A Shoulder to Lean On

Rating: PG

Spoilers: A Night at the Movies and everything up to that.

Feedback: Makes my day

Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.

Archive: At my site Checkmate (http://helsinkibaby.ahkay.net) , Fanfiction.net; anywhere else, please ask.

Summary:  Warrick is worried about Sara

 

It was the end of yet another long shift, and one that Warrick was not displeased to see the back of. At least, he reminded himself, he and Sara had been able to put this case to bed, all loose ends tied up into neat little bows, ready to be sent to the DA. The only thing they’d had to do was tell the victim exactly what happened, which is what they’d done, and now they were on their way out into the early morning sunshine, with Warrick at least thinking about the dozen and a half things that he had to do today, a nice long sleep being at the top of his list.

 

He couldn’t vouch for what Sara was thinking though, especially since she’d been somewhat less than communicative with him, with everyone, for the last few days. Most people were chalking it up to just Sara being Sara, but Warrick was a little more worried about it than that, because he knew Sara, the real Sara, not the reputation that she had around the crime lab, and he knew, like he knew his own name, that there was something wrong. He also knew, that because this was Sara, that she wouldn’t tell him about it, at least not until she was good and ready.

 

Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to try to talk her into a good mood, or at least make the dark clouds that were surrounding her dissipate a little. “So, any big plans for the day?” he wondered as they walked across the parking lot.

 

“Huh?” Sara turned to him with a vaguely distracted frown, reaching up and pushing her hair back behind her ear. Glancing down at her, Warrick felt a frown crossing his own face, noting how pale she was, the dark shadows under her eyes.

 

Swallowing his concern, Warrick rephrased the question. “You got any plans for the day?”

 

Her lips quirked up in a pale, and fleeting, imitation of a smile. “None to speak of,” she murmured quietly, a far-away look on her face that he was growing rather accustomed to, and didn’t like.

 

“Well then,” he said, shrugging, trying to keep his voice normal, pretty sure that he was failing completely. “How about breakfast?”

 

She bit her lip, and he could see her swallowing hard, and she looked around her as if to find an exit sign somewhere. She evidently did, because she looked stricken suddenly, and her face actually grew paler, something that Warrick didn’t think was possible. “Just hang a minute, ok? I need to-”

 

Warrick followed her gaze, kept his face level with difficulty when an ambulance parked, saw Hank Peddigrew crouched inside, checking instruments and equipment. “I’ll meet you at the car,” he said simply, nodding, and she flashed him a quick grin of appreciation before making her way across to the ambulance.

 

Once she was gone, Warrick gave full vent to his feelings, letting a frown cross his face and settle there as he looked at Sara and Hank, taking in every nuance of the conversation. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what Sara would want to talk to Hank about, because after last month, after she’d found out about how he’d cheated on her the entire time that they were together, Sara had been very definite about they two of them being through, about how she never wanted to see Hank again. Of course, that much had been said to Catherine under the influence of alcohol, but the same had been said to him the next day under the rather more soothing balm of coffee and Advil. From the look in her eyes, he’d known that she’d meant it, and she’d never as much as mentioned Hank since then. Why she was seeking him out today was a mystery to Warrick, so after making his way slowly towards the car, he leaned against the driver’s door, keeping his gaze on Hank and Sara, observing the interplay between them. Hank had emerged from the ambulance, was standing beside Sara, and from Warrick’s standpoint, and much to his surprise, it was Sara who was making all the overtures, doing all the talking, while Hank looked disinterested, kept trying to turn away from her, but Sara wasn’t taking that, kept coming around in front of him. It looked very much like she was trying to reason with him, but he kept on shaking his head, and eventually, he threw his hands up in the air, turned on his heel, and walked away.

 

From the way she’d been gesturing, Warrick expected Sara to follow Hank, or at the very least, come towards him, spewing invective. What he didn’t expect was for Sara to stay exactly where she was, wrapping her arms around herself in an unmistakably protective manner. He didn’t expect for her to tilt her head back towards the sky, for her shoulders to rise and fall with deep breaths, didn’t expect her to look like a woman who was on the verge of falling apart right there in the parking lot of Desert Palms hospital.

 

He’d known Sara for over two years by now, he’d never seen her like this, and he knew, because he knew Sara, that she’d be mortified by him, by anyone, seeing her in that state.

 

He just didn’t care, because she was his friend, and she was hurting, and he wanted to help.

 

He was beside her before he was even aware that he was moving, certainly before she was aware that he was moving if the little jump she gave when he said her name was any indication. He gave her a smile of apology, harder to do than he’d have thought, because her face was whiter than chalk, her eyes a livid shade of red that told of the tears she was trying to keep back. “You ok?” he asked gently, keeping more than arm’s length away from her, letting her have her space.

 

She chuckled, a harsh, mirthless sound that had his throat tightening, and shook her head, something that had his throat tightening more. “You know,” she said slowly, her voice hoarse, low. “I don’t think I am.”

 

He frowned more at the un-Saralike admission, glancing in the direction Hank had vanished. “Did he say something? Do something?” Implicit in his words were a promise that, were she to answer in the affirmative, he would go after Hank and teach him a little lesson in manners and how to treat a lady, but Warrick’s mind was diverted from such violent thoughts by another one of those mirthless chuckles, this one sounding rather more like a truncated sob.

 

“You could say that.” It was a non-answer if ever he’d heard one, and he tilted his head, looked at her curiously.

 

“Would you say that?” She didn’t reply, just looked down at the ground, and Warrick, for no reason that he could articulate, felt himself growing very cold, took a step closer to her. “Sara? What is it?”

 

Her deep breath was audible and he could almost see her make the decision to talk to him about whatever it was that was bothering her. Slowly, she lifted her head, and he waited impatiently, each second passing like a lifetime. Once her eyes met his, it seemed to take a long time for her to speak, and when she did, the three simple words hung in the air for aeons before he could process them.

 

“Warrick, I’m pregnant.”

 

Once he processed them, he nodded slowly, the entire scene making sense. “And Hank’s not too pleased about that.”

 

Her lips twisted a grimace as she looked towards the ambulance. “He’s saying that it might not be his.”

 

“Wha-?” Warrick could only get the first syllable of the word out, such was his shock, and he knew that his jaw was wide open, his whole body going slack with shock. He had a very good idea of what he must look like, but when Sara looked at him, she actually snickered, a sound of real amusement, and a genuine smile lit up her face. “You’re kidding me, right?” Because much as he and the rest of the CSI lab might have wondered about what Sara and Hank’s relationship was all about, what with her denials that Hank was her boyfriend, Warrick knew that she hadn’t been seeing anyone else, knew damn well that Sara Sidle was not the kind of woman to cheat on her boyfriend.

 

She nodded. “Evidently, he judges everyone on his own standards.” Sighing, she reached up, pushed her hair back from her face. “I sure can pick ‘em, huh?”

 

Warrick had no idea what to say to that, but he did have a couple dozen questions that he wanted to ask her, all of which were second to his concern that Hank might come back and see them there. Quite apart from how Sara might react to seeing him, Warrick was far more aware of the fact that he was very likely to give in to his violent impulses of seconds earlier. So when he spoke, he started with a caveat that morphed into a question. “Look,” he said slowly, holding up his hands as if to forestall any violent impulses on her part that his words might foster. “I’m not trying to get into your business, and you don’t have to tell me anything, not if you don’t want to… but you want to go somewhere? Talk about this?”

 

This time, her nod was accompanied by an audible intake of breath, and when she spoke, her voice was thick with tears, the same tears that were forming in her eyes. “I’d like that,” she whispered, so quietly that he could barely hear her. “I could really use a friend right now.”

 

Nodding, his own voice uncomfortably thick, Warrick extended an arm towards the car, and she fell into step beside him. “You’ve got one.”

 

>*<*>*<

 

When he first made the offer of breakfast, he’d envisioned them going to their usual place, the place where most of the CSI graveyard shift went to unwind and enjoy good food at a reasonable price. Sara’s revelation put paid to that though, because this was the kind of conversation that simply couldn’t be had in public, and knowing their luck, no matter where they went in Vegas,  even if it was a big city, they were bound to bump into someone they knew. Thus, when Sara suggested that they go to her place, Warrick agreed straight away, only realising as he followed her through the streets of Vegas that in all the years he’d known Sara, he’d never been to her place, had never even seen the outside of it. Parking down the street from the building, he met her at the front door, walked up the stairs side by side with her, and when she let him in the front door, his CSI’s instincts kicked in straight away, his eyes roaming over the apartment, taking everything in at a glance. The place, he gleaned straight away, was pure Sara, her personality stamped on every corner, the sparse, yet comfortable furniture, the shelves overflowing with books, some of which were spilling over on to the coffee table and the desk to his right. The desk itself was cluttered, papers and books and yet more papers, which was something of a surprise to him, because he’d always pictured Sara for the neat freak type. However, as he was learning rapidly, there was a lot more to Sara than he thought.

