DYING

By ProWriter11

Chapter 23 and Epilogue

Grissom had been lying in bed for more than an hour, unable to sleep. The stress of waiting for the other shoe to drop was unbearable.

Ecklie believed Dell was on the run and probably out of Nevada by now.

Brass and Grissom knew better.

Brass wasn't happy about the large open area behind the safe house. It was definitely a hole in the security. But he couldn't keep a helicopter up to cover it. The FAA had regulations about how low aircraft could fly over a populated area. If the chopper went high enough to suit the FAA, it entered an MOA, a military operations area, where civilian flights were forbidden. Nellis AFB had given permission for intrusions periodically, but the permission carried so many restrictions it was essentially worthless.

So the units on the ground were instructed to keep careful watch on the rear of the house, and they did. But Dell was cautious and better prepared.

Grissom, finally fell into that peaceful region between waking and sleeping, had just turned over to put an arm around his sleeping wife when the plastic cover taped over his eye hit the pillow and startled him awake. He whispered a curse. A moment later he heard a thunderous blast, followed by the shattering of a bedroom window.

Something sailed past his head and hit the opposite wall, exploding into a firestorm.

It was followed almost immediately by a second blast and a second missile that exploded against Sara's side of the bed. The roar of the flames was deafening.

"Sara!"

He screamed at her as he pulled her away from the tongues of fire lapping at her bedding.

She came full awake.

"Oh, my God," she said.

The heat of the flames engulfed them, and the smoke thickened quickly.

Grissom put his mouth against Sara's ear.

"On the floor, as low as you can go," he shouted. "Crawl for the door."

They had just dropped when a third explosion shattered the room. Grissom immediately covered Sara with his body, hearing what sounded like insects buzzing his head.

Something hit him in the right side, under the rib cage, and he squeezed his eyes against the pain. Something else hit him in the upper arm.

Sara grunted.

"My leg," she said.

Grissom took stock of their situation. Fire had now blocked the bedroom door and was licking at the ceiling. There was no chance of getting to the window through which the grenades had come. The bed blocked it, and the bed was fully engaged in flames.

The second window was the only choice. Although the advance of the flames threatened to block it, too, it provided the best chance for escape if Grissom could pick up Sara and simply hurl both of them through the fire and the glass.

He didn't like the odds.

He didn't have a choice.

"Sara, don't fight me. I'm going to pick you up. I want you to try to hold your breath."

"Okay," she said.

He lifted her. Her slight weight made it easy, but the wounds in his side and arm had weakened him. That was a problem. He had only once chance to crash through the glass. If they bounced off back into the room, they were doomed.

He heard the shouts of would-be rescuers on the far side of the door. He couldn't wait for them.

He stood, immediately inhaling searing heat and smoke.

He gathered every ounce of strength he had and leaped at the window.

The flames licked at their night clothes.

It singed their hair.

It burned their skin.

The shards of breaking glass lacerated them.

The hard landing on the ground outside pounded the breath from them.

Sara's body had hit the window first and was slammed under Grissom's when they hit the ground. It stunned her unconscious.

But they were alive.

In the noise of the inferno and the rescue effort inside, nobody heard them go through the window.

The only person who saw them and realized they were still breathing was Lionel Dell, and he had four shells left in the Mossberg.

x x x x x x x

Dell reached them seconds after their escape. Grissom was on his hands and knees, bleeding and coughing. Sara lay still beside him.

It was ingrained in Dell that killing Sara was paramount. It's what Natalie wanted. He ran at her with the Mossberg aimed at her head.

With a gargantuan effort, Grissom heaved himself at Dell, and they both went to the ground.

Both had two hands on the shotgun.

Dell had the all-important control of the trigger.

They rolled on the ground.

Dell got the weapon horizontal to Grissom's neck and put all his weight behind it, trying to crush Grissom's larynx. Breathing through damaged lungs and countering Dell's strength with a wounded arm and a growing weakness due to blood loss proved impossible. Grissom was fast losing the battle.

Then Sara was there in a singed nightshirt, soot on her face and blood pouring from somewhere high on her right thigh.

She bent down and tried to pull Dell off Grissom, but made little headway.

She kicked him twice in the ribs, hard with the ball of her foot, and he yielded enough to let Grissom push him away.

Either Dell moved off Grissom deliberately, or he planned to take advantage of a sudden opportunity. The momentum of his roll to the ground put the muzzle of the shotgun squarely on Sara.

Grissom saw what was coming and screamed a warning. The shotgun discharged and Sara went to the ground.

"Sara!" Grissom screamed.

"Okay," she said. "Missed."

He allowed himself a moment to feel the relief. "Thank God," he whispered.

"Get help," he said, coughing hard.

