| Second Chances- by kyrdwyn (page 2) |
| Rated: R Spoilers: None Synopsis: The crew calls in a language specialist from UNLV for some help. She may know more about this case than anyone knows, however. |
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| CSI, Gil Grissom and company, and places and etc are all property of Anthony Zuiker, Alliance Atlantis, CBS, and other companies. They did not condone this fic, and I am not getting paid for it. I write because I want to. All other characters not appearing on CSI in any way, shape, or form that appear in this story are my property. If you have any comments - good or bad, feel free to e-mail me at: toxicrev@yahoo.com |
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| The sound of the doorbell stopped Kyra in her tracks, her arms full of clothes from her closet. She dumped them onto the bed and grabbed her nine-millimeter from her holster she'd clipped onto her belt as soon as she'd gotten home. Silently, she crept to the front door and looked out the peek hole. Gil Grissom was standing there, looking worried. “Kyra? It’s Gil Grissom. I need to talk to you.” Sighing, Kyra opened the door. “Hey.” “Can I come in?” Kyra stepped back and waved him in, noticing at the same time he did that she still had her gun in her hand. She looked at him and shrugged. “Women living alone can’t be too careful,” she explained as she shut and locked the door. “Especially when there’s an obsessed killer after them.” She whirled around to face him, panic in her eyes. Gil’s heart broke at what else he saw reflected in the green depths. Eight years of hiding, of starting at shadows, of looking over her shoulder every time she went out had taken their toll. “Hey…look, I shouldn't have said that…” Kyra sank down to the floor, her back to the door. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh God. I thought he was gone. That he’d been captured somewhere, given up on me, died, something. I never thought he’d wait for eight years to find me.” She set the gun down and covered her face in her hands, the strain of the past few days and eight years finally breaking down old barriers. Gil sat down next to her and pulled her into his arms, holding her as she cried. He didn’t try to stop her, he didn’t know how and he wasn't sure he should. But when she finally ran out of tears, she began to talk, and Gil desperately tried to distance the woman in the story from the vibrant young woman he’d met. She was leaving for work when someone grabbed her from behind and chloroformed her in her driveway. When she woke up, she was chained to a bed, in her underwear, handcuffed and blindfolded. Her captor kept telling her how impressed he had been by her work on the case: her dispassionate examinations of the crime scenes and the way she'd figured out his writings. He had really been impressed by the way that she had spoken about him to the reporters, not disparaging him as some of her colleagues had. They were meant to be soul mates, he told her, and he knew it. He kept her up to date on the hunt for her, mocking the police and their attempts. The fact that she had gotten close to him, but they couldn’t find him proved that they were meant to be together - two bright minds in a dull and stupid world. He just needed the time to prove it to her. He touched her while talking to her, causing her to squirm, trying to get away, mentally retreating from him. Five days after he had taken her, her boss said something in an interview that set her captor off. She heard him trashing the area, and then he left. She heard him come back, heard him struggling with someone. A thud. Then her blindfold was removed for the first time. When her vision cleared, her captor was standing there, wearing a ski mask. Next to him was an unconscious man. Her captor kept muttering, saying that he would show them he was worthy of his princess, that he would prove his intelligence. She tried to get him to stop, screaming that he was worthy of her, as he slashed the man’s throat open in one slice, blood spraying out onto her. She watched him carve a message into the man’s chest – that a killer should not be mocked – before he finally came over to the bed, regarding her. Said that he wanted the world to know she was his princess, and used the bloody knife to carve that word into her thigh. She passed out. When she regained consciousness, he was gone, and so was the body. She was alone, still covered in someone else’s blood, and stayed that way for two days until some kids playing near the building heard her screams. The cops came and she was rescued. But she couldn’t forget what happened, and he wouldn’t let her. Every new body had a message for her. She couldn’t work a crime scene alone for fear that he’d be there. The wounds on her thigh took a long time to heal, plastic surgery eventually hid them. The wounds to her soul took longer, though no one could see those but her. She was afraid of doing her job; afraid to work the evidence for fear that someone else would think she was too smart, that she was meant for him. She saw the murder in her nightmares until she stopped sleeping. Finally, she quit and fled the city, searching for someway to forget. But she couldn't. Gil just kept holding her, unable to imagine the true horror of her story. She was silent for a long while, a few stray tears appearing. They stayed like that for what seemed like hours Gil's cell phone rang, shattering the silence. He reluctantly removed one arm from around her to answer it. “Grissom.” Kyra heard the phone ring but didn’t move when Gil moved to answer it. This was the first time in eight years she felt safe, and she wanted to savor the feeling. She lay against Gil's chest, listening to his heartbeat and the rumbling of his voice when he spoke. She didn’t pay attention to the conversation, but she knew it wasn’t good when he ended the call and sighed. She raised her head to look at his face, his reluctance to tell her was written all over his face. “You have to go.” He put his arm back around