 

“Make yourself at home,” she told him, over her shoulder, heading into the kitchen, throwing her keys on the counter. “Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea, juice…”

 

He nodded as he followed her, leaning against the counter. “Juice would be good,” he said, his eyes taking in the neatness of the kitchen –when was the last time it was used, he wondered- not missing the bowl of fresh fruit beside the refrigerator, or the vegetables he could see inside it, a sight that had him re-evaluating the answer to his seconds-earlier question. Evidently Sara did cook; she was just really good about cleaning up after herself.

 

“Orange ok?” There was a little smile on her face as she turned to ask him the question, and he was faintly embarrassed, sure that she knew what he was doing, the direction his thoughts were going in. There was no way that he would admit it, and he knew she wasn’t going to call him on it, so he just smiled at her, nodding.

 

“Perfect,” he said, and she grinned, a real Sara-smile, the first that he’d seen all day, or maybe longer. “You’ve got a nice place,” he told her, and she shot him another look over her shoulder, this one frankly sceptical.

 

“Not really,” she replied, in a tone that left no room for argument. “It was only supposed to be a stop-gap while I found a better place… I’ve been here two and a half years.” She shrugged, not sounding too upset about it, despite her words. “I figured it was fine, that I was never here that much, always working…” Her voice trailed off then, and she stared hard at the two tall glasses that she was filling with orange juice, as if she was being very careful about not over-filling them. But when she had to clear her throat before she spoke again, he knew that wasn’t it. “I guess I’m going to have to look for a new place soon.”

 

There was nothing he could say to that, so he simply waited for her to turn, accepted the glass she held to him with a quiet, “Thanks,” and following her lead, moved to the couch. She sat down at one end, he on the other, an ocean of space between them, and he waited for Sara to speak, not wanting to rush her.

 

Her glass of juice was half-empty and his hand was freezing from holding his before she finally sighed. “I guess you’re wondering how this happened,” she said, looking at her white-knuckled hands rather than at him, her face drawn.

 

The first words that came into his head were a smart comment, and in a split second, he considered whether he should give voice to it, deciding that he really should. “Grams did give me the birds and bees talk,” he said, and her head snapped up, her lips curling up into a wide grin, a laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep inside.

 

“Funny,” she said, rolling her eyes, and he shrugged off-handedly, reaching over to the coffee table and putting his glass on it. When he straightened up, he leaned his right side against the back of the couch, resting his arm on the cushion and propping his head up on his hand.

 

“I meant what I said Sara,” he told her seriously, all levity forgotten. “I’m not looking to get into your business… but if you want to talk, I’m here.”

 

She smiled, nodding as she too leaned towards the coffee table, placed her glass on it, and when she sat back on the couch, she mimicked his posture exactly, something that he noticed, but knew better than to comment on. “I never expected this,” she told him frankly, and a slight tinge of pink made it way across her cheeks. “We were careful.” Warrick shifted, because frankly, that was as much information as he was comfortable knowing, and from the look on her face, from the way that she moved on swiftly, it was as much as she was comfortable with sharing as well. “And then, when I found out about Elaine, we broke up, I didn’t even think about it.” She rolled her eyes. “I thought it was a stomach bug at first… and then I took a mouthful of Greg’s coffee in the lab one night and promptly threw up.” His eyes grew wide at that, and she snickered, nodding. “I’ve never been so grateful to be alone in the break room,” she confirmed. “That same night, I was signing off on something, I can’t even remember what, and I noticed the date…” Her voice trailed off, and he took pity on her.

 

“And two and two made four.”

 

She nodded. “Went to a drugstore on the way home, did the test… when I saw that blue line, I threw up again.” Her lips twisted into a grimace as she spoke, and she leaned over to the table, taking up her glass and taking a sip, holding the liquid in her mouth for longer than usual, as if she was trying to get the memory of the taste out, replace it with something nicer. “Took a couple of days to get my head around it, and then I told Hank.” Suddenly, she chuckled, but it was decidedly less than humorously. “Of course, the date happened to be April 1st. He thought I was kidding him.”

 

Warrick rolled his eyes, feeling a surge of anger course through his veins, imagining beating Hank to a bloody pulp. “He would,” he muttered darkly, and if Sara heard him, she didn’t say anything.

 

“When I managed to convince him I wasn’t, he told me…” And here, Sara’s bravado faltered, and she looked down and to her left, at her fingers picking idly at the pattern of the couch fabric. “He told me that our relationship was hardly exclusive… that there were weeks where we hardly saw one another… that he couldn’t be sure it was his.”


As she spoke, her voice grew lower and lower, and by the end, Warrick could barely hear her. He was seized by another urge, this time decidedly non-violent, the urge to reach out and touch her hand, her shoulder, her knee, anything to show her that he was there for her, to provide her with some sort of comfort. But this was Sara that he was dealing with, and he was sure she wouldn’t welcome it, was even more afraid that it would cause her to shatter and crack, so he did nothing, just waited for her to speak again.

 

When she did, her words made him even angrier at Hank. “I thought it might be the shock talking,” she explained. “That once he had time to think about it, he’d been more reasonable…” Her voice trailed off, and she didn’t have to say anything else, because it was more than obvious that that hadn’t happened. “As you saw…”

 

“He’s a jerk Sara,” Warrick said quietly, just about keeping his temper in check, and a sad smile crossed her lips.

 

“Yeah,” she whispered. “But he’s the one who gets to walk away.”

 

Frowning, he shifted in his seat slightly, because from the way she’d been talking about this, and from that comment in particular, there was only one conclusion that he could draw. “You’ve made up your mind?” he asked, wondering briefly if that was a question too far, only found out that it wasn’t when she shrugged.

 

“There was never a choice to make,” she told him honestly, her eyes meeting his, and she didn’t look away. “I don’t believe in abortion Warrick, I never have.” Another shrug. “I mean, if people make that choice, that’s fine, but… it’s not for me. I could never take a life.” He remembered her saying that to him once upon a long ago, in a tone that was far more strident, more angry, than the one she was using here, and he nodded, because once he heard her say the words, he couldn’t imagine her doing anything else, honestly, had barely even contemplated the notion in the first place.

 

“And you’re ok with doing this on your own?” he asked, the words out before he could stop them, and he instantly regretted them when she bit her lip, looking stricken.

 

“No,” she said, with something that might have been a laugh, or might have been midway to a sob. “But I don’t have a choice about that either.”

 

He shook his head, not sure of what to say that wouldn’t sound corny, or patronising, and settled for going for honesty. “You’re not alone you know,” he told her. “We’re all going to be here for you… whatever you need.”

 

She smiled, nodded her head, and to his surprise, she reached out with one hand, touching his knee lightly, briefly. “Thank you,” she whispered. 

 

>*<*>*<

 

Warrick would be lying if he said he felt well rested when he arrived at the crime lab later on that same day. He wasn’t normally a man who had trouble sleeping, but when he’d arrived home that day, laid down on his bed and closed his eyes, his dreams had been filled with images of Sara, her eyes filled with tears, her face drawn with pain. He’d seen her arguing with Hank, his imagination easily filling in the words he hadn’t been able to hear, and his dreams had taken him into the future, allowing him to see Sara, a baby in her arms, but no smile on her face, instead tears rolling down her cheeks.

 

He’d tossed and turned and slept fitfully, worrying about her, and when the alarm went off, it had been a relief.

 

He’d showered and dressed as quickly as possible, grabbing breakfast on the run, a slice of toast, eating it in his car on the way to the lab. Once there, he didn’t, as was his custom when awaiting a new case, go straight to the break room where Grissom usually gave out assignments, or to Grissom’s office, to get his pick of the cases. Instead, he wandered the halls, looking for Sara, eventually finding her in one of the layout rooms, packing up the evidence of the case they’d finished the previous day. “Hey,” he greeted her, coming in and leaning his hands on the table, relieved when she looked over her shoulder at him, tossing him that easy smile of hers, the same kind of smile that she used to give him all the time.

 

“Hey,” she said, going back to piling files in the evidence box. “You’re here early.”

 

He wasn’t going to let her away with that. “So are you.”

 

She glanced over her shoulder at him again, her smile faltering momentarily. “I couldn’t sleep,” she shrugged, a thin line of tension appearing between her eyes, and he pursed his lips, moving closer towards her.

 

“There’s a lot of that going around,” he observed, and this time when she looked up, she held his gaze.

 

“You don’t need to worry about me Warrick,” she said, keeping her voice low, her eyes every so often darting towards the door, as if she was afraid that someone would walk in on them, or worse, be lurking outside, ready to overhear. Though, Warrick noted, this was the CSI lab, and stranger things had definitely happened.

 

“I know I don’t need to,” he countered straight away, having learned from long experience that the only way to win an argument with Sara was to cut her off before she got a good head of steam going. “And yet I find myself doing it anyway.” The last was said with a wry smile, a teasing lilt to his voice, something that had her looking down at the ground, then looking up at him through her eyelashes, a blush coating her cheeks, a blush that only intensified when he continued with, “How are you?”

