AN: Another chapter for you guys, hope you like!

Thanks to WalkerTRngr for the beta help!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything relating to CSI

Warning! This chapter deals with rape/sexual assault. It's not graphic, but it is implied

Chapter 3

Since they don't have any warrants yet, Grissom heads straight to the AV lab when they get back to the lab. "Hey, Archie, can you pull up all the traffic cams near Molasky Park, and along Cambridge and South University Center between Flamingo and Twain."

Archie straightens up and starts tapping away at his keyboard. "Do we have a time frame to work with?"

Grissom frowns. "No. Well, between four PM yesterday, or the day before, I mean, and two hours ago, but…"

"Yeah, thirty plus hours of video per cam… that'll take a while."

"Just pull it up for now, hopefully we'll be able to narrow it down further soon."

"Will do. Hey, is there any surveillance in Sara's building?"

Grissom thinks about it for a moment. "I don't remember seeing any cameras, but there might be. I'll try to get a hold of the apartment manager to find out."

"Need the number?" Archie calls after him when he steps into the corridor, and he turns around with a raised eyebrow. "What? It's not like it takes long to find."

He returns to the AV tech to get the number, making a note of the name as well, and hits call on his way to the layout room, where Warrick's laid out the contents of Sara's purse – the only thing they brought back with them. There's no answer the first two times he tries, but on the third, a grumpy voice comes over the line.

"What?"

"Mr. Logan? My name is Gil Grissom, I'm with the Las Vegas crime lab. I need to know if there's any surveillance in your building?"

"Huh?"

He takes a deep breath, counting to ten quietly. "I'm investigating the disappearance of a woman who lives in your apartment building on Cambridge Street, and I need to know if there are any surveillance cameras in the actual building or in the surrounding area."

"Um, yeah, there's a camera above the entrance, covering the parking lot – some cars were broken into last spring, stopped when we got the camera up, of course, probably some punk kids living in the building or…"

"Mr. Logan!" Grissom interrupts him. "If someone leaves the building, would they show up on that video?"

"Well, yeah, as long as they don't, like, cut through the bushes just outside the door."

"OK, thank you." He lets out a relieved breath. "Now, if I send over a colleague, can you get them a copy of the video from the last forty-eight hours?"

"Sure, yeah, the equipment is in the office in the lobby, I can meet them there."

"Thank you. They should be there soon." He hangs up and immediately finds Nick's number.

"Anything?" the younger man asks as soon as he picks up.

"Jim's working on warrants for phone records and tracking, Archie's pulling up surveillance from the area, but nothing yet. I take it you didn't get anything from the hospitals?"

"No. Nobody has been admitted matching her description in the last thirty-six hours," Nick reports. "And I checked traffic reports – there haven't been any accidents with serious injuries within five miles of Sara's apartment."

The knowledge should make him feel better – at least the risk of her being in a hospital bed somewhere, or, worse, on a slab in a morgue, has decreased – but it doesn't, because it means they still don't know anything, and she could be anywhere.

"OK, thanks, Nick. Are you on your way back?"

"Yeah, we just left. Sorry, Warren and Green only got to the scene ten minutes ago and demanded a run through of what we had so far before we left."

"Don't worry about it. But if you don't mind taking a bit of a detour, I just talked to the apartment manager at Sara's building – there's surveillance of the parking lot that covers the entrance, he promised to have the last forty-eight hours for us if someone could come by and pick it up. He seemed happy to share it, but call me if he asks for a warrant and I'll get Jim on it."

"Got it. See you soon."

Grissom hangs up, stuffing the phone into his pocket before leaning heavily against the light table in front of him.

"You OK, Griss?"

He takes another deep breath before looking up and meeting Warrick's eyes. He shakes his head – not sure if it's a response to the question or just to clear it. "Anything?"

"Nothing too interesting," Warrick replies. "Receipts from the Albertsons two blocks over – probably from the errands the neighbor was talking about – and from Target later in the evening, but nothing from today."

Grissom moves around the table to inspect the Target receipt – she paid at nine forty-two, which narrows their window down by a few hours, but still not much.

"So, we've got surveillance from Sara's building?" Warrick asks, pulling him back to the present. "Why didn't we think about that when we were there earlier?"

That's a good question.

