assumptions about cases until all of the facts are in."

Catherine scoffed, tilting her head back towards the ceiling.

"Sometimes instinct is better than fact." She released a shuddering breath. "And my gut is telling me that she's the abuser, not him."

"How can you know that?" Sofia pressed, stepping closer.

"I just … I just know."

"Now you sound like Sara." Sofia muttered.

"Yeah, well she'd know."

The throwaway comment wasn't meant for the detective to hear, but her trained ears picked up on it anyway.

"What's that supposed to mean?" She asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Catherine dropped her gaze guiltily, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she instantly regretted the mistake.

Sofia took a deliberately careful step closer, cocking her head to the side.

"What do you know, Catherine?"

X x x

Sara snatched the towel off the hook and wrapped it around herself hurriedly.

This shift had been so busy; she'd barely had time to dwell on what was to come later on.

She was going to meet with Catherine at the end of shift and – hopefully – they would go and talk to Brass together.

Then, she kept assuring herself, it would all be over. She could walk away.

After ringing her damp hair out, she tightened the towel around herself and tugged the curtain open.

Her clothes were on the bench, where she had left them. For some reason she had developed this paranoid fear that one day she would get out of the shower and all of her clothes would be gone. And with the strange things that had been happening around here lately, it wasn't exactly unreasonable to be concerned.

She stepped out of the shower and towards the bench when a shadow on the floor caught her attention. She spun around, but even her quick reflexes weren't quite fast enough.

She barely caught sight of the figure before she felt a sharp pain against her head. After that, the last thing she recalled seeing was the cold, hard floor hurtling towards her.

X x x

"Whew!" Warrick whistled as he and Nick drifted down the corridor with matching grins. "You smell that?"

"Yeah, you know it smells sort of familiar." Nick agreed, raising his voice a little. "Decomp?"

"Nah, it's worse than that." Warrick hummed.

Up ahead, Greg's ears pricked up and he narrowed his eyes as his colleagues continued stalking him through the hall.

"Yeah, you're right." Nick sniffed the air again, hitting Warrick's arm lightly. "You know what, I know what it smells like. Greg's apartment."

At their childish laughter, Greg came to a sudden halt outside the locker room and whirled to face them.

"Alright, very funny." He held his hands up. "I smell."

"No, no man." Nick disagreed, giving him a once over. "You reek."

Greg sent the Texan an exasperated look.

"Grissom needed someone to search through a dumpster for our vic's missing purse." He explained. "And since you guys were too busy, guess who got the job instead."

Ignoring the direct shot at them, the boys exchanged an entertained look.

"So, did you find the purse?" Nick asked, barely containing his amusement.

"No." Greg dropped his hands to his side. "But I did find a dead rat and several bags of rotting fish. Did I mention the dumpster was behind a sushi restaurant?"

Warrick snorted, earning him a disgruntled look from the ex-lab rat.

"Oh man." The dark-skinned CSI howled. "He's stepped up his game for you."

"Yeah, I thought the trash cans behind Chucky Cheese were bad." Nick laughed.

Realising that he was clearly out of the loop here, Greg folded his arms across his chest sullenly.

"Alright, what don't I know?" He asked impatiently. Sharing another look with Warrick, Nick finally took pity on the boy.

"Grissom does this to all new CSIs in their first few months." He explained. "It's kind of an initiation, but you never know when it's going to come."

Greg's brow furrowed as his mind worked through this. Slowly, his face began to fall.

"There was no purse in that dumpster, was there?" He asked incredulously.

Nick and Warrick just smiled, glad to have clarified the issue for him.

Having had their fun – and quite frankly fed up of the smell – they decided to leave him alone to curse Grissom in peace.

Hodges, heading the other way, initially offered a silent nod in greeting but froze halfway past the man. He stepped back, leaning closer to the newest Graveyard Team member.

"I know you don't possess the best fashion sense," the forensic scientist began, wrinkling his nose up in distaste. "But could you at least change your shirt every once in a while?"

Turning his narrowed eyes slowly towards the tech, he darted out a hand and pretended to flick something at him.

Hodges flinched, hurrying away as fast as his legs would carry him.

Rolling his eyes, Greg emitted a frustrated sigh.

"If anyone needs me," he announced to the now-vacated corridor, "I'll be in the shower."

X x x

Unlike the other guys, Greg had always been shy about revealing his body, even around his colleagues. If he were to analyse the phobia, he could probably trace it back to high school. But that was a can of worms he really didn't want to open. Ever.

Ensuring that Hodges had well and truly left the vicinity, he cast a few nervous glances around the empty room before stripping his shirt off on the way into the shower block. He expected it would be empty – the only other person who'd had a gross case tonight was Sara and she'd been back in the lab ages.

En route to the shower room, his shirt got stuck over his head and he stumbled blindly into the doorframe.

"Ow." He grunted, finally wrenching it free and lauching himself inside.

However, his triumph quickly turned to horror as the first thing his brown eyes settled on froze him to the spot.

He had seen this room so many times before, but now it looked almost alien to him; like walking into an unfamiliar crime scene for the first time.

It was the colour that first caught his attention. Bright red on the sterile grey floor.

Red, flooding the ground beneath Sara's limp, pale body.