 

She nodded. “I’m fine Warrick. Really.” He must have looked sceptical, because the last word was tacked on after a slight pause, and the usually taciturn Sara Sidle, the woman who would rather have teeth pulled than talk about her personal life, continued doing just that, even if she didn’t look at him as she spoke, even if she went back to packing up those boxes with more concentration than the task really deserved. “I actually think it helped… talking to someone about it…” She chuckled during another pause where her hands stilled, but her head stayed lowered. “Thank you, by the way.”

 

Somewhere in the conversation, he’d ended up standing right beside her, his feet moving him of their own free will, and now his hand discovered a will of its own too, reaching up and closing over her shoulder, touching down for a second, dropping almost at once. “Any time.” She glanced up at him quickly, her cheeks scarlet, and he nodded seriously. “I mean that, you know.”

 

“I know.” Her work done, she closed the lid of the box, looked around for a pen to write the case number on it. Noticing one nearer to him, he grabbed it and held it out to her, her fingers touching his briefly as she took it from him. “Thank you,” she said, scribbling down the letters, and Warrick noted, not for the first time, but knowing better than to say anything, that whoever might be looking for the box in future might have difficulty reading the writing. “But we’ve put this one to bed, now all we need to do is get it to the vault.” She sounded triumphant, flinging the marker onto the table and moving to lift the box, stopping only at the sound of Warrick’s rather alarmed voice.

 

“Let me get that,” he said, leaning across to take it from her as he spoke, and she looked at him with surprise stamped all over her face.

 

“I can lift a box Warrick,” she told him, but he was already lifting it, testing the weight, realising that indeed, it was as heavy as he’d thought it was, and that there was no way in the world that he was going to let her lift it.

 

“In your-” he began, biting the comment off before he complete it, but from the grin on her face, she knew exactly what he was going to say, and she was hugely amused by it.

 

“In my condition?” she asked, keeping her voice low, but this time, she didn’t look towards the door, didn’t take her eyes, dancing with amusement, off his. “Is that what you were really going to say, in my condition?”

 

He sighed, shaking his head. “Sara…”

 

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” she chuckled, holding her hands up. “It’s actually kind of sweet…”

 

He rolled his eyes. “Man, you’re killing me here,” he mock-grumbled, and was rewarded by another peal of giggles, one that she quickly cut off, narrowing her eyes at him, even though they were dancing, even though she was smiling.

 

“That’s nothing,” she told him, “Compared to what I’ll do if you say something like that in front of the others.”

 

She was dead serious, and he tilted his head, looking curiously at her. “You do know this isn’t the kind of thing you can hide for long, right?” he asked, keeping his voice deliberately light, and she nodded.

 

“I just need a little while to get used to the idea before I tell anyone,” she told him. “That’s all. You wouldn’t-”

 

“Sara.” He cut her off before she could even finish the question and her expression was instantly contrite.

 

“Sorry.”

 

“Your secret is safe with me,” he promised, before turning, heading for the door. “Come on, let’s get this to the vault then find out what we’re doing today.”

 

As it happened, they didn’t have to look far to find their assignment, rather, it found them as they were coming out of the evidence vault. “Hey, I was looking for you two,” Nick said, waving a piece of paper in his hand. “Gris wants us working together.”

 

“Us three? Together?” Sara’s surprise was stamped in every syllable, and Warrick couldn’t blame her. Usually, Grissom split them up, two of them working with either him or Catherine, the odd time giving one of them a solo case, or letting two of them work together. Warrick couldn’t remember ever working with both Sara and Nick on the one case.

 

“Kinda a surprise, huh?” Nick’s teeth flashed white in his face as he fell into step beside them. “DB at a warehouse just outside of town… I got the directions here.”

 

“I’ll drive,” Warrick said instantly, out of long habit, and the annoyed look that Nick flashed him made him grin. “You can navigate. Sara can sleep in the back.” It was a joke, but when he looked over at Sara, any semblance of mirth vanished. She had paled considerably, and wasn’t looking as if travelling anywhere was in the cards anytime soon.

 

“I’ll pass, thanks,” she said, holding up one hand, something that was supposed to be a smile on her face. “I’ve driven with you before. Besides, there’s something I’ve got to take care of here…” She glanced over at Nick, who was frowning slightly at her. “You got those directions?”

 

He nodded, handing her a slip of paper. “Copied two sets, just in case,” he told her. “You ok Sara?”

 

She nodded, smiling brightly at him. “Just have a call to make, that’s all,” she said, and Warrick had to give it to her; the girl was smooth. Only for he knew what was the matter with her, only for her face was so pale, he would have bought it completely. “I’ll meet you guys out there.”

 

With that, she was gone, turning on her heel and walking quickly away from them, and Warrick didn’t take his eyes off her until she was out of sight. Once that was done, he shook himself slightly, glanced over at Nick, then took a step in the opposite direction. “You ready?”

 

Nick nodded, but his expression was slightly preoccupied. “Hey man,” he said as they walked. “Mind if I ask you something?”

 

Warrick shrugged. “Shoot.”

 

“You noticed anything off with Sara lately?”

 

His face schooled into a blank mask, Warrick made a show of searching his memory banks, finally ending up looking at Nick, shrugging his shoulders. “Off? What do you mean?”

 

“I dunno…” They’d reached the locker room by now, were grabbing badges and jackets. “She seems quieter… even for her. Ever since she broke up with Hank…”

 

The name evoked a snort of disgust from Warrick’s lips, he couldn’t help it. Nick looked surprised at his vehemence, so Warrick did some fast thinking, rolling his eyes. “Jerk,” he decreed, because that much was evident, even without his new knowledge. “She’s better off without him.”

 

“No argument here,” Nick agreed. “And I thought she was ok with that you know? But lately, it’s like there’s something else going on with her, and I’m not sure what it is.”

 

Warrick shrugged again. “Look, if there’s something wrong with Sara, I’m sure we’ll find out what it is sooner or later.”

 

He thought that was an innocuous enough statement, but whatever way he’d said it had Nick’s head turning sharply to him, had his friend’s eyes boring lasers into his. “You know something,” Nick said, and it was a statement, not a question. “You do.”

 

For a long moment, Warrick didn’t speak, because he didn’t want to lie to Nick, but there was no way that he wanted to betray Sara’s confidence either. Eventually, he settled for running a hand over his forehead, through his hair. “We need to get to that crime scene,” he said simply, and Nick didn’t look happy at the non-answer, but he didn’t call him on it either.

 

Instead, the journey to the crime scene passed as these things normally did; the two of them chatting about sports and time off and Grissom and Catherine’s case, a dead body at a movie theatre, something that led to more than a little hilarity because neither of them could really picture Grissom inside a movie theatre. They must have delayed at the lab more than either realised, because by the time that they made it to the warehouse, following Nick’s directions to the letter, Sara was right behind them, and they walked up to O’Riley as a trio, Nick taking care of the greeting, Warrick of asking who called it in, while Sara was silent, something that Warrick tried very hard not to notice and failed utterly.

 

“Passing motorists heard gunshots,” replied O’Riley. “First officer did a drive up. Found the scene, called in the word. I hope you brought extra supplies.”

 

“Why’s that?”

 

They were the first words Sara had spoken since back at the lab, which the part of Warrick’s brain that wasn’t involved with working the scene registered. “You’re going to be here a while,” O’Riley told them as he opened up the warehouse door, exposing something that none of them had ever expected to see.

 

It was your standard warehouse, high ceiling, corrugated iron walls, completely empty, so that their voices would echo off the walls. There were two things that seemed out of place though. One was the body lying face down on the floor, a pool of blood around it. The second was the sunlight streaming in through the bullet holes on the wall, shafts of sunlight coming from every direction, landing in seemingly a thousand different places. O’Riley looked from CSI to CSI, while they looked into the centre of the room in stunned silence, and it was Nick who spoke first.

 

“Looks like a war zone.”

 

He could have taken the words right out of Warrick’s mouth, but the words had the effect of breaking their paralysis, making them move carefully towards the body, whether to avoid the pools of light, as if they were the vampires that Day Shift sometimes not so playfully called them, or to avoid disturbing evidence, Warrick couldn’t tell. “We got an ID on the body?” he asked.

 

“No cash, no ID,” O’Riley replied. “Just a driver’s permit.”

 

If there were any words that Warrick hadn’t wanted to hear out of the burly detective’s lips, those were they. “Driver’s permit,” he echoed dully, leaning forward, looking at the body and ascertaining that yes, the kid really did look that young, if not younger.

 

“Driver’s permit? What is he, sixteen?” Sara asked.

 

“Fifteen and a half,” O’Riley told them, and Warrick just about kept back a wince. “Timmy McCallum. Coroner’s on his way.”

 

Warrick glanced up at him. “Tell them to watch their step. There’s casings and blood everywhere.” O’Riley nodded, making his way outside to wait on the coroner, and Warrick stood, glancing from Sara to Nick and back. “Divide and conquer. Inside or outside?”

