AN: Time for a little Warrick/Sara interaction, not sure if anyone's been waiting for that, but I wanted to clear the air between those two… hope you like!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything relating to CSI

Chapter 22

"Sara!"

She stops at the voice, turning around to find Grissom crossing the parking lot.

"Hey," she greets him when he reaches her. "How did things go with your mom?"

"Better than I expected," he replies. "She's very excited to meet both of you."

"Really?" she asks suspiciously.

"Really," he assures her, holding the door to the lab open for her and guiding her in with a hand on the small of her back. The touch is light, but still makes her skin tingle. "She tried to convince me to let her handle dinner on Sunday, but I managed to talk her out of it. I don't have time to help her child proof her apartment, it's more of a gallery than a home, to be honest. Lots of breakable items within easy reach."

"Good call."

"Any requests for dinner?" he asks as they enter the break room, where Warrick and Greg are waiting.

"Not off the top of my head," she replies before taking a seat next to Greg, just catching Warrick's shake of the head before he looks away from her.

She needs to get that out of the way. She knows Grissom has been avoiding pairing her with Warrick, but she should have told him not to, or tried to get some alone time with the man some other way. Sooner or later, they'll have to work together, and she needs to know that she can trust him to have her back.

Catherine and Nick trail in, laughing about something, but soon enough, everyone settles down.

"OK, Greg and I are still working the triple from yesterday," Grissom starts. "Nick, Warrick – DB at…" He pauses, squinting at the assignment slip in his hand. "The Landing Strip?"

Greg snorts. "Man, the names of strip clubs in this town just get more ridiculous every year, huh?"

"Competitive advantage," Catherine says with a shrug. "You've got to stick out in the crowd."

"Catherine, you and Sara have a robbery at a liquor store on Washington. A customer called it in – nobody in the store, cash register open and empty, broken bottles and a blood trail on the floor," Grissom continues, handing Catherine the slip. "Considering the missing clerk, it might be more than a simple robbery, so keep that in mind."

"Will do."

They disperse, pairing off for their respective assignments, and Catherine leads the way out to the parking lot.

"You want to drive?" Sara offers.

"I never say no to that."

Catherine waits until they've left the parking lot and are en route to the crime scene before she speaks again.

"So, how'd things go with Gil's mom?"

Sara shrugs. "Fine, according to him. He says she's… excited to meet us."

Catherine glances over. "You don't believe him?"

"I'm not saying he's lying; I know he wouldn't do that, even to make me feel better about the whole thing, but… I don't know. I mean, obviously she wants to meet Shelby, I get that, but me?"

"You're still nervous," Catherine concludes. "I don't blame you, trust me. Meeting the in-laws is never fun. But if he thinks it'll be fine, I would probably try not to worry about it."

"Easier said than done…"

The crime scene is a nice distraction, though – they've finished dusting for prints on the door, which shows no signs of a break-in, and the cash register, and collected blood samples, when there's some kind of commotion outside.

"You've got to let me through, my boss is going to kill me!" a young man is pleading with the officer at the door.

"What's the problem here?" Sara asks as she joins them.

"This guy claims to be the clerk on shift," the cop tells her.

"I am!" the young man says, shifting his attention to her and holding up a heavily bandaged hand. "Some punk ass kids tried to buy beer and got pissed when I refused, so they threw a six-pack on the floor. I cut my hand real bad when I tried to clean it up, so I locked up to go get stitches at the hospital. I tried to call my boss but he didn't pick up, of course. He's harder to get a hold of than the freaking president."

"When did you leave?"

"My shift started at seven, and I was there for about two hours, so around nine. What the hell happened while I was gone?"

She steps aside so he can see into the store. "So, the blood by the register, that's yours?"

"Yeah, it's mine."

"We'll need a DNA sample to confirm. And was there money in the cash register when you left?"

All the color drains from his face at her words. "Oh, shit, my boss is so going to kill me! That cash register was full, we don't cash out until midnight. Someone robbed the place?"

"As far as we can tell," she replies. "We're still processing the scene. Only we thought it was an armed robbery, possibly with a dead clerk."

"Oh, I will be, when my boss hears about this… but I wasn't here when someone took the money. You can check the surveillance system if you don't believe me."

They haven't gotten that far yet. "Where is it?" she asks.

"Back office, through the break room behind the counter."

"OK. You need to stay out here, but I'll be back soon."

She goes back into the store where Catherine's examining the broken bottles.

"Beer," she notes as Sara stops next to her.

"You're not going to believe this," she says, waiting until Catherine looks up. "See the guy out there? He's claiming he was working here, some kids trying to buy beer broke a six-pack, and he cut his hand so bad cleaning it up, he had to lock up and go to the hospital."

Catherine frowns. "Seriously? That's my second non-crime this week!"

"I mean, the cash register is still empty," Sara points out. "He claims it was full when he left, so could be a lot of money."

"Or he took the money and cut his own hand to give himself an alibi," Catherine counters.

"There's an easy way to check that," Sara says. "He says there are surveillance cameras. If they've been turned off or the recordings are missing, we can probably assume he did it. If not… maybe we've got our robbers on tape."

They make their way carefully to the back office, locating the security system quickly.

"Clerk says he left around nine," Sara says. "And the call came in at ten forty-seven, so that's a window of almost two hours."

"Let's go back to eight thirty and take it from there." Catherine pushes a button to rewind the footage, stopping at eight twenty-three. "Is that the guy?"

Sara leans in a little closer and squints at the small screen. "Yeah. Same clothing, sans bandage, so that checks out."

"Let's see what happens then."