her, hugging her tightly, resting his head on top of hers. “There’s been a break in the case, they need me back at the office.” Gil could sense that she was withdrawing from the closeness they had shared, retreating behind her barriers again, and he wanted to tell the sheriff to go to hell, that Kyra needed his attention now more than the case. But he couldn’t. The bastard who had forced Kyra to build her mental walls was still out there, hunting for her. “Why don’t you stay at my place while I’m gone?” The offer slipped out before Gil even knew he was going to say it. Kyra looked at him, an unreadable expression on her face. Before she could answer, though, his phone rang again. He cursed under his breath and answered it. Kyra got up, picking up her gun and heading back into her bedroom. She pulled her carryon bag out of the closet and began folding her clothes into it. She wanted to accept Gil’s offer, to stay at his place, get to know him better, see the private side of him that she could fall in love with, if she let herself. But for that reason, she couldn’t. Staying with Gil would put him in danger, and she would never forgive herself if another person got hurt because of her, especially someone she was starting to care about. Gil stood in the doorway to Kyra’s bedroom and watched her pack. He knew she wasn’t going to accept his offer, even though he wanted her to. He wanted her to see who he was outside of his lab, his job. He wanted to get her away from here, where her stalker could find her at any time. Yet he’d heard the guilt in her voice when she had talked about the man who had been killed in front of her and knew she was afraid it would happen again. He knew that if their roles were reversed, he wouldn’t take the offer, because he wouldn’t want to put Kyra in danger. He cared about her too much. “Where will you go?” “I don’t know yet, but I can’t stay here – he’ll find me too easily.” She folded the last shirt into the bag and went into her closet to retrieve a safe. She unlocked it and dumped seven manila envelopes on the bed. Gil picked up one of the envelopes and looked inside. A U.S. passport, Nevada driver’s license, and credit cards all in the name of Karen DiMarco. He looked in five other envelopes – the same items, different states, all in different names. He glanced at Kyra incredulously. Six fake ID’s with credit cards would have cost a small fortune. Then he noticed the cash that she stuffing into her bag from the seventh envelope. His eyebrow went up. “You’ve been planning for this for a long time.” “Eight years.” Her voice was unsteady, like she was trying to hold back tears. Gil closed his eyes on the thought of her spending eight years thinking she might have to give up her entire life and start over because of this man. He opened them again to find Kyra staring at her bag, tears threatening to spill. He stood up and pulled her into his arms again, leaning down to kiss her, letting his actions say what he couldn’t put into words. * * * There was a message waiting for Grissom when he got back to the crime lab. Carmen Davidson called. Meeting is tomorrow at the Monaco. You can page her at 555- 1418. Grissom smiled. Kyra had made it out of her house okay and to a hotel. He liked the message, no overt statement of where she was. Sara and Brass were in his office, waiting for him. “Our boy has screwed up. This time he left fingerprints on the body.” Sara looked up from the report, “Yeah, I ran them though AFIS, our guy’s got quite of record of stalking in the past two years, no charges ever filed.” “Who is he?” “His name is William Powell, and he's local. Works at the Hotel Monaco as a desk clerk.” Grissom paled, “The Monaco?” “Yeah. Hey Gris, you okay?” Grissom looked at Brass, “Get your guys over there to pick this guy up, now. Kyra just checked into the Monaco to keep this guy from finding her at her house. Sara, you’re driving.” Gil left the office at a near run, Sara and Brass at his heels. * * * Powell wasn’t at the hotel when the team got there, but he had been working when Kyra checked in. The manager let them into her room, and Gil’s heart stopped at the destruction in the room. The lamps were smashed, the bedding strewn on the floor, pillows knifed, the TV shattered, and the phone cord torn out of the wall. There was a message left in Kyra’s lipstick on the bathroom mirror – “She’s still my princess.” * * * Grissom had been too shaken by the message in the room to start working the scene, so Sara sealed off the room and started processing it. Brass grabbed the manager and the Chief of Security to start going over the tapes and all the access points and finding witnesses. By the time Catherine, Warrick, and Nick arrived to help out, Grissom was back in control of himself enough to give out their assignments. Warrick headed to the security office to review the tapes, Catherine was sent to check out what were deemed the most likely ways for Powell to have left to see if there was any evidence, and Nick joined Sara and Grissom in the room. There were hundreds of fingerprints found, along with fibers, but no blood. Catherine hadn’t found anything either, but Warrick got a frame of Powell and Kyra leaving through a service exit in the back. Grissom sent him and Catherine off to process the area. Kyra had been walking out, though she was carrying a coat over her arms, so Powell had probably tied her hands. “Hey Grissom, look at this.” Nick was holding up a scrap of paper that had been left on the floor near the trashcan. “There’s some numbers, and some writing that looks like one of the words from that first body.” Grissom took the paper from Nick and regarded it intently. Nick was right; it was one of the words from the body. Grissom even remembered the translation. “Good work, Nick. Kyra just left us a way to find her.” “What do you mean?” “This word is Gaelic for ‘cell’, as in jail cell. This is a seven digit number, so maybe her ‘cell’ phone?” He watched the understanding bloom on the younger man's face. “If she has her cell phone with