Fandom: CSI Rating: PG-13 Pairing: GSR Summary: Another serial killer strikes Las Vegas--but this one has a twist.   Disclaimer: Most of the characters and situations in this story belong to Alliance Atlantis, CBS, Anthony Zuicker and other entities, and I do not have permission to borrow them. No infringement is intended in any way, and this story is not for profit. All others belong to me, and if you want to borrow them, you have to ask me first.  Any errors are mine, all mine, no you can't have any. Spoilers: through "Bull"   Note: this story includes the non-graphic deaths of children.        ********* Dr. Julia Reyes looked over the edge of her reading glasses at Sara, frowning just the slightest bit, and Sara reflected impatiently that when Grissom did that it was cute; when her boss did, it meant that Sara was about to hear something she didn’t want to hear.    “I’m sorry, Sara,” Reyes said.  Her soft voice went so well with her short, plump form and greying bun, and not at all with her sharp wits and iron will.  “You’re going to have to put this one aside.”    Sara shifted in the seat across from Reyes’ desk, which was as ruthlessly tidy as Grissom’s was a paperwork disaster.  “Look, we have no leads.  If you just let me--“    “Exactly; no leads.”  Reyes pulled off her glasses, letting them drop to her bosom on the leash of their chain.  “We have four cases to work tonight among the three of us, and that’s just for starters.”  She sighed, a sound with an edge of sorrow, and it was that added note that made Sara forgive her.  “Without any new evidence, the Hsien case will have to go on standby.”    Sara thought about arguing, but the most infuriating part was that she knew Reyes was right.  Swing shift didn’t have enough personnel to handle the cases it did get, most nights, and there really wasn’t anything more that could be done with the evidence they did have.  On some level in Sara’s mind, little Roger Hsien was asking for justice...but they just couldn’t supply it.    Not yet, anyway.    “I’m not asking you to make it a cold case just yet, Sara,” Reyes added.  “But it has to move to the bottom of the priority list.”    Once upon a time Sara would have argued all the same, but things had changed.  It had taken her a frighteningly long time to regain her energy after she had been abducted, and living with Grissom meant it wasn’t as easy to spend hours of extra time at work.  And besides, she was trying to better manage her work life.  “All right,” she conceded, ironically aware that she really didn’t have a choice.    “Good.  I’ll take Ronnie tonight; you go ahead to your assignments, and if you finish up before the end of shift, I’ll look the other way if you want to add in a couple of extra hours.  No more than two,” Reyes warned, holding up a hand as Sara’s eyes gleamed.    “Gotcha,” Sara said with a grin, and stood up.    She had to admit, she liked her boss.        Work and life went on.  Sara took what time she could snatch to revisit the Hsien case, but nothing new came to light, either in Las Vegas or Yakima.  Roger’s body was released to his parents, and his short life was relegated to a few lines of obituary in the Yakima Herald Republic and whatever memorial his parents managed to agree on through their animosity.  Sara looked up the obituary, but even her obsession didn’t extend as far as finding out about his gravestone.    What was left included his clothes, the garbage bag, a few fibers and reports, and the rosary, and Sara was looking over the latter one more time one night when her phone beeped.    Grimacing, she shut off the alarm and began to pack up the evidence.  She stuck to her promise to Dr. Reyes; no more than two hours of overtime per week on the Hsien case, and it wouldn’t be officially labeled “cold” until the end of the year.    Putting everything back didn’t take long.  Sara sealed the box yet again--the lid was getting rather ragged from all the evidence tape--and carried it out to return to the evidence locker.    Unfortunately, she didn’t see Nick coming the other way.    “Whoa, Sara!”  He managed to catch the box before it hit the floor, fortunately for Sara’s piece of mind.  She laughed, a bit embarrassed but nonetheless glad to see him.    “Sorry, Nick, I wasn’t watching where I was going.”    “No problem.”  He grinned at her and handed the box back, then bent to pick up the file that had slipped from his grip.  “I’d ask what you’re doing here so late, but it’s pretty obvious.”    