Chapter 38

JJ looked at Nick with an annoyed look as she threw the case file she had been studying down on the table in front of her. Ella was officially staying with Catherine and Lindsey, and she was enjoying getting to know Warrick somewhat, but she still refused to go close enough to him for him to actually give her a big hug. JJ could tell that her husband was just as annoyed as she was as they looked through every crime scene associated with this killer.

"There has to be something we are missing, and you know it." Nick snapped at her.

They were both tired and hungry, having been up for nearly 48 hours straight, and they hadn't had anything to eat since the night before. JJ leaned back in her seat and realized that Nick was probably well more annoyed than she was. They both needed to set aside the file, get something to eat and try and get some sleep, otherwise they weren't going to be any good to anyone on this case.

"Let's put everything down and eat some of the pizza that we have over there and then go to bed. We need to go to bed and sleep, it's going to be difficult for us to actually do anything until we can sleep and clear our heads." JJ said softly as she studied her husband. Even though they had been married for a while, it was still pretty hard for her to say that. For so long she had wanted Nick to look at her, the way he looked at her now, and to see that look in his eyes, the look that said he found her attractive, shocked and amazed her.

"You're right." Nick said as he rubbed at his tired eyes. "We need to step away from all of this anyway."

"Yup." JJ said with a slight smile. "Cheese or Pepperoni?" JJ asked him as she got to her feet and headed for the kitchen.

"Both, I am starving." Nick admitted rubbing his growling stomach.

"So am I." JJ said as she grabbed paper plates and piled pizza onto one plate for Nick and put a couple of slices on another one for herself. When she walked into the dining room area, she placed the plates down and then went back for drinks. When she got back into the dining room this time, Nick was sitting in his seat and waiting for her before he started eating. After she had taken her seat and placed his drink in front of him, they both dug into their food.

After they had both had enough, they threw away their plates and put away the leftover pizza and then both of them headed upstairs to bed. Exhaustion was weighing heavy on the two of them, the lack of sleep was clearly starting to effect their brain function. JJ had to admit it was at this point that she was glad that their daughter was safely in the hands of someone who wasn't as out of it as they were. Being as tired as they were, they wouldn't be able to fight off anyone. She just hoped the killer didn't decide to strike at them that night, she knew as soon as their heads hit the pillow that they were going to be out cold.

The next day, JJ opened her eyes and looked over at the clock, grateful she hadn't had to set the alarm because Ella was safe with Catherine and Grissom had asked them to take the next couple days off and to work from home. When she saw the time she moaned in disbelief before sitting up and looking next to her. She realized that her husband was not in bed with her and she could only hope that he hadn't decided to stay up all night and work by himself. He had better gotten some sleep last night, or else she was going to be sending him straight up the stairs and straight into bed. She climbed out of the bed and grabbed her robe, putting it on over her favorite pajama's and headed down the stairs in her slippers. When she found Nick, she realized he was in his pajama bottoms, his feet bare and shirtless, and he was fast asleep on the couch, surrounded by the reports and files.

JJ wasn't sure if he had gotten up at night and started working on everything or if he had gotten up earlier than she had and started working only to realize he was still way too tired and fall back to sleep. She smiled at the sight in front of her and went ahead and grabbed the reports from around him, before she covered him with a throw blanket and went to the table to start working herself. She wasn't sure how long she had been working on her own at the table, but she heard footsteps behind her and then felt lips on her nape and that made her smile.

"You should have stayed in bed longer." JJ teased as she turned around and arched an eyebrow at her husband. Nick stood in front of her in only flannel pajama bottoms, no shirt and no socks or slippers. His brown hair was tousled from sleep and his eyes were half closed from just waking up. He had never looked more sexy to her, at least she didn't think he had. "Sheesh, if we weren't really anxious to catch this killer and as tired as we are, I might make you take me upstairs right now to bed." JJ said with a smirk on her face that let her husband know what they would have been doing in the bedroom.

"Hmm… you know it might get our adrenaline running and allow us to start concentrating more, so I think that's a great idea." Nick said as he suddenly picked her up and ran for the stairs, with her laughing and shrieking at the same time.

