Sara hadn't spoken at all and remained sat forward, her fingers tented against her lips in thought.

"Say something." Catherine pleaded softly. "Yell at me, get angry with me. Anything."

After a painfully long few seconds, Sara dragged her gaze up to her friend's hopeful face.

"I'm not angry with you." She said hoarsely at last, sinking back against the couch cushions.

Catherine released a heavy breath.

"I promise, I didn't want to tell them." She repeated. "I was hurting and I lashed out and made a comment that just left me backed into a corner. I'm so sorry."

Sara nodded absently at the explanation, a frown settling on her face.

"How did they react?"

"Well, Nick was pissed. With me, not you!" She quickly corrected. "They all thought that I should have told them at the time. I think Warrick and Greg got it, eventually."

"Grissom?" Sara raised an eyebrow, causing Cath to exhale.

"I think he's more angry with himself than with me over this." She mused. "He's realised now what he should have noticed back then. He's probably feeling a little jaded – or at least, he should be!"

"But they don't know?" She clarified, less than concerned with the state of Grissom's conscience right now.

"No." Catherine slipped a hand into hers and squeezed it gently. "No, they don't know who it was. I just said it was some guy you met in a bar."

Sara nodded again, finally satisfied with that explanation.

"That's good. That's all they need to know."

x X x

"We owe it to her to do this."

Greg lifted his head, meeting Nick's eye.

"But it's not what she wants. Catherine said that." He pointed out weakly.

"Yeah, well maybe Catherine doesn't know her as well as she thinks." Nick spat. "I know that Sara would want this guy off the streets, whatever the cost."

When Greg didn't respond, Nick shot him another look.

"Why did you even go looking for it if you weren't planning on doing anything with it?" He challenged.

Greg exhaled, picking the little piece of paper up and staring at it, as if it might hold the answer to that particular puzzle.

"I don't know." He admitted at last. "I guess I just wanted to see if I could find it first. Figured I'd decide what to do about it then."

"So," Nick pressed. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Do about what?" Warrick interrupted the tense little tête-à-tête, sauntering into the break room with an empty coffee mug swinging by his side.

The boys exchanged a wordless communiqué, with Greg offering an imperceptible shake of his head.

Electing to ignore the silent instruction, Nick snatched the paper from his hand and turned towards Warrick, who was busy refilling his drink.

"Greg found this case reference number hidden in Catherine's office." He blurted out. "We think it's for the evidence in Sara's rape case."

Warrick whirled around to face them, a horrified look on his features.

"What?" He demanded, striding over to join them at the bench.

"We were just trying to decide what to do with it." Greg added. He hadn't wanted anyone else to know about his thievery, but now Nick had spilled the beans, there was no sense lying about it and, in all honesty, he could use another opinion on the matter.

"I tell you what you do with it," the dark-skinned CSI stated. "You put it back."

Nick fidgeted in his chair, dissatisfied with that advice.

"If this is the reference number for her case, we could run the evidence." He offered as an alternative. "We could find out who it was and put him away for what he did to her."

"Yeah," Warrick agreed, putting his mug down and placing his hands flat on the bench so he was leaning down over them both. "Just one problem with that – it's not what Sara wants."

"And how do we know that?" Nick countered earnestly. "We only have Catherine's word, and she's not exactly proving herself to be reliable at the moment."

"Hey," Warrick warned. "Don't go there, man."

Pursing his lips, Nick reluctantly backed down on that particular point. He knew only too well about Warrick's soft spot for Catherine and he wasn't about to get into that argument now, even if he stood by his statement.

But he wasn't backing down about the brunette.

"All I'm saying it, we don't know that Sara wouldn't want this guy arrested, if we had the chance to get him. All we have to do is run the DNA – if there's no hit in the system, then we can leave it. But if there is..."

Warrick flicked his gaze from Nick to Greg, who had been analysing the two sides of the argument carefully and still appeared equally as torn.

"You know Sara better than either of us," Rick pointed out. "What do you think?"

Greg meditated on this for a moment, chewing it over.

Did he know Sara better than the boys? Sure. But that wasn't really the question at hand – the true questions was; did he know her better than Catherine did? A week ago, he wouldn't have even hesitated to answer. Of course, he knew her better!

But now ... well, he wasn't so confident about that anymore. And he was ashamed to realise how much that bothered him. He had never been particularly possessive, but Sara was his best friend.

"I want to get him." He declared at last. "I just don't like the idea of going behind Sara's back to do it."

Warrick nodded, encouraging him to follow that instinct.

Nick, in comparison, sat back and crossed his arms defiantly.

"You know what I don't like?" He said. "I don't like the fact that this guy raped her two years ago and he's still walking around out there a free man. I'm going to run with this, with or without you guys."

"Well, you can do it without me." Warrick straightened up and reclaimed his drink. "You want my advice – put that thing back where you 'found' it."

Nick watched him march out of the room, before turning back to Greg with a raised eyebrow.

"Well? What about you?"

x X x

"Do you think the guys will say anything about it?"

The question came out of the blue and stalled Catherine, her cheesecake-laden fork stopping halfway to her mouth.

"About ... the rape case?" She clarified.

"Yeah." Sara pushed her half-empty plate away from herself, her appetite for dessert suddenly waning. "Do you think they'll ask me about it?"

"Not if they have any common sense." Cath huffed, finishing her bite and moving her own plate aside. She reached across the counter, taking Sara's hands between her own and tugging them towards her. "Honey, they love you. They would never want to do anything to hurt you and they have to know that bringing this up would only cause you pain. They wouldn't do that."

Sara nodded meekly, threading her fingers between Catherine's and tightening her grip.

"I hope you're right." She said in a shaky voice. "I'm not sure I can go there again."

x X x

"This is so wrong." Greg muttered, tugging his jacket around himself in an attempt to keep out the chill.

"Come on, Greg." Nick warned sternly, aiming his flashlight at the rows of boxes above their heads. "Don't wuss out on me now."

"I'm not." The younger man straightened up a little at the insinuation. "But it still doesn't feel right."

Nick came to a halt and turned to his young compadre, placing a firm, mildly threatening, hand on his shoulder.

"Look, I don't like going behind Sara's back anymore than you do, but we are doing this for the right reason." He insisted. "And one day she's going to thank us for it. When the piece of filth that did this is sitting in a prison cell and she can finally sleep again at night – then, she's not going to care how it happened."

Greg held his intense gaze for as long as he could stand, before offering a relenting shrug.

Nodding with approval, Nick aimed his flashlight at a box directly above them, where the beam landed on a familiar number.

The two men locked eyes again, with Greg eventually releasing a heavy sigh.

"I guess we've come this far." He noted, reaching up to drag the box down and feeling a slick sense of guilt settle in the pit of his stomach as the weight fell into his arms.

In this one box, he could give his friend some much-needed peace of mind. Or he could blow their friendship apart.