Sara snorted.  “I’m about to quit for the night.  How’re things on Graveyard these days?”    “Busy, what do you expect?  We lost our main workaholic.”  He winked at her.  “C’mon, I’ve got time, I’ll walk you to the locker.”    They set off down the hallway.  “What are you working on?” Sara asked.    Nick shrugged.  “Nothing special, just a jewelry store holdup.  Amateur job, really kinda boring.  I’m hoping Mandy can find something in the prints, because he did have enough brains to wear a ski mask.”    “A mask but no gloves?  Classic.”  Sara shifted her grip on the box, amused.    “Yep.  What do you have there?”  He gestured at her burden.    She sighed.  “A dead end.  Two-year-old found smothered and dumped in an alley off the Strip, no prints, no nothing.  The only thing I have to go on is a rosary, and it’s not talking.”    “No kidding?  That’s weird, Sar, we had one like that, like, a month ago.”    Sara halted, her head snapping around to stare at him.  “A smothered toddler?”    Nick ran his free hand over his head.  “No, she was about six, I guess, but she had a rosary in one hand.  Laid out on a little patch of grass behind a laundromat.”    Her gaze didn’t waver.  “Any leads?  Signs of abuse?”    “Nothin’.  She’d only been missing about ten hours.”    Sara started walking, her stride so quick that it took Nick a few steps to catch up with her.  “I need to see your evidence.”        “Sara.”    She didn’t look up from her microscope.  “Mmm?”    Cloth rustled, a shoe tapped the floor, and then someone touched her shoulder, a warm slide of palm over her labcoat sleeve.  That would have been a tip-off, if she hadn’t already known who was there before he even spoke.    “Sara, it’s the end of Nightshift.  It’s time to go home.”    It was strange, how much power love could give; love given, and returned.  She raised her head, blinking at Grissom.  “Is there any way I can talk you into going home without me?”    He pursed his lips, but the smile came through anyway.  “Not this morning, dear.  You’ve worked two full shifts, and besides--“  He lowered his voice.  “--I won’t sleep well if you’re not in bed with me.”    That last was an old saw, but it held a grain of truth.  Sara considered pushing it, but her eyes were starting to blur a bit, and…   …And besides, six hours of going over the scanty evidence from Nick’s case had yielded no more leads than she’d had before--that is to say, none.  Ethnicity, age, and gender had all been different; Trisha Tomlin had been a local, born in Las Vegas.  She had disappeared one sunny afternoon from her front yard, where she’d been playing with her stuffed animals.  No ransom demand, no note, no abuse of any kind.    Just a double dose of diphenhydramine and the shadow of a bruise around her nose and mouth.  And a rosary in her hand.    No prints.  No fibers.  No DNA.    She blew out a breath.  “All right, you talked me into it.”    Her reward was a tap of his forefinger against his lips, their secret shorthand for a kiss deferred, and another smile.  “Want some help?”    Sara pressed her hands to the small of her back, stretching out the kinks, and enjoyed the way Grissom’s eyes followed her movement.  “No, there isn’t a lot here.  See you at home?”    “No.”  Grissom folded his arms.  “I’ll see you in the parking lot.”    She rolled her eyes, pretending offense, and shuffled the photos back into their file.  Grissom chuckled, and left.    Ten minutes later she waved at him where he waited by his Mercedes, three rows over.  “See?  Leaving now!” she hollered.    She could almost hear his snort, and Sara grinned, climbing into her own car.  It had become almost a game, his watchfulness--not because of paranoia, but because he knew that if he left without her, the odds were good that she would go right back to what she had been doing.    Her shift change had worked out surprisingly well, once she’d settled back in, Sara mused as she drove home, trying to keep Grissom’s car in sight ahead of her.  It wasn’t as much fun as working with Grissom had been, but it was a decent compromise, and it was definitely better than being opposite him on Days.    To say nothing of having Dr. Reyes as a boss instead of Ecklie.    She still needed less sleep than Grissom, though there were certainly pleasures to be had in rousing halfway to the feeling of him enveloping her in a sleepy embrace when he got home.  