He was staring around him at the new area that he had chosen. He wasn't sure what it was about this area but there was something special about it. He needed to make sure that when JJ showed up here, she was able to start remembering the truth about everything. JJ was the key to everything and she was the reason he had started to kill and do the things he had been doing. He wanted her to eventually remember that it was all her fault, he wanted her to know that she could have prevented all of this and to feel guilty for every single person that had died a horrible and painful death because of her. He wondered if there was a way that he could show her all the things that had happened because of her, and then he remembered that he could, by showing her the video tapes he had made over the years.

"I can't wait until you see just how amazing my handy work really is." He said with happiness actually running through his veins. He had never really been at peace or happy, not after the things that had caused so much misery that he had felt the need to spread it around. Now he was going to make sure that the woman who had caused his pain, learned the true meaning of emotional torture and pain. He was going to make sure that she never ever forgot the victims, that their screams of pain echoed in her head long after she finished watching the tapes. That she no longer slept at night because of the terror she could see on their faces, the terror that would imprint itself on her own mind. He wanted that image in her mind, he wanted her to suffer for everything she had ever done, and this was going to be how he made her suffer.

Glancing around he realized the area had way too much foot traffic though. There were so many people walking by he would never be able to actually get his camera's up and running. And with all the people walking by there was a bigger chance of being identified when he dropped the body, someone would eventually see him no matter how careful he was if he decided to still use this area. There was no way that he was going to be able to hide from all the people walking by. Sighing he felt the giddy feeling leave him as he realized the perfect place, wasn't as perfect as he thought it was going to be.

"Back to the drawing board." He muttered as he turned and headed for his car. He had to find the perfect place, and it had to be able to trigger JJ's memories in a way none of the other crime scenes had been able to do. He had to make sure that she didn't walk away from that scene still struggling to remember what it was that was so familiar, he needed to trigger her memories which would in turn trigger Nick's. "Soon you will all know my pain." He snapped as he started his car and drove away from the area he had so wanted to turn into a dark and dreadful sorrow filled place. There were so many people laughing as they walked around, he wanted to wipe away all of those smiles and make them cry over the death of a beautiful young woman, who didn't have to die. "You should have been a better person JJ."

JJ was sitting at the kitchen table with Nick, both of them were freshly showered and dressed and had just come downstairs after spending another couple hours upstairs in bed. JJ couldn't seem to wipe the smile off her face as she drank some of the juice she usually had with breakfast. Nick was wearing his satisfied smirk that always showed he had gotten his way on something, yet again. They were trying to make notes on the case but every time it seemed they were getting started, Nick would teasingly tap her foot under the table and get her to blush, which then got him to burst out laughing.

"We need to get back to work." JJ said after what seemed like the hundredth time.

"Okay, you're absolutely right, we do." Nick said, starting to turn serious as his smirk slowly disappeared from his face.

"Where did we leave off last night?" JJ asked as she looked around for the notes she had been making and then winced when she realized that they made no sense, at all. "We were way too tired to write anything properly. I can't read my own chicken scratch. What about you?"

Nick winced as he looked over his own notes and then shook his head. "I can't understand anything that I have written here." He admitted as he threw aside the pages of notes he had made in frustration. "Whatever we were thinking about last night, it's no longer there. We can't remember what we were thinking and we can't read our own handwriting because we were way too tired to write properly."

JJ could tell Nick was frustrated and he had every right to be, but this was something that they knew was a possibility when they worked with so little sleep. Sighing she started to look over her notes, to see if she could make out anything when an idea hit her. What if this had something to do with their pasts, their long ago pasts when they were growing up?

"Nick, what if all of this has nothing to do with who we dated in college or after that? What if this has something to do with us all right, but something from a very long time ago?" JJ asked as she looked at Nick who seemed to be studying something he had written in his notes from the night before.

"I can read this one, it says a letter was found stating they had to remember." Nick read off and then he turned and looked at his wife. "If this has to do with our childhood, then we have some serious memory lane walking to do, and we might even have to call home for this one." Nick said with a wince and they both knew that if they were right, things were about to get extremely complicated around there.