her, and it’s on, we might be able to get a general area of where he took her.” “Right. But we need to know what cell phone company she used,” Sara interjected. “Brass sent a couple of uniforms to Kyra’s house in case Powell showed up there. Maybe we ought to go join them and take a look at Kyra’s bills.” Brass called the uniforms and told them to check Kyra’s mailbox in case there was a recent bill there before Grissom and crew headed over. Luck was on their side; her cell phone bill was right on top. It took Brass less than 20 minutes to get a warrant for the phone company to get them to find out where her phone was: on the outskirts of Vegas. * * * Kyra sat on the bed she was once again chained to. She could alternate between sitting and lying down, but there wasn’t enough slack in the chain for her to stand. She wasn’t blindfolded this time; she’d seen his face when he’d confronted her outside her hotel room as she was returning from the vending machines. He'd let her keep her clothes. The kidnapping had been worse this time. He’d forced her into the room, and she fought. He had dazed her with a blow from his gun, then handcuffed her before trashing the room. While he was writing his message in the bathroom, Kyra recovered enough to recall her cell phone was in her pocket, and jotted down the number and a note for Gil on a scrap of paper, dropping it on her way out of the room. She just prayed that the Las Vegas crime lab would live up to its reputation and that Gil would understand what she wrote. Now she was waiting. Her captor had left her alone after he had chained her to the bed in a small room of this abandoned building, locking the door behind him. He hadn’t said a word to her, but she got the feeling that he was somehow disappointed in her. She didn't care. She was too busy retreating from the thought of him. The door was unlocked and opened. Her captor stood there, smiling. “You know, my princess, I am going to enjoy our life together.” Kyra regarded him silently as he came closer and stroked her cheek. “I have known since Nashville we were meant to be together, and I knew that you would come to me. But I couldn’t wait any longer for you to return to your true calling, so I had to force you back into crime solving. Don’t you enjoy the rush of having a plan work they way is supposed to? Oh yes,” he said in regard to Kyra’s look of incredulous fear, “I’ve been following you for eight years, always in the same city, same town, close enough to see you whenever I wanted, far enough away that you couldn’t see me until you were ready.” He leaned down and whispered into her ear, “Now, one final game to show the police who is the smartest, and then you and I, my princess,” he kissed her cheek, “will be able to leave here and start our life together.” He took her hand and removed the ring she wore. “Just a little clue for the Keystone Kops.” He left her then, chuckling. Kyra sat still, recoiling inwardly from the caresses, retreating behind her walls. A tear escaped as she prayed that Gil would find her. She didn’t think about the phone in her pocket. * * * Grissom downed a prescription painkiller and rubbed his forehead. It had been three days since Powell had taken Kyra, and the leads were getting thin. Brass' men had combed the area where her cell phone was, but nothing turned up. One of her rings had shown up at the lab through the mail, causing a minor flurry until they realized the only prints on it were Kyra's, and there was no useful evidence on the packaging. It had been mailed from the main post office - with a fake return address. Grissom was getting more short-tempered by the day. He felt responsible for Kyra getting grabbed, no matter what Catherine or Brass tried to tell him. He'd taken to spending time in Kyra's house. He wasn't sure if he was trying to assuage some of his guilt or if he was just being masochistic. Her house was quite different from his - more of the home of a professor than a CSI. She had framed posters on her walls. Most were city skylines - London, New York, Chicago, Dallas. A few pictures of her with family and friends. Her TV, VCR and DVD player looked like they were often used and she had bookcases full of movies and compact disks. Her outgoing mail was on the hall table, along with a preview textbook she'd been reviewing. Gil moved through the living room into her study. She was all around him in there. Bookcase after bookcase was crammed with books on languages, history, forensic science and police work. Despite changing professions, she'd kept up on her forensic training. Certificates from seminars were in a box on the table in front of the window. Her diplomas were framed on the wall behind the desk - dual major in Language Arts and Criminal Justice at the University of Tennessee, Masters in Forensic Linguistics from George Washington University. She'd done her translations at this desk. He sat down in her chair and stared at the books haphazardly strewn on the surface, some still open to pages she'd been reading. He leafed through one idly, noticing that she had a tendency to write comments in the margins. Something underneath one of the books caught his attention. He pulled it out and smiled. A copy of the Forensic Journal opened to an article he had written. She'd written comments in the margin, some related to cases she must have worked on in Nashville, some related to her impressions of him - a few had been updated after they'd met in the morgue, apparently. The phone on the desk rang. Gil got up and went back into the living room, waiting for her machine to pick up. Her message played, then a muffled voice came on the line. He got closer to the machine; his skin prickling as he realized the voice was hers. "….factory…..he's laughing…victim….tomorrow….please hurry…." He grabbed for the phone, "Kyra? Kyra!" But she'd hung up already. Grabbing his cell phone he called Brass, getting him to trace the call, and pulled the tape out of the machine to take to the lab. |
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