She pushes the button to fast forward, pausing whenever the guy on the screen moves in some way. A couple of women come in to buy something at eight thirty-nine, and then, at eight fifty-three, the group of teenage boys the clerk mentioned tries to buy beer. When the clerk refuses, one of them drops the six-pack on the floor and they all scramble out of the store as the clerk yells after them. He stares after them for a moment and then bends down before quickly straightening up again, lifting his hand over his head, dark blood dripping down his arm. He looks around for a moment, grabs something from behind the counter, and disappears out the door to the back. Catherine fast forwards half an hour, but he doesn't come back into the store.

"He said he locked up," Sara says.

"Looks like he forgot and just left through the back. Poor kid's not having the best day."

"Still a robbery, doesn't matter if there's a welcome sign out front and the cash register's wide open," she points out.

"So let's see who had sticky fingers."

They fast forward again, nothing happening for almost an hour, but at ten fourteen, two young men come into the store. They grab a couple of bottles and head to the counter, seemingly confused by the empty store. One of them steps over the broken bottles on the floor and looks into the back room, then turns around and slips behind the counter.

"Bingo," Catherine breathes as he opens the cash register and starts emptying it. His friend rounds the counter as well, stuffing money into his own pockets and giving them a nice, clear shot of both their faces. "I wish all criminals were this easy. Shouldn't be too hard to find a match if they're in any kind of database."

"Nope."

Catherine's phone starts ringing in her pocket, and she pulls it out. "Willows?"

Sara stops the security system and ejects the disc, putting it in an evidence bag and tagging it.

"Well, lucky for you, our case turned out to be much less complicated than we thought, so one of us can come help out… yeah, send him home, tell him it's an order."

"What's going on?" Sara asks as she hangs up and Catherine sighs.

"Nick's come down with some sort of stomach bug, or maybe food poisoning, I told Warrick to send him home. I figure we don't need to double up on this. You got a preference? Stay here or go to The Landing Strip?"

It's the opportunity to talk to Warrick that Sara's been looking for.

"With that name? I have got to see the place," she replies. "Unless you mind."

"Nah, I'm good here. You want the car?"

"I'll take a cab there and ride back with Warrick."

"OK, good luck."

She finds a cab without problem and arrives at The Landing Strip ten minutes later. The uniform on site isn't someone she's familiar with, so she flashes her ID, and he lifts the crime scene tape for her.

"Down there," he says, nodding at a nondescript door halfway down an alley.

"Thanks."

The door opens to a dimly lit hallway, the flash of a camera guiding her to the second door on the right. There are no signs whatever happened in the room extended to the hallway, but she still stays close to the wall.

"Where do you want me?" she asks when she reaches the open door, and Warrick looks up.

"Draw the short straw?" he replies before turning back to the bloody footprint he's photographing.

"Our supposedly dead and/or kidnapped liquor store clerk turned up," she explains. "A bunch of brats broke a six-pack, he cut his hand and forgot to lock the door before going to the hospital to get stitched up."

Warrick snorts and rises to his feet. "Seriously?"

"I could not make that up," she assures him. "Unfortunately for him, before the kind customer who called the crime scene in arrived, two not so good Samaritans did, and they cleaned out the cash register. But the surveillance system's of pretty high quality, we got both of the perps facing the camera directly, so it shouldn't be too hard to track them down."

"Thank God for technology, huh?"

"Sometimes, yeah. So, you've got this room, you want me to work the hallway? Doesn't look like anything happened out there, but might still get some useful prints."

He glances up at her briefly. "Sure."

They work the scene mostly in silence, Sara asking a question or offering a comment now and then, Warrick responding as monosyllabically as he can. It gets old fast, but she bites her tongue and focuses on the work.

By the time they're packing up the evidence and their kits, though, she's just about had enough.

"Are we good?" she asks, pointedly.

"We're fine," Warrick replies, not even looking at her.

"Because if you have a problem with me, it might be better if we don't work together."

He snaps his kit closed and finally meets her eyes. "I don't have a problem."

"Look, I get that you're mad," she says. "Catherine told me. About your kid. And I'm sorry you had to go through that. But it's not the same."

"I know that, I still don't get it."

"Yeah, I figured that out, thanks." She focuses on getting her own kit packed up, considering how much she's willing to reveal to try to make him understand. She waits until they've loaded everything into the trunk of the car before she picks up the conversation again. "Look, I know I was never… very open about my personal life. But I wasn't… I wasn't in a good place, back then, even before…"

She trails off, feeling his eyes on her.

"Yeah, we… me and Nick, we sort of figured that out," he says after a moment, voice notably warmer than before.

She leans against the car, looking up at the sky above. She can almost make out a few stars. "I almost left town at least half a dozen times in the year or so before I got pregnant. And then I just…" She shrugs. "I couldn't be here anymore. I couldn't…"

"Hey, you don't have to justify anything to me, OK?" Warrick says, leaning against the car next to her, arm pressed lightly against hers.

"Obviously I do, if I want to be able to work with you. And I do. We used to be pretty good together, remember?"

He chuckles. "I remember. And I… I can't say I understand, because I don't think I can, not without being in your shoes. But I'm sorry I took out my own issues on you, OK?"

She nudges him lightly. "Thank you."

"And I get that you did what you had to do," he says, and it sounds like he means it.

"So we're good?" She levels him with a look. "For real this time."

He wraps an arm around her shoulders and squeezes. "We're good."

"Good. Do you have photos?"

He gives her an odd look. "Um, we just packed the evidence in the trunk, remember?"

Sara snorts and elbows him lightly in the ribs. "Of your kid! You already met mine, it's only fair."

"Oh! Yeah, a ton, obviously."