Either she would wake all the way for a good snuggle--or more--or they would both sleep; Sara usually woke before him, and got up to run or do chores, and have the coffee ready when Grissom’s alarm went off.    They would eat together, maybe run an errand or talk or just sit and read, and eventually Sara would leave for work, knowing that if nothing else she would be able to stop by his office later and say hello.    It worked.    Grissom beat her home by only a minute or so, and Sara parked her Prius next to his car and hit the remote to close the garage door.  He had insisted on a two-car garage when they’d begun house-hunting, and Sara hadn’t argued; the safety factor was significant.    The garage door opened into the kitchen, which was larger than either of their previous ones and provided plenty of space for cooking together.  Sara dropped her keys on the counter by the door, next to Grissom’s, and shot the bolt behind her with the unthinking motion of habit.    Her fiancé was not in sight, but she heard his voice coming from deeper in the house--speaking to the phone, it seemed, rather than to her.  Sara stepped out of her shoes and picked them up, heading for the bedroom to change and suddenly aware of how hungry she was.  Normally she ate when she got home after shift, but today--    Grissom came out of his study, snapping shut his cellphone, and smiled at her.  “Dinner should be here in ten minutes or so--you change and I’ll set the table.”    She raised a brow at his phone.  “Don’t tell me they--whoever they are--are delivering that fast.”    He gave her a one-sided smirk.  “No, I called before we left work.  Hunan Manor okay?”    The question was rhetorical, and Sara leaned in to give him a kiss instead of an answer.  Grissom made a small, pleased sound against her lips, then pulled away.  “Good.”    Sara tapped his nose with her finger, a teasing gesture, and continued on to the bedroom.    She chose a pair of cotton drawstring pants and one of Grissom’s sweatshirts; it was so cliché, but she did enjoy wearing his clothes, and he loved it when she did.  Knowing that dinner would be a few minutes, she took her time washing off her makeup.    Grissom was just closing the door behind the delivery person when Sara came out, and she took the bag from him and unloaded the steamy, fragrant contents onto the table.  Both she and Grissom liked to cook, though she had to admit that he was the better chef, but a few times a week it was just easier to order in.  This time, though, there seemed to be half again as many cartons as usual.    Grissom was cheerful, and his easy banter distracted Sara from the puzzles of Roger Hsien and Trisha Tomlin; it took her a while to notice that Grissom kept refilling her plate.  Finally she pinned his arm as he made to spoon out more rice.    “All right, what’s with the overfeeding?  At this rate I’m going to pass out from carbohydrate overload.”    “That’s the idea.”  Grissom held out the carton.  “You’re not going to have much time to sleep before work; I want you to sleep.”     Sara smirked at him.  “There are other ways to accomplish that, you know.”    He chuckled, and when she didn’t take the rice, put it down.  “Oh, those are on the list too.  I’m just hedging my bets.”    She had to laugh.  “Serve you right if I fall asleep in the middle.”    Grissom’s smile took on a sensual edge, the look that always made her shiver in the best way.  “I think I can avoid that.”    As it happened, though, it wasn’t necessary.  Grissom insisted on giving her a backrub after dinner, and promptly turned Sara into a boneless, blissful jelly.  When he made to get up, she protested muzzily, and he pressed a kiss to her temple.  “I’ll be right back, sweetheart.”    She was asleep within seconds.        Sara was at Dr. Reyes’ door the minute her supervisor came in to work, armed with the evidence reports from Nick’s case.  To her disappointment, however, Reyes didn’t give her carte blanche.    “You know CSI Stokes better than I, Sara,” she said, leaning against her desk and fidgeting idly with her glasses.  “Would he have missed anything in his investigation?”    Sara’s determination wilted slightly.  Nick might not be brilliant, but he was thorough--and doubly so on any case involving children.  “No.”    Reyes nodded.  “Go over his reports, see if anything new comes up in comparison.  If not, it goes back down the list again.”    Sara stared at her boss.  “A possible serial?”  She was going to owe Ronnie an apology, she thought absently.    “Three makes a serial, and while I’ll admit the odds of coincidence are very low, we’ve both seen stranger things.”  