 

He was looking more at Sara, who once again seemed to have paled significantly, and from the way that her gaze shifted more and more to the body, Warrick had a good idea as to her preference and the reason why. So he wasn’t really surprised when she promptly replied, “Outside perimeter,” turning and following O’Riley’s footsteps without giving them a chance to argue with her. She did, however, give Warrick a grateful look as he turned, or, he thought to himself, that could have been just his imagination.

 

“I’m Dennis Rodman,” Nick said, turning and following Sara out, and Warrick nodded, looking at the body, and speaking his own preference, even if there was no-one there to hear him.

 

“I’ll take everything below the knees.”

 

The next few hours passed mostly in silence, with Warrick painstakingly marking each fallen casing, pouring the contents of the many beer bottles littered around the body into containers, marking each one neatly, then bagging the bottles, marking them too. As he did that, Nick was up and down ladders, marking every bullet hole with rods, a back-breaking job that he loved and that Warrick hated with a passion. They traded comments back and forth every now and again, loose theories and notions of what could have happened, but nothing serious, following Grissom’s maxim of evidence first, theories last.

 

Through it all, Sara stayed outside, only coming in when both he and Nick were just about finished. In her hand, there was a long pole, which Warrick couldn’t connect to the case, and nor could she from her question. “Hey guys? What do you make of this piece of bamboo? I found it on the roof.”

 

Nick’s answer was immediate, and had he been a shade slower, Warrick would have made the same comment. “Bag it.”

 

“That’s funny,” Sara said, in that Sara-tone that indicated it was anything but. “Very funny.” Warrick had been moving towards her, intent on getting a closer look at her, seeing if she was all right, even if the comment, and the tone in which it was uttered, spoke volumes on that particular score, but he paused when he saw something on the floor, something shiny and small, like a piece of glass. He was moving in for a closer look when Sara noticed something herself. “Did you get the hole in the ceiling?”

 

“You find anything else up there?” Nick asked, and that did get Warrick’s attention, because the thought of Sara climbing up on that roof, walking around up there – and come to think of it, how the hell did she get up there in the first place? - in any circumstances, let alone in her condition - and he knew he was going to catch hell if she ever heard him thinking that, but he didn’t really care - frankly gave him hives.

 

“No,” Sara answered, and Warrick bit his tongue, instead focussing on his discovery.

 

“Got some shards of glass,” he told them. “Clear in colour. Mixed with some small pieces of black plastic.” Standing then, he looked around at Nick, just coming down his ladder. “You almost finished with that? What’s your count?”

 

“Yeah,” Nick told him. “109 rods.”

 

Warrick knew it was going to be a big number; not that big though. “109 bullets?” he echoed, and Nick gave him a knowing look, followed immediately by a question.

 

“How in the world do trajectories occur fifteen to twenty feet off the ground? Horizontally?”

 

Sara was as baffled as he. “What in the hell went on here?” she wondered.

 

All Warrick could do was shrug his shoulders, looking at the carnage around them. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “But it’s gonna be hell finding out.”

 

No-one disagreed with him.

 

>*<*>*<

 

Warrick and Sara headed back to the lab first, leaving Nick at the crime scene, collecting up all the bullets to give to Bobby Dawson. He’d complained at first about being left to do such a menial job, but as Warrick pointed out to him with an evil grin, what went up had to come down; namely the 109 rods that Nick had put around the walls. Having come with Nick, Warrick therefore caught a ride back with Sara, and much of the initial part of their journey was spent speculating about what might have happened in the warehouse, throwing ideas and theories around, in gleeful abandon of Grissom’s “evidence first” maxim. It was only when they were almost back at the lab that Sara glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, her expression suddenly serious. “Thanks for letting me take the perimeter,” she said, and he shrugged, not having thought much of it at the time, save the obvious.

 

“Not like there was a stampede for it,” he observed, truthfully as it happened; the perimeter was always the least sought-after job on a crime scene.

 

“True,” Sara murmured, biting her lip, then looking over at him sharply as if something had just occurred to her. “You don’t think Nick found it weird, me looking for the outside?” Warrick looked at her, debating whether to tell her of his conversation with Nick, perhaps hesitating a moment too long, because she looked at him sharply again, the car swerving slightly before she righted it. “Warrick?” she asked, more than a little alarm in her voice, and he sighed.

 

“We were talking on our way to the scene,” he told her. “He’s noticed that you haven’t been yourself lately, asked me was it just him.”

 

“What did you tell him?” Her voice was sharp, and he held up a hand, as if to ward off any accusations she might direct his way.

 

“I didn’t tell him anything Sara… you know better.” In spite of his words, his tone was gentle, and that must have registered with her, because her expression was one of instant contrition.

 

“I know… I’m sorry…”

 

Warrick waved a hand to indicate that she shouldn’t worry about it. “I told you I wouldn’t tell anyone, and I won’t. But I think he knew that I knew more than I was telling him…”

 

He was unsure of how she was going to take that, and he was spared some reaction when she pulled into the CSI parking lot, pulled into a parking space there. Staring straight ahead for a long moment, she rested her hands on the steering wheel, arms locked dead straight, and Warrick could see her shoulders rise and fall with several deep breaths. Finally, she turned to look at him, a forced smile on her face. “It’s ok,” she said, and he wasn’t so sure who she was trying to convince. “I expected this… it’s ok.”

 

The previous day, he hadn’t wanted to touch her, was afraid that it might cause her to break. Today, he was beyond such concerns, wanting only to comfort her, and he reached out almost without thinking, his hand landing on her shoulder, squeezing gently. When she smiled in response, it was a ghost of a smile, but it was a genuine one, and he dropped his hand quickly, not wanting to push his luck. “You know I’m here for you,” he said. “If you want to talk… or whatever…”

 

Her smile broadened, to be something much more approximating what he was used to from her. She didn’t speak, just nodded, and he nodded back, and in unspoken agreement, they got out of the car and began taking out the evidence.

 

Despite the serious atmosphere between them in the car, once they hit the open air, it was back to normal, carrying in their field kits, shucking their jackets in the locker room. “So,” Warrick said conversationally, after a look around to make sure that they were alone. “I take it you don’t want the autopsy?”

 

He regretted his teasing remark when he saw the effect it had on Sara; her face paling, having to swallow hard as she looked up at him. Nonetheless, she gave him a rueful smile, even though it looked rather forced, as if she was swallowing lemons. “No,” she agreed, nodding her head nervously. “It’s… em… it’s all yours.” Warrick couldn’t even smile, so worried was he by her reaction, and she reached up to rub her forehead, bringing her hand down to wave him away. “Go,” she said. “I’m fine.”

 

“You sure?” He knew she was telling the truth when he found himself on the receiving end of the patented Sara Sidle glare. “OK, OK, I’m going…” He made it to the door before he turned again, looked at her sitting hunched over on the bench, elbows on her knees, running her hands through her hair, pushing the strands back almost fiercely, holding it there. “You’ll page me if you need me?” he asked softly, and she looked up at him, nodding tiredly.

 

“Go,” was all she said, and he went, because he was having the uncomfortable urge to lift her into his arms and carry her home to put her to bed, and he was fairly sure that if he looked at her a second longer, that that was exactly what he would do.

 

Instead, he made his way to Doc Robbins’s autopsy room, where they were both surprised by what they found on the victim’s body; bruise marks the like of which Warrick had rarely seen, save on torture victims. Cause of death was as expected, a single gunshot wound to the chest; what was less so was the angle of the wound, a downward angle of twenty five degrees in a room with a roof angle of forty five meant that the shooter was ten to fifteen feet tall. Aside from the bruises and the gunshot wound, there were other abrasions, what Doc Robbins termed ‘Boys will be Boys stuff’ but Warrick couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it than that.

 

He finished up with Doc Robbins, did everything that he was supposed to do, and he was fairly sure that no-one would have seen anything in his demeanour that indicated he was anything other than wholly absorbed in his work. He knew better though, knew that while much of his thinking was devoted to the case, there was a small part of it that was thinking about Sara, worrying if she was all right, worrying about what would happen when people found out about her, wondering how she would handle being a single mother, what might happen if Hank changed his mind. He tried to stop thinking about her, to push her out of his mind completely, but nothing worked, and he decided that he might as well seek her out, see if actually seeing her would put his mind at ease. After stopping at the photo lab, he even had himself an excuse to do just that.

 

Thus it was that he found himself wandering the halls of CSI, finally finding her in a room with the door sealed off with crime scene tape. She couldn’t have announced her desire for privacy more if she had the door alarmed, and Warrick made his voice light when he announced his presence. Not that it was a hard job; after all, she was trying to fingerprint the bamboo rod that she’d found on the roof of the warehouse, and the perfect opening line came without thinking.

 

“This where the limbo party is?” She looked up at him and smiled, a sight that eased Warrick’s worries considerably. She looked relaxed, or at least as relaxed as Sara ever got when she was working. “Can I come in?”

 

He barely waited for her “Yeah,” already ducking under the crime scene tape when it came, and as he walked over to the bench, she continued, “Sorry, I don't want everyone in here.”