"I can't leave."

"You've got to get help."

She turned and sprinted for the front of the house. In the distance, Grissom heard the sirens of responding fire equipment.

Dell must have heard them, too, because he had redoubled his efforts.

As Grissom shouted instructions to Sara, he struggled to twist the shotgun from Dell's hands. Dell won that struggle and quickly clubbed Grissom with the stock.

Grissom's world exploded. When it returned it was out of focus. Grissom wondered if his eye had been damaged. The blow to the head would have killed him had Dell been able to get any leverage behind it.

The shotgun was now pinned between them. The stock was beside Grissom's bloodied head, the muzzle pointed down.

Dell seemed intent on eviscerating Grissom with his next shot.

Sara was limping back toward the side of the house with Brass and three police officers when they heard the shotgun blast.

Sara stopped and stared in horror.

Both men lay still, Dell still on top of Grissom.

"No," she whimpered.

She saw Dell move first and her chest heaved.

Dell rolled off Grissom.

The flashlights wielded by the cops found blood everywhere.

Dell's eyes were open.

Grissom's were closed.

Sara couldn't see her husband breathing.

She dropped to her knees at his side.

She ran a hand gently over his face.

"Gil, please. Come on, Gris."

"Get the medics here now," Brass ordered the officers. He kicked the Mossberg well away from Dell.

Dell stirred.

"Help me," he said.

"Shut up," Brass told him.

Grissom opened his eyes. He looked at Sara.

"Where are you hit?" she said.

"I'm not," he said. "At least I don't think I am. Blacked out for a minute."

Sara borrowed a flashlight from one of the cops and examined Grissom. He was bleeding from a head wound. Blood flowed freely from his right ribcage area and his upper right arm. There was some blood on his left thigh from what appeared to be a small puncture wound.

She looked over at Dell.

A massive blood pool swam at his right thigh.

Sara recognized the signs of bleeding from a severed femoral artery.

"Somebody should tourniquet that," she said.

"No point," Brass said. "He's died a few seconds ago."

"Dell's dead?" Grissom asked, his voice weak.

Sara coughed and nodded.

"It's over," she said.

Grissom's world went black.

16 DAYS LATER (Epilogue)

Sara was released from the hospital after a day. She was recovering well from her fragmentation injury, smoke inhalation and several small burns.

Grissom stayed for three days, on oxygen. Two shards of the fragmentation grenade were pulled from his arm and rib cage. Fortunately, the second one, which could have rattled around in his chest doing all sorts of mischief, had been content to stop in the first layer of muscle.

The buckshot pellet that caught him in the leg had lodged near his femoral artery. But not in it. The muzzle blast had burned him.

His lungs and chest hurt.

Owen Richland had given up.

"Didn't I tell you to take it easy?" he said when he looked in on his eye patient.

"I did for about nine hours," Grissom said, coughing.

"Oh, well then, what am I complaining about?"

"How did the eye hold up?"

"It fine," Richland said. "You're incorrigible."

Grissom could tolerate all the abuse knowing Dell was gone and Sara was safe.

Although Sara had been discharged, she insisted on staying with her husband in his room until he could go home.

As Grissom was getting ready to leave on the third day, Richard Jennings came by. Jennings kissed Sara's forehead and gently shook Grissom's hand.

"Am I to understand that the two of you are getting out of Dodge?" he said.

"I think we've left enough blood in Clark County," Sara said.

"Too bad," Jennings replied. "One more injury combo for the two of you and we could have built a new surgical wing on the hospital. I was counting on it."

"Could we just make a donation?" Grissom said with a smile.

Jennings grew serious. After shepherding these two through a myriad of encounters with bad guys, he was pleased they were moving onto a quieter, safer life.

"It's been an honor," he said. "Good luck."

x x x x x x x

It felt good to be back in their own home, even if they were preparing to leave it.

The sheets were clean.

Hank was sprawled happily at the bottom of the mattress.

Gil had Sara in his arms.

Lionel Dell was dead.

"You think he was really married to Natalie?" Sara asked.

"No one has found a record of a marriage certificate."

"It could have been common-law."

"Ummmm."

She raised up on an elbow and looked at him.

"You okay?"

"Fine."

"Really?"

He glanced away.

"That's what I thought. Talk to me."

He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

She put her hand on his bare chest and rubbed gently. "Can you tell me what's bothering you?"

"Not really something I want to discuss."

"You mean what it's like to kill somebody?"

He nodded. "Something like that."

"You saved my life," she said. "You saved your own life."

"I know."

"Doesn't help?"

"A man's still dead by my hand."

"You feel that you killed him?"