"It'll be here soon," Grissom reasons. "We probably won't get the warrants for a while anyway."

"Still, it'd be something to do."

He agrees, of course, but commiserating won't get them anywhere.

Instead, he finds a pair of latex gloves and pulls up a stool to look over Sara's purse and its contents.

"I've gone through everything," Warrick says.

"I know. I just… need to keep busy."

Warrick's hand squeezes his shoulder for a moment, then he leaves the room.

Grissom scrutinizes everything Warrick's organized on the table – car keys, wallet, chapstick, a pack of wet wipes, two granola bars, a bottle of eyedrops, hand sanitizer, a couple of hair ties, a small notebook with a pen stuck into the spiraling, a pack of gum and one with breath mints, some Kleenex, and aspirin. He glances at the tampons, but stays away from them, instead opening the wallet.

There's nothing new there, of course. Some cash, credit cards, driver's license. No appointment cards, no receipts, no piece of paper torn out from the notebook with a hastily scribbled date and time for some meeting that might explain her absence… Putting the wallet back down, he grabs the notebook instead, but if Sara uses it to keep notes, she must rip them out when she doesn't need them anymore, because it's blank. He tilts the first sheet against the light, trying to interpret the indentations, but can't make out any words.

He's turned the purse itself inside out and is feeling through the lining, looking for anything that might have slipped through a hole in a seam, when Nick sticks his head through the door. "Hey, Griss, Archie's prepping the surveillance footage from Sara's building."

Grissom drops the purse and pulls the gloves off as he stands. "Coming."

Archie looks slightly perturbed to have four CSIs and two techs – Greg and Mandy – in his inner sanctum, but to his credit, he doesn't say anything.

"How far back should I go?" he just asks, looking at Grissom.

"What was the time on the Target receipt, Warrick?"

Warrick checks his notes. "Nine forty-two."

"Then let's start around there. The receipt was in her purse, which was in her apartment, so she must have made it home after that, but just to make sure."

Archie nods and turns to the computer, making the video on the screen fast forward for a moment. When it returns to normal speed, the little clock at the bottom says 9:40.

All eyes are fixed on the screen as Archie increases the speed a little. A few people come and go, and then there she is. Grissom's breath catches in his throat for a moment when she pauses just within reach of the camera, digging her keys out of her purse. Then she continues on her way, disappearing from view.

"Any sign of someone following her?" Nick asks, drawing several looks.

"What do you mean 'following her'?" Greg frowns.

"Exactly what I'm saying," Nick replies.

"Nick," Grissom warns, earning a frustrated look.

"What? We have to at least consider the possibility that he's got her!"

"Who?" Warrick demands. "What are you on about, man?"

"Lurie!"

For a moment, it's so quiet, you could hear a pin drop.

"What's he got to do with any of this?" Warrick then asks, looking between Nick and Grissom.

Nick opens his mouth to respond, but Catherine puts a hand on his arm and takes over. "He was the homeowner in Nick and Sara's B&E the other night," she explains. Grissom assumes Nick must have filled her in at some point. "Nick says he was acting weird around her, staring… but it's a big leap from awkward looks to kidnapping, Nicky."

"I know that, I'm just saying that we should…"

"Guys!" Archie's voice interrupts Nick, and everyone turns back to him. "I've got Sara leaving a few minutes after midnight."

Grissom moves closer to the screen, where the surveillance video has been paused, and there she is again, in tights and an oversized sweatshirt, hair in a ponytail. She's stopped in the middle of the camera's line of sight and is leaning down, in the middle of tying her laces, by the looks of it. There's a water bottle on the ground next to her feet.

"Go forward slowly," he instructs the AV tech, who starts the video at half speed.

Sara moves diagonally across the parking lot, in the direction of Cambridge Street. Soon, she disappears from view.

"Go back," Nick says. "Play it again. Is someone moving behind her when she passes that car?" He points at the very edge of the screen.

Archie rewinds and replays from the moment Sara leaves the building. Sure enough, a moment after she's disappeared from view, there's some sort of movement where Nick is pointing.

"There's no way to see if that's even a person," Catherine points out. "It looks like the streetlight is out. I don't suppose you can clean the footage up at all?"