 

He wasn’t sure if that was because of the work that she was doing, and how she didn’t want to explain how this related to their case, or because of personal reasons, but she was looking so like her normal self that he didn’t think twice about not asking her. Instead, he showed her the photographs in his hand.  “Well, I've got your one-to-ones.  The tire treads, there's nothing specific here.”

 

Sara was as pleased over that as he was. “Bummer.”

 

There was a bright side though, one that he showed her. “But the shoe prints that you took, they look interesting.  It looks like five suspects walked in, and four ran out.” He’d marked them on the photographs, and she grasped the implication immediately.

 

“Four guilty people out there somewhere.”

 

“No doubt.” He nodded slowly, then, unable to ignore the proverbial elephant in the room, he tilted his head towards the bamboo stick. “How's it coming with your big bamboo here?”

 

He regretted the question when shadows seemed to fall across her face. “Well,” she said, sounding disgusted. “I have black lung from all the powder, and not a single print, nothing, nada.”

 

Warrick considered a moment, then something obvious occurred to him, something so obvious, he was sure she would have done it, but asked her anyway. “You test for GSR?” She looked at him blankly, and he realised with a shock that she hadn’t tested for it, something that surprised him to no end. “The place was riddled with bullets,” he added. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

 

If she was annoyed that she’d missed something so obvious, she didn’t show it, just smiled. “Wouldn’t hurt,” she echoed, and without further ado, they got down to the business of testing the pole.

 

As they worked, they talked and he told her about the autopsy, what Robbins had told him, leaving out as many of the gory details as possible, though her stomach seemed to have recovered in the last couple of hours if the grin she gave him was anything to go by. “Think Nick’s done collecting those bullets yet?” she asked him with a wicked grin, and Warrick chuckled, recalling Nick’s face as they’d left.

 

“I think the bullets were the easy bit,” he told her. “Getting the rods out of the walls would have taken longer.”

 

Sara nodded, holding a swab up to the light, as if that would help her see if there was any GSR evident. “I wonder how the bullets got up so high,” she murmured. “You saw the height of the roof.”

 

“Yeah…” Warrick dragged the word out, glancing over at her, then purposely looking down at the wood as he asked his next question. “Sara, how did you get up on that roof?”

 

He looked at her when she answered, saw her shoulders rise and fall in a shrug, and she was concentrating hard on the bamboo too, something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, all the more so when she actually spoke. Her voice was casual, too casual he knew at once. “There was a ladder going up the side of the building,” she told him, her voice airy, but his jaw dropped anyway.

 

“In your-” He realised instantly that his voice was just a little too loud, perfectly audible from the hallway, and she did too, narrowing her eyes and throwing a pointed gaze at the door. Dropping his voice, he set his jaw, all but hissing, “In your condition?” at her, and a smile spread across her face, followed by a loud laugh.

 

“I knew you were going to say that,” she said, not pausing as she rubbed another swab on a section of bamboo. “I saw your face at the crime scene; you looked like you were going to explode.”

 

“Do you have any idea how dangerous it was for you to climb up there?” he demanded. “You should have let me or Nick do it…”

 

“Warrick.” Her voice was strong, even if quiet. “I’m pregnant. Not incompetent.” She held his gaze, long enough so that he would get the message, and he sighed, nodding once to let her know that he agreed with her. “Besides which,” she continued, “Of the three of us, I’m the lightest… which also makes me the safest choice to go up there. Doesn’t it?”

 

It was a logical argument, one that he had no answer to. “Sara…” he breathed, and she shook her head, forestalling further argument.

 

“Look, Warrick, you’ve got to trust me… I’m not going to take any risks, put myself in any danger. If I need help, I’ll ask for it… but you can’t keep on like this for the next few months… you’ll drive us both crazy.”

 

He chuckled wryly, because he knew that much was certainly true. “Yeah,” he said, almost under his breath, and when he met her gaze, he saw a curious glint in her brown eyes. “What?”

 

She shook her head again, looked off above and to the right of his head. “I guess… I’m just wondering why you care so much… why this means so much to you.”

 

Put so baldly, he had no real answer to give her, didn’t know the answer himself, just knew that it did. So he can up with the best answer he could, the one that came off the top of his head. “I just want to look out for you, that’s all,” he told her. “I think you need that.”

 

“I need a friend,” she countered. “Not a mother hen.” He grinned, so did she. “You think you can be that?”

 

He nodded. “I can be that.”

 

Then, just like when they got out of the car, they dropped the subject, because they’d reached the end of their respective sections of the pole, having finally met in the middle, and neither of them had found GSR. Sighing, Warrick made what he was sure was going to be an unpopular suggestion. “Maybe this has nothing to do with the case.  Maybe it was just a piece of debris left at the scene.”

 

“No.” Sara rejected the notion straight away, not even having to think about it, with the same vehemence she usually displayed when opposing having to do an experiment involving meat of any kind. “No no no no no,” she continued. “I’m not quitting. No, I am in too deep.”

 

With that, she picked up the bamboo and headed for the door, leaving him mystified, and with no choice but to follow her, seeing her walking down the hallway very carefully, the pole almost long enough to hit off the walls. “Where are you going?” he called, and she half-turned to answer him, only slightly slowing.

 

“Trace,” she called back. “Maybe Hodges can find something.” Knowing that she must really be desperate if she was voluntarily calling on Hodges for help, Warrick chose not to comment on it, distracted by how she nearly poked some poor unsuspecting tech’s stomach out as she tried to turn a corner with the pole. “Coming through,” Sara called, a little late for the tech who dodged just in time, with a stifled exclamation of “Whoa!” Sara didn’t even apologise, barely gave him a look, just saying, “Careful people, easy…”

 

All Warrick could do was look at her and smile, surprised once again at the lengths that Sara would go to when she was chasing a hunch. She was completely indomitable, indefatigable, any other in- you cared to mention, and while he was amused at the doggedness with which she was pursuing this particular piece of evidence, there was a larger part of him that was happy to see her so passionate about something, especially after her apathy of the last few days, the tears and the hurt that he’d been witness to in her living room the previous day. Even if this turned out to be a wild goose chase, it was her wild goose chase, something she’d been able to sink her teeth into, something to make her forget her worries for a while, and that, Warrick knew, was priceless.

 

His thoughts were interrupted when the tech that Sara had nearly eviscerated came up to him. “Hey Brown, PD called. Mrs McCallum’s there.”

 

“The mother,” Warrick sighed, the mention bringing him crashing back to reality; interviews with grieving relatives were never his favourite things to do. “Tell them I’m on my way.”

 

>*<*>*<

 

He didn’t go straight to PD, checking in with Nick first, gleaning from him that Greg had identified some of the DNA from the crime scene; that one of the samples collected belonged to a brother of Timmy McCallum. So he was interested when sitting beside his mother was Kevin McCallum, older brother of Timmy, who admitted not to being at the warehouse, but to dropping Timmy off, having bought beer for him earlier that night. From the appalled look on Mrs McCallum’s face, Warrick believed that she knew nothing about her sons’ arrangement, but her words stayed with him for an entirely different reason.

 

“Mr. Brown, I don't know what to say.  I'm a single mother ... I work nights, and you can't keep your eyes on your kids all the time.  At a certain age, you just have to trust them.”

 

It was a familiar enough line; he’d heard it, or variations thereof, innumerable times in his work as a CSI, or even outside that. About how hard it was for a single mother to balance caring for her kids and providing for her kids, of how there weren’t enough hours in the day, of what a struggle it was. Catherine had given him chapter and verse on that often enough, but he knew that it was slightly different for Catherine. At least until recently, Eddie had been around, and while he’d been a faithless husband, he’d worshipped Lindsey, had done his share in helping to raise her. Catherine had a sister too, and friends who were willing to help out with Lindsey if work got in the way, as it so often did.

 

But Warrick wasn’t thinking of Catherine, or even Mrs McCallum.

 

As for so much of that day, he was thinking of Sara, and he was thinking of how much harder it was going to be for her. She didn’t have a family to help her out, didn’t even have that many friends, and he was reasonably sure that those she did have came from work, none of whom would be exactly able, even if they were willing, to step in with childcare duties. And there was a world of difference too, he knew, between being a single mom of a grade schooler and a newborn infant. Especially for someone like Sara, whose work was her life, her life her work, with little or nothing outside that.

 

Keeping his mind on the case was difficult, but he managed to do it, just enough to sympathise with Mrs McCallum. “I understand.  We are going to need to keep Kevin here to ask him some more questions about that night.  Do you object?”

 

When Mrs McCallum stuttered out, “No,” Warrick nodded, standing up and leaving the room, going back to the lab, looking around for Sara, to see if she’d found out anything. He couldn’t find her anywhere, until he walked into Jackie, who, for some reason that escaped him, was wearing Greg’s swami hat. “Hey Jackie,” he said. “Love the-”

 

He stopped talking when she levelled him with a glare that Sara would have been proud of. “Mention it, and you’ll go to the bottom of my list every time you leave evidence in.”

 

From the tone of her voice, she wasn’t lying, and he held up both hands, leaving well enough alone. “You seen Sara?”