At Sara’s huff, Reyes smiled slightly.  “Look, we both know it’s most likely the same killer, but without leads and a third victim, I can’t justify the time.  The curse of the bean-counters.”    Sara frowned.  “So we wait for him to kill again?”    Reyes sighed, the lines deepening in her face to age her a decade’s worth.  “We hope that he’s done or moved on.  Go, Sara.  See what you can find.  But you’re on your own unless you turn something up.”    Sara spent half her shift looking over Nick’s data, but his results were as frustrating as hers.  There was a commonality in how the children had been killed, but not in their backgrounds; Trisha had come from a poor neighborhood.  Her father had been released from prison three days after her death, and her mother had immediately taken out a restraining order against him.  Sara looked up his offense and felt the old rage flare at his light sentence for assault and battery.    He beat his wife half to death, and got a slap on the wrist.  Typical.    She took a deep breath and deliberately let her anger go; Sara recused herself from spousal abuse cases these days, a decision that Reyes quietly supported.  Someday she might take them up again, but she wasn’t ready yet.    If the timing had been different, Sara might have suspected Mr. Tomlin of his daughter’s murder, but he had been securely locked up the night she had died.  Nick had talked to a couple of Tomlin’s prison associates, Sara noted; he had obviously been running the same hunch.  But nothing turned up there either.    And neither of the Tomlins were Catholic.    Frowning, Sara did a little research, trying to find out whether rosaries were used by any other faith, but turned up nothing that remotely resembled the small crystal beads and silver medals left with the victims.  She stared at the image of a knotted prayer rope for some time, feeling the beginnings of a hunch teasing at the edge of her mind, but it remained outside her grasp.    The rosaries are obviously significant.  Remorse?  Protection for the soul?  Some kind of warning?    She was about to start reading up on Catholic rosaries in particular--the amount of information available through Google was daunting--but a tentative knock on the door of her tiny office made her look up.    “Any luck?” Ronnie asked cautiously.    Sara grimaced.  “Nope.  Still a mystery.  What’s up?”    The younger CSI hesitated.  “Dr. Reyes says that if you haven’t found any new leads, she has, I quote, plenty for you to do.  Unquote.”    Sara regarded her, and wondered when she had been such a bitch recently as to make Ronnie so wary now.  “Okay.”  She closed the browser window.    Ronnie grinned, her caution vanishing.  “So is it a serial?”    She glared harmlessly at her.  “Probably.  Not officially.”    Ronnie sobered slightly, possibly remembering what it would take to make it official.  “Well, Dr. Reyes gave me two slips, a burglary on the north side and a suspicious death at the Lucky Dice Motel.  Which one first?”    Sara snagged her vest and her kit.  “You pick.  I drive.”        She was planning another assault at the end of shift, but Reyes found her first.  “No overtime today,” she said sternly, reaching over Sara’s desk to shut off her monitor.    “I didn’t put last night on the books,” Sara protested, but Reyes’ frown didn’t abate.    “That’s not the point.  You worked a double shift yesterday and came in short on sleep.  Sara--“  She held up a hand to ward off Sara’s protest.  “Look at it from my point of view.  Letting you wear yourself out on a hot case is one thing; we all do it when necessary.  Letting you do the same over something one step up from cold is irresponsible.  We have three people on our shift; if any one of us gets sick, I have to pull in someone from another shift, which is disruptive to everyone.”    Sara drew in a breath, then bit her tongue.  Reyes had a definite point; the week when Ronnie had contracted the flu had been memorable for many reasons.    And, Sara knew, she could just as easily research rosaries at home.    “All right,” she conceded, and Reyes smiled approvingly.    “Thank you.  Now go home.”    Sara complied, picking up a double latte on the way.  She spent three hours on her laptop, absorbing information about rosaries in general, the Rosary in particular, and the history behind the concept, but eventually she found no new information.  