Archie sighs, squinting at the screen, where he's paused the video. "A bit, but probably not enough. The camera seems to have some sort of night vision, but it's too far away."

"Let's go forward and see if she comes back," Grissom suggests, even though it seems unlikely.

Nodding, Archie fast forwards quickly for a while – not much foot traffic in the middle of the night on a Wednesday. The next time he returns to normal speed is when a man approaches the door, and the clock reads 4:51.

"There's no way she would be out running for almost five hours in the middle of the night," Nick says quietly.

"No, there isn't," Grissom agrees, running a hand over his face and taking a deep breath. "At least we have a better time frame to work with. Archie, start checking traffic cams, focus on the hours around midnight. Page me immediately if you get anything, OK?"

"Will do."

"I'll help," Greg offers, sounding subdued.

Grissom knows he should probably send him back to the DNA lab, but the reinforcements Cavallo called in have yet to return from their scenes, so there's nothing for him to do at the moment, anyway. And more eyes mean quicker results. "Do that," he says instead, pulling his cell phone from his pocket. No missed calls. "I'm going to call Jim, see what the hold-up is with those warrants."

"No need," comes the detective's slightly out of breath voice from the doorway. "Got 'em right here."

Grissom lets out a relieved breath. "Good. Nick, Warrick – go through the phone records. Catherine, you and I will start tracking the phone."

He doesn't bother to check if she follows him, but when he logs into the system on one of the computer stations, she's right beside him. "What exactly are you hoping to get out of tracking her phone?"

He ignores the question as he finds the database he needs and plugs Sara's number into the search box. "What we usually get from tracking someone's phone – a general location."

Catherine sighs and pulls up a chair. "And what are you going to do with that 'general location'? You know as well as I do that you can't get a precise enough idea to conduct an actual search."

Why is she trying to fight this? "And you know as well as I do, that all of these puzzle pieces work together to form the bigger picture. A general location in combination with a license plate from Archie's surveillance footage might be enough to get a warrant."

"A warrant for what exactly?"

The system is searching, so he looks away from the screen to frown at her. "Look, I know you were hoping she was just running late; I was too. But that's clearly not the case, so why are you being obstinate?"

"I'm not! I just…" Catherine huffs. "I just think we should consider the possibility that she might have left of her own accord."

Grissom just stares at her for a moment. "I know the two of you aren't exactly best friends, but…"

"That has nothing to do with anything," she interrupts him. "I just don't want us to run away with a half-cocked idea when it could turn out she's… taken a break, or actually left this time."

He winces at the reference to Sara's attempted leave of absence but pushes the memory away and focuses on the present. "Without saying a word? Leaving behind her car, driver's license, credit cards?"

Catherine frowns. "What do you mean, her driver's license and credit cards?"

"Nick didn't tell you we found them in Sara's apartment?"

"Of course not! If he had, I never would have…" She pauses, takes a breath, and then rolls her chair to the computer next to the one he's already using. "OK, read out the coordinates and I'll map them."

Grissom turns back to the screen, where coordinates for pings from Sara's cell phone have appeared, and does just that. Forty-five minutes later, they have a large map laid out on the light table in one of the layout rooms, illustrating the journey Sara's phone – and, hopefully, Sara herself – took from the time she left her apartment until the device turned off.

"You have better luck than us?"

They both look up at Warrick's voice, finding him and Nick in the doorway. "Nothing from the phone records?" Grissom asks instead of answering.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," Nick replies. "Our numbers, the lab, a few take out places, stuff like that. What did the phone tracking turn up?"

Catherine nods at the map. "Take a look."

They both come into the room to scrutinize the map. "You've marked the cell towers the phone signal pinged?" Warrick assumes.

"Exactly," she confirms, pointing at an X in the middle of the city. "So, this is the tower closest to Sara's apartment, the phone pinged it every hour during the evening, last one was just after eleven thirty. Then, at twenty past midnight, it pinged off the tower here." She points at another X in the north part of town.

"Indicating the phone just moved from the area covered by the first tower to the area covered by the next," Nick says. "And then it continues out of the city?"

"We've surmised they must have been moving along the I-15 to the 93, and then north. The last tower the phone connected to was the one about three miles north of Coyote Springs." Grissom indicates the last X on the map, where they've drawn up the area the cell tower covers. "I think if we compared your outgoing calls, Nick, they'd match the last dozen or so pings, until the phone turned off."