 

Jackie’s face went from irritation to concern in the blink of an eye. “Everything ok with her?”

 

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Warrick was all innocence, and he only hoped that he could pull it off.

 

Jackie shrugged. “I dunno… she just seems off lately. As if something’s bugging her.”  She shook her head. “I met her in the hall wearing this thing; she didn’t even blink.” Reaching up, she adjusted the hat, with an expression on her face that screamed loud and clear she’d like to do a hell of a lot more than that. “That’s just not normal.”

 

More innocence from Warrick, and he hoped that Jackie wasn’t as perceptive as Nick. “I haven’t noticed anything.” A pause, then, “She say where she was going?”

 

“Trace lab.” Jackie replied, snickering suddenly. “That’ll really help her mood.”

 

Warrick grinned, already moving past her. “Thanks.” He made his way down the hall to Trace, where he could hear Hodges’s voice from the hall. “What do you think I am, a miracle worker?” he asked, and Warrick rolled his eyes, knowing that the answer to that was definitely in the negative. If Hodges were a miracle worker, he could make people actually like him.

 

“Well, that’s obvious Hodges.” Warrick blinked when he heard Sara’s voice, because she sounded more like her old self than she had all day, and he knew he’d been right, that working, keeping her mind off things, had done her some good. “If you were a miracle worker, you wouldn’t be rude.”

 

Warrick bit back a grin. “That’s my girl,” he thought.

 

Anyone else would have stopped after that smackdown, but not Hodges. “I wasn't being rude, I was being curt.  Rude would be, ‘When I know, you'll know’.” He took a beat then, and Warrick could only imagine the look that Sara was giving Hodges. “Friends?”

 

“No,” Sara replied, her tone matching the look that Warrick imagined perfectly, and that was when he decided that he’d better go inside, lest someone see him standing around and wonder what he was doing, or why. Especially since he couldn’t answer either question himself.

 

“Hodges, how's it coming with that glass?’ he said. Hodges tapped the microscope near to Sara, and as invited, Warrick leaned down, checking out the glass. What he saw there surprised him. “Looks like there's some kind of coating on it.”

 

Hodges sounded like the supreme know-it-all he was when he replied, “More specifically, crystallized calcium fluoride.”

 

Warrick stepped back, allowing Sara to look into the scope, and she had a question of her own for Hodges. “You ran it through the I.R.?”

 

“Please,” Hodges scoffed. “I.R. says "fluorspar".  I say "high-end optics".”

 

“Camera lens,” Sara decided instantly, taking the words right out of Warrick’s mouth, leaving Warrick to ponder the next question.

 

“You think someone has this murder on tape?”

 

Sara shrugged, then, glancing at Hodges, tilted her head in the direction of the door. It was an unmistakeable suggestion, and Warrick nodded silently. They didn’t speak again until they were in the hallway. “Murder on tape?” Sara asked, and Warrick lifted one eyebrow, letting out a long breath.

 

“Could be… it’s another thing to ask Kevin when we talk to him again.”

 

“He’s still here?”

 

Warrick nodded. “Mother said it was ok for us to keep him… he’s cooling his heels in the interrogation room. See if that does anything to make him talk. Meanwhile, I get to check their car… see if the tyre treads match first.”

 

Sara nodded. “You want a hand with that?” Warrick gave her a look, because the first thought that came to his mind was that maybe crawling around and underneath a car wouldn’t be the best thing for her to do. His face must have shown what he was thinking, because she narrowed her eyes. Her lips turned up in a smile though, so he took heart at that. He knew what a really angry Sara looked like, and this wasn’t it. “Don’t even think about saying it.”

 

Warrick chuckled. “I wouldn’t.”

 

“But you’d think it.” It was nowhere near a question and he shrugged.

 

“Can’t arrest me for my thoughts.” By this time, they were at the break room, and he stopped walking, tilting his head, then checking his watch. “We’re about due to go off shift you know.”

 

She stopped too, crossed her arms over her chest, lifting an eyebrow. “You’re driving me crazy,” she informed him flatly.

 

“It’s a short trip.” He didn’t even think about his response, and he had to dodge a sharp slap to his upper arm. “Hey!” he protested laughingly, taking a step back, just in case. “So, if you’re done assaulting me, you want to grab something to eat?”

 

Sara considered it for a moment, but only a moment. “The usual place?” she suggested, and he nodded. “You’re on.”

 

>*<*>*<

 

The usual place was an open all hours coffee shop five minutes walk from the lab, a place that served good food cheap, a place that offered the choice of takeout or eat in. Usually, their preferred choice was takeout, food carried back to the lab and eaten in the layout room while they reviewed files, or sometimes, in the lab, over Grissom’s strong protests. Today, takeout would have been Sara’s choice, and as they walked, she gave Warrick what she evidently considered to be a very good reason for it, that she had to start cataloguing the bullet trajectories. Warrick however, wasn’t going to let her away with that. “You have to input data into a computer,” he reminded her flatly. “And if you don’t watch yourself, you’ll end up maxing out on overtime.”

 

Sara tilted her head, considering his point. “Again,” she muttered, and he bit his tongue, because he’d been thinking it, even if he hadn’t said it.

 

“The bullets will wait Sara,” he said gently, knowing that he was walking a fine line, knowing that he was an inch away from toppling over. “You need to take better care of yourself.”

 

She narrowed her eyes. “Because of…” Her voice trailed off and she looked around furtively, as if she was afraid that someone was around who could overhear them.

 

“Because you’ve not been doing it for months,” Warrick countered, and when Sara looked down, he knew that she was taking his point on board. “Look, let’s compromise.” She looked up at that, a hint of a smile in her eyes. “You and me, sit down here, have something to eat, kick back a little. After that, you decide you want to go back to the lab, I won’t stop you.”

 

She was silent for a moment, running the proposition through her head, as if looking for hidden catches. “You mean that?”

 

Her scepticism was palpable, and Warrick grinned, raising his fingers in a time-honoured salute. “Scout’s honour,” he said, and she burst out laughing.

 

“You’re telling me you were a boy scout?”

 

“No,” he replied, opening the door of the coffee shop for her, letting her go through ahead of him. “But it’s the thought that counts.”

 

She rolled her eyes, but didn’t otherwise say anything, and they sat down at a booth at the window, ordered their usual choices, though Sara opted to forgo her usual cup of coffee, instead settling for orange juice. Warrick noticed, but didn’t say anything, instead turning the conversation to the case and to the many things that might have happened, and what they could do to further the case. By the time their plates were clean, they had several questions for Kevin McCallum, as well as a couple of suggestions for O’Riley. Warrick was feeling pretty ok, the meal having done him the world of good, and he was all ready to go another couple of hours in the lab, despite his earlier words that they were ready to go off shift. Sara though, he couldn’t help but notice, looked ready to fall asleep.

 

“You ok over there?” he asked, more in amusement than worry, and she might have been about to reply, were it not for the fact that a huge yawn cut off any words she might have been preparing.

 

“Sorry.” A slight tinge of pink spread across her cheeks, her lips curling up in a sheepish smile. “I guess it’s the food… made me sleepy.”

 

His own lips twitched, and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep a full-blown grin from appearing. “Yeah,” he said. “The food. That’s what it is.”

 

A trademark Sidle-glare was sent in his direction. “Mockery isn’t nice Warrick.”

 

“But it’s so much fun.”

 

She threw her balled up napkin at him, but she laughed, and he laughed too, before fixing her with a serious look. “So,” he said, and she must have heard something in his voice, because her smile faded slightly. “You still feel like going and cataloguing those bullet trajectories?”

 

Her answer didn’t need words, because she actually groaned at the thought. “I think I might head home for a couple hours,” she said, and while he might have responded with something along the “I told you so” lines, he didn’t even think about doing so. Well, not much anyway.

 

Instead, he asked her another question, and he didn’t really care if she gave him hell for it. “You gonna be ok getting home?”

 

She gave him a tired smile, nodding. “I’ll be fine. All of a sudden, all I want is my bed.” She wrinkled her nose, something he couldn’t ever remember seeing Sara do before, something that struck him as adorable. “Which is odd. I don’t get tired.”

 

“Maybe someone else does.” The second the words were out there, he wanted to take them back, but much to his surprise, she just smiled, the type of smile that he never would have associated with Sara Sidle. Moreover, her right hand moved to her abdomen, rubbing there absently.

 

“Maybe so.” They were silent for a moment, her lost in thought, him looking at her. The moment was broken when her eyes met his, and he saw a flicker of doubt there. “Am I doing the right thing Warrick?” she asked, and he didn’t hesitate in his answer.

 

“You’re going to be fine Sara. I have no doubts.”

 

Earlier in the day, he might have. But sitting there, with her, he had none. And when he saw her smile, he was even more sure.

 

>*<*>*<

 

After he and Sara walked back to the lab, and he made sure that she was in her car and safely on her way home – just short of making her promise to call him when she got home so that he’d know she got there ok – he decided to take his own advice. Heading home, he sacked out the second his head hit the pillow, and it seemed like no time at all until his alarm was blaring and it was time to go back to the lab.