He nodded. "We both had a finger on the trigger. When he realized the gun was pointed more at him than me, he tried to pull both of us away. When he moved his finger, I pulled. I knew what I was doing. It wasn't an accident."

"But it was self defense."

"Somehow that doesn't help."

She reached over and caressed his cheek. She kissed his closed eyes softly.

"Does that help?"

"Ummmmm."

"Can you get past it?" Sara asked.

"Eventually. Probably."

She moved over him and kissed him lightly on the neck, in the hollow of his throat, on his cheeks, on the mouth. She laid her head on his shoulder.

"I'll never get over that," he said.

Grissom felt Sara's smile spread across his skin. The sensation reached him.

Sara lifted her head.

"You lie there and relax," she said. "I'll give you a better memory."

For the next 10 minutes she worked him over with the lightest possible touch from her lips. She feathered them over his face, his neck, his shoulders, chest, abdomen. She spent extra time on his thighs and stopped before reaching his groin.

The lightest of touches for so long – he called them whispers of a promise – had him fully aroused. Sara managed to cut through everything, the exhaustion, the pain, the guilt and move him toward oblivion.

"Why did you stop?" he asked.

"I figured you'd had enough," she said.

He opened one eye and gave her a reproving look. It was the good eye, so she knew he meant it.

"Well, then, I guess I'll have to start all over again."

"Take it in reverse this time."

She tapped her finger on the slit at the tip of cock, and it twitched.

"Naughty boy," she said.

"I try," he said with a blissful smile on his lips.

She started on the slit, dipping her tongue in to gather the pre-cum that seeped from him. She spread it around the head as if she were icing a cake with her tongue. Again, no pressure. Just a light, light touch.

He moaned and moved his hips, overcome with his passion.

When he was writhing sufficiently beneath her, she pursed her lips and blew a stream of cool air right at the slit.

"Oh, god, Sara. Please keep going."

She had no intention of stopping.

She began the same game with his balls. Lapping lightly, blowing lightly. She felt them draw up. He bucked. She stopped. She wasn't ready for him to come. She sensed he wasn't ready, either.

She took a short break.

"Thank you," he whispered. "For slowing it down."

She gave him half a minute, which she filled by kissing his chest and biting at his nipples.

He sank his hands into her ass cheeks, but she pushed his hands away.

"My show," she said.

"But …"

"Uh-uh."

Then she was back on his cock.

She feathered her tongue up and down the hard ridge on the underside.

She took all of him in her mouth and down her throat, touching him only lightly with her tongue and lips.

He was insane now.

"I want to be in you," he said. "It's been too long."

She kissed him hard, then, and slid down onto him.

He put his hands behind her then and began kneading her ass cheeks again.

"Gris," she said.

He gave her a totally innocent, little-boy look.

"That isn't sex," he said. "I forgot to do my hand therapy today."

She laughed out loud at that.

"If you want to exercise your hands, try it in front of your cock, not behind."

He did. She rode his erection slowly as he played with her clit.

"God, you're so big and so hard," she said.

"Let's see if you can take any more," he said.

He slipped one, then two of his fingers into her vagina, so the fingers that massaged her worked in perfect concert with the cock making love to her. Every erotic place in her was covered by one of his moving parts. Out of her, too. He used his other hand on her clit.

"Jesus, fucking … I don't believe that, Gil. Oh, god, I am so coming."

He was close, too. But he knew the sensation would grow with every second they could wait.

"Hold it as long as you can, Sara," he said. "Feel the excitement build."

"If it builds any more, it's going to fucking kill me," she said.

He smiled. "Hold. Hold."

She tried.

He tried.

They just couldn't any more.

She climaxed first, her vaginal muscles spasming hard against his cock and his fingers, her clit dancing in his hand.

He followed, just as hard, and the sensations for each of them just kept pounding their bodies.

The aftershocks were as big as some orgasms.

Sara was practically sobbing with the intensity of the feelings.

Grissom was struck mute by them.

As long as anything of him was left inside of her, Sara was determined not to move. When she finally had no choice, she slid down his sweat-slicked skin to lie on top of him.

She dipped her fingers between her legs and brought up a mixture of the proof of their pleasure.

She licked at the fingers for a moment, and then offered them to Grissom.

He took them in his mouth down to the knuckles, and she finger-fucked his mouth until he had cleaned her.

"You really are the naughty one," he said.

"You said once the only unnatural sex is the absence of sex. So what we just did was perfectly natural."

"Hmmmm," he said. "It was natural, yes. But I don't think it was quite perfect. I think we need to practice some more."

"We have all the time in the world, Dr. Grissom."

"We do, Mrs. Grissom. Welcome to our new life."

x x x x x x x

A/N: Thanks to Flo1804 for a unique perspective on Grissom's hand therapy. j