"That's a big area, man," Warrick notes, and Grissom holds back the snapping response that's on the tip of his tongue.

"Hopefully the surveillance tapes will give us something more to go on," Catherine says.

"Come on, Grissom," Nick pipes in. "You know who we should be looking at!"

Grissom exchanges a look with Catherine, who shrugs. "We can at least talk to him. We don't need a warrant for that."

He considers for a moment. He wants to go himself, but he knows he won't be able to maintain what little self-control he still has, and there's no way he's letting Nick interact with the good doctor. "OK. You and Warrick do that, but keep things civil, OK? The last thing we need right now is a harassment suit, then we won't be able to go anywhere near him."

He can tell that Nick wants to object, but Warrick pulls him aside and the two exchange a few quiet words before he nods reluctantly.

"Let's get going."

The two disappear, leaving Nick with his arms crossed over his chest and an expectant look on his face. "What do you want me to do?"

Grissom taps the map on the light table. "Get a more detailed map of the area covered by the cell tower. Then you can help Greg and Archie out with the traffic cam footage."

"And what are you doing?"

"I am going to run a few searches through the property records."

-CSI-

She must fall asleep at some point, because some time later, a hand wrapping around her free wrist makes Sara jerk awake. Before she can get her bearings, the hand is locked to the other side of the headboard, forcing her onto her back.

Lurie moves to the foot of the bed, a length of rope coiled in one hand. Sara's breathing immediately picks up, and she can feel her heart beating wildly in her chest.

"You like being tied up, right?" he says, voice low, almost… seductive. "I know this is a little… rougher than your silk restraints, but I figure it'll work just as well."

She swallows, trying to make her voice steady. "You don't have to do this. Please, just… just let me go, I won't…"

"Let you go?" he interrupts. "I did that, remember? When you told me things weren't working anymore. See where that got us."

He reaches for her left foot, and Sara scrambles to pull her legs away from him. She can't get very far, of course, and with a frustrated sigh, Lurie rounds the bed. She kicks at him, but he must have anticipated the movement, because he grabs her calf and soon has her leg tied to a bar in the footboard.

As he moves to the other side of the bed, he almost leisurely pulls the gun he showed her earlier out of his waistband and studies it. "You know, I've seen my fair share of gunshot wounds… I bet you have too."

The implication is clear, and she doesn't fight – much – when he grabs her other leg. When she's spread eagle on the bed, he puts the gun down on the floor some ways away and, instead, holds up a knife.

Her heart is beating so fast by now, she's getting lightheaded, and as he leans over the bed, all she can do is turn away, so she won't have to see.

There's the sound of metal cutting through cloth, and then she feels the cool air of the basement on her stomach, realizing he's cut her sweatshirt open. When she turns back, he's tugging at the zipper in her sports bra, and she grinds her teeth together as he pulls it down.

Her tights are next, the back of the knife blade cold against her skin as he cuts them open and tosses them into a corner. Lurie doesn't bother using the knife on her underwear, just tears them off, making her flinch.

"Beautiful…"

Sara meets his eyes then, hoping he can see all the hate and revulsion in hers. If he does, it doesn't seem to faze him. He just puts the knife down next to the gun and reaches for the top button in his shirt. She turns away, pulling on the handcuffs, but they don't give an inch.

The bed dips, and then a rough hand slides along her leg. A moment later, his mouth makes contact with the skin on her throat, and she jerks at the feeling, her chin coming in contact with the top of his head.

Before she can blink, there's pressure around her throat, and he's right in front of her face.

"You want to live?" he hisses at her, his fingers squeezing her windpipe, and she desperately gasps for air. "Then stop fighting. You understand?"

Darkness is starting to invade at the edge of her vision, and she nods, willing to do anything to stay alive. She has to stay alive, so they can find her.

The pressure on her windpipe eases, and she can breathe again, but he keeps his hand around her throat. Sara squeezes her eyes shut and starts going through the periodic table in her head, including the elements' atomic structures, trying in vain to shut out reality.

When she's alone again, after the lock on the door has clicked, she wraps herself in the comforter and curls into a ball.

But she doesn't cry.