 

His first stop was the garage, where he checked the tyre treads from the crime scene against the mini-van. On visual observation alone, he knew that they were onto something, but he covered all his bases anyway, hunkering down and putting the clear plastic sheets over the tired treads, proving beyond doubt what he already knew. “Venus and Serena,” he murmured. “Perfect match.”

 

That much done, he got down to the serious business of searching the car, and it didn’t take him long to hit pay dirt. There, clear as day, was a torn beer carton that bore the price tag of Jenko’s Liquor Store, and upon checking the door, he noticed several dark spots. A spray of phenothaline later, those dark spots were bright pink, and he was reaching for his cell phone to call O’Riley, tell him that they were ready to talk to Kevin McCallum.

 

He was on his way down the hall when he saw Sara coming in the other direction, and he slowed down, giving her a smile. “Hey.” Then he looked at his watch. “You just get in?”

 

Sara nodded, looking abashed. “I overslept,” she said, making it sound like a four-letter word, and her cheeks darkened when he laughed. “Don’t tell anyone?”

 

“My lips are sealed,” he promised. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how she was, to point out that she must have been tired if she was sleeping late, but he resisted temptation, instead asking, “So, you’re on bullet trajectories?”

 

Sara nodded. “You want to help?”

 

He snickered. “Picture that,” and Sara shrugged, as if to say that you couldn’t blame a girl for trying. “I gotta go over to PD, talk to Kevin McCallum. Blood in the van, and part of a beer carton from Jenko Liquor.”

 

From the look on Sara’s face, Warrick wasn’t sure whether she was surprised or impressed, and her tone didn’t do anything to help. “He was there,” she said, and he nodded.

 

“Looks like. So O’Riley’s starting him off, and we’ll see what we can get.” He checked his watch. “I should be back in an hour, hour and a half? I’ll meet you then.”

 

“Great.” Sara was already walking past him, but after a couple of steps she turned, grinning at him. “I’ll save you some bullets.”

 

“Music to my ears,” he quipped, walking backwards down the hallway, not turning until she’d turned the corner.

 

Warrick went straight to PD, and to his surprise, found Nick there already, standing on the other side of the two-way mirror, watching O’Riley interrogate Kevin McCallum.

 

“Just talked to Bobby Dawson,” Nick said. “All the bullets came from the same gun. 

Nine-millimetre semi-automatic.  How's this going?”

 

“I found a twelve pack container in the McCallum minivan,” Warrick replied. “Sales slip said ‘Jenko Liquors’.”

 

Nick nodded. “I'll check the surveillance, see if we can get some footage of this guy.” As they watched Kevin McCallum shifted in his seat, uncomfortable under the weight of O’Riley’s stare, and when his left arm moved, Warrick noticed something odd on his shirt. For a split-second, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, that he was seeing what he wanted to see, but then Nick spoke, proving that he’d seen the same thing. “What is that on his elbow?”

 

There was only one person who could answer that, and without further ado, they went into the interrogation room, nodding to O’Riley, Nick asking the detective with a raised eyebrow if they could step in. O’Riley moved his chair back slightly, stretched out one arm to show his approval, and Warrick inclined his head towards Nick, indicating that he should take the lead.

 

“What’s that on your arm?” he demanded, in a voice that didn’t allow for argument, but Kevin tried to stonewall anyway.

 

“It's just a scab,” he replied. “Got it skateboarding.”

 

Warrick didn’t believe that for a second, but this was Nick’s thing, so he let him take the lead. “Can we see it?”

 

Kevin sighed, but didn’t look disposed to move, so Warrick put on his most serious countenance, counting that his frown would intimidate the kid. “Peel it back,” he ordered.

 

Kevin might have been trying to be brave, but with Warrick, Nick and O’Riley all staring daggers at him, he knew when he was beaten. Slowly, he removed the bandage, exposing his cut to their eyes, and Warrick kept his face neutral with difficulty. He didn’t pretend to be an expert on abrasions and injuries, had no formal medical training, but he knew a gunshot wound when he saw one.

 

“Skateboarding?” he asked. “Why don't you stand up and take off your shirt?”

 

His bravado vanishing by the second, Kevin tried one last feint. “Don't you guys need a warrant for that?”

 

That was a question that O’Riley chose to deal with, the burly detective managing to insert more threat into a few simple words than Warrick or Nick would ever have been able to accomplish. “We get a warrant, and we're going to strip you down to nothing, then ask you to bend over.” He left a slight pause, just long enough to let those words sink in. “Choose.”

 

Kevin let out a long breath, but then he stood up, taking off his shirt, exposing his chest to their gaze. Warrick wasn’t the least bit surprised to see that his body was covered in cuts and bruises, almost the same as those that they’d found on Timmy. “Geez, man, what happened to you?” he asked. “Turn around.” There were more marks on Kevin’s back. “Those are the same markings your brother had.  You want to tell us what went down here?”

 

He’d thought that they were getting somewhere, but Kevin’s next words put paid to that notion. “I can't talk about it.  I'm sorry.”

 

Warrick couldn’t help but note that he really did sound it, and maybe Nick heard that too, because he played good cop, saying, “Hey, listen, if you’re the victim here, you can tell us. OK?”

 

Seeing perhaps a slight flicker in Kevin’s face, Warrick pressed on with, “Kevin, who did this to you man?”

 

Kevin looked at him for a long moment and didn’t say anything. Then he sat back down again, silent.

 

>*<*>*<

 

After seeing the marks on Kevin McCallum’s body, they stayed with him for a long time, trying to get him to talk, but to no avail. When it was evident that they were getting nowhere, Warrick excused himself, going out to his car and getting his camera, taking pictures of the marks on Kevin’s body. “Probably won’t do any good,” he told Nick and O’Riley when they left Kevin in the room, giving him yet more time to think about what he could do. “But you never know.”

 

Nick nodded. “I’ll start tracking down that surveillance footage. You want in?”

 

Warrick was about to nod, but then he remembered that there was someplace else he had to be, and he looked at his watch, finding to his dismay that he was already way late to meet up with Sara. “Sara’s working on the shooting reconstruction; I told her I’d help her out.”

 

Nick held up his hands. “Far be it from me to stop you man,” he said, but with a smile on his face that Warrick wasn’t entirely crazy about.

 

“What?”

 

Nick was all innocence. “What?”

 

“You got something to say, come out and say it.”

 

Nick shrugged. “Just that you and Sara seem to be spending a lot of time together. That’s all,” he said. “You got something you want to tell us?”

 

Warrick blew air out between his lips. “Man, you’re trippin’,” he said, even as Sara’s words from the previous shift ran through his mind, the query she’d voiced that he hadn’t been able to answer.

 

“I’m just wondering why you care so much… why this means so much to you.”

 

Nick’s voice came in on the tail end of Sara’s, his tone pure scepticism. “Am I?”

 

Warrick rolled his eyes, waved a hand in disgusted dismissal before turning on his heel and making his way back to the lab and Sara. He tried to put Nick’s insinuation out of his mind, because he knew it was ridiculous. He was just looking out for Sara, that was all. She needed a friend, was going through one of the hardest things she was probably ever going to have to go through. If Nick knew what he knew, he’d be doing the same thing. That was all there was to it.

 

Warrick told himself that, several times, but for some reason, it didn’t make it ring any more true.

 

Such thoughts stayed in his mind as he made his way back to the lab, but he forced them out once he stepped through the doors, making his way to the AV lab where he knew Sara would be waiting for him. He didn’t waste any time apologising when he saw her bent over the computer typing, a frown on her face. “I’m sorry I’m late. What bullet are you on?” From the time he’d been gone, not to mention from the tension across her shoulders, he figured she was pretty near to the end, and her next words bore that out.

 

“109, finally.” He just about kept back a wince, keeping his face neutral. “Height, distance, angle.” She tapped each key ferociously, and he found himself wondering if he should move backwards lest she stab him. “This has been a very laborious shift,” she concluded dryly, turning to him and looking into his eyes. He wanted to ask her if she was all right, but there was something in her countenance that made him think she’d lynch him if he tried, and besides, in the back of his eyes, he was sure he could see a spark of humour there. “Are you in the mood for a light show?” she asked, and he grinned, knowing that she’d read his mood and thoughts perfectly.

 

“Yeah,” he said, turning his attention to the screen. “Hook it up.”

 

With the press of a key, the screen came to life, showing the crime scene and the bullets moving across it. Streaks of red light converged in one direction, making a distinct image, one that looked familiar to Warrick. “The trajectory is all pointing in one uniform area.  Looks like some kind of a pole.”

 

The second the last word left his lips, an image invaded his mind; Sara, walking down the hall and nearly skewering some poor lab tech with a limbo pole. He knew exactly what she was going to say, and he wasn’t surprised when she said it, in a very “I told you so” tone of voice. “Or a bamboo stick.”