Cursing the underfunding that meant that the city’s libraries kept day hours only, she made up a list of books to find, and shut down her machine.    There was plenty of leftover Chinese food for supper.  Sara leaned against the kitchen counter as she ate, thinking fondly of Grissom and his efforts to see that she got enough sleep.  She might not admit it out loud, but she loved it when he took care of her.    The independence for which she had fought so hard had somehow become less urgent once she and Grissom had finally begun a true relationship.  It had not taken her long to figure out that someone as reserved as he was would find nonverbal ways to express affection; she had learned to accept them without protest.    And he never tried to clip her wings, either.  Grissom trusted her judgment, and understood that she sometimes needed time alone; in fact, he needed such time too.  He had supported her sudden sabbatical, waiting patiently for her to return to Vegas and to him.  Grissom sometimes voiced a different opinion, or even a protest, over her choices, but he never tried to dominate her.  Theirs was an equal partnership.    Sara had observed the relationships of friends and acquaintances for years, often finding little to admire.  Sure, romance was nice, but the manipulation that so often took place within a pairing turned her off, big time.  The anger-driven bullying of her father and frantic placating of her mother, the sanctimonious authority of male chauvinists, the capricious whining of selfish women--it all left her cold.    Grissom--she could trust him.  She did trust him, had from the moment she’d first woken up to his sleepy, adoring smile.  They didn’t need to meet the expectations of society when it came to their relationship, they had only to satisfy themselves.    Speaking of which--    There was nothing more she could do on the case now, and Sara was getting tired.  But Grissom had made a promise the day before, one that had not yet been fulfilled.    Pleased anticipation curling in her belly, Sara brushed her teeth and had a long shower, taking the time to blow-dry her hair afterwards and lotioning up her arms and legs.  Opening her lingerie drawer, she fished underneath her panties and bras for an item she’d purchased weeks before but had not yet used.  It was comfortable enough to sleep in, but...interesting...enough to catch Grissom’s attention.    Grabbing her cellphone, Sara sat on the edge of the bed and hit the speed dial.    Within two rings, Grissom answered.  “Hello,” was all he said, but the tone made her smile.    “Hey Gil.  I’m heading to bed--are you going to be late tonight?”  She heard voices in the background, and pictured him outdoors, bent over a body or a piece of evidence.    “Nope, I don’t think so--this is pretty straightforward.  Everything okay?”    “Yeah, fine--there’s still some beef with broccoli left for when you get home.  See you when you get here.”    “Not if I’m quiet enough,” he said cheerfully, and Sara snickered.    “We’ll see.  Love you.”    “You too,” he answered, all he could say in public.  Sara closed her phone, donned her chosen outfit, and slid into bed.    The anticipation had her smiling as she fell asleep.        Five hours was enough to get by on.  Sara woke all the way up when she felt the mattress dip, and opened her eyes to see Grissom sitting on the edge, pulling off his shirt.  Shoving off the cover, she got to her knees and hugged him from behind, arms around his shoulders.    “Hello there.”  Warm fingers closed around her wrist, and Sara felt her hand tugged upward to receive a kiss on the palm.  “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”    She returned the favor against the nape of his neck.  “Hmm.  Well, you know, you owe me something.”    Grissom turned his head to look at her, smiling.  “I do?”    “Yep.  I’m here to collect.”  Sara let him go and sat back on her heels so he could see all of her.  His reaction was gratifying; his eyes widened and the pupils expanded, and she could all but smell a surge of testosterone.    Grissom pulled in a breath.  “Far be it from me to welsh on a debt,” he managed.  The pulse in his throat was speeding up.    Sara let him look his fill, and then pounced.  Chapter 1     Chapter 2     Chapter 3    Chapter 4     Chapter 5     Chapter 6     Chapter 7     Chapter 8     Chapter 9     Chapter 10   Chapter 11     Chapter 12     Chapter 13     Chapter 14     Chapter 15     Chapter 16     Chapter 17     Chapter 18     Epilogue   CSI Home Feedback