 

What with the absence of GSR, Warrick had been sure that the pole was indeed a piece of debris that had just happened to be on the roof of the warehouse. He’d more or less forgotten about it in the investigating of Kevin McCallum’s story and the mysterious glass. Now it looked like the bamboo stick did indeed have some kind of bearing on the case, though Warrick couldn’t imagine what or how. It was an extra piece to a puzzle that already had too many, and he couldn’t help but laugh. “The whole case has been like this,” he observed. “It's like you can't wrap your head around it, you know?”

 

Sara began running through the evidence they’d collected so far. “A bamboo cane with black swirls descending downward, no GSR, 109 rods, 109 bullets, all fired from the same gun.”

 

“Camera glass, blood droplets everywhere,” Warrick continued. “DNA that says five people were there, one boy’s dead, one boy’s injured, and he ain’t sayin’ nothin’…” He couldn’t come up with any conceivable way that those elements could be related, and yet they had to be. But from the look on Sara’s face, she couldn’t shine any light on it either, and that perplexed him even more. He and Sara together made a good team, balancing one another out, keeping one another in check, thinking along the same lines, spurring one another along to come to the right conclusion. They’d never come up against a case they couldn’t solve, and the fact that they seemed to be doing now rankled. “Is this the end of the road?” he asked her, just in case he was reading her wrong, but her quiet answer told him he wasn’t.

 

“Forensically?” she asked him, looking at the now blank screen, then back to him. “Yes.” She sounded as depressed about it as he was, certainly as tired and frustrated, and she sighed, turning back towards the blank screen. Pushing the keyboard away from her, she gave herself room to rest her elbows on the table, covering her face with her hands, her shoulders rising and falling in another huge sigh.

 

Warrick frowned, glancing towards the deserted hallway, then back to her, reaching out carefully to rest his hand on her back. He was concerned about how she might react, but she didn’t move, and his frown increased when he felt the tension along her spine. That wasn’t good for anyone, he thought, let alone someone in her… He stopped the thought before it could finish, biting the inside of his cheek as he moved his hand up and down her spine. “You want to take a break?” he asked her quietly. “Go for a walk, clear your head?”

 

He felt the muscle of her back move slightly as she straightened a little, but he didn’t drop his hand. “No,” she replied, moving her hands to push back her hair, tucking it behind her ears. “I’m fine.”

 

“You look like you’re about half an inch away from collapsing,” he told her, not unkindly, and she chuckled, though she stopped when he made his next suggestion. “You want to go get something to eat?”

 

Her face twisted into a grimace, and colour leeched from her face. “No,” she said firmly. “Thank you.”

 

Warrick tilted his head, eyes narrowed in concern. “You feeling ok?”

 

She smiled wanly. “Nauseated,” she told him. “When they say morning sickness, they forget to tell you that it comes and goes all day.” She shot him a wry smile, shook her head at the look he gave her in return. “Don’t even think about saying it.”

 

“Say what?” He tried for innocence, thought he missed it by a mile, a suspicion borne out by her next words.

 

“Anything to do with my condition.” She sounded amused, placing extra emphasis on the last two words, lips twitching. “If you keep on like this, I will have to kill you.”

 

“You just wouldn’t be able to do my autopsy,” he countered, regretting his use of the “A” word when she visibly gulped. “Sorry.”

 

She pressed a fist to the underside of her nose, drawing in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. That must have made her feel better, because she gave him a tremulous smile, though she couldn’t hide the slight shaking of her hand as she held it up to him to indicate that his apology was unnecessary. “It’s fine,” she said. “Except that it looks like this is a kid who’s going to love its sleep and be squeamish at the sight of blood…” Her dry assessment made him grin and she rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the sympathy.”

 

“I’ve got nothing but sympathy for you,” he told her, honestly if not humourlessly, and he stood up, moving his hand from her back to her shoulder, squeezing gently. “Come on, let’s get you to the break room… there’s some ginger ale in the refrigerator, it’ll settle your stomach.”

 

“Sounds good.” A pause as she looked up at the screen. “If I can move from this stool that is.” Snickering, he took a step back from her, noting as she moved that she did seem stiff, though of course, after one hundred and nine bullets, he’d be stiff too. His snickers quickly vanished though when he saw her sway on her feet, one hand going to her forehead, the other grabbing for the table, and his hands shot out without him even thinking about it, steadying her.

 

“You ok?” He didn’t even try to stop the alarm from coming out in his voice, and his worry didn’t abate when she took her time in replying. He could hear her breathing, deep and laboured, and when she looked up at him, her face was chalk white. “OK,” he heard himself saying. “Let’s get you-”

 

“I’m fine.” She interrupted him with no conviction whatsoever, and he simply raised an eyebrow, staring her down.

 

“Look,” he said after a second of thought. “Why don’t you go up into one of the offices upstairs, lie down for a bit?” It was common practice among the night shift CSI’s to do that, especially when they’d worked daylight hours as well. The offices upstairs, manned exclusively by office personnel working solely during the day were all furnished with couches where many a weary nightshift CSI had found solace, if not sanity, after an hour’s lie-down. When she bit her lip, he knew that he was getting somewhere, and he pressed ahead, promising, “I’ll come get you if I hear anything.”

 

She looked down, and he knew the battle was over. “Promise?” she mumbled, and he grinned to himself, wanting to pull her into a hug, but knowing he couldn’t, not with the rest of the lab ready to pass by outside.

 

So he settled for increasing the pressure on her arm momentarily. “I promise.”

 

>*<*>*<

 

The next time he saw Sara was when he responded to Nick’s page about surveillance videotapes, and the three of them were helping O’Riley round up their Junior Tarentinos. He gave her a hard look when he saw her coming towards him with Nick, because he didn’t think she’d been lying down for that long. She nodded at him, flashed him a quick smile, as if seeking to reassure him, but it did anything but. She didn’t look any more rested than she had when he’d walked her up to one of the deserted offices upstairs, and if anything, she looked paler, more drawn than she had a couple of hours previously. He wanted to ask her if she was feeling all right, but he knew better than to do that in front of Nick.

 

Besides, when they found the videotape they were looking for, bringing it to the lab, leaving O’Riley to interrogate the kids, he had a feeling that they were about to break the case, and then she’d be able to go home and get some real rest. He’d be more than willing to do her share of the paperwork if it would put some colour back into her cheeks.

 

When he saw the contents of the video though, he thought that it might take more than a good night’s sleep.

 

Five kids, all of them looking familiar, and not a little wild, were mugging for the camera, boasting about their stunts.

 

Speedway surfing, where cars were driven at high speed, one of the boys standing on the car hood, rolling off onto the hard asphalt. Warrick shook his head at the sight, hard pressed not to wince, hardly able to believe what he was seeing. From the silence to his left, Nick and Sara were feeling the same way.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sara glancing across at him, but he was transfixed by the next stunt on the tape, what the kids called “The 150 Yard Marker”. That involved four of them strapping on football helmets – and how sick was it, Warrick wondered, that he wanted to praise them for taking that minor precaution? – while the fifth shot golf balls at them.

 

Then came a scenario that was familiar to them.

 

Bamboo Russian Roulette.

 

At the mention of bamboo, Warrick shot a quick glance at Sara, whose eyes were locked onto the screen, and he thought that it could have been his imagination, but she seemed to be holding herself just a little bit straighter, as if she was concentrating hard on the images playing across the view screen.

 

All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place as they watched.

 

The bamboo pole, dropped by one kid down through the hole in the ceiling.

 

The gun, let spiral down it, firing all the way.

 

The four others, running crazily, dodging the bullets.

 

Sounds of gunfire and laughter echoing through the lab.

 

A crazy, dizzying shot as the camera fell to the ground.

 

But it was still recording, and they saw, captured in perfect digital quality, Timmy McCallum, saw the bullet hit him the chest. Saw him fall to the ground, looking right into the lens, saw him fighting for his last breath. Heard the alarm of the other boys before everything went black.

 

Warrick had never heard such quiet in the AV lab, and one look at Sara and Nick told him that they were as sickened by what they’d just seen as he was. Nick, his jaw set, his expression serious, turned slowly to meet his gaze, shaking his head, but his expression changed from disgust to concern when his eyes fell on Sara.

 

Warrick followed his gaze, felt an identical expression coming to his own face. Sara’s head was in her hands, elbows resting on the table, back ramrod straight. Her breathing was loud in the silence of the room, deep and even and too controlled. Though he wasn’t sure why, Warrick felt a shiver go down his spine, felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up one by one, and when he dragged his eyes away from her, meeting Nick’s worried glance, he mouthed a single word.

 

“Go.”

 

Nick nodded quickly, keeping his voice as natural as possible as he rose from the stool. “I’m going to book this in,” he said. “Get it to Archie, get him to grab some stills off it…” All of which could be done there, and they all knew it, but Sara didn’t look up, and Warrick wasn’t about to call him on it. “I’ll catch you guys later,” Nick concluded, beating a hasty retreat, leaving Warrick and Sara alone in the too-quiet room, and Sara still didn’t move.

 

Feeling for the first time a thrill of real fe